Roubet himself followed an instant later, clutching the bleeding wreckage of his hand to his chest and sobbing inconsolably.
“Well,” Adrienne said finally. “That was convenient.”
She felt a brief swell of satisfaction from her divine partner-but it was no match for her own sense of satisfaction as she darted forward and kicked the whimpering man in the head until he was well and truly unconscious.
“We've got to get out of here,” she told the god seriously, limping on a vaguely sore foot as she moved toward the long passage and the stairs beyond. “They think I did this, and I sort of doubt that Lefty here is going to tell them otherwise. We've got to hide until I can figure out what to do, or how to get back to Alexandre.”
Another questioning probe.
“I don't know,” she admitted. “It doesn't matter, really. I grew up out there, remember? The Guardsman hasn't been born that can find Adrienne Satti when she doesn't want to be found!”
Olgun's doubt, when it came to her, was almost tangible. She concentrated on it, so she wouldn't have to confront her own.
CHAPTER ONE
Eight years ago:
Brick walls and wooden fences were the borders of her world, roads of dirt or broken cobblestone its fields, rickety staircases its trees. The city wasn't just “a big place” at her age, her size-it was all there was, all there ever could be.
She'd spent much of that day exploring the nearest reaches of that world, along with a number of friends who, like her, were ducking out on the various chores with which they were tasked. Rag-clad and dirt-faced, they moved in a feral pack, yipping and screeching and giggling. Their chins dripped with the juices of fruits they hadn't paid for; their wrists and arms and shoulders ached with the iron grasp of merchants who snagged them before they could run. But there were always more vendors, and those swift or fortunate enough to catch them were far less numerous than the shopkeepers who never knew they'd been robbed. The children pushed, slipped, shoved, and squeezed through barricades of flesh and cloth, making their way through the bustling markets and crowded streets. The heat of bodies pressed together in the throng was enough to make them sweat, despite winter's chill in the air and a light dusting of snow on the rooftops. They shouldn't really have been here unsupervised, so far from home, but their parents had long since given up forbidding them to go.
Futility was a common enough guest in the poorer quarters of Davillon. No sense in inviting him for an extra stay, no sense at all.
Young as she was, however, the girl had some vague sense of responsibility. While everyone knew that adults thrived on giving children meaningless busywork, there were some chores that needed doing. And of course, she wouldn't want her parents to worry. (The fact that it was growing late, and that her stomach-unsatisfied by purloined produce-was rumbling for dinner had, of course, nothing at all to do with her abrupt decision to head for home.)
A few shouted farewells, a few insults and protruding tongues, and she left her friends behind. She didn't quite skip along her way, for even if she'd been a happy enough child, the traffic on the roadways wouldn't allow for it. But she was, at least, as carefree as her lot in life would allow. Today, given her own limited frame of reference, had been a good day. She watched, with a delight that she hadn't yet outgrown, as clouds of dirt puffed up around her worn and ragged shoes.
The forest of legs thinned notably as she moved farther from the market, and she began to shiver as the season coughed and wheezed across her skin. She kept her head low, wrapped her arms about her chest in a quest for the warmth her tunic failed to offer, and mumbled aspersions upon her friends. It must, after all, have been their fault she'd stayed out so late.
It wasn't the change in the constant roar of the city's voice; people were always shouting about something or other. It wasn't the faint stinging in her eyes, or the almost dainty cough that kept traveling up and down her throat like a yo-yo. No, it was instead the sudden gust of warmth, a comforting yet confounding relief from winter's winds, that finally drew her attention from her feet.
She saw, at first, nothing but the various muted colors and shoddy fabrics that covered the legs and backs of the people before her in the road-more of them, in fact, than was entirely normal. Higher her gaze drifted, higher still, to the flickering glow and the plumes of smoke twisting their way skyward.
Even at her age, she knew full well the dangers of fire, especially in a neighborhood as poor as this. Should she run the other way? Find a place to hide? Offer, however small and feeble she might be, to help?
Mother and Father would know. Again winding between, around, and under a thicket of limbs, the hitch in her breath now as much fear as it was smoke, she wormed her way through the evergrowing crowd.
And then she was near enough to see precisely which building was on fire.
The frantic adults simply stepped over her as she fell to her knees in the middle of the road, and her scream was just another voice, lost amidst the many voices of the city.
“…and as ever and always, to your endless grace, Vercoule. To you, our most humble thanks for the prosperity you have brought us, the safety you have brought us. For Davillon, which is both your gift to us, and our greatest testament to you. In your name, above all, we pray. Amen.”
Sister Cateline smiled shallowly at the dull, mumbled chorus of amen, already drowned out by the scraping of cheap wooden spoons on cheap wooden bowls, scooping up mouthfuls of cheap porridge (probably not wooden, but who could really say for certain?). Stretched out before her were a quartet of long tables, crammed to bursting with unwashed children clad in undyed frocks. There had been a time, oh so long ago, where Cateline felt horrible that the convent couldn't provide a more comfortable life for these unfortunate waifs; when she would've felt guilty that the blue and silver of her own habit was so much better kept than the clothes they offered these lost souls.
Once, but not now. Still she did all she could, but no longer lamented her inability to do more. She'd seen too many of them in her years, and she simply couldn't afford to care any more than she had to.
She strode forward, wending her way between the tables, and stopped just as swiftly, pinned in place by two tiny, red-rimmed eyes. The new girl-what was her name…?
“You're not hungry, child?” Duty, more than genuine concern, but at least she'd bothered to ask.
“Who's Varcool?”
Cateline felt her jaw drop.
“You don't know Vercoule, child?” she asked, gently correcting the girl's pronunciation. Many of the nearby children had stopped to listen, some scoffing at the new kid's ignorance, others-just perhaps-hoping for answers to questions they'd never had the courage to ask.
When the girl shook her head, Cateline continued. “Why, he's our patron god! Vercoule, above all others, watches over Davillon.”
“What others?”
“The gods of the Hallowed Pact, of course.”
“What's the hollow pact?”
Good gods, was nobody teaching these children anything? Little heathens, running the streets of Davillon. The nun really wanted nothing more than to get the children finished up and put to bed, but even her cynicism recognized a spiritual obligation when it appeared before her.
“It refers to all the gods of the High Church, child. Uncounted gods ruled before our forefathers carved Galice from the lands of the barbarian tribes. The one hundred forty-seven greatest of them joined together over civilization, promising to watch over humanity.”