102. DEMON FALLS

Fayrin’s story

The Marakori war camp

Sometime during the attack

Fayrin Jhelora sauntered through the opening of the tent like it was the front doors of a velvet house, a bottle of sassibim brandy in his hand and a rascal grin on his face.

Caerowan looked up from his book, widened his eyes, and shot to his feet. He reached behind himself for something. Presumably a trap or a gas or maybe just a dagger.

Fayrin cleared his throat. “In a Green Land turned to war, the eight will become none, and the clash of armies will roar over the silence of battles won.” He squinted. “Is that book five or eight? I don’t remember. Quatrain one hundred twenty-four, though.”

Caerowan paused. Fayrin carried no obvious weapons. He looked like he’d already taken a few generous pulls from that bottle.

“I didn’t realize you were a fan of the Devoran Prophecies,” Caerowan finally said.

“Are you kidding? I’ve read them forward and backward.” Fayrin flopped down in a chair by the door, setting his feet on a trunk. “But you.” He pointed a wavering finger. “Seriously? All this going down around our ears and you’re reading? Shouldn’t you be celebrating?” Fayrin leaned forward and stage-whispered, “We’re about to win.”

Caerowan closed his book and set it aside. “We? You work for Tyentso. For the empire.”

Fayrin grinned. “Sweetheart, you have met me, haven’t you? I work for whoever’s paying me enough metal.”

Caerowan rubbed his chin. “Tyentso didn’t take you with her.” Unspoken were the implications: that Fayrin wasn’t under the effect of Warmonger, that his loyalty to Quur and its empress was certain. That, perhaps, Fayrin was telling the truth.

Fayrin hadn’t spent the last decade carefully cultivating a reputation as a greedy wastrel who was always for sale to the highest bidder for nothing.

“No, the bitch,” Fayrin muttered, “didn’t trust me for some reason.” He leaned forward a second time and slapped his hand on the desk. “But that’s why we’re having a drink!”

“I don’t drink,” Caerowan said. He sounded rather smug about the fact.

“Bah. You do today.” Fayrin pointed a finger at Caerowan and took a healthy swig of brandy. “In victory did the god-king boast his promises to make his followers rich. Many bottles were raised in toasts to the defeat of the blackhearted witch. Book three, quatrain sixteen.”1 He held out the bottle to Caerowan. “Come on. You know that’s got to be Tyentso. The prophecies say we have to drink.”

Suddenly, Caerowan looked visibly torn.

The small man’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “I always thought that referred to Jaakar’s defeat of Olin during the Zaibur era, but maybe…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Fayrin said with the somber seriousness of a very drunk man.

Caerowan started to reach for the bottle, but then stopped.

“No,” he said. “I don’t trust you.”

“What? Why?” Fayrin schooled his expression into wide-eyed innocence, so overplayed that there was no chance of it being genuine, as he took another drink. Then he slapped a hand on the desk. “It can’t be tea, Caerowan. Do you have any alcohol here? Hmm?”

“Of course not, I—” Caerowan paused. “The man who was here before left a bottle of something.” He pulled a small tin cup from a drawer along with a bottle of amber-gold liquid. Not rice wine or sassibim brandy. Ara.

“Just one drink,” Caerowan said sternly.

“To the defeat of the blackhearted witch!” Fayrin toasted.

Kalindra’s story

The Marakori war camp

During the attack

They’d been traveling through the back lines when it happened. Kalindra had taken it upon herself to prepare for a war that might continue beyond this single attack. Poisoning food reserves and sabotaging scorpion war machines in storage might not win them any battles immediately, but it would come in handy as the fighting continued in the weeks and months ahead. While she did that, Kalindra and Jarith both searched for the ritual.

At least, they searched until they heard shouting. Kalindra looked up to see eight colored streaks of light fly up into the sky and vanish.

“Shit,” she muttered. That meant that not only had they not found the right ritual but they certainly hadn’t stopped it.

She retreated to a section of auxiliary stables that had been repurposed as storerooms.

**Kalindra!**

She spun around, ready to defend herself. She’d assumed that Jarith had shouted her name as a warning.

But she was wrong.

Her husband had materialized a few feet from her. Right away, she knew something was happening. It was like some force was trying to pull Jarith away but he was fighting it. Smoke trying to resist a hurricane.

“No,” she whispered. The second ritual. The demon-banishing ritual that Janel had changed so it wouldn’t wipe out most of humanity.

“No,” Kalindra repeated. “She was supposed to find a way. She was supposed to figure out a way not to affect you!”

**I knew she hadn’t.** Jarith’s voice whispered in her mind. **But it didn’t matter. Better me than my List.**

She choked. His list. How many people on it would have been affected by Relos Var’s version of the ritual? Probably all of them. “Jarith, please—!” She had no idea what she was pleading for exactly. What she thought he might be able to do. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Every demon in the world simply vanished. No one but a few would ever understand what had happened to them, where they had gone, or who had died so everyone else might live.

It wasn’t fair.

**I love you.**

And he was gone.