“Oh, phooey,” Iruoch said.
Widdershins turned and snapped the leather, with a whipcrack, across the animal's chestnut haunches. A startled whinny and the horse was off, galloping through the abandoned streets. The rope snapped taut, and Iruoch, too, was gone, dragged across the dirt and cobblestones behind the animal's mad dash.
Again she turned, this time into a rising tide of disbelieving stares. She shrugged and tossed the rapier in a gentle arc toward Julien. He caught it awkwardly, apparently unable to tear his gaze from Widdershins to the blade.
“We really need to go,” she told them.
She got nothing but a few scattered blinks for her trouble.
“No, really,” she insisted. “That's only going to buy us a few minutes. We need to not be here when he gets back.”
More blinking, more staring.
Widdershins threw up her hands, grumbled something, and then proceeded down the street at a brisk pace, trusting the others to fall in behind her.
They did, but by the time they'd reached the Flippant Witch quite a few blocks away, the others hadn't said a word.
And they were still staring at her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nor was there a great deal of discussion about what had just happened immediately after they arrived, because Widdershins and Robin had spent a good twenty minutes just holding each other and alternating between laughter and tears.
Given that it remained early in the morning, and thus outside normal business hours for an establishment of this sort, the tavern was empty of customers. The group had pushed two of the tables together for use as a makeshift hospital bed. Igraine and Ferrand, using torn linens for bandages and various spirits-the cheaper ones, naturally-as disinfectants, had done their best to treat the various and sundry injuries. They couldn't do much about the deep bruises or other aches, but the gash on the bishop's head, the wound in Julien's side (thankfully shallower than it had first appeared), and the torn skin on Widdershins's arms had all been cleansed (with only a modicum of screaming and threats) and tightly wrapped.
The common room now smelled fiercely of alcohol, sweat, and greasy smoke; it was lit only by a handful of lanterns, as all the shutters were tightly latched, and was already growing uncomfortably warm. Widdershins and Robin sat side by side on one of the longer benches; Julien on the “operating table”; Renard on the bar, where he'd helped himself to a jug of something or other; and the others in the tavern's various chairs. The Finders who'd accompanied Renard on his rescue mission (for which Widdershins had already tearfully thanked him about a thousand times) loitered on the streets outside, where they could shout a warning if danger approached.
And, not coincidentally, where they couldn't overhear any of the private discussion within.
Sicard studied one of the dancing flames and mumbled to himself, while most of the others waited with greater or lesser displays of patience for Widdershins and Robin to wrap up their reunion. Robin had, by this point, pretty much narrated the entire experience, but Widdershins-in addition to constantly apologizing for catching Robin in her mess, however unintentionally-was having real trouble grasping some of the finer details.
“He was just letting you go?”
Robin couldn't help but laugh. “Yes, Shins. Same as the last eighteen times you asked.”
“But…he was just letting you go?”
“Which,” Renard interjected from atop the bar, “doesn't in any way diminish the extent of my own accomplishment in rescuing her.”
Both women did him the courtesy of a quick smile.
“Seriously,” Robin continued. “I really got the impression that he was in over his head, and he knew it. I'm not defending the man,” she added quickly at Widdershins's abrupt scowl. “Just trying to understand him.”
“Well, after I murder him horribly,” Widdershins said, “you can understand him all you want.”
“Could you please see your way to saving the death threats for a time when Paschal and I aren't around to hear them?” Julien asked plaintively.
“Which reminds me,” Renard said, hopping down from his perch, “I have something for you.” He reached back behind the bar and presented a gleaming blade to Widdershins with a dramatic flourish. “I believe you're short a rapier, mademoiselle. I hope you'll find this a satisfactory replacement.”
Widdershins's eyes gleamed as she recognized the weapon as Evrard's own. “You're a treasure.”
“So good of you to notice.”
“I…” She took the weapon from him, then stopped. “Renard, this sword had a ruby in the pommel.”
“Did it? Oh, my. I can't imagine what might have happened to it.”
Widdershins gawped at him, and then laughed. “Well, I'm sure it cuts just as well without it.”
“I was almost certain it would.”
“If we're all through catching up,” Igraine snapped at them, “perhaps we'd be willing to spend a minute or two discussing what to do about the unkillable monster?”
Widdershins bent over and kissed the top of Robin's head-utterly missing the incongruous flicker of sorrow that crossed the younger girl's face as she did so-and with a whispered, “I'm really glad you're safe,” rose from the bench. She carefully lay Evrard's rapier aside until she could recover her old sheath, and moved to stand in the center of the group.
“All right,” she said aloud. “Let's discuss. I'd say, first and foremost, that His Eminence has some explaining to do, yes?”
Sicard slowly, even sleepily, dragged his attention away from the lantern. “Yes,” he said softly. “He does.”
“Your Eminence,” Ferrand said, “you don't have to-”
“I think I do, Ferrand. I think explanations are the very least of the debt that I owe.” He smiled, an expression with no joy or humor in it whatsoever. “I know that it's a bit cliche to begin one's confessions with ‘I never meant for anyone to get hurt,’ but it's the gods' honest truth. I really didn't.”
He paused, perhaps to allow for any questions or interjections of disbelief. When he got none, he went on. “You must understand, my position here was…awkward, at best. Some might even call it untenable. The first bishop assigned to Davillon in years, and how did my tenure begin? In the shadow of the murder of Archbishop William de Laurent, and the Church's retaliation against your city.
“I don't…” He coughed once, shook his head. “I don't pretend that what the Church did was right. We're supposed to be above such pettiness, but we're human. I know that their-our-efforts at directing trade to other cities, at discouraging travel here, caused nothing but suffering to a population that largely didn't deserve it. I may have been a newcomer to Davillon, but I couldn't stand seeing what was happening.
“Of course the people turned away from the Church and from the gods in their anger, and who could blame them? But I knew they were only harming themselves spiritually. And I knew that I could never convince my brothers in the clergy to lift the interdiction so long as Davillon's citizens were so openly hostile to the Church, no matter how justified that hostility might have been. So I…” Again he stopped, his voice choked.
It was Julien who first put it together, or at least first enunciated his understanding. “So you decided to give the people a reason to turn back to prayer. Back to the gods.”
Sicard nodded miserably. “It seemed so simple, really. Make the citizens think they had some sort of unholy terror stalking their city, something the Guard was helpless to confront-no offense, constables-and what else would they do? It would take some time, of course, and it would hardly change everyone's mind, but it would get people back into the pews. And once that was done, I had hoped I could use their return to the flock as an argument for the Church to cease interfering in Davillon's economy.”