Free Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure by Ari Marmell Page A

sear it all the way around, that should do until—”
    “Master Cyrille!” Intense but hushed, it was somewhere between a whisper and a snarl. The young man and older soldier turned toward the two guards they had just dispatched the other way, now jogging swiftly toward them.
    “I believe I assigned the both of you a task—” Cyrille began haughtily.
    “There's someone else here!”
    Jourdain's hand was to his belt and then held out before him as fast as the stars twinkled, fist full of an ornately etched flintlock. Cyrille's rapier slid from its sheath only a second later, his fingers clutching the hilt in a textbook dueling grip. Then, after sliding shut the aperture on the lantern with a soft click , “Show me.”
    All four of them, aristocrat and armsmen, slipped across the desolate field, allowing their eyes to adjust, the moon alone to guide their way. Careful, silent, barely a scrape of boot on rocky soil; it appeared, initially, that they'd caught their quarry unawares.
    Clad in an ashen cloak and hood, presumably against the chill, the figure was otherwise unidentifiable, undefinable. Cyrille could tell only that it was shorter than he—and, if the muffled buzz drifting his way was any indication, softly mumbling to itself.
    A mumble that sprouted, flowerlike, into articulate words just as Jourdain drew breath to speak.
    “Hello, guys. Was wondering who'd come along. Any idea what all this is? It's not precisely natural, you know.”
    Cyrille could only blink. How had she—at least, judging by the voice, “she”—known they were here? Who was she? And what in Cevora's name was she talking about?
    “Dumb question,” she continued. “You'd have to be stupid or blind not to know, yes? Or maybe both. It looks like the bottom of a plague's chamber pot around here.”
    The young aristocrat found himself utterly at a loss. “Who the hell…?”
    “A sickly plague,” she added helpfully.
    Jourdain raised and aimed his pistol. “Turn around and identify yourself!”
    “An incontinent sickly plague.”
    “ I said turn and identify! ”
    “Wow, all right. Touchy. And loud .”
    Slowly she turned, slowly she raised dark-gloved hands to lower the hood from her head…and Cyrille felt as though he'd just been punched in the chest. And the gut. And then each had turned and punched the other.
    She wasn't the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, not even close. Dwelling among the aristocracy, the young Delacroix had known women of noble blood and meticulous upbringing whose entire lives seemed devoted to the refinement and ultimate perfection of personal beauty.
    This stranger? Pretty enough, certainly, but hardly exquisite. Features a little too sharp, hair a little too uneven. Her eyes and cheeks were just the tiniest bit sunken, touched by the ravages of recent travail.
    And she talked funny.
    But there was something about her, an allure of the genuine that Cyrille had never seen before. She was real , where every aristocrat he'd ever known, family or otherwise, wore at least a patina of the artificial.
    It wasn't until the pain of the emotional blow in his chest grew even worse, and the roar of an excited crowd or perhaps an angry sea filled his ears, that he remembered to breathe.
    “…any good if I gave you my name,” the stranger was explaining to Jourdain, clearly exasperated and apparently utterly unperturbed by the pistol pointing her way. “You don't know me. So what difference does it make? Wouldn't you rather talk about—”
    “Oh, for Cevora's sake!” Was Cyrille imagining things, or did the woman flinch at the guard's outburst? “That's it. You're coming with us!”
    “I am?” She actually put her hands on her hips and cocked her head; Cyrille wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or sigh aloud. “I don't seem to recall this particular discussion. Did I miss a meeting?”
    “Until we determine your involvement in the poisoning of the House Delacroix fields—”
    “Do I look like an