Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,82

You're the one who chose to follow the usurper, Remy. You should thank her, by the way. It was only because of the threat she posed that we were able to get the Church and the Houses on board with something this massive.”

She leaned even closer, until she could whisper almost intimately in the taskmaster's ear. “The protection of the Shrouded God was never just silly superstition, you ridiculous fool. Such a pity you had to learn that the hard way.”

Then she was up and back amongst the guards, leaving her former friend and ally cursing and spitting in a frustrated, fearful rage.

Riding the momentum of another humanly impossible sprint, Shins dropped to her knees, leaned back, and slid the length of the hall, passing beneath the fusillade fired by the gathered Finders. Beneath the fusillade, and beneath the outstretched arms of the first rank, slashing a calf here or a hamstring there as she swept by.

Then she was up in the midst of them. She snatched one of the Finders by the belt and collar as she shot upright, driving his head—with a bit of Olgun-boosted strength, of course—into the ceiling.

Those still standing in the front spun to face her; the bulk from the back pressed forward, eager to see her bleed.

Which, of course, had been the point. Clumped, focused on her, facing in multiple directions, this last gaggle of sentries were not watching down the hall whence she'd come.

Widdershins smiled, dropped her rapier, and leapt. Her right hand and foot slapped hard against the wall, her left against the ceiling. Even with her god's assistance, it was a position far too awkward, far too lacking in any real support, for her to hold more than a few seconds.

But a few seconds was long enough for Renard and the guards accompanying him to fire down the hall, unimpeded by any return shots.

Those thieves who survived wisely raised their hands.

Shins dropped to the floor, landing—for no reason other than showing off, at this point—on the pommel of her sword with the toe of her boot. Pivoting on the basket hilt, the weapon flipped into the air inches from her chest, where she caught it as smoothly as though it'd been handed to her.

“I can't help but wonder,” Renard mused as he strode up beside her, “if that last bit was truly necessary.”

“It'll just have to remain one of life's great mysteries.” She indicated the door with a tilt of her head, looking first to her friend, then to the squad of soldiers with whom she'd met up moments before. “Everyone ready?”

Gruff nods and the hefting of very large weapons were her answer.

She hurled open the door to the Shrouded Lord's chamber.

So accustomed was Widdershins to seeing the room choked with smoke, she needed a moment to realize that it wasn't supposed to be anymore. That, and the fumes were far darker, and far more redolent of singed flesh than the incense-laden stuff the Shrouded Lord had used.

It billowed from the hidden trapdoor, the exit Renard had used to escape Lisette some months before. An entire contingent of the Guard had waited down there, armed with blunderbusses, and the area directly beneath the trap had been soaked in oil. Their orders, if anything were to come through that portal without shouting the proper pass phrase, had been to ignite the oil and then fill the passage with enough shot to stretch wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It should have been more than even Lisette, with all her unnatural gifts, could penetrate.

It wouldn't be until later, after much careful examination and questioning of the survivors, that Shins and the others would learn what happened: that the madwoman had used the bodies of her own people to smother a portion of the flames and to shield herself from the wide-barreled guns. Once she'd closed to within the range of blades, the soldiers never stood a chance.

But that, again, Shins would find out later. For now, she knew only that after all they'd just been through, Lisette had still managed to escape them.

Twice the sun had risen and set again, since the raid on the Finders’ Guild, and it did so over a city fallen into a strangely controlled and formal chaos.

Courts across Davillon swelled with thieves who argued that their arrest had been blatantly illegal, Guard and city officials who swore otherwise, and a woefully undersized population of magistrates who were coming to regret the choices they'd made in life to bring