False Covenant

the ground beside the structure. The sound of children cooing and applauding echoed from the distance. And then, for a moment, there was silence.

The dark figure stared at Squirrel, his head once again slightly tilted as though not quite certain what he was looking at. Squirrel stared back, unable to blink. His entire body shook with the beating of his heart, and he was only scarcely aware of the wet warmth running down the inside of his leg.

“You…you…”

“I, I?” the creature asked, advancing in one of his peculiar dancer's steps.

Simon swallowed hard. “You don't want to kill me.”

“I don't?” The head straightened, then cocked to the other side. “I'm rather certain-entirely positive, in fact- that I really, really do.”

“That's-that's because you haven't thought it through….” The thing was closer already, so much closer than he should be.

“Oh, I haven't?” Another surge, and he was right there, filling Squirrel's field of vision. His right hand lashed out and those impossible fingers cupped Simon's face- almost. They hovered, half an inch from his flesh, close enough that he could feel the wind of their twitching in the scruffy hairs on his cheeks. “And you're going to explain it to me? I'm so excited!”

“Um, it's just…I can help you! You need someone who knows this city!”

“I do? I seem to be doing fine without one.” Again the fingers twitched, and Squirrel twitched with them.

“What about her?” he shrieked.

“Her? Her, her, her? Her who?”

“The girl you just fought! Widdershins!”

The fingers vanished from around his face with a series of rapid snaps. “Widdershins? Her name is Widdershins?”

“It's-it's what she goes by, anyway.”

“Goes by? Goes by? A name is a name is a name! Is this hers?”

“Yes! Yes, it is!”

“Widdershins…” His mouth moved around the syllables, bending and twisting. “And her god? Do you know her god?”

“I…You mean the Shrouded God?” Then, at the narrowing glare, “No! That is, I don't, but I can help you find out! I know people who know her! Know her very well! Know where to find her!”

“I see…Little god, tiny god, where have you been? Out and about in a silly girl's skin! Little god, tiny god, where have you been…” The figure began capering about the roof, spinning in ever-widening circles-and just as abruptly, after a full minute of rhyming, stopped.

“Very well.” A single step, and he once again loomed over Squirrel, blotting out the moon and stars. “You will be my vassal, my guide, my northern star. Tell me what I want to know. Show me where I want to go. And learn all you can about this…Widdershins.” A fingertip tickled the skin beneath Simon's ear, drawing only a faint line of blood. “You have my oath, Boy-Thief. No harm will come to you, so long as you remain my servant.”

“I…Thank you. Ah, my lord.”

“Splendid!” The creature stepped back and clapped his hands. “We have a friend! Oh, goody, goody!

“Tell me, friend…. What's a nice place to find someone to eat around here?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

So wrapped up was Bishop Sicard-apparently in reading the holy treatise that lay open before him across the desk, but more accurately within his own tumultuous thoughts-that he failed to notice the first two knocks on his chamber door. Only the third sequence of raps penetrated the cloud of cotton encompassing his mind. He grunted once, smoothed his bushy beard with one hand while rubbing at bloodshot eyes with the other, and called, “Enter!”

For a moment, Sicard thought that a complete stranger had stepped into his study, even though he couldn't imagine a circumstance in which the guards would have allowed such a stranger to wander in alone at this time of night. He was just rising to his feet, whether to call for help or defend himself he wasn't certain, when the newcomer doffed his ragged cap and filthy cloak to reveal the blond, tonsured head and lanky frame of Brother Ferrand.

“Well.” Sicard returned slowly to his chair, struggling to keep a scowl of embarrassed anger from his face. “I see you've got the ‘incognito’ bit down.”

“I assumed, Your Eminence, that wandering around town in a monk's cassock would probably not be conducive to my efforts.”

“Right, fine.” Sicard waved distractedly at the nearest chair, into which Ferrand allowed himself to slump. “So I assume you've learned something about the young noblewoman?”

“Uh…” Ferrand squirmed in the chair, causing the wood to squeak, and coughed once.

“Succinct,” Sicard noted, “but not precisely helpful.”

“Her name is Madeleine Valois,” the monk told him. “Something of a social butterfly. Popular enough at parties, but without many close personal friends that I could find. Nobody actually seems to know her all that well.”

Silence for a moment, broken only by Sicard's fingers drumming on the desk. “And?”

“And, well, that's all I've found so far, Your Eminence.”

“That's all?”

“She is, as I said, not especially well known on anything but a superficial social level. Shows up at all the right parties, says all the right things, and is otherwise about as forgettable as day-old bread.”

“There's something unusual about her, Ferrand. I felt it.”

The monk shrugged. “I'm not doubting you, Your Eminence. I'm simply saying that nobody else seems to have noticed.”

Sicard grimaced at Ferrand for a moment, then at the small chandelier that hung from the ceiling-as though seeking answers or inspiration from what was, at this hour, the room's only illumination-and then back at the monk once again.

“And this riveting report couldn't have waited until a decent hour?” he asked finally. “I'm fairly certain that nothing you've just told me qualifies as especially urgent.”

“That's, um, not precisely what I came to tell you, Your Eminence.”

“Oh? Then get to it, man!”

“Well, it seems that there have been a few deaths….”

“Deaths?”

Ferrand nodded. “As regards your, um, ongoing project.”

“Bah.” Sicard returned to the book on the desk, reaching out for a quill to make a few notes in the margins. “I've heard the rumors, too. Utter nonsense. Just the sort of exaggeration we expected from this sort of-”

“All due respect, Your Eminence, but it's not. I'm not speaking of whispers on street corners. I've spoken with City Guardsmen who were at the scene. Who observed the-well, the bodies.”

Sicard straightened, slowly letting the quill topple to the desk. “That's not possible, Ferrand.”

“Nevertheless…”

“My instructions were specific!” The bishop was slowly standing now. Papers crumpled beneath his fists on the desk, and his cheeks flushed red above his beard-whether with anger, with shame, or a combination of both, even he couldn't honestly have said. “Nobody was to be killed, or even badly harmed! Nobody! Terrorized, yes. Even slightly injured, gods forgive me, to make it all seem real, but not…Gods, what are they…?”

“It's not precisely what you think, Your Eminence. Your, ah, ‘assistants’ weren't responsible.”