Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure Read Online Free

still smoldered in the fireplace, but the refugee from Davillon felt a greater chill here than she had outside.
    People—not a lot of people, but enough—knew that Widdershins and the archbishop had grown close, however briefly. If someone was watching for signs of her …
    Was it possible? “Olgun? I'm being paranoid, right?”
    His fretting, worried reply didn't precisely calm her down.
    “Right. Make this snappy, Maurice,” she said more loudly, spinning and nearly colliding with the startled young monk, two steaming mugs of tea in his hands. “I'm not going to be staying in Lourveaux very long.”
    Maurice blinked, twice, but apparently their first encounter, last year in Davillon, had rendered him at least partially immune to the confusion suffered by so many individuals who spoke to her. He merely nodded and placed the two mugs on the table.
    Widdershins took a seat on one side of it—an old, simple, but remarkably well-preserved piece of carpentry, with lightly padded chairs to match—while Maurice took the other.
    “I know about you,” he said, sipping gingerly at his tea. “You and, ah, Olgun.”
    No real shock, there. Shins wrapped her fingers around her own teacup, more to warm them than out of any desire for a drink. “I'd wondered if William had the chance to tell you.”
    “He didn't, exactly. He…died very shortly after you left.”
    Two pairs of eyes gazed down at the table, then, rather than at each other.
    “But,” he continued gamely, “His Eminence and I had discussed some of his suppositions before he sent me to fetch you. Then, more recently, when Bishop Sicard came from Davillon to tell us about your…more recent troubles, the diocese asked me to consult. They knew I'd already met you, and much of the bishop's testimony was…difficult for some of them to believe.”
    “I was there,” she said, voice suddenly small. “It's still difficult for me to believe.”
    Maurice began to reach across the table. “I'm truly sorry for your—”
    Ceramic cracked in Widdershins's hands, leaking a steady dribble of tea onto the wood.
    “Right,” he said, drawing back. “Anyway, Sicard's story filled in the remaining gaps, or at least enough for me to have a basic idea of your situation.”
    “And does it bother you?”
    “It might,” he confessed, “had it clearly not bothered His Eminence. He trusted you, though— and Olgun, apparently. I can do no less.”
    “Thank you for that,” she said, and meant it. “I…Wait. Didn't he also want you to transfer orders and become a priest yourself? I seem to recall…”
    “I'm a servant, Widdershins. I don't want to lead anyone.”
    “Maybe that means you should .”
    This time, their eyes did meet; Maurice looked away first. Mumbling something Shins couldn't quite catch, he rose and returned with a towel to wipe up the spill. She, though she felt a faint pang of guilt for the teacup—it looked old—allowed him to do so without offering to help.
    For a time, then, they spoke little of import. Maurice shared the latest news and rumor from Davillon, carried to Lourveaux by travelers who had left far more recently than Shins, but little of it interested her, or concerned anyone she knew. She, in turn, offered a brief account of her past six months, wandering Galice, but omitted most of the details—of the towns through which she'd passed, the threats she'd avoided, the few daring thefts that had allowed her to pay her way. And certainly she said nothing of her reasons for leaving Davillon at all.
    So tired was she, so accustomed to being tired, that it wasn't until Olgun gently prodded her that she realized her eyelids had begun to drift shut, that she was on her dozenth yawn of the past hour.
    “I'm sorry,” she began, “I—”
    “There's room for two here,” Maurice offered. “Decently, I promise.”
    “Oh, thank you. I was so worried you were going to misbehave.”
    “Widdershins—”
    “Thank you, Maurice. But no. I really