Lorcan gave another of those hopeless sounding laughs. “Avoid them too.”
“They thought the Glasyans were after them. Is that Rohini’s doing?”
“Why are you trying to puzzle all of this out?” Lorcan cried. “There’s nothing to be gained by knowing what the plans of archdevils are. It’s only going to draw their eyes. We shouldn’t even be guessing at what Rohini is tasked with.”
“I’m trying to figure out what we should be doing before your fifty-eight half-sisters show up along with Rohini and her karshoji-possessed aboleths, and tear this city to the ground.” She fought the urge to threaten him with the rod again. “You’re the one who brought up Ashmadai before. You’re the one who claimed we were in the middle of a Hellish civil war. You’re the one demanding I get out of Neverwinter safely, so help me. Tell me what we’re dealing with.”
But Lorcan merely clamped his mouth shut and shook his head emphatically.
“Fine.” Farideh turned her back to him. “We need to get back to the hall and to Mehen. Without running into any more devils.”
“And we have to undo what Rohini’s done to Mehen,” Havilar added. She looked up at Lorcan. “Does he know how to do that?”
“We try things until they work,” Farideh answered. “Starting with Brin’s magic.”
“No,” Brin said. “I’m not strong enough … you need a more powerful priest than me.”
“Luckily this place is lousy with priests,” Havilar said. “Tam is somewhere here, isn’t he?”
Farideh pursed her lips. “He said to meet him outside the South Gate. We don’t have time to find him.”
“You have to,” Brin said. “Unless you have powerful potions up your sleeves?”
“A present from your lousy priest?” Lorcan muttered.
“What sort of potions?” Farideh asked. “A potion of vitality? Would that do it?”
“Well … yes,” Brin said. He squinted at her. “Where did you get a potion of vitality?”
“I don’t have one,” Farideh said. “But Yvon did. There’s one on the shelf of the shop.”
“The Ashmadai place?” Havilar said.
Lorcan snorted. “How terribly safe.”
Farideh ignored him. “It’ll be fine. They’re all dead, remember?”
“Not by a long shot.”
Farideh glared at Lorcan. “I’m sorry, I thought you didn’t want to puzzle this out. Have you got something to add?”
He regarded her a long moment, as if he did, as if he wanted to spell out what she was missing. But he turned resolutely to the window. “Don’t say you’re sorry when you’re not.”
“What do you mean they aren’t all dead?” Havilar demanded. “Farideh said we killed them all.”
Lorcan paused, as if he didn’t want to say. “The Ashmadai are as numerous as termites in Neverwinter. And now they’re angry. If Rohini left even one alive, scads of them are now looking for the two of you.”
Farideh cursed. Why did Lorcan always have to be right? Aboleths and cultists of Asmodeus, and devils serving Glasya—you’re being stubborn if you stay here, she thought. Nothing but stubborn.
“Fine,” Farideh said. “We need one to go get the potion and one to get Mehen out of the temple. Brin, you’re the one the Ashmadai haven’t seen. You break into the shop.” She looked at Havilar and bit her lip. The worst of her shock had subsided, but she was still looking drawn and nervous. Farideh couldn’t ask Havilar to come anywhere near Rohini, not if the succubus might possess her again.
“Can you go with him?” she asked. “He’ll need someone to guard him.”
Havilar nodded once. “And I’m fast,” she said, half to herself. “I can get there quick and be back to meet you—”
“No,” Farideh said. “We meet by the gate. If something happens, you can’t be caught.” She hesitated a moment and turned to Brin. “Keep up if you can, heal her if the bandage doesn’t hold. I’ll bring Mehen to you.”
Brin glanced up at Lorcan. “Is he going with you?”
“No,” Farideh said, just as Lorcan answered, “Yes.”
“No,” she said again, “you aren’t.”
“Rohini must have a portal to the Hells. She couldn’t travel back and forth without one. Since my … path, is clearly not working, I might as well come with you and find hers.” He smirked. “It’s just convenient.”
“Or we could kill you,” Havilar piped. “That would send you back.”
He glowered. “That doesn’t work on half-devils.”
“Havi, go,” Farideh said. “We don’t have much time. Brin, go with her. Keep your eyes open. If you run into Ashmadai—”
“Yes, Mehen,” Havilar said, sliding into her glaive’s harness. “We’ll be careful.”
Words caught in Farideh’s mouth—she wanted to warn Havilar, to snap at her for being flippant, to tell her she loved her dearly in case something happened. To say she was sorry for everything that had brought them here. There wasn’t time. She hugged her twin tight. “Be careful.”
“I’ll try,” Havilar said, squeezing her back. “You be careful, too. You don’t need me to tell you, worrywart, but do it anyway.” Farideh chuckled.
She made a point of hugging Brin as well, stiff and awkward as it felt. “Don’t let her fight any cultists,” she murmured. “Please.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
Havilar eyed Lorcan a moment before giving Farideh one last, significant look—a reminder that being careful extended to the cambion—and heading down the wall with Brin following.
You will see her again, she told herself. It made the lump in her throat harder to swallow. Farideh looked back over her shoulder at Lorcan, who was still giving her a petulant, puzzled sort of stare.
“What in all the planes were you doing in an Ashmadai safe-house?” he asked quietly.
“Finding a way out of this pact.”
His eyes tightened, and he folded his arms over his chest. “How clever of you. No better way to the peaks of the Hells than clinging to the god of sin’s most brutal followers.”
“Fortunately I have other options,” she said, ignoring the insult. “If you’re going to follow me, you ought to put your disguise back on.”
“You do make a much better tyrant than a killer.”
“Put it on, or don’t follow me,” she said. She turned from him, her anger getting the better of her. “Gods, I can’t believe all this time you could make yourself look human. It was just too much fun popping up and putting me in danger, wasn’t it?”
“You may have noticed earlier,” he said bitterly, “the spell causes a great deal of pain. I save it for emergencies. Like rescuing you.”
“You mean ‘trying to drag me out of where you couldn’t get me’?”
“You ripped me out of my disguise and into my proper skin. I think we’re even on that score.”
She spun on him. “I used the amulet to protect myself from you! You don’t get credit for that.”
“An enormous waste of its powers,” he said tightly. “I’d never hurt you like Rohini will.”
She couldn’t deny Rohini’s danger—but that didn’t mean Lorcan wasn’t dangerous himself. The amulet wouldn’t have done anything if he weren’t. She pulled herself straight and stared him down. “You hurt me enough.”
He stepped closer, and her pulse sped. “And I save you plenty. I could still get you out of here. You know I’m right—you are not a match for archdevils and aboleths.”
“Maybe I’m not,” she said. “But I’m not a coward.” She walked away. “Besides,” she said, reaching for the handholds in the broken wall, “you don’t have your portal.”
He grabbed her arm. “I could fly. Carry you out of here. I could fly you to the House of Knowledge if you’re really set on this mad plan.”
Whipping through the cool rain, dozens of feet above the slick roofs of the city, the cobbled roads, with only Lorcan to keep her from falling—Farideh shuddered. He’d go where he wanted
and she’d be stuck, clinging to his neck.
“Take your hand off me before the amulet makes you.” She climbed down the wall to the lower level. If he was going to be difficult, that was not her problem at all. Much as she found herself hoping Lorcan would help, she knew perfectly well it wasn’t in his nature. Changing Lorcan would be as impossible as saving him. Let it go, she told herself as she clambered over the ancient lava flow.
He dropped through the open stairwell and landed in front of her, holding up a hand to ease her down. She didn’t take it.
“You trust me enough to hear your plans when I could easily go over to Rohini,” he said. “I think you don’t really care how it turns out, you just want to be seen to make the effort. And who would blame you? Mehen never appreciated all you were. He shouldn’t be surprised if you leave him to his fate.”
She bore it, only watching the cracks in his facade. Something had changed. It was so much like Havi, upset and not sure why she was upset—only lashing out because it wasn’t coming clear. Waiting for Farideh to puzzle it out.
“I don’t have time to coddle you,” she said after a moment. “So help me, or go to Rohini—whatever your plans are.”
“Fine!” he snapped. “But don’t blame me when you end up dead!”
“You’re afraid, aren’t you? You’re afraid you won’t make it home alive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It doesn’t make you a coward. We’re all—”
“I am not a coward!” he seethed. “And how dare you imply it, after I defended you from my sisters, rescued you from Sairché, without as much as a ‘many thanks’ from you.”
“Many thanks,” she said. But still he had that uncomfortable, frustrated look. He flexed his wings in a fidgety way, but wouldn’t say any more. After a moment, Farideh left the building. Lorcan could fix himself.
But in short order he was beside her again.
“You could have let that sword fall,” he said. “I know you were thinking of letting it.”
“I didn’t want you to die,” she said, growing annoyed. “And besides, you did the same thing as me—pushing me away like that, telling me to run. If saving you is such a slight, then you were just as bad.”
“That’s not the same!”
“It’s exactly the same. You would have died.”
“I would have died anyway—they wanted to kill me, you stupid girl. You could have run and escaped their notice!”
“And you could have flown away and found some other heir!” she shouted. “But you didn’t!”
“I …” Lorcan trailed off, surprised, and Farideh realized he hadn’t been baiting her: it had not occurred to him to flee. The clearest, simplest action—the one thing selfish Lorcan should have found obvious to his very core—and he hadn’t done it. Because he’d been afraid that she would be hurt.
She wasn’t just a piece in his collection, and he didn’t know what to do with that. Suddenly she couldn’t quite look at him.
“Or maybe I wanted you to owe me,” she said, though it was a lie, though it was in no way what she would have done, though it made no sense even if she had done it. It was less complicated than what threatened to be true. “And now you do. So you’ll help me face Rohini?” she asked, turning the topic.
But Lorcan was still agitated. “Darling, she is going to kill you!” he said with sudden earnestness. He took her arms—gently; the amulet didn’t react. Farideh wondered if it could tell at all what was dangerous and what was safe. “What do I have to say to get you to understand that? You will be dead, and there is nothing I can do to fix that. Nothing.” He let her go. “Even your little paladin isn’t going to be able to save you.”
There, that was the Lorcan she knew. That raw moment might never have happened, and they might go back to what they always were: her sword, his treasure. “If you don’t want to lose your set, you should help me.”
For the barest of seconds, she thought he might storm off. She turned to walk away, only to find herself scooped up in Lorcan’s arms, and vaulting into the empty air. His wings flapped heavily, gusting the air around him as he sought the new balance of their combined weight. Farideh glanced down once, at the street below and the buildings growing smaller and smaller. Her stomach turned and she wrapped her arms around Lorcan’s neck tight enough to choke him and shut her eyes.
“Now,” he said firmly, “I don’t owe you anything.”
Sairché sat in a dark corner and listened to the garrulous mortals arguing the same points over and over again. For the most part, the Ashmadai didn’t possess secrets worth hearing. She fought the urge to sigh and listened as a warty little man with watery eyes again ran down the list of cultists who had not come to their impromptu meeting, the interminable planning session that would lead to revenge.
By the look of things, most of the Ashmadai were just as antsy as Sairché.
“An insult this great,” the warty little man said in a smooth, slippery voice, “is an insult to us all, and worse, an insult to Asmodeus himself.”
Sairché rolled her eyes. One tended to live a great deal longer if one didn’t attempt to put motives in the king of the Hells’s mouth.
“Simply listen,” Glasya said. “Make certain they are coming to amenable conclusions. If they do not, feel free to guide them.”
Sairché was prepared to, but once they were past the point of laying blame on their absent comrades, the assembled Ashmadai spat out information and cobbled it together more quickly than Sairché would have ever given mortals credit for:
The shadow devil had blamed “the Sovereignty.” The Sovereignty was spoken of on the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was a sailors’ tale. It was a true and terrible threat. It was the ruler of the creatures of the sea and spellplague. It was the origin of all madness.
They strung rumors together like pearls on a necklace—the nightmares of the Chasm, the hospital that ministered to spellscarred soldiers and the secret experiments everyone knew were carried out there, the smug priest who ran things, the visits he paid to a certain peculiar gentleman who lived on the edge of the river. The Abolethic Sovereignty. The fearsome aboleths. The Chasm’s monsters, and the strange way they all mimicked one another—the lashing tentacles, the poisonous slime, the reminders of the nightmares everyone knew came with proximity to the Chasm—and didn’t, as if a mad sculptor built them one by one, the Ashmadai mused. As if something was crafting and sending them out. It would be easy, and clever too, to send them out in the guise of the Ashmadai’s known enemies, to harry and winnow them while they in turn harried and winnowed the ranks of other cults. They thought they were clever, these aboleths—well they had not yet met the followers of the Raging Fiend.
As Sairché watched the Ashmadai circling up for the sacrifice that would call up Asmodeus’s emissary to pass along the information of this new and eldritch threat, her mouth pulled down in a frown of puzzlement.
Sairché knew, as well as anyone knew, that getting too clever around the schemes of an archdevil could easily lead to an early death. Or worse. But as she watched the Ashmadai pin down a struggling half-elf woman, she couldn’t help but wonder at Glasya’s intentions. She’d gleaned from listening to Invadiah and Rohini that Rohini’s mission was to infiltrate the Sovereignty and get Invadiah access to an aboleth. Sairché had assumed that Glasya wanted to capture one of the interplanar monsters for one reason or another, and didn’t wonder too hard about why.
But the archduchess had sent Sairché not to lure the Sovereignty, not to redirect the Ashmadai away from her agents, but to drive them toward Rohini, thinking they were fighting the Sovereignty.
It was almost as if the aboleths had nothing at all to do with any of Glasya’s Neverwinter plans.
The woman’s screams broke her concentration and she settled back to watch the rest of the sacrifice. Glasya would want to know if they were successful at passing on this new theory.
Yvon stirred close to consciousness several times. He heard the
voices of strangers, saw limbs strewn across his field of view, and once heard Lector’s strident tones, diminished by fatigue or something like it. When he finally broke free and woke from his fitful half-sleep, he sat up and found himself covered over with several stiff bodies. Sekata looked down at him, her chest a ruin and a fly walking over the surface of her eye.
Yvon pushed her body off in a sudden panic and hauled himself dizzily to his feet. The room was littered with bodies and splattered with blood and smears of char where spells had broken over the timbers and brick. His own gut was throbbing in pain, and as he touched his abdomen he found it bloodied and feverishly hot. Still disoriented he fished in his pockets for a small pouch and withdrew a potion—a sample of Sekata’s wares—downing it in one gulp. The wound flared for a moment, then subsided, still there, but no longer a death sentence. He tore lengths of cloth from another fellow’s robes to make a bandage.
Then he remembered the twins.
He froze, looking around the room, but all was still and silent. If they were still here, they weren’t ready to attack. He crept carefully over the fallen bodies, noting faces. So many.…
In the middle of the floor lay a chain and a small silver amulet. Lector’s paralysis charm. Yvon’s shaking, bloodstained fingers scooped the valuable necklace up. Valuable, he thought, but it did Lector no favors. It was what came of putting your faith in breakable things. He crept slowly up the stairs, favoring his wound.
Kalam—poor boy—had been laid out beside the entrance and covered over with a sheet. A new man, a tiefling with broad shoulders and heavy horns, sat on a stool beside him, sharpening a short curved blade.
“You,” Yvon said, his voice rasping. The guard jumped, nearly taking off a thumb. “You there.”
“Hells, are you alive?” The guard was on his feet and ushering Yvon toward the door and fresh air. “Your pardon,” he said. “It seemed like no one down there was still breathing.”
The rush of cool, damp air was a welcome change from the bloody stink of the cellar. “They’re all dead?”
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