The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  “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. Perhap
s 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.

  • • •

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With this, the final book of the Brimstone Angels Saga, there are so very many people to thank.

  Nothing I have done would have been possible without the two best editors a writer could ask for: Susan J. Morris, who let me drag her into a conference room and pitch the story of tiefling twins, who provided an expert ear and eye for every book in between, and who came back to help finish things off; and Nina Hess, who suggested me for the Sundering and who made me ten times the writer I could have been on my own, even if I was occasionally crabby about it. Thank you both so much for everything.

  Thank you to those folks who made my job immeasurably easier by lending a sharp eye to a wobbly scene, enthusiasm to an incubating idea, or access to their bank of knowledge: Brian J. Cortijo, Michaelle Forbus, Ari Marmell, Matt Sernett, George Krashos, Corry Boehm, Rhiannon Held, Kate Marshall, and Shanna Germain. Thank you to Mike Schley for such fabulous maps. Thank you to Min Yum, Tyler Jacobson, and Kekai Kotaki for the lovely covers, and to Dina Pearlman for making my words sound wonderful even when they’re too karshoji complicated. Thank you to the other authors of the Realms—Ed, for uncountable emails about uncountable problems big and small and all the solutions; Paul for well-timed pep talks and a beer I still owe you; Richard, my copacetic confidante; Troy, for all those story connections and sticking up for me; and Bob, for all that business wisdom and for punching my imposter syndrome right down.

  Unending thanks to my family. To Kevin, for making it possible to write these books, for supporting me through stressful deadlines and Word crashes, book launches and best-seller lists, and for doing the vast majority of the dishes. For Idris, who was born alongside Brimstone Angels, and for Ned, who settled in as I finished The Devil You Know. The very presence of you changed this series from what I first imagined. You can read them when you’re eighteen. Fifteen. We’ll discuss it later.

  Thank you to my sister, Julia, who kept her nephew entertained and bought me time to write, and then listened to me talk through too many scenes to count and helped me find the right path. Thank you to my sister, Kristen, for answering many frustrated texts, and my brother-in-law, Mike, for reading more than a few scenes.

  Thank you to my mother, Andriea, for being the first one to recognize that maybe I should be a writer and taking care of Idris when I needed some more time. Thanks to my father, Andy, for telling anyone who would listen about his daughter’s new book, and facing out the latest copy in any bookstore in any city he happened to travel to.

  And thank you, readers. For all of you who gave these books a try, who told a friend, who wrote a review. For all of you who brought my ideas to your game table, who had me on your podcasts (special thanks to The Tome Show for being the first!), who drew fanart and cared enough to petition me for particular endings (so sorry #TeamLorcan). You made this whole experience amazing.