The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  Lorcan held her gaze, feeling the half-lie burning on his tongue before he spoke it. “I don’t know.” You don’t know, he told himself. It could be any agreement in Malbolge. You don’t know.

  “Why did you destroy it then?”

  “I panicked,” he said, again the half-lie. “It might have been cursed or a trap. If she wanted you to have it, it couldn’t have been good.”

  Farideh studied him a long moment. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose we’re safe from that at least.”

  Lorcan smiled at her, but his thoughts were on the other nine copies of the deal, which were stored around the Hells. A security against reckless mortals thinking to destroy their contracts and a liability when it came to Bryseis Kakistos.

  13

  3 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  SODDEN HELLS,” THOST MUTTERED AS THEY PASSED THROUGH THE GATES to Djerad Thymar late in the evening. “Every soul in this place is scaly.”

  “Except this girl of Dahl’s, I s’pose,” Bodhar added.

  Dahl kept his eyes locked on the middle of Mehen’s back, wondering how likely it was that the dragonborn was leading him back just to make it absolutely clear Dahl had no chance of repairing things with his daughter, and good riddance, which would be just exactly what he needed while everything else seemed to be slipping out of his grasp.

  Calm, he told himself. Calm.

  Before they’d left Somni and the dreaming giants, the giants had found another group of dragonborn refugees—these with piercings that announced their clan as Prexijandilin, apparently, and Yrjixtilex. Kallan had rushed off, but when he returned, it was clear these weren’t the family he couldn’t contact.

  “Line of Nerinal,” he said gruffly. “Apple orchards near the foothills.” Tales of their farm torn in half by the planar storm, tales of the Prexijandilin’s holding nearly wiped out by a landslide that swept away their livestock but stopped short of living quarters. They were all heading to Djerad Thymar, and glad to hear it still stood. In the end, they deemed it best to use the giants’ powers and speed the travel of everyone together. The horses would need less rest that way, and their trail would be shorter, and no one would worry about whether they were treating the elders poorly, because everyone would be swept along together.

  And now three giants slept beyond the gates of Djerad Thymar, lying on their backs and smiling up at the clear night sky as they dreamed. The Untherans remained beyond the gates, for the moment camping between the sleeping giants—whether out of respect for the dragonborn’s customs or caution for their actions remained to be seen.

  “Never thought I’d see such a thing,” Dahl heard a dragonborn woman with silver skewers through her jaw mutter as he followed Mehen into the city.

  “The giants or the maunthreki?” her companion asked.

  Dahl blew out a breath. Uadjit had gone ahead, to speak with her clan’s patriarch. Dumuzi had stayed behind among the Untherans, despite his mother’s suggestions he do otherwise. Mira stayed behind as well, to ease the language barrier for the Untherans.

  “Utu came and found me again,” Mira had told Dahl before they’d started out that morning. “He says a lot of them don’t trust the dragonborn. That they don’t want to go to Djerad Thymar. That some of the dragonborn refugees are saying they ought to make an example of the Untherans.”

  “No one is saying that!” Shestandeliath Mazarka insisted when Dahl confronted her. “If anything, Gilgeam’s spies are among them, waiting to make an example of us.” She—and most of the Vayemniri—had left quickly after arriving in Djerad Thymar.

  “I’ll find her,” Kallan had said when Dahl noted her absence.

  “Go,” Namshita had said when he asked about Utu. “I will deal with my people. You see if your beliefs in the Vayemniri are true.” There was nothing left in Dahl’s way but several hundred stairs and his own fears.

  “Would you look at that?” Bodhar said, as they came into the interior of the pyramid city, a shaft a thousand feet high stretched up through the center, full of a magical glow. Balconies projected from every slanting wall, dripping with plants that filled the air with unfamiliar scents. “Feels like we fell into a different world.”

  Thost eyed the dragonborn eyeing him. “Ayup.” Dahl said a little prayer to himself that his brothers wouldn’t gawk at Farideh the way they did at the dragonborn passing by.

  “Did you know they came in normal size?” Dahl heard one young woman whisper in Draconic, her eyes locked on Thost as he strode by, as if Oghma meant to remind him such things came from all sorts of sources.

  “Everyone speaks … um, dragonborn here?” Bodhar asked Mehen.

  “Draconic,” Mehen said. “And the common tongue. Worse comes to worst, your brother can translate, I’m sure.”

  “Can you?” Bodhar asked.

  “Yeah, some,” Dahl said.

  “What’s that say?” Bodhar asked, pointing across the path.

  Dahl squinted at the sign. “It’s a shop that sells pasties.”

  “Huh,” Bodhar said. “What sorts?”

  “It’s a sign, not a bill of fare,” Dahl said irritably. “Probably all sorts.”

  “You all right?” Thost asked.

  “Fine.” I love and miss you more than I can say, her last letter had read. But how many days had passed since then?

  Bodhar squinted at him. “For someone you were willing to pop me in the jaw for the honor of—”

  “For the last time, I’m sorry!”

  “I’m just saying, you look like you’re heading for the hangman’s noose!”

  “You’re shaking,” Thost noted.

  Dahl blew out a breath. “She doesn’t …” He stopped himself. She doesn’t know I can’t talk to her, he thought. She doesn’t know what Lorcan’s done. I don’t know what he’s been telling her and I don’t know if she even thinks I’m still alive. He thought, not for the first terrible moment, about what might have happened if Farideh thought he was dead, and Lorcan turned up to apply the right pressures—

  “I don’t know what’s happened since I saw her last,” Dahl said, driving the image from his mind and dancing around the realities of the situation. “I don’t know … I don’t know if I can make it up to her.”

  Mehen made a low, irritated noise deep in his throat and turned so swiftly that Dahl nearly crashed into him. “I am not going to pretend I’m fond of you,” Mehen said. “I am not going to tell you that you’re anything close to what my daughter deserves. But I will tell you I’m already done listening to this whimper-whining. Get your head together. Because if nothing else, right now, you remind her she doesn’t need to go back to Lorcan, and that, I prize.” He bared his teeth briefly, not a smile, not a grimace, but something swift and agitated. “And you make her happy, for whatever reason, so don’t ruin what you have.”

  Dahl felt certain he would never get anything closer to approval from Mehen, and though it didn’t sweep away his worries—or the sharp things Mehen had said about him back before they left—Dahl quelled the panic until they reached the Verthisathurgiesh enclave.

  Bodhar whistled as they passed through the massive doors. “Fancy.” He peered up at the frieze running along the top of the wall, a running scene of dragonborn battling dragons and kobolds and skeletal dragonborn. Above the door at the end of the hallway was a red dragon perched atop an erupting volcano, a fat faceted garnet set into the mountain’s heart.

  “Some kind of story?” Bodhar whispered.

  Mehen started to answer, but Dahl was already speaking. “The Tale of the Crippled Mountain,” he said. “It’s where his clan takes their name from. They fought a dragon tyrant and triggered a volcano to kill him. Oh.” Mehen glanced back at Dahl, puzzled. “Vayemniri,” Dahl said. “Ash-Marked Ones.”

  “Did Farideh tell you that?” he asked.

  “I was interested,” he said, a little defensive maybe. “Where is she?”

&nb
sp; Mehen turned back to the path. “I don’t know where we’re going to put you. Even with …” He broke off, silent for a moment. “We’re down a few,” he said flatly, “but then we’ve added some others.”

  Havilar and Brin missing, Dahl remembered. It was a wonder Mehen had a civil word in his mouth. They turned down several corridors, winding through the mazelike enclave for so many turns that when they finally pushed through a door into the little sitting room, Dahl was startled to find an end to their wandering, and Farideh sitting on a low couch with two other people, not fifteen feet from him.

  She looked up and saw Mehen first, coming swiftly to her feet. “Mehen!” she said. “Something awful’s happened, I—” But whatever new horror had interjected itself, it would have to wait. Three steps from Mehen she noticed Dahl and stopped, dead in her tracks.

  A part of Dahl believed so surely that this moment would be like something out of an epic or a chapbook, full of poetry and beauty, a story he would always recall. But he couldn’t have said what her face looked like when she recognized him, which of them moved first, or given a single detail of what was in the room. She was just in his arms again.

  There had been times in the past month where Dahl had thought, surely, he had misremembered the feeling of Farideh in his arms. That it couldn’t be all that special, that he was acting like a sop. That somehow the sureness of her that had saved him in the presence of Graz’zt was only because he’d convinced himself out of stubbornness. But for the first time in a month, with gods and demons and devils and worse still circling them, once more in her embrace, he felt as if everything would be all right.

  “I wasn’t sure,” she whispered, her voice thick. “I didn’t know if you were coming back. Where have you been?”

  He nearly answered—there was nothing he wanted so badly as to answer—but he caught himself. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and held her tighter. It sufficed, at first, but then she pushed him back, cupped his cheek. “Dahl? Are you all right?”

  Bodhar stepped up beside them, tapping Farideh on the shoulder. She turned to him, startled. “Well met, sorry. Um, I’m Dahl’s brother—we’re Dahl’s brothers, me and Thost. Heard … well, not a lot about you—Dahl’s not the most forthcoming soul, right?”

  “Bodhar—” Dahl started.

  “You oughta know he can’t talk to you,” Bodhar finished. “Some kind of magic or something”

  Farideh’s eyes widened, but Dahl could not so much as nod. “What happened?” she asked.

  No one answered—no one could have answered. Only Dahl and Lorcan knew. Farideh looked from him to his brothers and back. “Did you make a deal with someone?” she whispered.

  Again, he couldn’t answer—he couldn’t speak to Farideh and he couldn’t tell anyone about the deal he’d made with Lorcan that had let him reach his family in time to save them. “Bodhar,” he said, carefully looking away from Farideh. “Could you tell Farideh when you have a chance that I … I haven’t exhausted my resources on this? I will figure it out. I promise.”

  Bodhar squinted at Dahl. “Can you promise that?”

  The door to one of the bedrooms opened and a strikingly handsome human man with dark blond hair curling to the collar of his leather armor came out, looking annoyed. He spotted Dahl and his eyes widened.

  Dahl let go of Farideh—forgot Farideh. Every thought in his head evaporated, except for the sudden searing rage boiling out of his chest, the sureness in his step as he darted across the room toward Lorcan, pulled by the blessing and the curse of Graz’zt. The cambion scrambled backward into the room he’d just left, trying to shut the door, but he wasn’t quick enough.

  There are monsters in the dreaming world too—Somni’s voice went through Dahl’s head as he slammed into the closing door with his shoulder, forcing it open. You don’t want to do this, he managed, but the taste of ashes in his mouth said it was a lie. He stormed into the room, noting nothing but Lorcan, scrambling backward.

  “Sairché!” Lorcan shouted. “Hit him!”

  “Why would I do that?” Dahl heard a woman say as he closed the distance and swung at Lorcan’s face. The cambion dodged, grabbed his fist, but even as he forced Dahl’s strike aside, Dahl’s left hand was swinging up. He watched his knuckles slam into the hard bone of the cambion’s jaw, but felt nothing at all, not even when Lorcan hit him back, right in the stomach.

  “Dahl!” Farideh cried. “Stop! Stop!”

  You think you’re escaping, Graz’zt sang in Dahl’s head. But you can’t flee your own true nature …

  A haze had closed over Dahl’s vision, his arms hardly seemed his own. He watched himself draw back, watched his fist fly forward and connect with the center of Lorcan’s chest. The cambion’s human disguise burned away, but the skin revealed beneath was not red, but sickly gray, traced with the jagged map of the capillaries of his face. A pulse of magic went through Dahl in the same moment, pulling the air from his lungs, stopping his heart in his chest, his knees buckled—he nearly fell.

  Then Farideh tackled him to the ground and he did fall. All at once, the wild drive vanished from him, the urge for violence knocked out of him with his breath as he hit the stone floor.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “He was just standing there!”

  Dahl rolled over, looking up at her, again unable to answer, unable to outline Lorcan’s crimes, unable to tell her about the demon lord, unable to ask for help. Behind Farideh, the cambion woman who’d come looking for Dahl, who’d tried to tempt him with a copy of his own deal, watched with interest. Dahl laid his head back and cursed and cursed and cursed.

  In the door his brothers stood, looking surprised. Bodhar held up both hands, a gesture of calm.

  “All right, so he might need a priest,” Bodhar told her.

  • • •

  BRIN WAS WAITING at the portal when Bryseis Kakistos returned with her hand fastened around the upper arm of a boy about seven or eight years old. His frantic, pupilless blue eyes found Brin’s and stole the breath from him.

  Bryseis Kakistos saw him and pulled the red-crystal staff in front of her. “Did you tell her where he was?”

  “Who?” Brin asked. “Phrenike?”

  She pressed the crystal tip of the staff up under his chin. “Don’t toy with me, Lord Crownsilver.” Her cloak was scorched, burned along all the edges, and her eyes were wild. “Farideh and the cambion were waiting for me when I arrived. Did you find out from her? From Sairché?”

  Brin held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say a word to Farideh. And truth be told, if Sairché had a chance to say a word to me, I’d do my utmost to end her then and there.”

  “Then why are you waiting here,” Bryseis Kakistos snarled.

  Brin cast his gaze down at the terrified boy she still held tight to. “I wanted to see him. You said I could. You said he might stay with me.” He had clung to that, figuring he was one step closer to a plan to rescue the child if he had access.

  Bryseis Kakistos searched his face with Havilar’s golden eyes. “I don’t think that’s wise anymore.”

  “Look”—Brin dropped his voice—“you already had trouble with Nalam, right? Do you think the rest of these are going to stay calm if you have a crying child thrown in with them?” She looked down at the boy, red-faced and silently weeping.

  “Don’t put him in a cell alone,” Brin said. “He can stay with me, or I can stay with him. Your choice.”

  Bryseis Kakistos said nothing for a long moment, and Brin wondered if she had drifted off again. “You shouldn’t get attached,” she finally said in dull tones. “He’s not for you.”

  “No,” Brin said, making himself sound as though he agreed. “But … well, you seemed concerned before over whether I could manage. In the future. And I was thinking … perhaps it would assuage your worries. And give me a chance to know him.”

  Brin held his breath as she considered him, setting up better ways to convince her, new angles to consider. Down in
his marrow, he knew there was no way he was letting her throw the boy in a cell on his own. Bryseis Kakistos’s expression softened.

  “Fine,” she said, shoving the boy toward him. “But your door is locked from here on out. I do not fear you, Lord Crownsilver, but I don’t have the patience for nonsense I might have once had.”

  A pair of the lich’s servants marched the boy and Brin together back up to his rooms in the tower. A platter of highsunfeast waited on the table beside the defunct location apparatus. When the bolt had slammed into the lock, the boy’s silence broke.

  “I want my mam,” the boy said in a small, frightened voice. He curled into himself, as if he could hide his grief and fear from Brin. “I want my da.”

  Brin moved beside him, putting an arm around the boy. He shoved Brin violently away, scrambling across the room toward the window. “It’s all right,” Brin said. Then, “No, I shouldn’t tell you it’s all right. This is all very scary. But I’m not going to hurt you. You want to stay over there, that’s just fine. What’s your name?”

  The boy shook his head. Brin sat down again beside the brazier. “My name’s Brin. It’s short for Aubrin, but the people I like best call me Brin.”

  “She called you Lord Crownsilver,” the boy said.

  “Exactly,” Brin said. “Do you want something to eat? I’ve some milk in the kettle and some bread.”

  The boy didn’t move. “Are you a prince? Did she lock you up in here?”

  “I was a lord and a duke, and I suppose a prince, but nowadays, I try to just be Brin. And, yes, I’m stuck here too.”

  “So … do you have to wait for a princess to come rescue you?” he asked. “Does it work like that?”

  “I hope not,” Brin said. “I don’t think any princesses know I’m here. Where do you come from?”

  The boy sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Aglarond.”

  Brin poured some of the hot milk into a cup for the boy. “What do you like best about Aglarond?”

  The boy blinked at him, as if this were the oddest thing he’d ever been asked. “Remzi,” he said, after a moment. “My name’s Remzi.”