14 Alturiak, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Harrowdale, a day’s ride from New Velar
• • •
Farideh blew out a nervous breath as Bodhar’s and Thost’s horses trotted away from the wagon, heading down the snowy slope toward the little farmhouse that had just come into view.
“I am fairly sure,” Dahl murmured from the driver’s box beside her, “that you did not make this much shadow-stuff when you faced the arcanist. Nor the Chosen of Shar.”
“You weren’t there for the Chosen of Shar,” Farideh pointed out. She brushed a hand over her cloak, trying to smooth away any sign of her nerves. Dahl had insisted she didn’t need to wear the hood up, but the cover over her horns gave her a measure of comfort as the wagon rattled through the Dalelands. “I don’t think you’re right about the arcanist either.”
“Good,” Dahl teased. “My mother is nowhere near as frightening as an undead arcanist, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise.” She brushed a hand over her sleeve again—Dahl caught her fingers and squeezed them. “What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Farideh gave a nervous laugh. “The worst? Your brothers tell your mother you’re bringing a tiefling girl home, she gets so upset she bursts out of the door, calls you a disappointment and makes you choose between your family or me. And then I’m alone, in the middle of the Dales.”
“Well,” Dahl said mildly, “if she demanded I choose, I’d choose you.”
“You can’t pick me over your mother.”
“Of course I can. Besides, if my mother demanded I pick, I’m fairly sure that’s not my mother, so we’re dealing with doppelgangers or the like, and I need you in that case.”
One of the stones in her pocket hummed, as if it had suddenly become alive. She slipped her hand in and pressed it to her palm.
Did you know, her sister’s voice came, that people drop actual pearls into the Sea of Fallen Stars to appease Umberlee? Sea elves must be decked out. Miss you.
Farideh smiled to herself. “This is not what the stones are for, I hope it’s nearly deepnight there or that you have no emergencies. Nearly there, miss you too.”
“I will wager you the next words out of her mouth are ‘I have a glaive and a hellhound, I don’t have emergencies.’ ”
“She also has a child with her, at least for the next tenday,” Farideh pointed out. Havilar and Brin had gone to return Remzi to his parents. Farideh and Mehen had both offered to go along, but Havilar had been firm.
“You both have other things to do,” she’d said. “Brin and I can handle this.”
Farideh leaned against Dahl’s shoulder, wishing to herself that Havilar were here too. “Is it late there?”
“Assuming they’ve nearly reached Aglarond, yes, it’s very late.” He kissed her head. “You going to give Mehen the sending you promised now, or hope you remember before you fall asleep?”
“I haven’t forgotten once yet, thank you very much,” Farideh said. She thought of Mehen, alone again for the first time since they’d returned from their imprisonment in the Nine Hells. This time, though, he had a way to keep tabs on them: Ilstan’s last gift. And someone to keep him company in Kallan, and someone who needed him in Dumuzi.
Farideh tried to imagine Mehen, forcing her to choose between her family and Dahl, between her past and her future, and couldn’t. Especially not after everything that had happened on top of Djerad Thymar—Mehen would always, she suspected, be a bit gruffer with Dahl than he was with Brin, but when Farideh had told him they were heading to Harrowdale after all, his only hard words were over whether it was wiser to take the land route through the newly disturbed countryside of Tymanther or the sea route, past Unthalass.
“I’m well aware that dragon turtle is meant to be on our side,” he’d said. “But give him a year to prove he can tell the difference between a trade ship and the karshoji Untheran navy. You go with your giants.”
Someone—a woman too young to be Dahl’s mother—came out and lit lamps beside the doorway. Dahl waved to her, and another twinge of anxiety took Farideh by the throat. Mehen wouldn’t make you choose, she told herself. Eurdila won’t make him choose.
“What should I say to her?”
“Who? Dellora?” Dahl asked.
“Your mother.”
“I don’t know. ‘Well met, it’s nice to meet you.’ What should you say?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know any Dallish customs. I don’t know what’s rude or not or what’s going to make me stand out—”
“You’re going to be fine,” Dahl said. “You managed in Djerad Thymar, you managed in the royal palace of the Purple godsbedamned Dragon—twice, now—you are not going to somehow bungle things so impossibly that it can’t be explained on my family’s farm, where half the time someone has to tell my brothers to leave their sheep-mucked boots outside.”
Ilstan’s body had been laid to rest in the catacombs of Djerad Thymar, a warrior’s burial, a hero’s tomb etched with the story of the warning he carried to Dumuzi, the ritual they’d cast on the pyramid’s peak. To Suzail, Farideh had carried his cloak with the war wizard sigil on it, his wand, his spellbook, and a lock of his hair. She’d intended to bring them to the Nyaril family, but she’d no more than crossed the city’s gate but war wizards had descended on her, brought her to the palace, first to the Royal Magician Ganrahast, and from there to Queen Raedra, who was—much to Farideh’s surprise—very glad to see her.
“You were going to sneak right by, weren’t you?” she’d said.
“I didn’t want to bother you, Your Majesty,” Farideh managed.
Raedra raised an eyebrow. “I became queen—I didn’t become a stranger.” She’d smoothed her purple skirts nervously, and for a moment she was so clearly the young woman Farideh had become friends with in Suzail, that she smiled.
“I let you leave without much of a good-bye last time,” Raedra had said. “So I do hope I can convince you to stay a few days at least.” They’d spared three, and promised when they came through again, to stop once more.
Dahl pulled the team of horses to a stop alongside a hitching post set at the edge of a wide yard. A lanky boy and a girl of about fifteen came out of the house, bundled in woolens and jogging toward the wagons. Farideh’s pulse leaped up her throat as Dahl climbed down and hugged them both. “You two draw the short straws?”
“Still short some hands,” the boy said. “Ghiwan and Marto went to war and Jessa’s gone home to Deepingdale. Besides, it’s ‘good for us.’ ”
Dahl chuckled. “Farideh, this is Jens, Thost’s oldest boy, and Sabrelle, Bodhar’s daughter. This is Farideh.”
“Da says she might want her space,” Sabrelle said, peering under Farideh’s hood. Farideh felt a blush burn up her cheeks. She took a deep breath and climbed from the wagon.
“Well met,” she said to the girl. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Sabrelle glanced at Jens. “Well met,” she said, sounding pleased. “Is it true you saved Uncle Dahl from a hundred shades?”
“That is not remotely true,” Dahl said. “Get the horses dried off and into the barn. You can catch up later and see if whatever your da says bears the slightest resemblance to the truth.” They both went to work, unhitching the tired horses.
“What else do you think he said?” Farideh asked.
Dahl pulled their haversacks down from the wagon bed. “Sorry, did you meet Bodhar earlier? If you’re not a dragonborn princess who faced down an archdevil on her own, you should count yourself lucky.”
Farideh shifted both bags onto her shoulders, as Dahl pulled a crate of goods down and set it on the ground. She slipped one hand up her sleeve to trace the edges of her brand—the marks had changed since she woke again, since she’d freed Lorcan, but the brand was still there, the connection to the Nine Hells was still there.
You don’t have to use it, she thought. There are other ways.
“Hey!” Bodhar shouted, appearing in the doorway. “Ma says you went to all this trouble she expects her boots to be off!” A woman in the doorway swatted at him as he broke into laughter. Farideh caught a glimpse of her, stout and smiling, before she followed after Bodhar out of sight.
Farideh turned back to Dahl to find him looking abashed and a little amused. “Do I need to take off my boots?” she asked.
“No, he’s … he’s teasing. It’s …” He folded his hands around hers. “It’s a Harran wedding custom. You come in barefoot and the groom’s mother … she washes your feet. It’s … It’s kind of archaic, I suppose.”
“It’s kind of nice,” Farideh said. And Eurdila hadn’t looked worried at the joke. Maybe it would be all right. “Do you think she knows?”
“What do I have to tell you to make you stop worrying?” Dahl asked. “I said before, you’re a woman and I’ve brought you home. You could be a bugbear and my mother would be delighted.” Farideh bit her lip. It was easy to say that sort of thing when you had nothing to compare it to. “When you first met me, you wouldn’t have thought it was someone you should bring home. Why would she?”
“She’s less of a git than I was.” Dahl sighed. “All right, look: if she’s not … nice, if anyone’s cruel to you, then we take provisions and head for New Velar. Maybe horses, though it’s fine to walk, we’ll just have to leave the things Raedra gave you behind—which is a pity, I haven’t gotten anywhere useful with the Giant primer and I liked that dress on you, but there we are. I know places we can camp on the road. Shouldn’t take more than a tenday to find a ship sailing to Suzail and from there we can cross the reach to Chondath and down to Somni, or head for Waterdeep or take a boat to Djerad Thymar, because nothing sank Havilar and Brin’s ship so I don’t think we’re going to prove your father right.” He paused. “Where you go, I go. Whatever else, I promise you that.”
Farideh smiled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t stlarning kill yourself again, all right?”
“Promise,” she said.
He hesitated again. “Just to be clear, that didn’t count, what Bodhar … My brother didn’t propose to you for me. He doesn’t get to do that.”
“No, he was being Bodhar,” Farideh said. “Besides, Mehen would probably have something to say if we got married and didn’t tell him, and however afraid I am of your mother, you’re ten times more scared of my father.”
“Your father is more frightening than my mother, ten times over,” Dahl said, and she chuckled. “How do dragonborn get married?”
“With a very big contract and a lot of arguing about eggs.” Farideh smiled at him. “It doesn’t really matter to me, you know. Where you go, I go—that’s all I want.”
Dahl frowned at her. “Really?”
“Contracts and eggs and Mehen arguing,” Farideh reminded him. “Why would I ever think about getting married?”
“You’re not opposed though? Right?”
“I’m very opposed if you’re going to try and make me walk barefoot in the snow.” She glanced back at the farmhouse as the snow began to fall again. “But not on the whole.”
“Summer wedding. Got it.” Dahl slipped an arm around her waist as they walked, chasing away the last fearful ghosts of her lonesomeness. Whatever came next, Farideh would have him, and Havi and Mehen and Brin and more on her side.
• • •
Lorcan left the Hells in the dead of winter, almost ten years after he’d first appeared to the last Brimstone Angel in a village on no one’s maps. In his palm lay a little silver mirror, and in the mirror, the face of the woman who’d either saved him or doomed him—it remained to be seen which.
“Lords of the shitting Nine,” said the little black imp perched on a branch of the tree beside him, “if you expect me to traipse around this horrible little plane while you mope over her—”
“You don’t have to traipse after anyone,” Lorcan said, slipping the mirror back into his pocket. “You’re welcome to return to the Hells. Find something else to do besides pester me. Isn’t that right?”
The erinyes who’d conducted them to the edge of this forest, folded her arms and shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose.” She frowned and shifted her arms, as if testing for the proper placement across her chest.
The imp made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Underneath.”
The erinyes folded them again. “Oh, that does work better!” she said. “Right so, she’s free to go or stay.”
The imp scowled. “Her Highness has especially requested I stay with you. As a reward.”
“Felicitations,” Lorcan said. “It was a clever idea.” He cast his gaze up at the imp that had once been his sister. “I find it rather insulting that His Majesty and Her Highness believe I need to be goaded along by an imp. Or thrown out by an erinyes so freshly promoted she lacks a proper name.”
The erinyes tilted her head. “I like Mot.”
“That’s an imp’s name,” Sairché said.
Mot made a face. “Well, I’d like to see an imp tell me I have to change it.” She smiled wickedly. “If you’re all set.”
“Perfectly set,” Lorcan said. “Go away.”
“This is a trap,” Sairché said as the erinyes vanished back into the Nine Hells. “You know it’s a trap. I’m supposed to report back on you.”
“We’ll see,” Lorcan said dryly. “It’s not clear you’ll have anything to report at all.”
It could be a lot of things, Lorcan thought. Perhaps Asmodeus wanted him back—after all, Lorcan had had a hand in preserving his godhood. Perhaps Glasya wanted him back—he’d been a part of what ensured she rose out of the Declension, seeming a stronger ally to her father instead of the near-traitor she truly had been. Perhaps both wanted him dead—an end to the example of a devil escaping the Nine Hells.
Half-devil, he reminded himself, looking down on the city tucked against the bank of a river. Maybe there was an arrangement to be had, a balance to be struck, in this new world. Whichever it was, Lorcan was game.
• • •