THE MOON ROSE, WANING GIBBOUS OVER SOMNI’S LEFT SHOULDER, AS THE Tusendraumren Steinjotunen chanted a loop of song, blending their magic into the powers of the Weave. Farideh could feel the edges of it, closing like a gossamer-fine net around them. She had never wanted so badly not to sleep.
She wasn’t the only one. Dahl sat close to Somni, writing notes in a leather-bound book. Thost and Bodhar’s bedrolls were laid out but unoccupied, the brothers wandering the camp. Ilstan lay staring up at the stars, unblinking, and Lorcan stood at the edge of the magic’s reach, arms folded, eyes shadowed. Only Adastreia slept, as if nothing they were doing mattered in the least.
Farideh rubbed the pinch of her brow. The night before, what little she’d slept had been plagued by nightmares, frantic races to find Havilar, battles with warlock after warlock, the armies of Bryseis Kakistos, Lorcan, and nothing she wanted the giant to ask questions about. Farideh watched Dahl scribbling notes. Every time she’d spoken to him, there was a moment where he’d almost speak—an intake of breath shaped around the thought of a word—but he’d catch himself, close his mouth around it. It frightened her. The danger in speaking so clear and yet unexplained.
This is what happens when you make deals with devils, she thought. This is what happens to the people you love.
Farideh walked to the farther side of the circle and sat down next to Lorcan. “You’re going to need to sleep.”
“I don’t particularly want an odd giant sifting through my thoughts,” Lorcan said, still standing. “Or dreams, or whatever. Why does she care? So far as I can tell, it’s an extreme waste of time, dreaming. Sleeping. All of this.”
“How else do we find the staff?” she asked. She reached up and tugged on the edge of his sleeve. “Sit, at least. I’m tired and so are you.”
Lorcan scowled at her, but he settled beside her. “Your brightbird clearly thinks I shouldn’t have come.”
“Do you blame him?” she asked. “You’re hardly trying to be pleasant.”
“Why would I be pleasant to him, darling?” Lorcan said softly. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s an impediment. The one thing I can’t resolve.”
Farideh sighed. Leave it, she told herself. You need him. Even as she thought it, Lachs’s words rose up in her thoughts: Sounds just right for “dear grandmama.” All of us tools, none of us dear.
“Are you feeling any better?” she asked.
“No,” Lorcan said. “Everything hurts. I’m tired and I’m hungry again, and I have no idea what I can or can’t eat, because who’s to say I won’t drop dead of a little venom now?”
Farideh looked across the circle at Dahl. “No one’s going to feed you anything poisonous.”
“Please: Dahl, for one. His brothers make three. Ilstan, cheerfully—assuming he remembers what food is. Adastreia, without a doubt—especially if Kulaga has a mind to expand his collection or make her more valuable in a stroke. You are the only person I can trust. More so than usual.”
Dahl looked back at them, meeting her eyes for only a breath before he looked away. Her heart squeezed. “I have some dried meat in my saddlebag,” she said. “Probably more waybread. Do you want me to get it for you?”
“I do not want to eat another crumb of that horrible waybread.”
“Would you rather undo the protection?” Farideh asked. “If you want to go home—”
“I can’t go home.” Then softer, “I don’t think you can appreciate, darling, how far and wide this stretches. Your eyes are locked on saving your sister, one small piece of this horrible puzzle, but the ramifications are … extraordinary.
“You save her, you kill Bryseis Kakistos once and for all—don’t tell me you don’t intend to do it, you might not, but given the right circumstances you would—then you stop the downfall of Asmodeus. You let the god of sin persist in the world and you make yourself an enemy of every archdevil hoping to bring him low.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Farideh said, even though it made her stomach tighten. “I don’t have that kind of power.”
“You shouldn’t,” Lorcan agreed. “That is how bad things have gotten. If you aid her, if you decide she has a point—and don’t tell me you don’t intend to do that either, if she offers you Havilar’s safety and an end to Asmodeus, then what will stop you?—if you aid her, then Asmodeus and Azuth will both be destroyed, there is no guaranteeing the continued stability of the Nine Hells, and you will have colluded in the deaths of thirteen innocents at the very minimum. And if you do nothing at all, the risk rises by the day that Asmodeus will find your sister and destroy her and Bryseis Kakistos together—which, in the broadest scheme of things is the wisest choice of action, and the only one I think you’ll refuse to do.”
“All I want is Havilar safe,” Farideh said. “That’s it.”
Still, the thought of the thirteen heirs, of little Remzi, of the balance of power that might crush tens of thousands or more … Farideh blew out a breath. I don’t have that kind of power, she reminded herself. I can only protect my own.
“Liar,” Lorcan said, his remark stretching into a yawn.
Farideh yawned too, unable to stifle it. The song of the giants, the way the music, the sounds of the strange words, looped and looped like a nighthawk, seemed to drag her down toward sleep, even as she was speaking. Thoughts of her nightmares crowded the worries about gods and ghosts and wars. She looked over at Somni, the grooves carved into her skin slowly building with a milky light.
“I hope this works,” she said, trying to ignore the very real fear that it wouldn’t. She wet her mouth. “Do you know much about Caisys the Vicelord? Where he might be?”
Lorcan said nothing, a silence so pointed that Farideh turned back to him, expecting to have set him off somehow. But instead he was watching the giants, grim and pensive. “Lorcan?” she said.
“Caisys the Vicelord was one of the Brimstone Angel’s first recruits,” Lorcan said, as if he were being forced to recite, “a demonborn tiefling well-known for his … wide-ranging tastes. His heirs are by far the cheapest, the most common. My last Caisys heir …” He broke off and swallowed, looking away as if he’d said something profoundly uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Farideh asked.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. What’s wrong?” But he kept his silence. “You can tell me,” she reminded him. “Did something happen to the heir?” Nothing. “Did something happen with the heir?”
“No. The heir was a louche little dabbler. He’s my father,” he added all in a rush. “So my warlock was … kin or something. I hadn’t thought of it until now. It’s … unsettling is all.”
“Holy gods,” Farideh said. “How … How long have you known that?”
“Sairché told me, I don’t know, some days ago. I don’t keep track.” He looked away again.
Farideh shifted a little nearer. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’s just some deviant who made a deal with Invadiah.”
“And left you in the Hells.”
“Yes, I’m sure I would have fared so well up here. With a wizard-coinlad father.”
Maybe, Farideh thought. “We could go looking for him anyway. After.”
“No. If I sleep,” he said, “if I let this lunatic giant sift through my dreams, do you think that will increase our chances of never having to bother increasing my knowledge of Caisys the Vicelord again?”
“You’re not curious what happened? Where he is?”
Lorcan looked at her sidelong. “Having seen how extraordinarily well things have gone between you and Adastreia, I’m surprised you’d even ask.”
Farideh wanted to protest that she didn’t care about Adastreia, that she never had. But the more the warlock involved herself, the more Farideh began to think perhaps … perhaps she wasn’t so terrible. Perhaps it was a good thing to have met her. She thought of the argument she’d had with Mehen before they’d left, and pushed it all aside.
“What do you dream about?” she asked Lorcan.
For a long moment, he said nothing. “I assume the same things you do,” he said loftily. “I assume everyone gets to watch their heart turned inside out and all your terrors capering about for the amusement of gods only know what. Where are you planning to sleep?”
“I have to go get my bedroll,” she said without answering. “Do you want something to eat or not?”
“You always said you hated sleeping alone,” Lorcan said, returning the favor. “I will say this much—I understand now. I suspect the dreams aren’t so bad, are they? Not when there’s someone close. Someone reminding you of what’s real with every breath.” The tips of his fingers brushed the side of her hand, lingering and suggestive.
“I have to go get my bedroll.” Farideh stood, turning swiftly from him, and headed toward where they’d picketed the horses. What is wrong with you? she thought, wrapping her cloak closer against the chilly night. But she was starting to realize there was nothing wrong—this was how it would always be. Something in her would always drag her back to Lorcan. She could fight it, but she couldn’t begin to imagine how to extinguish it. Time? Distance? All things she didn’t have.
You can kill him, the words of the long-dead Ashmadai shopkeeper came back to her. You can find another devil. How long could she walk free, the descendent of the Brimstone Angel, without a devil’s pact? Would someone like Kulaga be better, someone she didn’t care about?
She stopped beside the pillar of stones the giants had erected at the edge of their camp, covering her face with both hands. Calm, she told herself, willing the tears crowding her throat to melt away. But when she thought of breaking her pact, they threatened to choke her. She repeated to herself a litany of Lorcan’s crimes—he’d tried to kill Brin, to kill Mehen, he’d held Havilar’s safety over her, he’d claimed the gift Dahl had given her in apology for his own, he’d abandoned her in the prison camp, he’d infected her with shaking fever to keep her in Suzail. And he had reasons—he’d always had reasons. He’d always made it up to her and to others.
And none of that would stop the next transgression, Farideh thought.
She wiped her eyes, more to be certain they were dry than anything else. She couldn’t put off sleeping much longer—not for fear of nightmares or for fear of Somni. She headed toward the horses, their backs blanketed against the chill. And heard voices.
Thost and Bodhar were checking the picket lines, shifting some of them closer to the camp. “Gotta say,” Bodhar’s voice came, “not what I expected Dahl to be about out in the world. Although, I do notice you and I are making sure the horses get fed proper and he’s writing down peculiar giant songs.”
“Best we came with him,” Thost said. “What do you think of her?” Farideh stepped back, behind the stone tower.
“Dunno yet,” Bodhar said. “Prettier than I was thinking. She’s a complicated one, that’s for certain. Kind of … aloof.”
“Hold’s him at arm’s length.”
“Hold’s everybody at arm’s length,” Bodhar said. “Including her own mother.”
“Everyone save the devil,” Thost noted.
“Aye. Don’t know how he stands that. You’d think as clearly mad about her as Dahl is, she’d be a little affectionate. But apart from that greeting?”
“Pretty clear why Dahl wants to beat the devil brainless,” Thost said, exchanging a knowing look with his brother.
Farideh’s cheeks burned hot and she stepped away from the horses, fighting the urge to reveal herself and inform them both that what they thought was happening wasn’t at all what was going on—Was it what was going on? a clutching panic in her chest cried. She tried to think back, to sift through the things she’d said and done—maybe she had been too aloof, but all her mind and all her heart were taken up by trying to save Havilar, trying to stop Bryseis Kakistos.
Your eyes are locked on saving your sister, Lorcan had said, one small piece of this horrible puzzle, but the ramifications are … extraordinary.
Calm, she told herself, forcing a deep breath into her lungs. Calm. You’ve made it this far, you can keep yourself together.
She slipped back into the circle of the giants. Despite his protestations, Lorcan lay sprawled across the ground, face slack with sleep, and only then did Farideh realize she hadn’t gotten any of the things she’d gone for. She looked up at the moon and cursed.
When she looked down, Dahl was watching her. He raised his eyebrows as if asking if everything was all right.
Wave him off, she thought. Tell him its fine.
But with everything crowding up around her, with that accusation of aloofness burning in her thoughts, with Lorcan sound asleep and incapable of seeing, she went to Dahl’s side, and tucked herself close to him when he guided her near. The edges of the spell that shared her protection buzzed against her nerves. He pulled out their piece of foolscap, tucked behind his notes, the one they’d been writing on.
What’s wrong? he wrote.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing new.”
Are you going to sleep tonight? he wrote, balancing the little notebook on one knee.
She thought of her nightmares, of all the things Somni might see. “I don’t want to,” she admitted. He put his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and thought of Suzail, of how close they’d been to being happy—minus the siege, minus the Sharrans, minus the looming question of Lorcan. She thought of how badly she wanted to be alone with him. She inhaled slowly, trying to reclaim that ease. Dahl’s pen scratched against the paper and she opened her eyes.
What was left of that scent was in my haversack, he’d written. Sorry.
Farideh laughed. “Scent’s replaceable.”
I will search high and low for that sort, he promised. Has a potent effect on you.
She covered his fingers with hers. “Scratch that out before someone reads it.” She traced the bones of his knuckles, before taking the stylus and ink from him. If she wrote, he wouldn’t try to speak. I don’t think your brothers like me much, Farideh wrote. I guess it’s best I didn’t come to Harrowdale.
Dahl took the stylus. What did they say?
Her throat started to tighten again. It doesn’t matter.
Give them a chance to come around. These are hard circumstances. His mouth made a hard line. You’re making them ride beside Lorcan, for one.
She made to grab for the stylus again, but her nerves sent up so much shadow-smoke and her hands were shaking. “I can’t get rid of him. Not now.”
Not ever.
“I don’t know! You’re asking me to undo something … Look, forget I brought it up. I don’t want to get into an argument and then you slip—”
Scratching. Did you sleep with him while we were apart? he scribbled.
He wouldn’t look at her. A stab of fear, of anger went through her heart and she straightened, pulling away. “No.”
But you thought about it, a cruel little part of her said. You might have. You let him kiss you.
She felt her cheeks burning as Dahl wrote swiftly, Look, I disappeared, I acted like a hardjack, he was there, you have a past. You might have.
Farideh took the stylus from him, face still burning. I didn’t, she wrote. Then, Are you asking because you slept with Mira? She couldn’t look at him as she held the stylus back out.
A long time ago. Not in the Underdark. She broke it off ages ago.
Farideh thought of the uneasy way Mira had regarded her, of Dahl, so long ago when they’d first met, clearly taken by the cool-mannered historian. Farideh’d admired her too. Mira, she thought, wouldn’t worry about any of this. Mira would just press on, not care. She studied the page, the lines of questions and promises and worries almost filling the foolscap. You’re not Mira, she thought.
“I kissed him,” she said. “I mean, he kissed me. Twice. But I didn’t … I should have … Once was after I had a sort of vision … I wasn’t thinking really. The other time he’d just come back, you’d just hit him and he wasn’t … He was babbling and falling down and I was just trying to get him to lie down so I could figure out what in the Hells was going on, but then he was kissing me and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t trying … But I should have … I should have said so.” The lump in her throat was back and she swallowed hard against it. “I’m not feeling very like myself lately.”
The stillness stretched so long the shadows began to stir along her arms again. At least it will be an answer, she thought. At least you will have a path.
Dahl moved as if to write again, but instead covered her hand with his, rubbing his thumb over the dip between the bones of her thumb and her wrist.
I know the feeling, he wrote a moment later.
“Are you angry?”
He paused. Not especially. But I don’t like it. How long do I have to fix this?
Farideh looked up at him, horrified. “Whatever we need.”
Dahl gave her a skeptical look. You can’t wait forever. I know that.
I can wait a lot longer than two days, Farideh wrote. I missed you. Every day I missed you. Don’t make it sound like I’d replace you so quick. Then, How long do I have to sort things out?
Dahl sighed. Whatever you need. Then, Fair’s fair: I did kiss Mira. The demon lord got into
“Stop,” Farideh said, covering his hand. It didn’t matter—but also she didn’t want to think about it.
You know, he wrote, you’re what saved me in the Underdark. You’re the thought that kept me from getting overtaken. You’re what let me clear my head enough to save the others. He paused. And my grandmother smashed your ink, but
He scribbled over that. I love you.
I love you too, she wrote, and she was glad for the pen and ink. She could keep herself calm if she didn’t have to speak. I’m scared my problems are going to get you killed. I’m scared I’ll make you slip, and your deal will make things even worse.
Let me handle that, Dahl wrote. Then, I did this all out of order. I should have fixed it first, but I had the chance to come back. I’m sorry.
“Don’t be sorry,” Farideh said, holding him closer. “I’m really glad you’re here.” She cleared her throat and took the stylus back, dipping it once in the ink. I hope she knows how to get the staff. I don’t want to go back to Arush Vayem and hunt for Caisys.
To the Abyss and back with Arush Vayem, Dahl wrote. They didn’t deserve you.
She turned her face into his shoulder. I don’t deserve you, she thought. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She lifted her head to the sound of scratching. Stay here?
“Where else would I go?” she said, and kept her thoughts very deliberately away from Lorcan sprawled twenty steps from where they were.
• • •
THE LAND BREATHES beneath Lorcan’s feet, its foul blood coursing through it like a monster no one can slay. Toril is a trap, a danger, but then where isn’t? He wears the skin of a human, so no one knows what he is, but the land does. It shivers the way Malbolge does, driven by the Hag Countess’s dying nerves, as if it cannot bear his passing.
Farideh watches him approach from the bridge, over a river of blood that would be more at home in Avernus. She looks as she did on the night in Suzail, waiting for him in the garden to take her away from that place of sorrow, to take her somewhere where there was nothing else to distract them. Her nightdress is thin and delicate and poor armor against the creatures that breach the blood river, but she doesn’t notice them. She’s waiting for him like no one else would.
Lorcan is nearly to the bridge when a man appears in front of him—he might be Lorcan’s double, but for the char-black hair, the lack of wings, the slashing tail. Caisys, he thinks, and whether this is what the Vicelord looked like in life or not doesn’t matter—that is who he is.
“That’s not the way out,” he says. “There is no way out, really.”
“Get out of my way,” Lorcan says. Caisys or not, it doesn’t matter. None of this matters.
“What bad fortune to pin all our hopes on a house divided,” the man says, the words of the mysterious god of spells. “Have you decided yet?”
The pradixikai approach from the farther shore, all thirteen of them and their furies besides, led by his mother, Exalted Invadiah, her hooves sharp, her horns scraping the sky. Thirty-seven erinyes, the most deadly in Malbolge, and Farideh has her back to them.
“She’s not waiting for you,” Caisys says.
“She’ll always wait for me,” Lorcan replies, trying to pass the tiefling. “You don’t know her.”
“Do you?”
Rage boils up in Lorcan and he reaches for his sword, but he’s lost it somewhere. He searches the heaving, twitching ground, but before he finds it, he sees the giant, sitting on the horizon, tilting her head back and forth as if listening to some silent music.
A dream, Lorcan remembers.
Then Farideh screams, and he forgets Somni and the giants and the fact that he is dreaming.
• • •
HAVILAR HESITATED, EYEING the split in the mists, trying to hold it in her thoughts. She could feel a number of pathways leading out of that opening—ways into dreams. Farideh’s lay open like a wide city boulevard, the easiest path to take, and a part of Havilar wanted dearly to plunge along it, to find her sister and make certain she was all right first. Mehen’s, too, she could see it now, though the path seemed broken and dodgy, as if Mehen slept fitfully, ready to wake. Guilt burrowed into her chest—she should have gone to Mehen sooner, let him know she was all right. She could be in and out, a quick message—
You need to go now, Alyona said. We’ve delayed too long already.
How Alyona knew how much time had passed in the world beyond, Havilar still couldn’t guess, but given the dangers of Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, she was willing to bet that she was right.
Slipping into Brin’s dreams felt almost as natural as slipping into Farideh’s, and the ease with which she came to stand in a finely manicured garden felt treasonous. Blossoming hedges, buzzing with bees, rose high all around her. A bush carved in the shape of a castle tower rose up out of a bubbling fountain, the court around it ringed with red and pink roses.
“Brin!” she shouted, walking through the garden. “Brin, where are you?”
As she walked, the hedges grew thicker, more like brambles, their blooms turning sickly and lurid. The bees grew louder and louder until Havilar realized they weren’t bees—they were hellwasps. The dog-sized fiendish insects swooped over her, sword arms dragging through the air. The clouds overhead thickened and grew red. Havilar clenched her fists and found them closing around the haft of Devilslayer, to her surprise.
“Brin!” she shouted over the din.
She heard a deep, bone-shaking howl and ran toward it, weaving through the hedges. There, beyond a rotting lilac bush, she found another fountain, a statue of a woman spilling blood out of a jar, instead of water. Brin stood against it, sword out, holding back the little boy as Zoonie menaced a trio of erinyes encroaching on them.
“Brin!” she shouted again. “Shake it off. I have to talk to you.”
He spotted her and for a moment his expression was so full of fear. He’s starting to think you’re her, she realized. Karshoj. But then he blinked, his expression grateful, relieved. “Can you help me with this?”
Havilar’s grip tightened on the glaive. Three erinyes might be more than she could manage, but this wasn’t real, right? In a dream, she could beat them all together without so much as breaking a sweat.
Or, she realized as the erinyes turned to regard her, Brin’s fear she might get hurt would just mean she got killed and tossed back into the soul sapphire. Her hands itched around the weapon. The devils started toward her.
“Wait,” she said. She took a deep breath and when she exhaled, the erinyes and the hellwasps were all gone. Only her and Brin and Remzi chasing after Zoonie as she romped around the fountain, now full of clear ice. The clouds faded to a pearly gray, snow sifting down over the garden, quickly blanketing everything.
Havilar stared at Remzi packing a snowball and lobbing it at Zoonie, who tried to snap it out of the air, despite her muzzle. Brin approached her, sword still in hand.
“Is it you again?” he asked. “Is this real?”
Havilar tore her gaze from the little boy. “I guess. I mean, you’re not really in Suzail in the snow, but you didn’t make me up. So … half real?” She nodded at Remzi. “Does he … Has he been playing with her like that?”
“He’d like to,” Brin said, sheathing his sword and putting an arm around her waist. “We haven’t left my room.”
“She’s going to get antsy, not having any time to run,” Havilar said. Zoonie pounced on Remzi, knocking him on his backside with a burst of snow before romping off. “Bryseis Kakistos is planning on killing him, isn’t she?”
Brin’s arm tightened around her waist and the clouds grew darker. Lightning flashed, illuminating the clouds’ bellies, and the drone of insects returned. Havilar squeezed him back. “Never mind. That’s not right now. If this works, we won’t have to worry about it.”
“If what works?”
“Alyona sent me,” she said. “She thinks … I think you have to destroy the soul sapphire. The one Bryseis Kakistos wears around her neck.”
Brin goggled at her. “But, you’re in there.”
“Right,” Havilar said.
“It will kill you. Or at least leave you floating around without a body.”
“I don’t know,” Havilar admitted. “But it doesn’t matter—”
He shook his head. “I’m not doing that. I can’t do that.”
“All right well, don’t do it. Just pretend you’re going to do it. That’s what matters. The only thing she’s going to listen to is the possibility that Alyona might break free and wind up dead after all. Just bluff her.”
“If she calls my bluff?”
“Don’t let her call it.”
“That isn’t how things work!”
“Well it has to be!” Havilar said, growing irritated. “I don’t have another idea! I went in her dream too—she’s doesn’t care about anything except maybe her sister. That’s what all this aithyas boils down to. But she’s just exactly like Farideh in that she’s as stubborn as a goat in the mud and she wouldn’t even listen to Alyona. So the only way to stop her is to make … to make her think …”
The next thing she knew, Brin was calling her name. She cursed, her thoughts flooding back without order or reason.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she said. “It’s making me lose my mind, just like Alyona. I’m already … My mind gets blown out like a candle and the next thoughts I have have nothing at all to do with what I was saying.” She turned the point of the glaive into the snow. “I know it’s a stupid plan. I don’t have a better one. This is Farideh’s job. She does the stupid tactical parts, not me. But I can’t do what I know how to do, so start with this?”
Brin wrapped his arms around her, and whether it was real or half real or just a figment, it made her feel a little less adrift.
“If she reminds you of Farideh,” he said, “then what would you do if you needed to change Farideh’s mind?”
Havilar snorted. “Give up.” But she thought about it a moment. “Fari listens better if you tell her directly. If you get right to the point and say what you want and why you want it. If you tell her you’re angry or scared or whatever. But she’s not Farideh.”
“But did Alyona tell her she was willing to sacrifice herself—and you—so that Bryseis Kakistos didn’t go ahead with this?”
“No,” Havilar said. In fact, she hadn’t considered it in those terms exactly. But Brin was right—even if it was a bluff, there remained the chance that Bryseis Kakistos would call it. Alyona had to know this might mean they both would die.
Havilar sighed. “How about this? Can you find a way to break the gem in case we need to? Maybe find someone who can?”
“Maybe,” Brin said. “If I need to, I’ll take the soul sapphire. I’d rather I had it anyway, but if I can’t leave the fortress, it’s not going to do a lot of good.”
Havilar took his hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know when I can come back again. It’s hard. It’s making me forgetful.”
“Can you stay a little longer?” he asked. He sat on the edge of the frozen fountain, patting the spot beside him. “We can pretend this is real. Or half real.”
“For a little bit,” Havilar agreed, sitting down beside him as Zoonie raced passed again, chased by Remzi’s snowballs. “I need to find Farideh too.”
• • •
SOMEONE HAS GIVEN Adastreia a basket, but whoever it was is long gone, and wherever she searches, there’s nowhere to set it down. She walks beside Kulaga down a springtime street in Mulsantir, but she knows better than to give the basket to Kulaga—never give a devil anything you don’t want used against you.
She lifts the corner of the cloth covering. The basket is full of detritus—potsherds and empty bottles, shells and old roots, pieces of pretty stone, and scraps of parchment. And a knife—a black-handled dagger with a sharp, oiled blade. Oh yes, she thinks. That’s mine.
Kulaga stops walking. “Give me the blade.”
Adastreia takes hold of the weapon, the devil’s secret name on her tongue. She could kill him—they both know it—and he could kill her. That they can persist in this equilibrium is the most useful thing about devils, so far as Adastreia can see.
But the blade in her hand has other ideas, and she doesn’t realize she slashed off the logokron’s tattooed tongue until it lies flopping in the dirt. Oh dear, Adastreia thinks as Kulaga roars. Now I have to start again.
She looks back the way they came, expecting more barbed devils. But there’s only a stone giant, sitting a bow’s shot up the path, rocking her head in time to a music Adastreia can’t hear.
A dream, she remembers. But then Kulaga reaches for her throat …
PREXIJANDILIN HESKAN’S HEAD seemed smaller somehow, perched on one of the many spears beside the golden general, its jaw agape as if awestruck. Ophinshtalajiir Rahdia, daughter of Shurideh, of the line of Assilyath, held his face in her thoughts as it had been in life, a small rebellion as the King of Dust looked down on her. Beyond, the snarling nightmare of demons, the darkness deeper than it had any right to be, and an army forming out of the seething mass of bodies, ready to march.
“You think you’re achieving something by holding out on me,” Gilgeam says. “But I still have so many of you to go. I know about your weaponry. I know how many casters you count among your forces. I know about the bats. I know how your magic works now.” He smiled, his teeth a perfect slice of white. “This land was given to me once, long before you ever sullied it with your footsteps. You had no right to it.”
Rahdia said nothing. She told herself ancestor stories of old, bound and kneeling there in the dirt. If the King of Dust broke them—somehow—they would escape him, regroup, rise again. They had done so before, hadn’t they? They could do it again.
But she thought of Djerad Thymar, of the Prexijandilin patriarch, so set in his ways. Can you turn back the glass? Rahdia thought. Or have we grown too used to our sanctuary here?
“Djerad Thymar,” Gilgeam said. “You stole it from us.”
No, Rahdia thought. We built it of ruins and rock hewn from the Smoking Mountains. Sealed it with the Breath of Petron.
“You built it,” Gilgeam said, “out of a god’s tomb. Did you think I wouldn’t remember?”
Rahdia still said nothing, though her pulse leaped. If the Son of Victory could read her thoughts—
“I do know what you’re thinking,” Gilgeam said. “ ‘That city is ours.’ You built that city of my brother’s tomb, desecrators, and we will retake it in short order. Now: What did you do with the body?”
Rahdia tried not to think of the story of Thymara and the Black Axe, of the Moon’s Champion. At its heart lay a tomb, revealed by the broken stone. A bearded man, twice Thymara’s height, a human by his look and freshly dead by any indication. Had she reburied the body, after? Rahdia couldn’t remember. Her elders hadn’t liked that story, and young Rahdia had preferred tales of battle and bravery to the stillness of the founding of Thymara’s fortress.
Gilgeam seized her by the plumes, shaking her bodily. Pain blurred her vision. “What did you do with the body?” Be like the elders in Raurokh, she told herself, clamping shut her jaw. Still, silent. Never give the tyrant what he wants.
The King of Dust released her, planted a hand in the middle of her chest. A pulse of power surged through Rahdia, feeling as though it melted her very bones. She screamed, but the air went out of her as he shocked her again and again.
“What did you do with the body?” Gilgeam snarled.
“I don’t know,” Rahdia blurted.
“Who does know?” When she didn’t answer, he shocked her again, her vision briefly going black from the pain. “Who?”
“Kepeshkmolik,” she said. “It’s their tale.”
Gilgeam released her. “Good. Now which among you is Kepeshkmolik.”
But Rahdia would not compound her error. She shut her eyes and thought of Prexijandilin Heskan. “We are all Kepeshkmolik,” she whispered. “Ask around.”
His sandaled foot pressed against her throat. “Which among you is Kepeshkmolik?” he asked again.
“You cannot end us,” she said. “We are Vayemniri.”
Gilgeam smiled. “Then I will enjoy making the effort, at the very least.”
• • •
FARIDEH ROLLS THE dough out, thin as a scraped skin, on the scarred wooden table of the tallhouse in Suzail. Flour coats her hands, blending away the edges of her bleached third finger. On the other end of the table, Dahl’s chopping something green. The kitchen’s full of the smell of herbs—rosemary and bay.
Something black rises up out of the dough—a torn scrap of parchment. Farideh picks it out, then sees the others. It’s as if she’s rolled the dough out atop a shredded scroll, and maybe she has, she can’t remember. She picks them out, one by one, but there’s more than should be possible layered into the dough. She lays them to the side, torn edge to torn edge, looking for where the words meet, looking for meaning, but there’s nothing.
She looks back, over her shoulder, out the window at the garden. There’s a giant sitting there, watching her.
Dahl comes to stand behind her, arm around her waist. He kisses her cheek, just beneath the ear and asks, “Do we have turnips?”
She looks back. His shirt’s half-laced and untucked, looking lazy and freshly woken—she forgets about the giant entirely when he smiles. “In the cellar,” she says.
“Do you want to come with me?” he asks, still smiling. And it’s silly but she’s glad to. Her fingers interlace with his as they descend the wooden stair into a low-ceilinged, heavily decorated parlor. Cream silk papers the walls, and the rug beneath her feet is so thick Farideh loses her balance and bumps into a green plush couch. A hall leads away from the stairs, curving into the darkness. Dahl pulls her along, deeper into the cellars, down more stairs. She didn’t know this was all here.
She looks in the doors as they pass—some guest rooms, some cells, some look just like the ossuary-lined tombs of the Vayemniri. One room is packed floor to ceiling with little painted wooden dolls; they’re tumbling out into the hallway like a landslide.
Farideh steps over and she suddenly remembers—she has been here before.
She came down here, into the third cellar; she met Lorcan. The memory is there—unassailable, irredeemable—she remembers this place and the burning touch of Lorcan’s skin, and the greedy way she kisses him, pulls him down into one of these strange beds. He might still be down here. He probably is still down here. And Dahl doesn’t know.
“Dahl.” She tries to stop, but his hand only slips out of hers. “Dahl, wait!”
The door beside her is open, and the giant is there, sitting at the end of the room, shrunken somehow to fit the space, or perhaps the space has grown around her. Somni, she thinks, and she remembers she’s dreaming.
But it doesn’t last. She remembers Dahl—he can’t find out, not like this. She runs after him, down deeper into the earth. She finds Lorcan first, still naked and lounging in the unmade bed. He looks like sin. He looks like want. For a moment, she thinks no one can blame her for this misstep. No one can really call it a misstep.
“You have to go,” she says. “Now.”
“What’s this?” Dahl says behind her. She spins—he doesn’t look angry, only curious.
“Not turnips,” Lorcan says, and even that he manages to make sound obscene.
“Oh, are you kidding me?” Havilar is suddenly standing against the wall. “I thought you made your mind up.”
Farideh is about to grab her sister, to beg for her help … but she stops. “It’s a dream.”
“Yeah,” Havilar says gently. “It’s a dream.”
Farideh covers her face, wishing she could make all of it vanish. “Karshoj. This is the dream I have to have when Somni’s watching. When you’re watching.” She looks up at Havilar. “You’re real. You’re really here.” Havi nods, and she grabs her sister tight. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right.”
Havilar hugs her back. “For the moment. It’s getting worse. I’m … coming apart. I can’t … I can’t keep coming.”
“United—that’s what she wanted,” a voice says. “And can you really say she was wrong?”
Still holding Havilar, Farideh turns to look at Dahl, but he’s not there. Asmodeus stands in the doorway. He wears his own skin—he does when she’s dreaming, she thinks—and he watches her with mild displeasure. Even that makes her shiver uncontrollably.
“How are we united?” Farideh asks.
Asmodeus smiles. “You don’t know what it was like before. Chaos. Shadows. This is better, believe me.”
“Don’t talk to him,” Havilar says, her voice unsteady. “Don’t talk to the weird giant in the corner either. I don’t have a lot of time.” The corner—the room stretches in impossible ways and Somni is sitting in the corner, considering.
Havilar grips her shoulders. “What wouldn’t you do to save me?”
Farideh shakes her head. “Nothing.”
That isn’t the answer Havilar wants. “What … What would it take for you to give up? What would … It’s not you I’m asking about. It’s Bryseis Kakistos.”
Farideh’s thoughts are spinning too fast to grab hold of. “I wouldn’t. Maybe … maybe if you said I shouldn’t? Is … Is that what you want?”
“No,” Havilar says. “It’s Bryseis Kakistos. This isn’t about Asmodeus; it’s about—”
At the name, Farideh looks back to be sure the god hasn’t heard, but he’s gone and left Dahl in his place again, looking not so much puzzled as concerned. His eyes shine silver in the torchlight.
“I’m still here,” he says.
It’s a dream, she reminds herself. An incredibly embarrassing dream.
Havilar turns her back. “It’s about her sister. She’s trying to save her dead sister. Alyona.” The name echoes in Farideh’s memories, as if she’s heard it a thousand times before. “Only, she’s going to kill everybody trying to do it,” Havilar went on. “So yeah, if you thought it would kill a plane full of people to save me, karshoj yes, you shouldn’t do that. You’d get that, right?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Dahl says.
Farideh looks back at him, and he smiles, as if he’s waiting for her to answer a question that shouldn’t be this hard. His eyes are the wrong color, she thinks. “She was keeping secrets,” he says. “She still is.”
“Shut up, Dahl,” Havilar says. “You can finish this weird dream later.”
When she looks back at Havilar, Asmodeus stands right beside them, not merely displeased, but incandescent with fury—I’m not dreaming, Farideh thinks as Havilar skips back, away from the god. Her heart nearly stops.
“You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says. He waves a hand over them both—the cellars vanish and she and Havilar are looking out over the whole of the plane, turning blue and green beneath them.
“Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?” the god asks, and the plane tears. Fire and ice and hideous miasmas pour out, armies swarm from the rents, swallowing whole cities in their battle. The Nine Hells, collapsing in on themselves, their order destroyed, turn their armies out into every plane.
“I warned you,” he whispers in her ear.
Farideh turns, but he is gone, they’re in the cellars once more, and the old man is there, between her and Lorcan.
“Who in the Hells is that?” Havilar demands.
“You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says sadly.
“I know you’re both going to die no matter what I do,” Farideh says.
The old man spreads his hands, cards appearing in neat rows in the air between them. “The time for chaos and disorder is passed. Now comes method, neatness, law. The Overgod approaches and all that we have striven for will be etched in stone.” He sweeps his hand across the cards and they vanish, but for three that lie in a crooked line: Iolaum, the Arcanist; the Adversary; the Godborn.
Devils and magic, Farideh thinks. Sin and wizards. Gods and the Nine Hells. Jumbled together like cards dropped on a table.
“He offers you no solution.” She turns and it is Asmodeus once more. “If you separate us, we will die and you will have neither—is that better? Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?”
She blinks and it’s Azuth before her. “Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god?”
“Has he killed you?” she asks.
The wizard smiles at her in a way that sets her nerves humming. “If you consider the matter carefully, he saved me, though not as I would have preferred to be saved. I was near death, my divinity slipping from my grasp. He might have tried to wrench it away, but no … this way both are whole. Either can claim the godhood. Or neither.
“Fari,” Havilar starts.
“How do I stop it?” Farideh demands.
“You must wake now,” a voice—Somni’s voice—says, all urgency and magic. But Farideh can’t look away from the gods flickering in front of her.
Blink. “Stop her,” Asmodeus says.
Blink. “Help her,” Azuth says.
Blink. “Do something before it’s too late.”
“What do I do?” Farideh shouts.
The old man considers her sadly. “Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice.”
The archdevil smiles. “Sometimes we forget the power we wield.”
“Wake up!” Somni shouts. Havilar grabs her arm.
“She took my powers,” Farideh says. “Lorcan can’t give me anything as he is. What do you think I can do?”
Azuth approaches. Asmodeus approaches. A palm that might belong to either rises before her face, the god beyond it flickering between both selves. “We are fragile. We cannot spare a Chosen’s spark,” one says. “Any more than you need it.”
“But all the same,” the other finishes. “It wouldn’t do to leave all to chance.”
The hand caresses her face, electric with magic, enough to stop her heart.