“So what is it, then?” she asked, stalling desperately for time. “Dead women tell no tales? You blame all this on me and the real killers go free?”

“Something like that.”

Roubet's arm straightened, the bash-bang shifting until it came directly in line with her heart. The barrel gaped open before her, an endless tunnel to hell.

“I'm sorry, Olgun,” she whispered, unable to look away from the pistol. “I tried.”

She felt a brief surge of emotion from the near-dead god, followed by the faintest tingling in the air. She had just enough time to wonder if she'd imagined it before the flintlock's hammer crashed down with a deadly clank-

And detonated with a sharp crack and an ear-rending screech of metal. Shrapnel ripped through the soft flesh of Roubet's hand and arm, scored the stone floor in a staccato patter that punctuated the Guardsman's cry of pain. With a resounding thud, the remainder of the now useless weapon dropped to the floor, sending cracks shooting through a small blot of dried blood.

Roubet himself followed an instant later, clutching the bleeding wreckage of his hand to his chest and sobbing inconsolably.

“Well,” Adrienne said finally. “That was convenient.”

She felt a brief swell of satisfaction from her divine partner-but it was no match for her own sense of satisfaction as she darted forward and kicked the whimpering man in the head until he was well and truly unconscious.

“We've got to get out of here,” she told the god seriously, limping on a vaguely sore foot as she moved toward the long passage and the stairs beyond. “They think I did this, and I sort of doubt that Lefty here is going to tell them otherwise. We've got to hide until I can figure out what to do, or how to get back to Alexandre.”

Another questioning probe.

“I don't know,” she admitted. “It doesn't matter, really. I grew up out there, remember? The Guardsman hasn't been born that can find Adrienne Satti when she doesn't want to be found!”