False Covenant

“Oh, no…” Widdershins broke into as much of a run as the combination of stairs and skirts would permit. “Hurry!” She barely had the presence of mind to stick with her slightly higher-pitched “Madeleine” voice, scarcely caring anymore if Julien identified her or not. “Hurry!”

Nobody below knew what she knew, of course, or even understood what was at stake. But there could be no mistaking the genuine tremor in her voice. Instantly not only the constables, but the Marquise de Lamarr and a huge swathe of her guests, were following her up the stairs. Slowly at first, but spreading rapidly, nervous gasps and horrified mutters spread through that portion of the assembly who already knew precisely what was so important about the upper floor.

Widdershins dashed across the balcony above, whipping past a gold-framed portrait of Berdine Jolivet's grandfather and setting a light banner of Vercoule swaying and flapping in her wake. By the time she reached the door from which the awful scent emanated, the fastest of Julien's constables was pounding along directly beside her, his expression one of puzzlement and a growing fear to which he couldn't put a name.

She felt sorry for him.

The door flew open; Widdershins could never afterward remember whether it was she or the constable who'd shoved it. After a single shocked instant, she could only look away, her back pressed to the wall in the hall outside, and sob into her open hands. The constable, all professional detachment washed away, was huddled over across the open doorway, struggling not to retch.

She'd expected the bodies, ever since she'd first detected the horrid combination of odors. She'd even expected their dried, cracked, and shriveled condition, though that expectation had done little to prepare her for the experience of actually seeing them. But she did not, could not, have anticipated that there would be so many.

Or that they would be so small.

The corpses had been laid out and positioned as neatly as you please. Some reclined on the sofas, blankets tucked up under their chins. Others sat at the tables, hands resting on cups or saucers. Still others sat cross-legged on the floor, board games open between them. One, larger and presumably older than the rest, clad in a formal gown, was carefully leaned against the inside of the doorframe, as though observing the rest.

On the far wall, huge and uneven letters, scribbled in green wax crayon, read:

Where, oh where, is your little god now?

The hallway around Widdershins began to fill with a rising flood of humanity, and by the time it occurred to her to suggest that the constables shut the door and not permit the parents to see what lay within, it was far, far too late.

Never, in a life filled with trouble and difficulty, had Widdershins ever heard screams and cries the likes of which now echoed through her mind, blazing trails of memory that might never fade. She clapped her tear-wet hands over her ears and clenched her teeth until her jaw pounded, yet she couldn't begin to drown them out. Each sob, each shrieked and grief-drenched name, was a dagger in her gut.

Widdershins knew to whom, precisely, that taunting message was delivered. And if it wasn't her fault that Iruoch had killed, it was, at least, because of her that he had killed here.

“Where were you? Where were you?!”

She finally looked up, drawn by the despairing cry. One of the guests, a young noblewoman in a gown of white and gold, her wig askew and her makeup smeared into multicolored whorls, was pounding with both fists on a constable's chest. The poor man was trying to explain, but between the horror of what he'd seen and the emotional onslaught, he appeared to have forgotten how to form complete syllables.

Many of the assembly, the Marquise de Lamarr included, had shoved their way into the room, unheeding of Julien's protests. Some had fallen to their knees beside their sons and daughters; some stood in the chamber's center, unable to bring themselves any nearer the malformed bodies.

But many of the others, whether or not they'd had children present (as, indeed, most did not), turned toward the Guardsmen as though summoned by that one woman's cry, a sudden fire igniting in their expressions. Several of the mourners within rose as well, and began converging on the protesting (and rapidly paling) constable.

“My lords and ladies, please!” Julien stepped forward, his palms out, until he stood beside his beleaguered soldier. The other constables, with more or less subtlety, swiftly converged on their commander. “I assure you that we're doing everything we possibly can in order to-”

“Everything you can?!” It was the same woman screaming, but the expressions on all the faces around her suggested that it could just as easily have been any one of them. “Ives is dead! My baby- my baby's gone! What good is ‘everything you can do’ now?!”

Widdershins could hear the sound of fists clenching, of feet shuffling forward as the mob (and it was a mob, now) drew ever nearer the Guardsmen in their midst, packed themselves ever more tightly into the stifling hall. The soldiers themselves stood, as best the confined space allowed, in a rough circle, their backs toward each other. Julien continued to reason, even to plead, with the aristocrats, but his words were bumblebees in the face of a gale, blown away before they even had the chance to fly. The angry, ragged breaths of the assembly were a hot and humid gust, but it was far more than these that caused every man and woman in uniform to sweat.

Should the dam burst, should the partygoers boil over from misdirected anger into violence, the Guardsmen weren't numerous enough to fight them off without the use of weapons. Yet if the constables were to draw steel on a crowd of grieving aristocrats…

Widdershins huddled at the edges of the throng, forcing herself to breathe. Every impulse in her body urged her to push forward to Julien's side, not to allow him to face this threat alone. (Or rather, without her, since the presence of the other constables more or less made any real definition of “alone” inapplicable.) But what could she do? The presence of one more warm body wouldn't avert the crowd's fury, and any sudden action on her part might very well provide the spark to set the whole thing off. She found herself dancing from foot to foot as she struggled to make up a mind that was as tumultuous and confused as the situation in which she found herself.

A tingle in the air, another surge of Olgun's power, and Widdershins felt her hearing both expanding and narrowing, a sensation with which she was becoming quite familiar. And she heard, with a sense of abrupt relief that was nigh a physical blow, the sound of boots and voices and shouted orders on the pathway through the estate's front lawn.

More constables, presumably having accompanied the corpse wagon for which Julien's men had earlier sent. For the second time in minutes, Widdershins-who normally saw the silver fleur-de-lis as nothing but a nuisance- might just have been saved by the immaculately timed arrival of the Davillon City Guard.

“I assume,” she whispered to Olgun, “that you won't be too jealous if I offer a quick prayer of thanks to the Pact later?”

Olgun's relief, a close match to her own, was answer enough.

“Do you think you can…?”

Her voice trailed off, but her vague gesture toward the packed hallway was more than enough. Again she felt the air around her grow charged, felt Olgun reaching out to the furthest limits of his power, catching the sounds from below, carrying them, augmenting them.

For an instant, just an instant, everyone nearby, rather than Widdershins alone, could hear the sounds of the approaching soldiers.

With a single, communal exhalation that was half-breath, half-sigh, the mob deflated. Shoulders slumped, half-raised fists fell, and eyes that had burned themselves dry in anger once more began to glimmer with tears. And if the Guardsmen, too, were seen to sigh-albeit in utter relief-well, they could hardly be blamed.

Widdershins was already moving, heading not for the stairs or the door but for the nearest unobserved window. She hadn't, as Madeleine, done anything wrong, but she couldn't afford the time it would take to answer questions right now (to say nothing of the risks involved if Julien himself should interrogate her). Now that the immediate danger had passed, there was far too much to do.

The first step of which was a visit to the Finders' Guild. Neither the Shrouded Lord nor the taskmaster had summoned her for the meeting she'd requested, but this could no longer wait. They'd see her now, because she wasn't prepared to give anyone a choice in the matter.

Iruoch wanted to make this personal, did he? Fine, then. “Personal” was something with which Widdershins had a lot of practice….