Brimstone Angels

CHAPTER FIVE

The Palace of Ossela, Malbolge, the Nine Hells

Lorcan stepped through the portal into a small room dominated by a green obelisk as tall as he was and enclosed by fleshy walls that oozed a sickly, yellow fluid. A polyp of glowing tissue hung from the ceiling, casting the orderly piles of Exalted Invadiah’s treasure in a cold light.

He held still while the portal swirled around the base of the Needle of the Crossroads and scanned his mother’s treasure room. Nothing. Sairche wasn’t waiting for him. He let out a breath and stepped away, shutting the portal of the Needle of the Crossroads.

Godsdamned Sairche. What was she playing at?

A large iron mirror hung on the wall beside the Needle. As Lorcan stepped close, the spells woven into a matching iron pin on his sleeve stirred the reflection on the surface, and his reflection became that of a young tiefling man, laboring over a book in the candlelight. Lorcan waved his hand and the image slipped away, replaced by a middle-aged tiefling woman with striking silver hair looking out a window. The brand that marked her as Lorcan’s warlock was prominently displayed, framed by a series of cut-outs along the back of her dress.

The scrying mirror slid from one tiefling warlock to the next. Thirteen warlocks-each descended from the original thirteen tieflings in Faerun who had made the Pact Infernal with Asmodeus himself, trading the admixture of fiendish blood in their veins for the king of the Hells’ own.

Or so they say, Lorcan thought.

Regardless of history, a full complement of the tiefling heirs was rare and difficult to come by. Lorcan only knew of three other devils who had managed it, all further up the cutthroat hierarchy of the Hells than he’d ever be.

The trouble was, when a warlock was so invested in channeling the powers of the Hells as to make a pact with the king of the Hells himself, they didn’t tend to spend much time raising offspring. The men of the original thirteen tieflings had mostly scattered their offspring, making the lines difficult to trace. The women had only bothered with one or two as experiments or heirs to raise. After a hundred years, their living descendants totaled in the mere dozens. The rarest heirs-those of Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel, leader of the thirteen-had been widely numbered at three, until he found Farideh.

If anyone asked, Lorcan would say that it had been his keen intellect and dogged research that had led him to a lost heir of Bryseis Kakistos. But it had been, in fact, bare luck, and even Lorcan had to admit that to himself.

On his smallest finger, he’d worn a ring which could sense the blood of Bryseis Kakistos-a handy little trinket he had bought off a devil who claimed it was infallible … despite the rival’s lack of a Kakistos heir. Lorcan had been skeptical, but he had also been desperate and frustrated at the incompleteness of his warlock set. Had he not-had he cared less, had he chosen a different group of warlocks to gather, had he put his efforts to stealing his rivals’ Kakistos heirs-he might have killed Havilar, left her sister to take the blame, and been on his way, never realizing what he’d briefly found.

When Havilar had cast her ritual to summon an imp she could practice her blade skills on, he had merely been nearby, strangling the imp for shitting on his boots. Angry and ready to strangle the person who had opened a portal practically on top of him, he had stepped through and seen a gangly tiefling girl.

The Kakistos ring had turned to ice as he stood there, naming the Brimstone Angel’s heir. No one with such an innocent sense of the world had ever summoned him before. Twelve pacts in his hands, and Lorcan knew he wasn’t going to gain the thirteenth from this guileless girl in love with her blade. She did not need him and she did not want him But then Farideh came through the door. Havilar’s twin, her pretty face scowling, shifting expressions as if she were having an angry conversation in her own thoughts. The book was a good sign, the lack of weapon even better. But that expression-ah, gods, that expression. Here, he thought, is a girl who wants something she cannot get.

She had stared at him, like a mouse before a cobra, like she was fighting with herself to stay away. He had smiled and the ring had gone cold as ice again.

Everything had fallen together. Mostly. He wouldn’t pretend she was the simplest one to handle. Not by a long shot. She was afraid of him, but not so far as to be cowed by him. She wanted the powers, but not so much as to do his bidding to get them. Her pulse raced in very interesting ways when he got close enough, but not so interesting as to overcome her good sense and keep her from slipping out of reach.

Not so interesting, he thought irritably, that she didn’t pipe up with strange questions like how old was he.

Lorcan had been careful as he could not to let on about Farideh’s identity-he knew it drove his rivals fairly mad, and more than one didn’t believe he had made the set. If Sairche was stalking his warlocks, it was only his Kakistos heir she could be after and there was no way she could be sure that was Farideh, short of having the ring he had made a point of destroying once he had his heir.

But as he checked each of the other twelve in turn, he saw no signs of Sairche scrutinizing them. Perhaps she was only following Lorcan. Perhaps she’d give up if he didn’t check up on any of them. He ran a hand through his hair. Clever Sairche was his only full-blooded sister, and the only one he had never learned to predict.

What was she playing at? he wondered.

He fingered the scourge-shaped pendant he wore and the mirror slid to Farideh. She was still in the room, sitting on the floor beside Havilar and some human boy Lorcan couldn’t place. They were laughing and Farideh took a bottle of some brownish liquor from the boy, her cheeks flushed. Even through the scrying glass, Lorcan could sense the tendrils of divine magic that swirled around the boy.

He narrowed his eyes-the boy from the caravan. The one Farideh had saved.

And he was a godsbedamned priest.

Or not, Lorcan thought. He’d assumed the traces of divine magic among the caravan’s members were coming from a pair of priests, but the boy had no mark of who he served on his person. Maybe a priest, but not necessarily …

It didn’t matter whether the boy was a priest, a paladin, or just particularly devout-the blessing of some god wafted off him like a pall of incense.

Sairche and her meddling would have to wait.

Bad enough Mehen was at Farideh to break the pact, Lorcan didn’t need some pious little nit tugging on his warlock’s already all-too-principled heartstrings.

“You ought to come with us,” he heard Havilar say, the magic of the mirror adding a warble to her voice. “We’re heading in the same direction.”

Lorcan seized the iron frame of the mirror in both hands. The hard edges cutting into his hands kept his head clear. To go back to Farideh would be foolish. To go back would give Sairche a path to follow again, would give Farideh something to be afraid of or angry about, would give Mehen more targets for his campaign against Lorcan. She wasn’t in danger. Her pact wasn’t in danger. Yet. He could fix this.

The boy in the room took the bottle back. He would be very simple to get rid of. So simple, that perhaps Lorcan could get rid of Mehen too.

Lorcan turned back to the Needle and held the image of the road where he’d surprised Farideh behind the brambles in his mind. So simple. So clean. She’d never question it.

Lorcan made his way up the dark road and through the brush a ways before he found what he was searching for. The last breathing orc from the caravan attack lay spread-eagled on the ground, his midsection thick with blood and charred from the spell Farideh had cast. Lorcan rolled his eyes; a very good thing she hadn’t realized the damage she’d done. She’d probably have tried to nurse him back to health.

“End it,” the orc half-cursed, half-prayed at the darkening sky. The stars stared back, uncaring, watching the paralyzed orc weep blood from a hundred wicked burns. “Gruumsh, what have I not devoted to you?” he muttered. “Take my bloody soul.”

“Those sound like the words of a man ready to die,” Lorcan said. He called a ball of light into being, cupped in his palms. The orc startled-or would have if he could have moved, Lorcan suspected. As it was, only his face twitched.

“Arghash.” The orc sneered. “Leave me be.”

“I think,” Lorcan said, ignoring the epithet, “that you don’t want to die. I think if you did you would have gotten on with it a long time ago. I think you want to live.”

“Not for your price, devil,” the orc wheezed.

“You haven’t heard me out,” Lorcan said, squatting down beside him. “You ought to. I’m terribly reasonable and more than a little astute. There’s only one thing you want badly enough to treat with me: vengeance.”

The orc paused at that. “The bitch who burned me and left me here?”

“In a way. You can’t have her, but I want the boy and the dragonborn she travels with dead. Kill them, spare the warlock, and you’ll live out your days however you please.”

The orc’s face contorted in pain and he coughed, dark blood spattering his lips. “Not worth it,” he managed.

“Do you really think Gruumsh will take up your soul after a little tiefling girl laid you low?” Lorcan asked. “My offer’s far better than the one he’s making you.”

“I want the witch.”

Lorcan scowled. “I’m not bargaining,” he said. “Take what I’m offering, or go to your god and see what he says.”

The orc hesitated. “Why not her?”

“Because she and I have an understanding,” Lorcan said. “Trust me that she’ll agonize over that brat’s death though. The dragonborn’s far more so. And you’ll be alive. Better, don’t you think, than being hunted in the afterlife by Gruumsh One-Eye, and those who have not disappointed him?”

He could see the orc considering that. For all Lorcan knew, the vicious god of the orcs would think falling to a warlock in an ill-conceived supply raid was the most honorable death imaginable. But what was true didn’t matter. Only what the orc feared might be true mattered.

And, Lorcan thought, watching the orc’s breathing grow more labored still, this much is true: whether this orc is in for such a hunt or not, that death would be the worse fate. He hadn’t lied.

The orc’s silence drew on, and Lorcan’s temper started to fray. Perhaps he needed to make the orc’s situation worse-

The orc wet his lips. “I’ll take your deal, devil.”

“Lovely,” Lorcan said, his anxiety abating. Now it was business. Nothing else. He stood and produced a piece of parchment, a glass flask of a green and vile fluid, and a small bag. “Then we are entered into what we call the Pact Certain. Your soul is mine upon death, regardless of its disposition, and you get to live for the moment. Agreed?”

The orc’s eyes were starting to glaze. “Yesss …” The letters on the parchment flashed then faded, as the agreement was made.

“Good. Well met …” Lorcan skimmed the page. “… Goruc.” He rolled up the parchment, and flicked the cork out of the flask.

Lorcan poured half the fluid over Goruc’s wounds, then roughly tilted the orc’s head back and poured the remainder down his throat. The orc coughed and thrashed-Hells-brewed potions tasted like coals going down, Lorcan knew. He watched unconcerned as the orc’s face flushed again, as he stopped fighting, as he sat up, looking down at his bloody, burned, and tattered hide.

“That’s it?” Goruc asked. “A healing draft?”

“What did you expect?” Lorcan asked, standing. “A swim through the River Styx? You’ll find I’m a practical patron, Goruc. And-as I said-reasonable, as long as my terms are met.” He held out the parchment. “The details of our agreement. Your assent suffices and is binding, there is no need to sign. You want to read it, just ask.” He pinched a charm on his wrist between forefinger and thumb, and sent the contract to a safe place. Whether Goruc wanted to read the contract or not, it was all but impossible. The Supernal letters would look like nothing more than corby tracks to the orc.

“And this,” Lorcan said, holding out the small velvet sack, “is to help you complete our agreement.”

Goruc teased the package open. Inside lay a vial of dark red liquid and a wad of herbs tied with a dried piece of sinew.

“Take the liquid,” Lorcan said, “coat your blades in it and your enemies will suffer and die. The leaves are wyssin. When you find their trail, light the end and inhale the smoke. It will make you spot things quicker and give strength to your limbs like you’ve never had. Don’t waste it. Take a little when you’re ready to leave and a little before you go for the kill. That’s all you need.”

Goruc gave him a far cannier look than Lorcan ever expected. “Why do you want the boy dead?”

Lorcan narrowed his eyes. “Personal reasons.”

“Personal like he’s claiming your girl?”

“Personal like he’s getting under my skin and promising to make trouble. Not that it matters to you,” Lorcan said. “Just kill him and the dragonborn, and I’ll ask nothing else for the rest of your days.”

Goruc sniffed, but kept his mouth shut.

Lorcan eyed him, wishing he could hear the orc’s thoughts. It was Lorcan’s bad luck the only available orc was one Farideh had injured. But surely even an orc was not so stupid as to break a promise to a devil. Even if he were, chances were excellent that the orc would kill the boy and then find himself halfway up Mehen’s oversized sword. And Lorcan still could make certain Farideh was protected.

Nevertheless, the orc had a sly look about him.

“Remember, Goruc,” he said, reopening the portal. “Kill who you like, but you don’t touch her.”

“Aye,” he heard Goruc say as Lorcan passed into Malbolge. “Don’t touch the witch.”

The hallways of the palace of Osseia throbbed ever so gently as Lorcan walked along them, leaving a trail of bloody footprints where he stepped. Fleshy pink walls trembled with the tortured ghosts of the previous ruler’s thoughts. He brushed too close and a bloody mucus smeared across his sleeve. He grimaced and wiped it on a bit of bone that jutted out of a corner.

The barely living halls did nothing to deaden the piercing screams echoing through the skull palace as Lorcan made his way through his mother’s apartments. He pressed a finger to his ear-they were particularly loud today. Someone must have displeased Glasya, the lord of the Sixth Layer herself, to warrant such a torture session.

“May I never be so stupid,” he muttered.

Lorcan approached the drawing room where his mother had retreated earlier that morning, waiting for a guest, and slowed his pace. He heard Invadiah’s sharp voice as he approached and heard someone else’s muffled answer.

Like most of the items in her treasury, Invadiah found the Needle of the Crossroads-a singular artifact that opened a temporary portal that could be tied to anywhere in Toril-better suited to lording over her rivals than its intended purpose. Lorcan didn’t know if Invadiah had any idea he used it, but with Invadiah there was always a difference between what you did, and what she caught you doing while she was in a bad mood.

Fourteen of his dozens of half-sisters-all erinyes from before the Ascension-had died for that seemingly minor distinction.

Between the irritated tone of his mother’s voice and the fact that two of his half-sisters were certainly guarding the larger treasury and armory, Lorcan knew it was no time to play the odds. He needed Invadiah to give him permission. He lingered in the doorway a moment.

Exalted Invadiah, champion of Glasya and leader of the pradixikai-the erinyes who carried out the archduchess’s justice-sat in a chair made of burnished bones, her mane of deepnight hair cascading nearly to the floor. Instead of her usual char black armor, the erinyes wore a gown of chain and hard, carapace-like plates of such a vibrant gold they seemed to smolder. Her black nails tapped a beat that made the screams that lilted through the window seem musical. He could see her face in profile, her jaw as it ground.

“There is not another devil in the Hells as useless as you,” she snarled.

Lorcan started to protest, but then a dark shape fluttered past the lamps.

“Useless?” a voice as mellifluous as an angel’s said. “We are nearly there. He is in my grasp.”

Invadiah surged onto her feet-hooves that had crushed demons and broken souls into dust-and bellowed up at the rafters, “Your grasp? And what is that worth?”

Her eyes tracked the graceful female form that dropped to the ground, her dark wings raised. Red hair curled around the creature’s lovely face, as if the strands were alive.

“Much, much more than what you have without me,” the succubus said. “Every other agent has fallen or been discovered. I’m all you have, because I’m the best.”

The erinyes growled. “You are replaceable.”

“By whom?”

Invadiah towered over the succubus. “By anyone. By my daughters with their swords flaming.”

The succubus chortled. “The time it takes to draw a breath, and the whole of Neverwinter would be screaming if your lovely daughters appeared. Trust me. You need one who can pass unnoticed.”

“You’re taking too long with your skulking and secrets. I would be rid of you gladly.”

The succubus shook her head, setting her ruby ringlets shivering. “I know too much,” she said saucily. “I might tell someone.”

Invadiah moved like a striking serpent. She seized the succubus by the neck, her long black nails pressing into the creature’s pale throat, and slammed her against the wall. The succubus squawked.

“Do you think that wise?” Invadiah purred.

The succubus struggled and kicked her long, lovely legs, but the erinyes didn’t flinch.

“You may be the archduchess’s only agent in Neverwinter, but you will always be replaceable, Rohini,” Invadiah hissed. “You don’t threaten Glasya. You don’t threaten me. And you don’t fly in my presence. Ever. Again.” She let the succubus fall to the floor and Lorcan’s stomach dropped.

Rohini.

Hells, he thought. He wondered if his mother knew just who she was picking a fight with.

Rohini stood, rubbing her neck, her chest heaving. “I … beg your pardon, Lady Invadiah.” She made a tidy little curtsey. “I will press forward. The priest will have the proper connections within a few days.”

“When you get back,” Invadiah corrected.

Rohini’s red eyes flickered. “That will be dangerous. He isn’t Anthus. We cannot risk the Old Ones-”

“Do not tell me what we cannot risk!” Invadiah said. “This is my undertaking. I know where we stand. If your initial target is dead, then you must make do with what you have. There is a reason Glasya chose you.”

It was as close to a compliment as Lorcan had ever heard an erinyes bestow upon a succubus. Rohini’s eyebrow twitched-as close as he’d ever seen a succubus come to acknowledging the compliment of an erinyes.

Unattractive succubi didn’t exist-as mutable as their forms were, how could they? Succubi were the consorts of archdevils, the infiltrators and spies of the lords themselves, corruptors of many on the mortal planes.

Fantastic lays, Lorcan thought.

But long ago, before Lorcan was born, the Hells had been at war against the demons of the Abyss … and in that time, the succubi fought on the demons’ side, the polar opposites and sworn enemies of the erinyes.

That mad, demon spark, as far as Lorcan and most of the Hells were concerned, still lingered. You could see it in their eyes. It didn’t matter if they’d turned traitor just as Asmodeus rose to the godhood, ceding their blood and their offspring’s blood to the lord of the Ninth’s control, and-the rumors went-giving Asmodeus the last bit of power he needed to hurl the Abyss to the very farthest reaches of the Elemental Chaos, ending the war for good.

Lorcan had his doubts about that-everyone claimed to have been the lynchpin of Asmodeus’s ascension. Sycophants, all of them.

A slow smile curved Rohini’s lovely lips.

“You have a visitor,” Rohini said softly, “Lady Invadiah.”

His mother stiffened and looked over her shoulder. “Lorcan.”

“Mother,” he said, stepping into the room. “And Rohini.”

Rohini gave him a long, appraising look, as if she were assessing a cut of meat. No, he thought with a suppressed shudder, as if she were deciding which of his bones she should pluck out and suck the marrow free of first.

Sycophants or not, succubi were dangerous. Especially-if the rumors were true-Rohini. Lorcan had heard the archduchess had sent Rohini alone into Stygia, the layer of Hell ruled by one of Glasya’s most hated enemies. What the succubus had found or done on those frozen plains, Lorcan didn’t know, but he’d heard she’d returned to Malbolge covered in blood and carrying the severed hands of one of Archduke Levistus’s prized commanders. There might be a spark of madness in her eyes, but she had to be devilishly clever to manage something like that.

Lorcan knew better than to let her more obvious charms sway him. Rohini would eat him alive just to irritate Invadiah.

Invadiah glared at him. “Where have you been?”

“Toril.”

His mother raised an eyebrow. “Out playing with your warlocks?”

He didn’t react. “Something like that.”

“Warlocks?” Rohini said. “How interesting.” Lorcan tensed.

“He has a set,” Invadiah said, and as ever, Lorcan couldn’t tell if she was proud or mocking or enjoying putting him in a little peril. “A full thirteen.”

“Well, well,” Rohini said. “A Toril Thirteen? How ever did you manage that? I’d thought the Kakistos line was all claimed or dead.” Lorcan tensed-Rohini didn’t collect warlocks, he was almost certain. But much like Sairche, she might very well collect secrets.

“You really don’t expect me to tell you, do you?” Lorcan said and immediately regretted it. Her eyes took on an especially predaceous glint.

“Oh, I expect you’d tell me anything I liked.”

“Rohini,” Invadiah said. The succubus stopped, but the force of her charm hung in the air like a thousand darts caught midflight. The room was silent but for the screams of the damned outside. Lorcan held perfectly still.

“You interrupted us,” Invadiah said.

“My apologies,” he said. “I was merely coming to visit-which I see you don’t have time for; a pity-and to see if I might borrow one of your baubles.”

“What do you want?”

“The Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal.”

Invadiah frowned. “Are your toys fighting?”

He shrugged. “I do have a rather rare heir to protect.”

Invadiah stared out the window a long moment, drumming her nails against the armrest again. “Fine. Put it back when you’re done.”

“Of course,” Lorcan said. He turned to go. Invadiah reached out and seized his arm in her iron grip.

“What did you hear?” Invadiah asked.

He cleared his throat. “I merely overheard you giving Rohini here, ah, lessons of etiquette.”

Invadiah and Rohini both fixed him with burning eyes, and it was only the training of his entire life that kept him from flinching. He returned the gaze, if a little more insouciantly.

“What benefits us, benefits Asmodeus,” Rohini said.

“And what benefits Asmodeus benefits us all,” Lorcan said. A common enough saying in the Hells. “I’ll leave you to your … studies of the hierarchy, Rohini. Mother.”

He left the room as swiftly as he could, not looking back and listening with particular intent to the chorus of screams rather than another word of the conversation coming from the softly pulsing room.

Whatever Invadiah and Rohini were up to, they did not want him to know about it-and that was fine by Lorcan. He was no status seeker. With a human father, the hierarchy of the Hells was closed to him. While Rohini might please Glasya and earn her way to a transformation into an erinyes, and Invadiah to something greater still, Lorcan would always be a cambion, no matter whose boots he licked or whose schemes he chased.

Luckily, it suits me, he thought, striding through the hallways of Osseia. His mother might think him a dabbler and a dandy, but at least he’d managed to never become her pawn.

His path crossed a balcony that overlooked the Court of the Sixth, and Lorcan paused a moment. The archduchess herself perched on the throne, carved from the ivory that had been her predecessor’s teeth, her batlike wings curved around her like an icon’s niche. Coppery skinned and dark-haired, Glasya made Rohini look common. Glasya made everything look common. If corruption had a form, it was Glasya, and not a soul looked upon her that didn’t feel the urge to throw itself headlong into that corruption. She radiated like a star and she swallowed up the light around her. To look upon Glasya, Lord of the Sixth and Princess of the Hells, was a special sort of madness.

Glasya regarded the prostrate barbed devil in front of her with a stony face, while a swarm of hellwasps swooped around her, enforcing the audience’s distance with their sword-length stingers and bladed legs. A pair of pit fiends the size of small hills flanked Glasya’s throne, all muscle and whips. Devils of a hundred sorts stood, perched, or hovered in audience, giving the unfortunate barbed devil a wide berth.

Glasya tapped her scourge against the side of her throne as if counting time, while the creature before her shivered to the tips of the spikes that covered its black, muscular body. The barbed devils were the spy-hunters of the archduchess-tasked with hunting down intruders and agents of the other Lords of the Nine, the rulers of the layers of the Hells.

This one had failed in its task apparently. If it was lucky, Lorcan thought, riveted, Glasya would demote it. If it wasn’t … Well, it had heard the intruder’s screams as well as Lorcan had.

“May I never be so foolish,” he muttered to himself once more. You did not fail a Lord of the Nine-and if you did, you did not get caught holding the bag.

I know too much, Rohini had said. I might tell someone.

Do you think that wise? his mother had said. You don’t threaten Glasya.

Lorcan shivered. Whatever they were up to, those comments made two things certain. First, it was on Glasya, the lord of the Sixth Layer’s orders. Whatever Rohini and Invadiah were doing in Neverwinter, the archduchess wanted it so. Getting in the way of Glasya was suicide. Second …

I might tell someone.

You don’t threaten Glasya.

No one posed a true danger to Glasya except her father, Asmodeus, the lord of the Ninth Layer and the Risen God of Evil. The king of the Hells. The other lords might threaten her, other devils might pretend to her throne, but Glasya was Asmodeus’s only child. To threaten Glasya at this juncture, was to threaten him.

“What benefits us, benefits Asmodeus,” Lorcan murmured. “And what benefits Asmodeus, benefits us all.” No devil-no sane devil-would stand against Asmodeus directly, but such a statement could cover up quite a lot of schemes.

Lorcan shook his head. He wasn’t suited to being a pawn. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t need to know anything. He would simply stay out of it.

Glasya waved her hand and the barbed devil’s muscles all contorted at once. It screamed as if Glasya were pulling its intestines out with tenacity and a single hooked finger. It twisted and howled, and finally with an explosion of energy-burning hot and thick as soot-the barbed devil tore itself apart with a sick, wet rip. Lorcan flinched against the burning wind.

When it subsided, he looked back to the place where the barbed devil had been. There, in the tattered, bloody midst of its former body, a smaller form twitched. It jerked against the spent frame, tearing muscles, until it finally broke free and stretched delicate batlike wings. The shorter, softer quills that covered its body bristled, flinging gore over the assembled audience.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Glasya said. She spoke to the newly reborn spined devil, but every other creature there took the warning for their own: the Lady of Malbolge was not to be crossed.

“You are most kind and generous, your grace,” the diminished creature gasped.

Lorcan shuddered again, and moved away from the balcony. The archduchess had been generous. She’d only demoted the devil, which meant it could earn its way back to the rank it had previously held-if, that is, the assembled audience forgot its failure. He left the palace and headed across the field toward the armory.

Something dripped on him from above as he passed under the overhang of the entryway. Red spots smattered his already filthy sleeve. He glanced up in disgust.

Above, the sharpened fangs that fringed the gates of Osseia impaled a pair of humans in robes. They weren’t foolish enough to wear their allegiances on their sleeves, but these were almost certainly Glasya’s intruders-and just as certainly, they had been cultists of another Lord of the Nine. The one on the left, a man of middling years, twitched, his body not quite finished dying.

Should Lorcan ever be so stupid as to displease the Lady of Malbolge, here was his fate. There was nowhere in the hierarchy for a half-devil to fall.

Invadiah kept her treasury in one of the tall bone-spires that rose out of Malbolge’s poisoned ground. Venomous flowers twined their way over the pitted surface, fed by the streams of shimmering effluvia that shifted and changed day to day, hour to hour. The ruddy ground, much like the halls of Osseia, lived. When they finished being an example to all, someone would throw the corpses on the fangs of Osseia to Malbolge, and slowly, the Sixth Layer would absorb them.

Lorcan picked his way across the suppurating ground and entered the tower that held his mother’s treasury. Two erinyes perched on either side of the inner door, batting a dead lemure back and forth between them like a ball with the flats of their swords, keeping it from resting too long on the hungry ground.

“Nemea,” Lorcan said tensely. “Aornos.”

His half-sisters spared him no more than a glance, but he had hardly blinked before red-haired Aornos had maneuvered herself behind him, planting him between the two fierce warriors. He looked up at Nemea, who was slimmer than Invadiah and bore a ragged scar across her chest.

“Come to borrow more of mother’s things?” she said, reversing her grip on the sword.

“At her offer,” he said smoothly. “Let me pass?”

“Sairche was looking for you,” Aornos said behind him. “Said we should tell her if you showed up.”

“Sounds like our baby sister found a secret of yours,” Nemea crooned.

Lorcan gave an exaggerated sigh. “All she found was that I don’t want to seduce a mortal with her in audience. Where did she say she’d be?”

“She didn’t,” Nemea said.

“You’ll have to hope she finds you,” Aornos added.

“Or that she doesn’t,” Nemea finished.

“Fine,” Lorcan said. “Open the doors then and let me finish my business.”

Nemea smirked at him, thinking-no doubt-that she could crush him with no trouble at all. Invadiah might not even care.

Might, Lorcan thought, is the important word.

Nemea stepped aside and pulled the door open for Lorcan. As he passed, she cracked the back of his legs with the flat of her sword, much to Aornos’s amusement. Lorcan flinched, but didn’t deign to cry out.

“Don’t forget, little brother,” Aornos called as he descended the winding stairway down to the treasury, “only what Invadiah agreed to. Wouldn’t want to have to turn your pockets.”

Godsdamned erinyes, he thought. Better Nemea and Aornos than the elite of the pradixikai. Invadiah’s favorites chased down oath-breakers and those who deceived the archduchess. Nemea and Aornos weren’t skilled enough or intelligent enough for the pradixikai.

Still, Lorcan was intelligent enough not to test them.

At the base of the stairs, there was a door made of bone, and crisscrossed with bindings of a sinew strong as steel. Lorcan laid his hand upon the seal in the center. It gave slightly and shivered at his touch before the sinews slithered out of their sockets and back toward the center, releasing the door.

Had Sairche known he was lying? he wondered. Bedding some tiefling was nothing, after all. An heir of Bryseis Kakistos was … well, nothing to most devils. But for collectors, Farideh would be priceless. If Sairche figured out who Farideh was, there were a fair number of devils in the Hells who would pay her dearly for the information.

They would still have to lure Farideh away, he thought as he passed rows of sharp and shining blades. And he’d been careful to make sure Farideh didn’t want to leave, even if someone explained how.

Assuming she was safe. Assuming he got rid of that inconvenient acolyte. Assuming he was right about what Farideh wanted anymore.

How old are you?

Lorcan grit his teeth. He shouldn’t be rattled by a warlock or by such a stupid question. He was the one who did the rattling-and as soon as the orc caught up to them, Farideh would be plenty rattled and in no mood to be pushing him and his pact away.

Perhaps he ought to have told the orc to leave Havilar be as well. After all, if anything should happen to Farideh, Havilar was his only possible replacement. Then again, he mused, if Havilar died, it made Farideh even more valuable.

He shook his head. It wasn’t his decision to make, anyway-Farideh would protect Havilar to her final breath. As long as Farideh had the tools to stop the orc from harming her, Havilar would be fine. And if Sairche turned out to be too much trouble after all, well, then she might as well have Havilar instead, and good luck to her.

“There,” he said, spotting the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal’s telltale quartz tip. “This one.”