“Renard?”
“Yes, my dear?”
She hiccupped once. “How did you know?” she whispered. “How did you know how I feel about…?”
He had no reason to answer truthfully. In fact, so far as Renard was concerned, honestly was rarely, if ever, a virtue. Yet somehow, the notion of lying, or even refusing to answer, just felt
Smiling sadly, he brushed a tear from her face with a single gloved knuckle. “It takes one to know one, kid.”
Robin's eyes widened, and then-thank the gods! — so did her own smile. “Your secret's safe with me,” she assured him.
“I know it is, Robin.”
The thief's hand on the serving girl's shoulder, they led the small, ragged group from the warehouse, toward home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The shape-for indeed, a
Nobody but one.
Had she been a bit more calm, a bit less enraged, and indeed a bit less frightened, Widdershins might have noticed that Iruoch was not moving
But she didn't. She noticed nothing, nothing at all, save Iruoch himself. She saw the creature appear in the doorway, and swore there were bloodstains remaining on his hands, his lips. She heard the distant laughter of that ghostly chorus, but in her mind reverberated only the terrified cries of murdered children.
All the frustrated rage and simmering guilt she'd felt since that awful discovery on the upper floor of the Lamarr manor-all of Olgun's own fury, caused by the sheer, diseased
No communication, no requests, not even at the instinctive level of the rapport the thief and her god had developed these past few years. Today they acted, and they acted as one.
Iruoch had only just begun his second step into the room when Widdershins appeared above the shoulders of the others. A leap that should have been utterly impossible without a running start carried her over their heads. She tucked into a tight ball as she tumbled, barely enough to keep her from striking either the stone ceiling or the marble table. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet and one knee as she landed in a crouch, yet the shards failed to penetrate even the fabric of her hose, let alone her skin. Although she stared straight ahead, locked on Iruoch, her hands lashed out to each side, snagging the flintlock from the belt of the Church guard, and dragging the rapier from Constable Sorelle's scabbard.
The others gathered in the chamber hadn't even finished their gasps of astonishment when the pistol ignited with a deafening crack, and not even Iruoch was fast enough to avoid the shot.
The ball tumbled through the creature's filth-matted coat, through the flesh and bone of the shoulder beyond, and fell with a dull thump to the carpet in the hallway. A cloud of cinnamon-hued dust puffed from the wound and drifted to the floor in a flurry of flakes-flakes that resembled nothing so much as blood long dried to near powder. The ball, fresh and new when it was fired, was coated in years' worth of corrosion.
Ghostly children wailed in a chorus of pain, and Iruoch's face was a mask of utter astonishment. His jaw and cheeks flickered as those peculiar muscles-or whatever they were-twitched and flexed beneath the skin.
“
Widdershins kicked, and a small shard of broken glass from the carafe arced across the room-again, with impossible, unnatural accuracy-slicing for Iruoch's throat. He raised an arm fast enough to shatter the missile; several strips of shredded coat and skin dangled from wrist to elbow.
“That was-” he started again.
The flintlock-which Widdershins had hurled less than a heartbeat after kicking the glass-careened off his forehead, sending him staggering.
“That was-”
Widdershins lunged forward with a piercing cry and skewered the creature with Paschal's rapier, literally pinning him to the door.
“
Gag, but not fall back. Grunting, she twisted the rapier, widening the wound. More dried blood-or whatever the dust in Iruoch's veins might be-sifted out across his boots, and hers.
“Would you just
“Hmm…” Iruoch cocked his head aside and actually tapped one of those horrific fingers against his chin. And then, “Nah!”
Eight fingers clenched tight, wrapping and
Slowly, methodically, Iruoch straightened his arms, pushing her back. The blade slid obscenely from his body, the once-pristine steel now rusted and pitted.
She'd hurt him-she
Yes, she'd hurt him. But not nearly, not
“You're a
Iruoch's fingers flexed-not his shoulders, not his arms, but the fingers alone-and Widdershins hurtled back across the room, bowling over Constable Sorelle and Brother Ferrand in her flight. They fetched up against the desk with a painful clatter, a roiling heap of limbs and fabric and badly bruised flesh. Blood smeared the carpet around Widdershins's wrists, where the creature's touch had once again peeled layers of skin from her flesh, but she scarcely noticed the pain. Her ears filled with the sounds of desperate combat as someone fired off a second shot, as swords and bludgeons leapt from scabbards, as those still standing converged on the monster in their midst-but this, too, she was aware of only peripherally, as something happening at a great remove, lacking any immediacy.
Around her, cocooning her, insulating her from the world around her, was a despair so thick it was tangible; a despair partly her own and partly Olgun's, though she couldn't begin to guess where one left off and the other began.