Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,27

her face. “What about him? Did something happen?”

Faustine actually took Shins's hand in her own; the thief stiffened but forced herself not to pull away. “We don't know,” she admitted. “He always came by the Witch regularly. Said it was just because he could drink for cheap, but Robin and I both knew he was checking up on her.

“Couple of months ago, he came by, fretting like I've never seen him. He told us something was wrong. Something in the Finders’ Guild.”

Ah. Funny how they keep popping up, yes?

“He didn't say much,” Faustine continued, “just told us to start being extra careful. Said things were getting rough, and he didn't know how much he could protect us.

“That was the last time he came by with any regularity, Widdershins. And he hasn't shown up at all in weeks. We figured, you've already had problems with the Guild in the past, so with gods-know-what going on…”

Shins had to swallow twice before she could answer, clearing her fear for Renard from her throat. “Thank you,” she said, only slightly grudgingly. “I…don't suppose you know what he meant by ‘getting rough’?”

“He didn't say specifically,” the other woman answered. “But between Robin's place at the tavern and my job—I'm a local courier—we both hear things. Lots of things.

“There's a lot going wrong in Davillon right now, and part of that is the Finders’ Guild. They've gotten brutal. Vicious. And overt enough that everyone's scared. I mean, they were always dangerous, but now it's like they're shedding blood for the fun of it!”

Shins pulled free of Faustine's grip and began to pace—which, given the size of the canopy, meant basically one big step in each direction. It was a testament to how distracted she was that she didn't start to feel really, really foolish.

“Doesn't make any sense,” she muttered, a sentiment to which Olgun could only vehemently agree. “What's the Shrouded Lord thinking?”

A particular doubt took root in her mind, planted by divine effort, and blossomed.

“You think so?” Then, answering herself before he could, “You may be right. I can't imagine why he'd change so much, but if he's not in control anymore…. But who in the Guild would be so…?”

So completely, so abruptly did Widdershins freeze that Faustine jumped. The cold, the wet, the world, even the deep ache of Robin's reaction to her homecoming, all of it was gone. There was nothing for Shins, nothing around her, nothing to her.

Nothing but a gaping darkness and a slowly growing ember of pure, murderous hate.

Robin's wound was a message. A message for Widdershins.

The wound in Robin's upper thigh.

And the Guild had turned suddenly sadistic, brutal…

“Who attacked Robin?”

Shins didn't know what she sounded like, but it couldn't have been pleasant; Faustine actually retreated a step. “Wh-what?”

“The attacker. The one who stabbed her. Who was it?”

“We…we don't know…”

“Describe her!”

Faustine squeaked something only marginally intelligible. Then, “It was a woman! She was fast, so impossibly fast! We didn't…I couldn't see her face, not in her hood, but her hair was an almost brilliant red…. Wait. How did you know it was a ‘her’?”

But Shins was no longer listening to anything but the voices in her head, her own and Olgun's both.

Lisette.

She had wondered, on and off. After the men she'd had to kill in Castle Pauvril—not in self-defense, as she'd done before, but coldly, deliberately, for a greater good—the guilt had almost crushed her. And though she'd hoped she didn't have it in her at all, she'd wondered, idly, in the days that followed, what it might take for her to kill, to murder, without remorse.

Now, she knew. Now, Widdershins not only could kill, she swore she would.

And just this once, she would revel in it.

The weather had finally—if only partly—cleared, sometime around midmorning. The rain deteriorated into a soupy fog, the kind that, though more subtle than any precipitation, still managed to soak through and moisten just about everything.

It was more than enough to prevent Widdershins's drenched clothes and hair from drying out, and she was starting to feel a bit chafed. She could only imagine how bedraggled she must appear; probably looked like a drowned scarecrow.

Still, cleaning up and changing remained out of the question. She'd been halfway to one of her other boltholes after her talk with Faustine when several questions, previously held at bay by shock and anger, had finally returned to her mind. Questions that Olgun not only couldn't begin to answer but that—judging by the radiating waves of shame—he felt should have occurred