Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,34
arrayed about it soft and welcoming, the single bookcase loaded to groaning with stacks of papers and parchments. The braziers, which had once spewed that thick incense, now served as the resting places of pricey oil lanterns, brightening the room rather more evenly and cleanly than torches ever could.
And that was everything, really. Everything save the office's lone occupant.
“Took you long enough,” Lisette complained, rising to her feet behind the desk. “Hello, little scab.”
If anything, she looked even meaner than Shins remembered. Her face had hardened and sunken with age; the younger thief likened it to a plow protruding from her thick mass of crimson hair. Her lips were thin, her teeth exposed in a tight smile that had nothing whatsoever to do with friendliness. Otherwise she looked normal enough, clad in greens and blacks, topped with a vest that so perfectly matched her hair it must have been custom made.
She wore no weapon to be seen, but Shins wasn't foolish enough to assume she had none ready behind that monstrosity of a desk.
“I'm surprised, Lisette. I figured you'd have spruced this place up once it was finally yours, make it more you. This…” She indicated the desk and bookcase. “This doesn't even come close to tasteless.”
“Oh, and I'm so deeply sorry to have disappointed you,” Lisette replied. “I did think of doing a more substantial redecorating, but it didn't seem worth the effort. I don't intend the heart of my domain to remain here for too long.”
“And where do you expect to be ruling from, Your Malignancy?”
“Wherever I choose. City Hall, perhaps. Or maybe Luchene Manor? I've always rather liked the look of that place.”
Widdershins felt her grip on the conversation beginning to slide, or at least cause rope burns. “You—”
“Honestly, though, at the moment I'm thinking the Basilica. It's such a nice place, and it would certainly send a message, don't you think?”
“You think you're going to run the whole city?” It was almost a squawk, so incredulous was Widdershins. Then, at the other woman's casual shrug, “You're even crazier than when you left! For pastry's sake, you couldn't even run a conspiracy within the Guild without being exposed.”
For the first time, Lisette's false smile slipped into a more honest sneer. “Yes, and whose fault was that?”
“It's about to be mine again, you dog!” The lingering shreds of Olgun's unease vanished beneath a surge of fury; Shins had her rapier in her hand without ever consciously choosing to draw it. “You should have stayed away, Lisette. You should not. Have touched. My friends.”
“The living or the dead?” the former taskmaster asked dryly.
“And you really shouldn't have just let me walk in here.” Widdershins's tone could have frozen the remaining oil in the lanterns.
“The truth is,” Lisette continued, “I gave serious thought to torturing you for a few months after you got home. You have so many weaknesses, little scab. But, well, I have a lot to do, still. So, alas, I decided to deny myself the pleasure of a slow revenge.
“That does not mean,” and now that tight, ugly smile was back, “I wasn't going to allow myself a personal one. Really, you think I'd have gone to all that trouble to extend my invitation with Genevieve's, Alexandre's, and Julien's rotting, vermin-eaten carcasses if I was just going to have one of my people kill you? You. Are mine.”
The room had been clearer, under its old cloud of smoke, than it was now beyond the blazing red in Shins's vision. “You didn't have a chance against me even before the limp, you snake!”
“Whose limp? Mine? Or Robin's?”
Shins lunged.
The sharp tingle of Olgun's power and she was airborne, clearing the space between herself and her enemy in a single leaping step. Her front foot landed atop the desk as she thrust, the tip of her rapier a bolt of steel lightning, tracing a line between the two women faster than the human eye could possibly register.
It never even came close.
Lisette folded out of the way, leaning far enough at the waist that the blade passed only through empty space. Then, whipping her body around so she now bent forward rather than back—without straightening in between!—she slammed a backhanded fist into Widdershins's ankle.
The impact knocked the young thief's foot completely out from under her. She crashed down on the desk, chest first, a burst of air blasted from her lungs. It was sheer luck, or perhaps quick thinking from Olgun, that kept her fist clenched around her rapier.
She wasn't sure