The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  “Brin.” She held the glaive close, as if she could hide behind it. “I hope you weren’t watching that.”

  His mouth quirked into a smile she knew well, even under that stranger’s beard. “Only some of it,” he said. “Mehen said you were out here. He’s worried about you.”

  “I’m going in.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Just a moment.”

  “I’m worried too.”

  Havilar looked at her feet. What did that mean? He would have said, before. He would have told her what he was worried about and what made him say that—her sloppy jabs, her bleeding hands, the late hour, or maybe the fact she’d come back at all? He would have told her things were going to be all right, or if they weren’t, what they would do differently.

  Everything was wrong.

  “Thank you for keeping my glaive,” she said.

  “Of course.” He held up the wooden box. “I thought you might—” He cleared his throat. “That is, these are your things. Yours and Farideh’s. From before.” She crossed the field and took it from him, balancing the glaive against her hip. “Besides, you know, the weapons.”

  Havilar stared at the box, at once wanting to drop down on the ground and tear through it, and wanting to throw it away, so that it couldn’t taunt her. She settled for cradling it in her arms, wondering what was inside. What Brin had thought important enough to save. What Brin had been so eager to return.

  “Are you married?” she blurted.

  He laughed, maybe nervously. “No.”

  Was that a stupid thing to ask? She didn’t know. It seemed like every scrap of confidence she’d earned and gathered and prized was gone. She couldn’t use her glaive, she couldn’t talk to Brin, she couldn’t do anything.

  He looked so different and still so much like her Brin. She wanted so much to hold him tight again, to kiss him through that stupid beard. But he made no move to come any nearer to her. Too much had changed.

  “Are you staying long?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t. I probably shouldn’t have left Cormyr, only, well, I couldn’t not come.” He was quiet a moment, while she stared at the sand. “Havi, I’m really glad you’re alive.”

  “I have to go,” she said. It was too much. She wasn’t going to be the silly girl who said all the wrong things, not with him. Glaive in hand, box on her hip, she hurried past him, tears rising in her eyes.

  She passed the entrance to the cellar and grabbed one of the bottles of wine sitting there, waiting to be ordered. After all, she thought, heading up the stairs, it wasn’t as if she were a child. It wasn’t as if Mehen or anyone else could stop her.

  She was nearly to her room, at the top of the stairs, when she passed the little library the Harpers kept. The doors were open and Farideh sat on the floor, several books open around her. Reading, Havilar thought, as if nothing were wrong.

  Farideh looked up and in her expression was all the fear and contrition Havilar didn’t want to see. “Havi—”

  “You were right,” Havilar said, shaking, she was so angry. “It didn’t last. It didn’t even get a chance, because you had to get in the way, thinking you’re the only one who knows how to fix a karshoji thing, and ruin my entire life just to stop something that you didn’t even stop! Are you happy?”

  Tears brimmed her sister’s eyes, and Farideh looked away. “I’m sorry. Havi, I’m so—”

  “Shut up,” Havilar said. “Shut up. I was on your side when they kicked you out of the village, I was on your side when you decided to go racing around Neverwinter, I was even on your side when you wanted to go down in that crypt and nearly got us both killed, but I am not on your side now, and I’m never going to be on your side again.”

  Havilar didn’t wait for Farideh to respond—there wasn’t a thing she could say that Havilar wanted to hear. She turned on her heel and, toting her glaive and box and the bottle of wine, went up to her room.

  Door shut firmly behind her, Havilar pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth and considered the box thrown onto the bed. Give it to Farideh, she thought, make her sort it out. She took a heavy swig of the wine, flinching at its dryness. But she wasn’t going back out—not for better wine and not for Farideh. She drank more, enough to warm her belly, and sat on the bed, the box in her lap.

  “It’s just a box,” she told herself.

  It was emptier than she’d expected. A stack of yellowed chapbooks. A stylus. A bottle of ink, long dried up. Stiff strips of leather for tying her braids. Farideh’s little dagger, spotted with rust. A bright red feather she’d found and stuck in her braid for a day or two. Squares of cloth snipped off her old clothes—she rubbed a piece of her cloak between two fingers. It was softer than she’d remembered. She set them aside and found, pooled in the bottom, a chain of silver.

  She drew it out—Farideh’s amulet of Selûne. The one that bound devils.

  Havilar took another gulp of wine, squeezing the chain hard enough to hurt her palm. A single word—that’s all it would have taken and she could have stopped that Sairché. But Farideh wasn’t wearing the amulet then, because Lorcan had told her not to. Henish, Havilar thought, and drank more wine.

  She slipped the necklace on, over one horn and then the other. Karshoj to Farideh, if it had been Havilar that stupid Sairché wanted, she could have stopped all of it—with the amulet or with a spell or with her blade. She rubbed her thumb over the spiral carved into the back of the amulet, and imagined taking her glaive to Sairché the way she had the dummy.

  Havilar took another gulp of wine, and considered the amulet again—it would make things even easier to fix, if Sairché came back again. Because if anyone was going to fix this, it would have to be Havilar, and it would have to wait for tomorrow.

  Every tome and scroll in Tam’s library that so much as hinted at referencing devils or the Nine Hells lay open on the floor around Farideh. She’d even pulled down what seemed to be a chapbook in a memoir’s skin about traveling backward through time, just in case.

  But all she could think about was Havilar saying, “I’m never going to be on your side again.”

  Footsteps made her look up, and there was Brin, staring down the hall where Havilar had disappeared, holding a book under one arm. Farideh shut her eyes—so that was what made Havilar finally talk to her again.

  “Well met,” she said. He looked over at her, surprised, but said nothing. “Or not,” she added, wishing she’d said nothing at all. “That’s all right.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Brin. I didn’t—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he interrupted. “You’re not a monster.” But he still wouldn’t look her in the eye. He held the book out to her. “Here. It didn’t fit in the box.”

  Farideh took it from him—a thick tome bound in dark blue silk, smudged with dirt and marks of damp. Her ritual book. She leafed through it, skipping the first few pages instinctively, turning to the spells she’d written in herself, sitting in the back of a cart lumbering along the path between the Nether Mountains and Everlund. Havi and Brin trailing the cart, hand in hand, heads together. Dahl explaining how the components of the ritual fit together, rambling on and on, caught up in his own love of the magic more than any love of teaching her. Human-shaped Lorcan, sitting on the back of the driver’s box, close enough for Tam to bless him back into the Hells, and watching everything.

  She closed the book and held it to her chest.

  “You should have taken me too,” Brin said quietly.

  Farideh looked down at the book beside her, the grotesque woodcut of a grinning devil that leered up at her. “I would have. If I’d known what would happen. You have to believe that.”

  “So you say,” he replied, his voice too full of pain and anger to bear. “But I don’t.” She watched him turn and go, wishing she knew what to say, what to do.

  You can fix this, she told herself. You have to fix this. She set the ritual book beside her and went back to her studies, skimming pages full
of advice it was too late to take.

  A wind came from nowhere, rustling the pages of the book. A wind out of the Hells themselves.

  “Are you ready?”

  Farideh did not turn to look at Sairché, did not give her the satisfaction of seeing the fear that no doubt raced across her features.

  “You ask that as if I have a choice in the matter,” she said quietly. “If I say ‘no,’ will you give me time?”

  “Don’t sneer at my courtesy,” Sairché said. “You might find you still need it.” Sairché’s robes swished as she circled around Farideh. “Have you found a way around our deal?”

  “You know I haven’t,” Farideh said. “And I want none of your courtesy. Just tell me what I have to do and leave me alone.”

  Sairché’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t respond in kind. She held up a golden ring and looked through it at the tiefling. “A portal,” she said, and pressed the ring into Farideh’s palm. “I would accompany you, but since you have no need of my courtesy I shall let you figure things out on your own. Gather your belongings, make your excuses, and go. We’ll see how well you manage things alone.”

  Farideh turned the ring over in her hand. It was warm to the touch. “You like rings for portals,” she said. “You and Lorcan both.”

  Sairché narrowed her eyes. “Your new master isn’t expecting you immediately, but get moving. If you aren’t there by deepnight, I’ll have to come find you.” She smiled wickedly at Farideh and brushed the tiefling’s hair off her face. “And you wouldn’t want that.”

  Farideh ignored the threat. “No killing,” she said. “You promised. No stealing souls.”

  Sairché shook her head, as if Farideh were an incorrigible child, and Farideh was suddenly aware of the thousands of things she hadn’t marked out. But it was too late, too late for any of that. “No killing. No soulstealing. But,” Sairché added, “if you don’t fulfill your promised services your soul is forfeit.”

  “As if I care,” Farideh said.

  Sairché leaned in to hiss in Farideh’s ear, “You should. You should care very much. Because if I have to, I will kill you and put your sister in your place.”

  Farideh shut her eyes, but there was no stopping the fat line of tears that welled up at that. She rubbed her thumb over the ring—the link to whomever Sairché had promised her to, the only way to protect Havilar from Farideh’s bad decisions.

  “There, now,” Sairché crooned, a perfect mockery of sympathy. “It will all be over in a trice. And then you can go back to dodging collectors and disappointing your family. Until I can redeem that second favor.”

  Farideh said nothing. As much as she would have liked to turn the storm of Hellish energies that thundered along her pulse against the cambion, she knew too well the sort of magic Sairché would have access to. If she couldn’t kill her outright, it would be suicide to strike.

  And worse, she thought: Havilar would bear the brunt of her failure. She closed her hand over the ring.

  “A word of advice,” Sairché drawled. “When you arrive, try to pretend you’re not such an innocent. You’ll get eaten alive otherwise.” When Farideh looked back over her shoulder, the cambion was gone.

  It was still three hours to deepnight, but with her nerves threatening to overtake her and ruin what resolve she’d managed, Farideh headed straight to her room and packed what little belongings she had into a haversack. Sairché hadn’t said where the ring would take her, and Farideh hoped a rod, a sword, the ritual book, a whetstone, and a comb would be enough.

  Dahl’s deck of cards sat between the candles on the little table where she’d dropped it. She considered it a moment, then added it to the pack as well. She pulled her cloak closed, went down to the kitchens, and took the end of a loaf of bread and a few apples.

  From the library, she’d snatched a bit of foolscap and a stylus, a little bit of ink.

  I am so sorry, she wrote. I hope this makes things easier. She finished the letter and folded it up quickly, so that she wouldn’t have to see the words.

  Havilar was sleeping, curled tight on her cot, her lips stained purple from the mostly empty bottle of wine on the floor beside her. Farideh stood in the door a moment, her grief and guilt trapping her feet like a heavy mud. She thought of all the times they’d fought before, all the fights that had seemed vicious, world-ending, but always, eventually, settled out, eased off. They always came back to where they’d started, or near enough to it. They would always be sisters.

  Until this, Farideh thought.

  She left the note on the bedside table, and piled Lorcan’s necklace atop it. As a peace offering, it lacked. But there was nothing Farideh could leave Havilar that would make much of a difference, and if Sairché wanted the thing, at least she knew Havilar would be stubborn about letting go of it. She kissed her sister’s head, just above her horns, fighting the urge to shake Havilar awake, to tell her once more that she was sorry.

  She left before she lost her composure or her nerve. Havilar would find the note after she woke and take it to Mehen. By then Farideh would be gone, and Sairché would leave the both of them alone. She hoped.

  Heart pounding—head pounding—Farideh pulled her cloak closer around her and hurried through the Harpers’ stronghold. There were still at least two hours before her deepnight deadline. She could make it out of the city, well away from anyone else who might track her.

  Farideh made it as far as the middle of the crowded taproom before the sudden sensation of walking into a wire fence stopped her. Lines of power pulled her back toward the stairs. The protective spell, she realized, reminding her of its limits. Reminding her she was too far from Lorcan—who was gone.

  Farideh took a step back, searching the faces of the taproom’s customers. A broad-shouldered half-orc nudged her out of the way, back into the sharp edges of the spell. When she tried to go back the way she came, she found it blocked by bodies pressed close to the bar. She edged her way around the tables and chairs, the searing pain of the protection’s limits enough to make her hold her breath, enough to make her head pound. The edges of her vision started to crackle, stars flashing bright as she inched around the last of the tables.

  It should have pulled Lorcan toward her. It should have eased for her, if not for him. But if he’s not in the protection, she thought frantically, as the stars popped across her field of vision, a thousand swirling colors and shadows, if someone else has hold of it . . .

  Farideh turned and stepped away from the edge of the protection, square into a person. Ale sloshed over her cloak, and she heard a man curse.

  “I’m sorry,” she said automatically. The lights bloomed over her vision and she couldn’t make out how annoyed he was. “I didn’t see—”

  “Farideh?” Dahl said. She took a step back, and the lights dimmed a little. He didn’t look annoyed so much as surprised, even with an empty flagon and ale down his shirt. “What are you doing down here?”

  She shook her head—not now, not now. The lights were still popping in and out of her vision, so abrupt and bright that her ears imagined sounds for them. She glimpsed Dahl’s face between flashes of blue and teal and silvery gray. Between the pops his expression hardened.

  “Were you going somewhere?”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t know . . .”

  “All right. You need to talk to Tam. Now.” Dahl took her by the arm and guided her back through the crowd, but also toward where Lorcan must be.

  Or toward whoever’s captured an edge of your protection spell, she thought, weaving alongside Dahl, back through the bodies and the furniture and the exploding lights. There were more devils in the Hells than a person could count, and any one of them might be aligned against Sairché’s success. Her and Lorcan’s monstrous mother, any one of their half sisters, their terrible liege-lady, another collector devil—

  “Is this . . . fit you’re having to do with the devil?” Dahl asked as they ascended the stairs.

  “I’m n
ot having a fit,” Farideh said. But was she? Maybe it wasn’t Lorcan. Maybe this was some illness she’d caught in the Hells. Maybe this was some curse Sairché laid on her. “I just need to lie down, all right?”

  “Lie down in your cloak with a haversack for a pillow?” Dahl said, corralling her up another set of stairs. “You were running away.”

  No, Farideh thought. I was trying to keep my word. I was trying to get out of this horrible deal alive. I was trying to protect Havilar. “I was going for a walk,” she lied.

  “I’m sure.” Dahl was silent a moment. “You know, I thought Tam could trust you. It’s not such a leap to see hidden agents and traitors in what I’ve heard of your tale, but I was sure that couldn’t be the answer.”

  “I wasn’t here,” she said, as he marched her the rest of the way up the stairs. “I don’t even know who you’re fighting.” But he said no more, as they continued past two guards who spat bursts of yellow and black stars and streamers of red, past a ward he disarmed with a wave of an arm, and into the offices of Tam Zawad.

  “Dahl? What’s wrong,” Tam said, silver bursts of light blooming over him like ice flowers across a windowpane. “Shar pass us over, Fari, are you all right?”

  Three steps past the door, the protection grabbed hold of her again, strong, icy fingers of magic wrapped around her arms, her chest, her throat. She stopped, but Dahl urged her on. Another step, another two—the lights surged. Her legs buckled, and she stumbled backward before she could fall.

  “I can’t,” she said, panting. “Something’s wrong. And I need to go. I need to leave.” Don’t tell them, she thought. Don’t bring them into this. “I’m not feeling well.”

  “She was in the taproom,” Dahl said, “dressed for a journey.”

  “Sit down,” Tam said.

  “I have to stand,” she said. If she sat, she couldn’t move, couldn’t correct for the protection’s pull.

  “You’ll sit,” Tam said. “Before you fall. Dahl, get a chair.” He turned to the sideboard, and through the shroud of lights she could hear the clink of glass. “I don’t have a better cure for nerves,” Tam said with a lightness she didn’t believe. “And perhaps then you can give us a better explanation.”