Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure Read Online Free Page B

it herself or it was a nudge from Olgun, she couldn't fully say—it dawned on her where the monk must be leading.
    “Oh, figs…Church politics, Maurice?”
    “Um, well…”
    “So nice to visit with you. Thanks for putting me up for the night. I'll be leaving now.”
    “Wait! Widdershins, please!”
    She was already nearing the front door, ears all but deaf to Maurice's pleas—or Olgun's protestations of curiosity, for that matter—until something finally punched through the mental cotton she'd stuffed in her ears.
    “Widdershins, she wants to see you!”
    She stopped, one gloved hand inches from the latch. She felt her shoulders and back tensing, so tight they might just deflect a flintlock ball. “Who wants to see me, Maurice?” Even she was frightened by the utter, icy calm in her voice.
    “Her Eminence Archbishop Faranda. William de Laurent's successor.”
    It took Widdershins roughly three or four years to turn from the door to face her host once again. Perhaps another year or so before she could choke back her growing fury enough to be sure she could speak to him without violence. Olgun's suspicions simmered beneath her own, not yet ignited into the same fiery rage, but certainly starting to smolder and spark.
    “And how does ‘Her Eminence’ know I'm here, Maurice?” Not so calm, now, her voice, but rather something approaching an animal snarl.
    “What? Oh! No, no!” The monk held both hands out beforehim, though whether the gesture was beseeching or defensive was far from clear. “I haven't told anyone you're here! I meant, she's wanted to meet you since she heard of you! Asked me to arrange it if, by any chance, I could. I told her I didn't expect to ever see you again, but…Well, I mean, you're here….”
    Somebody might as well have unstoppered a drain, so swiftly did Shins's anger diminish, leaving only a frustrated—and perhaps frightened—weariness. For a moment, it was almost enough to make her dizzy, and she could only smile her thanks when a quick surge of strength from her partner ensured that she kept her feet.
    “I think,” she said, carefully making her way to the table and lowering herself into the nearest chair, “that you'd better make that tea after all.”

    “‘Nicolina Faranda’?” Widdershins repeated, transforming the name she'd just heard into a question. “That doesn't sound Galicien.”
    Maurice, seated opposite her once again, nodded through the herb-scented steam rising from his teacup. “It's not. She's from Rannanti.”
    Shins couldn't quite keep her jaw from dropping.
    “The Hallowed Pact is hardly limited to our country. You must know that.”
    “I do, but…” She glanced down at her own drink—in a simple wooden cup this time, she'd noted with some amusement—and gathered her thoughts. “I thought all High Church clergy had to be Galicien?”
    “That's been the custom, since the Basilica of the Waking Choir is here. Initially, it was just simpler to draw new officials from nearby, and eventually it became a matter of politics—”
    “Everything does,” she groused softly.
    “—but it's not a rule in any formal sense,” Maurice concluded.
    “But…Rannanti?”
    “You're hardly the only one to have gotten the impression that the Church has become a Galicien institution, in fact if not in name. The appointment of Her Eminence Faranda—”
    “You know,” Widdershins remarked casually, speaking to Olgun but quite deliberately pitching the comment loudly enough for her mortal companion to overhear, “he could talk at least twice as quickly if he didn't insist on using everybody's full title every single time .”
    Maurice glared over his teacup, an effect largely ruined when he accidentally banged the rim into his teeth. “…of Her Eminence Faranda,” he continued through his pained wince, “was meant to cut such growing sentiment off at the knees. To say nothing of, just perhaps, being the first step in an end to the rivalry between our