The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  “I am who I’ve always been,” Lorcan said. He hesitated. “I meant to offer before, but I can give you another spell. I think it will work this time. Put your sword away.”

  She did, and he pulled her hands toward him, turning her palms up. “What is it?” she asked.

  He laid his hands over hers, flexing his fingers. “Something useful.”

  Farideh closed her hands into fists. “What is it?” she said again. Lorcan’s dark eyes met hers, and the memory of a time that might have cowed her shivered through the back of her thoughts. She said nothing.

  “It will make a wall of fire around you,” Lorcan said, “burning anyone on the outside. Or inside if you mean it that way.”

  “She’s still a tiefling,” Farideh said. “It won’t burn her.”

  “It’s quite potent.” He nodded at her balled fists. She opened her hands again with only a little reluctance. She wouldn’t have to use it. It wouldn’t matter how potent it was.

  Lorcan laid his hands across hers, the connection to the Nine Hells surging with a jolt of power that seemed to shoot up through the bones of her arms, into her spine, stretching her nerves beyond what they could contain. Lorcan’s hands slid forward suddenly, closing over her wrists and squeezing them tight enough to send a shock of pain through her. His black, black eyes threatened to sweep away whatever distance lay between them now, turning memories into present. The magic drove the breath out of her.

  And then it was finished. She stood a moment, her hands still in Lorcan’s, reeling from the spell.

  “Draw a semicircle with the rod’s tip,” he said. “Say fiornix.”

  Farideh pulled her hands back. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.” He hesitated another moment, then nodded toward the cottage. “They’re no one,” he said. “Barren couple. One tiefling, one human. Perfectly ordinary, but willing to deal. Sairché is a lot of things, but she isn’t a fool. She wouldn’t stash a Brimstone Angel just anywhere.”

  “Not cultists?” Farideh asked. “Not warlocks?”

  “As I said, she’s not a fool,” Lorcan said. “He’d have been found out immediately, and if he hadn’t, well, at a certain age, mortals tend to challenge what their parents taught them to hold dear. And if he didn’t, then all the worse—you get a warlock who knows entirely too much for your own good, growing up neck-deep in devils and spells. You get much better results putting a foundling somewhere ordinary.”

  Arush Vayem, Farideh thought, wasn’t ordinary. Mehen wasn’t ordinary. Or was she wrong? After all, she’d taken the pact, she’d ended up lost in the middle of the Nine Hells machinations. Who was to say this wasn’t Caisys’s plan all along? She pushed those thoughts aside as they reached the stone cottage, and knocked. A chorus of cattle moaned from the pen on the cottage’s side.

  The door opened to reveal a human woman with dark, curly hair pulled up in a knot at the back of her head. “Yes? Well met?”

  “Well met,” Farideh said. “We’re looking for a tiefling boy.”

  The woman looked Farideh up and down, eyes widening, then pressed a fist to her chest. “You can’t have him,” she said in the smallest of voices.

  Yes, Farideh thought, no. “He’s in danger,” she said. “Can we come in?”

  The woman shook her head. “She said … She said never to give …” Her voice broke. “What kind of danger?”

  “Merida?” Behind her, a tiefling man maybe ten years older than Farideh, with a short beard and his hair tied back in a club at the nape of his neck. “Merida, what’s wrong?” As he caught sight of Farideh and Lorcan behind her, terror showed plain on his face. “Where’s Remzi?”

  Merida turned and raced back through the house. Farideh’s heart cracked—whatever monsters she wanted these people to be, they weren’t Sairché’s minions. They weren’t child thieves. “Wait.”

  “We’re friends of Sairché’s,” Lorcan said smoothly. “Might we come in?”

  “No,” Farideh assured the man. “We’re not her friends. But we’re … Remzi’s. Someone is looking for him. Someone is planning to kidnap him and possibly kill him. We don’t want that to happen any more than you do. So, please, may we come in and discuss how to stop anyone from hurting Remzi?”

  The man searched her face, looking as afraid of her as if she were Bryseis Kakistos herself come to steal his son. “You’re his real mother, aren’t you?”

  “No.” Then: “I’m … I’m his aunt.”

  The man looked her over again, as if debating what he might do to stop them. “Sairché sent you? Why didn’t she come herself?”

  “She can’t,” Farideh said. “She’s trapped. Please, I don’t how much time we have. My name’s Farideh,” she added. “This is Lorcan.”

  “Emmer,” the man said, nodding at them. He blew out a breath. “Come inside.”

  Emmer led them into the front room of the cottage, where a cookfire burned under a little cauldron. He gestured at the wooden chairs around a table, but didn’t sit himself. “Your sister,” he said. “Is she dead?”

  “No. But she’s in danger too.” Farideh swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat. “She doesn’t know about him. I don’t think she even knows she was carrying. Don’t deal with devils,” she added, when Emmer gave her a curious look. “You don’t know what you’ll lose.”

  Outside, the sun was setting, painting the walls of the little stone cottage in a golden light. Emmer lit a lantern on the table and closed the shutters one by one, plunging the room into secretive gloom. Merida came back into the room, carrying a child almost as long as she was, cradling the back of his head as though he were a babe. His arms were locked around her neck, his face buried against her shoulder, his skinny tail slashing anxiously. She spotted Farideh and stopped dead in her tracks. “You can’t have him,” she said, as if it were a simple fact.

  “She’s his aunt,” Emmer said. The boy lifted his head and glanced back at Farideh from the corner of his eyes, angry and skeptical around the redness of tears. A fist of grief closed on her heart. His profile was so similar to Havilar’s—to her own—at that age. The eyes were Brin’s, the dark blond hair around his horns, just starting to curl back over his head.

  “I don’t have an aunt,” Remzi said, not quite able to shake the quaver of tears.

  “It’s all right,” Farideh said, dropping down into a chair. “I, um, I bet I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m going to tell you that you have to come away with me. That these aren’t your real parents and you have to come back to the ones you share blood with. But that’s not it. I wouldn’t say that. I know it’s not true.” She met Merida’s eye. “I was raised by someone who had nothing to do with my being born. I was raised by a man who’s not even the same race. But he’s my father. And nobody can change that, Remzi. I wouldn’t dare try to change it for you.”

  Emmer cleared his throat. “She says they didn’t know.”

  “How do you not know?” Merida demanded. “How do you not look if someone stole your child?”

  “If we stole their child?” Emmer said. “You know they can’t search through the spells Sairché gave us.”

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” Farideh said. “We can talk about what you want to do, what … my sister and her lover want to do, what Remzi wants, another time. What matters now is that Remzi is in danger.”

  She told them the story of the Toril Thirteen, of Bryseis Kakistos and her attempt to reincarnate herself and bring down Asmodeus, how the ghost had returned and taken Havilar and was now hunting down the most powerful heirs of her coven, to finish what she’d begun. Fahideh didn’t watch Remzi as she told the story—she knew it was more than a child could understand, but she didn’t dare try to soften it, for fear his parents wouldn’t take her seriously.

  Still, she felt his blue eyes boring into her.

  “He has to come back to Djerad Thymar,” she said. “You can come with him. I think you should come with him.”

  “He’s
only a boy,” Merida said. “You said she wants the powerful ones—he’s not even … he doesn’t have a pact or what have you.”

  The child of a Brimstone Angel and the royal line of Cormyr. It wouldn’t be Lachs or Adastreia Bryseis Kakistos went after. It would be Remzi, she felt sure of it. “It’s not what he is now,” Farideh said. “It’s what he could become. It’s what’s in his blood.”

  “Thought you said blood didn’t matter,” Emmer said.

  It doesn’t, Farideh thought, until it does. “Please,” Farideh said. “Bring him. We can stop her, but we can’t let her gather the heirs. Remzi is the last one.”

  A window overlooking the cow pen blew open, a hot, bitter wind gusting through the little cottage. The cows started lowing, a chorus of frantic bleats. Lorcan shot to his feet. “Portal,” he hissed to Farideh.

  Emmer started for the door, pulling on a quiver and grabbing a longbow. “Stay inside,” Farideh warned. “If the house is warded, you stand a chance. Hide Remzi.” She drew the rod from her sleeve, her sword from its sheath and headed out into the gloaming, calculating how fast she could drop one or the other and get Ilstan’s scroll out. This might be their only chance to catch Bryseis Kakistos.

  The wind had faded to a snapping breeze by the time she stepped out of the house. The cows were still panicking, jostling themselves against the fence. The air tasted of ice and angry magic, brimstone and wintergreen. Lorcan came up beside her. “Maybe it was just the wind,” Farideh murmured.

  “Doubtful,” Lorcan said. “I’ll go around the other side. You keep those haynoses in the house.”

  Farideh glanced back at the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door. She waved him back, out of sight.

  Something yanked at her attention, the feeling of someone shouting her name. She looked up, expecting to see Havilar standing beside the cow pen, forgetting for a heartbeat it was Bryseis Kakistos, looking like something out of Farideh’s oldest nightmares: She wore Havilar’s leathers, but a blood-red cloak fluttered around her shoulders in the faint breeze, and every part of her that could hold a bit of jewelry did, all of them humming with magic. Worse, instead of Havilar’s glaive, she carried a staff with a scarlet gem at the tip, a mockery of Havilar’s precious polearm.

  “I dearly hope,” she said with Havilar’s voice, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”

  “I don’t know,” Farideh said, stalling. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”

  It was hard not to see Havilar despite the wicked smile that wasn’t at all her own. “Didn’t you?”

  “Sairché only just confessed to hiding him. My father wants him safe,” she added, a plausible reason that had nothing at all to do with Bryseis Kakistos.

  “Sairché survived?” Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “Resourceful little cockroach. Tell the dragonborn that my blood is none of his concern. Without the boy, Asmodeus wins.” Her eyes flicked to the weapons Farideh held, and she clucked her tongue. “You aren’t thinking clearly, my dear. What do you intend to do with those?”

  Farideh didn’t dare glance at the far corner of the cow pen where Lorcan would surely be coming around any moment. She sheathed the sword. “Do you think I’d stroll into the home of someone Sairché trusted without arming myself?” She glanced back at the house, checking to make certain Emmer had stayed out of sight. “I think she must have warned them. What do you need the boy for?”

  For a moment, Farideh dared to hope she might bluff the Brimstone Angel. Havilar’s golden eyes studied her face, as if looking for a hint of subterfuge. Ilstan’s scroll felt like a burning beacon at her waist—but the aftermath of it yawned wide in Farideh’s thoughts. Once she’d captured the Brimstone Angel, they wouldn’t have much time to decide what came next.

  Then her gaze flicked up to the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door, arrow nocked and aimed at Bryseis Kakistos. She gave a short laugh, and pointed the staff at him. A burst of light exploded from the crystal at the tip, expanding into a net that wrapped around the shepherd, yanking him bodily from the cottage and dragging him toward the Brimstone Angel.

  “You nearly had me,” she said. “Maybe this one has a better answer.”

  All instinct, Farideh pointed the rod. “Adaestuo!” she cried, sending a bolt of bruised-looking energy streaking across the field toward her twin. It crashed into Bryseis Kakistos, splashing over an invisible shield without doing much more than startling her. The net fizzled. Farideh took two steps forward and carved an arc through the air with the rod. “Fiornix!”

  A wall of flames erupted out of the ground, surrounding her and Emmer. It rose too high to see Bryseis Kakistos on the other side, nearly twice Farideh’s height. The spell seemed to burn at Farideh’s thoughts, as if it were trying to break away. Emmer scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fire.

  “Get up!” she shouted at Emmer. “Get back in the house!”

  A burst of fear exploded in her chest, enough to knock the wind from her and break her hold on the spell. The wall collapsed, flames extinguished, but there on the other side of the wall stood the Brimstone Angel, wreathed in the flames of Asmodeus’s power. Wings of fire unfolded from her back, and she smiled at Farideh.

  “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  Farideh pressed the fear down—it was only the magic, the blessing she’d fought against so hard for months—but a seething envy remained, and shocked her to her core. “I know killing that man doesn’t benefit you at all,” Farideh managed. “Just a convenience.”

  The Brimstone Angel smiled. “If you’re going to be trouble, you ought to know that I’ve all but settled things with Lord Crownsilver, assuming we can figure out the actual transfer. If you can’t behave and play your part, then you are not a need or a convenience. Understood?”

  Twin blasts of energy slammed into her armored chest, driving a cry from Bryseis Kakistos and extinguishing the flames. Lorcan came around the edge of the cow pen, wand and sword out.

  “If you think things are settled with Lord Crownsilver,” he drawled, “then I doubt you know the little Tormite well at all. Step away from my warlock.”

  Bryseis Kakistos looked back at him, as though he were only an old acquaintance come through the door. “Oh there you are,” she said. “I have something of yours.” She murmured a word that seemed to crawl through Farideh’s ears and a glittering rent appeared in the air before her. She reached into it like a pocket and pulled out a scroll as long as her forearm, tightly wrapped and capped with copper end pieces. Lorcan stopped dead in his tracks and she grinned. “Have you seen this?” she asked Farideh, waggling the scroll.

  “What is it?” Farideh asked.

  “I think you’ll find it interesting,” Bryseis Kakistos said in her singsong way. “Full of answers.” She held out the scroll. “Perhaps a trade. For the boy.”

  “I don’t have the boy,” Farideh said.

  Bryseis Kakistos gave Farideh a disapproving look. “Enough of this—you of all people should know my cause is just. How else can we loose the bonds Asmodeus has put us in? How else can we end this?” She held the scroll out again. “Honey for the pot. If you ask nicely, I’ll even tell you what it is first.”

  “Farideh,” Lorcan said in warning.

  Farideh! someone screamed, as if in echo, pulling all her thoughts away from the strange scroll, back toward the house.

  • • •

  HAVILAR BLINKED AND found herself standing not in the fortress as she expected, but in a field somewhere, in the middle of a cow pen next to a stone cottage. Her body stood not far off, holding tight to a charm pinned to her cloak and watching as Farideh and Lorcan crept out of the door.

  Karshoj, she thought. Her hands itched for her glaive—let Farideh distract Bryseis Kakistos, come around behind, hit her quick and let Farideh break a spell out when
she turns to stop it. Lorcan slipped around the back of the cottage and Farideh waved at someone in the cottage to stay back.

  Farideh! Havilar shouted. Her sister looked up. In the same moment, Bryseis Kakistos let go of the invisibility charm.

  “I dearly hope,” she said, and the sound of her own voice twisted to someone else’s words made Havilar’s skin crawl, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”

  “I don’t know,” Farideh said, and Havilar cringed—she was such a bad liar. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”

  Him—the boy was in the cottage. Her son was in the cottage.

  No, she said. It’s a mistake. Havilar curled her hands around the air as if she could will a weapon into them. Stop talking, she thought, and do something!

  But Farideh wouldn’t, she realized. She might be talking to the Brimstone Angel, but she was also looking at Havilar. Anything she did to Bryseis Kakistos might hurt Havi. Havilar cursed. Maybe she could do something else? Maybe she could—

  Havilar pulled herself away from Bryseis Kakistos, floating into the house. The electric jangle of a protective spell shook her being to its very edges, but it didn’t stop her from coming in. Just a house, just a room, just afire—she drifted farther, feeling the tether to her body grow more taut. A stirring in the back rooms, a woman struggling with the latch on a cellar door … and a child beside her, a boy with horns. Havilar stopped, hanging just behind the woman, where she could see the boy’s face.

  “Gods be damned, Emmer,” the woman cursed, frantic and frustrated. “Of all the times to put off fixing this damned door.”

  The boy seemed to look directly at her. His eyes widened, full of terror. Havilar suspected her face looked the same—it did look the same, or terribly close. Brin’s dream was true. She was looking at their son.

  Karshoji Hells, she said.

  The boy bolted, heading for the door.

  “Remzi!” the woman shouted, trying to catch hold of him. She fell onto one knee as she lunged. “Remzi, stop!”