False Covenant

Said constable was, to judge by the seemingly involuntary twitching in his jaw, not entirely convinced by anything she had to say.

“You're insane,” he told her finally, which certainly seemed to confirm said assessment.

“Look, Constable, if you'd just take me to see Julien, he-”

“Major Bouniard,” Sorelle said stiffly, “is more than a little busy at the moment. And even if he weren't, you're asking me to escort a known thief to him, while abandoning an investigation-to say nothing of leaving said investigation in the hands of a personal, civilian vendetta-in order to deliver to him some ludicrous story about a Church conspiracy behind a string of murders that you claim were committed by a figure out of fairy tales. Is that, more or less, the gist of it?”

“Uh, well…” Widdershins offered a broad, shaky smile. “Not exactly…”

“Oh? What did I get wrong?”

“You're not leaving the investigation in the hands of civilians. It already is in the hands of civilians.”

Sorelle spun, taking in every corner of the Flippant Witch, but the young woman's dapperly garbed companion had seemingly vanished. The constable muttered something that Widdershins pretended not to hear.

“How the hell…I have constables at every door! How did he…?”

Widdershins spread her hands. “We're better than you guys. Uh, no offense.”

“I believe I'll choose to take some, if it's all the same to you. I'm supposed to be arresting you, Widdershins!” he growled in a softer voice. “I'm trying to find a way around it, mostly for Major Bouniard's sake-feels wrong to nab his friend while we're investigating your friend's abduction-but you're not making it any easier!”

“Uh-huh,” Widdershins said. “Arresting me. At whose request, again?”

“The…” Sorelle blinked. “The Church.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“It does not tell me that they're part of some murderous conspiracy,” he insisted, but he sounded just a tad less certain of himself.

“Constable?” The voice emerged from over Widdershins's shoulder. “I am Igraine Vernadoe. You know the name?”

“I've heard it spoken a time or two. Read it a time or two more.”

“Then you know what position I hold?” When he nodded, she continued, “As a priestess of a god of the Hallowed Pact-and he is of the Pact, regardless of what you might think of him-I'm prepared to swear to you that Widdershins is speaking the truth as best we understand it. This is a threat against us all. We must speak to Major Bouniard.”

“I'm just…I'm not…”

Widdershins sighed and drew her dagger. Sorelle's blade was halfway free of its sheath, and they heard the other constables reacting as well, before it became apparent that she was holding the weapon out to him hilt first. With a suspicious glance, he took it. “What are you-?”

But she wasn't done. From the pouch on her belt came her primary set of wires and lock picks; from hidden niches in boots and gloves and even wound into her hair came several more. She sensed Igraine's startled look, and even Olgun's disapproving glower.

“There,” she said, handing those over to an equally startled Sorelle. “You can search me, if you want, but that's all of it.”

“I…What…?”

“I surrender myself into your custody, Constable,” she told him formally. “But only on your word as an officer of the Guard and a gentleman of breeding that you'll deliver me to Major Bouniard, and nobody else, for interrogation.”

“You're that serious about this?”

“You're the one holding my dagger and my tools, Sorelle.”

“All right.” Sorelle nodded to the other constables. “Colette, you're with me. The rest of you, continue taking statements and seeing what evidence you can turn up. Madame Vernadoe, you may accompany us if you wish, for the moment.”

“How generous. I do indeed wish.”

Widdershins offered Gerard a wan smile and a whispered, “We'll get her back,” and then the two constables and the two Finders were on their way, leaving behind them a crowd of Guardsmen and witnesses who were even more puzzled than they had been before.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Widdershins hadn't been making an empty brag with her comment to Sorelle. While obviously not every Finder was “better” than every member of the Guard-were that the case, none of the thieves would ever be arrested, save from meanest luck-it was certainly true that the more skilled Finders could readily avoid detection by the average constable. That was, indeed, how Renard Lambert had departed the Flippant Witch without being noticed, despite the presence of watchers at every obvious exit.

It was also how every man and woman present, whether constable or otherwise, managed to overlook the spy on their periphery.

Again, this shouldn't be taken to suggest either carelessness or incompetence on anyone's part. Widdershins and the other Finders were heavily focused, first on their mission, and second on the discovery of the Guard's presence at the tavern. The constables themselves were attending primarily to their investigation (as well they should have been), and then to the presence of known criminals in their midst. That someone might have been hanging from the eaves of the Flippant Witch, cloaked in the shadows away from the street lanterns and listening through the half-shuttered windows, was a thought that simply-and, one might argue, reasonably-had never occurred to any of them.

All that said, and even allowing for the fact that he'd always been among the best at going unnoticed, Squirrel found the whole thing almost too easy. He hung beneath the eaves, and never once felt the tremor or cramping of muscles. No matter what dance steps the moon and the clouds followed, or where the constables wandered below, the shadows never once threatened to reveal his presence. The night itself was his coconspirator, and he found himself even more afraid than he had been.

What, precisely, was his association with Iruoch doing to him?

He overheard it all, Squirrel did; perhaps not every single word, but more than enough for him to understand what was happening within. He thought, long and hard, of simply running. He didn't even have a destination in mind, just the nigh-overwhelming desire to hit the ground, pick a random direction, and go until he couldn't go any farther.

But of course, he did no such thing. It wasn't even his fear of Iruoch's wrath that kept him tied as tightly as any leash, though of course that was part of it. It was, instead, his fear of himself.

If he abandoned his “master,” if he broke free of his self-inflicted bondage, it would mean that everything he'd done for Iruoch, every horror he'd aided the creature in perpetrating, was meaningless. It would mean that he had been free not to participate in the nightmares of the past week.

That the indelible stain on his soul was not just Iruoch's, but well and truly Simon Beaupre's.

Once Widdershins, Vernadoe, and the two constables had departed, and the remaining Guardsmen had congregated inside, Squirrel allowed himself to drop from the overhang. A split second spent on hands and knees, and then he was off down the road. He struggled to keep himself to a casual walk, but the sidelong glances he got from the sporadic, rushed passersby suggested that his stiff-legged, twitching gait wasn't quite doing the trick. Still, given the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that churned from his belly to the base of his skull, it was the best he could do.

He passed, at one point, a storefront with actual glass windows (it was, he thought, a jeweler's of some sort, though he couldn't be sure), and he practically leapt in fear from the reflection that loomed beside him. His eyes