WHEN DAHL WOKE AGAIN, EVERY PART OF HIM HURT, AND FOR THE barest of seconds he assumed he’d been in his cups again and wondered what idiot thing he’d said the night before and if he’d cringe to know how he came to be lying face-down in a field. Then he remembered Tymanther and Unther and the Son of Victory. Then he remembered the Kethendan dragonborn plunging from the sky and the giants who cast spells that seemed to take no notice of sense or reality.
“Are you finally up?” He winced at Mira’s voice and rubbed a hand over his hair—hissing as he discovered the lump on the back of his head. “Good,” she said briskly. “That was a bit long for comfort.”
“How long?”
“Next morning. I sent your brothers to go check on the dragonborn and stop poking you.”
He pushed back onto his heels, surveying their position. The army of Gilgeam was nowhere in sight—except for the throngs of Untherans sitting on the ground around him. At a distance of a hundred paces or so, a fence flickered, woven of the same silvery light as the net that had scooped them all up. Beyond it a pair of giants watched over them, and beyond them more of the strange giants sat or stood along the foothills of mountains of tumbling rocks.
“What in the stlarning planes did you get us into?” Mira asked, crouching down next to him with a dipper of water. He drained it before answering.
“I have no idea. But we escaped Gilgeam.”
“Some of us.” He looked back and saw Namshita standing over them, flanked by two other Untheran warriors. “We’re counting nine hundred escaped.”
Nine hundred of two thousand sounded decent when they were numbers in a ledger. Another matter when they were people he might have seen or spoken to, people Namshita had promised safety to. “I’m sorry. It was a chance and I took it.”
Namshita nodded, but didn’t answer him. Instead she gestured to the men beside her. “I would introduce my confederates. This is Utu and Amurri.” The younger man was the soldier from Gilgeam’s guard. “Can you cast the spell to help them learn your language?”
Dahl shook his head. “My haversack is still in the camp. All my things …”
His ritual book. His symbol of Oghma. The little enamel-backed steel mirror his mother had given him the day he left the farm, the one he’d used in thousands of rituals. He’d had these things since he’d gone to the Domes of Reason, as paladin and Harper spy, through mission after mission, loss after loss. Farideh’s letters, the talisman they provided. The absence of these things hit him like a blow to the chest. All gone, as if a part of his life had been stolen away in that moment.
But nine hundred escaped, he reminded himself. Don’t be petty. “How many of the dragonborn made it?”
“Sixty-two,” Mira supplied. “Most, not all. They’re keeping to themselves, on the slope side of the fence. Don’t seem to trust the giants or the Untherans, but they like your brothers well enough. Someone named Mazarka asked after you, for Shestandeliath.”
“Her clan,” Dahl explained. “She’s been representing them. Have the giants spoken to anyone?”
“The Mash-en-li only want to talk to you,” Namshita said.
“What does that mean?” Dahl asked. “Mash-en-li.”
Namshita frowned. “You don’t have the words. They are only half in this place. Half in the world of dreams.”
“They came with you then?” Dahl asked. “With the storm?”
“They must have. We stayed away from them in the other world. They’re … You’ve seen their magic. Strange magic. Unpredictable. It’s said they carve foul curses upon their skin with chisels and hammers, and then fill the lines with the blood of human sacrifices so as to fuel their connection to that dream place.”
“You mean Gilgeam says so?”
Namshita glowered at him. “They carve their spells upon their skin. Their magic is enough to warp the mind. That much is true, and you can’t tell me otherwise. They are his enemies. They are not necessarily our friends.”
Dahl eyed the giants on the other side of the fence, two males this time. At least three times his height, their muscles seeming chiseled out of living rock and—yes—carved deeply with patterns and pictograms. Each of them wore a pendant with a rough-hewn jewel hanging from it. “I’ve made allies of worse. I thought you didn’t have magic in Abeir.”
“And so we stay away from them,” Namshita reminded Dahl. “They are not natural.”
He climbed to his feet, still a little unsteady. “You trusted me anyway?”
“We were running short of time,” Namshita pointed out. “It is very unnatural that you should know their tongue, and know they would not crush us all. You owe me an explanation for that much.”
Dahl hesitated. Namshita’s entire experience of the gods was a madman who claimed to be a reborn dead power, a man whose ego threatened to undo them all. If he tried to explain Oghma and the message to her, how all of this had come about because of a poem he couldn’t see and a word he didn’t know, Namshita would have no choice but to brush him off as a madman, a flamefool—and she’d be close enough to right, wouldn’t she? How many successes made the difference? Did Sessaca and the deal with Lorcan and the dead Zhentarim all wipe away anything he’d earned? That dark, angry something in his chest started to build.
Lord of All Knowledge, he prayed, trying to calm himself. Binder of What Is Known: Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true. He blew out a slow breath, the grief and fear and anger receding.
“The chieftain,” he said. “She was the one with the harp on her stomach? The one shouting about the draumrting?”
Utu turned to Namshita, speaking quickly in Untheran. She answered back, shaking her head vehemently. The sikati turned back to Dahl. “Yes. Gilgeam stole it from them. A gem of considerable size and uncanny magic. That’s what he traded for the demon’s army. Or at least what Gilgeam thinks he traded.”
“So they’re not getting it back soon.”
“Not from the Son of Victory.”
The giants on the other side of the fence seemed to notice Dahl and the cluster of people around him. They spoke quickly to one another, before one sauntered off and the other approached the fence. Dahl headed toward them, and found Mira soon at his side.
“You want to know what he really said?” Mira asked once they were a good distance on.
“Please.”
“Utu says Gilgeam still has the draumrting. That if they went back, they could steal it,” Mira said. “He was quite insistent, but Namshita said that was wrong. The draumrting was what he traded to Graz’zt, ‘among the other things.’ Utu thinks he kept it for himself.”
Dahl frowned. “I don’t suppose Utu said why he thought that.” And he knew Namshita wouldn’t have explained. “Regardless, it means we don’t have a good idea of what a draumrting’s powers are or Gilgeam’s.”
“Everything he’s done could be achieved by a charlatan with the right magic items,” Mira said stubbornly. “He’s always grabbing that amulet, for one.”
“He’s dangerous enough it almost doesn’t matter, though.” Dahl looked over at Mira as they approached the fence. “Are you all right, by the way?”
“Better now that I’m nowhere near him,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s Chosen or something like a god or a fraud of the highest order. But the Son of Victory is definitely a slimy hardjack of the highest order.”
The giant who had left, a pale fellow a head shorter than the first, strode back to his fellow, nodding once. Each took hold of their amulets, and a glittering swirl of magic poured into the carvings on their throats. The giant who had remained behind reached over the fence.
“You,” he said. “You, van. Human one. Come here, please. Somni wishes to speak to you now. I will lift you out.”
Dahl stopped in his tracks at the voice. “You speak the common tongue? How is that possible?”
The giants exchanged a glance. “This is how speaking works,” the second said, sounding confused. “You would not understand me otherwise.”
“Come on, please,” the first said. “Somni is anxious.”
Dahl let the second giant lift him out of the enclosure. Thankfully, he set Dahl down and the two of them let him walk across the rocky landscape, keeping their steps slow so as not to let him fall out of line. Dahl considered the other giants as they walked—men, women, even children. Some very young, some very elderly. Someone had built the beginnings of a rock wall on the plains side of the camp, and as Dahl watched, a female giant coaxed boulders to hop themselves down the slopes toward the growing wall. Not an army, Dahl thought. But then he remembered the Untherans. Not a usual army.
High on the slope of the mountain, the giantess watched him approach with eyes like onyx. Like most of the giants, male and female, her head was bald, her chest bared and carved heavily over. A skirt of mosses hung around her waist and a chain of office—embedded with uncut rubies and shining obsidian—hung around her shoulders. She lowered herself down to sit on the ground, with a difficulty that suggested she was older than she looked, and made herself, if not eye-to-eye with Dahl, then near to it.
“Who are you,” she said, still stately even huddled on the ground, “to ask for sanctuary? Who are you to have etched yourself with such words?”
Dahl bowed his head. “I’m called Dahl Peredur. I … Sorry, what words?”
“The song written on you. ‘Does the salmon demand the tide? Does the owl’s wing unfurl the gale?’ What does it mean?”
That threw him. “You can see it?”
“It is written out,” she said simply. “I can read it.” Her black eyes studied him a moment from crown to sole. “You are very marked for one of the vanen. Does this give you magic?”
“It … no, not exactly.”
“I am Somni, new-made forer of the Tusendraumren Steinjotunen,” she said. “The man that calls himself the Son of Victory killed my father and stole his draumrting. You run with him, but you flee him and beg for sanctuary from us. There are those among us who think it is madness to stop the reclamation of my father’s powers.” She sat back on her heels. “But we do not take such a call for sanctuary lightly, not even from one of the vanen. If we stop allowing these things to have meaning, we have lost the meaning of ourselves. So tell me your story, Dahl Peredur. Tell me why I should shelter that man’s allies.”
“To begin,” Dahl said, “we aren’t his allies. Some of these people planned to flee before the Blue Fire pulled them here. They know Gilgeam is dangerous and mad. They say he stole the draumrting and gave it to a demon lord. Myself and my friends and the dragonborn, we were captured and made slaves. We have no more love for the Son of Victory than you.”
“But you must admit,” Somni said, “that is what anyone would say in this moment. You don’t speak our language. Who told you to call for tjáting?”
Dahl swallowed. If it would be hard to explain to Namshita, it would be no easier to explain to Somni—and Somni was three times his size. But she watched him with infinite patience, a living mountain. She would wait him out, he felt certain.
“The … song,” he began, “was written on me by a god.”
She blinked at him. “God? Like the Son of Victory?”
“No,” Dahl said. “Oghma isn’t interested in conquest. Only knowledge.”
“A kind of conquest,” she pointed out.
“Only if you pervert it,” Dahl said. “The song, I think, is a puzzle. I think it told me to wait at the ruins for someone. I think that someone is you. The god put the word tjáting in my head, moments before you arrived. I didn’t know what it meant. I just trusted him.”
Somni tilted her head, considering him. “It sounds mad,” Dahl agreed.
“It sounds wise,” Somni said. “We believe that what we live is only a reflection of the greater world. That the world of dreams is what you see when you glimpse that something greater. From a very young age, we teach our children that dreams are not to be fought. That you gain most from them, that you can tap into their magic and strength when you go along and observe and experience all that the world is trying to show you. Your god-thing is speaking like a dream. When a dream speaks, it is wise you listen.”
“How is it,” Dahl asked, “that you can speak the common tongue? Do they speak it in Abeir?”
Somni considered him, faintly amused, the way Dahl might have looked at his little nephew Wilmot as he made a childlike observation Dahl wasn’t sure how to explain. She lifted the pendant from her chest—it was as big as a shield. “This is a draumrting,” she said, cupping the stone in one etched gray palm. “In this, we place the essence of our dreams so that we may take them into the waking world. So that we may claim a little of the dreaming world’s strength and channel it into our spells. In dreams,” she said, “we speak as we need to. So the magic of the draumrting can accommodate us, for a time anyway. I would still wish to learn it in the waking, since it seems we are meant to remain here.”
Dahl stared at the amulet. Here was a kind of magic he’d never encountered any mention of—there was tattoo magic that stored spells and runic magic, which might both mark the skin. There were warlock pacts that let a person draw the power of a plane and shape it into spells. “Can you …” He faltered, dazzled by the array of questions he found himself with. “Is that what makes your spells summon such strange things? The flowers that made sparks? The mirror-glass butterflies?”
Somni chuckled. “Are they strange? Maybe, if you don’t dream.” She considered him again. “Do you dream, Dahl Peredur? Or is this the purpose of your god-thing?”
“I dream,” Dahl said, feeling oddly defensive. “We dream. But we can’t do this sort of magic.”
“You don’t have a draumrting. Maybe this is why you have a god to fill your etchings.” She touched Dahl’s forearm with a fingertip as long as his hand. “Not this one. This is something else. And this”—she tapped his chest.
Dahl frowned. The Harper tattoo on his forearm was meant to be invisible—though less so than the words of Oghma, which he himself had never seen. As for the other … “What do you see there?” he asked.
Somni regarded him solemnly. “There are monsters in the dreaming world too.”
The demon lord, he thought. Or maybe Lorcan’s deal? “Can you tell if it’s permanent?”
Somni shook her head. “Your magics are not our magics. Those things that came in the two Sunderings we leave to themselves.”
With every careless word, Dahl’s brain began to churn—a new society of giants, an unheard of sort of magic, now artifacts from the first catastrophe that had split Abeir-Toril into two worlds. “What things?”
“Remnants of the Dawn Titans, bodies of those beings, artifacts that should be elsewhere.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Your god-thing must be pleased with such a curious one as you.”
“At times,” Dahl allowed.
“You have your freedom from the Son of Victory now. What do you intend to do?”
“There’s a city near here, Djerad Thymar,” he said. “The dragonborn are centered there, and their army.”
Somni frowned. “Do you mean the Vayemniri?”
Dahl racked his brain trying to recall the word. “The … scaly ones. I think I can rally aid for them, for all these people and an army to fight Gilgeam. I can get my family to their home and my friend to her allies. I can find … The woman I love is there. I need to get to her as well.”
Somni smiled. “Such a lot of reasons. What does your god-thing say?”
“He doesn’t,” Dahl said. “I think he wishes I would figure it out myself.”
“In the absence of dreams—or god-things—I would urge caution and patience,” Somni said. “The Son of Victory expects rashness, a lack of control. He is not one to rush into battle against. Rest. Recover your strength. Return to the dreaming.”
Dahl held his tongue—how could he possibly rest when he was this close? When Gilgeam was so dangerous? “He’s going to attack them. They need to be warned.”
“Oh, they have been,” Somni said. “That much I have dreamed. In the meantime, though, I think you and your god-thing have much to share with us. We can meet your Vayemniri on the morrow.”.
• • •
HAVILAR HESITATED EVEN as Alyona regarded her sadly. Was it rude to ask someone how they died? It seemed rude—but then, how often did you get the chance to ask? Assuming, she thought, you weren’t a priest who also tracked down murderers or something like that, there probably weren’t rules about it.
Alyona gave a little chuckle. You’re wondering how, aren’t you?
A little, Havilar admitted. Was it bad?
I don’t remember everything, Alyona said. Not anymore. She and I fought. I left. I went home, but then … I remember being cornered. A lot of people. Her voice grew flat, distant. I remember they blamed me for something—I wasn’t there. It couldn’t have been my doing. Someone threw a stone. And … Things go dark after that, for a long time. Dark but painful.
Havilar felt the memory of her pulse speeding. She’d had stones thrown at her too—never a mob, never more than a stone or two. But how many did it take? How different was the world she’d grown up in from the one Alyona had died in? A part of her scoffed and wanted to insist it was as different as one plane to the next. A part of her didn’t dare believe it.
I can remember Bisera saying that it was for my own safety. Then I was here. She gave Havilar a shy smile. Or maybe a place like this. I suspect they all look similar.
Havilar frowned. All what? What is this place?
Did I forget to tell you? Alyona asked. I’m sorry—I know you asked before … You did, didn’t you? Did I say it was a soul sapphire?
You didn’t, Havilar said, trying not to sound impatient. The poor woman was dead and maybe addled from many blows to the head—who knew what carried over when you became a ghost? What’s a soul sapphire?
A trap, Alyona said. This one’s different, though. The devils made them for their Blood War. You see, if you kill a demon, it goes back to the Abyss and is reborn. But the soul sapphire traps it, and so they can interrogate it or ransom it or … other things. At least that’s what Bisera knows.
Havilar considered the hazy expanse. How do you get a demon in one?
Alyona’s expression tightened. They would put a mortal soul in first. As bait of a kind.
Havilar shot to her feet once more, for all the good it did. Is she planning to put a demon in here?
No, no! Alyona cried, waving the thought away. Don’t be ridiculous. My sister isn’t a monster.
Your sister, the Brimstone Angel? Havilar said skeptically. The one who’s supposed to have sacrificed scores of tieflings to help Asmodeus ascend? The one who possessed Crake and Moriah and got them killed? The one who broke Brin’s fingers to make the point she could kill him? Because I get the impression we think the word “monster” means different things, you and I, if you’re going to say that.
Alyona wrapped her arms around herself and looked away. She wasn’t herself. Not entirely.
How much of herself was she? Havilar demanded.
Look, Alyona said. I wouldn’t try to tell you that Bisera’s … that Bryseis is perfect. But … she knows that. She accepted her transgressions and wanted to atone. To make things right.
You can’t un-kill people.
Alyona fixed her with a silvery glare. Are you going to tell me you have never taken a life? That you’ve never killed someone and damn the consequences?
I didn’t ever do it in the name of Asmodeus.
But what about your sister?
She doesn’t kill anyone in the name of Asmodeus either! Havilar cried. And frankly, she’s a terrible shot.
She uses his powers, Alyona said. The strength of his domain. Where do you think that magic comes from?
Havilar frowned. Fire and … planar magic … stuff?
Alyona’s eyes were hard. The Nine Hells feeds itself on the energy of souls. The damned are sacrificed to keep the plane intact. Her powers come directly from that plane, so her powers are fed by the suffering of mortal souls. Powers she has been specifically granted in the hopes she will feed more souls to the Nine Hells.
Havilar folded her arms over her chest. It wasn’t the same, she felt sure about that. But all the same … so often rules were stupid and badly thought out. Nobody planned for every circumstance, and no one would have planned for a warlock like Farideh, she felt certain. She wondered if Farideh would end up damned when she died. She wondered if she would be too … but that thought was a step too far down a path too thorny and she pulled her thoughts away from it.
You wouldn’t be able to save her from that, Havilar thought, even as she skirted the possibility.
But she doesn’t, Havilar said. She doesn’t damn people. She doesn’t sacrifice them. I mean … she cares about people who, really, no one would fault her for walking away from. That war wizard—did you see the war wizard? Would your sister have saved Ilstan or gutted him on an altar?
Alyona fell silent. I suppose it would depend. But—truly—she understood what she’d done. She wanted to make amends and I believe she’s doing that now. She gestured at the space around them. Or this? If she were a monster, why bother altering the soul sapphire so that I could leave? It would be easier to just leave it shut and never see or hear … Never dream … At the beginning I was so angry. I can’t imagine the dreams were good, for her, for Caisys, for … At any rate, if she were irredeemable, the Moonmaiden wouldn’t have aided us.
Another retort was on her lips … but the indignation in Alyona’s voice was all too familiar. It was one thing to know your sister was imperfect or maddening or wrong. It was another to sit and listen to someone else demonize her. For all of Bryseis Kakistos’s numerous faults, Alyona obviously loved her. She obviously wanted everything to come out all right, and while Havilar had her doubts, it wouldn’t be a pleasant sentence in the soul sapphire if she kept arguing the point. Better kindness, she thought, than rightness.
How many people’s dreams have you been in? she asked instead.
Alyona shut her eyes as if remembering. Bisera’s mostly. I helped her find the heirs that way as well … I didn’t … It wasn’t that many. And then Caisys. I visited Caisys.
Havilar rolled her eyes. Back to Caisys the Perfect Murder-Warlock. Alyona opened her eyes and caught Havilar making a face. She scowled. You don’t know him.
You’re right, Havilar said. But I’m willing to bet he’s not all that perfect.
I didn’t say perfect. He had his flaws … his … tendencies. But in the end, he was the only one of them Bisera could trust—even if she didn’t like him, she knew she could trust him. She adjusted her skirts in a prim sort of way. He watched over you. You owe him a little respect for that.
Havilar frowned. Me?
You and your sister, Alyona said.
That was the first Havilar had heard of any such thing. When?
Before … When you were small … after the ritual … It wasn’t supposed to go that way. I don’t know. Maybe Bisera … Maybe Bryseis was trying to make it do too much … So that we’d both be reborn, instead of only her. Maybe it was fate. Maybe bad luck … We’ve had such a lot of bad luck …
Havilar bit back another frustrated screech. When did Caisys watch over us?
Alyona blinked and said nothing for such a long time. No, he can’t see us here. You misunderstand. She turned away, staring off into the mists in a way that Havilar knew meant she was through talking for a time.
At least this time she’d left Havilar with another detail, another piece of the puzzle: Caisys had been watching them in Arush Vayem. She found the fold in the mists, the exit of the soul sapphire’s prison, the passage to that dream world. She had to tell Farideh.
But had Farideh listened to a damned thing she’d said? Havilar’s tail slashed across the mists, the faint memory of a solid floor beneath her traced in its arc. Dreams were a stupid way to tell someone something so important. Especially when that someone was all wound up and stubborn as an aithyas stain.
She blinked—the door had shifted. How long had she stood there, glowering at it? She found the fold again, but the path that led to Farideh had grown hazy and indistinct. She’d woken up. Havilar cursed to herself. If she’d just gone instead of getting annoyed …
In the mists, other paths, other dreams shimmered. She studied them, found one in particular that felt secure and familiar, even as it flickered into awakeness. It doesn’t have to be Farideh, she thought, even though it felt like a betrayal..
• • •
FARIDEH DRUMMED HER fingers against the side of the couch, eyes on the wide bowl of water before her, the cluster of components she’d borrowed from Ilstan. A protective circle nearly as wide as the room shimmered along the edges of her sight.
“I can scry,” Adastreia said from the far side of the circle where she sat. “Not that you asked.”
“I can wait for Lorcan.” Except she couldn’t. She couldn’t wait for any of this. It felt as if it took half her thoughts just to keep from losing her mind over how slowly everyone else seemed to be moving when there was so much on the line. Surely Lorcan could have taught her this sooner—some sort of far-seeing warlock spell, perhaps? But even as she thought it, she remembered how many conditions he’d had when he’d scried Dahl for her. Lorcan wouldn’t give her the means to see Dahl, even if that meant making her helpless and—
Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria, she said to herself, over and over. Which of them were still alive? Which of them would Lorcan be able to find? Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria.
Caisys.
“What exactly is between you and he?” Adastreia asked. “Are you sleeping with your pactmaster?”
“No,” Farideh said. Even though it stirred up memories of just that. Even though she kept letting herself get too close, too near to giving in.
I love you. I just don’t love you the way you want, because I am who I am, but I’m not myself now, am I? So what do you do with that? A lump built in her throat. Even if he loves you, she thought, he’s still too dangerous. He still poisoned you. He still won’t tell you what happened with Dahl.
That sent a new burst of panic through her. Dahl had sent the halfling Zhentarim to Djerad Thymar, to find her and have her warn the Vayemniri. Dahl was within a day or two of the city, captive of an army led by a madman that dealt with demons—an army that a second army of giants was already marching on and the dragonborn clans all dickered and positioned and argued about—
Farideh blew out a breath, concentrated on the still pool of water.
Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria she thought. Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria
Caisys.
“All right,” she said to Adastreia. “If you want to help.”
The tiefling warlock sauntered over, seating herself opposite her daughter. For a long moment, she said nothing, not until Farideh looked up. “Who do you want to start with?”
Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria. “Caisys,” she said.
Adastreia snorted. “You’re not going to track down Caisys. He’s almost certainly dead by now.”
Farideh said nothing—Adastreia could be useful or she could complain and disagree and it wouldn’t matter. Lorcan would return eventually.
“I assumed,” Adastreia went on, “you’d want to find Chiridion first. Since you’re so curious about the old days. Is it for the dragonborn’s sake he’s not your first pick?”
Farideh’s temper flared, pulling on the pact, reaching for the absent blessings of Asmodeus. “The only thing I’m curious about,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “is how you could do such a thing?”
Adastreia leaned back, stretching out against the couch’s low back. “As I said, I was young and idealistic.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I don’t know you,” she said coldly, “so I can’t mock you. Everyone could ‘do such a thing’ given the right reasons, and Bryseis Kakistos had the right reasons. The Raging Fiend’s blood taints us all, and she thought she might be able to undo that.”
“You can’t undo that,” Farideh said dismissively.
Adastreia pushed her silvering hair back, revealing a thick scar along her temple beneath her horn. “See that? I was nobody but a scullery and some wine-swamped, sharpjaw half-elf got it into his head that I was spying on his business. Broke a wine bottle on my head, nearly killed me. You think he would have done that to a human? An elf? Another half-elf? I was picking up dishes and I didn’t understand the first stlarning thing about his hushword-coin schemes.
“I’ll bet you have a scar like that,” Adastreia said, smoothing her hair down. “I’ll bet most of us do. So don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done ‘such a thing’ in the hopes it all could change.”
Farideh looked away. In this, she was lucky and she knew it. She’d had moments of danger, certainly—most recently, the urchins in front of the Suzailan tallhouse throwing rocks, the taproom at the Brigand’s Bottle when she’d suddenly lost her disguise spell—but the most perilous points of her life had arisen out of her own decisions or simply being in the way of someone or something worse. She didn’t have the scars of a brutal beating on her. She hadn’t clubbed her tail or polled her horns like the village midwife in Arush Vayem had, trying to unmake what Bryseis Kakistos’s deal had wrought. She’d been safe and sheltered in Arush Vayem, protected by Mehen and isolation.
You wore a full cloak even in the midst of summer, she thought. Maybe not scars like Adastreia’s, but not easy either.
“You handed us over to Caisys,” Farideh said. “You never even wondered.”
“He said you had the blessings of a proper goddess on you,” Adastreia said. “I assumed you were fine.”
“Before you said you assumed I was dead, so …” Farideh frowned. “What goddess?”
“How should I know?” Adastreia said. “I didn’t get involved with that part.” She sighed, sounding annoyed. “Do you or don’t you want me to scry someone for you?”
Just behind Adastreia, Mehen came into the room. Farideh leaped to her feet at the sight of him, moving away from the other woman and toward her father. “Watch the circle!” she warned. “Any word?”
“No,” Mehen said. “Havi?”
“Nothing yet,” Farideh said. “I think … I’m waiting for Lorcan, but—”
“Karshoj, can we just find a way to work around him?” Mehen demanded. “It’s been five karshoji days and we’re no closer—”
“Mehen, I can’t do the spell we need,” Farideh said. “There’s no getting around that.”
“I did offer to help,” Adastreia called back, “but you’ve raised a terribly stubborn child.”
Lightning crackled in Mehen’s teeth. “At least I raised her, tiamash!”
Farideh stepped between them. “Mehen, come on. We’ll talk outside.” She led the way back out into the wide corridor, not waiting for Mehen to follow her, pleased when he did. “Don’t let her get to you,” she said. “She’s … I think she’s—”
“A monster?” Mehen suggested.
“No, just … I don’t know if she has it in her to care about someone else.” Farideh sighed. “I just keep reminding myself that if she had cared then, well, we wouldn’t have you.”
Mehen’s fury softened at that. “That may be so, but I don’t have to like her for abandoning you.” He folded his arms. “You’re not stubborn. You’re … persistent.”
“I’m stubborn,” Farideh said. “You’ve said that plenty of times.”
“Well, it’s different when you’re doing something with it, isn’t it?” Mehen said. “And we’re both fairly karshoji stubborn. Persistent. What are you waiting for Lorcan to do?”
“Scry the last heir,” she said. “I have six names, but only one of them is alive, and I don’t know which and I don’t know where they all are. If it’s very far, I need Lorcan anyway, since I can’t make a portal.” She wet her lips. “Have they … Do you have a Vanquisher yet? A plan for the giants and the King of Dust?”
Mehen blew out a breath, his nostrils flaring. “It’s all talk and posturing. Every time a few more voices get anxious enough to want to move, but still, there’s too much old pride in that room. Anala pushed for them to vote for an interim Vanquisher—she put forth Kallan.”
For a moment, Farideh was sure she’d heard wrong. “Kallan? Why?”
“He could be Vanquisher,” Mehen said, a little defensive.
“He wouldn’t want to be. And it seems odd for Anala to choose someone who’s not Verthisathurgiesh.”
“It is,” Mehen said. “She’s playing a risky game. Especially since Uadjit won’t stand while Dumuzi’s business is in the way and Fenkenkabradon heard about Anala’s fool plan ahead of time and pulled the same stunt themselves, pushing Arjhani up since Dokaan won’t win while he’s recovering, but Arjhani will listen to Dokaan. Or so they think. And whatever Kallan thinks about perching on a throne and telling people what to do, I don’t think he’d leave Djerad Thymar to that fate.”
“Could be worse,” Farideh said. “Anala didn’t put you forth.”
“At this point, I would take the piercings if only for the chance to knock all their heads together and tell them what pothatchis they’re being. Wouldn’t say no to an army to go fetch your sister either.” A terrible, terrible, dangerous idea, Farideh thought. Even if she understood what drove it. An army attacking Bryseis Kakistos would be attacking Havilar too.
“Speaking of pothatchis, would you talk to Dumuzi?” Mehen said suddenly. “That boy is looking for advice from every karshoji quarter and not a one of them is the right place.”
“I’m not the right place,” Farideh said.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Mehen said. “You’ve stood a lot closer to where he is than the rest of us.” He scratched at the jade plugs studding his jaw and sighed again. “While you’re at it, you could track down Kallan for me and talk to him.”
“You know you have to do that yourself,” Farideh said. “It’s a pity you can’t just leave the city for a bit. Take a bounty or something.”
“There are entirely too many things happening here for me to go out gallivanting.”
“Still, it would give you space to talk to Kallan without spooking him, and give you something to do while we’re just waiting for everyone else to … Oh!” Farideh pressed her hands to her mouth. “What about those giants? The ones that they spotted on the plains?”
Mehen raised a scaly brow ridge. “I’m not hunting monsters while your sister’s missing. Anyway, you need a solid hunting party to take down one giant.”
“Who says you need to take them down?” Farideh said. “They were marching toward the King of Dust’s army, weren’t they? Maybe they’re reinforcements and maybe they’re attacking him. Maybe they’re the ally we need.”
“Fari, I don’t know where you got your ideas about giants,” Mehen said. “But you don’t just stroll up and ask them where their loyalties lie.”
She laughed, feeling a little wild. “If anyone could, I’ll bet it’s Kallan. Look, someone needs to find this out, and if they can help, someone needs to get to them. Plus, if you think Kallan needs to be Vanquisher, wouldn’t it look well for him to have made an alliance like that?”
“You sound like Anala,” Mehen said darkly.
“That’s not always a bad thing.” It wasn’t rescuing Havilar, she thought. It wasn’t untangling herself from the Nine Hells. It wasn’t solving the problem of gods.
“It’s something,” Mehen said. “Better than avoiding your unfortunate family reunion. Come with us. I’d feel better if I could keep an eye on you.”
Farideh shook her head. “I have to find that last heir. And—oh! I found something else out. Adastreia says that someone called Caisys the Vicelord is the one who brought us to Arush Vayem. I don’t suppose … it doesn’t sound familiar does it? Maybe he was someone who visited?”
Mehen made a face. “People didn’t visit the village.”
“So why would he go there?” she asked. “How did you know about it?”
He shrugged. “Rumors mostly. I knew enough people who had been exiled, enough others that I had heard of a village in the mountains. A bat rider off course seeing smoke where there should be none. So I found it. He could have.” He didn’t sound convinced. “What’s he got to do with Havi?”
You have to remember that you need to find Caisys the Vicelord. Understand?
Farideh blinked. “I think … I think he’s important. I have a gut feeling he’s a part of this.” She hesitated. “Have you had any dreams of Havilar?”
“I’ve not been sleeping much,” Mehen said. “You hear from Brin again?”
Farideh shook her head. “You think of anything in the village that might have been the staff of Azuth?”
“Damned if I know—a stick is a stick.” He blew out a noisy breath, nostrils flaring. “Are you going to take her with you to talk to Dumuzi?”
Farideh hesitated. She shouldn’t leave Adastreia alone. The circle would protect her from being scried and from someone trying to pull her out with teleportation magic, but if Bryseis Kakistos just turned up …
“Someone has to watch Adasteia.”
“How about,” Mehen said, “I find a few guards to stand in there and keep watch? Give you a break.”
“Thank you,” Farideh said. “Don’t do anything dangerous, all right? With the giants?”
He pulled her into an embrace. “I won’t if you won’t,” he said, and Farideh hoped the both of them could keep that word.