“Your Eminence,” Bouniard told him, fighting to keep his voice under control, “I'll acknowledge that she probably wasn't here to kill you. It's not her way. But she's involved with people of a much bloodier bent-and putting thoughts of murder aside, she was definitely here to rob you. I don't approve of that, even if you do. And someone wants to cause you harm. So either way, you're in danger. And either way, Widdershins is connected to it, and she's the only lead I've got.
“Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see if your carriage is ready.” Fists clenched so hard his leather gauntlets squeaked, the major rose, bowed stiffly, and swept from the room.
“That,” Maurice noted as he moved to stand behind the archbishop's left shoulder, “is not a happy jasper.”
“Indeed, no,” William agreed.
“Maurice,” he said suddenly, swiveling to face his young friend, “you'll not be traveling with me to our next residence. There's something I need you to do for me.”
“I'm a very busy woman, Jean Luc.” Lisette Suvagne leaned, hawklike, over the edge of the table, her face illuminated hellishly by the lamp blazing between her and her unexpected guests. “I have no work for you, and I certainly didn't summon you. So what the hell are you and your…”
She scowled irritably at the motley assortment. Jean Luc had always struck her as little more than a common dandy-he reminded her vaguely of Renard Lambert, come to think of it, even if he lacked the foppish thief's flamboyance-though she had to admit he was decent at his job. She didn't know the others: two, in their dueling vests and cheap rapiers, looked the part of common thugs. The last was tall, shrouded in a worn cloak, his hands and face bandaged as though to evoke the leprosy scares of old. Only the fact that Jean Luc had worked for the guild before, and swore he'd come on a matter of urgency, had won them admission past the guards. The red-haired taskmaster fully intended to have someone lashed if this didn't prove very, very important.
Or at least interesting.”You and your friends doing here?” she finally concluded, twisting a dagger between her fingers, scarring the heavy table with the blade. The sound of tiny splinters being gouged from the wood snuck through the chamber and went to go lurk in the corner, where it occasionally bounced back at them as an echo.
“That's not good for the steel, you know,” Jean Luc said neutrally.
“Oh, thank you so much. I've never held a dagger before. They're sharp, aren't they?”
“I was just-”
“Just about to tell me why you're here, why I should talk to you when I frankly have no use for you, and why I shouldn't just have all your throats slit and your carcasses dumped in a deep hole with the rats.” She grinned maliciously. “You don't necessarily have to answer to that last one, if it's too much of a strain.”
Jean Luc returned her smile, obviously not cowed in the slightest. “I would very much like to know when the Finders' Guild was taken over by idiots and cretins.”
Lisette rocked back in her seat. He couldn't possibly be talking about the attempt to kill Widdershins in gaol; not even the Shrouded Lord, let alone anyone outside the guild, could have linked her to it! And yet, what else could he…? “Explain yourself-quickly,” she hissed at him.
“What could possibly have possessed you,” Jean Luc continued, ignoring the woman's posturing, “to authorize a job on the archbishop? That sort of attention's bad for all of us, not just your precious guild!”
The taskmaster's jaw snapped shut like a bear trap, allowing only the release of a strangled, “What?!”
“The archbishop,” Jean Luc repeated slowly, as though explaining something to a child. “One of your thieves made an attempt on his belongings the night before last. My employeer-”
“And that would be who, exactly?” she interrupted.
“You know full well that I can't tell you that, mademoiselle. But I'll say that it's someone who would make a very bad enemy.” He fluttered his fingers in dismissal, as though shaking a clinging strand of cobweb from his gloves.
“I have plenty of enemies,” Lisette told him stiffly, when it became clear he would offer no further answer. “One more doesn't scare me. But as it happens, we authorized no such operation. Perhaps you'd tell me more about it?”
“Really?” Jean Luc leaned back, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “Not to doubt your word, but I find that hard to fathom. She was clearly a professional, mademoiselle.”
“She?” Lisette's face lit up to shame the lantern. “Describe her,” she all but cooed.
Jean Luc shrugged, and began. He'd scarcely gotten beyond eye and hair color before Lisette's own eyes blazed like a funeral pyre.
“Widdershins!” The woman's grin was somehow both wolfish and serpentine at once.
“Really. Don't any of you people have normal names, Taskmaster?”
Lisette ignored him. “The little scab was specifically ordered to keep away from de Laurent! I told them she'd be trouble, but no, have to give her the chance to hang herself first. Well, now she's done it, hasn't she?”
And made things much easier for Brock and me, for that matter.
Jean Luc rose to his feet and bowed politely to the woman sitting across from him. “I see this has become an internal guild matter, then. We'll leave you to your affairs, content in the knowledge that you can handle the situation. Good evening.”
“Just a moment, Jean Luc,” the taskmaster interrupted as he rose, her voice oily as a well-greased hinge. “And what, precisely, were you doing at the Rittier household to witness little Widdershins's activities?”
The assassin ran a hand down his fine vest. “I was a guest,” he said simply.
Lisette Suvagne was no fool; Jean Luc hailed from the aristocracy, yes, and he could have been innocently attending the party, but she didn't buy it for a moment. He'd been there on his own job, one that could have thrown the entire city into chaos if he'd meant to kill de Laurent himself. She was tempted to demand answers from him, even though she knew well she'd get none.
But there were always alternatives.
Lisette waved him away, waited until her guests had departed, then rose and strode from the room. She whispered instructions to the nearest guard, who nodded and darted off along the hall; then she moved in the other direction.
Widdershins had finally given Lisette cause to deal with her as she'd always wished. Not even the Shrouded Lord could object if she took action now, not without appearing weak. Lisette almost felt like skipping along the darkened halls, and many of her fellow Finders recoiled in fear from the gleeful malevolence in her grin.
Huddled deep in a tattered cloak, good hand and bad both wrapped in a beggar's bandages, Henri Roubet waited in the shadows of a nearby alley. His companions had been inside a while, now, and the former Guardsman was growing ever more concerned that something had gone wrong-or that one of the guild sentries would decide he was more than the vagabond he seemed, and run him off. He'd give them a few more minutes, but then…
Then, thank the gods, Jean Luc and the others emerged, apparently unharmed. They looked this way and that, as though getting their bearings, but for a split second the assassin met his eyes and nodded. All right, they had what they needed. Now it was his turn.
Jean Luc and the others disappeared down a side street, followed a moment later-as they'd known they would be-by several guild thieves, determined to learn whom they served. Roubet let them go; they weren't his concern.
The second group, however, led by the large, limping man with the hammer, were definitely his concern. Sticking close to the shadows, Roubet flitted after them.