“I’m not going to crack again,” she said, cheeks still burning. “I’m grown. I’ve got my own life. I’ve got nothing to do with him.” Farideh said nothing, and in the silence, Havilar wondered if she was thinking about how much Havilar’s life had come apart—her true love broken by fighting and distrust, her adventures determined by others, her life decided by the whims of an evil god.
“If Arjhani shows up,” she said a little loudly, “I’ll tell Zoonie to sit on him.”
A smile slipped through her sister’s serious expression. “I like that idea. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to walk around with Zoonie. People might realize what she is. She could burn your whole room down—”
They came to the market floor, and Havilar wondered if she could find that tiefling fellow again. “My room is all stone, same as yours, same as everything. If the whole place is full of dragonborn, then what happens when a windchill fever sweeps the place? Everybody hacking fire and lightning? They wouldn’t last long if the city could burn—Hey, if Zoonie can’t burn my room down, then you can’t burn down yours! You don’t have to go far to do your fire thing!”
Farideh’s expression was grim. “We’re not staying that long.”
“Well we’d be gone a lot quicker if you called Lorcan and asked him about that portal.”
Farideh’s expression turned grimmer and her tail lashed. “He’s not going to help us.”
“Please. He’s just as stuck as we are. If Brin and I can be friends, you and he can be allies. Anyway, if Dahl’s gone—”
“Thrik!” Farideh spat. “I’m not calling him down.” They walked in silence the rest of the way to the Verthisathurgiesh stables.
Zoonie was overjoyed to see Havilar and would have knocked her on her rump if she weren’t chained. As it was, the wooden beam creaked as Zoonie yanked against it. The stablehands all peered around their nervous charges as the hellhound yelped, her tail thumping a wild tattoo against the stable walls.
“Sit!” Havilar cried. “Sit, Zoonie!” Zoonie obeyed, scrabbling back into the stable, bouncing on her still-wagging tail. Havilar unlatched the chain and wrapped the length around her waist. Through the muzzle the hellhound licked her face gleefully, scattering sparks.
“Quit it!” Havilar laughed, patting out an ember that had caught, glowing, on her blouse sleeve. “Did she do any damage?” she asked the nearest stablehand, a broad-shouldered dragonborn woman with reddish scales.
“Just burnt up some hay,” she said. “What kind of dog is that?”
“A Nessian warhound,” Havilar said, scratching Zoonie’s neck. “Good girl, good girl.” The stablehand ventured a hand forward to pet her.
Zoonie turned, snarling and baring teeth the size of iron nails. “Hey!” Havilar yanked on her muzzle, pulling the hellhound away. “No! She’s friendly. We don’t growl at friendly people.” Zoonie dropped her head, but eyed the stablehand mistrustfully. Havilar smiled at the woman, holding tight to the muzzle. “Maybe don’t pet her just now. She’s not completely trained yet.”
She kept hold of the muzzle as she and Farideh walked back through the streets around the pyramid. The sun was setting, and their breath clouded on the chilly air. Steam wafted from Zoonie’s coal-black coat.
“You’re still planning to send her back, right?” Farideh said.
“When she’s ready.”
Farideh sighed. “Havi.”
“What? You can’t say she’s unruly—she obeys me.”
“She’s a hellhound.”
“You kept Lorcan around a lot longer than I’ve kept Zoonie,” Havilar retorted.
Farideh turned scarlet. “What happened to ‘You have to call him down’?”
Havilar bit her tongue. It was too easy to snap back, to say something she didn’t mean, just to push her sister. Lorcan wasn’t worth the argument. “I’m taking Zoonie for a run so she’ll sleep better,” Havilar said instead.
Farideh frowned. “She walked all morning.”
“Tell Mehen and Brin I’ll be back later,” Havilar said, unstrapping her glaive and attaching it to Zoonie’s harness. She clucked her tongue and started down the Road of Dust, Zoonie loping alongside.
The air had warmed with the rising sun, but as it set, it grew chilly and sharp in Havilar’s nose. She ran until the effort of moving her legs was all she could think about, and panting, she stopped beside an outcropping of rock that looked down over the river. Zoonie trotted over to her, nudging at her to get up.
“I don’t want a ride right now,” Havilar said. “Sit with me.” The hellhound nudged again, but when Havilar pushed her off, she obeyed, laying her enormous head across Havilar’s sweaty lap, her side heaving.
“Are you going to tell me if you want to go back?” Havilar asked, scratching Zoonie’s coal-black coat over her ribs. The hellhound licked the air happily. Havilar giggled. “I’m not going to make you,” she promised.
She’d thrown Lorcan in Farideh’s face before, but in a way, he and Zoonie were the same—Lorcan was useful, until he wasn’t. Zoonie was harmless, until she wasn’t. But then again, who was to say Lorcan wasn’t still useful? Assuming you just talked to him and kept your knees together, Fari, she thought with a little venom.
She sighed. It was better she hadn’t said that to Farideh.
The last of the sunlight glittered on the river, making silhouettes of the boats crossing to the other bank. She thought of the dead dragonborn, of the stink and the dread and the cold nausea that upended her stomach. It wasn’t just a matter of a disagreement gone bloody, she felt sure down to her bones—as sure as she was that Farideh would be much, much happier if they could leave Djerad Thymar sooner rather than later.
And you’re not going to convince her of the best way to do that, Havilar thought, scratching Zoonie behind the ear.
Havilar sighed again, her mind made up. “I need help.”
THE BONE DEVIL ran through its feints of gossip too quickly for Lorcan’s tastes, and it agitated him to acknowledge he’d developed any kind of opinion on such things. They stood on a parapet over the mound known as the birthing pit, watching new-made lemures scrabble down the sides to wander the plain of Malbolge.
“I hear,” the bone devil said, “that Lady Malcanthet requested to leave the Nine Hells in order to put down a faction of her exiled sister, the Lady Xinivrae, claiming that she is the queen of the succubi. But Asmodeus denied it. One can hardly imagine why.”
Lorcan considered the circling imps overhead, the peculiar cries of the devils born from the pit, and cursed how he’d gotten there. Entertaining a bone devil of all things, while its mistress, Lady Fierna, ruler of the Fourth, attended the archduchess. When Lorcan’s mother had been in power, he would have made a point to be far, far away from Malbolge when another archdevil visited. But circumstances had brought the cambion solidly under the notice of the archdevils and forced him up the hierarchy against his will.
“Because he doesn’t trust her?” Lorcan guessed, knowing it wasn’t the answer the creature wanted. Knowing exactly why Fierna had suggested this connection. He flicked his wings in irritation.
“Well who would?” The bone devil shifted, its scorpion-like tail clattering as it did. It towered over Lorcan, skinless, sinewless, but unspeakably strong. Any other time, Lorcan might have been afraid to be so near one of the brutal enforcers, but this one’s motives were as clear as the bones of its spine: Something is happening in Nessus. Something is happening to the king of the Hells. Everyone knows Invadiah’s spoiled son is caught in it. Find out more.
“But given the rebellion of the succubi in Stygia,” the bone devil went on, “the fact that the Abyss has grown more of the defectors since their defeat, one would assume that His Majesty would be glad to allow Lady Malcanthet to show where the true succubi stand.”
Lorcan met the creature’s green-ember eyes within its hollow sockets. “Or loath to let her conspire with her sister.”
The bone devil’s teeth twisted in somet
hing like a grin. “You give the succubi too much credit. The ones who remain must know it’s in their interests to reaffirm their loyalties.”
You don’t give them enough credit, Lorcan thought. If the succubi were as foolish as most of the Nine Hells believed, they never would have escaped the Abyss when Asmodeus ascended—and if they were wise enough to see which way the wind blew a hundred years ago, they were wise enough to see it now.
His mother, Invadiah, had been an erinyes all his life, until a succubus under her command had turned traitor and earned Invadiah the displeasure of Glasya and Asmodeus alike. For her crime she’d been demoted into the form of a succubus herself, and there was no denying Invadiah had grown more terrifyingly clever even as she was weakened.
“I will lay a balance of thirty souls,” Lorcan said flatly, “that we find the ‘succubus queens’ have all been playing us—demons, devils, and all else alike—into thinking their loyalties are something that persist beyond their current needs.”
“How bold,” the bone devil chortled. “Does that notion come from His Majesty?”
If Lorcan ever found the person who had let slip that the king of the Nine Hells, the god of sin, had spoken to him personally, he would throttle them merrily and crush their bones into the ravenous plane of Malbolge. Twice—two shitting times—Asmodeus had made Lorcan his audience, and half the Hells seemed to think Lorcan was the path to the god’s ear.
More and more, if the gossip was to be believed, the king of the Hells fell silent and turned away any and all petitioners. Not even his closest advisors seemed to know what was happening.
More and more, Lorcan feared that he did.
“You say that as though His Majesty brings me into his confidence,” Lorcan said, aiming for louche, aiming for useless. “And I hear that circle is quite diminished as it is. My only fortune lies in being the pact holder for a few Chosen.” He made himself smile at the bone devil. “Do you collect?”
There was no denying the bone devil’s disdain—of course it didn’t collect warlocks. “So I hear. What is His Majesty’s interest in that Chosen?”
Lorcan kept his eyes on the bubbling lake, but his thoughts were on Farideh, that first night together—the fury in her eyes and the tremor in her voice, the roughness of her breath and the glint of the amulet she wound around her hand. “You remember how this works?” she’d said. “You hurt me and it hurts you.” He’d let his temper get the better of him—there had been no plan in his head, only the fact that he did not want Dahl near her, didn’t want her to forget that she wanted him. Lorcan hadn’t expected her to turn his bluff on him, to dare him to act on the lust he taunted her with. Which made him all the more eager.
He thought of Asmodeus saying, Keep her alive. Keep her sated. Keep her quiet.
For a time, they all aligned so nicely. Not anymore.
“I know better than to ask that,” Lorcan said.
“That’s not what I hear.” The bone devil’s tail clattered behind Lorcan. “You’re cleverer than you make yourself seem.”
“You’d be the first to say that.”
What did you do to him? Farideh had cried—Lorcan should have kept his distance, should have waited until she’d become certain that Dahl must have left of his own accord. What did you do to him? And the truth was as unmanageable, untwistable as Farideh was becoming. So Lorcan did the previously unthinkable: he looked her in the eyes and lied.
What did you do to him?
Absolutely nothing.
The lie still danced on his tongue, the urge to do it again, not to twist the facts but to invent new ones. He could tell the bone devil Farideh was dead. He could tell it Asmodeus was looking to obliterate the Fourth Layer. He could tell it anything at all, and it made him feel as if he were looking down into the bottomless Abyss.
“Weaker too,” the bone devil went on. The scorpion tail twisted behind Lorcan’s legs, rattling against the stone, a reminder of the creature’s purpose. “I hear your Chosen isn’t corrupted. I hear you’ve lost all your other warlocks.”
“How funny,” Lorcan said, forcing his voice to remain level and dry. “I hear nothing at all about you.”
The bone devil’s grin twisted once more. “I don’t tend to leave many tongues to wag.” Its tail curved more closely around Lorcan. “Does this deliberate obtuseness work with lesser devils?”
It can’t kill you, Lorcan told himself. It doesn’t dare. “Quite frequently,” Lorcan said. “Or else they realize that they’re treading terribly close to things they shouldn’t know.”
The air beside him popped and Lorcan and the bone devil turned to see a dark blue imp hanging in the air over the Birthing Pit.
“Greetings,” it said in a nasal voice. “You are Lorcan, yes? You are the one who holds the pact with the Chosen of Asmodeus.” It wet its lips. “Chosens of Asmodeuses.”
Lorcan suppressed a curse. “What is it?”
“There’s been an incident.”
Fear seized Lorcan’s heart like the claws of the bone devil itself. “What? What happened?” She was dead, he thought. She was wounded. She was apostate and Asmodeus wanted her head—
“I think there’s a dretch in the city where they are,” the imp said. “She wants you to come. Right away, if possible.” Its eyes darted to the bone devil.
Lorcan went perfectly still—fear and rage and relief and desire clutching at his heart. The bone devil didn’t need to know, the imp didn’t need to know, but it was very hard in that moment not to laugh. “Does she?” he said carefully.
“Trouble?” asked the bone devil.
“Possibly,” Lorcan drawled, seeing an escape. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just find out for myself.” He turned to the erinyes guards who followed him everywhere now—dark-skinned Neferis, ugly Axona, Pandosia with her broken nose, and silver-haired Ctesiphon, whom he’d promoted to the elite pradixikai to replace their dead sister, Noreia. The closest he could come among his half sisters to a loyal guard.
“Ctesiphon, would you escort our guest back to Osseia? I’ll return shortly. Neferis, to me.”
The erinyes fell in behind him, and Lorcan found himself all too aware of the proximity of her blade. But—like himself—Neferis had been singled out by Glasya, lord of the Sixth. When Noreia had been sacrificed to the Dragon Queen to destroy the secrets she knew, only Neferis had been spared among the erinyes who dragged Noreia there. Her life, she had to know, was a gift, and it would not do to throw that away with foolish actions.
“What did she say?” Lorcan asked the imp that still flapped alongside him. “What exactly did she tell you?”
“That you should come and see for yourself,” it said. “That she wants to be sure, but that the other one—that Farideh shouldn’t know you came.”
Lorcan stopped walking. “Havilar sent you.”
“Yes,” the imp said. “Because she thinks you can deal with the dretch.”
Of course, he thought. Of course. He kept his expression still, his back stiff. There was no humiliation here, because no one needed to know he’d ever thought anything else.
Havilar, he told himself, was better than nothing.
“Where did the dretch come from?” Lorcan said, walking toward the tower again. “I assume she didn’t call it up herself?”
“I don’t know,” the imp said. “I didn’t see it. I only smelled it.”
Farideh could handle herself against a dretch. The whining dregs of the Abyss, even the imp could probably hold its own against one. Havilar did not need Lorcan.
But where one dretch appeared, there would be more. There would be a summoner. There would be something to fear. If Farideh wasn’t supposed to know Havilar had sent for him, did she even know demons were involved? Or was she angry enough that she was willing to risk it?
Or, he thought, was the imp a little idiot?
“She’s in Djerad Thymar with Mot,” the imp said as they approached the fingerbone tower where Lorcan’s scrying mirror hung.
> “I know.”
“The dragonborn city.”
“I know what Djerad Thymar is. Get out of my way before I break your shitting neck.”
A spell of protection cloaked Havilar from the scrying mirror’s magic, but the imp directed him to seek out a second imp, the aforementioned Mot, who was still with Havilar. Lorcan hid himself in the guise of a human before waking the portal in the wall. A ghostly screech scraped the air as he stepped through it onto a grassy patch beside an outcropping of rock. Havilar waited there with a bright red imp and that blasted hellhound. The beast snarled as he appeared.
“Hush, Zoonie,” Havilar said. “Well met.”
“Well met. I hear you have a problem with dretches.”
“Oh blistering archlords, Olla!” the other imp cried. “You boot-sucker—who said to tell him dretches?”
“I don’t know what I have a problem with,” Havilar said. “But something strange is happening and you’re possibly the only person who can help.”
“I doubt that,” Lorcan said. “Where’s your sister?”
“In her room,” Havilar said. “She’s not happy with you.”
“Well I’m not happy with her either,” Lorcan said, ignoring the trickle of panic that ran through his thoughts. “What is it you think I can do?”
Havilar blew out a breath. “I’ll tell you inside. You can go,” she said to the red imp. “Thank you.”
It rubbed its hands nervously. “You sure? We could come along. In case.”
“He’s fine,” Havilar said, looking up at Lorcan. “Mostly.”
“You shouldn’t impugn a greater devil like that,” the blue imp said.
“Who’s impugning?” the red one snapped. “And in case you didn’t notice, he’s a cambion. Wild card, that one.” The little imp narrowed its eyes at Lorcan.
Lorcan smiled at Havilar. “My, but you seem to have a penchant for undersized defenders.”
“Shut up,” Havilar said. “And Mot, go away and take Olla. Thank you for helping, but I can do this on my own.” The imps popped out of existence, the little red one’s eyes fading out last, still glaring at Lorcan.
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