Thief's covenant

Claude, chest heaving and forehead glistening with sweat, emerged from behind his minions and glared around him. “You wait outside,” he said, gesturing to one of the men. The others, along with Jean Luc and the demon, followed him inside, their boots muffled by the worn carpeting.

The door slid shut behind them, but their sight adjusted rapidly to the sickly light of the uneven lanterns and torches, the artificial gloaming that presaged the fall of a night that never came. Claude quickly recognized the chapel for what it was, and his gaze slowly traveled across the humanoid form of the idol, coming to rest upon its heavy hood of black cloth.

“Here,” Widdershins said, appearing from behind the statue. “Your proof.” With an almost contemptuous flip of her wrist, she sent the mask drifting unevenly down to the floor.

The chapel filled with horrified screams, as men and monster looked upon the unveiled face of the Shrouded God.

Beneath the upraised hand that shielded her eyes, Widdershins saw the assassin Jean Luc collapse to his knees, screaming until his cheeks had reddened and his eyes bulged. All around, she heard other men following suit, though she dared not look.

And as it seemed he could scream no more, that his lungs must collapse for lack of air, his voice took on a horrible, liquid tone. Jean Luc thrashed on the floor, vomiting everything in his gut, heave after heave until there was utterly nothing left.

Still it refused to stop, for the curse of the Shrouded God was nothing less than the most primal font of thievery itself.

Need. Want. Hunger.

When she could actually see the flesh, the meat, the muscle fading-when his skin sank ever nearer his bones with each purge, as the substance of his body was eaten away, almost deflating before her eyes-Widdershins finally had to look away, her own whimpers scarcely audible above the hideous gurgles that had once been screams.

Only when the noises finally stopped and the chamber began to reek of purged and rotted flesh did she open her eyes. Bodies lay strewn across the room, gaunt as famine victims and glued to the matted carpet by a viscous sludge. Even the demon lay sprawled, its leathery hide clinging to its bones. It moved, struggling to rise, apparently too potent for the curse to slay, but for the nonce, at least, it was vulnerable.

Keeping her eyes carefully downcast and her back to the idol, Widdershins reached down and, with a shudder of revulsion, peeled the statue's hood from the carpet where it lay. She felt her way along the sculpture until she finally found the head, and gasped audibly in relief as she pulled the hood back over its face.

All right, all she had to do now was find some way to keep the demon down, and-

Olgun's scream was almost too late. A long, wide blade flickered from the darkness, and Widdershins's desperate forward roll might have saved her life, but only just. Fire flashed through her as the steel punched into her back just above the kidney, and her blood rained down to mix with the vile mire soaking into the carpet.

Struggling through the pain and the crawling of her skin as she rolled across the foul floor, Widdershins rose to her feet and spun, hefting the rapier that had fallen beside the body of Jean Luc.

Claude stood before her, sword in hand. A trickle of blood running down one side of his chin was the only sign of the Shrouded God's curse. Perhaps the Apostle had averted his eyes before the magics had taken hold-or maybe, just maybe, he had taken shelter behind his own divine protection.

“Well played,” he growled, the tip of his sword slicing abstract patterns through the air before him. With a scowl, he shrugged the cloak from his shoulders. “You almost had us. But Cevora protects his own, and none can stand before him.”

“I'm not standing before him,” Widdershins grunted, rapier steady in one hand even as she pressed the other to her bleeding wound. “I'm standing before you.”

She lunged, ignoring the tearing in her back. She had to end this fast, turn her attention back to the demon before it recovered its strength.

The Apostle's blade, though far heavier than her own, swept up with astounding speed to meet the assault. They stood a moment, steel against steel, the stares they exchanged sharper than any sword.

Widdershins's rapier was gleaming lightning, striking from one direction almost before she had completed her thrust from the last. It whistled as it cut through the air, and the ring of metal on metal was so rapid it became a single prolonged screech.

But through it all, Claude's blade intercepted even the swiftest strike. His heavy sword was more than enough to turn her weapon away, yet quick enough to slice through the gaps opened by his overwhelming parries. Widdershins bled from half a dozen wounds, tiny scrapes that sapped away her swiftly fading strength, yet she delivered none in return. Sweat poured down her face and his, gleaming in the light reflecting off the flashing blades.

Claude was good, but he wasn't that good; not as skilled as Lisette had been. But in that earlier struggle-gods, had it been so recent? — Widdershins hadn't been weighed down so terribly, by grief, by exhaustion, by the pain of her vicious wound.

She hadn't faced a foe who, just perhaps, had his own god guiding his hand, even as she did.

And she knew, she knew, that this was a fight she could not win.

Widdershins spun, wincing at the pain of her injury even as she ducked under a slash that would have opened her scalp had it connected. Dropping almost into a crouch, she reached out with her empty hand and-struggling not to think about what she was doing-scooped up a handful of the semiliquid remains spread across the floor and hurled it at her foe. Claude saw it coming, turned his face away to avoid getting the horrible stuff in his eyes and mouth-but it was enough to halt him in his tracks, if only for the briefest instant.

Widdershins was off at a limping sprint, standing at the door before the Apostle had taken a single step. With desperate speed she hauled it open, sliding it into its stone moorings, and came face to startled face with the guard Claude had left outside.

For a heartbeat they stared, she having utterly forgotten he was there, he having heard nothing of the conflict within, thanks to the heavy walls and door. And then he was yanking his flintlock from his belt, bringing it up and around with expert speed, finger already tightening on the trigger…

Widdershins hissed Olgun's name, and the deity reached out to caress the weapon-not to stop it, not to blow it to splinters, but to ignite it early. The flint slammed down without the trigger's urging; black powder flashed and sparked. The thug's eyes had only begun to widen as the lead ball hurtled harmlessly past Widdershins's shoulder-and sank, with a dull tearing sound and a horrified grunt, into the chest of the man charging up behind her.

The soldier stared in growing horror, Widdershins in shock, Claude down at his chest in bewildered disbelief.

“I don't understand,” the Apostle whispered, tears forming in his eyes. “Cevora…”

And then he fell, first to his knees, then facedown in the putrid carpet.

Widdershins stepped forward, kneed the remaining guard in the groin as he stood stunned, and cracked him over the head with the pommel of the rapier for good measure.

“Nice shot, Olgun!” she crowed, laughing through her pain. She felt the god within beaming with pride.

“Don't let it go to your head, though,” she added. “I don't want to still be hearing about this a month from now.”

She swore she could feel him stick his tongue out at her.

Widdershins wanted nothing more than to leave. She hurt all over, she'd begun to feel slightly faint from exertion (and probably blood loss), and she knew it was only a matter of time before the thieves regained their courage and came hunting for whatever had invaded their home. But she'd come here for a reason, and that purpose remained undone.

Leaning over the unconscious thug, she carefully removed the powder horn at his waist and made her way back into the reeking chamber of horrors that had lately been a shrine.

It wasn't dead. The inhuman form had survived a three-story plunge back at the tenement, waded through a barrage of bolts and bullets, refused to be slain by the curse of a god not its own. But it lay, grunting and twitching, struggling to regain the strength that had been ripped from it. Some hideous viscous sludge of a color that Widdershins had never before seen-she could describe it only as some hideous combination of blue and death-oozed