28 Alturiak, the Year of the Malachite Shadows (1460 DR)
Aglarond
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There were eight of them, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, scattered across a family tree that had planted its roots from Vaasa to Amn to Durpar. Bryseis Kakistos surveyed the circle of tieflings with a pride she wouldn’t have expected.
One son survived, Alonzo, the baby Caisys had stood over, now an old man with a bad hip and the soft eyes of the adept she’d brought to her bedchambers one night. The stern line of his mouth as he watched the others made her think of Alyona when she grew nervous and annoyed. He’d married a Northern girl—an odd concession to society, given the rest of her brood—and two of his children stood nearby in the grove. Naria, dark as her dead mother, and Lachs, pale as his father, both long and lanky. Naria’s daughter, Threnody, stood by as well, sharp eyes watching the shadows despite her graying hair. Two more children were dead, another boy, another girl—the elder brother’s son was the one they’d chosen for the ritual. Chiridion, proud and straight-backed and bearing all the best gifts of his forebears. They’d tracked him to far-off Durpar, amid silks and spices and the dangerous eyes of rakshasas and the descendants of Pradir Ril. Bryseis Kakistos had to admit not a little fondness for the young man who’d given Caisys the slip twice before being caught, and then bargained like a fence for his assistance. Strength, tenacity, cleverness—who wouldn’t be proud?
Her other son had not fared so well. The fosterage had named him Jubal, and he’d rambled all across Toril, leaving behind bodies and debts and children, before dying at last in the dark by the point of several blades. She had gathered two of his children to their cause—proud and sullen Nasmos, secret child of a minor Amnian noblewoman; and Livulia, stout and graceful, the third child of a merchant and his straying tiefling wife.
How many children Jubal had fathered wasn’t certain, nor was it certain how many of these had gone on to mimic their father’s ways. The Nine Hells would know—the devils had begun to make a sport of crafting their own pacts, collecting their own sets of warlocks, descended from that first coven, that first agreement. Every one of these, her descendants, had been snared in such a pact, and it made what remained of Bryseis Kakistos twist with guilt. She had doomed them, every one, all down the line from Jubal to the baby-vessel resting in Adastreia.
She’d traced the lines of the pact out to Mulsantir, to the tiny, purple-haired woman now sitting on a rock with her hands folded nervously over her stomach. She called herself Adastreia Tyrianicus, which made Alyona chuckle. She was sharp and careful and far more powerful in her pact than Bryseis Kakistos would have expected of someone who worked as a scullery in a Golden Way tavern, but the pact was fresh and Adastreia already knew to be careful with devils.
She glanced at Caisys. He still believed this was about untangling their descendants from the demands of the pact, about making the world better for tieflings by making it progress. Adastreia had needed a firmer nudge, the whispered truth of Asmodeus’s ending in her dreams, and the fire had taken hold of her great-granddaughter.
You might have doomed them, Bryseis Kakistos thought, looking over her brood, but had she not made things easier as well? If she hadn’t helped Asmodeus claim the blood of the fiendborn, they might have seemed human and lived completely invisible lives.
Or they might have been born with every wrong feature and been thrown in the river. They might have never had the chance to take the power of a warlock pact.
They might never have been chased by devils, she thought.
Alyona was suddenly beside her. It worked! she said. Are you ready?
Bryseis Kakistos turned her attention to Caisys, the architect of this strange family gathering, their messenger in the mortal world. Tell her its time, she said.
He chuckled once, and nodded, the enchanted ring that let them speak glinting in his ear. “Well done, children,” he said. “Sounds like it’s time.”
Adastreia nodded, ignoring the others with a determination that made Bryseis smile. She took up the knife and the oils, stretched herself out upon the stone surface. Chiridion moved beside her, saying something soft and in her ear that made Adastreia roll her eyes and laugh. They might not be all that fond of each other, Bryseis Kakistos thought, but they are comrades at least. They want this better world.
They want to fix your mistakes.
Livulia stepped forward, bearing the gifts of Selûne, the prayers and spells that would make the vessel safe from prying devils’ eyes, from the notice of Asmodeus. Long enough at least for Bryseis Kakistos to gather the elements for the next ritual, the one to bring down the king of the Hells. She’d have to tell Caisys about unseating Asmodeus eventually. She’d have to pry the staff from him one way or another.
He noticed her watching and raised an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”
I’m glad we’re allies once more, she said, and she meant it.
He snorted, but he smiled. “You don’t have friends, do you?” She didn’t know how to answer that. She had allies and she had Alyona. And maybe she had Caisys.
Bisera? Alyona said, taking her by the hand. Are you ready?
Bryseis Kakistos turned her attention to her great-granddaughter, to the fluttery beginnings of something in her belly, to the strands of the Weave and something more tatting themselves into readiness. The ritual would disrupt all of that, latch Bryseis Kakistos’s soul into that tiny void, taking up the space meant to grow some other self. She wondered idly if that supplanted soul would find another someone to become, if, like Bryseis and Alyona, it would have another chance.
She wove the anchor, magic and moonlight—this one for her and the next for Alyona. It wouldn’t take long between them—not twins, but sisters still, and she told herself that was more than enough. It wasn’t how she anticipated her revenge, but this would be better. This would cleanse the stain from her. This would make Alyona forgive her.
Stay close, she told her sister.
The thread of magic pouring down from the moon suddenly tightened, sharp as a razor across the center of her soul. She moved in front of Alyona, but the anchor was splitting, the magic shifting. Each point was suddenly bound to two places—an impossibility that forced the spell apart. She felt the connection to Alyona pull close, then tear away.
Her last thought before Beshaba’s misplaced blessings destroyed her, was to hope for third chances.
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