Read Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure for Free Online

almost nothing of the streets, nothing of the layout, nothing of the interiors. In Lourveaux, the more ornate and more frequently sloped buildings made hopping from one to the next a slower, riskier proposition. In Lourveaux…
    All she could do was call on Olgun to help her outrace and outlast her prey, and run.
    She felt the familiar tingle over her skin, followed by a surge of strength in her legs, a soothing balm in her coldly burning lungs. The buildings and passersby to either side surged past her, her hair writhed in a brown pennant behind her, in defiance of the wind. So fast did her feet fly, the crunching beneath her boots sounded less like snow and more like a carpeting of dead beetles.
    It surely wasn't as swift as it felt; Olgun's magics reached only so far, could drive her body only to amazing feats, not impossible ones. But it felt glorious and, more to the point, it enabled Shins—despite her ignorance of these streets, despite winding through people who didn't clear her way swiftly enough, despite leaping over a small cart that trundled into her path—to close on her target in a matter of moments.
    When the disreputable fellow made a sidelong dash into what even a newcomer to the city could tell was a blind alley, she knew she had him.
    “Oh, don't be a ninny!” she snipped at the warning image parading before her inner eye. “Of course I know. Are you ready?”
    Olgun's reply, translated as nearly as possible from emotion and imagery to actual vocabulary, was, “Don't be a ninny!”
    Widdershins hit the mouth of the alley at a dead run and dropped, leaning back at a nigh-impossible angle. Her momentum carried her forward on her knees, digging parallel trenches in the ash-gray snow, cloak and hair billowing behind her. The sharp crack of a flintlock bounced around her ears, and she was certain she actually saw the ball fly overhead, punching through the space her torso would have occupied had she remained upright.
    A flex of both legs—she ignored the brief agony of protesting joints; hadn't this sort of thing been easier when she was more of a child?—and she was standing once more, launched upright by muscle both her own and Olgun's. She stood several paces before her quarry, drawing her rapier—a weapon won from one of the world'sfinest duelists, who had decided at least temporarily to cease trying to kill her—with a theatrical flourish.
    He produced a blade as well—something between a large knife and a short sabre—but the expression on his face, which strongly suggested he had just mistaken a chamber pot for a washbasin, was evidence enough that they both knew precisely how this fight would end.
    “This doesn't need to be painful,” Shins told him. The tip of her rapier sliced tiny patterns in the air between them, so swift and so complex that she could have been knitting with it. “The only thing pointed we have to exchange are questions…Oh, figs.”
    With a cry rather more desperate than fearsome, the stranger lunged, sword held high.
    “Why is everyone but me stupid, Olgun?” The thief pivoted on one heel, letting her opponent's charge carry him clear past her—then continued her spin, rapier extended, so the tip sank just half a finger's worth into the man's left buttock.
    One more long step, closing even as he toppled with a porcine squeal, brought her near enough to slap the weapon from his hand before he hit the dusty bricks.
    “I'd have that looked at,” she told him, gesturing idly at his rear end with her rapier before wiping it clean on his coat. “Assuming you can find anyone willing to look that close.” With the blade free of blood, she slashed a corner from that coat, making him wince and yelp before he realized he hadn't been cut. She handed him the wad of fabric; he stared for a moment in utter incomprehension.
    “Oh, for…You'd prefer not to bleed to death from your backside, yes? If nothing else, that'd be a seriously embarrassing epitaph!”
    Grumbling