False Covenant

How's the jaw?”

“Go to hell, bitch.”

“Hey!” Remy snarled across his desk-a massive, antique monstrosity that was clearly too nice for the otherwise frugal office and had most probably been stolen from somewhere fancy. “None of that! Both of you, sit!”

They sat. The office contained four rickety chairs (not counting Remy's own); perhaps unsurprisingly, Widdershins and Simon took the ones on the edges, leaving two empty seats between them.

“Good. Now, we're gonna have a couple of words about your little disaster at Rittier's manor last week.”

“She ruined-!” Simon began, simultaneous with Widdershins's own, “If that idiot-”

“Shut up!”

They shut.

“Widdershins, you haven't worked a lot of jobs since the Shrouded Lord promoted me, so maybe you've forgotten, but we're a guild, not a gods-damned social club! That means that if you're hitting a big target-such as, just for instance, anything likely to attract other Finders besides yourself-you coordinate! You keep us the hell informed!”

“But I-”

“That wasn't a question!”

“Got it,” she grumbled.

“And you!” Remy continued, swiveling to face his other victim. “Wipe that fucking smile off your face before I carve it off you! You're a bigger fool than she is!”

“But-”

“What the hell were you thinking, you diseased jackass? You bring an entire crew with you? Try to rob a noble estate at knife-point? To take hostages?!”

“Finders rob lots of people,” he protested.

“Not the aristocracy, gods damn it! You want to steal something from one of the blue bloods, you do it quietly! You trying to bring the whole fucking Guard down on us?!”

“What are they going to do? They've known where we are for years, and they haven't…they…” Simon trailed off, looking as twitchy as the rodent for which he was named, as Remy slowly rose and leaned over the desk.

“I,” he said, his voice abruptly calm, “am this close to wringing out your brain and using it as a sponge. At which point, I should point out, it will probably become more useful than it is right now. Are you hearing me?”

Squirrel nodded. Widdershins, deciding that safe was definitely better, at the moment, than sorry, nodded too. Just in case.

“If you'd killed any of the nobles,” Remy continued, “we'd probably have handed you over to the Guard ourselves. We sure as hell wouldn't even be considering paying bail for your idiot friends.”

Squirrel's eyes brightened, perhaps reflecting the escape route he suddenly saw for himself. “Nobody would've been caught at all if it wasn't for her,” he spat, pointing. (As if there were any other “her” in the room to whom he could have been referring.)

“Oh? And how's that?”

“She helped them, Remy! Helped the damn Guardsmen grab some of my boys!”

“That so?” he growled, turning once more.

Widdershins sat straight in the chair, refusing to cringe or even so much as frown. “Not initially. I actually got involved, even after Squirrel and his nuts messed everything up, to keep them from getting arrested.”

“Oh, horseshit!” Squirrel began. “You're such a-”

“Have some of your people ask around about a gaggle of Guardsmen getting a banner dropped on their heads if you don't believe me,” she said to Remy.

“I may do that. But even if it's true, you said ‘initially.’ That sounds to me like an admission that you did eventually throw some of our people to the Guard.”

Squirrel grinned a tight, evil little grin.

“Well, yeah,” Shins said casually. She actually crossed one leg over the other knee and began examining the nails on her right hand. “I mean, given how peeved you are about those idiots threatening a few aristocrats and servants, I can just imagine how irked you'd have been if-”

“She's lying!” Simon screamed, rising to his feet.

“-they'd actually succeeded in-”

“Shut up, you bitch!”

“-deliberately murdering officers of the Guard.”

Simon looked about ready to hurl himself across the room at her, but Remy's abrupt stare effectively pinned him to the floor where he stood.

“They…” He swallowed once, then tried again to answer the taskmaster's unasked question. “They were disguised as servants! How could we have known?”

“The first ones were disguised as servants, Squirrel,” Widdershins helpfully reminded him. “The ones that you actually tried to stab were in full uniform, though.”

“That so?” Remy asked again.

“No!” Squirrel insisted.

Widdershins shrugged. “As I said, I know you have sources in the Guard. Ask around. We'll be happy to wait.” She smiled sweetly at Simon. “Won't we?”

Simon might have had a response to that-probably not, though-but either way, it didn't matter. The door opened without so much as a knock, and Remy was immediately on his feet, Widdershins close behind.

There was, after all, only one man in the guild who'd dare to barge in on the taskmaster without knocking.

Framed in the doorway, illuminated by the flickering lantern light, stood the Shrouded Lord, unquestioned master of the Finders' Guild. His garb consisted entirely of charcoal-hued fabrics hanging in heavy folds, topped by a full-face hood not dissimilar to that worn by the nearby idol. The result was to make him look vaguely phantasmal (and, in fact, not too different from the mysterious figure stalking Davillon's streets, though he had no way of knowing about that unfortunate coincidence). It was a much more successful effect in his own audience chamber, which was kept full of a scented smoke whose color matched the fabrics, but even here it proved impressive enough.

Nor was he alone. Just behind and to the left loomed a tall, severe-looking, hatchet-faced woman of middle years. Her dark skin, her darker hair, and her eyes-piercing and black-contrasted sharply with her cassock of formal whites and grays. Widdershins had had only a few sporadic dealings with the woman, but she recognized her well enough. This was Igraine Vernadoe, the high priestess of the Shrouded God and the clergy of the Finders' Guild.

“Sit,” the Shrouded Lord ordered, gliding into the room, the priestess at his heels. His voice was rough, gravelly, and blatantly artificial. None, save the priests themselves, ever knew which member of the Finders' Guild wore the hood of the Shrouded Lord; but of course, the hood did nothing to alter his voice. That, then, was entirely up to him. Widdershins had long wondered just how badly the fellow's throat must hurt at the end of any given day. “What, pray tell,” he continued when everyone had done as he ordered, “is all the shouting about? We heard you from down the hall.”

Remy glowered one last time at Squirrel, who had the courtesy to cringe, and then repeated the entire exchange to the Shrouded Lord.

“I was,” the taskmaster concluded, “just about to start discussing punishments when you arrived, my lord.”

The hood rumpled forward in a nod, and then turned toward the priestess-who looked neither at Remy nor Simon, but had kept her attention locked on Widdershins from the moment she entered the room.