Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  But as the Vanquisher said, agreements are made, and I will suffer if that king of dust doesn’t get his prize.

  Tarhun ends the dretches as they force themselves forward, spears two of the ghouls. The dragon claws he strikes from the sky like troublesome bats. His expression is fearless, his sword sure.

  But the skull of a horned dragon that snaps over his shoulder is swifter than it was in life and far less afraid. Tarhun bellows, tears the head off him, hurtling it to the ground, but the champion is wounded. The end is begun.

  The urge to attack is more than I can master. The dragon trophies batter and break him. The ghouls rend his scaly flesh. The dretches snap and whine. Each sword stroke brings him nearer to me, and in my stolen memories I am sure I am witnessing an ancestor story unfolding. It’s unbearable.

  So I leap. I tear. I am torn in turn. The pain is bliss and fuel and fear—how can something so minor stop me, when the Dark Prince still reigns? For the Vanquisherthis should be a fight that tests him, that pushes him to his limits, that sees him spring back a hero.

  It isn’t. It never would have been.

  At last, he lies still.

  “That one must be gone,” I say, pointing at the nearer guard. “Someone will come searching soon.” I set myself to my task.

  Every bit—every bone, every sinew, every slippery organ—all must be mine to gain the power, the soul, the memories. They build as I eat, and he and I blur together with each step. The kidneys—and I hear the names of every elder in the city. The muscles of the calf—and I smell the ordure in the bat stables. The eyeballs—and I taste the tea he drank with breakfast. Words build in my brain, stacking upon my earlier faces’. Strategy. Defenses. Sepideh’s knowledge of what the city would do if attacked increased to what the city will do, and who will do it, and how to spur them into action.

  When I finish, someone is trying to break down the door. The ghouls look to me, waiting for orders. I take his skin from the moment of the first injury—blood down the arm. With the Vanquisher’s sword, I cut both ghouls down—my need for them is ended. I open the farther door, and lie down in the blood near there, as the doors burst.

  More guards rush in—see the carnage, see their dead fellow, see me. They race forward. “Majesty? Majesty?”

  “It was here,” I pant. “It was one of the guards. It overpowered Shestandeliath Sepideh—I barely fought it off. Quickly! You must go after her!”

  Poor Sepideh—poor injured Sepideh—she taught all of them and they respect her. This one they’ll fight for, they’ll run after. The other guard would not have spurred them so. They shout orders back down the hall. One helps me up, offers me a healer.

  “No time,” I say, clutching my falsely injured arm. “I must speak to Fenkenkabradon Dokaan immediately.”

  GET HER OUT, Lorcan thought as Farideh stumbled a second time. Shit and ashes, get her out of here. He caught her and steered her toward the bedroom, ignoring the silent wizard—a problem for another moment.

  “Stop it,” she said, her voice distressingly hoarse. “I’m not an invalid. I only fainted.” She dropped down on the bed all the same, as if her legs had given out.

  “You were absolutely under some sort of trance, and then you fainted, and you’re bleeding from your nose.” He gave a silent sort of thanks that she was clearly still dazed and unlikely to notice the tremor in his voice. “What in the shitting Hells happened?”

  She didn’t answer, only daubed at her bleeding nose with careful fingers. Lorcan’s worst fears raced to the fore. He shut the door, closing out the wizard and anything else.

  “Did the Brimstone Angel come to you?” he demanded. “Did she possess you? You need to tell me if she—”

  “It wasn’t the ghost.” Farideh looked up at him, blood smeared across her upper lip. “It was the god.”

  Lorcan’s whole being went cold. There is nowhere to get her to, he thought. Nowhere that is safe. “What are you talking about?”

  “Would you be worried if … if your master were in danger?” she asked, still sounding hoarse and bleary.

  “My master is never truly in danger, assuming you mean Asmodeus,” Lorcan said. “He has a plan for every situation, a plan for every outcome within those situations, and another for every counter and reaction his enemies might have. Asmodeus always wins.” He made himself pause and in the delay, asked, “What sort of danger?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What if someone were trying to kill him?”

  “What did he tell you?” Lorcan did not want the answer, but without knowing, without understanding Asmodeus’s demands, how could he know how to stop her, if he should stop her, how he could protect her.

  Farideh did not speak for a long moment, lost in thoughts Lorcan wished he could tear out of her head. “What did he say?” he demanded.

  Farideh looked up at him once more. “He’s not always himself,” she said in a low voice.

  She cannot die, the king of the Hells’ terrible voice echoed through his memories. She cannot be allowed to ask too many questions.

  It will be you that determines if she succeeds or she succeeds, the same voice saying—but not the same, not the same at all.

  “What in the world does that mean?” Lorcan asked, slow and careful.

  “You know what it means,” Farideh said. “That vision didn’t start out coming from Asmodeus. It was Azuth speaking to me.” Her voice was surer now, though uneven, as if she understood at least that what they were talking about shouldn’t be given words.

  “Ilstan,” she went on, heedless, “says Azuth told him to cast a fireball at a shield that was meant to deflect breath weapons. He nearly died.”

  “A pity it didn’t work,” Lorcan said. “I would suspect this isn’t the god so much as the wizard.” The wizard who heard the voice of Azuth. Azuth who could not be the strange and dreamy voice that Asmodeus sometimes spoke with.

  Azuth who could only be the strange and dreamy voice that Asmodeus sometimes spoke with.

  “I think they’re connected,” Farideh said. “I think sometimes Asmodeus is Azuth and sometimes Azuth is Asmodeus. And—”

  “And when you started putting that together,” Lorcan said, “the god of sin forced you into a waking vision. Does that not suggest anything to you?”

  Farideh pursed her mouth. “It suggests,” she said, “that he wants me to stop. But I don’t think he knows—”

  “He knows. Trust me, he knows.”

  “I don’t think he knows,” she said more firmly, “what Azuth overwhelmed him to say.” She wet her mouth. “He told me, ‘You know. And you do not. But what you do not know, she knows. Which is the greater danger, to he and I and all of you.’ It sounds like maybe, just maybe, Asmodeus isn’t ready for everything.”

  “Or maybe,” Lorcan said, “just maybe, you are losing your mind. What’s to say that any of that was Asmodeus’s doing? What’s to say it wasn’t all his doing and this, darling, is his punishment for nosing around in his affairs? Darling, believe me, please believe me, the only way you survive Asmodeus is by avoiding his attention.”

  Farideh shook her head. “What happens, if he dies? What happens if she is actually a danger to him?”

  “He isn’t going to die. He’s a god.”

  “Gods die all the time,” Farideh said. “What happens if Asmodeus dies?”

  “Asmodeus always wins, darling. If he dies, then I daresay that was his plan all along. Leave the gods to their own ends, whatever that means.”

  She didn’t flinch, and that as much as anything unnerved Lorcan. “Who is she, do you think?”

  “A figment,” Lorcan said, even as his thoughts sped away: Glasya. The Succubus Queens. Bryseis Kakistos. The voice saying, It will be you that determines if she succeeds or she succeeds. “You should lie down. Perhaps sleep. Here”—he pulled the musty little pouch of herbs out of the pocket of his belt—“I brought you something. That tea you drank before, when you were having so much trouble with your night
mares. I thought it might help.”

  She took the pouch and made an awful little sound, half laugh, half sob. “Do you know he looks like you? In my dreams, he looks like you.”

  That startled him, and it made a new swirl of fear churn up through his chest. “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. To make me trust him?”

  Lorcan tilted his head. “Do you trust me?”

  She laughed again, covering her mouth as the laughs broke apart into sobs. Lorcan did not move as she mastered herself, wiped her eyes. “Why are you like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a devil,” she said bitterly. “I want to trust you, but I know better … You don’t have to be like this. You have a choice.” She looked up at him, as though this were the greatest tragedy in either of their lives. “He offered to change you once. To make you a decent person for me. Give us a normal little life.”

  Lorcan carefully schooled his expression. “What did you say?”

  “I said absolutely not. That’s monstrous. You can’t just make someone be someone they aren’t.”

  You can if you know what you’re doing, Lorcan thought, but he knew well enough not to say so. He let the silence stretch, too long. She wiped her lip again, brushed the blood from her fingers. “Why are you so concerned about the Brimstone Angel?” she asked.

  Before Lorcan could think of an answer, before he could shake off her odd confession, Brin’s shouted voice came through the closed door. “Stlarning hrast! Farideh!”

  “In here!” she called back.

  Latch the door, Lorcan thought. Grab her, get out of here. Away from the wizard, away from the maurezhi.

  When was the last time that shitting worked? he thought, as Brin pushed the door wide, bringing with him the fragrant scent of food.

  “What happened to Ilstan?” he demanded.

  Farideh’s eyes met Lorcan’s. “Complicated. Is he still sitting there?”

  “No, he’s asleep,” Brin said. “Knocked over on his side, snoring.”

  Before Farideh could answer, wisely or otherwise, the door beyond opened again, and the jingling of the hellhound’s harness rang through the room. Havilar stuck her head in the door. “What’s going on in here?”

  “Did you find him?” Farideh asked.

  “Yeah,” Havilar said. “He’s upstairs. Mehen’s waiting to yell at Anala. Or something. Did you figure out the axe?”

  “What axe?” Lorcan asked.

  “It’s a dragonborn artifact,” Farideh said. “The head is possibly a scrying surface.”

  “We’re pretty certain the axe has to be in the moonlight to work,” Brin said. “It’s what makes sense. But the moon’s not coming up until after deepnight.”

  “Karshoj,” Havilar sighed. “I was hoping this would end quickly.” She frowned at Lorcan. “You can scry things. Can’t you find the maurezhi?”

  “And say what? ‘Show me the maurezhi’? Do you have any idea how many maurezhi there are?” Lorcan peered at her. “Do you have any notion of how scrying works?”

  Havilar scowled at him. “No. You find people all the time. You did it before—Mehen, Farideh. Hells, you found Dahl in a bowl on the floor.”

  “Because I knew them,” Lorcan said. “The spell understood who I meant. Better if you have something of the subject—an object, some blood or hair, a signature. Better still if you have a more powerful scrying surface than a bowl on the floor.”

  “I think we do,” Farideh said. A shiver ran down Lorcan’s spine. Beshaba shit in my eyes, he thought.

  “Let me see the axe,” Lorcan said. Farideh stood and led him back out into the sitting room, where the lanky wizard was indeed sleeping deeply on the settee. She took up the weapon: a single-bitted axe, black as a spinagon’s underbelly, glinting with gold leaf. The head gleamed like obsidian, unnaturally reflective.

  His hands had no more than curved around the shaft but a cold so deep it shocked his nerves went through Lorcan. “Shit and ashes,” he spat, jumping back.

  Farideh clutched the axe nearer. “Are you all right?”

  Lorcan rubbed his hands together, trying to sooth the lingering ache. “That’s a holy relic,” he said. “If you don’t want gods in your hair, then I suggest you not take the bait.”

  “But does it work?” Mehen’s rumbling voice startled Lorcan. How in the name of the Nine that man moved so quietly, Lorcan would never know. “That’s all that matters, gods or not. Does the damned tool work?”

  “You will have to ask someone else,” Lorcan said. “It doesn’t agree with me.”

  Farideh told him about the moonlight, about moonrise. “We can only wait.”

  Mehen’s nostrils flared as he sighed. “And rest up. If it works, we’re going to be off and running and karshoj to the time of night. I’ll tell Kallan to keep watch—if Arjhani wakes first with a name for the last victim, that will be faster than the axe.” He glared at Lorcan. “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking on my warlock,” Lorcan said.

  “Then it sounds like you’re done.” He looked over at the sofa. “What in all the broken planes happened to Ilstan?”

  The wizard was fine, so far as anyone could assess. Havilar and Brin laid him out flat and covered him with a wool blanket. Mehen left, presumably to update the sellsword, after giving Lorcan such a prolonged glare that the cambion had to turn away. Havilar followed, trailing the hellhound. Farideh went back into the bedroom and nestled a kettle in the coals of a brazier.

  Lorcan followed her, standing close behind. “I could stay,” he said. “Keep an eye on you. We could share that protection spell, just like old days.” He thought of Shetai’s summons, of the lie he’d told Glasya. You don’t have to be like this—Farideh had no idea how terrifying, how terrible that truth was. “Things are not … easy in the Hells,” he added, “it would be a welcome holiday.”

  Farideh turned, studying his face. Behind that frank appraisal were too many things, too many ideas. He could beg her for all his days not to think of Asmodeus, not to worry about Azuth, not to trouble herself with the struggles of gods. It wouldn’t do any good. If she were happy to let the troubles of others pass her by, Farideh would never have become a warlock in the first place.

  One would assume that you understand your position, Lorcan. That you understand what is required of you. You tempt, he thought. You corrupt. You find the thing they’ll do anything for, and make it possible.

  All our wants align, he thought bitterly, even as he leaned in and kissed her. One hand on the small of her back, just above her tail, one hand between the shoulder blades. Persistant, not rough. Her mouth parted and his plans frayed as she pressed close. For all the rest of the world mattered, to Lorcan, they might have stood in Suzail once more, everything neat and right.

  Then she pushed him away. “Lorcan—”

  “I’d stay,” he said quickly. “Didn’t you always want that? You share the protection and I would always stay.”

  But she only shook her head. “That’s not what I want now. That’s not … Right now, I need to go to sleep.”

  He leaned close, kissed her temple. “I know what helps you sleep.”

  His breath on her neck sent a shiver through her. But then she pushed him away. “You can stay. If you really need to. But I’m sleeping with Havilar, so not in here.” She gestured to the door. “Go. Please.”

  Fury built in Lorcan. “How many times do you think you can tell me to go before I stop coming back? I’m not your shitting dog.” He left before she could respond, burning with an erinyes’ pride and rage.

  Beyond, the sitting room was empty but for Brin, playing a flickery tune on a wooden flute, and the sleeping wizard. Brin stopped as Lorcan paused, considering the sitting room and trying to decide his next steps. Trying to get his feet under him again.

  “Troubles?” Brin said coldly.

  It’s a step, Lorcan told himself. It’s a process. You are not defeated—not yet.

&nbs
p; “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said, waking the portal that pulled him back into the Hells.

  … right into a squadron of erinyes.

  Lorcan froze—as much as he might have outranked his half sisters in that moment, he’d lived too long not to know when this many of them stood together, he was going to hurt. Four of the pradixikai—Sabis, Tanagra, Ctesiphon, and Zela, who wore their mother’s mantle as the leader of the elite erinyes—plus six more of the lessers—Caudine, Axona, Pandosia, Numantia, Plataea, and Illipa. Neferis stood against the far wall, watching. She pursed her mouth as Lorcan regarded her.

  Three makes a fury, he thought, counting them all. Nine makes a curse. And Zela to lead them—something catastrophic was happening.

  Zela separated from the others, looming over him like a living thunderhead. “There you are. Unlock the portal.”

  Pale Caudine and red-eyed Illipa both crouched beside the gash in the wall, Caudine with an orb in one hand, a knife that crackled with magic in the other; Illipa with a staff pressed to the portal’s edge. The walls gave off a low-pitched whine.

  “What is it you’re trying to do?” Lorcan asked.

  Zela regarded him in a way that made Lorcan remember Asmodeus’s good graces were but a paper-thin barrier to the pradixikai. “Hunting an oathbreaker. Invadiah marked Sairché. She fled through the portal.”

  Beshaba shit in my eyes, Lorcan thought. That was the purpose, the true calling of the pradixikai—to hunt down those who broke their oaths to the archdevils, and Glasya most particularly. If Invadiah marked Sairché as an oathbreaker—he thought of her cursed dagger, always tucked into the small of her back, always ready to mark the target of the pradixikai—then she was moving. Lorcan owed her his aid, but in the same moment he had made a deal with Sairché, to protect her from danger until her claim on Farideh had passed.

  Danger like this, he thought, feeling the edges of that agreement tugging on his thoughts. If he broke it, would it break him? Would he be human enough to avoid the fate that waited for devils who did not keep their words?