“Start with the wizard,” he said.
“What about him?” Sairché said. “He’s a nuisance and I can’t wait to see him dead.”
“What in the Hells is he doing?”
Sairché frowned. “Glasya told you nothing?”
“Little enough that I can guess she wants me to fail.”
Sairché hissed. She glanced around the cave out of habit, but any watcher would be subtler than that. “Not here,” she said. She took a few, tentative steps—the stasis cage’s effects still clung to her nerves. “Do you have control of the portal still? Is it working?”
“That thing in your chambers? Yes, it’s working.”
Sairché stretched her wings. They’d hold her weight—she hoped. “The forest,” she said. “The one you’ve almost surely met Magros in? It will be easier to talk. The magic makes scrying hard.”
“No,” Lorcan said, heading for the palace. “Straight to the fortress.” Sairché scowled at him. “Who are you to give orders?”
“The one holding all your magic rings, to begin with.”
“Those weren’t a part of our agreement.”
“No,” he agreed. “They weren’t.”
Sairché fumed. “I would have thought of that if I’d had a moment.” Lorcan gave her a nasty smile. “I suspect we are about to come across all sorts of situations that will make you reconsider having made such a quick agreement.”
From Osseia, the portal dropped them this time on the sharp, black glass battlements of the tower’s highest level and into the middle of a heavy snowfall. Sairché cursed. “That shitting wizard.”
Lorcan looked around. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, that’s what,” Sairché said. “I’ve told him a hundred times if I’ve told him once to fix that stupid barrier so it stops throwing off my portals.”
The clouds hung low enough, Sairché imagined she might be able to drag her fingers through their icy coats if she stood on tiptoe. The snow they dropped collected in the dips and grooves of the obsidian tower, in between the irregular battlements. Sairché shook her wings off and curled them over her head. “You shouldn’t start with Rhand,” Sairché said irritably. “He’s incidental.
Disposable. You ought to start with Farideh.” She glared at Lorcan. “She can’t leave. Not yet.”
“Not until you declare her favor complete.”
“I am not trying to trick you—you try and spirit her out of here, and we’ll all suffer for it. This is dangerous terrain.”
Lorcan gave her a significant look. “These are the plans,” he said, “of Asmodeus.”
Sairché blew out a breath—so he knew that much. “All the archdevils’ actions are within the plans of Asmodeus,” she said carefully. “Of course,” Lorcan said after a moment’s pause. “It would be suicide to do something to upset His Majesty’s plans. Especially plans that seem to be as complicated and delicate as these.” He looked over the jagged battlements, as if considering the swirling snow. “But you must admit, these are particularly complex plans. One might say unnecessarily complex. From the outside, it seems as if you are aiding the Netherese in something. Something involving a great deal of divine power. And you have Stygia at your side—of all the layers—secretly recruiting Red Wizards and assassins.”
“Red Wizards?” Sairché said.
Lorcan smiled. “Oh, was I not supposed to mention them? Give my apologies to Magros when you see him next. And tell him I am not such an idiot as to kill his Chosen for him.” He pulled a strange, long blade out of his scabbard and held it up to Sairché. His eyes darkened. “He is such
an asset.”
“Half right,” Sairché said dryly. She considered the blade. “Is it just a sword?”
“So far as I can see. He doesn’t think much of us, does he? He suggested I kill the agent and the wizard, and leave Farideh to take the blame. Presumably so he could then act surprised I was driven so mad with rage.” Lorcan rubbed his arms. “Apparently he’s through with his agent. Shall we go in?”
“Not yet,” Sairché said, though the cold bothered her too. “Too many ears down there. Magros’s end was to put an agent in the camp—someone for the prisoners to rally around, someone to keep them from doing anything too drastic until arrangements could be made. And then to perform the harvesting.”
“But?”
Sairché smiled despite herself. “But he decided to use the Chosen he was allotted to build up His Highness Prince Levistus’s interests in the North.
Around the time that Many-Arrows decided to give up on being civilized. A pity Asmodeus didn’t grant the fellow an ability to deflect war clubs to the head. He had to find a new agent, and get that one into the camp. I have no idea what he told them or who they are. But if we were dealing with a Red Wizard, I would know.”
“He seems intrigued by them outside the camp. Is he doing anything else?”
“He’s not supposed to be.”
“Then I don’t see other possibilities here,” Lorcan said. “What is it Glasya is having us do?”
“Follow the edicts of Asmodeus,” Sairché said quickly.
“To what end?”
In the Nine Hells, there were none who didn’t know exactly where they stood in the hierarchy of the devils, from the lowest soul to the archlords ruling the layers to Asmodeus, the god of evil standing over all of them.
To fall required only the displeasure of one’s betters. To rise required their pleasure . . . which came chiefly from their own advancement. There was an art to pleasing one’s betters, while not angering their betters.
And when one answered to an archlord . . . that art was very rare indeed. “This world has been in turmoil for the last hundred and fifty years,”
Sairché said carefully. “The strain of chaos makes people hunger for answers, and the coffers of the Hells have swelled. We are powerful, more powerful by the day, because mortals ache for simple answers. Asmodeus is more powerful by the day,” she added.
“Powerful and mad,” Lorcan spat.
“For the moment,” Sairché said, still careful. “The end of that chaos is coming. The crescendo. Asmodeus might have claimed the spark of Azuth, may have armored himself with impressive powers by claiming the succubi, the tieflings, uncountable souls, and more. But what comes next . . . even the gods are afraid of what it might mean. That something more powerful may take their divinity from them, or even wipe away the world. Everything will change soon, and who is as vulnerable, in the eyes of the gods, as the last to gain the spark of the divine?”
Lorcan watched the clouds. “If anyone could cling to the spark, it is His Majesty. But I fail to see how you’re helping him do that.”
“I am doing what is asked of me,” Sairché said significantly. In each of these Chosen is a fragment of the gods’ divine power, infusing their souls. “The wizard thinks he’s gathering Chosen for his goddess’s use, but he will soon find out we have other plans. When it’s done, Asmodeus will have found a way to steal those sparks and thereby the powers of the gods themselves, and leave the blame on the goddess who thought she was gaining all the power. If it should fail . . .” She let the pause hang, filling with all the words she wasn’t saying. “ . . . then Asmodeus would not claim that power, our plans would be revealed, and the goddess in question might be very upset with him. Do you see what I mean?”
Lorcan’s brows rose. “That is,” he said, just as carefully, “a lot of pressure on such a delicate point. And we shouldn’t pretend Prince Levistus has no argument with Asmodeus. He might have it in mind to sabotage these efforts and usurp the throne.”
“ ‘Might’?” Sairché said sarcastically, before schooling her tone once more.
“But that would be foolish—Asmodeus is a god. So long as he is a god, there is no chance another archlord might succeed him. So long as he remains a god. “So long as he remains a god,” Sairché repeated, “the archlords are all his grateful vassals, every one.”
Lorcan blew ou
t a breath. “And so your plan hinges on Farideh. She can’t leave because then everything will come apart.”
“That, and I would not repeat Magros’s mistakes.”
Lorcan turned to face her with such fury and horror in his expression that for a moment, Sairché feared he would break their agreement and throw her off the chipped obsidian battlements. “Magros’s mistakes?” he said. “That’s why Asmodeus wants her alive? Shit and ashes!” He rubbed a hand over his face. Sairché frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Lorcan didn’t answer at first, and once more, her brother’s expression became a mask. “Nothing,” he said. “A minor complication. I didn’t mention it.”
“You had better mention it. Are we allies or not?” Sairché demanded.
“What’s happened?”
He wet his mouth as if the words were threatening to choke him. “His Majesty paid me a brief call.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the plane or the winter threaded through Sairché’s core. “He gave you new orders?”
“No.” Lorcan shuddered violently. “He wasn’t interested in telling me any of this plan, or any of your adjustments to it. All he said was that I had to keep Farideh alive . . .”
“And?”
Lorcan hesitated. “And then . . . he told a joke.”
Sairché’s brother had always had a way with the truth—a calculating stillness that made it impossible to discern how much he had twisted facts to make one hear a different story, how much irony was left to float gently into one’s thoughts masquerading as verity. She studied him a moment—there was no mistaking his agitation.
There was also no mistaking how insane his last comment had been. “He told a joke?” Sairché repeated. “Asmodeus?”
“Yes,” Lorcan said, quieter. “He said he would trust me to do this because he knew I had no ambition in me, that I should keep it to myself and my trusted allies, and that he would reward me handsomely.” He wet his mouth again, as if the very mention of the god of evil dried it out. “And then . . . then he said, ‘Handsomely? Of course, for Asmodeus can do nothing in an ugly fashion.’ And then he laughed.” He shook his head. “I think.”
“You think?” Sairché said.
“Have you ever heard His Majesty laugh?”
Now it was Sairché’s turn to shiver. “Once. At a distance. My bones tried to jelly themselves, as I recall.”
“Exactly,” Lorcan said. He dropped his voice. “That didn’t happen.” Sairché frowned. “Perhaps it was someone else. Perhaps it was a ruse.”
“Who in all the planes has the unholy pluck to stand in the palace of Osseia and pretend to be Asmodeus?” Lorcan hissed. “Every other word he spoke, every heartbeat I lay there, was inarguably in the presence of Asmodeus.”
“And then he told a joke.” Sairché shook her head, wishing she didn’t know that, wishing she were still trapped in the stasis cage. “Even the gods should be afraid of what that might mean.” She sucked her teeth. “What do you think it does mean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care,” Lorcan said, as flustered as she’d ever seen him. “This falls squarely into the category of things we should not consider.”
“I would say ‘things we should hold onto for later,’ ” Sairché said. “But for now, he wants her alive. He never said that before—not that I assumed he’d be pleased. But he didn’t exactly throw Magros to Malbolge when he lost that Chosen. And he never mentioned that stricture in the orders.” Which meant he didn’t want devils to know it mattered. He didn’t want people looking for answers as to why. But it also meant it was critically important if he’d told Lorcan as much.
Sairché wondered if Lorcan realized that.
Lorcan was staring at the clouds again. “You didn’t tell Farideh.”
“Of course I didn’t,” Sairché said. “Do I look like Magros? She would have lost her mind at that sort of revelation.”
“You don’t give her enough credit.” He sighed. “Ashes, we’re playing a dangerous game here.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Sairché said.
He laughed. “You are a little mad these days, aren’t you? You can’t please everyone, and displeasing the wrong person—”
“Have you forgotten the story of His Highness, Prince Levistus?” Sairché asked. “You can seduce the king of the Hells’ own wife, kill her when she refuses you, corrupt his only daughter, thunder around stirring up discontent, and in the end—so long as Asmodeus sees a use for you in the future—come out alive.”
“And frozen in a glacier for all time,” Lorcan said.
“Frozen and alive is still alive,” Sairché said. “Still possible to come back.”
“And what do you have to offer His Majesty that would rival an archduke?”
Lorcan said. “If we fail—”
“We shall simply have to fail less spectacularly than someone else,” Sairché said. “Asmodeus cannot afford to destroy perfectly good pieces in this game and he knows it. Better to keep us in play.”
“But which is worse? Alive and under his notice,” Lorcan asked, “or dead?”
“A very good question,” Sairché conceded, and she headed down the stairs, trusting that her brother was, if nothing else, too curious to stab her in the back just yet.
The snow had started falling again, great fluffy clumps that melted away as soon as they landed on the blood-slicked courtyard. There was no covering the carnage. There was no washing away the deaths of the prisoners.
They are dead, Farideh’s thoughts repeated, over and over like a terrible chant, they are all dead. This is what your bad decisions have wrought.
The shadar-kai had to shove the prisoners in, like cattle into a slaughterhouse. They passed by in a blur—angry, afraid, staring up at Farideh as if she were a monster. She could not tell them that this was safer.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the young man staring up at her, the old woman clutching her throat, the little genasi girl screaming and screaming.
I cannot save them, Farideh thought. I cannot save anyone. Not even myself.
She stared down at this—the last group for the day, Rhand had promised—the excuse hollow and dusty in her own thoughts. She ought to be planning. She ought to be counterattacking, she ought to be figuring out how to outmaneuver Rhand, she ought to be clever—if there were one thing Farideh could do in a fight, it was think ahead, so why didn’t she? It sounded so much like Mehen’s voice, her heart ached to ignore it. She could be as clever as a general out of one of Mehen’s bedtime stories, and Rhand would still win, because he held too many lives in his hands.
Every time she tried to outthink him, to pull herself out of the shock and grief for the sake of the prisoners who still lived, that truth lay as plain and ugly as the sticky gloss of blood the snow couldn’t wash away. Every time she hesitated, the guards reached for their weapons, their excitement shimmering off of them like the heat off the cobblestones in the city of Proskur seven summers ago.
I should have cast, she thought as she named the Chosen. I should have leaped down into the pit, put myself between the swords and them. I should have attacked Rhand, pushed him into the pit. I should have run, she thought, and still she named the Chosen.
As each of those acts played out in her thoughts, the result was the same: The guards would react. Rhand would react. And with so many against her, she would fail, she would suffer. More people would die. She would die and Sairché would win. Havilar would be lost. It was as if she had already taken the wrong path seven and a half years earlier and there was no turning off it now.
Action was wrong. Inaction was wrong. She could not win without losing. She pointed to the last Chosen in the group—a human woman with her brown hair in long plaits. She glared at Farideh, a condemnation Farideh let soak through her. She deserved every bit of it.
“There now,” Rhand said. “That wasn’t so bad.”
True, Farideh thought bitterly. There were more uncomfortable ways to d
amn your soul. If she could have hoped to find lenience for the Chosen she’d sorted before she knew what was going on—despite the fact she’d known well enough that Rhand was a villain—there was nothing, no justification, no appealing artifice, to lessen the deaths of the third group of prisoners, nor the Chosen she’d doomed afterward.
The tiefling woman’s ghost appeared, hovering just behind Rhand, faint as Farideh’s breath on the cold air. The ghost stared at her successor as she always did—cool and stern—before gesturing at her swirling locks. Farideh slipped the ruby comb from her pocket, jamming it heedlessly into the smoothed hair of her crown.
Now you see what he’s capable of, the ghost said. Now you see you must fight fire with fire.
Farideh shook her head, knowing better than to answer. There were too many complications, too many ramifications. Rhand might not win, but she would always lose. And more importantly, innocent people would lose as well.
Do you know who you are? the ghost said. What you can master? You have let a weakling—a robber, cloaked in magician’s robes—outwit you by playing on soft feelings. He cannot afford to lose these people—you know that and so does he. Steel yourself—a few more dead, a score of dead, it is nothing compared to what he’ll do. He cannot afford to lose you.
Farideh turned from her, to look at Rhand where he stood giving arcane directions to his apprentices. He looked up at Farideh and smiled unpleasantly.
You have no choice, the ghost said. You fight or you die.
“Come,” Rhand said. “My guest wishes to speak to you.”
Even terror at facing the Nameless One again could not break through Farideh’s numbness. She stared down at the snow landing on the blood-dark cobbles. It cannot be worse, she thought. You are trapped. They are trapped. You cannot save them.
And no one, she thought, remembering Lorcan’s cold fury, remembering Havilar’s refusal to meet her eye, is going to save you.
Maybe it was better that way.
Rhand took her by the arm, and there her gloom found its limits, and a spark of rage and revulsion seared through the fog. But she didn’t fight as he led her up the stairs, trailed by Nirka and her unsheathed knives.
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