The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  “Someone ought to tell her we don’t have to look here,” he said, a little loudly. “Someone ought to say we can let Adastreia and my brothers pick through this.”

  “No. I can do this.” As much as Farideh wanted to hide from the past, as much as she wanted to grieve once more what she’d lost, they needed the staff. They needed an answer. But she stayed a moment where she was, letting Dahl stroke her back and clinging to him like a gale was going to tear her away.

  Lorcan was watching when she let go, and her heart flipped.

  There was surprisingly little left in the rubble—nails, melted and twisted by the burst of flames; a spoon, bent and blackened; a half-rotted blanket in Mehen’s room. The villagers had scavenged what they could, no doubt. It was too far from anywhere else to let things go to waste. Farideh turned stones until her hands were cold and stiff and streaked by the ashy dirt. Nothing magical stirred.

  “There’s nothing here,” Lorcan said, as if he wanted more than anything for it to be true. Farideh put her mittens back on and turned to him and Dahl.

  “The wizard,” Dahl said. “She’s mentioned a wizard who taught her magic. If someone left an active spell in place, he’s probably the one who would have noticed it. Maybe,” he added pointedly, “you should ask her where he is.”

  Lorcan scowled at him. “Darling, where’s the wizard?”

  “Eight years ago he lived on the other side of the village, on the slope before the cliffside. I don’t know if he’d have noticed anyone coming or going or even placing a spell. He was a little mad when I was a girl.”

  “Even madmen can sniff out a spell,” Lorcan said, striding toward the farther wall of the village, far enough ahead to stretch the edges of the spell. She blew out a breath, as if the tumult of memories could be exhaled in a cloud on the chilly air. She squeezed Dahl’s hand. “Come on.”

  Farideh recalled the last time she’d seen Garago. She’d coaxed a book out of him, a history of the genasi in the south, even though he insisted she wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t understand it, shouldn’t waste her time on war stories when Mehen filled her ears with more than enough of that—besides, the book was nothing he could replace. She’d convinced him anyway … and then the book had been destroyed in the fire that taking her pact had ignited.

  Farideh curled guiltily into herself, cloak tight around her. Maybe she could ignore the stares and whispers of her former neighbors, but Garago had been kind to her. She started thinking of ways she might replace the book.

  Dahl returned the scowl of an old man it took Farideh a heartbeat to recognize as Iannis’s father, Oster. She squeezed his hand again. If Havilar couldn’t be with her, if she had to walk through Arush Vayem without Mehen, at least she had Dahl beside her. She found herself hoping Garago liked him. She found herself hoping Garago was sane enough to understand who he was—who she was.

  He wasn’t always: Garago had lived in the village as long as anyone could remember, and as long as anyone could remember, he’d drifted in and out of madness. Some said he’d been spellstruck. Some said he’d been cursed. Sometimes he was the wisest person in the village, sometimes he blew out his own walls slinging spells at ghosts, and sometimes he vanished for months at a time.

  At least, that’s what people said. Farideh never remembered him leaving.

  Twenty-six years ago, she thought, would he have been well enough times to notice an active spell? Would he have noticed when Caisys came to the gates?

  Would he have helped him?

  Dahl tugged her hand and she realized she’d slowed down. The ramshackle stone cottage, its walls patched and repatched with year after year of new stone, waited only a bowshot away. Smoke curled from its chimney. Garago was at home.

  If there had been a spell in place, she thought, then Garago would have said so—dispelled it or declared it. The people of Arush Vayem liked their privacy, their peace. If someone were watching them, they would want to know—Garago included—and if he’d known and said nothing and they’d found out? Any spell to observe them would have had to have been in place for all seventeen years she and Havilar had lived in Arush Vayem—if it had been broken, then Caisys would have come to find them.

  So perhaps there had never been a spell.

  If there hadn’t ever been a spell, then either Caisys was nothing like they’d been told—

  “Oh gods,” she breathed, stopping in her tracks. “Lorcan!”

  The cambion stopped and looked back at her, a cold wind threatening to tear aside the cloak that hid his wings. She ran toward him, past him, dragging Dahl along. “He didn’t leave,” she said as she passed.

  “What? Who?” She looked back at Lorcan as she reached the door, saw the shock that overtook his features. “No.”

  Farideh paused, about to knock. “I have to,” she called back. Lorcan said nothing—he didn’t even have the chance to flee. You can’t run from this, she thought, and rapped on the door anyway.

  The door opened a sharp foot, revealing the face of an old man with a beard that came nearly to his waist, all steel gray. His black eyes stared at Farideh a moment, wild as a creature in the brush, then a slow smile split his beard and he straightened. “Ah. Where’ve you been? Where’s my Calimshan book?”

  “Well met,” Farideh said, her breath clouding on the air, “Caisys.”

  • • •

  IN THE DEAD of night, Brin left Remzi sleeping, tucked against Zoonie’s side. The hellhound lifted her muzzled head as his makeshift lockpicks clanked against the tumbler of the ancient bolt. Zoonie whined and scratched at the floor with one paw.

  “Shush,” Brin said. “Lie down and don’t burn him. Good girl.” Zoonie eyed him mistrustfully, but laid her head against the boy’s shoulder as Brin closed the door and relocked it from the outside, secure in the knowledge that if anyone short of Bryseis Kakistos returned—and maybe even then—Zoonie would defend the little boy.

  The image of her tearing Nalam’s hand off, blood sizzling in her burning jaws—Brin pushed it aside. Havilar would be furious that the warlock was corrupting her dog, and that alone would chasten Zoonie. He held tight to that thought.

  Four days had passed and Bryseis Kakistos had not returned to take the boy, but Brin had come no closer to finding a way out. He’d risked another sending, this one to Waterdeep and the Harpers there, requesting assistance. But, the reply came, Master Tam Zawad wasn’t in Waterdeep. He’d been called away in an emergency. They’d search for agents in Brin’s vicinity, but so far into the mountains and so far from the trade roads, they couldn’t promise aid would be quick in coming.

  You’re on your own, the unspoken message.

  Which didn’t leave Brin many options for allies.

  No one had told the jewel-studded skeletons he wasn’t supposed to be walking around. He questioned two, their charred arms pointing the way through the fortress, until he found Phrenike in a high windowless tower, surrounded by the makings of spells but making use of none of them. Instead she was watching a pair of genasi fight in an arena, reflected in a scrying mirror. As Brin entered, she made the barest of turns, hardly acknowledging him beyond the shift of her violet eyes.

  “Well met, saer,” Brin said.

  “Lordling.” She returned to her spying. “Weren’t you supposed to be locked up?”

  “Doesn’t seem so.”

  “Hm. Have you grown bored with your little … object then?”

  “Not at all,” Brin said. “I came to thank you. Obviously, I’d caught myself on a bit of a snag.”

  “And you are ever so glad, surely, that Bryseis knows about the child.” She waved a skeletal hand over the mirror, banishing the fighting genasi, turning to him at last. “Why are you here?”

  Brin made himself consider her for a long moment, reminding himself of the three Hellish armies and Remzi’s worried face, and not the feeling of his bones freezing under Phrenike’s touch. “Well, I’ve been down in the dungeons and I had a question for you,” he said. “Wher
e’s your heir?”

  Phrenike waved her hand dismissively. “She’ll find one soon enough. They always seem to be underfoot.”

  Brin nodded to himself. “I mean, she has a perfectly good one right here. Do you think she’ll bother?”

  “Me?” Phrenike said. “You assume Bryseis will run out of uses for me.”

  Brin shrugged. “You said it yourself. ‘Bryseis has a way of trusting others without trusting them at all.’ You find that staff—or worse, she does—and suddenly, you’re no longer useful to her, and she’ll have the most powerful heir of your bloodline around.”

  “I think you should be worrying about your own future.”

  “She needs a father for her next vessel,” Brin pointed out, “and if you’re intending to apply to be her nursemaid, I have to tell you, your references are wanting.”

  The lich was all but impossible to read, spare as her face was, but the silence that hung in the air revealed a sliver of doubt. “You say that as if she’ll have only mortal concerns once this is over. She’ll have to relearn a great deal if she expects to start anew. It can’t all be tattoos and scrolls and charms. She’ll need mentors.”

  Brin gave the lich a piteous look. “My children could be taught by the Royal Magician of Cormyr himself, if I wished it. So what purpose do you serve, if you’re not meant for the ritual?”

  For a long moment Phrenike said nothing, and Brin began to worry he’d badly miscalculated. A game of wits with a lich was a poor plan, even if the lich seemed to be lazy, as did Phrenike. Abruptly, she spread her hands, tracing the lines of some unseen magic and muttering an incantation that seemed to crawl over Brin’s very skin. The air shifted, his ears popped as it did.

  “What—” he started, but Phrenike brought a finger to her thin lips.

  “Shhh … Wait.”

  Brin’s pulse thudded in his ears—one, two, three, four. At the count of twelve, the air shifted again, a feeling like something ineffable had split like an overstuffed sack of grain. Three devils spilled out, into the room—little spiky things, bigger than imps and carrying tridents. Each wore a cloak of furs, edged with frost.

  The largest of them let out a triumphant-sounding cry. The other two lunged—one at Brin, one at Phrenike. Brin pulled his sword free, scrambling back to catch the trident across the blade. He shoved the creature back. The one who’d gone after the lich fared better, his trident catching the sinews of her wrist as she instinctively blocked him. The tendons snapped. Phrenike shrieked.

  “You shitting little—” Phrenike flicked the fingers of her uninjured hand. A gust of wind tossed the spiky devil back into its fellows. She spread her bony hand, speaking a word as dense and heavy as lead.

  The three little devils froze, tridents poised, mouths agape.

  “That,” Phrenike said viciously, “is one thing I can do that you cannot.” She rubbed her torn wrist, then cast again, a mirror of the spell she’d done initially. Once more the air shifted, the sack of grain stitched shut and filled again, some sort of shield returning to its place.

  “A forbiddance?” Brin asked.

  “Hardly.” Phrenike crossed the room, searching the shelves there for a moment, before plucking up a thick, shimmery cloth and using it to pull down a bottle. She bent the devils’ hands so that each touched the other’s shoulder, then set the bottle atop the nearest one’s spiky head. The trio of devils were suddenly gone, replaced by a bearded human man, who looked around the room, wild-eyed.

  “Oh,” Phrenike said. “I’d forgotten you.” Before the man could speak, she dropped to one knee and plunged her hand into his chest as though she were reaching into a well. Another pulse of magic thrummed through Brin’s nerves as the man gasped, his cheeks sinking in, his veins standing out like roots across the thin soil of his skin. Light flooded up Phrenike’s arm, the sinews re-forming, relinking the gilded wires and bones. The man collapsed, looking as shriveled and drained as if he’d been dead for years.

  She flexed her repaired hand and sniffed. “Not the same,” she said. “Where were we? Oh yes: As you can see, I have my uses, and if she doesn’t feel that way, well, I’m not her tagalong anymore. If she tries to double-cross me, she—and you for that matter—will find I’m very prepared.”

  Brin made himself stay where he stood, made himself look the lich in the eye. “That’s a lot of power to expend for someone you’re ready to stab in the back. What in the world do you owe her?”

  “Nothing,” Phrenike said, too smoothly.

  Brin tilted his head. “Well, if it’s worth the chance of being her sacrifice, then that’s your decision. But should you find yourself uneager to proceed, you know where I am, saer.” He turned to go.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell her?”

  Brin glanced back. “Not really. As I said, she has a use for me still, and given both of our seditions together, saer, I think she’ll opt to hold onto me. Don’t you?”

  He headed back toward his room, hoping that he was right about any of this. Phrenike wasn’t wilier than a noble of Cormyr, she wasn’t more powerful than the Royal Magician, and she wasn’t more determined than the Holy Champions of Torm—all people he’d bluffed before. But the risks were higher than they’d ever been. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

  He stopped at the next black skeleton he came across, this one’s eye sockets set with huge amethysts. “Do you know where Bryseis Kakistos intends to cast her ritual?”

  It stared at him for a long moment, his face shining back, bruised-looking in the amethysts. Then it pointed one arm up a set of stairs. Brin felt it watching him all the way up.

  The stairs led to a pair of doors. He slipped through these to find himself outside, and a cold winter wind cutting right through his clothes. He wrapped his arms around himself—who knew the fortress was warm by comparison?—and made his way along the gallery there.

  The path wound around, overlooking a stone courtyard and sheltering it somewhat from the wind. Brin peered down at it, keeping himself behind one of the blocky pillars that lined the gallery. The courtyard was circular, with a plinth at its center … And thirteen slabs placed around the outer edge of it. Beneath the dusting of snow, faint lines of runes glowed red, eerily lighting the courtyard and illuminating the figure of Bryseis Kakistos, standing alone in the winter night, facing him.

  She didn’t look up or seem to notice Brin at all. In fact, she didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything he could see. She stared at one of the slabs laid around the outer ring, her cheeks shining with tears, her lips moving faintly as if she were speaking under her breath. She touched the edge of the slab, almost reverently, but still, she didn’t look up.

  She looked as if she were mourning. It made Brin feel almost sad—almost, but not enough to stop him from slinking back down the stairs, toward his rooms, thinking of ways to stop Bryseis Kakistos from ever using that courtyard.

  PART IX

  FAITHLESS

  26 Uktar, the Year of Lost Ships (1400 DR)

  Vaasa

  • • •

  “You have to admit,” Caisys told Bryseis Kakistos, “you’ve gained far more than most people trying to trap the king of the Hells in his promises would have.”

  Fifteen years, and the Brimstone Angel’s powers were unrivaled among the infernally pacted. What the Hells could not grant her, Bryseis Kakistos had directed their powers toward gaining the spells of a wizard and more. Magic infused her, kept her strong and quick. When assassins came for her, she cut them down by spell or by blade, and never feared for her life. When the world buckled and the Weave split, she was prepared with spells plucked from every sort of discipline, powerful enough to protect herself, to avoid being blown apart by the shatter of magic.

  But she didn’t have the only thing she wanted.

  “He said he needed the powers of a god,” she told Caisys, and Caisys alone. “That was the only way to get her back.”

  Caisys had shrugged, jiggled the cradle that held her
second-born son with the sort of disinterested kindness that made one toss a stick for a strange mutt. The baby stirred and pawed at the nubs of his horns in his sleep. They were all like that now—horns, tails, smooth, edgeless eyes. “But did he say he would?” Caisys asked.

  “I’m not an idiot,” Bryseis Kakistos snapped. But neither did she have the upper hand. Asmodeus had agreed, but without any time line established, it had quickly become apparent that the new-made god of sin felt no compulsion to complete their deal. She had summoned emissary after emissary, devils appearing in the middle of her workroom.

  “His Majesty requests your patience,” they would always say. “Now is not the time.”

  It would never be the time, she was rapidly coming to understand. He would feed her powers, little by little, hoping to distract her from the promise of returning Alyona to flesh and seating Bryseis Kakistos at his right hand. Perhaps because he couldn’t do it. Perhaps because he didn’t wish to. It didn’t matter—whatever his reasons, Asmodeus had betrayed her, and Alyona’s ghost drifted through her dreams every night, mournful and distant. She needed another solution.

  “Do you still have the staff?”

  Caisys made a face at the baby. All these years gone and he looked almost identical to when she’d first seen him—a little gray in his hair, some weariness around his eyes, but nothing like a man of seventy-odd years. Magic buoying him above the tide of age, she thought, and she wondered if that had come with Asmodeus’s magics or from somewhere else. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But it’s not easy to get to. And I recall you telling me to forget it, and certainly not to tell you where it is.”

  She had told him that, and she’d intended to kill him after, to seal away the secret completely. But … after everything, she’d hesitated. Caisys was different than the others.

  “That was then,” she told Caisys. “I need leverage. I need a conduit.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Please tell me you aren’t planning to build the kind of spell it sounds like you’re building.”