Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure Read Online Free Page A

need to go.”
    He rose, and for the first time she saw a flicker of iron in his expression. “It's dark. It's freezing. Whatever you fear, it won't find you here over one night.”
    “I…” She stumbled, then, slightly but notably, as a wave of exhaustion drained much of her remaining strength from her limbs. “Oh, don't you dare !”
    Olgun's stern response—accompanied by a second wave of fatigue—felt very much like one of her father's “If you won't take care of yourself, you'll just have to live with how I do it” lectures from her childhood.
    Surrendering—sullen, cursing up what for her was a storm and for others might qualify as a single raindrop, but resigned—she allowed Maurice to show her to her bed.

    “So tell me about this ‘unrest.’”
    “ Gah! ” Maurice bolted upright, startled from a deep sleep, and promptly rolled off the side of his narrow cot in a muddle of sheets and gangly limbs. The hut reverberated with the dull thump of monk against floor.
    Widdershins leaned idly against the wardrobe, the only other piece of furniture in the room, ankles and arms both crossed. It was the same spot she'd occupied—the same pose —since she'd finished packing up her few possessions in preparation to leave, over half an hour gone by. It was still almost that long again until dawn would peek in the windows to see if it might be welcome for breakfast, but the young woman had grown tired of waiting.
    After another moment of tangled thrashing with no sign of an emergent Maurice, however, Shins felt a gentle, probing suggestion in her gut.
    “Oh, come on , Olgun! It's a bedsheet and a three-foot fall! I'm sure even he can handle…Oh, fine .” She pushed herself away from the wall, took two steps from the wardrobe, and abruptly froze.
    “Um, Maurice?”
    The thrashing ceased. “Yes?” The reply was oddly muffled, less by the weight of the linens, Shins guessed, than embarrassment.
    “Do you need help?”
    “It wouldn't be un appreciated….”
    “And,” she continued, giving voice to the question that had stopped her in her tracks, “are you dressed?”
    A moment. Two.
    “I don't think I'll be needing any assistance, thank you.”
    The thief snorted and made a point of both stomping her feet and slamming the door so her host would know he was once more alone in his bedchamber.
    By the time he emerged, she had taken an identical leaning posture, this time against the pantry. He was, thankfully, fully clad now—not in his traditional coarse robe, as she'd anticipated, but heavy, functional tunic and trousers.
    “I didn't know you even owned normal clothes. Olgun, did you know he owned normal clothes? Don't monks burst into flame or turn into frogs or something if they own more than a robe, worn sandals, and a length of string?”
    “Widdershins…”
    “ Two lengths of string, then, is it? The Church has gotten more relaxed, yes?”
    “Did you want to talk about what's going on in Lourveaux right now or didn't you?” Maurice asked, his tone almost desperate.
    Shins nodded once. “So?”
    “Let me just brew up a pot of—”
    “Oh, no!” Shins lurched away from the pantry, standing fully upright. “You've already used up your grace period, going off on that tangent about your wardrobe.”
    “ I used it up?!”
    “Well, of course. It's not as if I could choose how you spend your time, is it?” And then, “Olgun? Is the vein in his forehead supposed to do that?”
    “It's been building for the better part of a year now,” Maurice said, apparently having decided that answering his guest's questions was the safest route to maintaining at least a semblance of sanity. “Ever since the Church appointed His Eminence's successor as archbishop of Chevareaux.”
    Widdershins winced as William de Laurent sprang once moreto mind. A quick pivot and she began to pace the length of the tiny kitchen, past the pantry and stove in a handful of steps, and then back.
    And then—whether she came to