False Covenant

and his cheeks were sunken pits in a skull-shaped field of waxen, corpse-gray. Dirt and oil plastered his hair to his scalp, save where occasional tufts jutted out at irregular angles. His clothes, whose original colors he'd long since forgotten, held enough dirt to begin a small garden-or, more aptly, a shallow grave.

He looked…Well, he looked like someone that he himself, even in his hungriest and most miserable days, wouldn't have bothered to mug.

Squirrel found that thought oddly droll, and spent the next minutes of his walk struggling desperately not to break into hysterical giggles. The effort occupied his mind until he finally found himself standing before the house, and all thoughts of laughter were purged, perhaps carried away by his sudden sheen of sour perspiration.

It was a modest structure, boasting only a single story. The shingles were rough and somewhat mildewed; the bricks of the walls, old and cracked; the parchment windows, stained and torn. Nothing, other than the fact that the small garden outside was somewhat more overgrown and less well kept than those of its neighbors, marked it as in any way different from the other houses that stretched away to either side.

Nothing on the outside, anyway. Alas, for the family that no longer lived here-that no longer lived-the inside was something else again.

Squirrel went around to the back and let himself in, recoiling against the stench of decay. It wasn't particularly strong, as Iruoch hadn't left much intact to rot, but still pervasive enough to fill the household.

The master himself sat cross-legged on the dining room table, licking with violent tenacity at the inside of a child's shoe.

“You don't want to waste even the tiniest portion,” he said in his awful twin voices, responding perhaps to Squirrel's unspoken question. “Not when there are so many children starving in this world-who will certainly die before we can get around to eating them.” He tittered briefly, then tossed the shoe over his shoulder, where it landed perfectly amidst the shrunken, desiccated remains of the house's former occupants. “Sing me a song, my young thief. Tell me of little girls and the littler gods that live between the folds of their deepest dreams.”

“Uh…Well, I found her. I mean, I knew she'd go back to the Witch eventually, so I, um…”

“Found her. Yes.” Iruoch slowly drummed the spidery fingers of one hand against his cheek, occasionally rustling the floppy brim of his hat. “As you said you would. Not an accomplishment, silly boy. Anybody can do something that's so easy that anyone could do it.”

“Um…”

“You may be impressing my friends”-and right on cue, the distant chorus began to ooh and ahh-“but you're not impressing me. I want you to impress me.”

“Well, I-”

“Impress me! Impress me! Now, now, now!”

“I know what they're planning!” Squirrel shrieked.

“Oh, do you?” Iruoch applauded twice. “That's a little impressive. Well, don't leave me in suspense.”

Squirrel nodded, trembling, and spoke for several minutes. As he neared the end of his recitation, Iruoch placed his hands on the table, lifted himself upon them, and-still seated, his legs crossed-began to walk himself back and forth across its surface on his fingertips.

“The thief and her god, the Church and the Guard,” he muttered as he “paced.” “Alone they're no danger, together…”

“They're hard?” Squirrel offered hesitantly after a moment of silence.

Iruoch ceased his peculiar pacing and swiveled himself about on his fingertips so he could face his servant. “I was going to say ‘they might be a bit of a problem.’ What's with the rhyming?”

“I, uh…”

“Still, I've never met a problem I couldn't eat.” Iruoch flexed his fingers and shot to his feet, coming to rest beside the table. At no point in the graceful arc did his coat so much as flap. “Thieves and Guards and Churchmen, with-what do you think? Butter? Cinnamon? Or perhaps a sprinkling of random passersby?”

“I think we should lie low,” Squirrel said.

“Lie low? Lie low?!” Iruoch took a single staggering pace sideways and was abruptly directly before the quivering thief. “Cower and hide, cower and hide, draw the curtains and stay inside? Let the citizens brush us aside, feast on nothing but swallowed pride? This is your ‘suggestion,’ my little morsel?”

“I…” Somehow, Squirrel didn't think that pointing out the rhyme would be an effective use of breath. “You're great and powerful and all that…”

“I knew this already.”

“But, I mean, all of them? Priests, Finders, the Guard, and Widdershins's, uh, personal god? I just think it'd be smarter to-”

“I. Don't like. Cowards.” Iruoch was looming over Squirrel, their faces nearly touching-enough so that Simon could see the twitching and writhing of something beneath the creature's lips. “And I think you've been just about as useful as you're ever likely to be….”

“You can't,” he whispered.

“Can't? Can't?” The distant children began to weep. “Not my favorite word, oh, no, not at all!”

“But you swore…” Squirrel was sobbing now.

And just that swiftly, Iruoch drew himself up and stepped away. “I did, didn't I? An oath is a promise is a vow is a bargain. I swore that no harm would come to you…”

“For as long as I served you,” Squirrel breathed, his heart pounding.

“Yes, yes. And I will not break that oath, no.”

The boy's shoulders slumped in relief.

“Simon?” the fae said thoughtfully.

And tightened once more. Iruoch had never, never used his name before.

“Yes, master?”

Iruoch's face literally stretched, distorting itself outward to contain his impossible smirk. “You're fired.”

Squirrel squeezed his eyes shut and wailed-even as a part of him, the tiny surviving sliver of his soul, welcomed what was to come.

“…and, Vercoule, who among all the gods, has chosen this, Davillon, as his favored city. To all these, and more, we offer our gratitude, and our devotion, and our most humble prayers.”

This, the bishop's favorite holy litany, was now familiar to a huge swathe of Davillon's populace. Sicard invoked the same divine names (with perhaps a little variation, so as to avoid offending any of the more minor deities of the Hallowed Pact) in each of his services-and with each service, the Basilica of the Sublime Tenet grew ever more heavily attended. As the terror of the city's murders spread, and with it the fear of some supernatural agency at work, more and more of the people forgot their anger at the Church's treatment of Davillon (or, more accurately, allowed their worry to overshadow said anger). They sought comfort in the words of the priests, and the protection of the houses of the gods.

At this particular service, despite the fact that the day was just now dawning outside, the pews supported enough prayerful rears that the wooden planks, perhaps having grown accustomed to lesser loads, offered the occasional squeak or groan in counterpoint to the bishop's words. Perhaps only one of every five or six seats remained vacant, and a great many of the attendees were dressed not in their finery, but in workday clothes. The implication-that church attendance was once again considered, by some, to be an everyday event-was unmistakable.

“In times as trying as these,” Sicard said, tugging at one sleeve of his cassock to remove a stubborn wrinkle, “it does us all good to recall that the gods of the Hallowed Pact watch over those who honor their names. Let me recall to your memories a tale I'm sure you've all heard before, involving the cavalier Verrell d'Ouelette and his seemingly impossible quest to slay the Charred Serpent of Lacour….”

The sanctuary itself was lit in a rainbow of colors, resplendent in the thin shafts of light that speared through, and were cheerily rouged and shadowed and otherwise made up by, the stained glass windows. And indeed, for most of the audience sitting in that rain of colors, the tale was aptly chosen, for it told not only of one of Galice's