The fingers vanished from around his face with a series of rapid snaps. “Widdershins? Her name is Widdershins?”
“It's-it's what she goes by, anyway.”
“Goes by? Goes by? A name is a name is a name! Is this hers?”
“Yes! Yes, it is!”
“Widdershins…” His mouth moved around the syllables, bending and twisting. “And her god? Do you know her god?”
“I…You mean the Shrouded God?” Then, at the narrowing glare, “No! That is, I don't, but I can help you find out! I know people who know her! Know her very well! Know where to find her!”
“I see…Little god, tiny god, where have you been? Out and about in a silly girl's skin! Little god, tiny god, where have you been…” The figure began capering about the roof, spinning in ever-widening circles-and just as abruptly, after a full minute of rhyming, stopped.
“Very well.” A single step, and he once again loomed over Squirrel, blotting out the moon and stars. “You will be my vassal, my guide, my northern star. Tell me what I want to know. Show me where I want to go. And learn all you can about this…Widdershins.” A fingertip tickled the skin beneath Simon's ear, drawing only a faint line of blood. “You have my oath, Boy-Thief. No harm will come to you, so long as you remain my servant.”
“I…Thank you. Ah, my lord.”
“Splendid!” The creature stepped back and clapped his hands. “We have a friend! Oh, goody, goody!
“Tell me, friend…. What's a nice place to find someone to eat around here?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
So wrapped up was Bishop Sicard-apparently in reading the holy treatise that lay open before him across the desk, but more accurately within his own tumultuous thoughts-that he failed to notice the first two knocks on his chamber door. Only the third sequence of raps penetrated the cloud of cotton encompassing his mind. He grunted once, smoothed his bushy beard with one hand while rubbing at bloodshot eyes with the other, and called, “Enter!”
For a moment, Sicard thought that a complete stranger had stepped into his study, even though he couldn't imagine a circumstance in which the guards would have allowed such a stranger to wander in alone at this time of night. He was just rising to his feet, whether to call for help or defend himself he wasn't certain, when the newcomer doffed his ragged cap and filthy cloak to reveal the blond, tonsured head and lanky frame of Brother Ferrand.
“Well.” Sicard returned slowly to his chair, struggling to keep a scowl of embarrassed anger from his face. “I see you've got the ‘incognito’ bit down.”
“I assumed, Your Eminence, that wandering around town in a monk's cassock would probably not be conducive to my efforts.”
“Right, fine.” Sicard waved distractedly at the nearest chair, into which Ferrand allowed himself to slump. “So I assume you've learned something about the young noblewoman?”
“Uh…” Ferrand squirmed in the chair, causing the wood to squeak, and coughed once.
“Succinct,” Sicard noted, “but not precisely helpful.”
“Her name is Madeleine Valois,” the monk told him. “Something of a social butterfly. Popular enough at parties, but without many close personal friends that I could find. Nobody actually seems to know her all that well.”
Silence for a moment, broken only by Sicard's fingers drumming on the desk. “And?”
“And, well, that's all I've found so far, Your Eminence.”
“That's all?”
“She is, as I said, not especially well known on anything but a superficial social level. Shows up at all the right parties, says all the right things, and is otherwise about as forgettable as day-old bread.”
“There's something unusual about her, Ferrand. I felt it.”
The monk shrugged. “I'm not doubting you, Your Eminence. I'm simply saying that nobody else seems to have noticed.”
Sicard grimaced at Ferrand for a moment, then at the small chandelier that hung from the ceiling-as though seeking answers or inspiration from what was, at this hour, the room's only illumination-and then back at the monk once again.
“And this riveting report couldn't have waited until a decent hour?” he asked finally. “I'm fairly certain that nothing you've just told me qualifies as especially urgent.”
“That's, um, not precisely what I came to tell you, Your Eminence.”
“Oh? Then get to it, man!”
“Well, it seems that there have been a few deaths….”
“Deaths?”
Ferrand nodded. “As regards your, um, ongoing project.”
“Bah.” Sicard returned to the book on the desk, reaching out for a quill to make a few notes in the margins. “I've heard the rumors, too. Utter nonsense. Just the sort of exaggeration we expected from this sort of-”
“All due respect, Your Eminence, but it's not. I'm not speaking of whispers on street corners. I've spoken with City Guardsmen who were at the scene. Who observed the-well, the bodies.”
Sicard straightened, slowly letting the quill topple to the desk. “That's not possible, Ferrand.”
“Nevertheless…”
“My instructions were specific!” The bishop was slowly standing now. Papers crumpled beneath his fists on the desk, and his cheeks flushed red above his beard-whether with anger, with shame, or a combination of both, even he couldn't honestly have said. “Nobody was to be killed, or even badly harmed! Nobody! Terrorized, yes. Even slightly injured, gods forgive me, to make it all seem real, but not…Gods, what are they…?”
“It's not precisely what you think, Your Eminence. Your, ah, ‘assistants’ weren't responsible.”
“I don't understand.”
“Two men clad in strange, flowing black garb-including full face masks-were among the dead. I wasn't present when you made the arrangements, but they certainly sound like what you've described to me.”
Sicard fell back into his own chair with a muffled whump. “But…I don't understand. Who…?”
“That's what the Guard is investigating.” The monk rolled his head back, trying to stretch away some of the tension in his neck. “Rumor going around the Guard is that a young thief by the name of Widdershins was somehow involved in what happened, though few of the stories agree on precisely how.”
“Widdershins? That's an odd…Why do I know that name?”
“Brother Maurice's report,” Ferrand said gently, “of William de Laurent's murder.”
The clench of Sicard's teeth was a crack audible throughout the room.
“Maurice swore,” Ferrand continued, “that this Widdershins was a friend to the archbishop, that she actually thwarted a prior attempt on his life. But he also admits that he knows little else about her, as William dismissed him from the room during the bulk of his conversation with the young woman.”
“Could she be responsible for what's happened, then?”
“I couldn't begin to guess, Your Eminence. But if she's involved in this, and in what happened with the archbishop last year…Well, I find it difficult to write off as coincidence.”
“As do I. Is the Guard currently hunting for her?”
“I wasn't able to learn that, I'm afraid.”
“All right.” Again the bishop's fingers drummed across the desk, this time in a rapid patter much like hail, or the impact of a blunderbuss's lead shot. “If she's responsible for what's happened, then either she's attempting to use our ‘haunting’ for her own schemes, or she's learned what we have in mind and is trying to prevent it. Either way, she cannot be allowed to continue.”
“And if she's not responsible, but involved in some other capacity?” Ferrand asked.
“Either way, we can't afford to have her interfering until we know more.”
Ferrand nodded and stood, recognizing the cue when he heard it. “What would you have me do, Your Eminence?”
“Davillon and our Mother Church are only just starting to mend their disagreements, correct? We should make it clear to the brave and noble Guardsmen that such efforts could only benefit if they were to arrest this Widdershins with all speed-and that said efforts could well suffer should they fail to do so.”