Lesser Evils

CHAPTER EIGHT

EVERLUND

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

The summer sky is blood red and the monsters of Neverwinter swarm through it, but the air’s so cold that steam wafts off Lorcan’s skin. He looks like sin. He looks like want. He looks like Farideh’s doom, and she knows it.

It’s your doom too, she says, but he ignores her, pulls her hard against him. One burning hand strokes her cheek and she tilts her head away from him. He twists a lock of her hair around one finger and pulls, and the sudden pain steals her breath.

Say it, he says roughly.

Say what? she asks, but she knows, when he holds her like this, she is likely to say anything he tells her. He is dangerous, but she is helpless here.

Laesurach, he whispers. The tip of his tongue flicks over her ear, and she looks past his shoulder. Sairche’s standing there, a wicked smile on her lips.

Laesurach, Farideh repeats, and the fire surges up around Sairche-but the cambion doesn’t flinch as her skin burns away. And suddenly, it’s not Sairche standing in the volcano’s mouth but Havilar, and her leathers are flowing robes of red and black, her glaive a staff that weeps blood.

There are five, she says, but it’s the archdevil’s voice. That was the surprise.

Lorcan’s arms are suddenly gone-he doesn’t hold her, he stands between her and Havilar-and the lack of him frees her, but it leaves her moorless.

Run, darling, Lorcan says as the erinyes rise out of the ground. Run fast and run far.

Havilar-who is not Havilar, who is not Sairche, who is not the archdevil-points her staff at Lorcan and a stream of hellwasps pours out of it. Their sword-arms and stingers pierce every inch of him. They tear out his eyes and he screams, and she screams, and over it all Havilar laughs …

Farideh sat up in a spare bunk in the Harpers’ tower, her pulse hard and her breath harder. No hellwasps, no erinyes, no Lorcan-but still her stomach churned and she bolted for the window to vomit bile into the alley below.

“Fari?” Havilar said sleepily. “Are you all right?”

Shivering, Farideh crouched beside the window, her forehead resting on the sill between her shaking hands. Her tail rasped against the floorboards. How many nights of this? How many more nightmares before she went mad of them?

“No more tea,” Tam had said, not until the very last of the poison’s effects had faded. No tea, and no tapping into the Hells. Between the two, her nightmares grew worse and worse.

She heard Havilar pad toward her and felt her sister’s hand on her shoulder. She tensed-afraid to turn and see the strange robes.

“Nightmare,” she said lightly. “It’s nothing.”

“It was nothing last night,” Havilar said, dropping down beside her. “And it was nothing three nights ago. What’re you really dreaming about?”

Farideh turned her head side to side against the sill, the wood rubbing against the ridges of her horns. “Nothing. It’s just a dream.”

“A dream that makes you hark up.” Havilar dabbed a corner of her sleeve to Farideh’s chin. “Tell me.” Farideh kept her silence-the dreams were horrible enough, she didn’t want to argue over them too.

“All right, I heard you saying his name. You practically screamed it before you woke. So quit lying. What is it?” She ducked her head closer to Farideh’s. “Mehen’s not here,” she said. “You can tell me if it’s indelicate-”

“They’re torturing him,” Farideh said quietly. She turned her head. “That’s what I dream about. Devils cutting up Lorcan. And I can’t stop it, and when I try to, they capture you too.”

“That does sound more like something you’d vomit about,” Havilar said after a moment. “You’re right, though, it’s just a dream. Why would a devil want me anyhow?”

Farideh shut her eyes. Tell her, she thought. Tell her, tell her now.

“Havi … what would you do if a devil offered you a pact?”

“What, like Lorcan?”

“Another devil,” she said. “One you didn’t know. One who offered you anything you wanted. What would you do?”

Havilar’s eyes flicked over Farideh’s face, as if she were gauging the seriousness of the question. As if she were trying to decide what her answer ought to be and not what it truly was, Farideh noted.

“Tell them to heave off,” Havilar said finally. “I don’t want to be a warlock, and I don’t want to be indebted to a devil.” She slipped an arm around Farideh and hugged her tightly. “I don’t want you to be either. Do you think he’s making you dream that? Like if he wanted you back?”

“Not his style.” Lorcan’s attention made the lines of her brand ache-but no matter how shaken or ill she woke, her arm and shoulder were fine. If he wanted to lure her back, he would have started by needling at the brand. If he wanted to get her back, he would have let her know he was alive.

Besides, he still has me, Farideh thought, shutting her eyes. For the moment.

Havilar rested her head on Farideh’s. “Lorcan’s not better than nightmares.”

Farideh said nothing, but clung to her sister, listening to the wind streaking down the mountains and trying to drive away the fabricated memory of Lorcan’s bleeding eyes.

“If you aren’t going to pay attention,” Dahl said, “then why did you bother bargaining with me in the first place?”

Farideh turned from the window back to the open ritual book in her lap. She had been paying attention-half a day’s worth of attention-and it was only as she felt certain she’d grasped the magic of the ritual that she’d turned to the sound of sparring in the courtyard of the tower in Everlund, and the pine-scented breeze coming down off the mountain.

Farideh looked down at her careful copying of the spell, the rusty-colored ink laid down stroke by careful stroke. She wasn’t used to script and her hands were cramping after three days of it. But since Dahl had seized on it as a sign she wasn’t well enough to continue the day before, she kept silent. She wasn’t interested in hearing all the ways she wasn’t suited to this, and she’d be damned if she’d let him off his end of their bargain just because Tam had torn into him over it and he was embarrassed.

“I’ve finished.” Three days of Dahl’s lessons, and she’d learned a ritual for reading unfamiliar languages, one that made the cold and heat more bearable, and one that put broken things back together.

She traced the last lines of that one with her eyes, thinking of the spell Lorcan had shown her that shattered objects with a word. They fit together nicely.

Tam had allowed the lessons, once the worst of the poison’s effects had past and she could eat without being sick and walk without losing her balance. The magic of the Hells still pulsed somewhere far along the connection of her brand, waiting to be called up again and pulled through her like a pump pulling water. The rituals’ magic had an entirely different feel-almost like laying pieces of fabric on top of one another so that the light shined through the right shade.

She’d tried to explain this to Dahl and had gotten a funny look in return.

“Give me another,” she said. “There’s day enough left.”

“No,” he said. “You’re too tired to focus anymore. And Master Zawad said you’re not to be taxed. Besides, I’m too tired to try and make you concentrate.”

Three days of nonstop study wasn’t making him any more pleasant toward her. He stood and pulled a rope beside the door and said no more. Farideh took the opportunity to shut her eyes and rest her head against her open palm. She knew better than to say it aloud, but if she never read another word again, she could be quite content.

Except she still needed the ritual that would free Lorcan.

A servant came into the room, carrying a tray of raisin-studded rolls and a pitcher of watered cordial that she poured into two narrow, blue glasses before slipping back out of the room. The cordial was sweet and mild, and tasted of rosemary and oranges. Farideh took it in tiny sips-Tam might well have forbidden the stuff. Dahl drained his glass.

And smashed it against the floor. Farideh jumped from her seat. “What in the Hells are you doing?”

“Testing you,” he said. “Do the ritual. Prove you’ve learned it.”

Shards of blue glass littered the floorboards and scattered over the rug. “Are you mad? I haven’t got the ingredients.”

“Components. It’s not a recipe for stew.” Dahl hauled his haversack up from the floor beside him. “Use mine.” His gray eyes were positively dancing. Ready to prove I was distracted, Farideh thought. Henish.

Bottles of colorful liquids, packets of powders that gave off a bitter odor, little jars of paste whose lids seemed to be cemented on-the sack was heavy with a clutter of components.

“Do you use all of these?” Farideh asked, picking through them for the needed elements-beeswax, powdered sap, and salts of mithral.

“I can,” Dahl said. He straightened the pitcher on the tray, avoiding her eyes. “I like to be prepared.”

She found all three components to the spell and crouched down on the floor with them. Careful not to cut herself on the shards, she copied the rune from the ritual book, drawing it onto the wood with the square of beeswax. She bit her lip-was that straight enough? It was too hard to see. The sap and the salts she mixed in the palm of her hand and sprinkled over the floor, making sure to dust each splinter of blue glass.

The air started humming. It seemed to pull on her throat and made it difficult to breathe in-that was probably good. Farideh glanced up at Dahl. He made no sign one way or the other.

She held her hands out over the mess and the thrumming air seemed to yank the words of the ritual out of her mouth, shifting the magic and drawing the fibers of the Weave tight.

The pieces of blue glass surged up from the floor like a swarm of insects. Fragment met fragment with an audible clink as the edges touched, and fused-then again and again, faster and faster until the room was filled with the chimes of glass hitting glass. A flash of light, and the unbroken flute hung motionless in the air for a moment, long enough for Farideh to snatch it before it fell again. Her head was spinning.

Dahl took the glass from her and held it to the light. Despite herself, Farideh watched his expression carefully, as she eased back into her chair.

“You aren’t,” Dahl said, after a moment, “terrible at this. One’s missing.” He tapped a chip in the lip of the glass. Farideh scowled.

“Drink carefully.”

She looked out the window, down into the yard. Havilar was sparring with one of the mercenaries Mira had hired on, a wiry woman named Pernika, with a mass of blond braids and tilted eyes that suggested she might have ancestors in the Feywild. The mercenary’s bastard sword moved like a striking serpent, but she wasn’t quick enough to get past Havilar’s glaive easily. Beyond them, a second mercenary-a man called Maspero-stood scowling at the fight, his arms folded over his chest, his biceps like hams. Brin sat in his shadow. She sipped her drink.

“If you want to go out there with your sword,” Dahl said, “you should. I mean it: you’re not good for another lesson today.”

Farideh laughed and nearly choked on the cordial. “Hardly. The sword … I’m not all that suited to it.” She took a roll and smiled wryly to herself. “In our village, everyone capable of handling a weapon was sent on patrol by turns. They excused me, because I nearly took off the blacksmith’s foot when a marten ran across the path.”

Dahl didn’t laugh, but a small smile tugged at his mouth. “Who taught your sister the glaive?”

Farideh shrugged. “Everyone. Our father, to start. A … friend of his honed her. Some of the people in the village where we grew up knew a thing or two. They showed her what they knew, and she picked up the rest by watching.”

He looked down at Havilar in the yard. “I’m surprised she listened that well. She doesn’t strike me as an easy pupil.”

Farideh shrugged. “Not at everything. Not at much else, really. It’s how her thoughts flow. She can watch you fight with a chain or a broadsword or just a pair of daggers, and come back knowing something more about her glaive.” She sipped the cordial, watching Havilar leap past Pernika’s jab as though she had wings. “I’ll bet if you gave her ritual lessons, all she’d get from it would be how best to block magic with a glaive.”

“You don’t fight with rituals,” Dahl said.

Farideh looked up at him. He was still staring out the window, the smile gone, his expression closed. “I know that,” she said. “You’ve mentioned it several times.”

“And you can’t block magic with a glaive,” he added.

“Well, good thing I was joking,” she said, flushing. “You needn’t take everything so seriously.”

“It’s serious magic,” he said, and Farideh got the distinct impression it wasn’t her that he was talking to so much, but that she was answering for it nonetheless. “Rituals still take years of study and a knack for the Art. It’s not just some … feather in your cap.”

“No one’s saying otherwise,” she said hotly.

Dahl fidgeted with his glass, still staring down at the practice yard. “Will you tell me what you’re after?” he said a moment later. “Because I don’t believe you’d be so eager to learn for learning’s sake.”

“Because I’m just some tiefling out of the mountains?” she said bitterly, and he had the decency to look embarrassed. She’d overheard him talking to one of the local Harpers.

“Because you want something,” he said. “And we both know it. I owe you ten rituals. But tell me what you want so we don’t have to argue over ten more.”

Farideh took another roll and picked at the raisins. It would look exactly like the ritual Havilar’s scroll had performed, the one that had called Lorcan forth in the first place. But unlike spells to mend broken glasses and translate strange languages, there was no disguising the purpose of such rituals.

What ill luck had fallen on her that Dahl Peredur was the surest source of such a spell? Even with the ritual book in hand, even with his promise to teach her, and his pride in his talents, the chances he would teach her the ritual that made the passage between the worlds and the circle of protection were small. Smaller, she suspected, if he found out why she wanted them …

But if she didn’t ask, she would surely end up learning the ten simplest rituals he knew.

“Tam made a circle once,” she said finally. “A ring of runes meant to protect-”

“A magic circle,” he interrupted. “I know.”

“So you’ll teach me that next?”

“Perhaps.” He pinched off a piece of the bread’s crumb and rolled it between two fingers. “What do you need protection from?”

“Shady codloose winkers,” she said bitterly.

Dahl scowled and mashed the bread-ball flat. “You seemed awfully concerned before about devils.”

She regarded him evenly. “Are you saying you wouldn’t appreciate protection from devils?”

“I’m saying most people don’t need it,” he replied. “And Master Zawad could have taught you that. What else?”

Farideh shook her head. She’d have to tell him eventually. “I need a portal,” she admitted. “A way to get someone from another plane.”

Dahl started laughing. “Are you quite serious? Do you think I can-or would-teach you that?”

She felt her cheeks burn. “I’d hoped.”

“Portal magic is well beyond you,” he said. “It’s well beyond me. Short of finding a master wizard to help you build a scroll, you’re not getting that ritual.”

“You said all sorts of things are possible-”

“Well, breaching the Hells is right out,” he said. “If there’s a way to work around the difficulty of it, I’m not doing it for you.”

“Did I say the Hells?”

“You didn’t have to,” he said. “Tell your devil to find its own way out.”

Farideh stood. “Then I will see you tomorrow,” she said tightly, “and you can show me how to cast the protective circle instead.” She stormed from the room before he could start after her again. If he thought he was going to put her off by being rude and unpleasant, he had no idea how very stubborn she could be.

Portal magic is well beyond you, she thought rubbing her hands over her face. She stopped and leaned against the wall near the end of the hallway. Gods, ah, gods-there had to be a way. Maybe he was lying. Maybe he was just refusing to try.

She rubbed her bare arm, the brand that marked it. It had been bad enough in the days and tendays after fleeing Neverwinter to know that Lorcan was in danger, to know she had to do something, and soon. But nearly a month had passed and the constant alarm had grown into its own entity, like a second head settled into her own, whose constant thoughts were of finding the means to breach the Hells. Before Lorcan died and whatever protection he provided was gone.

Farideh sighed. Even your daydreams have gone mad, she thought.

The hallway ended at a larger room that overlooked the river valley down below. Mira and Tam stood over a great stone table, beside the open windows. Half a dozen maps were spread over the table, small marks and notes littering the reproduced landscape. Granite quarries here, Farideh read as she drew nearer. Water flows up from aquifer here.

The page lay flat on the table, all on its own. Tam was watching the subdued swirl of its ink.

“Well met,” Tam said looking up. “Feeling better?”

Mira kept her head down and her eyes on the distance marked by a pair of brass calipers. Farideh hesitated, but the guard didn’t look up or greet her. She still wasn’t sure how Mira fit into all of this, only that Tam knew her somehow and that Mira knew about the page and its origins.

“Well met,” Farideh said. “And yes, very well. Have you had any word from Mehen?”

“Not yet. But keep in mind,” he said when she frowned, “Cormyr has quite a reputation for protocol. You can hardly carry a weapon through the wilds without a proper writ.”

“It’s been nine days,” she said.

“I once spent a month waiting for the charter to travel armed through the forest.” Tam shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon. Take it as a sign of how well he trusts you.”

Farideh bit her tongue. It didn’t sound like Mehen. Before Neverwinter, certainly, he would have sent a dozen messages by now, and demanded a dozen back. Assuming he’d even left them behind. Even if Neverwinter had made him reconsider his daughters’ capabilities, she couldn’t see him changing that much. She wanted to tell Tam so, to enumerate all the ways he’d miscounted Mehen.

But then Tam was inclined to be as overcautious as Mehen. And he wasn’t worried.

“Are you having any luck finding your way?” she asked instead.

“It’s not luck,” Mira said without looking up. “It’s deduction. This”-she planted a finger on a point in the middle of a mountain range-“is the Caverns of Xammux, without a doubt our most likely location. There’s the name, foremost, easily a corruption of Tarchamus or Attarchammiux. ‘Through rock and flood I’ve come to this’-so we’re looking for some place buried, then, some place with plenty of water. I’ve managed, too, to coerce the page into displaying a schema of a huge dome-let’s assume that’s our ruin, and so we need a mountain to cover it. Otherwise, every adventurer in the Silver Marches would have tramped through it already.

“The caverns are at the source of a stream that flows into the River Rauvin. According to the locals, the stream’s fed by some sort of river in the Underdark-it floods every so often, and when it does, it sends a great deal of debris into the Rauvin. Including, according to my sources, finished stone with the same circular patterns as Rhand’s fragment.”

“Your arcanist is buried in the Underdark,” Tam said flatly.

“No,” Mira said, “the stream originates in the Underdark. The cavern’s deep into the mountain, but it doesn’t go down that far, as well as anyone knows.”

“Who goes in and out of a flooded cavern?” Farideh asked. Mira pursed her mouth, as if she had been hoping no one would ask that.

“Cultists,” she admitted. “At least that’s the tale the locals are telling. But it’s highly unlikely they’re much of a presence. As I said, the cavern floods. Besides … there’s a goodly sized population of funguses.”

Tam didn’t speak for a moment. “Tell me,” he said, “that you mean mushrooms.”

“Ah, no. The monstrous sort.”

“Excellent. Well, I wasn’t convinced there were enough of us to uncover a lost ruin. I’m certainly unconvinced we’ve enough forces to fight our way through cave monsters that blend into the walls and then uncover a lost ruin.” He drew a hand over his sparse beard. “We need more help.”

Mira shrugged, as if he had suggested they needed to pack more waybread. “Surely that would be better-but we don’t have the time to seek that out. Pernika and Maspero were dear enough to come by-what do you think we can do before our friend, Master Rhand, starts trailing us? If he hasn’t already.” She gave Farideh a significant look. Farideh looked away.

“He doesn’t have the page,” Tam said. “He hasn’t seen the schema.”

“But he has the stone,” Mira said. “And so he can match the rock where we cannot. And we cannot be sure of what he’s seen or not seen.”

“All the more reason to gather more reinforcements.”

“If we wait,” she said, “then we leave the cavern open for Shade to find. The more we delay, the more likely it is that Rhand will coax information from the resources he does have and beat us there. Maybe even track us down here in Everlund. And which is more dangerous?

“Besides,” Mira said more gently, “all we’re doing is assessing the site. If it turns out to be full of phantom funguses and mad cultists or Shadovar historians, of course we’ll come right back and call for those reinforcements. But if we don’t look into it, we’ll have no idea how to prepare.”

Tam said nothing, but glowered at the map-covered table for several moments. “I need to speak with someone,” he said. “Farideh, go lie down.” He left the room, Mira watching after him.

Perhaps she’s a Harper too, Farideh thought. Surveying skills might serve a guard well, perhaps even a little knowledge of ancient history-but Mira seemed to have more of both than strictly necessary. And a skill for influence she didn’t bother hiding.

Farideh had not yet broached to Tam the topic of her coming along, already too certain he would refuse. She needed to stay, he’d undoubtedly say, where she could rest. Where there was little chance of cultists, funguses, and mad-eyed Shadovar breaking his promise to Mehen, however coerced that had been.

But Mira …

“That was clever,” Farideh ventured. “How you figured out where to look. Piecing all those things together.”

Mira’s eyes didn’t leave the door. “It’s what I do.”

“Do you think he’ll let you go?”

“Of course. The trick,” Mira said, “is to mention Shade. I suspect that might be the only thing he’s really afraid of.”

“Aren’t you?” Farideh asked. After all, if nothing else was clear about her, it was apparent Mira knew a great deal more about Netheril and the more ancient version that had birthed it than anyone Farideh had met.

Mira smiled softly. “Not really. The Empire of Shade is a danger, of course, but they’re not fools. And as long as your enemies listen to reason, well, they’re practically allies.” Her dark eyes flicked over Farideh’s bare mark. “You know that well, I suspect.”

Farideh fought the urge to cover the brand, to rub it as if she could rub the scars back into her skin. “You make it sound as if you work for them.”

Mira laughed. “Broken planes, no. Shade is for zealots. I merely think there’s good mixed in with the bad-maybe not much, but there’s something there. Nobody’s perfect, and no kingdom is an unremitting horror.”

And a pact is a tool, Farideh thought, not a damnation. “As long as you’re careful,” she added, as much to her own thoughts as to Mira’s words.

“That goes without saying,” Mira replied with an uneven grin.

“And this … cavern?” Farideh asked. “This Tarchamus-closer to perfect or unremitting horror?”

“Ah,” Mira said, a zeal in her voice that Shade couldn’t tap, “that’s the question isn’t it? What lasted to the current age suggests it could be either. One reference makes it sound as if he was often arguing with the other High Mages of Netheril, implying that their courses of study were bound to doom them all-which they did, eventually. The other … well, let’s say Tarchamus could have used some other arcanist telling him to stop ripping holes in planes.”

“What sort of planes?” Farideh said too quickly.

Mira gave her a curious look, and Farideh blushed a little. “I mean,” she said, “dangerous planes? Or … more like planes one would visit?”

“Dangerous,” Mira said. “Somewhere fiery for certain. He’s supposed to have created a spell that made a flame powerful enough to burn one of their floating cities from the sky by opening a gateway to someplace.”

Farideh wet her lips. “Whatever you find is going to be astounding, isn’t it?” she said. “I’d like to see that.”

Mira considered her a moment. “That fellow, Dahl-he’s been showing you rituals.”

“Only as many as he has to. He’s not a terribly patient teacher,” she explained, when Mira arched an eyebrow. “But some, yes.”

“Did he show you any that decipher languages?”

“That was first,” Farideh said. “I can read Draconic already. If it helps.”

Mira shrugged. “Who knows? But I will need clever hands and strong backs. Uncovering a site like this-with the limits having that scoundrel on our heels creates-it’s a lot of work.”

“If I come,” Farideh said, “then you’ll have my sister as well. She can’t cast the ritual, but she’ll be useful at clearing the space-of rubble or of creatures.”

Mira nodded to herself a moment. “Fair enough. And your Mehen? Will he worry?”

Yes, Farideh thought, terribly. And for a moment, she thought about telling Mira to forget the offer, she couldn’t run off like that, especially when Mehen was taking so long to come back from Cormyr. You can hardly carry a weapon through the wilds without the proper writ. She took a deep breath-Mehen was fine. Lorcan was the one in trouble.

“He’s supposed to contact Tam. So if Tam’s along with you … we can simply return the message that it’s all fine.” And then deal with the consequences afterward, she thought.

“Then that all sounds perfect,” said Mira.

“There’s just Tam,” Farideh said.

Mira leaned back over the map, taking up a pair of calipers and setting them along a planned path. “Don’t worry. I’ll convince him.” Farideh smiled. Perfect. “How is it you know Tam?”

Mira’s calipers stopped.

“He didn’t mention?” she asked. Then, “No, of course he didn’t. It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d forget to say. Three damned days, and he never says a word. Just assumes it’s been handled.” She slammed the calipers down on the table. “Gods.”

“I’m sure it’s just that things are so hectic,” Farideh said quickly. “Whatever it is, I didn’t mean-”

“He’s my father,” Mira said. She looked up at Farideh, the same lazy smile she always seemed to wear painted on her mouth, covering up all trace of her outburst. “Did you think we were colleagues?”

“Perhaps,” Farideh said, suddenly very aware of Mira’s resemblance to the Calishite priest. “I didn’t know Tam had any children. It’s not the sort of thing he talks about-with me, at any rate.”

“And what do you talk about?” Mira asked, turning back to her maps.

She spoke as if she were doing Farideh a favor, as if she were leaving the conversation open for the younger girl to amuse herself. But under it, Farideh suspected, there was an old anger. She thought of Mehen, of the way he favored Havilar and the way he fought Farideh so hard when she wouldn’t break the pact. She and Mira might have more in common than she’d expected.

“About how I’ve done the wrong thing, usually,” Farideh said. “But mostly, we don’t.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Mira said, straightening and eyeing the inked path she’d drawn through the green patches marking the forest. “Really, the only one who is ever truly right with him is Tam Zawad.”

Which was true, Farideh thought, recalling how often Tam’s conversations had been centered on how she ought not do something she ended up perfectly capable of doing, or how she ought to avoid something she’d never ever intended to do. Or how he’d streaked off to reclaim the page and stone without once consulting Dahl or herself.

And yet she wouldn’t have agreed with it, not outright. Enough persuasion and Tam could be convinced. He would see reason. But then, she supposed, much like if someone were to ask Farideh what she thought of Mehen while they were mid-argument, Mira wasn’t interested in that side of things.

The thought of Mehen sent a nervous pang through her stomach, and the patch above her tail tensed. She hoped indeed that Tam was right about that much.

“Has it been long since you’ve seen him?” she asked.

“A few years.”

“That must be hard.”

Mira looked up, her smile even more insistently unconcerned.

“Not in particular. Are you ready to leave soon?”

Farideh frowned. “Now?”

“Well,” Mira said. “My father’s clearly gone to get permission or coin or what have you from his superiors-else he would have said something about where he was going. Once he has that, I suspect we’ll be well underway. All of us, most likely, and I would think by morning. So you ought to get your things together. Your sister, as well.” This time, Farideh thought, Mira’s smile was genuine. Fond, even. “And this time next tenday we’ll be in the cavern of Xammux,” she said. “Amid the treasures of Tarchamus.”

Brin watched as Havilar lunged at the mercenary, the butt of her glaive aimed at her leading knee. Pernika darted out of reach, letting the glaive strike the packed earth. The women slipped around each other, so fast Brin wasn’t sure how they’d both managed to keep their balance, coming back into firm-footed stances before lunging at each other again, graceful and deadly.

“It’s like watching a dance, isn’t it?” Brin said. The man beside him made no reply. “I mean, I know people say that all the time, but … it really is with those two.”

Beside Brin, Maspero only grunted.

Pernika swung the flat of her sword hard at Havilar’s back, but the tiefling was quicker than she’d expected and rolled under, bringing the shaft of the glaive down on the mercenary’s wrist. Pernika hissed and leaped back, shaking her hand.

“Sorry!” Havilar cried, dropping the batting-wrapped glaive and scrambling to her feet. “Ah, karshoj, sorry. I didn’t break it, did I?”

Pernika chuckled under her breath. “I’m a little less fragile than that.” She clutched the wrist all the same.

Panting, Havilar grinned and wiped the sweat off her brow. “Good. Again?”

“Give me a minute, stripling,” Pernika said. She came over to the bench, Havilar trailing. “You’ll get another chance to make up the score.” She pulled at the collar of her shirt to stir the air. “Balls, but it’s hot. Where’d you learn that style of glaivework? You’re quick.”

Havilar’s grin grew wider, and she shot a little glance at Brin. “Around,” she said shyly. “You’re really good. I haven’t sparred with anyone so much better than me in ages.”

Pernika gave Brin an amused look. “Well, you can’t expect to spar with someone in your safekeeping. Might as well challenge a tree.”

“I am not in her safekeeping,” Brin snapped.

Pernika’s black, tapered eyes glittered. “My mistake.”

“I liked that move you did,” Havilar blurted. “The one before the big lunge where you feinted. If I shortened the swing, it might work as a chop.”

“Maybe,” the mercenary said, and Havilar was off and chattering as if she could fill the tense silence with talk of guards and parries and glaives and swords, making complex gestures with her hands to show the angles of blades and strikes.

But Pernika kept staring at Brin, and he turned away-who cared what some mercenary said? He was of the blood of Azoun after all. Constancia was right-that couldn’t change. For all that it meant … probably half the nation of Cormyr could trace their ancestors to the promiscuous king.

Yet Brin had been trained by the holy champions of Loyal Torm, the god of duty. He’d been blessed by the god … and not taken the oaths that would have made him a true priest, all too aware he wasn’t always the god’s best representative.

Brin wiped sweat from his forehead. You’re fooling no one, he thought. He could be anyone’s descendant, any god’s devotee, and it didn’t make him braver or cleverer. He was still himself, no matter what titles he might lay claim to.

No one had doubted his capability in Neverwinter. No one had called him a coward. No one had made him take up a sword and defend his friends against the horrors of the Spellplague Chasm. No one had protected him when he faced the corrupted priest, Brother Vartan.

Even if the half-elf priest had been mad and distracted, he’d been dangerous, seething with the otherworldly powers that infected his mistress, Rohini. And Brin hadn’t had a hope of staying alive without aiming for the good brother’s heart. He still dreamed of killing Vartan, still woke shaking some nights, remembering the hideous slime that poured out of the corrupted priest’s wounds. Vartan had been a kind man, once.

“Are you ready?” Havilar asked Pernika.

Pernika didn’t answer, but started rolling up her sleeves, baring the intricate inkwork of tattoos that swirled from wrist to elbow and perhaps beyond. “Where’d you two hook each other?”

“We’re not …” Havilar’s tail flicked across the dust. “We’re not hooked, or anything.” Brin’s stomach tightened and he watched the edge of the wall along the training ground. He could still hear her embarrassment-fssk, fssk.

Pernika chuckled. “She means,” Maspero said in a surprisingly light voice, “where’d you start traveling from?”

“Neverwinter,” Brin said flatly.

“You’re from Neverwinter?” Maspero asked.

“He’s from Cormyr,” Havilar supplied.

Brin cursed to himself. He turned back to find Pernika giving him an appraising look as she leaned on her practice sword. “Interesting.”

“Is it?” he said blandly. “There’re a great many people from Cormyr in the world. You go to the right places you might think half of Faerun’s Cormyrean.”

“Easy there,” Pernika said. “Just making chit-chat. You want to know, I came out of Erlkazar. Maspero here is Westgate’s dear scion.” She swung the wooden blade up onto her shoulder like a yoke, and Brin stared at her arms. “There-now we’re all interesting.”

Brin’s mind scrambled for something to say. Something to put the mercenary off his birthplace, his identity, or whatever else she might have been digging at.

But the words escaped him, his thoughts far too occupied with the tattoo nestled in the lines of inkwork of a black clawed fist, clutching at the air. Of Pernika’s mad dancing eyes, and the implications of a mercenary who marked herself with the ancient symbols of the god of tyranny.

“I’m from Tymanther,” Havilar said.

Pernika’s eyes lingered on Brin a moment more. “Now that,” she said, “is terribly interesting. Point for you, stripling.”

Havilar smiled nervously. “Shall we go again?”

Pernika traded glances with Maspero, whose expression hardly flickered-a slight tightness around the eyes, a momentary purse of the lips. Still, a fleeting annoyance crossed Pernika’s foxlike face before she turned back to Havilar. “Not today. Sun’s too high. And you’re too skilled for me to go half measures.”

“All right. Tomorrow?”

“If we’re still here,” Pernika said, collecting her things. She and Maspero headed back through the tower, toward the city beyond, never saying a word to one another.

“That,” Havilar said, once Pernika was out of earshot, “was fantastic. Did you see me get past her? That wasn’t easy.”

“Was it?” Brin murmured, turned away and watching Pernika’s back.

“No it wasn’t.” He turned back to find Havilar frowning at him. “What’s the matter with you? It’s not … It’s not because of what she said before, is it?”

“No.” Brin beckoned her nearer. “I think Pernika’s a Banite. We need to tell Tam.”

Havilar didn’t react. “Sometimes,” she said after a heartbeat, “I think you say things like that to make me ask what you mean.”

Brin nearly cursed again-how could someone possibly know so little of the gods? — but he bit it back. Havilar might look like a tiefling, but the ways of the unbelieving dragonborn lined her marrow. “She worships an evil god,” he hissed. “The kind of god whose followers enjoy killing people to prove they can. And,” he added before she could speak, “not in a fair fight, or because someone needed protecting, or any of that.”

“Oh,” Havilar said. She stood on her tiptoes and peered over his head at Pernika’s retreating form. “Are you sure? She didn’t try to kill me before.”

“She has a tattoo,” Brin started.

“She has a lot of tattoos,” Havilar said. She rocked back down on the flats of her feet. “Maybe I need a tattoo.”

“Havi!” he barked. “Stop being daft and listen.”

Her brows went up, and her mouth tightened. “I am listening,” she said. “And I think you’re imagining things. Pernika’s not trouble-she didn’t hurt me before, she didn’t hurt you either, and I don’t think a tattoo makes the difference.”

“A tattoo of a dark god’s symbol?”

“Sort of like a devil’s brand?” she said sharply and set to unwrapping her glaive. “Tam knows what he’s doing. If you can spot some stupid symbol, then so can he.”

Brin flushed. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t need to know where I’m from,” he said a little stiffly. “I’d appreciate you keeping that to yourself.”

“Pernika doesn’t care,” Havilar said. “As you said, half the world’s Cormyrean.” She wrapped the batting into itself. “Although I don’t think that’s so.”

“I was exaggerating,” Brin said. “And I still don’t want you telling.”

Farideh appeared in the tower’s doorway and made straight for her sister. “Are you through?” she called.

“Got too hot. But she only took me five times of seven. I’ll catch up tomorrow.”

Farideh glanced at Brin. “They’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “Mira said she has clues enough to find the place finally.”

Havilar’s face fell. “Oh. Drat.” She considered her glaive. “Do you think any of Tam’s people might spar with me? Or maybe you two-”

“I want to go with them,” Farideh said. “And I think you should come too.”

“What?” Brin cried.

“Really?” Havilar clambered to her feet. “Isn’t it supposed to be dangerous? Caves and evil wizards and maybe that creepy codloose Netherese?”

“It’s just a ruin. We’ve handled worse.”

“Well, right, but you were worried the whole time.” Havilar peered at her. “And what about Mehen?”

Farideh bit her lip. “He said to stay with Tam. We have to go along to stay with Tam.”

“That’s true!” Havilar grinned. “And he knows we’re here. He’ll know we’re there too.”

“You’re not at all worried about Mehen?” Brin asked. “I thought he was meant to be back almost a tenday ago.” The twins looked at him.

“Tam says Cormyr’s terribly complicated,” Farideh said. “That everything is bound up in officials and papers and things.”

“Well, yes,” Brin admitted. “But wouldn’t he have said-”

“What could happen to him anyway?” Havilar said. “It’s Mehen.”

From the open windows of the tower, came the sound of Tam’s raised voice. Farideh flinched. “Mira,” she said, “was going to talk to him about our coming.”

Good, Brin thought. If Tam hadn’t agreed yet, there was a very good chance he’d stop them from going. Even if Pernika weren’t a Banite, she was trouble. He was sure about that.

“Karshoj,” Havilar sighed.

“I think she’ll win,” Farideh said. “I just hope he’s not too mad once they’re done.” She looked down at Brin. “Did you know Mira was his daughter?”

“Yes,” Havilar said mildly. “Who else would she be?”

Farideh looked at her and shook her head. “Anyone else in the world. Did he tell you?”

“No. But their faces. She’d have to be his daughter. Or … his much younger sister. Or maybe a niece.”

Brin looked up at the window, imagining the man and woman beyond its shadows. “I didn’t know he had children. He’d be strange to have as a father.” The words had no sooner left his mouth but he regretted them: an itinerant spy was far less strange than a dragonborn bounty hunter. The twins let the conversation fall.

“I’m going to pack,” Farideh said. “Come up soon?”

“Yeah,” Havilar said. “A moment.” Farideh went back into the tower, leaving Brin and Havilar standing on the training field. Not looking at one another.

“Will you come?” she asked abruptly. “Or are you going to stay here?”

“Dunno,” he said. Just say you’re sorry, he thought. “I certainly won’t go where I’m not welcome.”

Her mouth was still tight and furious. “Well I guess that’s for you to decide. Don’t want you to have to muck it with us daft folks.” She turned and stomped back into the tower.