Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “Where is Mother now?” Lorcan asked.

  Zela bared her tusks. “Dead. Open the portal.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “Open the shitting portal.”

  Lorcan fidgeted with his rings, trying to buy time. Invadiah, dead—Invadiah dead. He could say it until the planes all flipped like cards in a deck, and it wouldn’t feel real. “You”—he had to wet his mouth—“you know where she went?”

  “Through the portal!” Zela bellowed.

  Focus, Lorcan thought. Keep your place. You faced the Vulgar Inquisitor, you lied to the archduchess, you can stall Zela. “Well if you don’t know where she is, it isn’t going to help matters for me to unlock the portal. It’s not like it’s a damned door to the next room.” Eleven pairs of eyes glared at him. “Give me a moment,” he protested. “I didn’t say I couldn’t find her.”

  He moved toward the scrying mirror, trying for unconcerned, trying for ease. He waved the ring over it and thought of Sairché, hoping the mirror would show his sister at the head of a particularly vast army.

  The mirror shivered, right to the edges of the frame. An image rose halfway out of it, like a soul struggling its way out from the Birthing Pits. Zela leaned close, her face appearing in the mirror over his shoulder.

  “Sairché’s mucked with it,” Lorcan said, waving the ring over the surface again. “Too many adjustments.”

  “Fix it,” the erinyes hissed.

  Lorcan hit the frame of the mirror with an open hand, then waved the ring across the surface once more. His reflection split to reveal a cavern—an Underdark cavern—crowded with bodies. There was Sairché standing at one end—

  “Make it go there,” Zela ordered.

  But Lorcan’s attention could not be torn from the scene in the mirror, from the man standing beside the object of Sairché’s focus—Dahl Peredur, shabby and battered. There was a moment, slim as an eyelash, where all Lorcan could think of were the ten thousand ways Sairché must be trying to unmake his deal with the godsbedamned paladin.

  And then he saw who Sairché was speaking to, and he understood why the mirror had fought him. He waved a hand frantically over the mirror, as if he could wipe the sight of the demon lord from the mirror. Beshaba shit in my bloody, stlarning eyes! he nearly screamed.

  “Little sister trucks with Azzagrat?” Sabis said. “That’s unexpected.”

  “Hardly,” Tanagra said, baring her tusks. “Cambions always have an eye out for a way up. No discipline.”

  “Open the portal,” Zela said. “I’m not asking again.”

  Lorcan’s agreements pulled on him—nearly a year more of protecting Sairché, and there was no chance she would survive a demon lord. Moreover, he might lose Dahl’s soul to the paladin being conscientious about his agreements and find the archduchess annoyed—if he lost it to Graz’zt the Traitor, he wouldn’t live to make another deal, leaving aside whether breaking such a contract spelled his doom.

  You have only one choice, he thought.

  “Give me some room.” The erinyes moved away from the portal, each fury of three lining up behind the four pradixikai erinyes. Neferis moved to stand behind them, as if she intended to follow Lorcan too.

  He found himself thinking of Farideh as he took hold of the trigger ring. You wouldn’t be here if not for her, he thought—even though he doubted any part of this path would have changed. He opened the portal, hesitating long enough for the spell to stretch, for his half sisters’ hooves to clack impatiently upon the bone-tiled floor.

  Cursing his luck one more time, Lorcan rushed through the portal, sealing it shut behind him as he did.

  FARIDEH STUDIED THE glowing coals in the brazier beneath the kettle, picking out the shifting shapes in their embers, the fanciful forms in the steam and smoke that curled up toward the vent in the wall above. She studied them with a dedication they didn’t deserve, because every corner of the rest of her thoughts was a riot of competing panic. If it had been hard to concentrate on the immediate problems of the maurezhi, of Thymari politics, and her family’s happiness, then the current situation was flat-out untenable.

  I gave you the chance to stay out of this. Farideh flinched as if to shake it from her thoughts. Just listen to him, a part of her urged. Just do as he says, hide your head, protect yourself. Protect the ones you love. You don’t even know what’s happening.

  You know. And you do not.

  Farideh flinched again. A nightmare, she thought. That’s all.

  She could almost believe it. Except the way Lorcan had pled with her to take it to heart.

  And then there had been that kiss.

  “Karshoji gods,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands. How had she let that happen?

  Easy, she thought. You were there. You wanted it too. Why are you like this? You don’t have to be like this.

  She pulled Dahl’s last note from her sleeve. What would happen to Dahl and her if Lorcan weren’t a devil? How could she even suggest he ought to change for her, when she had Dahl.

  Maybe that’s what you want, a little part of her thought. Maybe you’re just that cruel, just that shortsighted. She didn’t want Lorcan. But she did. She felt trapped, like some dreamkisser, knowing it was poisoning her to keep taking the drug from him.

  What if there was nothing for it? What if she would always feel that way? That wasn’t fair to Dahl. Did it even matter, a little part of her asked, when he’s on the other side of the continent? When he’s running around with Mira—who he hasn’t once mentioned—and you don’t even know if you’ll see him again? If he even wants to find you again?

  Something lay between the fear in his voice when he’d left her in Suzail and the sweet words in the snake notes, and Farideh couldn’t begin to guess what it was. She smoothed the last note flat, unrolling it between the pinch of her hands. Your letter overwhelmed me, & I told him 4, & have thought of at least a score for myself.

  Don’t trust Lorcan.

  She eyed the shifting embers of the brazier. It would be safest for both of them if she burned the notes. It would be safest for both of them if she stayed far away from Ilstan, if she listened to Asmodeus.

  From under the mattress, she took out the first note, read them both together.

  Mehen returned before the water had grown hot enough. He sat down next to Farideh, his bulk tilting the thin mattress and pulling her toward him.

  “Lorcan wasn’t here to check on you,” he said.

  Farideh felt a blush burning up her neck, even though Mehen couldn’t know about the kiss. She shifted higher up on the tilting mattress. “No. I mean, I think he was at first, but … something happened.”

  “With the god business.”

  “It might not be such a conjurer’s trick after all,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to tell you. If you don’t know, it might be safer.”

  Mehen cursed softly. “Where does this stop?”

  “When it stops,” Farideh said.

  “No,” Mehen said. “Don’t give me that. I’ve known you all your life. You’ve obviously made the decision that you’re not going to sit still and let this pass you by. You’ve obviously decided to do something, never mind the rest of us. Now, have you done that with a plan in mind or not?”

  Farideh stopped. “I’m still figuring that out.”

  Mehen shook his head. “Since you were tiny, you’ve been the sort to rush in and rescue, and worry about the consequences after.”

  “No one’s rushing in!”

  “No one is considering consequences!” Mehen roared. “You say it stops when it stops, but you don’t have a plan to tell you when that’s happened. You don’t know who your enemy is or even what your victory conditions are. You have the mutterings of a madman, the messages of a karshoji archdevil, and a fear that you won’t be able to save everyone—am I close?”

  Farideh looked away. “I don’t want to be the kind of person who sits on her hands when she coul
d have done something.”

  “Take it from me,” Mehen said, “you also don’t want to be the kind of person who rides into battle without a plan, without a thought for what you can achieve. With only righteousness for a shield. At best, you’re going to get hurt, and I can’t sit on my hands and bear that.”

  Farideh considered the coals in the brazier. “I just want it to make sense. Doesn’t it bother you that none of this makes sense?”

  “Some things don’t make sense,” Mehen said. “Some things you need to walk away from because you will make yourself mad trying to fit them into a box.” He pulled her into an embrace, rubbing the frill of his jaw against her head. “Asmodeus doesn’t deserve your help.”

  Farideh hugged her father back, but kept her tongue. It wasn’t Asmodeus—it was her and Havilar and Ilstan and Lorcan and more. Azuth. All the world, maybe—who knew what happened if a god died? Not Farideh.

  “Which is worse,” she said, releasing Mehen, “this, or panicking about one of us being pregnant?”

  “Not funny.” Mehen sighed. “Don’t go back to him. There’s not a man alive I’m going to think is worthy of my daughters, but … You light up when you’re with Dahl, whatever it is you see in him. When you look at Lorcan, you look afraid.”

  I am afraid, Farideh thought. Loving Lorcan was like looking down over the edge of a chasm. Dizzying, intoxicating, but there was no way to see where it ended. Unless you leaped.

  “Dahl isn’t here,” she said.

  “Then there are a hundred thousand other fellows for you to bother with another day,” Mehen said. “And all of them will be less dangerous than Lorcan.” He rubbed his jaw against her head again. “Get some rest.”

  After he’d left, Farideh opened the pouch of tea. The smell took her right back to eight years earlier, when Tam had given her a similar pouch to help her through a bout of battle-shock and anxious dreams of Lorcan being tortured. It smelled like summer and fear and meeting Dahl, a time when the sparks between them only bit and stung, when if someone had suggested she’d be pining for Dahl Peredur, Farideh would have laughed hard enough to injure herself. Farideh flipped the lid off the kettle and added three fat pinches of leaves to the steaming water. The memory of being so irritated by him felt foreign now—he could certainly rile her and be riled right back, but there was a care behind it, an awareness of where they needed gentleness.

  She tried to imagine Lorcan being gentle like that.

  Havilar slipped in the door. “Gods, I thought Mehen would be in here forever.” She sniffed the air. “Oh, gross! Where’d you get more of Tam’s tea?”

  “Lorcan.” Farideh plucked the pot out of the coals and poured the tea into a clay cup. “Do you want some?”

  “It’s from Lorcan and you’re just going to drink it?”

  “If it was poisoned or something he would have made sure I drank it,” Farideh said. “He’s just trying to be nice. Do you want some?”

  Havilar sat down beside her. “Maybe half a cup. I told Brin. About the Lance Defenders.”

  “He, um, mentioned.” Farideh passed her the half-filled cup.

  “What did he say?”

  “That he really does think you should. He thinks you’d be happy.”

  Havilar wrapped her hands around the mug. “Do you think he means it?”

  “Yes. But I think he’s … sad that …” Farideh bit her tongue. “I think you should just talk to Brin. Or decide on your own. Do you want to be a Lance Defender?”

  Havilar sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. Would you stay if I did?”

  Farideh drank the tea down to the bitter dregs before replying. “I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you here, but—”

  “Right? I don’t want to make all my life about where you and Mehen and maybe Brin are, but I don’t want to leave you. I might like it,” she said. “But I’d be so lonely.”

  Farideh squeezed her arm, feeling the tea start to seep into her veins. “If that happened, you’d make friends. You’d be all right. And it’s not as if we’d never see each other again.”

  I am not an enemy you want to make, Asmodeus’s words rattled through her slowing thoughts. The one who gets hurt doesn’t have to be you. Farideh flinched.

  “But you wouldn’t stay.”

  “Mehen might still.”

  Havilar sighed. She knocked back her tea. “I’m angry at Mehen right now, so that’s not a good argument.”

  Farideh blinked, her eyelids growing heavier. “Go to sleep. You won’t have a choice in a minute.”

  I let you uncover enough to see your enemy clearly.

  Which enemy? Farideh thought. There’s too many to count.

  What you do not know, she knows. Which is the greater danger, to he and I and all of you.

  How many dangerous women did she know? Glasya, she thought, her thoughts shattering into broken sounds. Invadiah. Sairché. Mira. The Nameless One. Rohini. Helindra. Havilar …

  … One moment all is blacknesss, the next Farideh dreams, but this time is different: she’s not in Arush Vayem, there is no snow, and she’s certain from the moment she looks across the landscape that this is a dream.

  Under a full moon, she crosses a field, a desert, the ruins of a stone-paved road. Something slips beneath her feet and she realizes the ground is littered with Wroth cards, like fallen leaves. She picks one up—the Adversary. On one side, the true version, the archon chasing the devil chasing the archon, a never-ending circle. On the other, the dream-form, the tiefling woman who looks like her—one gold eye, one silver—framed by burning wings and pulling the grasping souls of the damned from the earth. And when she turns it once more, it’s not an archon but the maurezhi, sprinting after an erinyes who pursues it, forever and ever.

  Farideh turns it over and over, and the face changes. Not Farideh, Chosen of Asmodeus, but a woman with short, sharp black horns and hooved feet. Bryseis Kakistos, holding a baby by one ankle in one hand, holding a knife in the other.

  Do you know who you are? Farideh looks up at the ghost of the Brimstone Angel, hovering over the stone-paved road. What you can master? You have let a weakling—a robber, cloaked in magician’s robes—outwit you by playing on soft feelings. He cannot afford to lose these people—you know that and so does he. Steel yourself—a few more dead, a score of dead, it is nothing compared to what he’ll do. He cannot afford to lose you.

  Farideh turns the card in her fingers. “What’s the secret?”

  The ghost drifts, in and out of the dreamscape, her skin peeling back, her bones baring to the moonlight. I don’t know. I know the past. I know the path that brought us here. Alyona and the broken vessel. Chiridion and Adrestreia. I don’t know the secret. Ask Caisys. He lies and he does not. Ask the other.

  “Do you hold the key?”

  Her skin layers back over her face, revealing a hideous rictus before smoothing into Bryseis Kakistos’s implacably lovely face. Farideh blinks and the ghost is doubled, as if the world is folded over itself like a sheaf of parchment.

  The key is the secret, the left-hand Brimstone Angel says.

  You were supposed to be safe, the right-hand one says. He gave you that, at least. Be careful.

  Farideh lets the card fall, fluttering to the ground.

  When it lands, He is there.

  This time is different: he comes as if she’s called him, he comes as if he’s called to battle, and the god doesn’t walk in Lorcan’s skin. It’s the shining archdevil she saw in the internment camp, in the tunnels beneath Suzail. Asmodeus, the Raging Fiend. The ghosts fade, the layers of their selves peeling away and away and away.

  “Are we to battle now?” he says, and his voice is a terrible song that threatens to crush her heart into a pulp, shrivel her soul.

  Farideh seizes the powers twining up her spine, the powers of the Nine Hells flooding her, leaping from her skin to form an armor of flames, the wings of the burning angel. The terrible fear abates as the flames build, and the avatar o
f the archdevil laughs as though he’s never seen such a thing. The wind picks up, swirling the Wroth cards in little dust devils.

  “I’m not your enemy,” Farideh begins.

  Asmodeus laughs. “You are not my ally. I am the champion of happiness, the patron of desire—and what do you do? You run from what you want, you hide from your desires. You sublimate them, burning them out of you like a farmer ridding a field of pestilence. How could you think we were anything but opposed?”

  Farideh knows she should be afraid, but the fire, the gift of Asmodeus pushes it all out of her. “Then why did you Choose me?”

  “Because I honor my agreements,” he says slyly, “in the way that best benefits me.”

  “I know Azuth is still alive.”

  “Alive is a funny word to use, when we are speaking of gods.” He twirls a hand over the cards, and they rise in a column of wind. His hand snaps shut on three and he tosses them at her feet: the Firetail; Draevus, the Trickster; the Godborn.

  “Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god? The god is killed. Destroyed. You cannot pluck something so fundamental from a being and not expect it to collapse. Did she tell you that?”

  “Who?”

  Asmodeus only smiles. He tosses a fourth card at her feet: Tethyla, the Dark Lady. It slides, top-first beneath her burning boot, and catches ablaze. “It’s not an easy thing to achieve either,” he says. “Imagine using only your smallest fingers to tear the heart from your father’s rib cage, whilst blind. You might imagine it—you are imagining it, my dear—but you cannot manage it.”

  “You managed it.”

  “And are we equals suddenly?” He closes a fist around empty air and the fire ebbs from her. She clings to it, but it’s his to take, not hers to hold. As the wings fold in and gutter out, he says, “Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?”

  “It collapses?” she guesses.

  “Very good. I am the linchpin, the core. My vassals may scheme—that is their very nature, so they must. They may try to pull themselves up into my throne, but I have been ready for that since the beginning of time. They pull, and their plans, their greed, their ambition break with their weight and fall upon them, so that the one beneath may climb up their failure to their seat of triumph. Everything is carefully balanced, carefully ordered. If you were to steal the divine spark from me, I would die and all that order would be lost. All that greed and ambition and carefully leashed wickedness would burst out—the Hells could not contain it, oh no—and so you would damn your whole world by doing what you thought was good. You would gain nine kings and queens of nine warring Hells to show for all your heroism, and two dead gods beside. And that’s presuming you succeed—you cannot imagine there aren’t contingencies in place.”