The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  But he didn’t. Not now. And Farideh was still upstairs. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, taking another step back to move around Mehen. He felt the dragonborn’s eyes on him the whole way up the stairs.

  Two doors opened off the landing, one wide open to an unlit room, the other ajar and aglow with a lamp. As he reached for the knob, the silence struck him. There was no noise—none at all. Not a voice from the room, not his boots on the boards, not his own breath. Magic, he thought. Shit and ashes.

  I take you to Harrowdale, and you never, ever speak to Farideh again, he’d told Dahl. You don’t whisper in her ear, you don’t yell across the room. Not with a spell, not with handsigns. Never. The sloppiness of the deal struck him then. If she couldn’t hear, if she couldn’t understand him, would a spell to eliminate all sounds take away the risk of speaking? Could she read his lips? That was surely covered. Without a connection to the Nine Hells, he had no feel for whether Dahl had broken his agreement, and without a copy, he couldn’t be certain. He eased the door open another inch, peering inside.

  But there was nothing to put a stop to.

  The spell kept either of them from hearing the door open, but even without it, Lorcan doubted they’d have noticed. Farideh lay on her side, one arm tucked under her head, naked but for smears of black ink and the sheet draped over her hip. Her tail slipped from the bedcovers, the tip tracing an anxious semicircle on the floor. Her side heaved with a soundless sigh, as she traced more inky streaks across Dahl’s face with lingering fingers.

  Lorcan’s hand tried to crush the doorknob.

  Be patient, he told himself, feeling his temper surge. You can wait him out. How many times had Dahl almost slipped already? Another tenday? Another month? Another year and the Harper’s soul would be claimed and dealt with and he could coax Farideh back.

  No—he thought, studying the edge of her face, the hints of sorrow in the angle of her mouth, the tightness of her eyes. She knows and she’d blame you and if you could lure her back after that, then all you’d have is a shell of what she is. She’d hate him in her heart and that wasn’t what he wanted. Dahl kissed her forehead. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Lorcan’s gaze traced the groove of her spine, avoiding the hand wrapped around her waist. Think like a devil, Lorcan thought. There’s another way. You’ve always found another way. Think like a devil—

  Farideh pulled Dahl down into a much less chaste kiss, pushing off the bed and up onto him.

  There was nowhere Lorcan wanted to be less than on Toril just then. He went back downstairs, utterly without a plan—he hated not having a plan. Dahl’s idiot brothers had come back in, letting in a blast of chilly air as they stacked more wood beside the hearth under Mehen’s watchful eye. Ilstan was laying out a bedroll near the fire.

  “Hey,” Caisys called, as Lorcan reached the bottom of the stairs. He held up a cloudy glass bottle.

  “I didn’t find that,” Lorcan said, coming over to the table. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s like whiskey,” Caisys said. “You want some?”

  Lorcan almost pointed out there was no point in him drinking—his devilish blood meant he couldn’t be poisoned and drink slipped through him like water without numbing a thing. But he remembered the curse, the limits it laid and undid. “All right.”

  “Comes with a conversation,” Caisys warned.

  Lorcan sighed. “Just give me the shitting drink.”

  Caisys poured the clear liquid into two copper cups and pushed one toward Lorcan. “You don’t always get to choose who you fall for,” he said. “But you do get to choose whether or not you’re a hardjack about it.”

  “That sort of conversation. I see. Well, I’ve had quite enough advice in the last hour, thank you.” But he took the copper cup anyway. “And anyway, that’s godsbedamned rich coming from the Vicelord.”

  Caisys shrugged. “Don’t see how a taste for the unknown makes me heartless.”

  Lorcan took a swallow. Whatever the liquor was, it tasted as if it could strip rust off armor—he swallowed a cough and a shudder wrenched his whole body.

  “Hm. You really are human at the moment,” Caisys noted. “Really shouldn’t fuss around with demon lords. I will grant her that much.” He folded his scarred hands together. “I’ve fallen in love exactly once, for your information. It’s rubbish. I don’t recommend it. Got me nowhere and put me in a position that would have hurt a lot of people.”

  “Why would you care?” Lorcan asked, taking another sip. It felt as if his eyeballs were floating, and he didn’t much mind.

  “Well if I were going to be heartless, I’d say it takes up a lot of time, dealing with everyone being angry at you. It’s a lot easier to get along when no one wants to gut you.” He leaned on the table. “So I did the right thing and opted to be the hurt one. I survived. We all survived. Then I got to—let’s say—‘make deals’ with a lot of interesting people, so it wasn’t all bad.”

  “You didn’t even try to get what you wanted?”

  Caisys made a face. “Well, maybe you are still a devil. That’s not how you think about someone you love.”

  “Devils don’t love,” Lorcan said and drained the cup.

  He hadn’t been thinking like a devil, though, Lorcan realized. A devil would be patient, would be calculating. A devil would have assessed what gains were to be made, what losses could be borne. A devil would see in Dahl a way to make his warlock act or retreat—a tool and not a rival, because what human could rival a devil of the Nine Hells?

  What devil could rival a human, after all? he thought. What devil would bother wanting someone to care about them? What devil would waste time turning a vassal into a companion?

  You are thinking like a human, he realized. You’ve been thinking like a human all along—human wants, devilish plans. It all falls to pieces because you can’t have it both ways.

  You failed.

  You need a new plan.

  Lorcan sat at the table until the fire in his belly had vanished and his eyeballs didn’t feel so much like floating. Perhaps, Lorcan thought, if he sat long enough, the curse would wear off and everything would be easier. Everyone else had gone to sleep, save Caisys, still sorting through his notes, building the spell that might save them all or make all of this moot.

  Nothing gets easier, he thought bitterly as he stood.

  “Don’t go up there,” Caisys said absently.

  Lorcan ignored him, half expecting as he climbed the stairs that the fabled warlock would try to stop him. But Caisys only watched as Lorcan returned to the dusty bedroom.

  He oughtn’t to have been surprised to find Dahl awake and waiting for him, sitting up against the head of the bed. Farideh lay deep asleep, curled on her side and facing the door.

  “I didn’t break the deal,” Dahl said. “You can’t say I did.”

  “I probably could,” Lorcan pointed out. “But … I have a proposition for you.”

  “Stlarn off.” Dahl shook his head. “I told her I wouldn’t fight with you, but if you think for even a breath—”

  “You can talk to her again.”

  The look of shock that crossed Dahl’s face would normally have pleased Lorcan, but it only made him feel more like one of his half sisters had punched him in the gut. “I don’t believe you,” Dahl said quietly. “What’s the catch?”

  “Good question,” Lorcan said, with a briskness he didn’t feel. “Because there has to be a catch. Can’t have a deal without requirements, can we? That would be … noteworthy. So here’s my offer: You can talk to her. You can tell her what happened, since I wager she’s worked it out. You just can’t say anything bad about me.”

  Dahl scoffed. “No.”

  “Fine,” Lorcan said. “You can’t say anything bad about me that isn’t true.”

  Dahl hesitated. “That’s awfully subjective.”

  Another time, Lorcan would have toyed with that. Left Dahl thinking there was danger in every opinion and the only way t
o be safe would be to keep his tongue still. But, Lords of the Nine, Lorcan was so weary. “Not really. There is truth, there is untruth, and there are things that are neither because they depend on you. Saying ‘Lorcan is a bastard’ doesn’t count. Saying ‘Lorcan stole my ill-fitting jerkin’ does. Got it?”

  Dahl said nothing for a long moment, already conditioned to be wary. “Why are you doing this?”

  Farideh slept on. Without wanting to, Lorcan thought of the way she’d looked at Dahl. She’d never looked at him that way, he had to admit. Or maybe she had—there was a time in Suzail where perhaps she’d been looking at him with that same longing and grief and he’d never noticed because he’d never thought for a moment about what he really had or whether he wanted it.

  Think like a devil, he reminded himself. Get through this. “Well, clearly I’ve lost this battle. You’re tenacious and she … she’s made up her mind. The very best I can hope for, you’d have to agree, is to be a gracious loser in the hopes that the next battle will be mine.”

  “Next battle?”

  Lorcan smiled, even though he didn’t feel it. “I’m immortal. I’m always going to look as I do now. I might have a chance when this”—he gestured at Dahl’s bare torso—“starts giving out on you.”

  “Yeah, you look like that now,” Dahl pointed out. “And she doesn’t appreciate that ‘battle’ horseshit, and you know it. So I’m not buying that cow.”

  Lorcan’s wings twitched nervously—how far had he fallen, for Dahl to see right through him? “I need her not to hate me,” Lorcan said. “I need that very much. All right? I haven’t earned any particular kindness from you,” he added, too quickly, “but … please don’t tell her to break the pact.”

  “Why would I do that?” Dahl demanded.

  She’s all I have left, Lorcan thought. But he knew better than to say that. “Because it would be very inconvenient, of course.”

  Lorcan left—first the room, then the stone cottage—walking out into the snowy night with the heavy fur cloak covering his wings. Beyond the thick trees, dawn lightened the edge of the sky. He didn’t dare stray too far from Caisys’s cottage, but in that moment, he needed a moment away from everything, away from Farideh and the fear that he’d made a grave miscalculation. You’re letting her be happy, he thought. And that is the one thing Asmodeus demanded. Human and devil, all aligned.

  Beshaba shit in my eyes, he thought, looking at the dwindling stars.

  “Oy,” a voice called. “Devil-child!” Lorcan turned and saw a dwarf—the same one that had met them at the gates—standing on a path trod into the snow with a lantern in one hand. “You lost?” he demanded in a way that sounded very much like a threat.

  Lorcan rolled his eyes. “How could I possibly get lost in a village with two bloody streets in it?”

  A burning wind blew his cloak and wings forward, tangling his hair. The dwarf squawked in surprise. He turned, finding himself facing a portal that seethed like boiling lava in shimmering red and orange. Nessus, he thought. The layer of Asmodeus. Only, everyone had said Nessus was sealed.

  Come here, said twin voices that made his heart want to climb his throat and smother his brain. We have a message for you to carry.

  • • •

  DAHL STARED UP at the thatched roof, listening to the birds waking outside with the dawn, debating if he ought to wake Farideh. On the one hand, he could talk to her again and there were a thousand things he wanted to say. On the other, he’d have to tell her that Lorcan had made it possible, and as much as he wanted to believe that Farideh had run out of patience for the cambion and would see through his schemes, Dahl thought of Lorcan’s last words to him and felt an unwelcome curl of guilt that could not be good. Lorcan was very convincing.

  All the more when there were gods and warlocks and worse in their midst. Dahl rolled onto his side, considering Farideh’s sleeping face turned half into the mattress by the curve of her horn. Half the word again? printed backward on her forehead. He brushed a lock of hair off her cheek.

  Suddenly her eyes flew open and she shot up, clapping a hand to her branded arm with a sharp cry. Dahl jumped out of her way, hands up in a gesture of calm. She searched his face. “Lorcan’s gone.”

  “Well …” Dahl said. “Good?”

  “No, I mean …” Her expression froze, horrified. “Oh, no. No, no, no!”

  “It’s all right!” Dahl said. “Sorry! Lorcan was here. He changed the terms.”

  Her hand dropped. “Why? What to?”

  Dahl considered—Lorcan hadn’t specified he couldn’t tell Farideh the new terms. “If I say a bad word about him, it has to be true.”

  “That’s too easy,” she said. “Why … why would he do that? Why would he let you out?” She rubbed her arm. “Why did he go back to the Nine Hells?”

  Dahl hesitated. I need her not to hate me. I need that very much. Gods’ books. “Are you in love with him?” he asked.

  Whatever she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “I told you last night—”

  “No, I know. You love me. Do you love him too?”

  He could hear her tail tapping against the frame of the bed. “It’s not that simple—”

  “Just yes or no, Fari.”

  “Do you want an answer, or do you want an argument?” she demanded. She picked at the ancient blanket. “He’s awful. He’s cruel and he’s selfish and he knows exactly how to get under my skin. Do you know why I made a pact with him?”

  “I have eyes,” he said dryly.

  “No.” She looked down at her lap. “I mean, I’m not going to pretend that didn’t … make it a little harder to think through all the consequences. But I’m not going to do something stupid because I’m lonely.”

  Don’t be a hardjack, Dahl told himself. She didn’t say yes. “You picked up with me,” he pointed out, which got him a little smile. “You wanted to leave this place,” he said more gently. “You were trapped here and you couldn’t just leave, not with Mehen and Havilar here too. It was a way out. An exit.”

  A godsbedamned parallel road to the one he’d taken.

  Dahl thought of the times they’d argued, where he’d said unkind things about her pact and she’d demanded to know how it was different from his bond to Oghma. For the first time, he could see how she wasn’t quite wrong—Oghma had seen in him a purpose past a life that left him unfulfilled and out of place. Lorcan had come down and offered her a chance, a power, a path into the world, and away from this angry, sad little village.

  “That’s … pretty obvious the more I think about it,” he said.

  Farideh shook her head, though. “I didn’t know the pact would let me leave. I didn’t know I was even brave enough to leave.” She swallowed. “But Lorcan was the first person who ever looked at me and saw anything special. Anything of value. This village didn’t want me. The mother that gave birth to me didn’t want me.”

  “Mehen,” Dahl pointed out.

  She sighed. “Mehen loves me. Mehen … does not have any idea what I’m good for. Or he didn’t, when I met Lorcan. Nobody did. I was too clumsy for the sword, too scared to run off, too stubborn to stay. I was the quiet one, so everyone assumed I was the wicked one. Everyone—even the people who loved me—were always talking about who was going to be stuck with me. There was nothing for me here, and you’re right, I didn’t know how to leave, especially not without Havi and Mehen. And … Lorcan showed up and he wanted me.” She met his gaze. “And I wanted him.

  “But,” she went on, “he’s awful. He’s cruel and he’s selfish and he knows exactly how to get under my skin. He doesn’t listen to me and he hurts the people I care about.”

  “And do you love him?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know anymore. It’s too knotted up in all the things he’s done—terrible and generous. I don’t even know if I ought to be mad at him for changing the terms. He could have just ended the agreement, after all, but he never would have. I can’t believe he even did this much.” She
bit her lip. “He saved me. And I think he needs me. It’s hard to let go of that.”

  All of it rolled around in Dahl’s heart like a lead weight. I haven’t earned any particular kindness from you, but … please don’t tell her to break the pact. He was very convincing. Always very convincing.

  “Fari, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life,” he said. “But I can’t do this.”

  Her mismatched eyes regarded him warily. “What does that mean?”

  “It means … You have to choose. Me or the pact. I love you. I love you regardless of what the Hells want with you, regardless of where you get your powers. Maybe even because of it—you’re resourceful and you’re steadfast. Gods’ books, how many people in your boots would have given in and just taken everything the devils offered? But you never would. It takes your sister being stolen to even consider—”

  “No. It took you disappearing,” Farideh interrupted softly. He stopped. “Asmodeus said he’d give me whatever I wanted, whatever made me happy. There was a moment I thought that would be the only way to get you back. But then, what would it cost? Did you even want to come back? Would it make everything worse? Would it put you in danger?” She wet her mouth. “I couldn’t do it.”

  A flood of guilt he didn’t want hit Dahl. “I understand why you have it. I understand why you’d rather it was with him. But even if I trust you, I don’t trust him. I don’t want to watch him put his hands on you, and I certainly don’t want to test the limits of how far he’ll go to sway you—it hasn’t worked out well for me in the past.” She looked away, and he felt like a hardjack again, even though there was nothing else he could possibly do. “Look, you don’t have to decide right off,” he said. “If you need time—”

  “I don’t need time,” Farideh said, sounding surprised. “I pick you.”

  Dahl stumbled. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” she said. “You’re sweet. And you’re thoughtful. And you’re smart, and you’re willing to fight for what you know is right, but you’re willing to be wrong too. Mostly.”