Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,35

what had just happened, only that she had no time to ponder it. Her god screaming a warning at her, she punched down with both fists—one empty, one wrapped about the sword hilt—propelling herself back and upward, off the desk to land in the center of the chamber.

A heavy bladed dagger, clutched in Lisette's fist, sank into the hardwood where Shins's back had just been, scarring the wood and utterly blunting the tip.

“Do you have any idea,” she shrieked, hurling the ruined weapon aside, “how much this desk is worth?!”

“How did you do that?” Shins demanded, shocked to her core and starting—far, far too late—to feel the first genuine stirrings of fear.

Lisette's answer was almost a purr. “There are powers in this world, you damn fool. Powers greater than you can imagine, and powers more than capable of concealing themselves.

“From you or your wretched, insignificant pet of a god!”

The words were weapons, rocking Widdershins, stunning her—and Olgun, too—far more than any physical blow. Her mouth opened, but she couldn't force whole concepts to pass through it.

“What…? How…?”

But Lisette was already moving. This time it was she who landed atop the hardwood, and though Shins was far too taken aback to be certain, it looked less like she had jumped and more as though she had simply lifted both legs, at once, high enough to reach the desktop. She wielded a rapier in one hand, a new dagger in the other, and Shins hadn't even seen her draw. Lisette froze for an endless instant, crouched atop the desk, and then her legs straightened in a tremendous leap.

Passing within a rat's knuckle of the ceiling, she soared over Widdershins's head in an arc so impossible it almost hurt to see it. By any natural law, she should have struck hard against the stone ceiling, or else covered perhaps half the room, at most, in her flight. Instead she landed at the far door, having already twisted to wind up facing her opponent.

“Are you beginning to understand,” Lisette hissed, exhaling pure malevolence, “how badly you fucked up in coming here?”

“I think so,” Widdershins said through a wan, sickly smile. “So, time to call it lesson learned and go our separate ways, yes?”

“Ah, yes, I well recall the famous Widdershins's wit. But no, my mocking gutter bitch, we're not done. I have so much yet to teach you!” Rapier and dagger swirling around past one another, Lisette advanced.

“Olgun…?”

Another surge of divine power, and the older woman's foot caught on an up-curled edge of rug. It should have sent her tumbling into the waiting chairs, granting Widdershins a second or two of opportunity to try to get past her, make for the door…

It didn't happen. Even as the toe of Lisette's boot made contact with the heavy weaving, the rug twitched, yanking that awkward fold from her path before it could begin to trip her up.

Olgun gibbered, and Shins felt a very great deal like joining him. Palms sweating, heart pounding, she retreated toward the desk.

“Such childish little tricks you two rely on,” Lisette taunted. “Not much more than divine sleight of hand. Would you care to see something…rather more interesting?”

“If it's all the same—” Shins's reply began with words; it concluded in a terrified cry, hers and Olgun's both.

Still spinning, Lisette's weapons advanced, suddenly seeming to attack Shins from all sides. Yet Lisette herself hadn't taken another step. It was impossible to see for sure—the whirling steel, and her efforts to either dodge or parry it, occupied the entirety of the young thief's attentions—but she swore her enemy's arms had simply reached across the intervening space, lengthening to compensate. Every time she allowed herself a fraction of a blink to look past the weapons, though, to actually try to study those arms, she couldn't quite focus on them. As though she tried to examine them through tears and a thick heat haze.

The superhuman speed with which Olgun infused her limbs, the extra warning he gave, the manipulations of chance that ensured her rapier was so often in place to catch an incoming attack—only these had kept Shins alive thus far. Her entire body was drenched in sweat, now, her arms stung from half a dozen tiny cuts where she hadn't quite moved fast enough. She couldn't recall ever growing so tired, so swiftly, or feeling Olgun falter so soon in his own exhaustion.

What was she? What had Lisette become?!

The incoming blades froze, and then Lisette was standing directly before her, as though her arms