“Shush!” one of the ghouls yelped. “Stop it! Loud!”
“She was barren?” Khochen said, but she was guessing now, and he laughed until he thought his scales would shake off and the ghouls would go mad of the sound.
“She was from a bad family? She . . . wasn’t a dragonborn?”
“Gods damn it!” the female wizard shouted. “Shut up, you brazen fool!”
“Well, well,” Mehen said. “I suppose you’re not as observant as you think you are, Harper.”
Before Khochen could reply, the shrieking ghoul leaped away from its handler, yanking the lead from the apprentice’s hand. The young man snatched at the line, missed, and worse, in his efforts let his grip on the remaining ghouls slip. Two more broke free.
“Catch them!” the other apprentice shouted. “Catch them, quick!”
Daranna ignored the apprentice’s meaning, pulling her bow and nocking an arrow to it almost as quickly as she let it fly. It struck one fleeing ghoul directly in the base of its skull, and the creature dropped like a stone. Another fled past Vescaras and into the High Forest, scored by his rapier. Lord Ammakyl and two of the scouts ran after it.
The first ghoul turned, mad-eyed and slavering on Mehen. It barreled toward him, and Mehen hardly had time to pull his falchion free before the corpselike creature reached him.
But not an arm’s reach from him, the ghoul stopped, flinched, and scrambled back. Mehen took hold of the amulet. “Stop!” it barked. “Shush! Stop it!” It threw itself at him again, as if it didn’t care what the amulet did.
A blade reached out of nowhere, skewering the ghoul through its bony ribcage. “You are not behaving,” the boneclaw thundered, holding the speared ghoul up like a tidbit of meat plucked from the spit. “Mistress Zahnya has decided to be unwise. Do not compound that.”
“Ow,” the ghoul mewled. “Sharp.”
The boneclaw let the weaker creature slide to the ground. The apprentice who’d loosed it dropped beside the ghoul, casting dark magic that slithered over the ghoul’s blood-blackened skin and muttering to himself. The other apprentice turned on Daranna, who was staring into the forest, after the lost ghoul. “You fool,” she shouted, storming toward Daranna. “You’ve killed the other one, and we haven’t got time to—”
Daranna replied with the butt of her bow, slammed into the apprentice’s nose.
“Enough,” Zahnya said, emerging from her palanquin. She surveyed the damage, clearly biting back her rage. “Harper, heal her. And then, Mayati, burn the corpse.” She looked at Mehen. “What did you do?”
“Not a thing,” Khochen answered. “Your pets seem a bit sensitive.”
Zahnya glared at the Tuigan spymaster. “Give me the amulet,” she said to Mehen. “You obviously can’t be trusted with it.”
“The amulet worked fine,” Mehen said. “Just your ghouls aren’t convinced of it.” He tilted his head. “Maybe you ought to be out here, walking with us. Remind them of their place.”
“Don’t chide me,” Zahnya said. Her gaze slid to the palanquin, as if she were thinking about what lay within. “Push on,” she said after a moment, climbing back into her place. “And if you kill any more of my creatures, our deal is done.”
“Excellent,” Daranna murmured. She glowered at Khochen and at Mehen, who hoped dearly it wouldn’t come to a battle before they reached the camp and Farideh.
Chapter Fifteen
The Palace of Osseia Malbolge, the Nine Hells
If Lorcan’s erinyes half sisters had little idea of what to do with Sairché as their commander, they had even less idea of what to do with him. The last few days, each one he passed watched him as if she were trying to decide just how severe the punishment would be if she opted to swat him with the flat of her sword, like in the old days. Lorcan had made a point of avoiding their haunts and posts—he needed a better plan than “look like you belong” before he tempted the elite erinyes of the pradixikai.
But when he returned from Rhand’s fortress, full of words he hadn’t said and retorts he hadn’t made, keeping his guard up was the last thing on Lorcan’s mind.
If possible the wizard was worse than he’d imagined: unbearably smug, not the least bit concerned that a representative of the Hells themselves was standing in his chambers. Lorcan still wished he’d broken that smug grin, wished he’d given Farideh something to look at.
What did she tell you? Enough, he thought, blood boiling. He wasn’t an idiot. He hadn’t lapped up Sairché’s lies—and how dare she suggest it. He’d been at this long enough to spot the truth among the deceptions.
I cannot tell you how glad I am you’re safe. What else would she say, faced with her betrayal come undone? She promised. Oh, Lorcan thought, I’ll bet she did. He could just hear Sairché, “Not to worry. He’ll be taken care of.” I was trying—However she meant to finish, it only made him more angry. He’d told her not to trust Sairché, and she had. He’d told her not to talk to Temerity, and she had. He’d told her she was just another warlock and lied, baldly, for the first time he could recall.
He wished he’d prodded at Farideh, made her confess. Made her tell him every secret about that shitting wizard. Made her admit that she was in well over her head. Raged and threatened and made her remember he wasn’t some accessory she could discard—
“Lost, little brother?” Lorcan looked up—a trio of erinyes, one of the pradixikai and two lesser. Noreia with her wooly black dreadlocks, and the twins, Faventia and Fidentia.
Lorcan looked around. “Oh I don’t think so,” he said savagely. If ever in his life there were a time he would gladly go toe-to-toe with his terrible half sisters, it was that moment. “These are still my quarters. Do I need to find something for you to do?” Faventia and Fidentia traded glances.
“Baby sister might have something to say about that,” Noreia said. Did she say how I know him? Farideh had demanded. Why I didn’t tell you?
Lorcan bit his tongue. “She’d find it difficult.”
“Would she?” Faventia asked, lazily shifting her scabbard. “Where’ve you put her?”
“Why? Do you want to keep her company?”
Faventia smiled around her fearsome fangs. “Try it.”
“Go sort out those godsbedamned cultists,” Lorcan snarled. “Earn your bloody keep.”
All three erinyes collapsed into laughter.
“Lorcan,” Faventia drawled, “telling us to earn our keep?” Wordlessly, he slipped a ring over one finger, and flames swallowed his arm. The erinyes shifted—more aware, more prepared. Not willing to back down though.
“Aw, little brother,” Noreia crooned. “We were just starting to have fun.” Lorcan scowled. “ ‘We’ have nothing . . .” His retort trailed away as pieces he didn’t even know were missing locked into place.
I was trying—Farideh had said, and in his memories Havilar’s voice finished the phrase she’d left hanging—to protect us.
Lorcan froze. Oh, Lords of the Nine.
“Maybe you don’t,” Noreia said. “But the three of us—”
“Shut up, Noreia,” Lorcan spat. He’d put everything together wrong.
He yanked the ring off as he turned on his heel. There was one way to be sure.
“What’s wrong, little brother?” Noreia called, while the others hooted and cackled. “Did you just remember who you’re talking to?” He made no response, but forced the portal open once more, slipping the ruby ring on his off-hand and concentrating on the necklace it was linked to.
He stepped out into the dim of twilight. Havilar was sitting as if at watch, her back against a huge oak. But her eyes were on the ground in front of her, lost in unhappy thoughts. Brin was nowhere to be seen.
Havilar startled when Lorcan called her name, a dagger in her hand as if it had leaped there. She glowered at him.
“Four breaths,” she said. “And you’re gone, or I kill you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Lorcan admonished. “If you could do that, I wouldn’t have com
e.” He looked around at the forest. “You’re a lot farther on than I expected. Brin didn’t make you turn back?”
“Two breaths,” she warned.
“Oh, calm down,” he said. “I want to ask you something.” Havilar narrowed her eyes and didn’t lower the weapon. But two breaths passed and she didn’t lunge. “Ask,” she said. “And go.”
Lorcan wet his mouth, half-hoping he was wrong. “You said Farideh was trying to protect us—”
“She was.”
Lorcan took a step back, just to calm her down. “I believe you. But who,”
he asked, “is ‘us’?”
Havilar lowered her dagger, staring at him as if he’d gone more than a little mad in the last two days. “What?”
“Is ‘us’ you and her?” he said. “Or is ‘us’ . . . you and me?”
“Are you joking?” Havilar demanded. “You stormed off and left Farideh to die because you thought she’d suddenly turned into a sensible person and let your sister have you? Of course I meant me and you!”
That Farideh would throw herself into a deal with Sairché to protect Havilar, he had never doubted. But to protect him . . . “You didn’t hear her talk that night,” he said. “She was ready to dissolve the pact.” Havilar shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “She was angry at you—you don’t kill people just because you’re angry, you henish.” Her gaze flicked over him. “Maybe you do.”
“But it’s fine and good to give them up to their enemies? You can’t wish away that part of—”
“Why did you think your sister just laid there and let you pummel her?”
Havilar cried. “She’s not allowed to hurt us—that’s the whole karshoji reason Farideh even said yes. Gods, you don’t listen to anything. It’s like double-Farideh.” Lorcan fell quiet, weighing his words, remembering Sairché’s capture.
She’d fought back a little, hadn’t she? He’d been clever—caught her unawares, gotten her where she couldn’t do anything to him.
“If I recall correctly,” he said, “I was already protecting you just fine back in Proskur.”
“And if I ‘recall correctly,’ you were frozen like a statue when I came in, and your godsbedamned sister was stalking around with a wand. Really, astounding job of protecting us.” She glanced off to her right. “Brin, don’t!” Flames poured into his hands as Lorcan turned to where the Cormyrean stood, not three feet from him with his sword out. Behind, near the edge of the brush, was a brace of rabbits. He hadn’t heard a thing.
“Back away,” Brin said to Lorcan, and the cambion wondered if there were a godsbedamned thing that had gotten simpler in the intervening years. “Put your sword down,” Havilar said irritably. “I don’t need to be saved from Lorcan.”
Lorcan narrowed his eyes. “Oh really?” he said. “I’m fairly sure I could burn you before your dear darling’s sword hit me. Send you off to the cavern, plenty quick.”
“You could,” Havilar said. “But you won’t. If you hurt me and then go save Farideh, she’s not going to be happy with you.” She folded her arms. “Besides, we’re . . . What’s less than friends? But not enemies, either?”
“Associates?” Brin said. “Collaborators?”
Lorcan shook the flames out. “Allies,” he said.
“Good enough,” Havilar said. Brin lowered his sword.
“She’s near here,” Lorcan said. “Maybe two days walking. Up on the mountain’s peak. There’s a fortress, a camp around it. She’s in there.”
“With the Netherese?” Brin asked.
“A wizard called Adolican Rhand.”
Neither of them spoke to him for a long moment. “That’s not funny,”
Brin finally said.
“It’s not meant to be,” Lorcan replied.
“You left her there?” Havilar cried. “With him? I told you he was—”
“You told me he wasn’t your type,” Lorcan snapped. He nodded at Brin.
“And I can see that—they’re not exactly a matched set, are they?” Havilar’s cheeks turned bright red.
“Adolican Rhand,” Brin said calmly, “is wanted for several murders in Waterdeep—grotesque murders. The watch would be after him for the rapes as well, only the victims are all dead and in pieces.”
Lorcan shut his eyes, the fine edge of guilt threatening his certainty. Not one of Rhand’s dark jests had bothered him in the slightest, aside from being not, in fact, amusing. Mortals said they’d do a lot of things, after all. They seldom followed through.
And if this one did . . . He wondered if what Asmodeus would do to him would be the worst of it, after all.
“Farideh can handle herself,” he said, not sure of who he was trying to convince. “Besides, she has to stay. If she reneges on her deal with Sairché, she loses her soul.” If she hasn’t already, Lorcan thought. You still don’t know what’s happening.
“What are his forces like?” Brin asked.
“Well, it’s overrun with guards. And he is a wizard.”
Brin shook his head. “He’s not that powerful. He makes as if he is, but we’re pretty sure he’s been trading on scrolls he recovered from the library’s destruction.”
“You don’t have to be too powerful to hit a small force from a high point.” Brin shook his head. “The distance—”
“Stop talking!” Havilar shouted. “Lorcan, you go back and you save her.
Brin, we have to—”
“Eat,” Brin interrupted. “And rest. We can’t walk for two days on fear and anger.”
Havilar drew back as if he’d called her a filthy name. “How am I supposed to sleep knowing how much trouble my sister’s in?”
“It’s no more trouble than she’s been in since we left,” Brin reminded her.
“And we’re not going to get to her any faster if we collapse a hundred feet from the fortress. We’re still doing what we can.” Havilar turned from him, and Brin pursed his mouth.
“Also, I have some of Tam’s sleeping tea,” Brin added. “So, we’ll try that.” Havilar glared at Lorcan. “What are you going to do?”
Lorcan held up the portal ring, glad at least for a plan even if he didn’t particularly enjoy it. “To begin with,” he said, “add to our list of allies.”
Sairché wasn’t sure at first that she’d woken. The world around her was little better than her nightmares: the bars of the cage, the dark shadows of the cave, the meaty gape of its mouth revealing Malbolge’s virulent landscape beyond. And between her and escape, Lorcan, scowling at her. Holding a red ring.
The cage’s control ring.
“Was I always meant to be a part of the deal?” he asked curtly. Sairché fumbled for words, finding splinters of glass instead. She gagged and spat the remains of the portal bead. “What . . . deal?”
“The deal you made with Farideh,” he said. “Did you intend to include me? Was that in the offer?”
Deal . . . Sairché shut her eyes and leaned against the cage’s bars. Asmodeus.
Dangerous . . .
A crackle of electricity jolted through Sairché’s frame, throwing her off the bars, her muscles all contracting painfully. She fell backward, against the cage, too penned in to drop to her knees.
Lorcan released his grip on the ring. “Was I always meant to be part of the deal?” he repeated.
“No,” Sairché said, panting. “It was a possibility. But I’d hoped to avoid it. I’d hoped she’d take the chance to rid herself of you.”
“What did you give her?”
“Protection until her twenty-seventh birthday,” Sairché said. “For her, for the sister, and for you. In exchange for two favors.”
Lorcan goggled. “Two favors?”
“There was a premium for including you,” Sairché said, mustering a bit of venom. She looked around the cave, remembering the fight in the forest and the portal bead. She ran her tongue over her ragged gums. “How long have I been here?”
Lorcan held up the control rin
g. “It’s still my turn. You have to protect me under her deal? That’s why you didn’t fight back.”
“She wouldn’t budge without it,” Sairché said. “Besides, I was half hoping you’d come out mad enough to kill her or make her kill you, solve all my problems in one blow.”
Lorcan stared at her for so long that Sairché wondered what she’d stirred up in his thoughts. “You know something,” she said. She took in her necklace of magical rings, hanging around his neck like a badge of office. “Her Highness made you take over.”
Lorcan smiled. “Indeed.”
“So that’s why you woke me? Can’t handle the hierarchy alone?”
“You and I both know this is bigger than the hierarchy,” Lorcan said. “I want to make a truce. I’ll let you out. We’ll help each other get out of this. You can’t kill me, and you can’t set me up to be snared by another devil—not till her twenty-seventh birthday. But you do what I say and I’ll return the favor.” Sairché smiled. “Or what?”
“Or Glasya makes you suffer for your failure.”
“She’ll kill you too.”
“ ‘Too,’ ” Lorcan said, “being the operative word.”
Sairché considered him, considered the gaps that existed in the deal. Her thoughts were still slow and syrupy. But the alternative was unavoidable: stay in the cage until someone came to kill her.
“Fine,” she said, slipping a hand between the thorny bars. “Until next Marpenoth.”
Lorcan clasped it as though he’d rather crush it. “Not a heartbeat later.”
He took a step back. “Which of these unlocks it?”
Sairché would have dearly liked to point to the diamond circle nestled in the right-side stack. But even thinking of suggesting her brother slip on the cursed ring made her prior agreement prickle at her brain. She was devil enough to be bound by her agreements—at least he would be too. “The control ring will do it. Flip it over so the dark side is closest to you, and put it on your other hand.”
The door sprang open, and Sairché stumbled from the cage. It could only have been a few days since she was trapped, and even still her muscles were confused and sapped. Lorcan made no move to assist her.
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