Lesser Evils

PROLOGUE

MALBOLGE, THE SIXTH LAYER OF THE HELLS

THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)

Lorcan ought to have counted himself lucky. Bound from knees to chest in a chain devil’s restraints, dragged across the hungry nightmare landscape of the Sixth Layer of the Hells-still, the half-devil son of Fallen Invadiah was not dead.

He was not dead, and he would soon be locked away in his sister’s newly claimed domain, far from their vengeful mother’s weakened reach, far from the notice of the archdevils, and farthest of all from those mortals who knew better than to let Lorcan slip the noose, after what had happened in Neverwinter. Lucky, indeed.

But that luck only counted for these few breaths.

All my life, he thought, watching the skull palace of Osseia recede as the chain devil hauled him toward the fingerbone towers, leaving a trail of raw, oozing ground in their wake. All my life avoiding the hierarchy and this is how they catch me. Beshaba shit in my eyes.

The goddess of ill luck could count herself proud of this mess: the only reason he was alive was that he had been caught in the tangled interplay of the Lord of the Sixth, Glasya, and her father, Asmodeus, king of the Hells and the risen god of evil. Their schemes and counter-schemes made a knotted net that trapped devils in every layer. Lorcan had long made an art of staying out of the cutthroat hierarchy they created. And now he was square in the middle of it.

Do be careful, little Lorcan.

Glasya’s words as he’d been hauled out of the court moments earlier pounded in his thoughts like a heavy hammer. She might, for all appearances, have given his freedom to his sister Sairche, a reward for all her help in twisting the collapsing pieces of Glasya’s schemes in Neverwinter into a suitable place. But wherever Sairche locked him away, Glasya owned Lorcan.

Your sister may be persuasive, but you and I know your warlock kept things in check.

Which meant Glasya owned Farideh too, he thought.

Osseia’s empty sockets watched him until the chain devil hauled him into the farthest fingerbone tower, as if waiting for Lorcan to make the next move.

There were erinyes in the tiny room at the tip of the tower-his half sisters, Cissa and Aricia-and more chains. Bad, bad, bad, he thought. The chain devil’s appendages withdrew, dumping Lorcan unceremoniously onto the marrow-slicked floor.

“Already?” he cried. Ruby-eyed Cissa seized him by the joint of his wing and yanked him forward. He cursed. “Were you crouching in Sairche’s shadow all this time?”

Aricia hooked the chain onto the nearest bone spur. “The time her lordship held the lot of you was enough to tell where the plane tilts.”

“If Baby Sister wants to play at commander,” Cissa said, shoving him to his knees and turning him around, “we’ll wait it out.”

“Who knows?” Aricia said, as he struggled. She smiled around a broken fang. “Maybe she’ll take out a few of the pradixikai when she goes. Make some room for the rest of us.”

“Watch your tongue,” a new voice growled. Lorcan lifted his head. In the lacuna of the doorway stood his mad sister, Bibracte. Still armored and splattered in the gore of Neverwinter’s denizens, the maddest member of the elite pradixikai made the lesser erinyes grow still with caution.

Bibracte stepped aside to admit Sairche-the half-devil daughter of Fallen Invadiah and master of her holdings. The erinyes might have towered over her cambion half sister, might have crushed Sairche as easily as a dry leaf instead of following Glasya’s orders. But she guarded over Sairche as if Sairche had never been anything but commander of the pradixikai. Bibracte gave him a vicious grin.

Bad, bad, bad, Lorcan thought.

Red-skinned Sairche stood with her wings curled around her. She’d had the good sense not to deck herself in Invadiah’s treasures at least, only a pair of bracers-silver, to match the tracery of tattoos that laced her bare scalp and the needle-sharp eyelashes she affected.

“Well, aren’t you prepared,” he said, as if there weren’t terrible things in store for him. As if he didn’t know exactly what Sairche wanted. “I didn’t realize you were so steeped in the hierarchy, to know Asmodeus’s mind before he speaks it.”

Sairche smirked. “Idiot. No one was ever going to lay the blame on you when they could lay it on Mother.”

“You’ve made an enemy of Invadiah, and I’m the idiot?” Cissa pressed down on his wing joint and he let out a gasp of pain.

“Careful, Lorcan,” Sairche said. “One might think you were growing a spine.”

“Much as one might think you were getting soft.”

Lorcan’s memory didn’t go back far enough to recall a time before Sairche, before knowing that his sister was never going to be an ally, even if she might suffer just as much under the erinyes’ notice. That Sairche would not have wasted so much of her time needling him.

“A pity for you I’m not,” she said.

“Really? I suspect you’re the one to pity.”

Sairche laughed. “How adorable! Is that something you picked up, grubbing around on Toril? I’ve won, brother dear. Pity my wickedness all you like, it doesn’t matter.”

“What on every plane do you take me for?” he said. “I’ve no pity for your means. You’ve achieved more than any of us could have imagined, particularly while under Invadiah’s thumb. You-a cambion-have control of the pradixikai and a good portion of Malbolge’s erinyes. You have all of Invadiah’s treasures-not the least of which is being the archduchess’s ear. Truly, no one would have thought you could rise so high.”

Sairche narrowed her eyes. “Many thanks.”

He smiled despite himself. “But you cannot ‘win’ at the hierarchy, and you know that. Now they’re all watching you, looking for the weak point that will bring you down again.” He looked up at Aricia and Cissa. “Found it yet?”

Neither erinyes had taken her eyes off Bibracte. She grinned at her half sisters and cracked her knuckles.

“Not now,” Sairche snapped. She scowled at Lorcan. “So I let her kill them and leave you with much better odds? You do think I’m an idiot.” To Aricia and Cissa, “Pin his wings.”

Cissa held his wings together. The cold iron spike ripped through the membranes, one after the other-pop, pop-so fast, Lorcan couldn’t cry out before it was already done. Aricia slid a loop over the ends of the bolt and twisted. A rush of magic ran down Lorcan’s bones, like a flow of lava. They let him up, his wings pulling against the pin as he tried to find his balance.

“Now,” Sairche said. “Are you going to cooperate? Or do I let Cissa and Aricia prove their loyalty?”

Long years of survival instinct made his wings flex against the iron bar-flee, flee, flee. But even if he could remove the bolt, even if his wings weren’t torn and bloodied, he’d have nowhere to run. He no longer had a portal out of the Hells. He had no allies. Malbolge was growing every day. The pradixikai would find him and tear him to shreds. He made himself still, pressed the urge to run down deep.

“That depends on what you want.”

Sairche’s stare didn’t waver. “The Kakistos heir. What else?”

Lorcan held her gaze and smiled, even though his heart was in his throat. Even though he was imagining another set of eyes-one silver, one gold. Another voice whispering, Run. Come with us. They’ll kill you.

“Now why,” he drawled, “would you want her?”

Sairche watched him, unblinking, but Lorcan was certain after long years of practice that there was nothing to see. “I don’t like loose ends.”

“What end is she to you? She’s my warlock.”

“And Rohini’s doom. I don’t need to repeat the pradixikai’s reports for you-you were there, after all. A warlock, I don’t care about. A Brimstone Angel, I care a little for. A Brimstone Angel who throws off a succubus’s domination and runs her through with so little effort? That I-and plenty of other devils-would be much more interested in.” Sairche smirked. “And then there’s the fact that she’s yours, as you say.”

He didn’t so much as blink, but he was overtaken by the memory of the slender tiefling warlock standing entranced before Rohini, motionless in the middle of the battle of aberration and devil, moments from death. Lorcan in the air high above, waiting for her to die-there was nothing he could do …

And then the charm snapping, almost audible, and Farideh releasing a burst of magic, a slash of blood spraying from Rohini’s burned face as Farideh lashed out with the heavy rod. Relief he would never, ever, voice starting his heart again.

“Was it Zela who came up with that nonsense?” he asked. “You’ve met Farideh-Hells, you dragged her around that crater of a city for half a day trying to woo her away. Do you really think she could have resisted someone like Rohini? Struck her down? The girl couldn’t corrupt a lord in a whore’s parlor.”

“She did well enough resisting me,” Sairche said.

Lorcan snorted, recalling the vicious, calculating succubus Rohini who’d nearly brought Neverwinter-and Glasya-to ruin. Sairche was certainly formidable, and Farideh had done well to ignore Sairche’s entreaties and promises. But Rohini had been a gem of another water-a foe far beyond Sairche’s skills.

Sairche wasn’t entirely wrong. No, Farideh hadn’t been the one to kill Rohini. So far as Lorcan knew, the succubus wasn’t even dead. And quick as Farideh might be to strike out, she’d never have lasted a moment trying to fight Rohini like a rogue in the street had other forces not been in play.

But it couldn’t be denied: that domination would have held firm on any of his other warlocks. And Sairche knew that much by now.

Sairche, and possibly half the Hells.

“All you have to do,” Sairche said, “is renounce the pact. Give her up.”

The night after he’d made her pact, he’d gone back to Toril to find Farideh, weeping beside a campfire in the foothills beyond the sty of a village she’d been hiding in all her years. It had been simple to claim her and simpler still to steer her with sweet words and sure hands-she was a girl who wanted what she couldn’t have and he was the sort of devil to gift her with it.

But then she was also the sort of girl to stand in his arms and ask, first of all, if this would hurt him. She was not a proper warlock or a proper Brimstone Angel.

Do be careful, little Lorcan.

“Who are you collecting for?” he asked. “Not Glasya-”

“Where is she, Lorcan?”

Tell Sairche, he thought, and risk Glasya’s fury-whatever Sairche wanted Farideh for, it wasn’t for the archduchess’s secretive plans. Keep quiet and risk Sairche’s fury-an anger that would lead to much quicker retributions.

Keep quiet, he thought, and you might keep her a little longer.

“I might be able to get you another one.”

“Liar,” Sairche said. Her wings closed tight against her delicate frame. “All four of the Kakistos heirs are claimed. Besides, yours is the one I need. Where is she?”

Quicker retributions, Lorcan thought, all too aware of the blackened chains. But Sairche’s irritation with him was all genuine-she needed Farideh for some reason. And, for now, she thought she needed Lorcan. Until that changed she wouldn’t kill him. If he gave up Farideh, he gave up his only bargaining chip.

Does it hurt? Farideh had asked. I’ll be fine, he’d told her.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said, grinning at his sister.

Sairche narrowed her eyes. “Cissa, Aricia: chain him up and give him an idea.” She didn’t break her gaze as they hauled him to his feet and backward toward the suppurating wall. “But don’t be too eager proving your loyalty. The others will want a turn.”