they and their families don't go wanting, yes. I know you did all you could.”
“Yeah. Be nice if it was enough one of these days.”
“Widdershins…they made this necessary. Suvagne and her unholy allies are responsible for this. Not you.”
“Great. Maybe they can come help clean the blood off their sword. This man,” she said more loudly, turning from the bishop before he could speak again, “is not who you think he is. Or rather, he is who you think he is, but he's also not who you think he is.”
Dead silence. Narrowed glares.
“Well, how would you have phrased it?” she whispered to Olgun, before speaking aloud again. “Commandant Archibeque hasn't been in control of his own actions for some time. He's been possessed, by a creature of the Gloaming Court.”
“Your Eminence…” Duchess Luchene rose from her seat, carrying what appeared to be all two or three hundred yards of fancy gown and train with her. “I've no idea what you think you're doing, but I believe I've had just about enough—”
“Your Grace,” Shins interrupted, “with every last ounce of due respect, I think you need to lose some of that mountain of hair. Your brain's suffocating.”
The gasps from before her were insufficient to drown out the slap of several hands against several foreheads behind her.
“Am I the only one,” she continued while the noblewoman's outrage was still more rage but less out, “who remembers what happened to this city last year? Iruoch wasn't exactly likeable, but I thought he was pretty boiling well memorable.”
“Mademoiselle,” Luchene intoned, quite clearly using the term as a synonym for lowborn ill-mannered little bitch, “this is my city. The duchy of Davillon has been my family's to oversee since before there was a city by that name. Don't you dare insinuate that I might simply forget something as awful as the events of last year!
“But the notion that it was truly some supernatural creature, despite what many of the witnesses believe they saw—”
“I lost someone I cared about very deeply to Iruoch. I watched him die. Through the magics we used to try to kill that creature, I felt him die. And less than a week ago, I was tortured almost to death by one of Iruoch's lovely cousins. Not so much of a family resemblance, really, but they share certain hobbies.
“So don't you dare tell me these things aren't real!”
“As it happens,” Sicard cut in before Shins could talk herself out of a potential ally (or into a potential noose), “we have both a means of proving to you that these creatures have come to Davillon and a weapon against them. Faith and divinity are anathema to the entities of the Gloaming Court.”
“Commandant Archibeque,” Luchene said stiffly, “appears to be lying in a sanctuary of the Hallowed Pact without bursting into flame.”
“Because, as with anything to do with faith,” the bishop explained, “a symbol is only as powerful as the belief behind it.” So saying, he knelt at Archibeque's side, drawing an amulet from around his neck. Gleaming in the light of the lone chandelier, it was a smaller version of the Eternal Eye on the wall—only this one was pure silver.
He cast a single glance at Shins, one she interpreted as You better be right about this, and then pressed the icon to the commandant's chest. His head bowed, his lips began shaping themselves around muttered prayers.
“I think,” Baron Merchand began, “that we've all had just about enough of—”
Archibeque screamed. Or rather, something inside him did.
This was no human voice, for all that it issued from a human throat. No, not it, them. Two separate voices, coiling and sliding around one another. One was high, piercing, enough to make everyone in the room clasp hands over ears; the other deep enough to feel through the floor.
An awful stench, some foul combination of peppermint, rotting oranges, and bile, seared nostrils and lungs. Dull black sludge welled up from within the commandant's mouth, bubbling and oozing before it began to drip down the side of his face—and then trailed away into a wisp of smoky shadow.
“I'll need rather more time,” Sicard said, breathing heavily, “as well as the assistance of other priests, to drive the intruding spirit from him. But I trust you've seen enough?”
When nobody claimed otherwise—although that could just as easily have been because they still stared in fascinated horror at the sprawled guardsmen as because they agreed with him—he continued, “I've taken the liberty of summoning the most senior of your House