Lesser Evils

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"You are not allowed to do things like that,” Havilar whispered to Farideh as they stood off to the side of the camp. “Especially not when we’re fighting.”

Tam cast a silvery circle around Lorcan, its powers pointing inward and hemming the cambion in close enough so that he had to hold his wings close. Whether that was Tam’s goal or an effect of the priest’s clear exhaustion, Farideh couldn’t tell-the set of his mouth suggested one thing, and the way his eyes didn’t seem to focus on the runes suggested the other.

“Tam and Brin wouldn’t let me go down there until the rope was fixed,” Havilar said. She’d only just let go of Farideh’s arm, holding tight to her sister during the whole rushed trip back to the camp. Brin was watching them both, looking concerned. “And there were all those awful noises and then there were devils-where did Lorcan even come from? You said he was trapped and getting cut to pieces?”

Where had he come from? Farideh wondered. Lorcan watched her, looking annoyed as if it were her fault there were so many people there. He still held tight to her rod, as if it were a talisman. Had he been lying about being tortured and captive? Had he lied about being glad she’d pulled him here the first time?

“You have to ask him,” Farideh said.

Havilar’s tail made an agitated slash. “Are you still mad about Brin? Is that why you took Dahl and not me?”

Between all the Hellish powers she’d been channeling and the adrenaline that had coursed through every inch of her veins, Farideh’s head was pounding and her muscles ached. She rotated her twisted ankle. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said. “I thought, ‘he used to be a paladin, he can heal Tam.’ Which … was stupid, I know. But he knew how to splint his leg at least. Besides,” she added, “you were at the back. With Brin.”

“If you’re mad, just say-” Havilar frowned at her. “What do you mean, ‘used to be a paladin? As in he fell?” She scrutinized Dahl as he finished a a second circle of protection around the camp-his runes drew themselves in a flurry of chalk dust. He eyed her as she edged away from the border of the circle, as if he were trying to decide whether or not to yell at Farideh again. “Did he tell you that?”

Farideh hesitated. Havilar wasn’t happy about Lorcan, and she’d be less happy to hear about his previous appearance. “More or less,” she said.

“Huh. I wonder if that’s why he’s so touchy.”

“I think it’s probably just him.”

Havilar looked at her, perplexed. “Do you ever read chapbooks? Paladins falling, that’s a big deal. They decide to do something-for love if they’re good, for power if they’re evil, and for both if they’re just tragic-and their god doesn’t like it, so they lose all their powers. Forever. It’d be like getting an arm chopped off or something. I think.”

Farideh shook her head. “That’s chapbooks though.”

“Well, they have to get it from somewhere,” Havilar said. “Too bad you couldn’t do something and lose Lorcan. Mehen is going to drop eggs when he finds out you called him back.”

Farideh thought of all her fears that Lorcan might have died or been locked away forever, or forgotten her or tired of her or given her pact away to someone else. It might be as far as could be from losing the blessings of a god, but the result was the same. She would be lost and lonesome and always wondering what had happened.

What have I done? he’d wailed at the darkness. How have I failed? If Havilar was right-if all it took was a single misguided action-it sounded as if Dahl didn’t even know what it had been. Considering how Dahl seemed to pride himself on knowing almost everything, it must be a wound that never closed.

Tam stood in the middle of the camp, looking so pallid and determined that he might have been a statue-had he not been swaying on his feet. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“I think you start with what in the Hells killed Pernika,” Maspero said, “then work your way around to why you’ve taken a devil hostage instead of killing him, too.”

“Because I’m a good deal more useful than your dead swords-woman?” Lorcan said.

“Not another word,” Tam snapped. He glared at Farideh. “Don’t think this is permanent.”

“But he’s right,” Farideh said. “We could use his help getting past the arcanist.”

“What do you need help getting past a crumbly old wizard for?” Havilar asked. “Is that all that’s down there?”

“It’s not-” Farideh started. The air suddenly sizzled and Tam clapped his hands to his ears. Two voices broke the silence, both bellowing as if demanding to be heard first, both too loud and broken as if bits of them were falling away.

Shepherd, drop the stlarning wards-

— no word since the twelfth and-

— and respond, damn it. Your fellow Rhand-

— Band of mounted shades with carriers spotted flying your way from-

— He’ll be right on top of you and Everlund says he’s got reinforcements-

— Get out of there immediately, agent …

No one spoke as Tam straightened, as if dizzied by the effort of the sendings. “Received,” he said. “Location … is secure. Looking for alternate exits. The wards …” He looked at Mira, as if he wasn’t sure who she was. Farideh’s chest tightened-a mix of fear and sympathy for Mira. She’d gotten that look before. “… are down. Send word if situation changes.” The spell crackled again, as if it clung unevenly to the strands of the Weave, colliding with its own power.

Tam stared up at the ceiling, catching his breath. “When did the wards come down?” Tam demanded.

“A good question,” Maspero murmured, turning on Mira. “You said this place was secure. That we shouldn’t worry about Shade, because with the wards were in place, they couldn’t find the spells faster than you. But that makes you wrong twice over, by my count.”

Mira shook her head. “They can’t have come down. They’ve lasted for years. Even the Spellplague didn’t destroy them.”

“Well, something did,” Maspero said. “Else we wouldn’t have dead shadovar in the stacks and sendings and devils coming through.”

Mira backed away from him. “Then something changed. Runes don’t unravel themselves.”

All the blood pounding in Farideh’s head suddenly dropped to her feet, dragging her breath behind. The runes were for doors, she thought. There must be different runes.

“You mean the marks on the walls?” Dahl asked quietly. “Those power the wards?”

“Yes. You see traces of similar spells in old Netherese ruins, but never intact like this. They’re clearly meant to prevent outside eyes from looking in. Or they were.” She shook her head. “The ones I found were still scintillating and when you said your sendings didn’t pass …”

Farideh’s thoughts were racing. She hadn’t checked the door before she broke the rune. The Book had said not to. She swallowed. She had to say something.

“Well, we can’t count on … their …” Tam swooned. Mira and Dahl sprang forward and caught him, eased him down to the floor. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice faint. “Let me up.”

“You’re exhausted,” Mira said.

Tam didn’t seem able to look at her. “I’m fine.”

“You are not,” Dahl said. “And you’re not in any shape to help us break out of here.”

“I think I have a better idea of what shape I’m in,” Tam said. “Help me up.”

“Please,” Dahl said. “You’ve run across this library end to end. Slung that chain around like a lariat. Broken your leg and then tried to heal it-and you’re still hurting, we can all see it. Cast more powerful blessings than I can recall at the moment, and you haven’t bothered to rest.”

Tam bristled. “I know what I’m-”

“If it were me,” Dahl said over him, “what would you say?”

Tam quieted. “It’s not the same.”

“You’re right, it’s worse. We need people who can heal and people who can cast to get past that thing and its ghosts. If you don’t rest, we’re down by one. The one we need most.”

Tam rubbed a hand over his face. “We don’t have time. We need a plan.”

Dahl gestured at the larger group. “You have plenty of help. We’ll come up with a plan while you sleep. You can tell us what we’ve done wrong when you can see straight.”

Tam scowled at the floor, looking as if he were searching for an argument to hurl back at Dahl. But there was no denying how worn down he was, or how dearly his injured state might cost them.

“I have more of the tea in my bag,” Farideh offered. “A little? To help you sleep?”

Tam didn’t answer, but Dahl nodded. “Yes. Make extra.” You need it too, his expression said. But they did not need her as much as they needed Tam. She dug out the little pouch and set a careful portion of water from their remaining waterskin boiling in a pot.

“There’s a hitch,” Tam said. He looked up at Mira, sad and furious all at once. “They ought to know who they’re working with.”

Mira stood a little straighter. “Does it matter?”

“Oh, I think so. I think when there are clandestine members of the Zhentarim pulling my people into danger, they have a right to reconsider alliances.”

Farideh looked up from the cookfire. Mira had gone perfectly still, not taking her eyes off her father’s. Everyone else watched them, uncomfortable and unwilling, it seemed, to step between and catch the sharp edge of the next words thrown.

“How could you?” Tam said.

“How could I not?” she said. “They make a persuasive offer. And it’s not as if every alliance you’ve made is so innocent. Even I’ve heard stories of the Culler of the Fold.”

“Being a paid assassin is not the same as being Bane and Cyric’s playthings.”

Farideh stoked the fire, uncomfortably reminded of half a dozen arguments she’d had with Mehen. But at least most of those times only Havilar had been watching.

“We want the same things,” Mira said. “To keep these powers from Netheril. To punish Shade for what they’ve done-”

“To turn these weapons to their own advantage?” Tam demanded. “Don’t be naive.”

Mira’s expression hardened. “If anyone is being naive,” she said, a low edge to her normally calm voice, “it’s you. Do you think for a moment that the Harpers will provide any sort of impediment to the Princes’ expansion? Do you think you can really stand against Shade and do anything but die? Take the allies you’re offered.”

“Does it matter?” Farideh piped up, unable to bear the tumble of their conversation down its rocky, awful path. “We’re all in this against Shade. Against Tarchamus. Perhaps against the Hells. And we barely stand a chance if we all stand together. Even if she meant to turn on us, you can’t pretend she’s foolish enough to do so with Pernika dead, and Lorcan on our side.”

“Yes,” Mira said bitterly. “Your warlock and her devil will keep us wicked mercenaries in line.”

Farideh flushed and dropped her gaze to the simmering water. “Many thanks,” she said, adding a few pinches of the tea. “I was on your side.”

“Enough,” Dahl said. “We don’t have time or allies to waste, so I think we can all be trusted not to kill each other, yes? That includes Zhents. And devils. So your conversation will keep until later,” he said to Tam and Mira. “First things first, we need maps of the lower levels-as clear as we can recollect-yes? Mira, that is obviously yours.”

“I can draw a map,” Tam protested.

“Farideh, if you have to pour it down his throat, make him drink that tea,” Dahl said. “No one talk to Tam.”

“Are we forgetting the shitting Netherese at the gates?” Maspero said.

“No,” Dahl replied. “Take Havi and Brin and make certain the doors are holding-and on your way back, make as many obstacles as you can. Make sure if they do get through, they’re forced to navigate the library as much as possible. But stay together, and let Brin scare the ghosts off if they get close.”

“What about you?” Brin asked. “And Farideh?”

“Fari can come with us,” Havilar said.

“No,” Dahl said. “We need better information about the arcanist. And the library. I think I know where to find it.” He glanced at Farideh, and it dawned on her that he knew about the runes. She’d told him. Ah gods. “She can help me when she’s finished dosing Tam,” he said.

Farideh cursed to herself. At least he wasn’t going to call her out in front of everyone. Maybe he knew how to repair them. Maybe he knew how to make new wards.

Maybe he just wants to be sure you know how badly you erred, she thought, pouring the tea into a clay mug for Tam.

Tam was staring at Lorcan when she brought him the tea. “I cannot believe I have to tell your father you called that devil down. What were you thinking?”

Farideh kneeled down beside his bedroll. “He called himself. And then I was thinking it was awful handy to have someone fly me out of that mess.”

He sighed. “And I cannot believe you are so flippant about this, Farideh. It’s your soul, but you’re treading a line you never had to, and I worry one day you will fall across it.”

She held out the mug to him. “Will it matter? If I look like this, is a soul really a surety?”

“Those sound like someone else’s words.”

“Plenty of other people’s. If you think I have a soul worth saving, you are well in the minority.” Her gaze flicked over to Dahl. “Even in this company.”

He took the mug, watching the steaming contents instead of her face. “Whatever part of you is devil, the greater part is mortal. And that part must have a soul capable of good. It would be a shame to damn that part of yourself because the fiendish part-if in fact some part of you remains irrevocably fiendish, mind-happens to control your outward features.” He blew on the tea and took a tentative sip. “And unless you are a splendid actress, I think you do care. Don’t let him tell you your soul is doomed.”

Farideh pursed her lips and watched him drink several more sips of the tea. “Is it me you want to save, or Mira?”

And Tam Zawad was wise enough at least to know not to answer that question.

“There may be a line,” Farideh said, “but I would hope crossing it had more to do with hurting people and being selfish, with letting bad things happen instead of stopping them and not stepping up when you’ve done wrong-with a great many things more important than the company I keep. I hope that’s true for her as well.” She stood, still smarting from Mira’s last jab. “Although, she did steal the protective circle ritual from your book. You should know.”

“Don’t change the-” He broke off with a jaw-splitting yawn.

“Go to sleep,” Farideh said. She sighed. “Being this tired just makes you surly.”

Tam looked as if he would have liked to argue, as if there were a lot more he intended to say on the subject. But the tea was already seeping into his thoughts-his eyelids drooped and it seemed to take all the effort in the world just to blink. Farideh remembered the feeling. She left, and within a few steps, he had dropped to sleep.

“I do hope,” Lorcan said coldly, “that he appreciates my silence. For all the good it did.”

The devil sat seething in his silvery prison, passing the rod back and forth between his hands. His wounds hadn’t been dressed, she noticed, but he seemed to pay them no mind. Farideh drew nearer to the binding circle. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, cozy,” Lorcan said. “I see the paladin got over his aversions.” He smirked across the camp at Dahl, who was half-watching them, half-reading a slim blue book. “Some of them anyhow. Aren’t you lucky?”

“Leave him alone,” Farideh said wearily. “We’re in enough of a mess as it is.”

“So it seems.” He looked down at her, his black eyes cruel. “Once again, out of the frying pan and into the fire? Between this and Neverwinter, it hardly seems fair that I’m the one in the binding circle.”

Gods, Farideh thought, pursing her mouth. Back to this. Back to sulking, sneering Lorcan. Why had she ever thought he’d be different? “I’m sorry you have to be in there. I didn’t have time to find a solution yet.”

He stopped passing the rod back and forth and glared at it in his hands. “Unfortunately things got rather heated on my end. I couldn’t wait.”

“Well, I’ll keep looking,” she said, and she turned to go deal with Dahl.

“How is your leg?” Lorcan asked. He was still looking at the rod as he spoke to her. “You were limping before. Is it all right?’

“Just a turned ankle,” she said, waiting for the twist, waiting for him to spring some other nonsense on her. “Some bruises. I tripped on a skull.”

“Well, that’s … good, I suppose.” He started fidgeting with the rod again.

“Can I have that back?” she asked.

Lorcan blew out a breath. “No. Not yet.”

She frowned at him. “Why?”

“I need it.”

Farideh started to protest, to demand to know what exactly he needed with a warlock’s implement anyway, to insist he give it back-because what was he going to do from inside a binding circle if she just took it? — when Dahl came up behind her, still holding the little blue book.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Now.”

Lorcan gave him a wicked smile. “Sounds serious. Best do as he says, darling.”

“We are not done,” Farideh whispered to the cambion. She followed Dahl back across the camp, to the very edges of the circle, as far from Lorcan and Mira and Tam as he could get. Glancing back at the others, Dahl whispered, “You destroyed one of the runes.”

Farideh felt the shadow-smoke start to pulse off her, the powers of the Hells stirring it up, ready for a fight. “I didn’t know. I thought they were door locks.”

“Because the Book told you.”

“It’s not that absurd.”

“I’m not blaming you!” He ran a hand through his hair, glanced back again, and pulled her out of the circle and around the corner of the shelves. “I … I broke one too. The Book said it powered a trap I had to get past.”

The shadows dropped back. “You did?”

“As you said, it’s not that absurd.”

“We have to tell them,” she said. “What if there’s a way to repair them?”

“Can you cast runic magic?” he asked. “I don’t think any of them can. What’s done is done. But … Look, what were you trying to get from the Book? What’s it been telling you?”

She felt the blood burning up her neck. “I was using it to figure out something. A ritual.”

“The ritual to pull the devil from the Hells,” he said flatly. “Don’t be coy. I was there. It drew it out? Had you coming back a lot?”

She nodded. “And … it sounds strange, but it lied about things, as if it wanted me to trust it and keep coming back. I have ancestors it claimed to know about, and it told me their history. Exactly what I wanted to hear.” How stupid had she been to believe a word of it? And how terrible, she thought, would it be to tell Havilar the truth?

Dahl’s face clouded. “It did the same to me. It … It gathered I had a problem,” he said delicately, “and sent me to find a book that suggested it was none of my doing. That it was others manipulating me.” He shook his head. “That I was like the arcanist.”

“Was Lorcan right?” she asked softly. “Were you a paladin?”

Dahl studied the runes on the limestone tiles. “Once,” he said. “I was dedicated to the god of knowledge.”

Farideh knew if she told him she was sorry, he would snap at her and say he didn’t want her pity. If she asked what made him fall, he would take it as taunting him. If she offered the parallel, the way her fear of losing her pact made her think of his losing his powers … well, that would only end badly, destroying the modicum of camaraderie they’d built up.

And if she said nothing, she would regret it.

“It sounds like something you were very suited to,” she told him.

Dahl sighed. “Listen to the rest of what I have to tell you before you decide that. We’re not dealing with just some old wizard.” He opened it to a spread of pages covered with a hurried diagram and littered with notes. “This is a diary of one of Tarchamus’s friends. I’m fairly sure this is a copy of the spell Mira’s looking for. Only it’s not an exaggeration. He really did burn a city out of the sky and destroy all the people living below it.” He flipped back through the book. “Here: ‘Tarchamus will not see me. He has not taken the council’s intercession well-who would?’ ” Dahl looked up. “They blocked him, the other arcanists and priests of the goddess of magic, from using the Weave after he destroyed that city. ‘But his apprentices still come and go, visiting his former friends and rivals. Today, Nyvasha, who Tarchamus lured away from Tenish, came to see several of my own apprentices, carrying a tome of absurd thickness that she must have dug out of Tarchamus’s attics for all the dust it carried.’ ”-Dahl gave Farideh a significant look-“ ‘When I asked after her master, Nyvasha was suddenly quite shy of me and danced around an answer. When I asked if I might see Tarchamus, she was quiet and said only it would be a few years more, she suspected, before anyone saw him. Sadebreth tells me Lorull, the old man who has been Tarchamus’s apprentice for such long years he must have more loyalty than sense, has flown for the mountains …’ Wait, there’s …” Dahl paged ahead. “Ah, here, the arcanist disappears and he gets ahold of his notes-’the structure this suggests is not so much a hoard as a trap, a pit into which Tarchamus’s hungry rivals may fall. It would take the likes of Tarchamus’s eruption to breach it, but I must do as I can because within rests the only copy of the eruption spell, the last scroll bait for every fool arcanist in Netheril.’ ” Dahl looked up. “Everything after that is notes about finding the place and trying to convince others to stop looking for it. I think he died here.”

Farideh turned the pages back to the diagram, studying the runes. “This one,” she said, tapping the center mark. “It’s part of a spell I know.”

“One that makes a lot of fire?”

“Lava. Not enough to burn a city out of the sky, but enough to do some damage,” she said. The scrawlings surrounding the rune reminded her of the scrolls the Book had sent her hunting. “Have you shown it to Mira?”

Dahl shook his head. “There wasn’t time before. And now …” He paused and wet his lips. “I’m afraid we might need to destroy this place. I’m sure we need to be ready for it.”

“All of it?”

“I don’t want to, all right?” he snapped. “The knowledge is not good or evil, but Shade will put it to evil purpose and people will die by the hundreds. Since Tarchamus isn’t famous for his eruption beyond historians and maybe Shade, we have to assume that scroll never got out. And if we can’t find it, we have to make certain Shade doesn’t either.”

Farideh nodded, surprised by the outburst. “Lorcan will know what the rune means. He might know what the spell does. He might know if we can reproduce it somehow.”

Dahl scowled at the text. “I don’t want to treat with a devil.”

“I’ll treat with him,” she said sharply. She handed the diary back. “You could always ask the Book. It might let something slip.”

“No,” Dahl said urgently. “Don’t pick up that book.” He pulled another book from his jerkin, another slim leather volume. “I found this. Look at the dates.”

Farideh frowned. “Fourteen seventy-eight? They couldn’t …” She read the names. “Karshoj. Who made this?”

“Is it true?”

Farideh stared at the name bound in curlicues of stylized branches and marked with the number three: Lord Aubrin Crownsilver. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “He’s … someone. But he wouldn’t have just left this … or written it.”

Dahl studied her face, as if he were assessing how much he could trust her and how much she trusted him. “Let’s say you’re right,” he said, “Brin wouldn’t have left it. What if this is what those ghosts are doing? What if they’re driving us back to the Book so it can … pull things from our heads? Make new books? Hoard new knowledge? What if that’s what this place is? A trap, to punish Tarchamus’s rivals.”

“And then they feed us to the arcanist?” She closed the book. If this was what was locked in Brin’s head, it wasn’t her business. “Where did you find it?”

“Near where you were casting your circle,” Dahl said. “If I’m right … there might be something there about the scroll. If someone hid it or destroyed it, they might have given that knowledge to the Book.”

“Maybe the memories of whoever got that page out of here?” Farideh held out a hand. “Stay here. Give me the diary, and I’ll see about that first.” And see about my rod, too, she thought as she walked over to Lorcan.

“I need to show you something,” Farideh said. She opened the diary to the spell diagrams, the lines of Infernal letters arrayed around the center rune. “Do you know what it says?” He reached out to touch the center rune-the circle rebuffed him, and he flinched.

“Phlegethos,” Lorcan said. “The fourth layer.”

“ ‘The Heart of Flames,’ ” she said, recalling the scroll. “What would that do?”

“Everything would burn,” he said. “Perhaps even the caster. Phlegethos is hotter than a volcano’s heart.” Lorcan peered at the diagram. “Lords of the Nine, that’s complex. What under Beshaba’s wicked gaze are you doing with it?”

“Nothing yet. Could you cast it?”

“I’d be impressed if an archlord could cast that.”

Not the answer she wanted. She shut the book. “May I have my rod back?”

Lorcan straightened. “Trust me, darling, you don’t want it.”

“I certainly do,” she said. She held out a hand. “And it’s not as if you can return it to the Hells at the moment. So please?”

“You can’t just trust that I have your best interests at heart,” he said, his wings twitching as if they might spread wide and shatter the walls of the circle. “Maybe you should have called Sairche-I’ll bet she’d make a fine mistress.”

Farideh shook her head, biting back a bitter laugh. “You know I thought things were different. I thought you and I … I thought you were done treating me like some thing you shift and prod and toy with, but that was never so. I spent every night worrying over you. I searched high and low for a gate to get you from the Hells-I put myself in the hands of monsters for you-and you can’t even come up with a decent lie for why you want to cripple me?”

“This isn’t about crippling you.”

“Because you suddenly need a rod?” she demanded. “Because you’d rather I fight ghosts with weakened spells?”

“Because Sairche found you!”

“What?” All Farideh’s anger froze. “How? You said she couldn’t.”

“She managed to scry the rod. But if it’s kept within-”

Farideh pointed her bare hand at the rod. “Assulam.” A flash of light, a low pop, and the rod shattered into a rain of splinters. Lorcan yelped and curled away from the explosion. Her stomach clenched. The implement and its enchantments had saved her more than once, and casting with it had made her feel far more powerful and in control than reality had ever granted her.

Sairche found you. She managed to scry the rod-and then it didn’t matter what the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal had done or not done or could do in the future. It was a lodestone for Sairche, and that was all that had mattered.

“Are you mad?” Lorcan hissed. “Do you know what that was worth?”

The splinters scattered over the limestone tiles, spangled with chunks of the quartz tip and flakes of gold leaf. Whatever magic had been in the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal was gone. “Less than Havilar,” Farideh said.

“She doesn’t know about Havilar!”

“And now she never will,” Farideh said. “No matter how hard she looks. Unless you were lying about that too.”

Lorcan dragged his hands over his face. “Have you wondered why I’m the first devil to seek you and your sister out?” he asked. “The only one to offer either of you the pact? Your parents were likely wicked, but one of them may have had a change of heart-there is a spell laid on you, on both of you. A protection. You can’t be scryed, not by normal measures.”

She blinked, startled. “How long has that been so?”

“All your life, I’d wager.”

“But you could find me,” she said. “So how well does it work, really?”

Lorcan shifted. “Don’t be angry, darling. Do you still have the charm I gave you?” She took it from her pocket and handed it over. Lorcan twirled the little scourge between his fingers. “Do you know anything about sympathetic magic? Like calls to like, and there’s nothing more powerful for a sympathetic link than blood. The Weave, the planes, the scraps of wild magic that pulse in all manner of things-they cling to blood in ways only the gods can explain. That is how I found you.”

She recoiled as his meaning came clear. “You bastard. You had no right.”

“Oh come now,” he said. “A few drops off your brand? That’s hardly worth getting upset about. And without it I wouldn’t have been able to find you again. I wouldn’t have been able to give you those powers you’re so fond of.”

Whatever reasons he put to it, stealing blood from her was a step beyond everything she’d agreed to. He’s practically Lorcan without the devil-magic and wings, Havilar had said. All teeth and hands. All greed and self-regard.

Lorcan thrust the charm at her, skimming the edge of the circle. “Here. Take it then. You’ll have all your blood back.”

And he’d never be able to find her. Farideh rubbed her arm. “You could have asked.”

Lorcan lowered the charm. “And if I ask now? There is a part of the pact. An allowance. I can take a portion of the spells that are left affecting you. It’s meant to spread the effects of curses and such, but I think it will contort the protection. But it uses blood.”

“What do you mean,” Farideh said after a moment, “a part of the pact? How many parts are there to this pact?”

Lorcan cursed. “It’s just a little … perquisite.”

Farideh bit back her anger. “One you didn’t think I needed to know about.”

“It isn’t you. Look, do you think I want to deal with every lazy warlock thinking they can stroll through the world provoking each other without a care because they pestered me into being their shitting shield?” Lorcan demanded. “I would have brought it up if it mattered before. I’m bringing it up now. It should carry over part of the protection and keep Sairche from finding me as well.”

“The binding circle does a fine job of that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Well, if you won’t, then eventually you will have to make a decision: would you rather leave me to rot in this cavern, or break the circle so Sairche can have me? How do you punish me, then? How do you make certain I regret all that I suffered for you, all the tears and blood the erinyes made me spill instead of handing you over? I nearly died a dozen times over so that you can swan around with that shitting paladin and act as if I’ve ravished you by claiming a few drops of blood.”

Farideh blushed to her temples. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say any of that. I’ll find a way to get you free.”

“You don’t have time to find another solution.”

She didn’t. There were already too many pieces hanging over them-the Book and the strange texts and the arcanist and the Shadovar. She needed the pact and she might even need Lorcan. Farideh bit her lip. “What do I have to do?”

“Give me your knife.”

She pulled out the blade, but when he reached to take it, she shook her head. “Tell me where to cut,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

“I suggest the elbow,” he said. “The skin is thin and no one will remark on the scars. Just a nick will do. And then you will have to hand me the knife. You’re not the only one who bleeds this time.”

Farideh pressed the tip of the blade to her skin, harder than she would have expected, until it broke the golden skin and freed a trickle of blood that smeared the knife. She grimaced at the pain that shot up her arm, but handed him the knife, hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

Another terrible mistake, a little voice corrected.

Lorcan slashed his own arm, black blood smearing the knife blade. “Break the circle,” he said, considering the mix of fluids. “This has to go quickly.”

With one pointed foot she smeared the neat silver runes into nothing. The magic sputtered and collapsed, as the Hells’ powers swelled around Lorcan. A steady stream of Infernal seemed to wind around them both like a serpent. Her brand started to throb. The blood burst off the knife’s blade in a cloud of droplets, so fine she hardly felt its spray across her face and arms.

Lorcan drew her against him. She forgot to breathe.

The spell pulled and for the first time, Farideh felt the lines of magic that wrapped around her, as they stretched, tighter, farther, thin and sharp as wires in a net so fine it would have caught sand off a lake bottom.

Her sight shrank down to only Lorcan’s black, black eyes. The pulse of the Weave grew stronger, harder to ignore, and it was harder to imagine she hadn’t always felt it. Her breath quickened. Her own heart raced. Adrenaline stirred her thoughts into a blur and she was certain the spell would break and she would break under it, pushed over an edge she hadn’t known was there.

Then suddenly, all of it vanished, and a great, gasping breath rushed into her. A wicked smile played across Lorcan’s mouth. Dahl stood behind her, his sword drawn. Even Mira had broken away from her books.

“It’s fine!” Farideh gasped. The sensation of the net faded from her skin. “It’s fine.” She brushed her shaking arms to be certain. “Did it work?”

Lorcan spread his hands. “No Sairche.”

“Good. All right.” Farideh swallowed against the knot in her throat. “I need to … I’m going to go with Dahl. So promise me you won’t do anything while I’m gone.”

Lorcan shook his head. “I’m bound to you and you’re bound to me. You aren’t going anywhere alone.”

“We don’t have time to argue this,” Farideh said, turning to go, needing to be away from him. “Just wait until I get back, and-” She had gone no more than half-a-dozen steps before the sensation of the net cutting into her skin flared again and made her catch her breath. Behind her, Lorcan yelped and hit the floor.

“What was that?” Farideh demanded.

Lorcan scowled up at her. “I told you. You’re bound to me and I’m bound to you. We’re sharing the protection. If you try to go without me, the spell will pull.” He stood, still looking furious. “Though apparently it remains your protection. Wherever you’re going, I’m coming too.” He glared at Dahl. “Like it or not.”