1. STEP ONE: GATHER INFORMATION

Kihrin’s story (in which Kihrin’s plan is revealed to be exactly the opposite)

Wandering in the Blight

The day of Vol Karoth’s escape, just after dawn

I’d started contemplating next steps before I’d freed myself from that ever-so-lovely prison in Kharas Gulgoth. Or what had been my prison. The Korthaen Blight looked much the same as it always had, as it had since everything had gone wrong.

In some ways, remembering its previous existence was far more painful. This had been a garden full of life and beauty, growing wild and lush under a yellow sun. The city of Karolaen had been a wonder—even if it had ultimately been a refugee camp for the voras as we ran from Nythrawl and the demon invasion.

Now, it was a corrupted, ruined landscape. The devastation was so total that it had fractured the earth itself, creating a hot spot that fed toxic thermal springs and sulfur-laced fumes. The damage poisoned the ground so utterly it was a shock that anything had ever been able to grow there at all.

Korthaen meant “the Land of Death.” Perhaps not the most original of names, but certainly accurate. It still amazed me that the morgage had found a way to survive here, but they’d been extremely, extremely dedicated to keeping people away from Vol Karoth’s prison.

That had been before Vol Karoth had woken. Afterward, even the morgage had been forced to flee.

It wouldn’t have been safe for them to return. Much as I wanted to think that everything would be fine now that I was “whole” again, that just wasn’t true. I couldn’t hold so much as a stone picked up off the ground without it disintegrating in my grip. I kept trying. It was a problem I’d need to solve.

Before I’d escaped (back when we were all still in that strange liminal space that was both Kharas Gulgoth and the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor),1 I’d given the others tasks to accomplish: we’d discussed strategies, how to keep Relos Var from discovering our plans, and how to avoid the people who might cause problems. I’d gone out of my way to make sure everyone knew that I had objectives, a definite scheme, even if I was being cagey about the details. S’arric the general, leader of the Guardians, could naturally be counted on to formulate a battle plan for fighting the enemy, right?

I hadn’t been lying exactly …

Okay, fine. I’d been lying. There was no plan. Nothing even resembling a plan.

Rather, I had a plan for making a plan. A real and proper strategy would be impossible while there were so many unknown variables beyond my control. I was going to need information and a lot of it before any such plan could be formed.

Senera had used the Name of All Things for every question we imagined before she’d then used the Cornerstone to cure Drehemia’s insanity, destroying it as a result.² But even such an artifact had limits. It couldn’t answer every question. It especially couldn’t answer questions about events that hadn’t yet occurred, that had occurred before its creation, or that might have occurred in an alternate timeline.

As far as the strategy itself, well …

I had no intention of behaving the way S’arric would have. Relos Var knew his brother far too well. No. I planned to take my cues from a more recent mentor: my adoptive mother, Ola. Who had been by her own admission a crook, a schemer, a rogue, and a swindler down to her core. Relos Var thought of his brother as being first and foremost a soldier: I had no intention of behaving like one.

Ola Nathera always used to say that the key to a good con lay in three factors: organization, execution, and finding an utter bastard.³

Whether said bastard was the con artist or the mark? Ah, now that was flexible and, depending on the answer, required a different approach. Once you figured out which was which, the rest was a matter of logistics.

Either one made for a successful con, but most of the time, it was safe to assume the “bastard” in question would be the con artist themselves. That’s because most of the time, the mark wasn’t a bad person.

This whole idea that you couldn’t con an honest man? Nonsense. Most cons didn’t exploit greed or lust. Most cons exploited benevolence. They appealed to the sincere desire that most people genuinely had to help someone in need, then lured them in with the revelation that such assistance also rewarded the mark for their altruism. What could possibly be more appealing than a charitable deed and profit wrapped up in a single act?⁴ These people wanted to help, and knowing that there was literally no downside made it an easy decision. It made the entire situation fair to everyone involved so that ultimately everyone won.

At least, that was the sell. I would argue that it wasn’t greed but this desire for equity that took most marks by the hand and led them those final, fatal steps into the trap.

And then there was the other kind of bastard.

That was when the mark was someone who didn’t give a shit who needed their help. Helping others wasn’t a persuasive motivation, not even if they’d be rewarded for it. They were, in fact, suspicious of such rewards, more likely to leave such a situation alone unless they could verify and double-verify. No, what they needed was a situation where someone else was vulnerable. Where they, the mark, believed they were in a position to exploit that vulnerability. These were the bastards who could be convinced to betray confidences, take advantage of the weak, leave their partners out to dry. They didn’t fall prey to the con because they were good people but because they thought they were smarter than the con artist. Smarter, wickeder, and more cunning. They assumed that because they were hunters, they would never be prey.⁵

If there was any lesson that I’d learned at Ola’s knee, it was that sooner or later, everyone was prey.

I always preferred the second kind of mark, because I’m not a complete bastard,⁶ and I always felt bad about exploiting the first kind of mark. Even in a city as notoriously corrupt as the Capital, however, that second variety was harder to find. A con man might approach a regular person out of the cold, beg them for aid. A bastard, on the other hand, needed to think they weren’t helping; that they had in fact gotten the drop on you, that you needed them far more than they needed you. They had to think that they had all the power. A bastard was too suspicious of the darker aspects of humanity to accept that anyone was free from ulterior motives. A good con made them think that they were the ones taking advantage of the con artist, rather than the reverse.

All of this was a long-winded way of explaining that Relos Var had always been a strange mixture of both. While it would be easy to say that Var was a bastard and leave it at that, I was fully aware that by Relos Var’s standards, he firmly and genuinely believed that he was saving the world (with the side effect of becoming its kindly if tyrannical god) in what might be described as the ultimate expression of “rewarded benevolence.”

Plus, a further complication: Relos Var was already involved in his own scheme. Conning certain types of people—other con artists, spies, smugglers, almost any royal—was made more difficult because they were people with agendas, people on missions. The only way to distract one of those groups was to present them with something better than what they already thought they were getting. Otherwise, there was simply no motivation to trade their old schemes for new ones.

Considering Relos Var was attempting to destroy the other Immortals and rule the world (after he fixed it), I was finding myself hard-pressed to describe what “better than he was already getting” might look like. Especially when I had only the faintest idea how Relos Var planned to accomplish it.

Normally, a con artist either picked a scam and found a mark that fit, or picked a mark and tailored the scam accordingly. In this case, there was really only one option. I couldn’t sub in my own game pieces until I understood Relos Var’s better. Fortunately, there was someone I could ask.

Although perhaps ask was the wrong word.

Still, I had to find it just a little hilarious—downright ironic—that in order to mess with Relos Var, I’d first have to mess with Xaltorath.

Honestly, I was even looking forward to it.

So with that in mind, I escaped my prison and set out in search of an old friend.