Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “The one who raises yaks,” Brin added.

  Havilar giggled, driving back the tears. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

  “It’s a very memorable detail.” He rubbed her hand as well. “Did you get drunk?”

  “Really drunk,” Havilar said. “Child drunk. I was so stupid. And … then I started to think that the only thing for it was to leave. To go find him and fix whatever had made him decide to leave. I put on my cloak. I took my glaive. I took a little of the rotgut and maybe a piece of bread, and I sneaked out of the village. Just as a snowstorm was starting.”

  She remembered still the cold, the way it ate its way into her dulled senses, as if her nerves were trying to save her. She remembered the way things started to slow and grow warmer. How incredibly sleepy she’d become, and how comfortable the snowdrift seemed. She didn’t remember anything else, until she was back in Arush Vayem again, wrapped in blankets and being fed sweetened milk, with Farideh standing over her, red-faced and weeping silently.

  “Mehen found me,” she said. “I knew better than to go out in a storm like that. I knew what to watch for—everyone did. And no matter how many times I told them it was just a dumb idea, that I was drunk and upset and stupid, he and Farideh treated me like I was going to shatter for months after. That’s the worst part,” she told Brin. “And that they think it would happen all over again.”

  And that somewhere deep in her heart, Havilar knew that she’d known the signs of a bad storm well enough to mark them even drunk. She knew what windchill felt like, what signs told her that her body was collapsing. She had to have known she was going to die out there, and she went anyway. To even think of it made her feel like something dark and dangerous lay within her. Something that wasn’t really even herself, coiled in tight even when everything was right and happy.

  She waited for Brin to point out she should have known, but he only said, “You kept the glaive?”

  “I didn’t at first. I put it away, but I missed it. I was good at it, and … I’m not very good at much. When the thaw came, Mehen took it out and gave me lessons. He told me it was my weapon, not Arjhani’s. I couldn’t let him get in my head and break my heart all over again.”

  “I think you might have broken his right back,” Brin said. “A little, anyway. You didn’t see his face, but he wasn’t expecting you to leave, I guarantee it. And you were spectacular.”

  “But he made it about him.”

  “And then you left,” Brin pointed out. “Because it’s not about him. It hasn’t been about him for years and years and years, so far as I can see. At this point you’ve learned more from Mehen than you ever learned from Arjhani. Hells, you’ve learned more from Zhentarim and devils and Shadovar and shades and orcs than Arjhani.” He laid his hand over their clasped ones, and for a moment, neither spoke.

  “You know I wasn’t much younger than that when my father was killed,” Brin said. “When … everything changed. When I stopped being a Crownsilver and I couldn’t live in Suzail anymore and they sent me off to become a cleric. I do know what you mean. It feels like somebody yanked the rug out from under your feet, when you hadn’t even figured out quite how to stand up.”

  Havilar kissed him, so suddenly she hardly realized she was doing it, and it felt, she thought, like holding the glaive, like settling into place. He pulled her close and for a moment, she didn’t think about Arjhani or the demon or the Nine Hells or Suzail.

  Her gorge suddenly rose, hot and metallic in her throat. She shoved Brin away so hard, she nearly knocked him off the stool.

  “All right, obviously we have—” Brin started.

  The demon—Havilar stood before Brin could finish, sweeping the room as she moved toward the exit, nausea building, saliva flooding her mouth. She pulled the glaive off, searching, searching.

  No one screaming. No one fighting. Nothing.

  She made it only a few more steps before she doubled over, emptying her stomach onto the worn granite floor. She stayed bent over, dragonborn giving her a wide berth, asking if she was all right from the edges of the street.

  “Ir bensvenk,” Brin’s voice called in clumsy Draconic. She’s all right. “Ir bensvenk. You are, aren’t you?” He dropped his voice as he bent down beside her, handing her a handkerchief. “The demon? Is it close?”

  Havilar wiped her mouth, avoiding his gaze. Her stomach had calmed. “No. I lost it.” She nodded and thanked the shopkeeper who brought her another handkerchief, the woman from the teahouse rushing up with a fresh cup of something that tasted of lemon and licorice. Another shopkeeper came out and turned a stream of fiery breath on the puddle, burning it up with a cloud of noxious vapor.

  “Come on, noachi,” the teahouse owner said gently. “You should sit.”

  Havilar followed her slowly back, Brin’s arm around her ribs not so much needed as wanted. “I didn’t see anything,” she whispered to him.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe it was fast—”

  “I mean no one saw anything. It was there, but no one knew it.” She gritted her teeth against the fading nausea, hoping that Lorcan would be able to show her a way to make her abilities useful before someone else died. “I think I know what we’re dealing with.”

  11

  21 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  MEHEN NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULD MISS SUZAIL’S CARRIAGES—TOO small, too soft, too close and crowded—but as he and Anala walked across the City-Bastion, trailed by a pair of young guards, Mehen would have given anything to have a carriage’s walls around him, deflecting the sidelong stares of the Vayemniri.

  Which part, he wondered, made them stare? The scandalous lover? The sharp words? The violence, the return, or maybe some new element, woven in over thirty years of retelling? Maybe it wasn’t him at all, but the matriarch, clearly in mourning for a son of her fourth clutch.

  “The unpierced fellow,” Anala said. “Who is he?”

  “Kallan,” Mehen said. “Yrjixtilex Kallan.” A good thing Kallan would go out into the city with Farideh—Havilar’s barely suppressed glee rattled his nerves, echoing back through the years to the summer Arjhani had come to stay. She’d been gleeful then, too, almost giddy. She’d loved him wholeheartedly, and look what had happened.

  Kallan’s crooked smile … and Havilar had insisted it didn’t matter, she could handle another brightbird, another heartbreak—she’d handled things with Brin hadn’t she?

  Mehen scowled to himself. That was not handled at all.

  “Whose son is he?” Anala asked. “Whose line?”

  “I don’t know,” Mehen said, as they descended stairs to a lower level. “I didn’t ask.”

  Anala’s mouth quirked. “You have better things to worry about in the wide world beyond? Still it seems like a question you’d ask a paramour. Does Matriarch Vardhira know he’s here?”

  “She knows. He comes from the homesteads, all right? One of those sheep farms. Nothing dire.” His teeth parted and he closed them hard. “We’re not paramours.”

  Anala clucked her tongue. “Oh Mehen. I never believed you then, and I don’t believe you now.”

  Kepeshkmolik’s doors were decorated with crossed single-headed axes, under a trio of carved dragon skulls jagged with spikes—the ausiri of the Citadel of Endings, the birthplace of the clan. The doorguards standing before them were stiffer and sterner than Verthisathurgiesh’s had been, their moon-shaped piercings an unmoving line. Mehen found himself straightening too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been within the enclave’s walls, but he couldn’t forget Kepeshkmolik.

  Any other hatchling would be grateful for this match. Any other hatchling would know his luck.

  I have my sword. I have my rank. I’m not a hatchling, and I’m not your karshoji spy.

  The body of the Kepeshkmolik guard lay on a bier, covered to the neck in white cloth, her missing limb hidden. She was young, her plumes worn short a
nd her scales a murky green. Kepeshkmolik Narghon stood at her head, his stern expression suddenly dark.

  “You didn’t tell him we were coming,” Mehen said.

  “I didn’t need to,” Anala said lightly. “The invitation is to the matriarch or patriarch. They send who they deem appropriate. I deemed myself and you. He has nothing to complain about.”

  “What’s the dead girl’s name?” Mehen asked.

  “Shaysa or Sharna or something. It’s not as if she doesn’t deserve my attention simply because I can’t recall her name,” Anala added at Mehen’s glare. They took their places in the line of representatives, all hatchlings without status weapons and elders without power. Beside Narghon, the girl’s parents—a Kepeshkmolik man, a woman with Ophinshtalajiir piercings—stood proud and dazed-looking in their white robes. Uadjit hovered at the right of the elder’s throne, her dark eyes fixed on Mehen.

  Dumuzi and another young man came along the line with a caster of oil, pouring a small amount into the mourners’ hands, so that they could mark the dead’s mouth and eyes, a stand-in for the olden days, when it would have been blood. Dumuzi nodded awkwardly at Mehen and Anala.

  “Well met, Dumuzi,” Anala said. “I see they’ve found things for you to do.” Dumuzi muttered a greeting, tipping a small amount of oil into first Anala’s palm, then Mehen’s, before moving down the line. “Poor lonesome child,” Anala murmured.

  “Does he have clutchmates?”

  “A few, younger. Uadjit’s first two clutches never hatched. The clutch with Dumuzi had three hatchlings—one died soon after, one died of a fever some years later. But she’s had two others since then, well-spaced.” She stepped forward, traced the dead guardswoman’s mouth and eyes with oil, murmuring the gratitude of Verthisathurgiesh, the benediction for the fallen. Mehen mimicked her, the memory of other funerals, other long-ago dead, guiding his hands. The dead might leave this world, but their impact on the clan, on the Vayemniri, wouldn’t. Her eyelids shone in the glow of the lamps.

  Anala inclined her head to Narghon. “Verthisathurgiesh mourns your loss. Our condolences.”

  “Your very deepest condolences, it seems,” Narghon said. “Or are your ranks truly so thin as one hears?”

  “More robust every day,” Anala said. Narghon’s eyes narrowed further, but he did not look at Mehen.

  Mehen stepped around Anala, removing himself from Narghon’s presence without a word, fighting the urge to deny any involvement in Anala’s scheme—that would only be worse. For him, for Kepeshkmolik, for Verthisathurgiesh. For these grieving parents. He picked his way through the crowd, carefully avoiding putting his elbow into this hatchling’s back or that elder’s head, until he found his way to Uadjit.

  “Well met.” She raised a scaled eyebrow at him, before turning wordlessly back to the crowd of guests. “This is your dead guard?”

  “One and the same. Shaysa, daughter of Andjer of the line of Nilofer.”

  “You have my condolences.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I need more information to find this killer, and I can’t get anyone to talk to me,” he said. “This was what Anala offered—and if she had told me what she meant to do, I would have said no. I have no interest in tweaking Narghon’s nose.”

  Uadjit’s face remained a mask. “Has she laid out all her plans then?”

  “Only parading me around.” Mehen lowered his voice further. “I need to talk to you about that missing guard. Has he turned up?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Who did you have guarding the catacombs the day the war wizard was caught?” Mehen asked. “Who was near to the Shestandeliath tombs?”

  Uadjit frowned, but she kept her eyes on the guests. “No one. Shestandeliath’s tombs are miles from ours.”

  “That’s not what I heard. A Kepeshkmolik guard arrived around the same time as Shestandeliath’s. The wizard hit him in the face. He might have returned with a broken tooth.”

  “I assure you,” she said. “There were no Kepeshkmolik guards in that place and no one returning with tales of fisticuffs with wizards. Whatever your witness saw, it wasn’t that. Did you ask the Shestandeliath guards?”

  “Shestandeliath won’t talk to me,” Mehen reminded her. “What’s the fellow’s name?”

  “What were they doing in the catacombs?”

  “What do you care if none of them were yours?”

  Now, at last, she turned to him. “They were friends of my son,” she said in a voice like ice. “I would be sure he’s not in the same kind of trouble.”

  “He’s not,” Mehen said. Then, “He told Farideh that they were trying to open a portal to Abeir. And he was trying to talk them out of it.”

  “Chaubashk vur kepeshk karshoji,” Uadjit spat. “What were they thinking?” She cursed again. “And so that’s what … That’s where the killer came from? The old lands?”

  “It doesn’t look like the portal ever opened. It looks like someone interrupted it, sent something else through.” He considered the crowd of guests, marked the clans there. “A demon.”

  “A demon?” Uadjit turned from him again. “Shall I assume your … daughters”—Mehen fought not to bare his teeth at that pause, the lilt of a question—“confirmed that?”

  “They’re clever girls.”

  “Dumuzi’s told me a great deal about them. Especially Farideh, I believe? She’s still in the city, I assume?”

  “Of course,” Mehen said. “Where I go they go.”

  “You ought to bring her next time,” Uadjit said. “I think we’d like to meet her. Bring both of them, if you like.”

  “Why is that?”

  Uadjit smiled as she turned back to him, her face a mask. “I like to know who my son’s associating with. Surely you can’t fault me for that?”

  Among the milling guests, Dumuzi watched them with a nervous eye, as if he could hear the conversation. “What does he say about her?” Mehen asked, all too aware of the many secrets the young man might have spilled. “What is it you think you’ll uncover?”

  “You should bring her by,” Uadjit said once more, without answer. “Before you leave Djerad Thymar.”

  FOR A LONG time after Farideh left, Lorcan remained in her room, trying very hard not to panic. Do I have to talk to you if I want to talk to him? She was smarter than that—but then there was no one better than Asmodeus at tangling the terribly wise in their wants. What did she want badly enough to be so foolish?

  Dahl, he thought, his blood rising. What would it be except the paladin? Surely Farideh knew that would serve her poorly. Whatever Oghma might think of a Chosen of Asmodeus, he would have no love for her if she asked the King of the Hells to lay his blessings upon the paladin. Farideh would know that. She had to know that. It was something else. It had to be.

  Lorcan considered the room. He opened the drawers and marked the spare clothing, the cluster of leather bands to tie her hair. He turned aside a blouse, a nightdress, a robe, the soft fabric hiding nothing. The same cloak she’d worn the day he met her, with snow clinging to the hem. Beneath her folded cloak he found a deck of cards, a chapbook stained with what looked like berry juice, a comb studded with rubies. Lorcan picked up the jewels, frowning as he tried to place it. A jolt of magic shocked him, twanging the fine bones of his hand like a vicious harpist.

  The tower of the wizard, he thought. The one you couldn’t protect her from. Adolican Rhand had decked her in such gems. She wouldn’t have kept it for that monster’s sake. Perhaps a reminder of Lorcan’s fallibility? But no, she’d clung closer to him after that, after he’d admitted how deeply he’d wronged her.

  She came to Farideh in the internment camp, only Fari didn’t know who it was. Rhand wouldn’t have enchanted the jewels—could the Brimstone Angel have managed it? Would Farideh have kept something so dangerous? He wondered how much Sairché knew of the ghost and her meddling.

  Lorcan considered the comb—it would be a small matter to take it back to the
Hells, to probe its connections and see what Sairché said or did not say—and instead put it back beneath the cloak.

  Get Farideh to mention it, he thought. Get her to show him, to offer it up. If he tried to work around her too broadly, it would only remind her of the mistake with the shaking fever again. He needed something to show her he was on her side. He needed to make sure she saw how dearly she needed him.

  He smoothed the cloak back over the hidden treasures.

  Lorcan had no more than stepped into the humid, fetid air of Malbolge, all flowers and rotten flesh, but Neferis was waiting for him.

  “Shetai sent a messenger,” Neferis said. “You’re free to visit.”

  Lorcan smiled at the fortuitous timing. “Excellent. Fetch Axona, Ctesiphon, and …” He sorted through his many half sisters. “Who else marches in a fury with Ctesiphon?”

  Neferis didn’t budge. “Shetai is dangerous,” she said. “Even Invadiah feared Shetai.”

  “We have something Shetai wants,” Lorcan said. “And only Shetai has the answers I need.” He considered his half sister. “Are you afraid I’m going to get you killed?”

  Neferis watched him, stone and venom. “I’m wary of it. You are no Invadiah.”

  “You should be glad I’m no Invadiah,” Lorcan said. “A sister who doesn’t want me dead is entirely too valuable to waste. For the moment, your destiny and mine are intertwined by the archduchess’s order and her grace. Should I have need of a dead erinyes, there are much better candidates. Go fetch the others. Be certain they’re armed.”

  In the end, the erinyes were a gambit, a weapon for Shetai to strip Lorcan of before he could enter the paelyrion’s innermost cavern. While they stood, edgy and disused at the entrance, none of the paelyrion’s minions searched Lorcan’s person too closely as he entered Shetai’s presence alone. They underestimate you, Lorcan thought. He could use that.

  Among collectors of warlocks, none sat so high as Shetai. The Ears of Glasya, they called it. The Vulgar Inquisitor. Shetai had survived the rule of every duke to come to the throne of Malbolge, keeping its form for millennia. Even Exalted Invadiah had feared Shetai, settled in its little blind alley of the hierarchy—no one could demote Shetai, and no one who had tried remained to tell the tale.