Thief's Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (25 page)

“Darien,” she growled, “you are going to tell me where we're going, right now, or I am going to get up and leave this carriage, right now.”

“Not a good idea, Adrienne. We're moving.”

“Not quickly, we're not. I'll take my chances.”

“The door's locked,” he pointed out.

The young woman's expression turned to ice. “I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you. I thought you said the door was locked.”

Darien nodded.

“Lemarche, you let me out of this carriage this instant!”

“I can't do that, Adrienne. You're not allowed to know where our shrine is until after you've been accepted.”

“Darien—”

“Adrienne, no harm will come to you, I swear it. Trust me.”

“Oh, because you're making it so easy, aren't you?”

But Darien subsided again into a solemn silence, one that Adrienne, for all her threats and demands, could not penetrate. Finally, worn out, angry, and growing ever more anxious, she, too, fell petulantly silent, save for occasional grumbles about how much Darien was coming to resemble his older brother.

Another twenty minutes passed, and for all Adrienne knew, they could be halfway across town, or only three doors from where they had started. When the coach finally trundled to a halt, Darien attempted to hand the young woman a blindfold, opening his mouth to explain that it was required, that it wasn't really up to him.

He quailed beneath her withering glare and put it away without uttering a word.

Despite her anger and mounting trepidation, Adrienne couldn't help but smirk contemptuously as her companion unfolded a bundle of gray cloth from beneath his seat and pulled it over his head. Unknown gods, hidden cult gatherings, and now a plain hooded cloak. This was starting to look less like a secret sect and more like the opening act of a bad melodrama.

“Well?” she asked, when Darien reached over to knock on the carriage door. “Don't I get one, too?”

The young man shook his head, the gesture strangely twisted by the hood. “No. It's traditional that the entire sect be permitted to look upon new petitioners as they determine their suitability to join.”

“I'm not petitioning, I'm observing. One service, remember, to judge for myself? So far,” she added bitterly, “I'm not terribly impressed.”

The door swung open, pulled aside by several figures that were, as Adrienne expected, similarly hooded and cloaked. A brief spate of whispers and mutters erupted as they took in Adrienne's unveiled face, and one of the small band glowered at Darien.

“She's supposed to be blindfolded!” he hissed in a stage whisper.

She left Darien to explain her lack of ocular wrappings as best he could, directing her attention instead to the building. It wasn't impressive, just a nondescript structure, ungainly and ugly. It didn't quite seem to be a warehouse, nor a storefront, nor a tavern, nor a tenement. Tucked away on a cluttered street, it was so unremarkable, so actively unimportant, that she doubted anyone gave it a first glance, let alone a second.

Not a bad place for a clandestine sect, actually. Her respect for Darien's people rose a bit—still below scalp lice, but now higher in her estimation than the thin film that covered the floor around a public privy.

The cloaked fellow who'd barked at Darien stormed toward her, clearly unhappy with the results of his conversation. Despite the hood, Adrienne had already seen enough of his jawline that, combined with his not-quite-whisper, she could identify the man from more than a few parties.

“Do you swear, Adrienne Satti,” he asked in a feigned rasp, “to remain silent regarding what you see here tonight, to reveal nothing of your activities this evening, and to expose the power of our god and our faith to no outsider, upon your very soul?”

“Yeah, sure, Tim. Whatever you say.”

Timothy Pardeau, patriarch and owner of a horse- and livestock-trading empire, uttered a strangled gasp and retreated several steps, glaring fire from beneath his cowl. Abruptly he spun, grabbing Darien by the collar with both hands. “This is your fault,” he seethed at the young Lemarche patriarch. “If this goes badly, I'll see to it personally that you catch the brunt of it! I—”

“If you're through threatening your fellow true believer,” Adrienne said, idly tapping a foot, “I thought there was supposed to be a floor show tonight.”

Timothy shouted something garbled and incoherent at her, then shoved past and practically flew into the building. With a shrug—and a second, larger shrug in response to Darien's whispered “Are you
trying
to ruin it?”—Adrienne followed the cloaked cultists inside.

Though she'd have scoffed if anyone had suggested it beforehand, Adrienne Satti's life changed forever in the following hour.

She'd rolled her eyes at the winding staircase that led to the underground shrine, formerly a basement. She'd shaken her head at the mass of gray-robed worshippers staring at her, good little sheep lined up between the door and the center of the domed chamber (which still sported rafters and platforms from recent reconstruction). She yawned through the sermon, some claptrap about health and fortune, delivered with gusto by an obviously enraptured Timothy. She snickered as they tugged on the hidden lever, engaging a series of heavy gears and pulleys that raised Olgun's likeness up into the center of the room, and she laughed aloud at the horned, bearded visage that hove into view. She was all but ready to tell Darien and his friends to stick their deity and his divine favor someplace very, very cramped when Timothy finished his benediction with “Speak to us, your faithful, mighty Olgun. Reveal to us your favor!”

In the single biggest shock of Adrienne's life, the god replied!

Not with deep-voiced words, thundering from on high, nor with obscure omens or a rain of frogs, but with what Adrienne could describe only as a gentle wave of emotion. It flowed through the chamber in a cleansing stream—kind, tender, washing them clean of their worries and cares. Adrienne tried to remain skeptical, even in the face of that outpouring of peace and tranquility, to convince herself that it was an illusion, some magic spell, perhaps even a drug in the smoke of the dancing torches.

And then Olgun touched her soul personally. Adrienne never knew if he'd communicated individually with anyone else that night, or if only she was so honored. And what he sent to her was not some empty sense of his own magnificence, not some haughty attempt to convince her of what she should or should not accept. No, the emotion that washed over Adrienne had been, as best she could translate into words:

“Pretty silly, isn't it?”

From that day onward, Adrienne never missed even one of their weekly gatherings. She accepted Olgun, and his worshippers, and they, in turn, accepted her as their newest acolyte, though some were more eager to take her in than others. Even here there were those who felt that Adrienne was attempting to rise above her station, that her recent fortune didn't make up for the cardinal sin of a common birth. As the weeks passed, however, germinating slowly into months, even the hard-liners were forced to accept that Olgun himself had chosen Adrienne as one of his own. Haughty and convinced of their own superiority they might be, but they weren't prepared to challenge the judgment of their god himself.

Olgun rarely spoke to her personally after that first night, though she experienced his touch each week, as he reached out to his worshippers en masse. His signs of favor were obvious, though, to those who knew to look. Alexandre had instructed Adrienne well, and she'd proven herself an apt student; but following her discovery of Olgun—or perhaps Olgun's discovery of her—the riches she'd accumulated in two years practically doubled in two
months.
Every endeavor seemed blessed with a bit of extra luck, never dramatically, just enough to nudge things in her favor. The silkworms of the east ceased production early that year, only after she'd stockpiled her own stores; a sudden rain kept a competitor's goods off the market while hers were bought and sold.

Adrienne's luck turned in other areas as well, and she found herself in Darien's company on as many social occasions as religious ones. And that, too, seemed to open further the doors of high society, to smooth the rough edges with which the aristocracy treated her.

And then, one night, he appeared beside her as Olgun's services came to an end, and the small crowd began to disperse.

“We should get a move on, love,” she said to him with a smile. “Don't get me wrong, I prefer listening to cats mate than going to opera, but if you don't want to be late…”

“Actually,” he said, his face strangely serious, “we're not going to the theater tonight. There's someone you need to talk to.”

Adrienne frowned, but followed as Darien led her across the room, his boots reverberating on the heavy stone. Finally, they stood before another gray-robed figure, his deep hood obscuring his face. She'd seen him earlier, standing near the back of the service, and had wondered who he was, but had forgotten all about it during the service.

He reached up, slowly—were his hands trembling?—to draw back his hood. Adrienne's eyes grew wide, and a surge of joy wrestled with a vague sense of betrayal deep in her gut.

“Hello, Adrienne,” said Alexandre Delacroix.

For long minutes they walked, side by side, along the streets of one of Davillon's higher-rent districts—away from either the shrine or the estate, but also far from anywhere they might feel unsafe.

“Why?” she finally asked. She could have meant any one of a dozen questions.

Alexandre sighed. “I've wrestled with this since the day we met, Adrienne.”

“Stop wrestling and start explaining.”

He couldn't help but chuckle. “Olgun turned my fortunes around, Adrienne. House Delacroix was destined for poverty, for disgrace, for social exile. I was desperate for a way to save the House—to save myself—and Olgun offered it.”

“And Cevora?”

The aristocrat's face fell. “Cevora has been patron of my House for generations beyond counting, and he's been good to us in our time. But either he chose to withhold his favors recently, or they proved insufficient for the tasks at hand. Either way, I shall never fail to honor Cevora for all he's done, for so many years of watching over us. I worship him still. But I grant my faith to Olgun as well, and he has honored me in return. It's why I've allowed Claude to take over most of the religious duties of the household. I revere Cevora, but it didn't feel right for me to be leading the services, you see?” Alexandre smiled shallowly. “Just as well, really. From the day I hired him, Claude took to the worship of Cevora as though he were born to it. I think he's more devout than I ever was.”

“All very nice,” Adrienne said, face turning briefly jaundiced as they passed beneath a streetlight in dire need of a good cleaning. “But that's not really what I meant, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” Alexandre stopped and turned, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Adrienne, I believe Olgun willed us to meet that night.”

“I'm sorry, what?”

“By the evening we met, I'd been attending Olgun's services for slightly more than a year,” Alexandre explained. “And it was everything I could do to keep it a secret—from my own servants, especially. You can just imagine how well Claude took it when I missed evening mass once every week or two.”

Adrienne snickered.

“I'd just decided, while on my journey, that I'd have to attend less often—or perhaps find someone who could attend in my stead. But of course, there was nobody I could possibly trust enough to do so. Don't you see, Adrienne? I'd
just
begun contemplating that, and suddenly there you were! It couldn't be a coincidence!”

“Is that the only reason you took me in?” she asked quietly.

“At first,” he admitted. “But only at first, Adrienne. I swear it.”

“All right,” she said, pretending that the streetlight wasn't blurring behind unshed tears, “but you never
told
me about Olgun! If I was supposed to be your—your…” She waved her hands helplessly.

“Proxy?” Alexandre provided.

“Yeah, that.”

“At first, because I had to be sure I could trust you. And then because I was afraid you'd feel used, that I'd taken you in with ulterior motives—which, of course, I had. But I discovered I was more worried of you leaving than I was about being found out.