Thief's covenant

across the floor where the demon had puked it up, slowly bubbling and eating away at the carpet.

Moving as rapidly as her aching body would allow, keeping half an eye on the demon at all times, Widdershins skittered about the room, packing the horn with all the black powder carried by every one of Claude's thugs. Then and only then did she lean down beside the demon.

“Go back to hell,” she whispered.

Widdershins shoved the horn unceremoniously into the beast's upturned mouth, as far down its throat as it would go, and fled the room. She paused once in the doorway, just long enough to yank one of the torches from the wall and hurl at the writhing, choking form, before slamming the door.

The thunderous blast made her ears ring even through the normally soundproof portal. Carefully she cracked it open once more, peered into the chapel just to be certain, and smiled.

And twenty-six souls, hovering in the ether around Adrienne Satti for two long years, drifted away to their long-sought rest.

“Now,” she told Olgun exhaustedly, “would be a good time to go home.”

Even as she spoke, she realized that she knew exactly where “home,” from now on, had to be.

It was the very last respect she could pay.

EPILOGUE

Several days from now:

“Well,” the girl began hesitantly, voice husky with suppressed grief, with tears long since cried, “I guess that's the end of it.” Robin looked around her, gripping the haft of the broom as though she sought to prevent the tool, and all it represented, from disappearing.

The common room looked good, better than it had in months. The employees, and Robin in particular, had done a marvelous job of cleaning up. The floor was free of dust and debris, and scrubbed so that all but the most stubborn stains had given up in despair. For the first time in years, the twin scents of alcohol and sawdust were stronger than the lingering aura of stale sweat. The tables, too, were cleaned and polished to within an inch of their lives…. All the tables but one. That one was gone, Widdershins having fed it piece by piece into the blazing hearth.

The serving girl still didn't know, really, what had happened. Part of her wanted to push, to demand an explanation, but she'd never do that to her friend. Shins would tell her the entire story if and when she was ready, and not a moment before.

“It looks good, Robin,” Widdershins said softly from behind her. The girl felt a comforting hand close over her shoulder. “She'd have been proud of what you've done with the place.”

With a piteous wail, Robin dropped the broom and fell against the newcomer's chest, sobbing miserably. Widdershins clasped her arms around the girl and let the spell subside.

Even once it had, she kept a worried eye on Robin, watching for a relapse of the near madness that had gripped her the night Genevieve died. She'd suffered no similar attacks since, but Widdershins walked on eggshells around her, terrified that she might set off another episode.

But it was more than the memory of her lost friend that had Robin so distraught. As the sobbing wound down, Widdershins distinctly heard a muffled, “What am I going to do?” from the tousled black mop of hair against her breast.

“What else would you do, Robin? You'll pull yourself together, organize the others when they get here, and get this place ready to reopen. You've got no idea the amount of business we've lost already.”

Robin jerked back from her friend's embrace as though she'd been shoved, her red-rimmed eyes wide. “Shins,” Robin began, trying to keep her voice steady, “there's not going to be any reopening. You know what Gen's father thought of this place! He'll probably just close it down, or maybe sell it, and in either case-”

“Robin, what makes you think Monsieur Marguilles has any say over what happens?”

The girl blinked, and despite her grief, Widdershins laughed at the befuddled look.

“Genevieve's will explicitly grants ownership of the Flippant Witch to someone else.”

“But Gen didn't have a will!” Robin exclaimed. “She kept putting it off.”

Widdershins smiled sadly. “You're forgetting the kinds of people I work with, Robin. By the time Marguilles gets here to take possession of ‘his' tavern, I'll have a will so perfect that Genevieve herself wouldn't have recognized it as a fake.”

“Is…is that right?” The girl sounded doubtful. “I mean, would Gen have approved?”

“More than she'd have approved of her father selling her home to some stranger, I think.”

Robin felt herself starting to smile as well, for the first time in almost a week. “And this new owner would happen to be…?”

Widdershins casually buffed her nails on her vest. “Of course,” she finally admitted, “I don't know the first thing about running a tavern, so that's pretty much going to be your job. It means, I'm afraid, that I have to insist on paying you more, but I'm sure you'll understooof!!”

Trying her hardest to gulp in some much-needed air, Widdershins gently disentangled herself from the world's most aggressive hug. “I take it you're happy with the decision,” the thief croaked.

“You could say that,” Robin replied.

“Is that why you tried to crush me to death just now?”

Startlingly, the girl's smile grew wider. “I thought it might be best to get you out of the way before you changed your mind.”

For a long moment, Widdershins just stared at her, and then nearly collapsed with laughter.

“Which reminds me,” Widdershins remarked afterward, tousling Robin's hair fondly. “I have a thing or three I've been putting off, myself. Now that the bar's taken care of…” And you, too, she added silently, “I really ought to get to them. You get this place ready to open by tomorrow night or it's coming out of your pay, you hear me?”

Even from outside, Widdershins could faintly hear the young girl whistling as she once more swept the already pristine floor of the common room.

Standing in the midst of a filthy bedroom, heaps of clothes and assorted bric-a-brac hiding the old, termite- eaten floor, Henri Roubet desperately shoved the pieces of several outfits into a satchel already bulging at the seams.

He wasn't entirely certain how it had all gone wrong, but he knew that it couldn't possibly have gone any worse. The Apostle was dead, his men were dead, and Widdershins had not only seen his face but heard his name! He'd flinched even then, when Jean Luc introduced him, but he'd figured it didn't matter. She was going to be dead, and he was going to be rich.

Well, so be it. He was still good at his job, bum hand notwithstanding, and the Apostle had paid him more than enough over the years. He could start over in some other city without difficulty, live for quite some time before he even had to worry about finding a new position. In fact, much as he'd have enjoyed the riches promised him, this might even prove the better option. In another city, the weight of his past and the suspicion of the Guard wouldn't be hanging over his shoulder. He just needed to-

He froze, satchel falling from limp fingers at the feel of the cold metal mouth kissing his skull. Nobody could have snuck up on him here! Just dropping a damn pair of trousers made the floorboards in this pesthole squeak! And yet there the man was, visible just out of the corner of Roubet's eye, flintlock pressed to the back of his head.

“Why?” the former Guardsman asked softly.

“Because Widdershins isn't a murderer,” Renard Lambert said to him. “And Genevieve would never have wanted someone like you to turn her into one.”

Henri Roubet closed his eyes tightly as the hammer fell.

Renard glared for a few moments at the corpse of Henri Roubet, then casually stuck the flintlock back in his belt. He tugged briefly on the fingers of his glove, blew on them to clear them of any excess powder, and turned