Widdershins, for her own part, marched through the halls as though she were thinking of buying the place (but found it too drab and distasteful to seriously consider), ignored Olgun's worried chatter as best she could, and struggled not to quiver or look over her shoulder every time she turned her back on the angriest of those hostile faces. She briefly considered trying to find her old mentor Renard, if only for the comfort of a friendly face down here, but she decided, reluctantly, that she couldn't really spare the time such a hunt might require.
Ostensibly, she should make a point of stopping by the shrine before proceeding to her appointment. The Shrouded God-patron of the Finders' Guild, member of the Hallowed Pact, and the inspiration for the Shrouded Lord's own title-was not a demanding deity, but the guild still had customs and rituals its members were supposed to follow. The idol itself-mostly stone but with a hood of thick fabric hiding its features, because anyone other than the priests or the Shrouded Lord who looked upon that face was subject to an awful curse-stood in a thick-walled, carpeted chamber at the very heart of the guild's labyrinthine headquarters. Convenient to most of the organization's offices, it would have been a matter of minutes for Widdershins to swing by and offer a few prayers; and Olgun, since he knew full well that she didn't mean a word of them, certainly wouldn't have objected.
Widdershins, however, went nowhere near the heavy metal doors providing ingress to that shrine; shuddered, in fact, when she passed them by, and smelled the faint traces of incense from beyond. Lots of memories lurked within the shadows there, and not a one of them pleasant.
Instead, she moved straight for a door in one of the passages adjacent to said shrine. The wood had scarcely ceased vibrating from her first knock when a voice called, “Get the fuck in here!”
“Well,” she said to Olgun as she pushed the door open, “at least he's in a good mood, yes?”
Laremy Privott-or “Remy” to most Finders-had been taskmaster (that is, lieutenant to the Shrouded Lord) since the dismissal of Lisette Suvagne late the previous year. Imposingly tall and broad-shouldered, bald as a stressed tortoise from the neck up but hairy as a northman everywhere else, he looked very much like someone had simply shaved an ape's head. (Though this was not, it should be noted, a comparison that anyone actually made aloud when Remy himself was in the room.)
Today he was clad in heavy trousers, which helped to minimize said simian comparisons, and a white tunic, which might have done so if individual hairs hadn't been protruding through holes in the weave.
He also, Widdershins couldn't help but note, wasn't alone in the chamber.
“Taskmaster,” she greeted him with a bob of her head. And then, turning to his other guest, “Hey, Squirrel. How's the jaw?”
“Go to hell, bitch.”
“Hey!” Remy snarled across his desk-a massive, antique monstrosity that was clearly too nice for the otherwise frugal office and had most probably been stolen from somewhere fancy. “None of that! Both of you, sit!”
They sat. The office contained four rickety chairs (not counting Remy's own); perhaps unsurprisingly, Widdershins and Simon took the ones on the edges, leaving two empty seats between them.
“Good. Now, we're gonna have a couple of words about your little disaster at Rittier's manor last week.”
“She ruined-!” Simon began, simultaneous with Widdershins's own, “If that idiot-”
“Shut up!”
They shut.
“Widdershins, you haven't worked a lot of jobs since the Shrouded Lord promoted me, so maybe you've forgotten, but we're a guild, not a gods-damned social club! That means that if you're hitting a big target-such as, just for instance, anything likely to attract other Finders besides yourself-you coordinate! You keep us the hell informed!”
“But I-”
“That wasn't a question!”
“Got it,” she grumbled.
“And you!” Remy continued, swiveling to face his other victim. “Wipe that fucking smile off your face before I carve it off you! You're a bigger fool than she is!”
“But-”
“What the hell were you thinking, you diseased jackass? You bring an entire crew with you? Try to rob a noble estate at knife-point? To take hostages?!”
“Finders rob lots of people,” he protested.
“Not the aristocracy, gods damn it! You want to steal something from one of the blue bloods, you do it quietly! You trying to bring the whole fucking Guard down on us?!”
“What are they going to do? They've known where we are for years, and they haven't…they…” Simon trailed off, looking as twitchy as the rodent for which he was named, as Remy slowly rose and leaned over the desk.
“I,” he said, his voice abruptly calm, “am this close to wringing out your brain and using it as a sponge. At which point, I should point out, it will probably become more useful than it is right now. Are you hearing me?”
Squirrel nodded. Widdershins, deciding that safe was definitely better, at the moment, than sorry, nodded too. Just in case.
“If you'd killed any of the nobles,” Remy continued, “we'd probably have handed you over to the Guard ourselves. We sure as hell wouldn't even be considering paying bail for your idiot friends.”
Squirrel's eyes brightened, perhaps reflecting the escape route he suddenly saw for himself. “Nobody would've been caught at all if it wasn't for her,” he spat, pointing. (As if there were any other “her” in the room to whom he could have been referring.)
“Oh? And how's that?”
“She helped them, Remy! Helped the damn Guardsmen grab some of my boys!”
“That so?” he growled, turning once more.
Widdershins sat straight in the chair, refusing to cringe or even so much as frown. “Not initially. I actually got involved, even after Squirrel and his nuts messed everything up, to keep them from getting arrested.”
“Oh, horseshit!” Squirrel began. “You're such a-”
“Have some of your people ask around about a gaggle of Guardsmen getting a banner dropped on their heads if you don't believe me,” she said to Remy.
“I may do that. But even if it's true, you said ‘initially.’ That sounds to me like an admission that you did eventually throw some of our people to the Guard.”
Squirrel grinned a tight, evil little grin.
“Well, yeah,” Shins said casually. She actually crossed one leg over the other knee and began examining the nails on her right hand. “I mean, given how peeved you are about those idiots threatening a few aristocrats and servants, I can just imagine how irked you'd have been if-”
“She's lying!” Simon screamed, rising to his feet.
“-they'd actually succeeded in-”
“Shut up, you bitch!”
“-deliberately murdering officers of the Guard.”
Simon looked about ready to hurl himself across the room at her, but Remy's abrupt stare effectively pinned him to the floor where he stood.
“They…” He swallowed once, then tried again to answer the taskmaster's unasked question. “They were disguised as servants! How could we have known?”