26 Uktar, the Year of Lost Ships (1400 DR)
Vaasa
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“You have to admit,” Caisys told Bryseis Kakistos, “you’ve gained far more than most people trying to trap the king of the Hells in his promises would have.”
Fifteen years, and the Brimstone Angel’s powers were unrivaled among the infernally pacted. What the Hells could not grant her, Bryseis Kakistos had directed their powers toward gaining the spells of a wizard and more. Magic infused her, kept her strong and quick. When assassins came for her, she cut them down by spell or by blade, and never feared for her life. When the world buckled and the Weave split, she was prepared with spells plucked from every sort of discipline, powerful enough to protect herself, to avoid being blown apart by the shatter of magic.
But she didn’t have the only thing she wanted.
“He said he needed the powers of a god,” she told Caisys, and Caisys alone. “That was the only way to get her back.”
Caisys had shrugged, jiggled the cradle that held her second-born son with the sort of disinterested kindness that made one toss a stick for a strange mutt. The baby stirred and pawed at the nubs of his horns in his sleep. They were all like that now—horns, tails, smooth, edgeless eyes. “But did he say he would?” Caisys asked.
“I’m not an idiot,” Bryseis Kakistos snapped. But neither did she have the upper hand. Asmodeus had agreed, but without any time line established, it had quickly become apparent that the new-made god of sin felt no compulsion to complete their deal. She had summoned emissary after emissary, devils appearing in the middle of her workroom.
“His Majesty requests your patience,” they would always say. “Now is not the time.”
It would never be the time, she was rapidly coming to understand. He would feed her powers, little by little, hoping to distract her from the promise of returning Alyona to flesh and seating Bryseis Kakistos at his right hand. Perhaps because he couldn’t do it. Perhaps because he didn’t wish to. It didn’t matter—whatever his reasons, Asmodeus had betrayed her, and Alyona’s ghost drifted through her dreams every night, mournful and distant. She needed another solution.
“Do you still have the staff?”
Caisys made a face at the baby. All these years gone and he looked almost identical to when she’d first seen him—a little gray in his hair, some weariness around his eyes, but nothing like a man of seventy-odd years. Magic buoying him above the tide of age, she thought, and she wondered if that had come with Asmodeus’s magics or from somewhere else. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But it’s not easy to get to. And I recall you telling me to forget it, and certainly not to tell you where it is.”
She had told him that, and she’d intended to kill him after, to seal away the secret completely. But … after everything, she’d hesitated. Caisys was different than the others.
“That was then,” she told Caisys. “I need leverage. I need a conduit.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Please tell me you aren’t planning to build the kind of spell it sounds like you’re building.”
“Help me? For her sake.”
Caisys stared at her a long moment, then pointed at the baby with his chin. “I see you’ve been busy. What’s this one’s name?”
Bryseis Kakistos blinked, and answered before she could stop herself, “ ‘The baby’? The fosterage will give him a proper name when I send him out.”
“Baby,” Caisys crooned over the cradle, “your mummy is a madwoman. She needs to leave well enough alone.”
“If you’re going to say no, say no like a grown man. Don’t use a baby for a puppet.”
Caisys straightened. “If I say no, you’ll stop listening to me—how long have we known each other? Don’t do this. You’ll end up a dead woman.”
“And Alyona?” Bryseis Kakistos demanded.
“There are other ways to deal with this,” he had said. “Pick one.”
Bryseis Kakistos narrowed her eyes. “Give me the staff.”
“No,” Caisys said. “You said to take it and never tell you where it went.”
“That was then,” she said. “That was when the problem was some rival of Asmodeus’s or that some trumped-up wizard might want it. Now I need it.” She dropped her voice. “I think I can use it. I can use the pacts to pull magic out of the Nine Hells and force it into the staff—”
“And get caught a heartbeat later,” Caisys finished.
Bryseis Kakistos smiled. “It will go too fast. By the time he realizes something’s wrong, the stream will be a torrent. It will weaken him even as it strengthens the god in him.”
Caisys studied her face for long moments. “And what about Alyona?”
Bryseis Kakistos held his gaze, but her hand wrapped around the soul sapphire hanging from its chain around her neck. “You mean if Azuth doesn’t appreciate our help? Then I’ll find someone else. She’s safe now.”
“While you live.” Caisys shook his head. “Maybe you ought to let her go. Try living a life that’s not about … hrast, you’re out for revenge on everything, more or less. You can’t be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”
For a long moment, Bryseis Kakistos said nothing, but stared at Caisys unblinking for so long a normal person would have turned away. But he only waited, as if he’d asked a question she had any interest in answering.
“Bring me the staff,” she said again.
Caisys sighed. “It’s going to take me a bit,” he said. “It’s not as if I put it under the bed.”
“Hmm. Too much traffic,” Bryseis said.
He gave her a withering look. “For one. A month—give me a month. But promise me you’ll think about what I said, Bisera.”
“I promise,” she lied. The smallest twinge of guilt went through her—after all, Caisys remained her oldest ally. They were very nearly friends.
If she’d known then, as he walked out the door, that he’d never return, she might not have felt guilty at all.
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