Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,54
can't learn anything new, we can at least shore up suspicions and try to figure out what the point of this whole mess is, yes?”
When most of the others seemed to agree—or at least nobody disagreed—she continued. “We'll meet back here at set times. Robin, Faustine, you'll stay—”
Three shouted protests at once severed the end of that sentence like an executioner's axe. Shins let them go on for a moment. But only a moment.
“Oh, for pastry's sake, shut up!
“You!” she began, two fingers pointing directly at the startled scowl on Evrard's face. “If you're in this, you're in it. This is someplace safe we can gather, where Lisette doesn't know to look for us. I think the rest of us really appreciate having somewhere like that, so if you object, feel free to leave.
“Besides, what do you care what happens here? You're just renting.”
One hand dropped back to her side, the other rose in counterbalance, now aimed at the sofa. “The horse-plucking witch already came after you once! She can't…!” It was a gentle divine prod that made her realize she was starting to shout. “I need to be sure you're safe, Robin. And don't even start with the guilty ‘I'm a burden’ nonsense. I'd have said the same thing before your injury, and you hopping well know it.”
Her friend frowned, turned her face away, but nodded.
“Faustine—”
“I'm a courier, Shins. I know all sorts of people, in the noble Houses, in merchant circles!”
“I know, but—”
“But you don't know me.” Somehow bitter and understanding, both at once. “You don't trust me.”
“Gods!” It was neither skill nor divine interference but sheer, dumb luck that Shins's goblet didn't go flying from her fingers to shatter against wall or ceiling as she dramatically threw her hands up in exasperation. “You're as stubborn as she is!” The thief stalked across the room—it was only a few steps, but she still managed to stalk them—to loom over the pair on the couch.
“Robin loves you. That's enough for me to trust you, until and unless you give me reason otherwise. Faustine, I need you to stay here because Robin's staying here.” She went on, quickly, stampeding over the protest she could see rising in Robin's throat. “I need someone with her. Whether or not she thinks she does.
“Now, are there any questions or concerns that do not involve changing a plan that you all know isn't going to change?”
Renard had a fist raised to his mouth, openly grinning behind it. “No, General Widdershins, I don't believe so.”
“Oh, be quiet.”
“I have one,” Evrard announced, far too calmly for Shins's taste. “Is there any chance of you finally returning my rapier any time soon? And please don't give me your line about how it can't be my missing sword because it doesn't have a ruby in the pommel.”
“Uh, right. Well, that…. It sort of got left behind when Igraine and Renard hauled my rear out of the Finders’ Guild. So, if I could just borrow another one? You know, only for the time being, until this is…all…
“Wow. I, um, I thought you had to be possessed to make that sort of expression. Doesn't that hurt? I'd think it…yeah, I'll just, uh…so, we'll meet back here tonight, okay everyone, right, bye.”
She didn't quite break into a genuine run, but she was out on the street, the suite far behind, before she realized she was still gripping the wine goblet in one clenched fist.
Paschal Sorelle, of the Davillon City Guard, leaned back in his plain, drab chair—which sat before his plain, drab desk in an office with dirty walls of plain, drab gray—and pressed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Had anyone else been in the room, it wouldn't have required much detective work to determine what was causing the tension in his shoulders or the pounding in his head. The uneven and teetering stacks of paperwork, doubtless generated by Davillon's many ongoing troubles, probably outweighed the desk on which they sat.
Of course, there was nobody else in his office. Or rather, there shouldn't have been anyone, and he hadn't seen anyone.
“You're working too hard,” Shins said from the corner nearest the doorway.
Paschal made a noise vaguely akin to a badger choking on a duck, and had his bash-bang out and aimed—albeit perhaps a bit inaccurately—before his chair ceased wobbling, or he ceased verging on falling out of it.
“You're not old enough to be going gray,” the young—and, thanks to some cheap dyes, currently black-haired rather than brunette—woman