“Did you … see Shestandeliath Ravar die?”
Kallan looked him over again “You want to know if I ripped a fellow twice my size limb from limb?” he asked dryly. A crooked smile curved his mouth.
“I know you didn’t.” Broken planes, he was good-looking. Focus, Mehen thought. “I’m curious about the wizard, though.”
“The wizard didn’t kill him either. He was trying to save that fellow.” Kallan gave Mehen a level look. “Maybe I’m no raging owlbear, but if I can’t rip a man’s arm from its socket, then Ilstan can’t. Besides, we saw what did it—you need to be looking for the fiend.”
“I’m trying to.”
Kallan leaned back on the bench. “I can’t say I’m pleased you’re willing to entertain the idea that I’m in here for any good reason. Do you really think I’d get involved with a demon? Do you think I’d take a job from someone I knew was trying to hunt your daughter?”
Mehen swore to himself and crouched down beside the sellsword. “No. Honestly, no. But I don’t take chances, not with them. And you know as well as I do that whatever we can do to make the Adjudicators see you don’t belong here is for the best.” He blew out a breath. “Could the wizard have summoned it?”
Kallan shook his head. “He didn’t have time to, whether he can or he can’t, or he would or he wouldn’t. He got to the tomb only a few steps ahead of me, and that fellow Ravar was screaming long before that.” He scratched at a loose scale behind his boot. “Did your girls think I was involved?”
Havilar’s slurred admonishment. The delighted expression on her face when she’d realized Kallan was staying in the tallhouse in Suzail. The boneless shock when Arjhani had left …
“Not in the least,” Mehen said briskly. “Though I wouldn’t take that as a guarantee. They don’t always make the best choices about who to trust. I trust you,” he added. “If it matters.”
Kallan’s crooked smile spread. “So you say. You won’t even tell me which clan you’re with.”
A beat of awkward silence, the drum of persistent heartache. You are too old for this, Mehen thought. “Verthisathurgiesh. I was born Verthisathurgiesh. I figured you could guess from the holes.”
“Not all of us are up on the many clan piercings. But I suspect I can diagnose a sick sheep faster—don’t get jealous. And I’m much faster at butchering.”
Mehen snorted. He nearly replied that it probably caught all the fellows’ eyes, a skill like that, but he stopped himself. He’d ended it, after all. He wet his mouth. “Ravar’s not the only one dead. Verthisathurgiesh hired us to track down someone who murdered around a dozen hatchlings in their catacombs a few days ago. The girls thought it was a demon too—but we haven’t laid eyes on it. So what’s it look like?”
“Big,” Kallan said. “Ugly. Gray skin, two legs, very strong. Talks in your head, not with its mouth.” He hesitated. “It was eating Ravar alive. Pretty sure I was next on its menu.”
Mehen shuddered. “A good thing it didn’t. I’ll do what I can to get you out of here—”
“Don’t. It’s really not necessary.”
He scowled. “Fine, maybe I ended things more abruptly than I should have, but don’t be a proud idiot—”
“I mean,” Kallan said, “Yrjixtilex has been sent to speak for me. And maybe I don’t know all your history, City Boy, but I do know that having a clanless bounty hunter speaking for me isn’t actually going to tip the scales in my favor much in Matriarch Vardhira’s view. I appreciate the offer, but my clan’s handling it.” He tilted his head. “It’s too much to ask what you did to end up clanless, right?”
Mehen chuckled again. “All dramatics, little substance. Maybe your clan will do the right thing, but maybe they’ll do it a little faster if they think you’ve got some gossip about Pandjed’s prodigal son.” He blew out another nervous breath. “And that’s my problem. I can’t go six steps in this city without someone recognizing me and using it against me. There’s something going on, the clans have a sense of it, and they’re not talking for fear everyone will find out their hatchlings were plotting to escape to Abeir.”
“Well,” Kallan said a moment later, “that’s a hatchling sort of a plan. What do you want me to do?”
“My girls are going to do the dirty work—but they’re not Vayemniri. They know the language, but they’re not from here. They stick out. Would you stick with them? I’d split the fee,” he added quickly.
Kallan’s smile flickered. “I can do that,” he said after a moment. “Not what I was hoping for, I’ll admit, but a fee’s a fee.” He shrugged. “And I think I’d like to get to know them better. They come highly regarded, after all,” he added, his cheeky smile returning.
You are going to make a fool of yourself after all, Mehen thought as he left the cells and made his way out of the Adjudicators’ domain. Too old or not. At least you’ve had plenty of practice at it.
But those were worries for another time, after the threat of killers and demons, devils and clans had faded. What would his younger self have said if someone had told him that at forty-five he would have tiefling daughters bound to a devil-god and Djerad Thymar would be somewhere he hadn’t set foot in for almost thirty years? It was so far from the life he’d expected, Mehen couldn’t even imagine what his younger self would have done with the knowledge.
Laughed, he thought, and vowed never to come to such a state. Pothach little idiot.
YOU ARE KEPESHKMOLIK, Dumuzi told himself, forcing his steps to come slow and measured as he left the cells. Forcing his thoughts away from the flicker of lightning in the ochre-scaled dragonborn’s jaws, the memory of the same moment just before he fled Pandjed. Just before he was scarred. They kept circling back, indefatigable.
Dumuzi stopped in the entryway, trying to slow his breath, slow his pulse. What had he been thinking, going after Mehen? Farideh could tell her father what the Liberators were up to, what possible sources he still had. Dumuzi didn’t have to involve himself at all. There was nothing to offer. He should go back to his clan and stay out of it, stay away from what remained of Pandjed.
You are Kepeshkmolik now, he told himself. You fulfill your obligations.
He squared his shoulders and went back to the room Anala and the Adjudicator had led him to shortly before. “Your counsel is your own,” Anala had said before she left him. “But I would consider it a favor to your qallim clan if you would politely tell your sire that it benefits none of us for him to come around at the moment. No one needs to unearth the past.”
Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani was still not waiting for Dumuzi. For a terrible moment, he wondered if Arjhani and Mehen would cross paths in the Adjudicators’ enclave, one leaving, one arriving. That is probably what keeps him, Dumuzi thought, settling himself behind the table there, watching the door. Anala would have found a way to prevent it.
Dumuzi thought of the look on Farideh’s face when he’d confessed to who his father was, that night in Suzail, after she’d almost died—hard and merciless and angry as he’d ever seen. He hoped Arjhani didn’t cross her path either, for both their sakes.
When the door opened again, a burst of laughter followed Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani into the room. “Ah! I’ll take that bet,” Arjhani called back. “You’ll see.” He laughed again, shook his head. “Dokaan,” he said, to Dumuzi. “Doesn’t know when to quit. Well met! You made it back. You look well.”
“Well enough,” Dumuzi said. “I found him.”
Arjhani’s grin wavered. “You did? I knew you’d manage it.”
Dumuzi doubted that. He couldn’t imagine anything his father wanted less than the return of Clanless Mehen, and so why would he send someone he felt confident would return successful? It had stung in its own way to be asked. “Thank you.”
“So he’s back?” Arjhani turned around the chair opposite his son, and sat astride it. “Does anyone besides Anala know?”
“Uadjit knows. Um, the Shestandeliath and the Ophinshtalajiir have seen him. Patriarch Narghon.”
“I’m sorry. I saw her first.”
By his expression, that didn’t matter to Arjhani. Still dressed in the armor and blazons of a Lance Defender, blue wraps on his hands as he gripped the back of the chair. “How’s your mother?”
“Well enough,” Dumuzi said. Then, “I think she’s probably been happier. They don’t know if there will be a need for an ambassador come spring.”
Arjhani’s brow ridges rose. “But no war for us? That’s a relief—High Imaskar is always too busy for our defense. Seems a shame to waste blood on their losing battle now—especially since no one asked for our help before.”
Dumuzi nodded, but inside he winced. If High Imaskar were their allies, then why turn from them now? He remembered dimly the battles against the ash giants, the threat of war with Chessenta when he was a child. The anger that High Imaskar had not been there to aid Tymanther as promised. But also he’d remembered his mother’s reaction: Diplomacy was not like lines upon a paper. It was not so simple as give and take, push and pull. It was a crisscrossing network of strings that all tugged against each other. High Imaskar’s failure, preceded by their own battles, their own concerns, did not make them a bad ally. They had uses still.
But then, perhaps, their current war with the rebels claiming to refound the ancient empire they called Mulhorand saw those uses dwindling. Tymanther could not afford to make bad alliances, Uadjit had said more than once.
“Well, I’m certain they’ll find something for her to do,” Arjhani said. “So … Is he down in the enclave then?”
It took Dumuzi a moment to determine who Arjhani meant: Mehen. Mehen who he was meant to be keeping his father away from. “Yes,” he said. “Matriarch Anala suggested it might be wisest for you to find things to do in the barracks.”
Arjhani snorted, his teeth parting in bare annoyance. “Of course. Count me irredeemable. Punish me for Pandjed’s folly.”
Dumuzi said nothing. Undeniably handsome, undeniably skilled with his chosen weapon, undeniably silver-tongued when it counted, Arjhani never took well to slights. Merchants saved their best for him, because he praised their wares and their charming smiles, and perhaps—if the rumors were right—whispered just the right things in their ears, but if they were sharp with him, Arjhani would never return. The Lance Defenders kept him as glaivemaster because he was swift and observant and good with students—and if sometimes those students, sheep-eyed and smitten, stayed too late for private lessons, or spent time running errands or doing chores that had nothing to do with their lessons, it was ignored. They’d learned well enough not to stir the pot. When someone finally discovered that Arjhani’s surface was not at all what lay in his core, there was Uadjit to smooth away the edges and Arjhani’s insistence that none of these things were really his fault.
Arjhani watched Dumuzi, troubled, puzzled. “Did you get along all right with him?”
“We didn’t talk much.”
“Yeah, he’s … Well. Strong silent type, right?” Arjhani smiled unevenly. “How does he look?”
“I don’t know. He looks like Pandjed.”
Arjhani folded his arms. “How much did she tell you?”
“Nothing more,” Dumuzi said. It was true, what he knew of his father’s past, his mother’s shame and anger, he’d gathered long ago from whispers thought unheard, from unkind children, from Pandjed’s cruel taunts. “I take it that you two had a falling out?”
Arjhani eyed him as if he could tell Dumuzi was lying. “You could say that.” A young woman stuck her head in the room. “Master?” she said. “Commander Sepideh said to let you know your class is ready.”
“Of course. I’ll be there in a moment.” He smiled. “Thank you for letting me know.”
Dumuzi stood. “It was good to see you.”
“Good to see you too,” Arjhani said, embracing his son. He smiled at him, studying Dumuzi’s face fondly, and then he tilted his head. “Did Mehen come alone?”
Dumuzi held his father’s gaze and thought of Farideh’s furious expression. “Yes,” he lied. “And truth be told, I think he’ll be gone within the tenday.”
Arjhani chuckled once in a sad sort of way. “Well. I suppose that’s for the best.”
HAVILAR WOKE TO Zoonie licking the palm of her outstretched hand. Her thoughts seemed too heavy to lift out of her head as she sat up, pulling her hand away. Zoonie thumped her tail against the floor and whined.
“Good girl,” Havilar said, her voice hard coming. She wiped her hand on her blouse, as she looked around the room—she was back in the enclave, in the too-big bed. The stink of burnt wool hung on the air—a scattering of embers had eaten through the patterned blanket.
“Oh, Zoonie,” Havilar sighed, pushing back the covers. The hellhound wagged her tail and sneezed, scattering more sparks. Havilar scratched the puppy’s head, and noticed her bandaged hand.
The infirmary, she remembered. The long walk to the pyramid’s peak. The tomb, the dead man, Ilstan.
Havilar stood, woozily, and dropped back onto the bed. Ilstan, in Djerad Thymar, and the sudden nausea, the sudden sickness she couldn’t seem to stop. When one of the guards had offered her the tincture, she’d drunk it greedily. Whatever it took to stop vomiting. And then … everything was fuzzy.
Hrast, hrast, hrast, she cursed to herself. The nausea, the vomiting, that was all the same as when she’d found the dretch—but worse. There was still a demon in the catacombs. A demon that had torn the arm off a grown dragonborn. A demon that had still been near enough to make her unstoppably sick.
She had to tell Farideh and Brin. She should have told them right away—but then she’d seen Brin, and known that he’d flee from her if she were somehow even more a Chosen of Asmodeus, and then Farideh had been so upset and it had been more important to be her sister and—
A thousand excuses, Havilar told herself, standing once more, and not a reason among them. Or something like that. Moving against her still-heavy limbs, she reached the door to the sitting area before she pitched against the wall, overtaken by the drug’s remains.
“Once, maybe,” she heard Brin say in a low voice. “But twice? And so badly she had to be medicated?” Hrast, Havilar thought. No more keeping secrets.
“Is that normal, when … if …” Farideh’s voice stumbled. “I mean, it might be a lot of things.” Then, “Do you think that the sedative will … I mean, I didn’t want to ask if it would hurt—”
Havilar pushed off the wall and out into the room. Brin stood as she came in, moving toward her, but Havilar caught herself against the settee and held up a hand.
“All right, look,” she said. “You’re right. Something’s going on, and I should have said before, only …” She sighed. “I don’t know. I didn’t want it to be true and I don’t want you all telling me I have to sit back ‘in case,’ and maybe I just really don’t think it’s fair, especially right now, you know?” She said this last part to Brin, even though he didn’t and he couldn’t, no matter how much she wished he did. “I didn’t want to run you off.”
Brin’s eyes shone. “Oh gods,” he said. He rushed to her, embraced her—and Havilar could only freeze. Farideh watched her, worried over Brin’s shoulder. Havilar hugged him tight, imagining the worst. She’d missed something. Something bad had happened.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why are you crying? What happened?”
“I’m happy!” Brin said. He pushed back from her. “I mean … we’re not … Things are still unsettled, I know that. I still have so much to make up for, and I promise I won’t ever stop trying to. But I love you. I love you, and there is nowhere I would rather be than by your side. You know that, right?”
Havilar stood stunned for a moment. It was sweet—more than sweet. And for a moment, she was so overtaken she nearly kissed him
. But that wasn’t what they were doing—they’d agreed. And it made no sense. “What are you talking about?” she said. She looked at her sister. “Why are you happy?”
“He knows,” Farideh said, and she did not sound happy. “We both know.”
“Know what?” Havilar took a step back from Brin. “What is wrong with you two?”
“We know that you’re pregnant,” Farideh said.
“What?” Havilar shouted. “I’m not pregnant, you pothachis! Holy gods! Why would you even think that?”
“You don’t throw up,” Farideh said. “And … the timing …”
Havilar colored a little deeper. “You told her? About the pantry?”
“I was worried!” Brin said. “You’ve been acting really odd and it fit!”
Farideh felt a flush creep up her neck. “He only told me it happened,” she said quickly. “Nothing else.”
“She doesn’t want to know, Brin!” Havilar cried. “How could you think that was all right? Honestly, why would you two even think I would … I would have said something!”
“You were just apologizing that you hadn’t!” Farideh pointed out.
Which, to be fair, was true. Havilar folded her arms tight and wished she had her glaive in hand. Brin wouldn’t look at her.
“I get sick,” she said, “around demons. I guess it’s a sort of power from Asmodeus. I threw up the first time because that dretch was still hiding in the tomb. I threw up again when Lorcan and Zoonie flushed it out. And I threw up more than both those times together when we found Ilstan and Kallan, because I’m mostly certain there’s still a demon running around down there and it was likely still in the room.” She uncrossed her arms. “And next time you think I’m pregnant, ask me.”
“I’m sorry,” Brin said. “I’m going to go, um, take some air.”
Karshoj, Havilar thought. “Wait,” Havilar said. “Please. I need you. I need both of you. We have to find this thing. I don’t know how. But I think I know who can …” She looked at her sister, and if she could have willed Farideh to suggest it first, she would have.
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