Lesser Evils

CHAPTER THREE

WATERDEEP

28 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)

Dahl Peredur was early to the taproom of the Blind Falcon Inn, early enough to order an ale and reconsider his notes once. Was being early good, he wondered, or was it bad? In his days with the Church of Oghma, it would have been counted as an extravagance, a waste of useful time-punctuality was the mark of a finely tuned mind. But the Harpers might have appreciated the fact that Dahl had come ahead, to study the taproom and prepare for his meeting.

Maybe. Dahl finished the ale in front of him and waved to the keghand for another. Or maybe they’d chastise him for being too obvious. Or maybe the lorekeepers in Procampur had been wrong and punctuality was no virtue but the sign of a kind of small thinking that the god of knowledge detested-it was clear enough to Dahl that they didn’t know everything.

Besides, his contact-partner, he amended-was late.

He pulled out a stack of papers he’d only just tucked away. Reread the list of antiquaries and items to be sure nothing was missing; everything was in order. Skimmed the advertisement-The Secrets of Attarchammiux, Terror of the Silver Marches-he’d pulled from a market stall that morning. A lucky catch, that. The runes the seller had painstakingly recreated suggested more than the usual brass-grabbing. He shifted it behind the list and set the stack down, as the keghand brought another dark, thick ale.

He looked at the letter on top of the stack and sighed. His mother’s neat writing had the delicate slant of wheat stalks in a breeze off the distant Dragon Reach. To have reached him here in Waterdeep, her letters had to have made a long and tortuous journey down into Harrowdale, across the Sea of Fallen Stars to the overland routes from Westgate up to the City of Splendors. And yet every month, another letter came, full of news that wasn’t noteworthy anywhere but at his parents’ small farm in the northern Dalelands-whose daughter had married and whose sheep had lambed, whose crops had come in best and whose children had gone off to other Dales, and farther afield.

It was a world Dahl had left behind a decade ago. And while the litany of his parents’ lives called up something primal in his heart, in his thoughts he marveled at how alien and unfamiliar those concerns were. He didn’t belong in Harrowdale, even if he didn’t belong to Oghma either.

His mother knew he wasn’t meant for the Dalelands. He suspected that she’d always known. She did not ask why he had left Procampur so suddenly, she never asked him to come home. She just closed every letter in the same fashion.

We love and miss you, she wrote, and hope the world treats you well.

Dahl folded up the papers and gulped down enough of the ale to quash the swell of homesickness that rose up in him. He’d write her back later. Tomorrow.

The taproom was still all but empty, and Dahl found himself reconsidering each patron, in case one was the elusive Tam Zawad.

“ ‘The Shepherd,’ we used to call him,” the spymaster, Aron Vishter, had said. “Priest of Selune, but don’t let that fool you. Might have the peace about him, but he was quite the blade when he was a lad. Middle-aged, Calishite. Thinner than you, but about as tall. Got a beard. You won’t miss him.”

Dahl doubted that either of the heavyset men in the corner, decked in lush fabrics, was this “Shepherd.” The other man was too old, and the last three patrons, playing a hand of cards in the corner, were very much female. He sighed and drank some more ale.

The door swung open again, letting in a flash of late afternoon sunlight and two young women.

No, not women. Tieflings.

Dahl tensed. Descendants of fiends and mortals, tieflings were one thing that never came up in his mother’s letters. Dahl hadn’t seen one of the horned, blank-eyed creatures until long after he’d left home. Even in Waterdeep, where you could find everything, one had to go looking for tieflings.

Just as well, Dahl thought, keeping his eyes on the two. That fiendish blood didn’t just wash itself away after all. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place to meet Tam.

The tieflings looked like mirrors of one another. Twins perhaps, or maybe it was just that they weren’t human. Maybe that was what all female tieflings looked like. One stood with her arms folded around a battered glaive, her long tail slashing the floor behind her and her gold eyes fixed on the door to the inn’s rooms. The other scanned the taproom as if searching for someone. When she came to him, Dahl met her gaze-one eye silver, one gold like the other’s-and she turned away with a blush.

“He’s not here,” he heard her say to the other. “We should wait.”

“Fine,” the gold-eyed one said. “Whiskey time.” She laid the glaive on the floor along the bar, pulled out one of the stools, and hopped onto it, signaling to the tavernkeeper. Her twin settled in beside her. “If he isn’t here,” the gold-eyed one said, “then we can-”

“Do exactly what Mehen told us,” the odd-eyed one said more firmly. “A whiskey is one thing. If he comes back and finds out you’ve run off or spent a load of coin or …” She waved a hand vaguely at the taproom. “Started a brawl-”

“I don’t start brawls.” The gold-eyed one grinned wickedly, displaying sharp white canines. “But I’d finish them.”

Her twin snickered. “That’s not better. Get me a cup of hot water, would you?” She bent down to pull a small pouch from her bag while her sister spoke to the tavernkeeper. As she righted, she glanced up at Dahl again, and this time he looked away. Not that he ought to have. He could look where he liked, after all.

“Of course it’s better. I’d win.”

“And spend all the bounty repairing the taproom.”

“So you say. Anyway, I never said I was going to start a brawl. I just think we ought to take the opportunity to have some fun. Maybe we could go back to the market. Try on some nicer cloaks. Mehen can’t argue with that.” She drummed her fingers against the bar top. “We’re going to be in this inn for ages anyway. Why start too soon?”

Dahl kept watching them from the corner of his eye. Whoever they were waiting for-whoever that “Mehen” was-the tieflings didn’t seem dangerous. In fact, they seemed a little foolish to his mind-cloaks and whiskey and arguing about brawling. But who hadn’t heard the saying? One’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy, three’s a curse.

“If we don’t do anything Mehen can call trouble,” the odd-eyed one said as the keghand set a small cup in front of her sister and a steaming mug in front of her, “then he has to relax a little.” She dropped a fat pinch of herbs into the water.

The other snorted. “Right. Tell me how that goes.” She sniffed at her sister’s tea. “How is that? Does it do anything interesting?”

The odd-eyed one shrugged. “Makes my sleep a little quieter for part of the night and tastes like old roots. Three pinches together knocks me out. You’re better off with whiskey.” She looked up at Dahl and narrowed her eyes. “Can we help you with something?” she said sharply.

“No,” he said, but he didn’t look away. She should know he was watching.

“Gods,” the other said. “Are you listening to yourself? This is probably how you attract such creepers. One fellow-one good-looking fellow! — in this whole taproom is giving you notice, and you jump down his throat.” She grinned at Dahl. “Excuse my sister. She’s better at worrying than enjoying herself, but she’s in the market for a good tutor.” Her sister turned scarlet and hissed something in an unfamiliar tongue.

“I think I’ll decline,” Dahl said coldly.

“No one invited you,” the blushing sister snapped.

The door opened again to admit a wiry-looking Calishite man, his brown skin crinkled around the eyes and his dark curls threaded silver. He looked exhausted and ferociously annoyed, but he was also wearing a small, unobtrusive broach-pinned from the inside of his cloak.

A Harper, Dahl thought. Here was the elusive Shepherd.

He slid the parchments back into his jerkin and started to stand. But Tam Zawad had spotted the tiefling twins and stopped in his tracks.

“Farideh?” he said. “Havilar? You’re supposed to be-”

The odd-eyed one-Farideh-cut him off. “Here,” she said curtly, shoving a folded scrap of parchment at him. “Mehen went to Suzail.

The prices went up on the portal, so he wants you to watch us.”

Tam looked at the paper as if she’d shoved a dead fish into his hand. “What?”

“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Farideh said. “Maybe in a few days.”

“I don’t have time to …” He unfolded the paper and skimmed it. “What do you need watching for?”

“We don’t,” Farideh said.

“So pretend to watch us,” the gold-eyed one-Havilar, Dahl supposed-said. “And we’ll pretend you were terribly strict and never let us out of sight. Mehen will be pleased, we’ll be pleased-”

“And you can go on doing whatever you were planning to do,” Farideh finished.

Tam raised an eyebrow. “You want me to lie to your father.”

“We want you to tell Mehen whatever you need to tell him,” Farideh said. “Tell him you thought his note was rubbish, if you like. He’s already left for Suzail. He won’t be back until tomorrow at the soonest. Neither of us has any intention of doing anything that needs a nursemaid.”

“I would believe that better,” Tam said, folding the note, “had you met me at the gate and not turned up spattered in the gore of unmentionable creatures instead.” Farideh blushed again and Dahl had to wonder what the Harper meant.

“We still didn’t need a nursemaid,” Havilar said.

Tam rubbed a hand over his face. “And that by the grace of all the gods.” He sighed. “All right: Get a room here. Tell me if you plan to be out all day. Do stay out of trouble-even the mundane sorts-and if you can’t help it, send word for me and for the love of the Moon don’t try and get yourselves out of it if the Watch is involved.”

Havilar snorted. “What are you afraid we’re going to do?”

“Be seventeen and short of temper,” Tam replied. “And I’d hate to explain that again to Mehen. Come out of this without being arrested, cursed, grievously wounded, or impregnated, and I think we’ll be fine.”

Farideh looked as if she’d been slapped, but Dahl could hear her sister snickering. They both thanked the priest and went to find the innkeeper about a room. Tam watched them leave, weariness overtaking his frame as if the twins had stolen something vital from the room. He sighed, shook his head, and started toward a table.

“Master Zawad?” Dahl said, climbing off his stool and stepping into his path. He extended a hand in greeting. “I’m Dahl Peredur. Aron said … He should have mentioned my pin-”

“Good gods,” Tam said, looking Dahl up and down. “You? Where did you get the impression that eavesdropping like a gawping spectator made for good spycraft?”

The rebuke shut Dahl’s mouth. “My apologies,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your business.”

Tam sighed again. “Get that pin off your cloak. You’ve never met me-what if someone else had shown up in my place? An agent of Shade or a Zhent or something worse?”

“I suppose I’d question their goals,” Dahl said, sharply, removing the harp-shaped pin that marked him. “Searching out antiquities doesn’t seem in the best interests of the Zhentarim.”

“Never assume.”

“All right,” Dahl said. This was all going to the Abyss’s privy and back. Dahl straightened his shoulders and took out the list of antiquities. “I’ve gone through all the reports that Master Vishter and his friends had,” he said. “I’ve brought together a list of the most likely and mapped out-”

“Is there anything pressing? Anything that will leave someone dead if we don’t do something right now?”

Dahl bit his tongue. “They’re antiquities,” he said. “Not plague-pockets.”

“Later then,” Tam said. “Tomorrow, preferably. I’ve had my fill of other people’s plans for the day.” He stopped and looked back at Dahl. “But I will buy you a drink. We can go over how to present yourself properly.”

The Fisher-fifteen years gone by and still he preferred that epithet to all the others-poured himself a few fingers of Damaran whiskey at the end of the day, intending to read a few more pages of reports and call it a night. But when he turned from the sideboard, he found himself face-to-face with a woman in dark leathers, watching patiently from the shadows of the door.

He stopped himself from crying out-thank the gods-and from tossing the alcohol in her eyes and pulling a dagger. But his disquiet must have shown.

“Did I startle you?” she asked striding into the room. “I couldn’t wait.”

The Fisher settled himself behind his desk. He knew enough about her to be sure she hadn’t been trying to surprise him-Mira was simply quiet on her feet, which was far more embarrassing.

Not Mira, he corrected himself. She’d told him another name, like she ought to have, and damned if he was going to breach etiquette that way. Not without a better payoff for the hoarded information. Trouble was he couldn’t recall the false name.

“What can I do for you, my dear?” he asked, skirting the issue. “Please sit.”

“I’ve sent messages,” she said, standing in front of the desk. “Where’s my team?”

Ah, here, here was a better payoff, the Fisher thought. “Would you like a drink?”

“No. Thank you.” She bit off each word. “Where is my team? We can’t wait any longer.”

“Ah, well, that,” the Fisher said. “You see I can’t, as it turns out, spare you so many agents. We’re short of hands as it is, and-”

“You promised,” she said. There was no plea there; this one was cool as they came.

“I thought I could,” the Fisher said. “But don’t worry: I’ve managed something better. A single agent-and perhaps an apprentice if they get along for the first part, you never know.”

“What in the Hells am I supposed to do with one agent?”

“A venerable agent,” the Fisher said, suppressing a grin. “Tam Zawad. Previously known to a lucky few as the Shepherd, as Brother Nightingale, and briefly, for an unluckier few, as the Culler of the Fold.” The woman’s thin lips pursed at the name, tightened with each of the epithets, and the Fisher’s grin broke free. “Do you know him?”

She stared at him, as if waiting for him to amend his words, as if he would take back what he said and give her a different contact. The Fisher felt the old blood stirring for something more exciting-he’d noticed already she was a quiet one, a calm one, but somewhere in that gaze something dangerous simmered. Too dangerous, likely, for an old spy with a fancy dagger. Or maybe not. He sipped his drink. At least it was more interesting than reports and corralling children playing at being Harpers.

“I understand,” she said softly, “that they hold you dear in Waterdeep. A venerable agent, yourself. They respect your expertise, your years of service, to an extent-a cheap extent. It’s less than you deserve, isn’t it? Makes a man willing to test limits. Seek out other allies.”

Her dark eyes pinned him but the Fisher refused to look away. If she thought to cow him, with information he hadn’t hidden from her, she was after the wrong man.

“I also understand,” her tone a little sharper now, “that you think this assignment is a minor matter. An inconvenient aside to your normal activities. Let me disabuse you of that notion: it is not. You do not accept Maspero of Everlund’s coin and then brush him aside. If we fail-”

“You’ll not fail,” the Fisher interrupted. “You can’t. Not without paying the same price.”

The woman stared at him again, as if he were a schoolboy speaking out of turn. What she said next came with such venom, such fury, that the Fisher momentarily considered he might have misjudged her.

“Maspero’s not one to make unnecessary examples, whatever your reports say. If I fail, it will be because you put a man known for rushing about to play hero, for trying to make up for past cowardices, for not working well with others-you, Fisher, put him on my watch when I specifically asked for strong-backed greenlings with eyes for antiquities who could follow orders and not ruin my site. This little jape, this game that makes you feel as if you’ve triumphed-over what, I can only imagine, Fisher; you’re a man of so many shortcomings-make no mistake, it’s not a mere inconvenience to me. Your games have jeopardized everything.

“And on top of that, you’ve delayed too long.” She pulled a folded page from her jerkin and tossed it on the table. “He’s selling it.”

The Fisher drew the leaflet toward him, avoiding the woman’s eyes. The Secrets of Attarchammiux, Terror of the Silver Marches. A paragraph of reconstituted history-tales of a wizardly dragon fit for chapbooks. A row of broken Draconic letters. The Fisher cursed to himself.

Sloppy, he thought. Godsdamned sloppy, you.

“You said he’d gladly sell it to us.”

“He would have,” she agreed. “And then you sat on your hands so you could pull a stupid prank on an old rival instead of moving quickly enough to catch him before he had it appraised by a nib-brained collector who went ahead and decided to tell him we were dealing with a stlarning dragon’s hoard. Now it’s too valuable to sell for Harper coin.”

“How high is it likely to go?”

“For clues to a dragon’s hoard?” The woman shrugged. “Depends entirely upon the crowd. Worst case: more than one ‘lordly adventurer’ shows up with their pockets spitting gold and their good opinions of themselves raging, and we have a battle of bidders. Could go very high, very quickly. Ten times the value or more.”

The Fisher swallowed more whiskey. “I can’t just hand over that sort of coin.”

“I’m well aware.”

“There’d be questions. They’d want to know what was so important.”

“I said, I’m well aware.” The woman glared at the city out the window glittering with torches, and bit her upper lip, deep in thought. “The plan will have to change. Your agent will know about the items?”

“He will. The greenling I tasked him with is nothing if not thorough when it comes to antiquities.”

She nodded to herself, still thinking. “Then he’ll find me. Keep the coin ready. We’ll find a use for it.”

The Fisher narrowed his eyes at the woman. She stared right back, implacable as ever. Her true identity hadn’t been difficult to puzzle out-even if she hadn’t told him her name, with those dark eyes he would have suspected. Twenty-five years in the field, missing such a detail would have him reaching for the hemlock.

No place in the world for spies who’ve slipped.

“They say it speaks, the page,” he said. “That it has secrets for mages to hear.”

“And?”

“If it’s not a dragon’s, whose is it?” She didn’t answer. “And where’d the stone come from? Your patron never said what it is we’re dealing with.”

“Because it doesn’t matter to you,” she said simply. “Dragon’s hoard, elven ruin, lordling’s country mansion’s facade-”

“Something … darker?” The Fisher studied her expression, but wherever her earlier fury had come from, it released nothing else for the intimation.

“Whatever it is,” she said, “you’re paid the same.”

“Still,” the Fisher said, “a man can’t help but be curious-what’s worth so much?”

She eyed him again, for long moments that seemed to press the very edges of decency.

“A man can help but be curious,” she said, “if he wants to live very long in the Harpers’ good graces.”

For days and days, there had only been the hollow in the tip of a fingerbone tower, still weeping marrow from the walls. The little room and chains and erinyes after erinyes, a new one each time Lorcan woke, and Sairche beside them, now and again. Chains and erinyes and new sorts of pain. He lost track of the time.

“… you’ll kill him if you aren’t careful,” a voice said as he stirred to consciousness.

“I didn’t do this.” Lorcan tried to open his eyes, but a layer of dried blood lacquered them shut. “Bloody Megara let them go completely feral.”

“Is he dead?”

Every muscle urged Lorcan to stay down. If they thought he was dead they’d stop.

If they think you’re dead, they’ll throw you to the layer, idiot, he thought. And you don’t have the strength to run from that either. Even being beaten by erinyes was better than being slowly devoured by Malbolge’s hungry ground. Someone grabbed him by the chin and tilted his head-a shock of pain went through him and his eyes wrenched open.

His vision swam-three erinyes. One of the pradixikai by the door. One of the red-haired ones in the middle distance. A blond missing one eye staring into his face. Sulci. Shit and ashes. He recoiled despite himself.

“Oh good,” Sulci said with a horrific smile. “You’re up.”

Not for long, he thought. After so many hours, his arms were bloodless and numb, his mind was hardly holding on to two thoughts at a time. His resolve was shaken-give him to Glasya, he didn’t care anymore-

I may have need of you and her in the future.

He shuddered at the memory of that horrible voice crooning in his ear. Of seeing Glasya’s punishments meted out to other devils. No-not Glasya. Anything but Glasya.

“There’s another,” he tried to say. And all he could imagine was Farideh’s terrified face-he’d promised her, he’d sworn no one would find out about Havi. And if they took Havilar, Farideh would do something drastic to try and stop it, he was sure. She would leave. She would throw herself to Sairche, or worse.

If they don’t take Havilar, he thought, you are not going to be fine, and it won’t matter what she does.

“Another heir,” he tried again, the words slurring from his broken teeth.

“Aw,” Sulci said. “How dear.” She uncoiled her whip. “We’re all well aware you think you’re smarter than us, Little Brother. But don’t think we’re so stupid as to fall for that. You can’t get another heir. Not from here.”

“Less talking,” the pradixikai-shaped blur by the door bellowed.

Sulci looked back over her shoulder. “Lords, Zela, what does it matter? It’s not like the worm’s rallying where he hangs.”

“You have to give him a little credit,” the middle one said. “He hasn’t broken. He ought to have broken.”

“Did you expect some fragile sinner?” Zela said. “Half-mortal or not, he’s still Exalted Invadiah’s son. So quit waiting for him to break on his own and make it happen.”

Sulci didn’t move, her eyes still on the larger erinyes. “You mean Fallen Invadiah.”

Lorcan didn’t need eyes to feel the tension in the room. Having spent all his life attuned to the rage of his fifty-eight half sisters, he could likely be a corpse and still know when one of the pradixikai was nearby and about to strike.

“And who are you to tell me what I mean?” Zela said, coming closer. Shit and ashes-don’t attack her here. One misplaced sword-strike and it wouldn’t matter what Sairche, Farideh, or Glasya wanted. “You answer to me, Sulci, don’t forget it.”

“And we both answer to Baby Sister,” Sulci said, not giving an inch. Both devils loomed over Lorcan, giving him as much notice as an imp underfoot. “Since Mother is no more.”

Zela’s hand shot out and seized Sulci by the throat, but the smaller erinyes was ready and, even choking, pulled an ugly, curved knife and stabbed it into the bare spot between the linked plates of Zela’s dress. Zela roared, and twisted Sulci toward Lorcan-

“Zela!” a voice barked. Sairche barked. Lorcan tried to focus and saw only the shape of her, her wings filling the lacuna of the door. “Drop her.”

Sulci hit the floor with a spongy thud. Zela turned on her unwanted commander, and the air still bristled with the threat of her rage.

Sairche strode into the room, followed by the shapes of more than one erinyes. Lorcan shut his eyes and didn’t bother trying to count the doubling images. More than one. Too many.

“What’s the punishment, Sulci,” Sairche said, “for disobedience to your fury leader?”

He could hear Sulci panting. “She questioned your authority. I was-”

“What,” Sairche said, a little louder, “is the punishment for disobedience?”

Silence. “Eighty lashes.”

“Then I think we all know what comes next. Be thorough, Zela.”

“Why are you here?” Zela demanded.

Sairche was silent for so long that Lorcan made himself open his eyes again and lift his head. She was glowering at him.

“Unchain him,” she spat.

He heard, not felt, the shackles come from his wrists, and without the chains’ support he crumpled to the floor. The blood rushed back into his arms and he fainted.

He woke seconds later, his pulse in his ears. Sairche stood over him, looking disgusted. She withdrew a small vial from under her cloak and dropped it beside his head, before turning and walking away, trailed by too many erinyes, into the fuzz of Lorcan’s failing vision.