Widdershins lay one palm flat against the marble, dropped her head, and sobbed as quietly as she could manage.
She ignored the distant sounds of footsteps on the cemetery's winding earthen paths. Mourners were constantly coming to visit this loved one or that, and here, if nowhere else in Davillon, everyone was respectful enough to leave everyone else alone. Already she'd noted, and dismissed, several strange faces-a few haughty and irritated, but some genuinely sympathetic-glanced her way during her crying jag.
This time, however, the steps didn't gradually pass beyond hearing. Instead, they grew nearer, ever nearer, and then…
“Shins?” The voice was soft, scarcely more than a breath.
Widdershins bolted upright, wiping her tears with the back of a hand as she came up on one knee and spun halfway around. “I-what? Robin?!”
“Shins, are you all right?” the younger girl asked.
“I–I'm fine.”
Apparently, whatever she saw on Widdershins's face or heard in her voice pretty well put the lie to that. With a soft cry of her own, Robin darted forward and wrapped her friend in a frighteningly intense hug. (One might have called it a “bear hug,” except that Robin could not possibly, in any stretch of metaphor, ever be compared to something that large. A “rabbit hug,” maybe.)
For a second, perhaps two, Widdershins stiffened, as though she'd pull away-and then she collapsed, burying her face in the shorter girl's collar. “Robin, I miss her!”
“Shh…I know, Shins.” They stood for long moments, Widdershins practically shaking in Robin's arms, Robin gently stroking her friend's hair. “I know…”
Finally, Widdershins straightened up once more and gently pulled away. Robin, after a moment's apparent hesitation, let her arms fall to her sides.
“But…” Shins said, blinking her now red-rimmed eyes. “Robin, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, actually. It wasn't hard to figure out where you were. You've been spending a lot of time here and with, uh, Alexandre.”
Widdershins nodded. Alexandre Delacroix's grave was in a different cemetery-but both graveyards, reserved primarily for the aristocracy and their families, were fairly near one another.
“I've lost a lot of people, Robin,” she said, slowly lowering herself to sit once more on the grass, gesturing for her friend to do the same. “But none of them ever hurt this much.”
Robin said nothing to that, perhaps with the full understanding that there was nothing she could possibly say.
“So, all right,” Widdershins continued some time later. “You were looking for me. I assume for some reason other than you just missed my sparkling wit and engrossing conversation, yes?”
Robin's lip twitched. “Well, those, too. But yes.” In precise details-or what precise detail she could recall-she went on to describe the peculiar encounter at the Flippant Witch and the appearance of the man who had initiated it.
“Evrard?” was all Widdershins asked when all was said and done.
“That's what he told me.”
“But…I don't think I know any Evrard!”
“Well, he certainly thinks he knows you, Shins.”
“Great.” Widdershins idly kneaded the grass between her fingers. “You know, I don't need this. If I was going to make a list of things I don't need, this would be right near the top.”
Robin snickered. “You'd put something you didn't know about at the top of a list? How would you accomplish that, exactly?”
Widdershins stared haughtily down the bridge of her nose. “I,” she announced, “have talents you cannot possibly imagine.”
For reasons that Widdershins couldn't possibly fathom, Robin looked away, her face flushing ever so faintly.
“Um, right,” the older of the pair continued, now more confused than ever. “If nothing else, I'd get Olgun to help me.”
That, of course, wasn't really the right thing to say, either. Shins had tried, some months ago, to entice Robin into Olgun's worship. Robin had only grumbled something about Banin not protecting Genevieve, and that she'd little use for any deities, and refused to speak any more on the topic whenever Widdershins tried to bring it up.
It was, thankfully, Robin herself who provided the subject change for which Widdershins was so desperately casting about.
“Shins, I…Um…There's, ah, something else we probably ought to, you know, talk about….”
A single dark-brown eyebrow rose at that. “Oh, boy. This sounds serious. You haven't been this nervous since you smashed that bottle of Scyllian red all over the kitchen floor.”
“I told you, that wasn't my fault,” Robin protested absently. “The label was slippery 'cause it'd been over-waxed, and-”
“Robin? It's all right. What did you want to say?”
“Well, it's just…Shins, the Flippant Witch isn't doing real well.”
Widdershins's face went stiff. “I know that.”
“I'm not blaming you!”
A few heartbeats more, and then, “It's all right, Robin.” Widdershins's expression softened. “It is my fault.”
“It's not. The city-”
“Genevieve would know how to roll with it. I'm trying my best, Robin. I am.” Again she found herself clenching her fists in the grass, as though clutching for the woman who now lay beneath.
“I know you are, Shins,” Robin told her. “It's just…Well, some of the guys don't seem as sure. Maybe if you were there a little more often…If they could see you working alongside them, you know? But you've…You haven't been around much recently.”
Widdershins studied the base of the headstone. “I've been trying to save the tavern my own way,” she whispered.
Robin blinked, as though unsure what her friend meant. And then, “Oh, Shins. I don't know if Gen would've wanted you to save the Witch like that.”
“I don't either.” Widdershins sniffed; she would not cry again, by gods! “But it's all I know how to do.” She shrugged, then, smiling without much humor. “Or at least I used to. It's not as though last week went all that well.”
“Last week?”
Her own face flushing now with embarrassment, Widdershins told Robin of the attempted robbery at the Ducarte estate some days earlier, and the fabulous mess that had resulted.
“Bouniard let you go?” Robin squeaked.
“What, you think I belong in gaol with the rest of the thieves?” Widdershins's smile was, she hoped, enough to take the sting from her words.
“No, it's just…That doesn't really sound like him, does it?”
“He's…been coming by the tavern, Robin.”
“He has? I never saw…”
“Only occasionally, and only when I'm running a shift. It's like he knows. He always says he's just stopping by for a drink, but I think he's keeping an eye on me, yes? I thought, at first, he was hoping to catch me doing something illegal, but…I don't know, Robin. I've actually started looking forward to our conversations. They're-I don't know, a little awkward, but…”
The other girl, at this point, had tucked her knees up to her chest. “You can't trust him, Shins.”
“I wouldn't have thought so, but after that…He protected me. I'm not sure what to think anymore.”
Robin wrapped her arms around her knees, almost curling into a ball. “It's good that you have friends, I guess,” she said dully.
“I don't know,” Widdershins repeated, shaking her head. “Maybe he just didn't want to deal with me. I mean, he's smart enough to know that I'm not dangerous, so between the other thieves and whatever's been creeping around the streets at night, maybe he's got his hands full.”