added with a wry smile. “Then I promise you'll have heard enough to hate it.”
Shift change at the various station houses, and the buildings all but bled the black and silver: tabards and hats and medallions of Demas, patron deity of the Davillon Guard. This flowing into streets already crowded with workers and crafters, vendors and patrons, racing against the setting sun to see who could reach home first. Men and women came, men and women went, and the result was somewhere between a spinning tornado and a cresting tide.
“There should be a term for that,” Shins whispered to Olgun, crouching at the very edge of a nearby rooftop, precisely midway between an old and worn waterspout gargoyle and a disturbingly broad speckling of old bird droppings. “Something to combine filling up and mixing up at once. Fixing! Wait, that's already a word. Milling? Oh, goose muffins! I think my language is full.”
She might have had more to say on the topic—no, she doubtless had more to say on the topic—but her deity shouted and pointed, or performed his equivalent thereof.
Shins peered down, dubious. “Are you sure? From here, all the guards just look like big floppy hats. All right! I'm sure you can sense it. Excuse the feathers out of me!
“What? No, I don't have feathers in me! You excused them out! Weren't you listening?”
She was already moving, jogging along the rooftop, leaping a narrow side street, keeping their quarry in sight. Widdershins still couldn't actually see anything to mark this one guardsman as different from any of the others, but she recognized him all the same; when Olgun had singled him out, her own senses had latched onto him as well.
Unfortunately, there was precious little even Olgun could do about the growing width of the roads, and thus the widening gaps between buildings. Shins still wasn't at her best, though it wasn't far, now; but even if she had been, some of those jumps were beyond her. Far sooner than she'd have liked, she had to trade in the soaked rooftops for the slightly less soaked cobblestones. The throng of travelers offered plenty of cover, so she wasn't too worried about being spotted. Losing the target, on the other hand…
After a trek that Shins swore should have taken them to the far end of Davillon and back again, the roads began to thin—in terms of width and traffic both—and she decided the man wasn't going to offer a better opportunity than this. Breaking again into a run, she turned down a side street and then another a block ahead, paralleling the main road. With Olgun's assistance, the ground flew by, her feet spraying lingering puddles of rainwater in a wake behind her.
More than fast enough for her to be waiting a few paces down the next side street, when the man she'd been following passed it by.
“Hey! Commandant Archibeque! You dropped your…uh…mustache!”
Said mustache, a thing of iron gray to match the beard, of course still clung to the leathery and leather-hued face that turned her way.
“Yes,” she murmured at Olgun's protest, “I'd rather have jumped him by surprise, too. Main avenue's still too crowded.”
“Is this meant to be a jest?” He took two steps from the intersection, confident but wary. “Because I'm not laughing.”
“Aww, you're not? I thought you were just hiding it really well.”
“Young lady—”
“Oh, stuff the ‘young lady’ nonsense.” Although fairly certain it wasn't necessary, Shins moved half a pace from the wall, ensuring that her face was visible in the light of the setting sun. “You know exactly who I am.
“And more importantly, ‘Commandant,’ I know exactly what you are.”
Fast, so fast! Even with Olgun's magics infusing her vision, she scarcely registered that his hand was in motion before it was already aiming a bash-bang pistol at her chest.
Well, at least he didn't waste our time with the “I don't know what you're talking about” routine…
The partners, one mortal and one otherwise, made no attempt to execute their usual trick for facing a flintlock, not without knowing precisely what the possessing spirit could do. If it was able to ward off Olgun's own power, however briefly, she'd simply be killing herself by forcing the weapon to discharge.
Instead, a second's heartbeat before the bang, she leapt.
No. She soared.
She was sure it must appear impressive, even melodramatic. Her body rising up and back, higher than any human could jump; arms outspread, legs tucked up under her, well above the path of the hurtling ball.
But then, the posture