They moved swiftly across the chamber, Widdershins deliberately falling back before Lisette's furious assault, concentrating entirely on defense, refusing to take so much as a single stab at the foe. Though gilded in a veneer of style and civility, trained into her during her years as the ward of a nobleman, Widdershins's swordplay was, at its core, brutal, direct-not fencing but street fighting. Nothing in her experience should have allowed her to turn away blow after blow as she was, yet she kept her lone blade constantly interposed between both Lisette's weapons.
The taskmaster was good, very good. But Lisette, for all her faith, didn't have a god watching over her shoulder and guiding her blades. And slowly, slowly, she began to tire. She found herself flinching from counterattacks that never came, her eyes drifting dangerously to follow Widdershins's footwork when they should remain focused elsewhere.
And then, as their path took them past the towering idol of the Shrouded God, Widdershins lashed out with the tip of her blade and scored a thin line straight down the stone deity's crotch.
Lisette froze, shocked to the core of her being, more horrified at Widdershins's blasphemy than she could ever have been at merely mortal suffering. And in that instant of paralysis, when Lisette's jaw and fingers had both fallen slack, Widdershins stepped in and slammed her rapier down on the taskmaster's sword, knocking it from her fist to skip and skitter across the carpeted floor. Even as Lisette turned, cognizant once more of the danger, Widdershins grabbed the taskmaster's left wrist with her own free hand and, with only a modicum of exertion, drove Lisette's own dagger deep into the woman's upper thigh.
“If we're through playing now,” Widdershins told the woman, now lying curled around a growing pool of blood, “I'd really like to ask you a few questions before you bleed to death.”
“Go to hell!” Lisette gasped around broken sobs. She tried to crane her head, to look up with some last show of dignity; but her leggings, already plastered to her skin by the torrent of blood, pulled rudely at the gaping wound, and she couldn't so much as shift her weight for the pain. “Killing me won't stop them! They'll come after you, no matter what!”
“I don't know, Lisette,” Widdershins said thoughtfully. “I think I'd be doing them a favor by popping whatever sack of contagion you have for a heart. I'm sure there are quite a few here who would send me flowers. Maybe a nice fruit basket.”
“Even if that's true,” the taskmaster wheezed, “the Shrouded Lord doesn't take kindly to being disobeyed.”
“I didn't disobey anything until you'd already punished me for it,” Widdershins protested. “And it's certainly a bit of overkill to throw a blooming demon at me, don't you think?”
Lisette laughed aloud, the sound changing to a gurgle of pain as the movement jostled her injured leg. “I'll tell Brock you think so highly of him,” she gasped.
Maybe it was her tone, but the young thief didn't doubt the woman for a moment. Lisette really didn't know what Widdershins was talking about. Someone else was trying to kill her, someone outside the guild-the same someone who had slaughtered Olgun's cult! She was after the wrong people!
Sheathing her blade, she delivered a swift and brutal kick to Lisette's injured leg. Then, as the taskmaster's scream drowned out all other sound, she slid open the door behind her and slipped out the winding corridors. Long before Lisette's cries could attract attention in the largely empty halls, Widdershins was already gone, lost in the labyrinthine corridors, leaving only the fading echo of her footsteps to prove she'd been present at all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Almost two years ago:
Even in darkest night, life continued in Davillon's central market. Though stalls and shops were long since closed, windows shuttered and doors thoroughly locked, the marketplace offered other attractions. Illicit deals and unlawful exchanges occupied shadowed culs-de-sac, dimly lit offices, corner booths in smoke-filled taverns-anywhere the participants could place at least one wall at their back. And for each audible voice lurked another individual whose mouth remained firmly shut, ready to cut the strings of a purse or the flesh of a throat. The nighttime market, without the scents of fruits and perfumes and sweetmeats, was redolent of sweat and drying horse manure.
Tonight, Adrienne smelled none of it. She didn't hear the muted whispers circling the market like carrion crows. She didn't taste the charged excitement that spiced the air, or feel the sodden sense of fear that brushed across her skin.
No, tonight Adrienne saw only the hideous sea of red through which she'd waded; smelled and tasted only the iron pungency of blood and the bitter stench of death; felt nothing save the clammy embrace of her gore-soaked gown.
In the back of her mind, Olgun yammered away in his own peculiar fashion, a barrage of emotions that Adrienne lacked the practice and the presence of mind to interpret. In later years, she would look back on this moment and realize that her divine companion, too, had been scared witless. It was one thing she never, in all her days, teased him about.
Adrienne flitted from alley to roadway and back again, keeping herself cloaked in the ambient darkness as she swept through the muted heart of Davillon. City Guard patrols passed her on the street, couples foolishly out for a late-night stroll meandered by, yet she remained unseen.
The claustrophobic confines of the city's center faded away, slowly metamorphosing into the well-kept and far more spacious properties of Davillon's better districts. Through this, too, she drifted, until finally she found herself before the high walls of the most prosperous, if not necessarily the largest or most pretentious, of the lot.
It occurred to Adrienne, through her exhausted fugue, that she might do better to avoid the guard at the front gate. Andre, like all the servants-except Claude-had never treated her with anything but kindness. But somehow, she couldn't see even easygoing Andre taking her current condition with aplomb, and she wanted to avoid a ruckus until she'd spoken to Alexandre, made sure he was safe and asked him what the hell she should do.
Eventually, without ever really remembering how she got there, she found herself clinging to a tree branch outside Alexandre's sitting room, listening in growing horror to the conversation within.
On the other side of the window, a small fire crackled in the hearth, popping in cheerful counterpoint to the low susurration of voices around it. The room was lined on two sides with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The other two walls sported trophies of their master's more adventurous past. An old rapier hung above the fireplace, crossed by a primitive arquebus. A lion's head roared silently from above the door, stuffed and mounted to perfectly match the face of Cevora, its gaze locked with that of the small albino rhinoceros that stared just as ferociously from above the mounted weapons.
A quartet of richly upholstered chairs faced one another, a small tea table set between them. Alexandre Delacroix, clad in rumpled nightclothes, sat directly opposite the window; Claude, fully dressed, loomed over his master's shoulder. The other three chairs were occupied by Guardsmen. On the right was the young constable, Bouniard, and the commander himself sat nearest the window.
“…be some mistake,” Alexandre was insisting when Adrienne pressed her ear to the glass, his jaw incredulously slack. “Or else a jest in unbelievably poor taste! Whatever your game, Major Chapelle, I can't say I find it amusing.”
“I'd hardly expect you to find it so, my lord,” the old Guardsman said respectfully. “And I assure you, I couldn't be more serious. I think the murder of twenty-six individuals, and most especially these particular individuals, falls well outside the bounds of humor.”