Lesser Evils

CHAPTER SEVEN

WATERDEEP

4 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)

His prayers ended, Tam opened his eyes to the waxing moon and the sure sensation of Selune’s blessing coursing through his veins. He lay on the roof tiles a few moments more, letting the powers quiet and settle. If his life had followed a different course, such nights might have been the center of his existence. Channeling the moon goddess’s powers to the people in the world below, a vessel for her quiet power.

Some days it seemed as if it would suit him far, far better than being her weapon, most often after a night where he gathered his powers from Selune without haste, the gift of powers as familiar and easy and untouched by time as sitting with an old friend. Other times it felt more like a rush, powers pouring into him before he could ask for them-Selune knew what he needed.

And now and again, there were nights where the communion made clear the extent of the goddess’s powers.

Mira, he thought, staring up at the moon poised among the shining fragments they called her Tears. The night Mira was born he’d been away and racing back, knowing he would be too late the moment the midwife’s sending faded. Truly, knowing from the moment he’d left Athkatla, but he’d agreed months before to accompany Viridi into Tethyr. He wasn’t supposed to have a child, her mother, Laeyla, wasn’t supposed to know how to contact him, and he wasn’t supposed to know how to contact her. He wasn’t supposed to be entangled with the rest of the world-for their safety and his own.

But a rash night led to an accident led to Mira’s mother deciding she wanted to be Mira’s mother, led to Tam realizing he didn’t want to cut out all entanglements.

“Something’s bothering you,” Viridi had noted almost immediately. And he’d denied it and denied it and denied it-but once the sending came, he admitted everything.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I knew the rules. I know why they’re there.” He shook his head. “I’m no one’s father.”

Viridi sighed in that way she had, that said he was so painfully young and if she remembered feeling as lost and unsure, she knew better than to try and explain it. She’d pointed out the fastest horse to him and told him not to come back to her compound in Athkatla for a month.

“At least,” she said. “But once you’ve sorted yourself out, I expect you to return.”

Near deepnight, he’d had to stop and change horses again, and he made his vespers to Selune, going through the prayers as carefully and quickly as he could, as if a single misspoken word would make everything fall apart. But when he’d finished, he’d sat there, alone in the grove. Listening to the sound of his horse clipping the spring grass. Afraid to move.

Please, he prayed, let it look a little like me.

He trusted Laeyla-the babe was his-but somewhere in the frightened center of his heart, he was sure she would be only Laeyla’s. She would have her mother’s eyes and nose and chin and cheeks, her mother’s barking laugh and her mother’s calculating mind. Her pointed feet, her tapered fingers, and nothing at all of Tam Zawad.

Please, he prayed, because it seemed as if it would make everything turn out all right.

Please, and I will never ask for another selfish thing again.

Please.

And the moon goddess’s regard fell fully on him.

For a moment, it felt as if there was no Tam, no Laeyla, no babe. There was no grove or horse or time or place-nothing except the silvery light and a sureness he had never felt in himself. Instead of his shut eyelids, he saw a face of Selune, a kind-faced elf woman with silvery hair. She smiled gently at him.

Go. The thought might have been his, and it might have been the voice of the god, and it might have been both. Go. Because this is happening whether you’re ready or not. Go. Because you will be more ready by the moment and sitting here won’t change that. Go. Because you’ll quickly realize now that you have a daughter that there are a thousand more prayers in you that you would have called selfish-for her safety, for yours, for her happiness, for yours. Go.

Because she’d already been born and she already had his eyes.

On the rooftop, Tam sighed and sat up. He climbed back into the room he was keeping by the window and changed into a suit of dark grays and blacks, perfect for blending into the shadows. He took his chain and the haversack with his lockpicks and a variety of deterrents in case he was cornered. Secured the daggers in his boot and belt. Pinned the holy symbol to his chest where he could reach it easily. Cast a quick healing on his achy knee. Ready.

He slid by rope out the window into the alley below. And found himself facing a waiting Mira. Despite himself, he startled.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be with the chest.”

“There’s a problem,” Mira said. “Rhand knows you’re going to try and steal it. He pulled me aside and made some … insinuations.”

“Insinuations?”

“His guards are all shadar-kai,” she admitted. “Loyal shadar-kai. And bored, too.”

Without warning, Tam’s thoughts flitted back to that night in the Akanamere, to the shadar-kai and their brutal blades and the sheer, horrible range of sounds a tortured body could be made to make. He shut his eyes. “Shar and hrast.”

Mira hesitated. “Are you going to let it go?”

“How can I do that?” he demanded. “If you’re right, and this page is the key to untold dangers? We don’t have a choice-we have to get it free.” He ran a hand over his beard. “But out of a nest of shadar-kai.”

She nodded. “But I’ve had a thought,” she said. “If you try and steal it beforehand, they’ll be ready for you. If you wait …”

“For what? For the middle of the revel? For a score of innocents to screen me? No, many thanks.”

“For a moment during which no one thinks you’d be mad enough to strike,” Mira said. “Rhand thinks there are other players-those Zhentarim.”

Tam shook his head. “And I should pretend to be one?”

“I think they may return,” Mira said. “We just have to watch and wait.”

“It’s too risky,” Tam said. “What if they don’t come?”

Mira pursed her lips. “Then we are exactly where we are now-debating the merits of rolling against Beshaba with a score of shadar-kai.” She took him by the arm. “But as it stands, I did get you invited to the revel. So we’ll be able to decide in the moment which die we ought to throw.”

I do not want to be here, Farideh thought, looking up at the brown stone manse looming just behind a pair of ivory-spangled gates.

If you don’t do this, a little voice replied, then Lorcan is doomed.

I don’t want to be here.

If you don’t do this, then Lorcan is doomed.

The two thoughts chased each other into a maelstrom of competing worries, each as forceful as the other, each as heavy. I do not want to be here. If you don’t do this, then Lorcan is doomed. Each had all of her attention, all of her heart tangled in them. They twisted together, fighting to shove the other out. It squeezed the breath from her lungs.

It took all her concentration just to get herself into the too-short green gown Dahl had found her and out the door.

“If your hem had to be so short,” Havilar said, “he could have at least found you slippers. Everyone can see your boots.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should care a little.” Havilar’s borrowed gown was murky blue and too loose in the bodice. She’d pinned it haphazardly snugger, and left her unbraided hair hanging in loose waves. “How often do we get to go to a revel in dresses?”

“I don’t know,” Farideh said, concentrating on the fear her dream of Lorcan left with her so she wouldn’t think of what lay inside the manor doors. “I hope not too often.”

“Don’t even say that! Even if your dress is ugly … Wait, are you wearing your armor underneath?”

Farideh wrapped her arms around her chest. “The dress was too big. And you took all the pins.” And the brigandine gave her an extra layer between herself and anyone else-a small difference, but she would take anything she could get. Especially when she couldn’t be sure of her promised guards.

Ahead of them, Dahl pressed forward, as if Farideh’s purpose were already served. The idea of perhaps turning around, going back to the inn and letting him storm Adolican Rhand’s manor on his own kept surfacing in Farideh’s thoughts. But he’d never hold up his end of the deal if she didn’t make certain to get him inside.

Which meant she had to go inside too.

“Well at least it makes your figure look better.” Havilar said, which had Farideh wishing for her new cloak. Brin came up behind them. A new suit of a cream-colored fabric hung off Brin’s shoulders a little loose-when Havilar had insisted Brin come too, Dahl had pointed out Brin dressed like someone’s apprentice playing truant; at which point Brin had stormed off and reappeared with a new-bought outfit that he hadn’t had time to have tailored.

“Crowded,” he commented.

Havilar watched him from the corner of her eye. Brin, for his part, looked past Havilar, scowling at Dahl’s back.

“I don’t want to be here,” Farideh murmured.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Havilar said to her. “Just stop being nervous. Have fun.”

Stop being a nuisance, Farideh thought, so she can make time with a boy more interested in sniping at a rival. “You cannot leave me alone.”

“No one’s going to leave you alone,” Havilar said. “Calm down. And stop doing that.” She dusted off Farideh’s sleeve, as if she could brush away the smoky blur of shadows that seeped from her skin and through the fabric. “Bad enough your dress doesn’t fit. You look like you’ve caught fire or something.”

Farideh blushed and swatted her sister away. People milling around the entrance were staring. “Stop it. You’re making it worse.”

The groom at the door, a tall, sinewy man with almond eyes, took her invitation, casting a jaundiced eye over their group. Farideh found herself staring at her boots. None of them looked fit to mingle with the glittering Waterdhavians beyond the door. Maybe he would shoo them off.

… The cambion pinned to the wall cannot answer-the hellwasps have smashed his teeth and torn out his tongue. He is screaming, wordless, and so is Farideh …

I do not want to be here, she thought. If I don’t do this, Lorcan is doomed.

She drew a deep breath and met the groom’s gaze. “Is there a problem?”

Recognition dawned on his face, and a little part of her cursed. Rhand had told him to keep an eye out for her. He hadn’t forgotten. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I suppose Master Rhand wasn’t expecting you to have guests.”

Brin gave a sharp laugh and when he spoke his fancy suit seemed a little less out of place. “Do you really suppose Master Rhand would invite the sort of young lady who has no one to accompany her out?” He took Havilar’s arm and led her in, adding as he passed, “Give your man a little more credit.” Havilar tossed a giddy look over her shoulder.

“He shouldn’t have come,” Dahl said.

Farideh said nothing, her eyes locked on the long hallway that led to the ballroom. I do not want to be here, she thought. If I don’t do this, Lorcan is doomed.

“What’s the matter with you?” Dahl said. “You aren’t going to be sick are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked up at him, wishing he were Lorcan. “Don’t leave me, all right?”

Dahl sighed and offered her an arm. “I’ll make sure you’re with your sister and Saer Crownsilver when I do. Just don’t faint or anything.”

“I don’t faint,” she snapped. She took his arm reluctantly, as if it were a shackle that would keep her from running. There’s nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. You can handle yourself. They made their way through a swirl of young men and women in jewel-colored velvets and silks, their stares open and their whispers mocking. Farideh felt the shadows surge a little.

“Is that …” Dahl was looking down at her arm, at the blur of magic coming off her. “It’s warlock magic,” he said softly.

“It doesn’t do anything to you, if that’s it.”

Dahl’s arm stiffened under hers. “Is it strictly necessary?”

“I can’t help it,” she said, as they came into the ballroom. “If it bothers you so much, you’ll have to see me out of here to make it stop.”

The ballroom stretched as long as two trade-ships, and teemed with people, all decked in finery and passing pleasantries over the wine and cordials that passed on circling trays. Their happiness at seeing one another was as aggressive as dagger stabs in a dark alley, and the undercurrent of competition was palpable.

Three stands had been set up-the unsettling statue waited on the left under a downpour of cold, silvery light; the painting, a portrait of a sad-eyed woman in a bloody gown, hung on the back wall; and the page and fragment had been arranged off to the right.

“Can you hear it?” Dahl asked.

The drone of the page was quieter here, dampened perhaps by the shimmer of magic that walled off the artifacts or perhaps by the much louder buzz of Waterdeep’s elite. But she could still make out the unfamiliar words in the pulse of the hum. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. “It’s the same,” she said.

He cursed. “Then Master Zawad’s plans aren’t unfolding. Wait here,” he said depositing her beside Havilar and Brin. “I’ll be right back.” He vanished into the crowd before Farideh could stop him. She cursed under her breath, and turned back to Brin and Havilar.

“I’m going to go try and catch some wine,” Brin said after a moment. “I’ll bring you a glass.”

“That’s all right,” Farideh said.

“Bring her two,” Havilar said. He slipped past a pair of women in long gowns of something rich and soft, punctuated with lace-covered cut-outs that showed their skin beneath, one deep as wood char, one bright as gold. They both stared at the twins as if they’d never seen anything as peculiar.

Farideh looked away, out at the crowd again, searching for Dahl or Tam or Master Rhand. Here and there, the sea of aristocrats broke around a body who had been invited for something other than his or her status-adventurers in scarred armor looking bare and antsy without their weapons as they entertained the other guests. But none were the Harpers. Most of the guests were just rich, with manners of satin and expressions of thick velvet, that softened anything sharp and hid it away under surcoats and skirts and jewels. Black was a favorite shade that evening. It would make it hard to spot Master Rhand. “I don’t want to be here,” Farideh murmured again.

“Why?” Havilar asked, staring back at the women. “Gods, what do you think a dress like that costs?”

“Piles,” Farideh said, scanning the crowd. “And where would you wear it?”

“If I had a dress like that, I’d wear it everywhere.” She turned back to her sister. “You really don’t need me to mind you, do you?”

“It’s not minding. I just want someone by my side when Master Rhand turns up. Someone to get me away if need be.”

“I don’t even see him,” Havilar said. “What are you so worried about anyway? Even if this fellow’s creepy, so’s Lorcan. I thought you liked creepy.”

Farideh’s cheeks burned. “I can’t believe you’d say that,” she whispered. “They are not the same.”

Havilar snorted. “He’s practically Lorcan without the devil-magic and wings. Also, he’s not nearly as good-looking, but still. All teeth and hands and-”

“Thrik,” Farideh hissed. “Were you paying any attention before?” She’d shown Havilar the rituals and the notes before they left, reminded her of the interaction in the shop. “What happened to ‘shady codloose winkers’?”

“I’m just saying you don’t need me. You have plenty of experience with shady codloose winkers.”

“I have not, they are not the same, and anyway, I don’t … I’m not fond of Lorcan.” Havilar snorted again, and Farideh cut her off. “Oh, go bother Brin.”

“I don’t bother him,” Havilar retorted. “You’re just mad you’re wrong about-” She broke off as Brin came to stand beside her, a wineglass in each hand.

“Bad news,” he said, handing a glass to Havilar. “I can only carry two glasses.” He held the other out for Farideh, but she waved him off.

“I’m going to find Dahl,” she lied, and she turned back the way they’d come before Havilar could get another word out. Dahl was in, he had his half of the bargain, and she didn’t see any reason she couldn’t leave. After all, he’d abandoned her straightaway. Havilar had made it clear she wasn’t welcome by her side, so long as Brin was around. No one could say she hadn’t tried.

Rhand and Lorcan were not the same, she told herself. Even if Havilar thought so, even if half of Waterdeep thought so.

And even if she was wrong, she thought, heading down the hallway, being alike didn’t mean she was bound to tolerate both of them. Karshoj to Havi, for implying so.

On a pillar at the middle of the hallway, a woman in a garb of sleek, deepnight blue so snug and seamless it seemed to be a second skin, posed contorted into a knot-resting on her forearms with her feet curled over and pointed down.

“Astonishing isn’t she?” a voice said beside her cheek. Farideh jerked away and saw Adolican Rhand standing beside her. “She assures me it’s quite uncomfortable.”

“It looks so,” Farideh said, taking a step back. Rhand handed her a tiny glass of bubbly gold wine-pressed it into her hand in such a way that she had to take it or let it smash on the floor. He toasted her with his own glass.

“Zzar,” he explained. “Have you had it?”

She shook her head and took a tentative sip. It tasted more like a sweet cake than anything else-until the burn of alcohol exploded in her mouth. She swallowed a cough. “Almonds,” she managed.

“Yes, quite a bit,” he said, staring into her. “It’s fortified with almond liquor, but the base is a rather nuanced elven wine. People say it tastes of summer. Honey and sweet hay. Violets.”

Farideh took another sip. All she could taste was almonds and alcohol. She held the glass back out to him. “Thank you. I was just leaving.”

“Now, that doesn’t sound right,” Rhand said, not taking the glass. “My doorjack says you’ve only just arrived. Not even time to have a glass of wine and see my new collection.” He gave her a sharp grin. “Not time enough to say well met and thank you for the gift.”

Farideh took another sip, another second to think of what to say. Already her cheeks were flushing and her thoughts looser-a good thing the zzar came in such small quantities. “It’s … Thank you. It’s too much.” And worse, it made her mouth dry. “But I worry I’ve given you the wrong idea. I …”

Farideh trailed off. The acrobat had lowered herself down onto the pillar and brought both feet to rest on either side of her face. She looked between her feet at Farideh with golden eyes, fringed with needle-sharp lashes of silver, and gave her a mirthless smile.

Farideh’s heart skipped. Sairche.

Sairche, and here Farideh was, alone and unprepared. Sairche, and Havilar was here, unaware and unprotected. Sairche, and what did that mean for Lorcan? If she had found Farideh, was Lorcan dead? Was she here to claim her own Brimstone Angel? All this time worrying about the Netherese and the Harpers and Farideh had let herself become complacent about the very real threat of the Hells. Of Sairche, and the danger of the Toril Thirteen.

Try it, Farideh thought, drawing up the powers of her pact, what else could she do? Try it, she dared the cambion in the woman’s skin. I’m ready.

“Are you well?” Master Rhand said, sounding distant. “Do you need to lie down?”

The woman settled her feet on top of the pillar and flipped herself upright, and Farideh could see, now, her eyes were only a lovely hazel and perfectly human, the lashes pasted on. The smile was still cold and empty, but now it wasn’t for Farideh but for the man beside her.

Not Sairche. Just an acrobat.

She cursed at her fancy. Were the dreams bleeding through after so many nights of broken sleep? She’d drunk twice as much tea the night before and dreamed only fitfully-perhaps she was paying for it now.

Master Rhand stood too close, waiting for an answer. “No,” she said. “I need to go.”

“Oh, you can manage a little longer surely,” he said, folding his arm around hers and holding it there. He led her back toward the ballroom, keeping her drawn close. “Come see my latest acquisitions and tell me how you’ve enjoyed your gift. Shall I assume you’ve been sequestered, learning new skills?”

“No,” Farideh said. She tried to disentangle her arm from his, without resorting to striking him, but her thoughts couldn’t sort which way to pull. He held her firm. “I mean … thank you, it’s very nice. But those rituals-”

“Not at all,” he said. “You ought to bring the book by again. I have several more rituals in mind that will suit you very well.”

This was going all wrong. “You hardly know me,” she said, trying to sound sharp. “What do you think will suit me so well?”

Rhand regarded her, amused. “You’ll find, Farideh, that you are not unique in so many ways as you believe. Though”-he drew a strand of hair between his fingers-“still unique in the important ways.”

Such a strange comment-Farideh found herself unsure of how to answer it. But it struck her in that moment it was very much the sort of thing Lorcan might have said to her once, if only Lorcan were not quite so clever.

The thought crossed her mind so knotted and complex she could hardly unravel it once it had. She frowned at the empty zzar glass she was still holding, and tried to remember emptying it.

Rhand steered her through the sea of staring guests, toward the display that held the shifting page and ancient stone. As they passed, Farideh picked out faces in the crowd-cruel glowing eyes, sly smiles, crowns of horns. Devils. Her heart started to race. No one else was noticing. No one else seemed to find anything to stare at but her.

Her arm started to ache where it pressed against Rhand, where her brand had etched her skin, and the ache became a burn. Her breath was getting harder to draw by the time they stopped before the display. His guests seemed to give him a wide berth-because the devils fear him, a voice in her thoughts seemed to say, or because he’s one of them?

“My latest acquisition,” Rhand said. “Perhaps you’ve heard about it?”

The murmuring voice was louder here, clearer. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. Brought through rock and flood to this? She kept her eyes locked on the shifting page. The rest of the room seemed to shift too.

“ ‘The treasures of Tarchamus,’ ” she said. “Yes, a time or too.”

Rhand chuckled. “Little minx-who knew you read Netherese? Most of this lot still believes it’s the remnants of a dragon’s hoard. I’ve had four fools try to buy it off of me already.” The page’s text swirled into a fluid calligraphy, trailing dots that wafted away like spring blossoms. Farideh blinked heavily. “Are you sure you’re well?”

“Fine,” she said, automatically. The wine might have gone to her head, but the Hells were boiling up into her veins, ready in case Sairche tried anything. Ready. Except … she was forgetting something.

Rhand’s arm went around her waist, but she only noted it-too distracted by the shifting text and the nagging sense her plans weren’t going to work. “He was quite the power, it seems. Even among the arcanists of ancient Netheril. Stories say he managed to work around the Weave. To harness the powers of wild magic and the planes beyond. They say he tore a portal to the Hells, for example, to destroy a rival’s floating city.” He chuckled and the sound made Malbolge’s energy suddenly surge in her. “Not a fellow to make angry.”

“A portal to the Hells?” she repeated. Suddenly the ink turned rust red and skittered across the parchment like insects, leaving a spiral of sharp-edged letters that seemed to smolder and burn the parchment. The page’s muttering changed. A rune formed in the midst of the smaller letters. A rune she knew.

Lorcan crouched a distance away and scratched a rune into the layer of frost and dead moss: a sinuous thing of smoothly angling lines that seemed to suggest a much more complex symbol, as if there were lines to it that Farideh couldn’t perceive.

“Draw the rune,” she heard Lorcan say. “Say laesurach.”

She looked up from the page, through the shimmer of magic, to the other side of the display. He was standing there, just on the edge of the light that poured down on the artifacts, watching her. “Say laesurach,” he repeated.

Farideh shook her head, not here, not now. He smiled at her and shook his head gently, as if she were being willful. As if she’d change her mind. A line of blood ran down from one of his nostrils, black as ink.

“No,” she said. “No.”

“Oh, it’s safe,” Rhand said beside her. “Are you sure you feel well? Why don’t you come lie down?” She blinked and it wasn’t Lorcan standing there, but a young man giving her a hard stare. She shook her head a little and looked over at Rhand. He was smiling at her in that unpleasant way, and she realized something was very wrong.

You could kill him, a voice in her thoughts said, and it occurred to her dimly that it didn’t sound like herself at all. Make it clear who he’s toying with.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. Then, with hardly a thought, “Do you know who I am?” A Brimstone Angel, she thought, but the thought came after as if buoying the demand. Rarest of the Toril Thirteen. Her head was spinning. Flames licked the spaces between her fingers.

Rhand’s blue eyes pierced her, surely as swords, and he said, quite simply, cruelly, “My latest acquisition.”

No-and whether it was her voice or the Hells’, she let the flames fill her hands. Her brand felt as if it were on fire.

“Don’t touch-” Someone bumped her from behind, and she startled. There were so many people. There was no keeping an eye on them all. She looked back the way they’d come, but Brin and Havilar were lost in a sea of skirts and surcoats.

“Havilar,” she murmured. That was what she’d forgotten-if there were devils, they would certainly be after Havilar. She took a step toward the door. Her knee buckled and Rhand held her firm. She was shaking her head again, the Hells surging up into her blood and her nerves with every quickening heartbeat, every extra breath. She could burn him. She could make him stay away. She had to get loose, to get back to Havilar.

“There you are,” a voice said, and someone yanked on the back of her brigandine sharply enough to break her free. She stumbled backward, fists up and burning. People were staring-let them stare. Dahl turned her so she faced him. “We need to go,” he said.

“Your pardon,” she heard Rhand say, “but she and I aren’t through-”

“Another time then,” Dahl said, and he pulled her out of the quicksand conversation and out through the crowds. The flames sputtered out. She clutched his arm, for fear of falling, and her own arm in hopes of feeling the brand burn again.

“I leave you alone for all of a song,” he said, “and suddenly you’re exactly where you said you didn’t want to be. Are you a fool or do you take me for one?”

She shook her head, still clasping her arm. Her breath didn’t seem to be willing to make its way into her lungs and her throat was squeezing tight. If she spoke again, she thought she might scream.

“I don’t want to be there,” she managed. “I … Where’s Havilar? I can’t …”

Dahl stopped and looked back at her. “Are you drunk?” he demanded.

“I don’t … I’m not … I just had a little glass. Almonds. Zzar.” Her face was prickling with the heat, but she didn’t dare touch it, the flames were already in her hands. She tried to shake them out. “He gave me just a little glass. And then the room’s full of devils-Dahl, I can’t figure out which ones to stop. I don’t know what’s …”

Dahl’s eyes widened. One moment he was glancing around, the next he was pulling her behind a settee. She managed to keep the flames away from him, but only just. “You have to vomit,” he said urgently. He grabbed her hand and yelped as the fire burned him. She kept shaking.

He pointed two fingers-Draw the rune, Lorcan says, say laesurach-toward his mouth. “Do it yourself, or I’ll do it for you,” Dahl said, panic in his voice. “He gave you something. You have to get it out.”

Farideh stared at her burning hands. The powers kept flowing, kept searching for an outlet. “Even I’ll burn,” she murmured.

“Stlarn it,” Dahl cursed. One hand went behind her head, under her horns, and before she could ask what he was doing, the other slipped two fingers past her lips and suddenly she was sick, vomiting hard enough to see stars.

“All of it,” he said, his voice shaking. “Completely empty. I haven’t found Tam.”

She tasted bile amid the almonds and leaned on him hard. “I need to find Havilar,” she croaked.

“You need to find Tam,” he said. “You need a healing. And water, lots of water.” He kept looking around the room, fierce as a hunting hawk. “There’s a fountain in the garden. Come on.”

Eyes and eyes and eyes watched her careen across the floor. A layer’s worth of watchers, she thought. “I have to find Havilar,” she said, a little surer. “I have to find Lorcan.”

If Dahl heard her, he made no sign as, still holding her under her arms, he pulled her through the sea of people, to the revel’s edges, and up a short flight of stairs. The air cooled noticeably as they broke free of the crush of bodies, and Dahl glanced back once, then pulled her through an arched doorway into the night.

Moonlight swamped the garden, gilding the lashes of water spraying out of a fountain shaped like a pair of monstrous dryads and making deep shadows among the trees.

In the shadows, something watches …

Farideh dug her heels in-cast, cast something, anything. But there were people here too, watching her, and she couldn’t tell who was a devil and who wasn’t. If she cast fire into the shadows, she’d surely hit someone.

Maybe you should.

Dahl leaned her over the fountain’s edge. “Drink it, as much as you can,” he said. “If you hark up again all the better.” He cupped a handful of water and held it to her face. It smelled stale and tasted faintly of stone and dirt, but she swallowed, and took another cupped handful of her own. It made her sick again, all over the stone patio.

“What possessed you to just drink something he gave you?” Dahl demanded.

“I’m not a Harper,” she said. She wiped her mouth and leaned back over the fountain. “Where I come from people don’t suddenly poison you. Not even the devils.”

Dahl shook his head, as if she wasn’t making sense. “At least you sound a little better. Can you walk all right?”

She cupped more of the foul water-its taste was nothing compared to the burn of bile in her throat. “I don’t want to, but I can. I think.” Her head was pounding, and her veins found the same pulse in the powers of Malbolge.

“You need a healer,” Dahl said. “And a safe place to lie down.”

“I need to find Havilar,” Farideh said. She stood and looked down at her arms, the veins were as black as she’d ever seen them, and seemed to swirl under her skin. “It’s doing something … I have to cast, I think … it’s like a volcano. It’s going to vent.” She thought of Neverwinter, crisscrossed by ancient streams of lava-her arms like the ruined roads. She shut her eyes. “I’ll vent it at him.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dahl said, propping her up. “You should have told Master Zawad that Rhand had taken a shine to you.”

Farideh leaned back on the fountain’s lip. “I can handle it.”

“Words, Master Zawad,” a voice behind them said, “is entirely too familiar with.” Farideh didn’t know whether to smile or curse, but she opened her eyes to find Tam striding out of the shadows. The silverstar was dressed in unobtrusive grays-he might turn invisible like that, she thought. “You made quite the scene plowing through the crowd,” he said. “What are you two doing here?”

“Four,” Farideh said. “Havi and Brin. I need to find Havilar. She’s in trouble. I know it.”

“She’s been poisoned,” Dahl said. “Rhand slipped her something.”

“Hrast,” Tam said. He glanced around the garden. “There’s a bench. Have his guards come after you?” he asked as the two Harpers helped Farideh over to the stone bench.

“Not yet, but he was mad enough. I can’t imagine they’ll happily let us leave. She’s vomited. Twice. And I got some water into her.”

“Not going to do much good since it’s already running its course.” Tam dropped down to his knees and took her face in his hands. “Look at me, Fari.”

The blessing rushed over her like a cold breeze that swept right through her skin and whistled through the spaces in her skull to blow the almond-scented toxin from where it had settled in her mind. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and the sound of a woman singing, far away, filled her ears. As it faded, she sighed.

“Better?” Tam asked.

“Some,” she said. But the thrum of the Hells still beat in her veins, and each moment made the remnants of the poison surge up. “No. It comes back.”

“She’s seeing things,” Dahl reported. “She says there’s devils.”

“I have to save Havilar,” she said. “The Hells …” She held up her arms-could they even see what was happening? Did they even care if Sairche caught Havi?

Tam’s eyes widened, and he cursed again. “You’ve been drinking the tea, haven’t you? The tea’s complicating the poison,” he said to Dahl. “You have to get her out of here and back to a safe location. Thort’s. If he has anything to cure it, give it to her and quickly. I’ll be there quickly as I can.”

Dahl helped her to her feet, but at least now she could feel her legs and keep her knees straight. “What about your other plans?”

“Later,” Tam said, ushering them back into the ballroom.

Back toward a pair of lean guards, whose eyes were locked on Dahl and Farideh. Rhand’s or Sairche’s? she thought. Or Lorcan’s terrible lady’s?

Does it matter? part of her asked. They’re here to take you. And Havilar, too. She scanned the crowd-no Havilar, no Brin-but there, thirty feet from the foot of the stairs, halfway between her and the display of artifacts and square in the path to the exit, waited Adolican Rhand. She brought one hand up, curling her hand around the energy that built there.

“Fari, don’t!” Tam said quietly. “Not here. Back out into the garden, both of you, and-”

The crash of glass broke his order, and was itself rapidly drowned out by screams as a score of black-clad men and women forced their way into the ballroom, through nearly every entrance. Rhand jerked to attention, and with a quick gesture, four gouts of shimmering darkness streaked out to the four guardsmen near him, dancing down their frames. They drew weapons, ready to defend. Down from the balconies, half a dozen gray-skinned assassins dropped out of the shadows like spiders into the panicking mass of beautiful people.

“Havi!” Farideh shouted.

“Get her out,” Tam ordered Dahl. “However you can. Back to the muster point. I’ll-”

Farideh vaulted over the balustrade down to the ballroom floor, her joints shocked by the sudden drop. Behind her, she heard Tam shout her name and curse, but she ignored him. The crowd fleeing the strange assassins broke on her like a wave, carrying her away from where she’d left Havilar.

Be alive, she thought of Lorcan. She drew the powers of the Hells up into her form and with a gasp of Infernal, slit the plane wide enough to step through and reappear on the other side of the crush of bodies.

The strange pain in her arm was screaming again and her head was pounding, but gods, she could have laughed with joy. The pact remained.

But she’d appeared between the dais holding the horrible statue and the advancing attackers. She’d no more than regained her feet when a pair of men, their faces covered with faded scarves, pounced on her with bare blades.

Her hands came up, all instinct, as if the engines of Malbolge moved them for her. A quick, ugly word and a gust of caustic smoke brought them up short as the miasma burned away the scarves and bit into their faces.

Farideh’s fist lashed out and struck the nearer man in the center of his chest as he clawed at his face, one handed. He dropped his sword and stumbled back. Flames billowed out from her hands, lighting his hair and his compatriot’s linen shirt afire. Her arms and chest ached with the churning, slick power-another burst of energy built in her palms, ready to cast-

One of the assassins who’d dropped from the roof-a gray-skinned woman glittering with piercings and blades-appeared behind the men, and suddenly they were both falling to the ground, each clutching at a dagger and the gout of blood that had been his throat. The woman drew a sword and started toward Farideh.

Farideh scrambled back and out of her path. The woman’s jagged blade looked more like a butcher’s tool than a weapon, made for hacking apart bone and muscle.

… the erinyes are a thunderstorm, unstoppable and rolling toward them out of nothing. Their hooves crack the cobbles, shatter the rune. Their crowns of horns threaten to spear the moon. Their swords are fire. Their swords are hungry …

Run, her every muscle urged. Run, run, run.

She fought it. She had to find Havilar. She looked down at her hands, recognized the dancing, bruised-looking energy that she’d gathered to attack the men with. Hands shaking, she pointed them at the assassin.

“Adaestuo.” The woman rolled out of the burst’s path, but when she came up, Farideh had another ready and sent it screaming across the distance. The purplish magic seared her exposed skin. But when it burned away, there the assassin stood, more eager and wild-eyed than before.

… the erinyes are a thunderstorm, unstoppable and rolling toward them out of nothing …

She’s not an erinyes, Farideh thought, fighting the poison still distorting her judgment. Gods damn it, concentrate. The woman lunged, her heavy blade cleaving down and nearly taking off Farideh’s foot. She stumbled aside, so full of the Hells’ magic she thought she might catch fire herself. The blademistress heaved her weapon up.

… Lorcan’s burning hands mold her fingers-smaller two wrapped around the implement, longer two extended, thumb curled over …

“Laesurach,” she hissed, as she quickly made the sign of the infernal rune. The marble under the gray-skinned woman’s feet cracked and a surge of magma welled up beneath her as the Hells peeked through to the greater world.

The assassin dropped her cruel blade as she caught fire, screaming and laughing with the most terrible sound Farideh had ever heard. Gods, she thought, backing into the dais, gods-

The silvery slash of Tam’s magic struck the man creeping up on her left, and instinctively she ducked. The silverstar carried one of the black-clad attackers’ dropped blades. With his free hand, he pushed her away from the assassin. “Stop casting!” he said. “Follow Dahl.”

Farideh cast another burst of magic past him and into the encroaching assassin. Tam leaped aside and cursed. “Farideh, go!”

All over again, Dahl was grabbing her by the arm and pulling her through the crowd. She glimpsed Havilar through the riot of fighting, and then she was gone. Bodies blocked her sight. They came past the settee Farideh had been sick behind. There was Master Rhand, surrounded by the wild-eyed attackers, clinging to the page and stone and flinging streams of dark magic. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis-the page’s murmur had become manic, wild. Thrilled.

Suddenly one of the attackers, a man built like a bear, slammed into the Netherese wizard, knocking him off his feet and into the blade of another man. It speared him through the shoulder. Adolican Rhand gasped, and in his shock, threw wide the arm clutching the page and stone. The stone, he kept his grip on.

The page, he loosed. It flew between the attackers and slid across the tiled floor to rest under the settee.

His attacker didn’t have long to gloat-one of Rhand’s wild-eyed guards broke the circle of black-clad fighters. With a terrible cry, he lunged forward with two blades-one needle-sharp, which he buried in one of the fighter’s kidneys, one edged, which he sliced across his throat. Hardly stopping, he caught the bleeding Master Rhand up around the middle, and seizing the charm around his neck, broke it. Both vanished in a burst of black vapors, taking the precious stone with them.

The page still lay beneath the settee. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis.

“Stay here,” Dahl said. Farideh swayed on her feet as he dropped close to the floor and fished the page free. He twisted, trying to right himself quickly as he’d made it under, and ended up with his back to the fight.

A ruddy, scruffy man with an enormous tattoo of a skull on a black sun radiating around the hollow of his throat was on them. Blood flowed from a cut on his cheek and soaked the shoulder of his shirt, but he looked nothing but gleeful as he closed on the Harper and his treasure.

She tried to shout. The poison surged again, boiling up her arms and slowing her tongue. Tricking her eyes. The skull’s sockets seemed to glow, and the whisper of shadows seemed to surround him.

The man’s boot came up and stamped into the center of Dahl’s chest as he turned, throwing him backward onto the floor. He crushed the page in his fist and Farideh heard the cough of the air going out of him even at her distance. He lay there, stunned and breathless as a caught fish, as the man leaped down, raised his sword to make the final stroke-

It hardly felt real, Farideh would later think. Like a dream, perhaps, thin and slow. The poison tried to pull her down into the darkness and the man moved as if he had taken no notice of her, grinning wide enough at Dahl’s weakness to display the gap of a missing eyetooth. All around there were screams and flashes of magic and the clang of blades, but here, it was as if there were no one else in the world but Dahl and the assassin.

A blaze of fire caught the man in the middle of his chest and set him crashing backward into the wall. The world refocused. Dahl gasped air. Farideh looked down at her hands, and the lingering flames licking the spaces between her fingers. More, so much more, they promised. Cast, cast, cast.

Dahl eyed her as she hauled him to his feet, somehow both grateful and furious. He shoved the crumpled page under his jerkin-Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. “To the door.”

There were a score of bodies between them and the exit-all bladed, all eagerly watching them. They want the page, too, she thought. They want the stone. Dahl picked up the fallen man’s sword and started grimly toward them, but Farideh seized him by the arm. With a soft gasp, she stepped into the split between worlds and pulled him with her, out to the other side. No sooner did they step free of the portal, but she cast it again.

Run, run, run, the pulse of her heart shouted, even if the pull of the Hells wanted to drag her back, to make the black-clad assassins suffer. To burn off all the poison in the process.

The effort of the spells and the effects of the poison hit her at once, and she stepped free of the split into the entryway, dizzy and panting and off-balance. She crashed into the wall, nearly taking Dahl with her.

“Hrast,” he swore, and he caught the blade of a very surprised-looking woman on his own. He ran her through, and it was his turn to pull Farideh on, urging her to run out into the dark night.

She lost track of where they went-her head was spinning and every turn was surely the one that would bring her back to the terrible erinyes of her dreams. Every shadow was full of the strange assassins. Every panting breath thrumming with the page’s maddened song. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. When Dahl halted at a street corner, considering both directions, she was sick again.

“Havilar,” she gasped. “We’ve left her. We have to go back. We have to go back now.”

He shushed her. “Master Zawad has her. You need to calm down. We’re nearly there.” She followed after as they moved quickly down one street, then another. The smell of the docks, wet and fishy, rose in the air. Her stomach turned. A voice in her thoughts screamed at her to go back, Dahl was wrong, Havilar was still back in the middle of all those blades. But even if she’d wanted to listen, she couldn’t have found her way through sprawling Waterdeep, and so she could only follow Dahl and fight the rising sense of panic, the farther they went.

They turned up a wide street, and for a moment, Farideh was certain she was losing her mind as an enormous stone face appeared at the end of the street. Shining white, even under the cloudy sky, the fierce visage of a helmed warrior, seemingly sunk to his neck in the pavement, scowled across the distance at them, his mouth a dark portal.

Gods, she thought, it’s getting worse.

Dahl strode straight up to the mouth and rapped on the door. It whipped open and they were rushed inside by a wizened old man leaning on a cane. One wild eye fixed Farideh with a penetrating stare.

“Two of ’em, eh?” he said. “Someone having a sale?” He chortled to himself.

Dahl made a face. “Thank you, Goodman Thort. We need a cure-”

“Oh calm yourself, boy. The priest’s already told me. Come along.” The old man beckoned Dahl and Farideh through the jumbled shop that took up the entirety of the head’s interior. Down a dark and narrow flight of stairs. Through a door, and into a crowded little room where Havilar, Brin, Tam, and a dark-haired woman were waiting. All of Farideh’s panic came unraveled and she rushed across the room to Havilar.

“Shar and stlarning hrast!” Tam shouted. “Where in the Hells have you been? You,” he said to Farideh, “lie down. They’re hunting down an antidote.” She sat on the narrow cot he indicated and pulled her feet up.

“I took the longer route,” Dahl said. “I wanted to be sure none of them followed.”

“Are you all right?” Havilar asked her, as she sat beside her. Farideh nodded-but no, no she was not all right. She wanted to scream or throw up or at the very least vent the churning, sickly magic from her. “They said you were poisoned.”

There were no devils. Sairche hadn’t found Havilar. Her arms ached and her stomach twisted but the world wasn’t trying to upend itself anymore and it was all right for her to lie down, even if there wasn’t a single inch of her not vibrating with energy. “I’m all right now,” she said instead. “You?”

“Fine,” Brin said. “We ducked the worst of it.”

“I,” Havilar announced, “beat the aithyas out of one of those pissers with a tray and a bottle of zzar. It should count for two at least. Then Mira threw me a sword and I helped get us out.” Farideh looked up at the woman with the angular face and eyes that glittered darkly. She was a little older and a little shorter than the twins, her armor was a great deal better, and her expression was a great deal sterner. She looked familiar …

“A pleasure,” she said, and Farideh couldn’t have said if it was or it wasn’t.

“Well met,” she said.

“They should have had no one to follow,” Tam was saying. “Thank the gods none of you are dead! What part of our plan did you misunderstand?”

“Your plan,” Dahl said.

“And what? You were so set against something you did not author that you decided to throw together this ill-prepared mess? By all rights your entire team shouldn’t have made it out alive.”

“I was prepared,” Dahl said hotly. “I had Master Vishter arrange a safehouse, and all of their things are stored there with enough for a few days. I was only coming to provide support.”

“And be seen by Shadovar agents,” Tam fumed. “If it was too dangerous for me, it was too dangerous to bring in inexperienced-”

“I wasn’t expecting stlarning assassins to fall out of the windows! Were you?”

“We are not having this discussion here,” Tam hissed. To Mira, he said, “Do you have any idea of where Rhand would go? Of where those artifacts would lead him?”

“An idea,” Mira said. “I spent time enough with both to make guesses-but nothing certain. Netheril stretched across most of the north once. It could be a lot of places. We need those artifacts as much as he does.”

The guard, Farideh thought. That’s where she’d seen Mira before. That’s why she looked familiar.

“I think we are having this conversation,” Dahl said. He took the page from under his jacket and smoothed it out for Tam to see. “A lucky thing I was there after all. Rhand vanished with the stone, but he dropped this.”

Tam took the page from him. The ink swirled purple, catching on the creases before straightening itself into neat lines of runes. For a long moment, the Harper said nothing and the air hummed with the page’s mutterings.

“A stroke of luck doesn’t absolve you of putting people in danger,” Tam said. “But well done.”

“I hope you’re not going to blame me for not realizing exactly how depraved Adolican Rhand is,” Dahl said. “You cannot hold me accountable for an army of assassins appearing to brutalize the guests, either.”

Tam looked up at him, as if he certainly could. “I can hold you accountable for forgetting the Shadovar, yes. The Cyricists … are a complication I think we can all be forgiven for not expecting.”

“What’s a Cyricist?” Havilar whispered.

Farideh shook her head. “Worshipers of someone?”

“Madmen,” Brin supplied grimly. “They follow the god of strife.”

“The Church of Cyric probably doesn’t want it,” Dahl said. “The Zhentarim probably do.”

“What’s a Zhent-”

“Mercenaries,” Mira interrupted before Havilar could finish. “And I’m sure it’s more a matter for the Church.”

“More than mercenaries,” Dahl said. “An organization that has its fingers in a dozen governments and a hundred cults-including Mad Cyric’s.”

“So Rhand was right,” Tam asked. “They must want it badly to attack him in his home. Why?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mira said swiftly. “What matters is that you and I”-she turned to Tam-“very much need to get out of Waterdeep. Master Rhand won’t be pleased at all with my guardwork, and he’ll no doubt be curious where you might have gotten to. So-”

“Plans have changed,” Tam said. He looked as if he could chew iron and spit nails. “All of you are going to have to come along to Everlund.”

“Can we?” Havilar asked. She tucked an arm around Farideh’s shoulders. “I mean, Fari’s not well and Mehen’s not back yet.” She fidgeted. “But can we?”

“If you stay here every eye in that revel who saw the twin tieflings and the Cormyrean lordling will be ready to recognize you,” Tam said. “Especially when one fought free of the brawl with a bottle and a tray, and one made a Waterdhavian brightcoin’s floor spew lava. You’re coming, and don’t think there’s an argument to change that.”

He said the last part to Farideh, but all she could think of was Adolican Rhand saying, They say he tore a portal to the Hells to destroy a rival’s floating city.

“He grabbed the page and stone when they broke in,” she said hoarsely. “Nothing else. It’s important isn’t it? You think there’s something still there.”

“Clever, clever,” Mira said.

Tam’s mouth made an even harder line, as if he heard the request she wasn’t making. “You will stay in the tower in Everlund and wait. I’ll arrange things so that word is sent when Mehen returns, and he can come collect you two. You,” he said to Brin, “gods, I thought you were more cautious than this. You’re coming too, if you know what’s best. Pray to every god they didn’t recognize you.”

“They didn’t,” Brin said. “You can be sure of that.”

Tam didn’t reply, but turned on his assistant. “And you,” he said to Dahl. “Since you’ve decided to play the leader of this little band, you can take charge of their well-being in Everlund. You’re on defender duty.” He looked up at Mira. “Until we sort out this mystery.”