Covenant's End (25 page)

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 them here.

The smaller Houses, particularly those who'd been involved in Lisette's schemes, huddled in tight and waited to see what fate might befall them. Oh, they made their own legal cases, challenging the laws and traditions by which Beatrice Luchene had seized power, but they made those cases quietly. Their House soldiers remained on the estates, guarding against attack but taking no other action; the patriarchs and matriarchs kept inside, never so much as appearing at an un-curtained window. With the Guard
and
the larger Houses arrayed against them—and the example of House Rittier fresh in their minds—none were willing to stick their heads up and risk being hammered back down.

Those larger Houses? They weren't precisely glorying in the tension or legal limbo, either. That their interests and Luchene's currently aligned was no guarantee they would still do so next week, next month. The aristocrats of these more potent bloodlines cemented alliances, reinforced their businesses, and otherwise worked to ensure they remained stable and powerful enough to survive whatever might come.

What they knew—what occupied the minds of every citizen of Davillon who paid attention—was that the next move belonged to the duchess. Any course of action the Houses might choose, indeed the entire future of the city, hinged on a single question.

Now that the immediate crisis was over, would she return shared power to the noble Houses of Davillon? Or did she intend to make the regional return to the proper feudalism on which Galice was founded a permanent one?

It was a good question, one that might have led to the establishment of any number of legal precedents.

Too bad it would never be answered.

In her simple nightclothes—without the added bulk of her formal gowns, the armor of her corsetry, the looming height of her fancy wigs—Beatrice Luchene was beginning to look old. Still imperious, with a spine of iron and a glare sharper than any rapier, but old. And she knew it, though she'd never admit it aloud.

She reclined on a fat sofa, lined in red velvet, its cushions so overstuffed it probably represented the end of entire dynasties of geese. On her lap lay a heavy tome, a book of laws and history, one of many she'd consulted over the course of the last few days. And like all the others, the answers it offered were muddled and inconsistent at best. Too tired to rise and restore the book to its proper resting place on one of the dozen bookshelves that made up her massive library, she instead rested her hands atop it, tapping it with one finger as she stared into nothing. Greedily sucking up the last of the oil, the lantern she'd placed on the small table beside the sofa began to gutter and fade, filling the chamber with gauzy shadow and a vaguely sour aroma.

Lower. Smaller. Dimmer. Until it was no more than a glowing ember at the end of a wick, and the duchess had dozed off on her sofa.

And then it was a conflagration, blinding in its intensity, the sun made manifest. Luchene rolled from the sofa, screaming, one arm thrown over her face—and only then did she realize that she felt no heat. That the room was not, in fact, engulfed in flame.

No, it remained lit by that lonely lantern. Indeed, squinting as she waited for her tearing eyes to adjust, the duchess realized that it was still only a tiny, lingering ember! An ember that, against all reason, now illuminated the chamber in sharp contrasts, casting razor-edged shadows over the walls and shelves.

And along with that light came the sharp tang of sugar candies and cinnamon.

Luchene forced herself upright on shaking legs. Still squinting, she felt around blindly until her fingers came across the stiletto and small flintlock that lay atop the table beside the impossibly gleaming lantern.

Every room of the estate was similarly equipped; the duchess had survived too many assassination attempts in her youth to live otherwise.

“Not the most friendly welcome I've ever received.” Twin voices, speaking in unison, a young boy and an old man. Luchene spun toward the sound; the creature she recognized from Widdershins's description as Embruchel, the Prince of Orphan's Tears, gazed back at her through mirrored eyes.

She felt as though a jagged hailstone had formed in her throat. Simply speaking was a heroic effort.

“How…how did you do that with the lamp?”

The gleam of the fae's inhuman gaze flickered as he blinked. Apparently, whatever he'd expected her to say, that wasn't it.

“I stripped away the shadows around it,” he said finally. “So the light had more room to expand.”

“I don't…” She took a shuffling, sideways step toward the door. “That doesn't make any sense!”

“It makes perfect sense,” Embruchel insisted, almost petulantly. “Your definition of ‘sense' is too narrow.”

In the distance, a chorus of children cooed and chortled.

Another slow, careful step, edging closer to escape. “Don't you—” she began.

“Slow, stupid mortal thinks we're all slow, stupid mortals! That's no door, not for you. Wrap your sweaty fingers around the latch, and I could still pull your bones out through your flesh, slick and dripping, and suck them dry before you could squeak the hinges!”

Luchene shot him.

It was difficult to tell, given the lack of pupils in his glassy eyes, but she thought they might have crossed as he tried, in vain, to examine the large hole in his forehead. “What was the point of
that
?” He sounded honestly puzzled.

The duchess softly gurgled something in reply.

He strode toward her, that impossible creature. She couldn't help but note that he left bloody footprints on the lush carpet, a trait that Widdershins had
not
described. “Weren't you asking me something?” he inquired.

“What? I…?” She'd just been trying to distract him, then. Still, keep him talking, maybe she could buy herself some time…“Just, I thought you always traveled with an entourage.”

Embruchel looked at her as though she were the crazy one. “They're busy,” he explained, his words slow and precise, as a parent might speak to a particularly dim child. “What did you expect, that I would take the time to murder your entire household by
myself
?”

Beatrice's soul shriveled. Her dagger fell from a suddenly limp grip.

“I don't normally take a personal hand with someone old and childless, like you.” He raised one arm, allowing the hideous lashes that served as digits to unfurl dramatically in the bright light. “But I'm doing a favor for a friend, you see.”

Screaming—in rage far more than fear—the duchess lunged at him, determined at least to go down fighting, not as some helpless, sniveling victim. She had only her bare hands now, since she'd dropped her blade, but really, it would have made no difference.

“…determine what exactly falls into our purview,” Bishop Sicard was saying as he addressed an assembly of priests, gathered in that same private chapel. Some were his own people, clergy of the Basilica of the Sacred Choir; others were loyal to various Houses. For days, now, they had remained in counsel, taking time only for sleep, for meals, and for prayer. What they had done regarding the Finders' Guild would rock High Church law. What Sicard had told them he
wished
to do was absolutely and utterly unprecedented.

“Again, we may not even have the opportunity. In the end, it's not our decision whether or not even to try.” Several members of the assembly muttered at that, as it was something like the eighty-third time he'd made the point. “But if we do, I want us all to be certain that we are moving forward with only the greatest reverence for—”

He couldn't breathe. The air in the chapel seemed to have frozen into a thick paste. His whole body shivered, his skin reddened. With an effort that pained him from head to stomach, he forced himself to inhale. It was like trying to suck wet soil through a straw.

After that first breath, it grew easier, but the room still felt deathly chill. Yet he saw no other signs of cold; his breath didn't steam, nothing around him was frozen to the touch.

The priests had stood, or fallen, or knelt to pray. Clearly they felt it, too, whatever it was. The two Church soldiers—present mostly as a formality, since nobody expected the assembly to turn violent—dashed forward, struggling to find some means of helping. They, obviously, were
not
experiencing the same effect.

Then what…?

Tarnish crept over the Eternal Eye, symbol of all 147 gods of the Hallowed Pact. The chandelier strobed, darkening and brightening to impossible extremes. The air thickened further still—no harder to breathe, but an oppressive weight, a building pressure.

That pressure, and the rightmost door to the sanctuary, both burst.

The thing on the threshold was only somewhat human. Back-bending, batrachian legs supported a torso that seemed normal enough, but its head…utterly hairless, it gaped open as if the jaw were hinged at the ears, revealing a writhing mass of barbed and grasping tongues.

Although their faces blanched, the soldiers advanced with halberds raised. Sicard waved them back, his mind racing. This creature of the Gloaming Court, as with most fae, would be undaunted by normal weapons. He might hold it at bay for a time, with prayer and his own icon of the Eternal Eye, as he had with Iruoch, but only for…

Even as the monstrous creature stepped into the chapel—leaving, for some reason, a trail of bloody footprints behind—a smile split Sicard's beard.

“Iruoch stood inside this church,” he announced, retreating toward his fellow priests. “And his presence felt nothing like yours. Nothing so heavy. And having met him, seen him, I feel safe in saying that he was no more holy, no less profane, than you.”

The fae halted, eyes rotating obscenely to peer over the edge of its own distended jaw and meet the bishop's gaze. A wet, burbling sound popped from its throat, a sound that
might
have been, “So?”

“So perhaps it's the excess of devotion in this room. You appear darker, against a brighter light. And while I, alone, might prove unable to stop you—”

The thing hurled itself forward, tongues lashing out, stretching yards from its maw. At the same moment Sicard raised his amulet and
began to pray. First one of the priests, then a few more joined him, until their voices filled the chamber in a deafening paean.

The thing froze, leaning forward as though battling against a mighty wind. It pushed, and the holy men and women of the Hallowed Pact pushed back. Both sides strained, both refused to yield.

And both began to tire…