Thief's covenant

the walls. Others appeared to have survived untouched for decades. Guards grew scarce; cobwebs hung thick; the air stank of mold; sconces were empty or sprouted only rotted wood that could no longer hold a flame. Obviously her drugged guide wasn't exactly taking the most direct route through the place-not that Widdershins had any destination in mind more specific than “where the important rooms are”-and she could only hope they'd indeed wind up somewhere worthwhile. Well, not her only hope. She prayed that Olgun could retrace the path they'd taken, should circumstances demand a hasty withdrawal.

But it seemed, finally, that they might just be getting someplace. Signs of regular passage and the echoes of distant voices grew more common with each subsequent hallway, until it became clear that they traveled through a major hub of the complex. Widdershins tensed, alert to the slightest sign that they might no longer be alone.

They encountered no one at all. Widdershins didn't know if most of the thieves were engaged in other pursuits, or whether it was sheer dumb luck, but it made her as nervous as it did relieved. Hubert, his pace slackening and his eyes beginning to glaze like a pastry, jerked to an unsteady halt before a heavy iron door. “Center,” he murmured, his voice thick, his tongue dry.

“The center?” Widdershins repeated. “Of the complex?”

“Yeah…”

“What is it?”

“Chapel.” Hubert giggled again, a flaccid sound. “We should go pray.”

Widdershins barely caught him before he slumped, unconscious, to the floor.

Ah, well. I suppose he lasted as long as I needed him to.

Widdershins put her ear to the metallic portal. She heard nothing beyond, but then, it was a hefty door. When Olgun's own divine senses confirmed her observations, however, Widdershins confidently gave the door a heavy shove-rather shocked at the ease and silence with which it opened-and dragged the slumbering sentry inside with her.

The chamber sparked the vaguest of memories. She'd been here only once, over a year ago, and then only for a few moments. It held a number of softly gleaming lanterns that pressed the shadows up to the ceiling where they hung, a thin, dark awning. Wormy tendrils of smoke reached sinuously from those tiny lights, intertwining at the ceiling and flowing through numerous concealed holes.

The young woman's attention was drawn to the towering stone statue at the front of the room. Her curiosity piqued, she glided, ghostlike, up the dais and around the podium.

Other than its prodigious size, the carving could have represented an ordinary man. His garb was loose, a style popular many generations back. The only other oddity was the statue's head, covered by a thick, heavy cloth of darkest jet.

She thought she remembered it being a lot more impressive.

“The Shrouded God,” Widdershins intoned melodramatically. “Beware his terribly wrathful terrible wrath.”

Olgun chuckled disdainfully.

“You know,” she said, reaching upward, “I've always wondered…”

Her fingertips had brushed against the roughly woven hood before Olgun screamed in her mind, a shriek the likes of which she'd never heard. She stumbled away from the idol, palms pressed to her ears.

“Ow! Purple steaming hell, Olgun! What was that for?”

The god continued to shout his warning at her-more calmly and far more softly, at least.

“Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “It's not like there's really some spooky ancient curse on whoever looks at the stupid thing.”

Her eyes widened at the sense of absolute certainty that washed over her soul.

“There is? What does it do?”

No answer. Either Olgun didn't know, or he didn't want to tell her. Widdershins cast a final glance at the statue and decided to let the issue drop.

“All right, all right. Look, the Shrouded Lord's office has to be close to the chapel, right? So let's head out there and find him, and maybe we can get this damn thing resolved before-”

“You!” There was enough venom in that single word not merely to knock a person dead, but to sicken the worms and beetles who would feast upon the corpse.

“Or,” Widdershins muttered, “we can let someone find us dillydallying about here.” She spun, one hand clasping the hilt of the rapier, and stared into the face she'd grown to hate with every fiber of her being.

Lisette Suvagne, her fiery mane radiating about her head like a corona, stepped over the insensate body of Hubert Juste. Her eyes all but glowed from within.

“I don't know how you got in here, you little scab, but I'm glad you did!” The taskmaster stopped halfway through the chapel. With a low, eager sound, her rapier slid obscenely from its scabbard, her dagger appearing as swiftly in her left hand. The blades glinted dully in the lantern light. “It's so much more satisfying this way.”

Widdershins's own blade whipped over her back, cut fine lines in the air before her. “Hello, Lisette. You're looking stressed, did you know that? Are you taking proper care of yourself?”

The redhead smiled. “I'm going to feel a lot better in a few minutes, Widdershins.” Cautiously, she took several steps; Widdershins did not walk, but leapt from the side of the idol to meet her. They stood only feet apart now, close enough for the tips of the rapiers to kiss one another with a metallic chime.

“So what happened, Lisette? I haven't seen you this upset since d'Arras Tower.” She smiled sweetly. “You're not still miffed about that, are you?”

The taskmaster lunged with a bestial snarl. Widdershins parried casually, contemptuously smacking the blade aside, retreating rather than taking the obvious riposte. Lisette flailed briefly, scrambling to retain her balance with an undignified whirling of limbs.

“I'll see you dead, bitch!”

“Only if the ceiling falls on me, Lisette.”

The room echoed, as though a rain of nails had suddenly fallen from the night-blackened skies. Over and over, the taskmaster's rapier lashed at the black-clad intruder. Her dagger was the flickering sting of a scorpion, seeking any opening the rapier might leave.

Nothing connected. Widdershins pivoted impossibly fast, twisting to face any direction from which Lisette could attack. Her arm flashed up, out, to either side; her wrist turned at impossible angles, whipping the thin steel into the path of the taskmaster's weapons.

They moved swiftly across the chamber, Widdershins deliberately falling back before Lisette's furious assault, concentrating entirely on defense, refusing to take so much as a single stab at the foe. Though gilded in a veneer of style and civility, trained into her during her years as the ward of a nobleman, Widdershins's swordplay was, at its core, brutal, direct-not fencing but street fighting. Nothing in her experience should have allowed her to turn away blow after blow as she was, yet she kept her lone blade constantly interposed between both Lisette's weapons.

The taskmaster was good, very good. But Lisette, for all her faith, didn't have a god watching over her shoulder and guiding her blades. And slowly, slowly, she began to tire. She found herself flinching from counterattacks that never came, her eyes drifting dangerously to follow Widdershins's footwork when they should remain focused elsewhere.

And then, as their path took them past the towering idol of the Shrouded God, Widdershins lashed out with the tip of her blade and scored a thin line straight down the stone deity's crotch.

Lisette froze, shocked to the core of her being, more horrified at Widdershins's blasphemy than she could ever have been at merely mortal suffering. And in that instant of paralysis, when Lisette's jaw and fingers had both fallen slack, Widdershins stepped in and slammed her rapier down on the taskmaster's sword, knocking it from her fist to skip and skitter across the carpeted floor. Even as Lisette turned, cognizant once more of the danger, Widdershins grabbed the taskmaster's left wrist with her own free hand and, with only a modicum of exertion, drove Lisette's own dagger deep into the woman's upper thigh.

“If we're through playing now,” Widdershins told the woman, now lying curled around a growing pool of blood, “I'd really like to ask you a few questions before you bleed to death.”

“Go to hell!” Lisette gasped around broken sobs. She tried to crane her head, to look up with some last show of dignity; but her leggings, already plastered to her skin by the torrent of blood, pulled rudely at the gaping wound, and she couldn't so much as shift her weight for the pain. “Killing me won't stop them! They'll come after you, no