Thief's Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) by Ari Marmell Page B

her arms and began idly tapping a foot. It sounded like a small woodpecker, patiently chipping away at the floor.
    Widdershins's face fell. “Who are they to tell me what to do anyway?” she mumbled petulantly.
    “They're people who can get you in a whole mess of trouble if you don't do as they say, Shins.” Genevieve frowned. “And from the looks of things, they're going to get me in trouble too.”
    “I'm sorry, Gen,” the thief breathed. “You're right. I'll pay up. I promise.”
    “Good.”
    Genevieve said nothing more, but by the time Widdershins departed later that night, the worry still hadn't entirely faded from the barkeep's eyes.

     
    Lisette Suvagne, taskmaster of the Finders' Guild, second only to the Shrouded Lord among Davillon's thieves, prostrated herself on the worn carpets of the chapel. It was a posture, a reverence, an obedience she would offer to no man or woman—one that she loathed to the depths of her soul. She was fire, was Lisette. From her blazing red hair to her powder-keg temper to her burning ambitions, she was the embodiment of flame. Only her outfit, all greens and blacks, failed to promise a searing heat. Any mortal who had demanded such submission from her would have died in the asking.
    But it was no mortal to whom she offered her devotion today. Here at the center of the guild's complex, in the looming stone shrine that smelled thickly of herbal incense, stood the city's only known idol to the Shrouded God from which the leader of Davillon's thieves took his own title. It loomed against the far wall, a stone icon slightly taller than a man. Though tradition held that the Shrouded God was one of the divinities of the Hallowed Pact, nobody in the modern day—not even the eldest of the guild—remembered his name. They called him simply by his title when they offered their prayers of thanks for a particularly rich haul or a narrow escape from the thief takers of the Guard.
    The figure was clad simply, in sculpted images of soft boots, thick pants, and snug tunic centuries out of fashion. A heavy hood of thick black cloth—real, not hewn from the rock—covered the idol's head. Guild tradition mandated that none but the Shrouded Lord might ever look upon the face of their god—and even then only during the ceremony that established him or her as the guild's new leader. Terrible curses both ancient and powerful were said to guard against blasphemy, ready to strike down any who would dare peer beneath that hood; and though Lisette wasn't certain she believed in such curses, her faith stayed her hand no matter how great her curiosity grew.
    Faith in her god, who watched over her, and faith in herself that one day she would be permitted to look upon him properly, as she took her rightful place as the next Shrouded Lord.
    There was, perhaps, no honor among thieves—but in the form of Lisette Suvagne, there was certainly fanaticism.
    For long moments, she remained hunched, arms outstretched, until her muscles quivered and screamed for relief. Only then, her prayers and her penance complete, did she allow herself to rise lithely to her feet. A final bow to her one true lord, then she swept from the room to go and confront the man who—for now, only for now!—dared believe he held equal authority over her.
    She stalked through several short corridors, finally stepping through an open archway into a chamber of haze. A steel portal slid shut behind her with ghostly silence, and Lisette bowed at the waist—the closest she would ever come to kneeling before any human—before her mortal liege, the sovereign of thieves across the length and breadth of Davillon.
    The Shrouded Lord.
    “Rise, Lisette.”
    She straightened and glared at the phantom before her.
    No matter how often she saw it, the effect remained impressive. The chambers of the Shrouded Lord were thick with the musky smoke of several incense braziers that were never permitted to burn out and were larger by far than the one that