“You think she’s someone’s agent?”
Khochen shrugged. “I think if she’d turned up looking for anyone else, you’d be the first to suggest it.” She frowned and tweaked one of the tuning pins. “At least, you would’ve a few years ago.”
Dahl hesitated. The thought had crossed his mind—he’d pushed it aside when he’d seen how sure Tam had been, when no one who’d examined the twins had noticed anything amiss. “It’d be a clever plan,” he said. “But all you have is that.”
“All I’m saying is you ought to keep an eye on them. Especially the warlock.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Khochen looked up at him, as serious as he’d ever seen her. “Because truly, I would have guessed that little gesture—if she’s not some sweetheart you’re trying to win back—was that of a man trying to absolve himself. Trying to walk away. Which does sound like you, right now.”
Dahl gritted his teeth. Every urge to run from the overwhelming embarrassment that wrapped him like an invisible cloak at the sight of Farideh seemed to turn solid and unavoidable in his thoughts. “I know what I’m doing,” he said tensely.
“Good,” Khochen said, cheerful once more. “Did I hear you say ‘Mehen’ was coming? As in Lord Crownsilver’s bodyguard?”
“They’re his daughters,” Dahl said, still smarting.
“Interesting,” Khochen said. She strummed the lute. “You’ll have to introduce me.”
“Of course,” Dahl said. “ ‘Meet Khochen, she’s the one who started a rumor about your daughter, the Shadovar spy.’ ”
“ ‘And her torrid affair with the Shepherd’s secretary,’ ” Khochen finished cheekily. “If you’re going to tell tales, tell good ones.”
Dahl scowled at her. “Give my regards to Lord Ammakyl. And never tell me about his smallclothes again.” He turned and went down to the taproom, trying hard to ignore Khochen’s laughter.
Farideh had no sense of how long it took for the swell of grief to pass, only that it had wrung her dry. She sat up and wiped her eyes—hoping dearly no one had heard—and found Sairché standing on the other side of the small room.
“I see you discovered my little ruse,” she said.
Farideh lunged at the cambion, all fury and instinct. She felt the surge of Sairché’s shield go up, but it provided no more resistance than a stinging across her knuckles as she slammed a fist into the other woman’s jaw. Sairché’s head snapped back and Farideh’s hand exploded with pain. She didn’t care. She aimed another, more thoughtful strike at Sairché’s throat, but before it connected the shield flared again. The magic pushed back, yanking her arm against the socket and throwing her off balance. Farideh fell backward to the floor.
Sairché pressed a hand to her bleeding and rapidly swelling lip. “You little bitch,” she said, half-marveling.
“Seven years!” Farideh cried, tears streaming anew down her cheeks. “You stole seven years of my life, destroyed my sister, broke my father’s heart. And then you sent us off, without a word of what you’ve done? You’re lucky I only hit you, you miserable tiamash.”
Sairché’s golden eyes seemed to simmer. “Maybe next time you’ll think about that before you throw around insults.” Her cruel smile returned. “And really, if you think about it, it’s closer to eight years.”
Much as Farideh would have liked to tackle the devil again, to lash out and drive some of the anger out of her heart, the shield was still there, shimmering faintly. She clutched her bruised knuckles.
“Why?” she said softer.
Sairché picked Dahl’s case of cards up off the floor. “Do you play cards, Farideh?” she asked, sliding the deck out. “You cannot lay just any old suit, any value down. You must think ahead, plan for what you will need.” She fanned the painted cards out. “This fortunately is not a game of cards, and so I can keep my best plays in my pocket and take them out when they are needed. Much better than laying everything out at the start or waiting for someone else to force my hand.”
“Havilar is not yours to play!”
“Not yet. But she and I haven’t gotten to know each other yet.”
“If you go near her, I swear, I’ll—”
“What? Strike me? Throw more bolts at my shield? I’ve had all this time to prepare for your little tantrums. There is nothing you can do to me.”
“Yet,” Farideh said. “You haven’t seen what I have to play.”
Sairché laughed. “Do you want a game? Fine. The next move is yours—two days to yourself. Go ahead. Figure this out. Undo our deal.”
“Then what?”
“Then it’s my turn again.” She gave Farideh a wicked smile. “And I’ll collect on my favor.”
“I owe you nothing,” Farideh said. “You didn’t keep your end—”
“I always keep my ends up,” Sairché said. “Protect you until you’re twentyseven, isn’t that what I said? And did any devil in the Hells give you the slightest trouble these last years? Hmm? No. Not a one. And I fully intend to hold to that until the Marpenoth after this. Full circle.” She sneered. “You owe me a pair of favors, make no mistake. And I’ll collect the first in two days.”
Farideh swallowed. “And if I refuse?”
“Then your soul is mine,” Sairché said.
“You said my soul wasn’t on the table!”
“I said it wasn’t the price,” Sairché corrected. “And it’s not: it’s the forfeit. You don’t carry out your end of our deal, I get your soul. That’s standard practice—I shouldn’t have to specify that.”
Farideh’s heart hung in her chest like a lead weight. If there were a way around Sairché’s deal, a secret path through the phrasing she could exploit, Sairché had already had seven and a half years to find it. Seven and a half years, and a lifetime of the machinations of the Hells. She was born to this, Farideh thought. You were not.
But that didn’t mean she could stop hunting for the answer.
“What if you fail to keep your end?”
Sairché’s expression grew stony. “Then I have my own punishments. Trust me—I won’t fail. And neither,” she added, “will you.”
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not with her soul in the balance. Not with Havilar to protect. Unless . . .
“What would you take . . . What would I have to do to take it all back?” she asked. “To go back. Even . . . even just Havilar. If you could just put her in Proskur when—”
“I doubt even the gods would grant that deal,” Sairché said. “Much as I’d love to strike a bargain. Time isn’t to be toyed with.”
Farideh looked down at her lap. “Tell me what you’ve done with Lorcan.”
Sairché reached over and patted her cheek. “Poor girl. He has a lot of other warlocks to worry about. Maybe he’s just washed his hands of you?” She chose a ring off the necklace and slipped it over her finger. A portal opened in the air behind her, leaking fumes of brimstone and ash. “Do cheer up,” she said, before backing into the portal. “There are plenty of people in worse straits than you.”
Is it the waters of the Fountains of Memory that make the air so cold? Or is it the magic that holds them? Farideh leans over the stone basin, watching her breath curl like the unearthly fog had that first day and asks the apprentices if they know. The wizards eye her and then each other, as if they can’t decide whether it’s their place to make her leave. The brown-bearded one finally offers that it’s both—the source is frigid, the magic keeps it so. Farideh takes a pinch of the blue petals from the bowl beside the waters and crushes it into a powder that smells like heavy perfume and bitter roots as she watches the look his peers give him—they don’t know what to do with her at all.
Let them think she’s charmed by the Fountains of Memory. The fortress won’t give up its secrets, its master hides away, and the guards only smirk as she searches—the apprentices might not be so cautious. Or maybe the waters will have the answers. But not this first time.
The first vision she summ
ons is for her own satisfaction, her own penance. The crushed petals dissolve into the clear water, lending it a momentary murkiness before the waters reflect a dragonborn man sitting in a prison cell—her father, Clanless Mehen. He has been there for two months, most of the summer. They’ve taken his armor and the falchion he prizes for reasons Farideh knows he pretends are entirely practical. The Crownsilvers have imprisoned him for kidnapping their secret scion, even though nothing of the sort has happened.
A guard stands off to the left, beside a woman with a dark bob and a stiff back, her tabard marked with the symbols of her family and her god. Mehen glares at the knight of Torm, as if waiting for an answer.
“If he doesn’t return,” Constancia Crownsilver says, “then . . . we will have to decide what to do with you.”
“Clever plan,” Mehen says. “Are you going to keep me here? Feed and clothe me? Or are you going to get out the executioner’s axe for a crime you know I didn’t commit?”
“Do I know that?” Constancia asks coolly.
Mehen snorts. “Fine. You don’t know it. But your god does. How about that?”
Constancia scowls at Mehen. “He’ll come back. He’s a good boy.”
A commotion comes from where the waters don’t show—both turn to look off to the left, Constancia’s hand on her sword. Farideh hears the sound of the guard apologizing and apologizing. “Your aunt commanded it,” he explains. Constancia’s perfect brows raise and the relief on her face is clear.
“And I command you let him out,” Brin says in a voice Farideh has only heard him use once or twice—something that will grow into imperiousness given proper exercise. “No one kidnapped me, you plinth-head.” He steps into view. “Unlock this cell.”
“Where are my girls?” Mehen says, unmoved by Brin’s changed demeanor. The answer is in Brin’s drawn expression, his ragged clothes. It hurts to look at him, but Farideh keeps watching.
“Hail and well met,” Constancia says. “Where are your manners, Aubrin? You can’t just countermand Helindra.”
“You want me to stay here more than the next few breaths, yes I can.” He looks up at his cousin. “I think Helindra will be pleased I remember I have something she wants. Open the stlarning cell.”
“Where,” Mehen says, almost a roar, “are my daughters?”
And every ounce of imperiousness is gone from Brin’s face. He is young, painfully young, and Farideh’s heart aches thinking of what he’s done: he’s bought Mehen’s freedom with his own—shackling himself to his scheming family once more—not only because Mehen deserves to be free but because no one else in all the world can help him figure out what to do now.
“They’re gone,” he says, and Farideh shuts her eyes. She cannot watch the rest.
Chapter Four
17 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep
The last time Farideh had stood in the hall of the portal to Suzail, she had marveled at how peaceful it seemed, how much like a temple. But now the frescos were all covered with heavy cloth to protect the paint, the wooden columns gouged by too-wide goods. The fine marble floors were covered with crates and bales and supplies meant for a distant war, and there were cracks where something too heavy had been pushed wrong over the tile. Farideh stared at the zigzag of broken stone and imagined what could have found the weakness in the rock and shattered it just by passing through.
The last time she had stood in the hall of the Cormyrean portal had been seven and a half years ago, and it had been the last time she’d seen Mehen.
“Leave Havi and me here,” she’d said, when the portal had been too expensive to carry Mehen, the bounty and both girls to Suzail. He hadn’t wanted to, but she’d convinced him. “What can happen in a few days?” she’d asked.
Everything, she thought, running her gaze up and down the crack in the marble. Days became tendays, became months. Became years.
She couldn’t bear to watch the portal itself. Every flash and crackle that marked another successful traveler from the forest kingdom of Cormyr to Waterdeep made her heart jump. Seven and a half years ago, she’d already been nervous about finding Mehen again, about how angry he might have been that they’d taken too long to get to Cormyr. But seven and a half years later, she had no way to guess what his reaction would be when he stepped through the portal to see his daughters alive and well.
He’ll be furious with you, Farideh thought, eyes still fixed on the crack. He’ll be twice as angry as Havi. She felt as if a squall had blown through the core of her and left everything tumbled and nauseated. She folded her arms across her stomach to stop from shaking.
Tam squeezed her shoulder. “It will be all right.”
Farideh said nothing. Beside them, Havilar stood, eyes locked on the screen that hid the portal. She had not so much as looked at Farideh since the moment they found out how much they had lost.
The portal flashed again in the corner of her eye, and Farideh heard Havilar’s sharp intake of breath a moment later. Every drop of blood in her seemed to rush down to her feet, and she made herself look up.
Her father stood on the first of the three stairs that led down from the portal, unmoving. The scales of his face had grown paler around the edges, but Clanless Mehen still looked as if he could wrestle down a dire bear himself. His familiar well-worn armor was gone, replaced by violet-tinted scale armor with bright silvery tracings. There was a blazon on his arm as well, the mark of some foreign house. The sword at his back was the same, though, the one he had carried since even before he had found the twins left in swaddling at the gates of Arush Vayem.
For all her life, Farideh had known that reading her father’s face was a skill she’d been fortunate to learn. A human who couldn’t spot the shift of her eyes or Havilar’s would certainly see only the indifference of a dragon in Clanless Mehen’s face. But the shift of scales, the arch of a ridge, the set of his eyes, the gape of his teeth—her father’s face spoke volumes.
But every scale of it, this time, seemed completely still—the indifference of a dragon, even to Farideh.
Farideh’s breath stopped. In her mind’s eye she replayed the last time they stood in the hall: Mehen putting his arm around her, hugging her close, the edge of his chin ridge rubbing against her hair. The sound of his heart where she had laid her head against his chest.
“When we get the bounty settled,” Mehen had said, releasing her and mussing her dark hair with one massive hand, “first thing, we get you a new cloak.” He’d reached over and tugged on Havilar’s long braid, teasing. “And you need a haircut. Getting to be a damned axe man’s handle.”
Mehen’s jaws parted, showing yellowed teeth. She saw the flutter of his tongue tapping the roof of his mouth, tasting the air for trouble. As if he suspected a trick. Far more likely, wasn’t it, than his foster daughters returned from a grave seven and a half years cold?
She shook her head as if she could will it not to be so, maybe pass through the portal and come out again seven and a half years back, no matter what Sairché said. Her knees seemed miles away, and her lungs were useless, unable to draw air past the sob that exploded from her before she could clap a hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry!” she managed around the gasps. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry—I thought it would be all right.” Every eye in the hall was on her, and she pressed both hands to her mouth as if she could smother the thoughtless, stumbling words; the sobs that made her breath buck and hiccup. She couldn’t. This was her fault. Even Mehen couldn’t forgive—
Then he was there, his great arms around her and around Havilar, crushing her close enough to drive the uneven air right out of her. For a moment, Mehen, too, was wordless, and there was only the dragonborn’s soft, shuddering sobs as he held his daughters close again.
“My girls,” he whispered. Farideh buried her face in his shoulder. “My girls.” And for the first time since they’d returned to Toril, Farideh thought there might be some things that weren’t completely ruined. S
he wept and wept and wept.
Over Mehen’s shoulder, Farideh saw a young blond man with a reddish beard, standing at the foot of the platform watching them, his expression guarded. For a moment, his intrusiveness embarrassed Farideh—was there nowhere else to look?
And then that closed expression slipped, just a bit, as Havilar lifted her head, noticed him. And Farideh realized it wasn’t a stranger standing there. It was Brin.
His clothes fit much better—a suit made for a lord of Cormyr all in pale wools with a dark emerald cloak—and with the beard, he finally looked his age. But it was Brin all the same.
Havilar stood poised on the edge of motion. But Brin didn’t move, didn’t speak. Mehen held both his daughters tight, but he was watching the floor behind Havilar, tense with worry. As if, perhaps, he knew what was happening over his shoulder. As if he were doing his part to stand in the middle of it. To keep Havilar safe and apart.
For so long, none of them moved, none of them spoke, and the sick feeling in Farideh’s stomach rose up like a maelstrom, threatening to overtake her again. She held Mehen tighter, wanting back that fragile moment of peace, unable to look away from the sad expression fighting through Brin’s studied calm.
Sairché stood in front of the scrying mirror, watching Farideh hanging off the dragonborn, weeping her little heart out. Though rage boiled through Sairché at the mere sight of the tiefling, she smiled. Her revenge wasn’t complete, but already it was going so well.
It had been Farideh—and Lorcan too—who had gotten Sairché trapped in this unenviable mess. While Glasya, the Archduchess of the Sixth Layer, had seemed to favor Sairché by raising her up in the hierarchy and making her a powerful agent in executing Asmodeus’s sprawling plans, it was an illusion. Sairché’s life hung on a balance so finely weighted that the merest mistake would drop her into immeasurable torments.
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