Covenant's End (16 page)

“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 continued, still utterly nonchalant. “Don't worry, though. It really doesn't stand out in the blond. You can barely see it.”

“Gods above, Widdershins!” He plunked the flintlock down on the desk—or rather atop the papers on the desk—but still readily within reach. “How the hell did you get in here?!”

Her eyes narrowed to the teeniest of slits as she looked at him, idly tapping one foot on the threadbare carpet.

“Well, okay,” he conceded. “Let's try
why
the hell are you here? By all rights, I should arrest you this instant!”

“Where does that expression even come from?” she asked him. “I mean, it's
not
by all rights. What you mean is, your
orders
would be to arrest me right now. But it's not
right
, and you know it's not right, or you'd be doing it.”

Paschal required a moment, which he spent absently smoothing his goatee, to make sure he'd followed. “I guess I can't argue that.” He smiled, then. “Not that I'd know how, if I wanted to. Julien warned me about talking to you before you and I even met.”

Shins matched his smile with her own, though she knew the ache showed through it, no matter how she might prefer otherwise. It probably always would. “Paschal, you know about his…his…?”

“Body. Yes.” Several papers, probably important ones, crumpled under his fingers. “When I find out who did that—”

“Her name is Lisette Suvagne. She's currently running the Finders' Guild, after overthrowing the Shrouded Lord. I can also…” She took a deep breath, steadying herself.
There's no reason not to. Lisette and her people know where the flats are, so they're not safe no matter what. At least the Guard can bring everyone home.
“I can also give you some idea of where he might be. Also the body of Genevieve Marguilles. And, um, others.”

Again she felt awful, not even saying Alexandre's name, but it had been during her life as Adrienne Satti that she'd known him. Trying to explain a connection between Widdershins and the Delacroix patron would be a challenge all its own, and she preferred to postpone that for as long as she possibly could.

Saying nothing, allowing his constantly wavering expressions to do all the talking, Paschal slid a quill and inkwell to the far side of the desk, apparently unconcerned that he knocked several forms to the floor in the process. He then retrieved some blank paper from a drawer and slid it over as well.

Shins retrieved both before returning to her seat and pulling up a second chair for use as a writing table. “The first address is where I know for sure you'll find one of them. The following five are where I think you should look for the others.”

“This is about you,” the guardsman ventured. “Julien and Mademoiselle Marguilles I comprehend, but what's your connection with this ‘other'?”

“Private.” Then, clearly intending to head off any further questions on that score and not caring how obvious it was, “By the way…congratulations on the promotion, Major.”

She glanced up from her scribbling to see that his face had settled in a grief-concealing mask not
too
dissimilar from her own. “I'd rather the position hadn't needed to be filled,” he said.

“I know. Me, too.” A few final lines, their
scritching
the only sound in the chamber, and then she placed the paper on the floor beside her chair, using the inkwell to weigh it down. “The desecrated graves aren't the only reason I'm here.”

“I figured as much.”

“Paschal, you and I don't know each other that well, but we've worked together. I know Julien trusted you, and I know that you know Julien trusted me, no matter what I…what my life's made me. I really hope that means I can trust
you
, now.”

“Assuming what you're about to ask of me doesn't give me reason otherwise.”

“Heh. All right, that's honest enough. Paschal…why the happy hopping hens am I even
wanted
by the stupid Guard? I didn't kill anyone before I left—anyone human, anyway—and even if you had any jurisdiction over what happened in the Outer Hespelene, there are lots of important people who can explain it all, and I don't know why you're looking at me like that but you're making me
really
nervous.”

“Widdershins…”

“I also recognize that ‘I don't want to tell you this' tone of voice. I've heard it so often, I'm basically fluent in it as a separate language.”

“It's just, you…” Again he seemed unable to continue. The mess on his desk suddenly seemed to require very close scrutiny.

For her own part, Shins was beginning to feel as though she had an equal amount of slowly uncrinkling paper in her stomach. “Spit it out, Paschal. Please.”

The guardsman sighed, and when he finally did look up at her again, she was somehow frightened by the sympathy in his expression. “‘In the name of Demas, justice, and the laws of Davillon,'” he said, clearly quoting, “‘the street thief known as Widdershins—real name unknown—is to be apprehended on sight, with all due force, on suspicion of having murdered Major Julien Bouniard of the Davillon City Guard.'”

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The room, the world, turned themselves over so completely that she might have fallen to the ceiling if she didn't keep a death grip on her chair.

“What?” When she finally squeaked it out, the voice wasn't her own. Only later did she realize it reminded her, more than anything else, of the girl she'd been ten years before.

“Widdershins—”

“How could you
think
that? How could anyone?”

“I
don't
think it!” he assured her. “But the order and the suspicion come from the top. Most of the Guard haven't heard the whole story of what happened in the graveyard that day, and it's not as if they'd likely believe it if they did.”

“But you were there! You could tell people what happened!”

“I didn't actually see any of it, remember? Julien had me standing watch at the gate. I only know what happened because you and the others told me—and if I hadn't already seen Iruoch in action, I'm not sure that
I
would have entirely believed it.”

Shins tucked her knees to her chest, her heels resting on the seat. “Gods. They think I…. Oh, gods…”

Paschal looked like he wanted to get up from behind the desk and do
something
to comfort her but hadn't the first idea what. It was so very like Julien that she almost broke into tears and a wide smile simultaneously.

“I'm not sure it would have mattered if I
had
been a witness,” he explained. “Commandant Archibeque seems quite certain of your guilt. If I could show any sort of genuine, hard evidence, that might change things but…” Even his helpless shrug somehow jostled one of the stacks, the papers idly threatening to topple.

“Olgun?” she whispered. “Do we know him?”

Nothing but puzzlement. Okay, so either this Archibeque really, truly believed, to his toes, that Shins was guilty of a crime that was nothing akin to her prior record, or…

“How honest is he?” she asked bluntly.

Paschal's brow furrowed. “Major—and then Commandant—Archibeque has been a fixture since before I joined the Guard. There is no one in this organization more trustworthy!”

Shins waited for more, then, “But?”

“What? What ‘but'? But what?”

“Wow. Everyone's starting to sound like me. Come on, Paschal, we both know what ‘but.' It's the ‘but' that you very, very loudly refrained from saying.”

The guardsman's scowl survived a moment longer, then faded. “How do you do that?”

“It's easy. After a lifetime of trusting nobody, you can just sense a but coming from a mile away.”

Other than the sound of Olgun nearly asphyxiating in hysterics somewhere in the back of her head, utter silence followed that pronouncement.

“I am going to pretend you found a better way to phrase that,” Paschal said finally.

“Would you?” she asked through a blush that would have been visible in the dark. “I would
so
appreciate it.”

“Commandant Archibeque,” he reluctantly continued, “hasn't been quite the same since his promotion. It's almost certainly just stress and adjusting to his new authority, mind you. But, while he was always stern, he's become excessively strict. And he's making a lot of pronouncements—such as your guilt—where proper investigative procedure would allow for suspicions and theories at most.

“I do
not
,” he added hastily, “believe it suggests any manner of corruption on the man's part.”

“No, I'm sure you're right,” Shins said, already running through various scenarios for finding out if he was wrong. “Thank you for talking to me, Paschal. I know you could get in real trouble.”

She stood, and he rose as well. “Was the right thing to do, and it's what Julien would have wanted of me. I hope you find whatever it is you need to find before…well, soon.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Do you need an escort out? Someone to make your presence appear legitimate?”

“Thank you, again, but no. I've got it.” She was already out the door, turning to shut it behind, when she paused. “Paschal? Things aren't
really
on the verge of open war on the city streets, right? Davillon hasn't gotten
that
out of control, has it?”

If the young major's expression hadn't been answer enough, his comment of “I'm not sure where you've been the past few seasons, but you might give some serious thought to returning there” certainly would have been.

It would only be much later that evening, at the end of shift, that Paschal would notice. He couldn't begin to imagine when or how it had happened—he'd had his eyes on her for the entire conversation, and she'd never left the chair—but when he reached to collect the
Guard-issued rapier he'd leaned upright in the corner nearest his desk, it was simply gone.

At which point, after a long moment gawping like a fish who'd just discovered fire, he was—despite his best efforts—too busy laughing, and recalling some of Julien's less believable but more exasperated stories, to be angry.