Thief's covenant

matter what!”

“I don't know, Lisette,” Widdershins said thoughtfully. “I think I'd be doing them a favor by popping whatever sack of contagion you have for a heart. I'm sure there are quite a few here who would send me flowers. Maybe a nice fruit basket.”

“Even if that's true,” the taskmaster wheezed, “the Shrouded Lord doesn't take kindly to being disobeyed.”

“I didn't disobey anything until you'd already punished me for it,” Widdershins protested. “And it's certainly a bit of overkill to throw a blooming demon at me, don't you think?”

Lisette laughed aloud, the sound changing to a gurgle of pain as the movement jostled her injured leg. “I'll tell Brock you think so highly of him,” she gasped.

Maybe it was her tone, but the young thief didn't doubt the woman for a moment. Lisette really didn't know what Widdershins was talking about. Someone else was trying to kill her, someone outside the guild-the same someone who had slaughtered Olgun's cult! She was after the wrong people!

Sheathing her blade, she delivered a swift and brutal kick to Lisette's injured leg. Then, as the taskmaster's scream drowned out all other sound, she slid open the door behind her and slipped out the winding corridors. Long before Lisette's cries could attract attention in the largely empty halls, Widdershins was already gone, lost in the labyrinthine corridors, leaving only the fading echo of her footsteps to prove she'd been present at all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Almost two years ago:

Even in darkest night, life continued in Davillon's central market. Though stalls and shops were long since closed, windows shuttered and doors thoroughly locked, the marketplace offered other attractions. Illicit deals and unlawful exchanges occupied shadowed culs-de-sac, dimly lit offices, corner booths in smoke-filled taverns- anywhere the participants could place at least one wall at their back. And for each audible voice lurked another individual whose mouth remained firmly shut, ready to cut the strings of a purse or the flesh of a throat. The nighttime market, without the scents of fruits and perfumes and sweetmeats, was redolent of sweat and drying horse manure.

Tonight, Adrienne smelled none of it. She didn't hear the muted whispers circling the market like carrion crows. She didn't taste the charged excitement that spiced the air, or feel the sodden sense of fear that brushed across her skin.

No, tonight Adrienne saw only the hideous sea of red through which she'd waded; smelled and tasted only the iron pungency of blood and the bitter stench of death; felt nothing save the clammy embrace of her gore-soaked gown.

In the back of her mind, Olgun yammered away in his own peculiar fashion, a barrage of emotions that Adrienne lacked the practice and the presence of mind to interpret. In later years, she would look back on this moment and realize that her divine companion, too, had been scared witless. It was one thing she never, in all her days, teased him about.

Adrienne flitted from alley to roadway and back again, keeping herself cloaked in the ambient darkness as she swept through the muted heart of Davillon. City Guard patrols passed her on the street, couples foolishly out for a late-night stroll meandered by, yet she remained unseen.

The claustrophobic confines of the city's center faded away, slowly metamorphosing into the well-kept and far more spacious properties of Davillon's better districts. Through this, too, she drifted, until finally she found herself before the high walls of the most prosperous, if not necessarily the largest or most pretentious, of the lot.

It occurred to Adrienne, through her exhausted fugue, that she might do better to avoid the guard at the front gate. Andre, like all the servants-except Claude-had never treated her with anything but kindness. But somehow, she couldn't see even easygoing Andre taking her current condition with aplomb, and she wanted to avoid a ruckus until she'd spoken to Alexandre, made sure he was safe and asked him what the hell she should do.

Eventually, without ever really remembering how she got there, she found herself clinging to a tree branch outside Alexandre's sitting room, listening in growing horror to the conversation within.

On the other side of the window, a small fire crackled in the hearth, popping in cheerful counterpoint to the low susurration of voices around it. The room was lined on two sides with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The other two walls sported trophies of their master's more adventurous past. An old rapier hung above the fireplace, crossed by a primitive arquebus. A lion's head roared silently from above the door, stuffed and mounted to perfectly match the face of Cevora, its gaze locked with that of the small albino rhinoceros that stared just as ferociously from above the mounted weapons.

A quartet of richly upholstered chairs faced one another, a small tea table set between them. Alexandre Delacroix, clad in rumpled nightclothes, sat directly opposite the window; Claude, fully dressed, loomed over his master's shoulder. The other three chairs were occupied by Guardsmen. On the right was the young constable, Bouniard, and the commander himself sat nearest the window.

“…be some mistake,” Alexandre was insisting when Adrienne pressed her ear to the glass, his jaw incredulously slack. “Or else a jest in unbelievably poor taste! Whatever your game, Major Chapelle, I can't say I find it amusing.”

“I'd hardly expect you to find it so, my lord,” the old Guardsman said respectfully. “And I assure you, I couldn't be more serious. I think the murder of twenty-six individuals, and most especially these particular individuals, falls well outside the bounds of humor.”

Alexandre shook his head, fists clenched. “Major, I don't for one moment doubt you when you tell me what happened. Gods, those poor…I know most of these people! So if I'm a bit distraught, I trust you'll forgive me.”

Over the top of the chair, Adrienne saw Chapelle's head dip in a brisk nod.

“But to come here,” the master of the house continued, “and tell me that you think Adrienne, of all people… Good gods, man, it's insane! I've raised her as my own daughter for years! Even assuming any human being were capable of the sort of carnage you've described, there's no way my Adrienne could be involved. She's not that person, no matter what gossip you've been listening to!”

Adrienne almost gasped in relief. He still believed in her….

“Monsieur Delacroix,” Chapelle said calmly, “I can only begin to imagine how hard this must be to hear. If the situation were any different, I would have preferred to do this slowly, more gently. But we simply haven't that sort of time, so I must be blunt. You've asked my forgiveness for your emotional state. I now ask yours for following the dictates of my job.

“What we found, monsieur, was a religious cult, devoted to no god of the Hallowed Pact. Until we learn more about this god, we've no idea what the cult might have been about, or what aims it might have pursued. More to the immediate point, however, is the fact that we located, at the scene, a log of sect membership.”

“The sect kept names?” Alexandre asked, incredulously-and perhaps just a tad fearfully.

“Names, no. But numbers.” Chapelle seemed to completely miss the aristocrat's faint shudder of relief. “And that is sufficient for us to note that one or two members of the sect were not present amidst the dead.

“The bloodshed was atrocious,” the constable continued relentlessly, driving his arguments home with a cold efficiency, “yet there were no bodies but those of the cultists themselves. Either they failed to kill even a single one of their attackers, or all other bodies were removed. In either case, that suggests an overwhelming force, and to me, that also suggests collusion. For a large group to even find the hidden shrine, let alone enter it without being detected in time to allow for some sort of escape or defense, would have all but required inside help.”

Alexandre nodded softly. “I can certainly see how that could be, Major. But I fail to see what my Adrienne has to do with it all.”

“One of the dead was Lord Darien Lemarche. I've heard enough ‘gossip,' as you say, to know that he's rarely alone these days-and to know with whom he keeps his company.”