False Covenant

“What?” Not a screech this time, but more of a faint squeak, as Widdershins seemed to deflate or even flatten rather like a mouse in a grain mill.

“Simon Beaupre.”

Widdershins was able, this time, to keep herself from sitting bolt upright and stressing her injuries even further. She settled, instead, for squeezing her eyes shut against what promised to become an incipient headache. “Squirrel.”

“Squirrel?” Robin and Julien asked simultaneously.

“That's him,” Renard said.

“I'm gonna kill him!” Widdershins promised.

Several chuckles answered her. “Maybe not the best thing to say when he's the one accusing you of murder,” Renard pointed out.

“Or in front of the Guard,” Julien added.

“Oh, both of you shut up.” Then, “Renard, I didn't kill anyone, and I don't know what Squirrel's talking about, though I can take a pretty good guess as to why he's trying to blame it on me.” Another pause, as she squirmed beneath the questioning expressions of Julien and Robin. “I, uh, sort of interfered with a job he was trying to pull. You…” She offered the Guardsman a weak, limp sort of smile. “You, uh, were sort of there for part of it.”

Julien's face stiffened. “I think you'd probably better not go into any further detail, before I hear something I'll have to act on.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking that.”

Robin looked at her, at Julien, at Renard. “Guess there's a reason you thieves don't plan anything with Guardsmen in the room, huh? Umm…” It was her turn to wither beneath the weight of several unamused glowers. “Maybe you guys should keep doing most of the talking.”

“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” Julien asked the world at large. Widdershins-who knew, for once, when not to make a snide comment-just nodded her sympathy.

“I never for a moment believed you a murderer, Widdershins,” Renard assured her, with a borderline melodramatic hand over his heart. “More importantly, neither do the Shrouded Lord or the taskmaster.”

Widdershins felt the fist that had closed around her lungs relax its hold just a bit, and nearly gasped aloud.

“There's a lot of pressure from the ranks of the Finders to question you-you're, let's say, not popular in some quarters…”

“You don't say?”

“…so I can't promise you that there won't be repercussions. And I'd definitely watch my back while out alone, were I you. Actually, I wouldn't go out alone, were I you.”

“You offering to follow me around, Renard?”

“Well, if mademoiselle wishes…”

“Never you mind.”

Renard chuckled. “Honestly, though, I think it should blow over fairly quickly. Even most of the Finders who believe you capable of murder don't really believe you'd use witchcraft to do it, so-”

“Stop. Stop right there. In fact, go back a few steps. What are you talking about?”

“The bodies. Our people you supposedly killed. They certainly weren't natural deaths.”

That fist in Widdershins's chest began to clench again. “Dry?” she asked. “Like old leather or parchment?”

She'd already had the attention of everyone in the room, yet somehow it felt as though her audience had grown. “You know about it?” Renard demanded.

“How many?”

“Widdershins…”

“Renard, please! How many?”

The older thief sighed. “Four.”

Widdershins shook her head. The hair Robin had so carefully brushed away fell right back into her face, though she scarcely noticed. “I only knew about two. Robin, help me sit up, please.”

During the few moments it took for her to get settled again, the pillows propped behind her so as to avoid putting any pressure on her wounds, Widdershins's mind was furiously chasing itself in half a dozen different directions. How much could she say here? Who would she have to keep secrets from? Gods, but this had been easier when she didn't mind lying to Julien, but now…

She blinked. When had she decided she didn't want to lie to Julien anymore?

Oh, this is bad….

“I ran into-well, into something-on the street last night,” she began. Better not mention that two of the Finders were actually masquerading as our local “phantom,” not in front of Jul-in front of a Guardsman. “I don't know what it was, but it…” She shuddered, and not just for dramatic effect. She found herself clutching at her shoulder with her right hand, though she didn't remember moving. “It did this to me, and…Well, you know what it did to them.”

“Something?” Julien asked, crouching down beside her. “Not someone?”

“Trust me, Julien, I can tell the difference.”

He nodded, and if he doubted her words at all, no such qualms appeared in his expression or his voice. “Can you describe it?”

“It, he-whichever-was kind of human-looking. Frighteningly gaunt, like a scarecrow, with really long limbs. Even longer fingers, like spider's legs or-”

Robin, with something somewhere between a gasp and an abortive shriek, actually lurched back from Widdershins's bedside. Her voice, when it emerged from between quivering lips, was a gravelly whisper. “Spider hands and webs for hair…”

“What?” Widdershins, stunned at the reaction and frightened by the sudden pallor in her friend's face, ignored her own pain and reached out to put a hand on Robin's arm. “Sweetie, what is it?”

“Don't you remember, Widdershins? You must have heard it when you were young. I'm sure everyone who grew up in Galice must have!”

The thief frowned, troubled once again by the strange sense of familiarity she'd felt when she'd first gotten a good look at the creature. “I'm not sure what…”

Robin took a deep breath, and began.

“Beneath the sun, the roads are man's,

His work, his home, his town, his plans.

But 'ware the ticking of the clock:

The night belongs to Iruoch.”

Widdershins's breath caught, and she felt the tingle of a thousand tiny legs across her back and neck. She did remember!

“In shadowed wood, in distant vale,

In summer rain or winter hail,

If you alone should choose to walk,

You may just meet with Iruoch.”

It was a children's rhyme, nothing but a silly, scary story; one of scores they told each other in the dark, long after they were supposed to have gone to sleep. Just one of many Galician bogeymen.

But he wasn't real!