Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,32
Finders who were specifically loyal to him.”
“Uh-huh.” The tip of the rapier twitched. “I can't help notice that didn't include you.”
Somehow, without shifting his grip, Remy managed to look as though he wanted to shrug again. “I do my job. I'm loyal to the Guild, not any one person.”
“Uh-huh,” Shins said again. “Also you didn't want her to open you up like a chest of drawers and reorganize your insides by color and size.”
“There was that,” he admitted.
“So she took the Shroud, then?”
“Nah. Seems happy enough running shit as herself.”
For the first time in the conversation, Shins found herself taken aback. “I thought the priests would've mandated it. It's a requirement, yes? To honor the Shrouded God?”
“Yeah, about that? Lisette's also purged the ranks of senior priests. Thinks she's got her own way of doing things in mind.”
She wanted to turn to Olgun, ask him what the frogs was going on, but she could feel his confusion as intensely as hers. Lisette had always been a fanatical worshipper of the Shrouded God, a zealous follower of his teachings. What could have changed?
A faint groan, clearly unintentional, pulled her thoughts back to Remy. “Almost done,” she told him, sympathy just dripping from every word. “Why all the bloodshed all of a sudden?”
“Orders.” His breath grew more labored with every word. “She wants…people afraid of us…wants bodies in the street. Seems to be trying…to stir up the Guard and…the Houses both. No idea why.”
“Because she's nuttier than a squirrel's larder.” Even as she said it, though, something about it nagged at her. Lisette was crazy, always had been, but there was always purpose behind her actions. “All right, last question. Maybe. What are your orders regarding me?”
“Locate…follow and watch. Nothing…else.”
Makes sense, given that the posters offered a reward for information about me, not body parts.
“You think Lisette wants to kill me herself, yes?”
“Maybe. Or she's got…some other scheme in mind. Either way, she wants you alive…for something.”
“Well…” Shins stepped back from the ledge, instinct and divine intervention all but painting her in shadow, leaving enough clear space for an exhausted, shaking Remy to haul himself up. “It'd be seriously inconsiderate to keep her waiting.”
Thick blankets of fog rolled in, but by the time Widdershins approached the Ragway District, they'd begun to dissipate. All that remained were thin tendrils and small accumulations of a lighter mist, seeping up from between the cobblestones. The ghosts, perhaps, of yesterday's storm-drenched passersby.
The shops and houses grew steadily more worn, more rickety, in some cases absent entirely. It was rather like walking through a mouth of bad teeth. Didn't smell much better, either. No sewers, here. No street cleaning. No comfort. No hope. Not in Ragway.
Widdershins didn't notice. She'd been through the district too many times before.
The building was an old, brick-shaped thing, supposedly the home of insurers and pawnbrokers barely breaking even. More or less everyone in the city knew the place's true purpose, though.
She knew she was watched by at least three separate sentries, even if she hadn't spotted them yet. It didn't stop her from striding right to the front door and knocking like the gods’ own tax-collector.
“It's called being confident!” she breathed in reply to Olgun's observation. “Not cocky. Well, yeah, that's because I'm not worried.”
I'm not. This isn't the Apostle and his demon, or Iruoch, or even Fingerbone with his weird goops. It's just Lisette!
Footsteps sounded behind the door, followed by the sound of a latch disengaging.
I'm not worried. Then, aloud, “Uh, but be ready to run anyway.”
A panel in the door slid open, granting Shins a view of deeply shadowed eyeballs—and them, in turn, a view of her.
Given their sudden, almost comical growth, the young thief had to assume she'd been recognized.
“Widdershins,” she announced casually. “To see Lisette Suvagne. I have an appointment.”
The panel slammed shut, and for some time there was silence nearby. Thunder and a howling wind both cracked that stillness at one point, but far in the distance, well beyond the walls of Davillon.
“Sounds like tomorrow's going to be unpleasant,” she casually observed. Her partner didn't reply.
Footsteps again, and for all her bravado, Shins tensed. It wasn't impossible that the door would open onto a bristling array of flintlocks and crossbows, and she needed to be ready to…
But no. The door did open, revealing only two young thieves, similar enough in appearance that they might have been brother and sister. He wore mostly browns and grays, she deep blues and crimson, but both were heavily armed—and both kept