The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  “I want to be able to look Brin in the face. So a very little.”

  “All right,” Havilar sighed. “You have to promise not to tell Mehen, though. He’d probably get his lightning breath going for this.”

  Farideh doubted she’d have to tell their adoptive father a thing—Havi and Brin were so obvious it was hard to be in the same space as them. And then Mehen would blame Farideh for not stopping Havilar from being infatuated with Brin in the first place. “As far as I’m concerned you and I were never once apart.”

  Havilar grinned. “Perfect.”

  Lorcan tipped his chair back, and the spell’s lines yanked again, hard enough Farideh drew a sharp breath. She glared across the room at him, and he scowled back. Stop it, she mouthed. Lorcan stood and started toward them.

  Havilar was looking past her, up at the stairs, the way Brin had gone when they’d returned from their errands. “Is it harder to be good at, do you think, than, say, killing orcs and things?”

  Farideh’s blood rose in her cheeks. “I suspect it’s different.”

  “The first time I killed someone I threw up,” Havilar admitted. She looked back at her sister. “Four times.”

  “I don’t think you’ll throw up.”

  “If I do, I’m going to tell you whether you want to hear it or not,” Havilar cautioned, as she stood. “You deserve the warning.”

  Havilar glared at Lorcan as he came to stand beside the table. He smiled back at her, pleasant as could be, but in those black, black eyes was something sharp as razors.

  “Well met,” he said. “What have you two been talking about?”

  Havilar gave Farideh a look that said Farideh ought to be just as careful—if not more so—turned on her heel, and headed up the stairs. Lorcan chuckled watching her go. He looked down at Farideh.

  “Well,” he said, appraising her face and no doubt the high color of her cheeks. “I have to assume it was something . . . interesting. What did she want?”

  Farideh hesitated. “Your half of Brin’s room.”

  Lorcan gave a low throaty laugh. “Well that is interesting. What is she going to trade me?”

  She looked past him at the tavernkeeper, who was eyeing them both. Or maybe, Farideh thought, she was just watching Lorcan. Out walking through Faerûn, Lorcan took precautions and made his appearance shift, taking on the skin of a human man. Gone were the horns, the red skin, the wings that would have stretched halfway across the taproom. His eyes were still black as nightmares, but they were ringed in white. His dark curls lightened several shades, and his skin was a shade brighter than Farideh’s. But he was still hard not to look at.

  Farideh took a deep breath. “I presume she’ll pay you back your half of the room fee. What did you pay for it again?”

  Lorcan smirked. “Where am I to sleep?”

  “You don’t sleep.”

  “I sleep a little. This plane is wearisome. And why not, if I have nothing else to do?” His eyes didn’t leave her face, but still Farideh had the sense he was appraising every inch of her in his head.

  What would you do if he asked to sleep with you? she wondered to herself. If he didn’t try to make you say it first? She quashed that thought as well—it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Lorcan wouldn’t ask, Lorcan had no interest in sharing a bed with her and every interest in keeping her off-balance. After a month, the sureness of it had been hammered down into her bones. All she had to do was keep herself focused and sensible and not get pulled into Lorcan’s manipulations.

  “But,” he went on, “more importantly, I need a chance to let this disguise drop. You don’t want me to tire of holding it up.”

  Farideh let out a breath. She’d forgotten about his spell’s limits. “Well, Havilar will have to think of something.” She stood. “Shouldn’t we go?” Without waiting for him, she crossed the taproom—pointedly not looking at the staring tavernkeeper—and out the door. The protection spell that had hidden Farideh from the Hells now hid Lorcan as well, and meant he had to follow wherever she went.

  That didn’t help matters between them either.

  The sun was setting as they made their way through the winding streets of Proskur. Lorcan threaded his arm through hers. As they passed graying clapboard houses and windowless shops, he held her close and it was strange how right and normal that had begun to seem. Even though too many people were watching her walk past—even though they were headed to meet another of Lorcan’s warlocks—she relaxed and held him too. Just a little.

  A tiefling wasn’t an everyday occurrence, and most people were circumspect about the descendants of humans and fiends—even if that past transgression was too many generations back to count. Despite the heat of the day, Farideh wished she’d worn her cloak and hood.

  Lorcan hung on her arm, distracting them. A real fiend, Farideh thought bitterly. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  It had been eight months since she’d accepted the infernal pact of a warlock, since she first learned to channel the dark and blistering energies of the Nine Hells. Eight months since she’d been banished from the mountain village she’d grown up in, eight months of hunting bounties for coin—all the way east to the Sword Coast, and far north as Neverwinter, down into the heart of the Nether Mountains, and everywhere in between. Eight months of little comfort, little sense of the future. Eight months of Lorcan, for better or worse.

  “What’s she like,” Farideh asked, “this warlock?”

  Lorcan’s hold on her arm eased. “You won’t like her. But then, you don’t need to talk to her.”

  “Is she wicked?”

  “She won’t do anything to you.”

  They walked a little farther down a narrow, dirty street. Lorcan’s grip on her loosened as he searched the doors on either side.

  “But she can get you back home?” Farideh knew it was the reason for this errand. Lorcan had only escaped his sister’s clutches a month or so prior. Bound under the same protection spell as Farideh, Sairché couldn’t scry him, but Lorcan couldn’t return to the Hells either. Farideh wasn’t sure he should. “Is she a very powerful warlock?”

  “Powerful enough to call someone who can answer some questions for me.” He eyed a man passing them by, all bundled up and hidden. “Find out if it’s safe. Temerity’s clever that way.”

  Temerity. He hadn’t said her name before.

  Farideh had always known Lorcan had pacts with other warlocks, other descendants of the Toril Thirteen. She’d been certain most of them were more talented than her, better suited to the pact. But hearing it—Farideh’s stomach twisted. She pressed the feeling down. He moved ahead of her, letting her go completely. She folded her hands together instead of trying to catch his.

  “Who was her ancestor?” she asked.

  Lorcan frowned at her over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Like Bryseis Kakistos,” she explained. “What was the name of the warlock Temerity descends from?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “It’s only a name,” Farideh said, falling into step beside him.

  Lorcan turned back to scanning the shops they passed. “You of all people should know better than to be indiscriminately curious. Ah,” he said, eyes falling on a dark green door. A sign with a picture of a mortar and pestle hung over the entrance. As they drew nearer, the thick scent of spices and perfumes curled around them, beckoning them in. Lorcan considered the door for a moment. The street had widened, edging back into something bordering on respectable.

  “Wait out here,” he said finally. “I won’t be long.” With that, he swept into the shop without so much as a glance at Farideh.

  She sighed. There was a bench in front of the shop beside Temerity’s and she settled herself there to wait, trying not to wonder too hard about Temerity and the warlocks of the Toril Thirteen.

  Almost a hundred years ago, thirteen tiefling warlocks had come together to work magic that helped the king of the Hells, Asmodeus, rise up and claim the mantle of a god—tran
sforming all the tieflings on the plane of Toril into the descendants of Asmodeus, cursed to wear that blood plain on their skin, no matter what they seemed before. At the coven’s head had been Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel. Farideh and Havilar’s ancestor. By those lines of descent, devils like Lorcan sought out sets of warlocks to reflect the Toril Thirteen.

  So like Farideh, Temerity had been chosen for some long ago ancestor’s sin. Perhaps she’d been pursued by many devils—some of the heirs, she had come to understand, were rare, though none so rare as those of the Brimstone Angel.

  Perhaps Temerity had known her blood’s story from the cradle and sought the devils out. Perhaps she, too, had merely been in the right place at the right time for Lorcan to say all the right words and snare her in a pact that changed everything.

  Farideh picked at the fraying edge of her sleeve and thought of Lorcan standing in the little stone house she’d grown up in, summoned accidentally by her sister. She thought of his hot breath on her cheek still cold from the snowy wind outside. She thought of him whispering, “Say you’re mine.”

  A shiver ran up Farideh’s spine. She might not be able to return to a normal life, but she could surely find her way out of the tangle of emotion Lorcan had trapped her in and into something simpler. More sensible.

  A woman stood in the doorway opposite the bench, watching Farideh with a wary eye, no subtlety in her distaste. Farideh shifted uncomfortably.

  “You waiting for someone?” the woman said after an interminable time.

  “My friend,” Farideh said. “He won’t be long.”

  “Buying spices from another devilborn.” She sniffed. “Your kind do like to stick together.”

  Farideh’s tail flicked nervously. She pulled it closer to lie along her thigh. “My friend’s human, many thanks.”

  “Is he now?” Farideh met the woman’s skeptical gaze. Without the ring of white humans were used to, Farideh’s eyes were unreadable. Emotionless. Inhuman. The shopkeeper could stare as long as she liked and Farideh knew she wouldn’t see anything there, not without practice.

  “Do you want me to have him show you?” Farideh said. “Or do you want to say what it is you’re getting at?”

  Farideh knew perfectly well what the shopkeeper was getting at: she didn’t belong here. Whatever clientele the shopkeeper was used to dealing with, a seventeen-year-old tiefling trying to rein in the tendrils of shadow that curled and coiled around the edges of her frame was not a part of it. The woman’s eyes moved from the swell of the horns along Farideh’s brow, to the flat color of her eyes, to the sharp points of her eyeteeth when she spoke, as if hunting for a sign of what, exactly, she was up to.

  “You a friend of the Dragon Lords’?” the woman demanded.

  “Do I look like someone your lord would employ?”

  The woman’s eyes lingered a little longer on Farideh’s heavy horns. “Of course not,” she said. “But then, that’s the sort they’d like to have, innit? Skims beneath your notice, and catches you all unawares when the wrong someone happens by your shop. All ’cause you thought sure the Lords on high wouldn’t give a ragged tiefling two coppers together.” She smiled nastily. “No offense.”

  The powers of the Hells surged up in her veins, forcing their way down into her hands, throbbing behind the beds of her nails as if they were trying to force their way out in a torrent of fire that would show the shopkeeper just how careful she ought to be about offending the heir of the Brimstone Angel.

  “None taken,” Farideh lied.

  “But if you’re not with the Lords’,” the woman went on, “then I’m thinking I ought to report you to the city watch. Ought to be conscientious. Since there’s such a fear of criminals.” Farideh could almost hear the old saying about tieflings, running through the woman’s thoughts: one’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy, three’s a curse.

  Farideh drew a slow breath, trying to calm her pulse and push the powers back down. “He’ll only be a moment,” she said.

  “So will the watch,” the woman said.

  They couldn’t afford to bribe the watch, Farideh knew, nor pay a trumpedup fine. They couldn’t afford to wait for some jailor to let her out of a cell or some magistrate to say she’d done nothing wrong. Farideh stood, glanced up and down the street.

  “That’s what I thought,” the woman muttered.

  But Farideh couldn’t leave, not with the spell still tethering Lorcan, and if she went the twenty steps the spell would stretch, she’d still be well in the woman’s sight. The engines of Malbolge churned more slick magic into her and she seemed to pulse from the soles of her feet up to her ears. Her veins were darkening with the unspent power. She had to go. She could not go. The woman narrowed her eyes.

  There was nowhere to flee but Temerity’s shop.

  An army of scents assaulted Lorcan once he crossed the threshold—arispeg, bitter marka, myrrh, and juniper—crawling so deep into his nose, they lay across his tongue. Long ropes of drying garlic hung from the rafters like garlands, and bins of seeds and blossoms and teas lined the walls, making the space feel much closer and narrower than it was.

  Lorcan never understood why Temerity had such a banal cover for her powers—perhaps the smell covered the stronger components of her rituals, perhaps she liked being the one who came by such rare and precious commodities, perhaps she just enjoyed having a supplier for her personal perfumes—but the little shop seemed to satisfy her, which was good enough for him. He had everything he needed from Temerity.

  Almost, he amended, crossing the shop. Which step triggered the magical tinkling of a bell, he couldn’t have said, but Lorcan was ready when an auburnhaired tiefling woman with the angry tips of a pact-brand reaching up from under her low, wide collar came around the shelves behind the counting table. He leaned against the table with the sort of smile that usually made her forget he was such a bad person to trust. “Temerity,” he said. “Well met.”

  She stopped dead. “Well met,” she said, a smile of her own creeping across her lovely features. “Didn’t expect to see you coming in by the door.”

  “All these years, I can still surprise you—I like that,” he said. That sounded right. He was out of practice with her—with any of them, really, aside from Farideh. “I was in the city, and how could I pass through without checking on you?”

  She held his gaze, eyes like silver pieces. Eyes empty of the sort of warmth and interest Temerity usually had for him. Lorcan tensed. Reconsidered.

  “How long has it been?” she asked, coming right up to the edge of the counting table. “Do you remember?”

  He didn’t, which was sloppy and he knew it. He’d been distracted by other things—the plots of his mother and sister, the complicated machinations of the Lords of the Nine. Farideh.

  “Too long,” he settled on, with a tone of regret.

  Temerity’s smile didn’t waver. “Indeed,” she said. “Ten months. And another two before that.”

  “And you didn’t call,” Lorcan said. He took her hand in his. “I assumed you didn’t need me. I hate to be a nuisance. I do hope,” he added, lower, drawing a small circle on the skin of her wrist, “that I’m not being a nuisance.”

  A little warmth stirred in Temerity’s features. She was simple—much simpler than some other warlocks he could name. Make her feel special. Make her feel wise. Make her think that she’s making the best possible decisions, even when she isn’t. Make her think there’s something there, under the surface, between them.

  “Too long,” she agreed, brushing her curls away from the side of her face. Then, “Long enough your rivals have come calling.”

  “Oh?” Lorcan said, as if it didn’t concern him. “I’m glad I can still count you mine.”

  “For now,” she said, but she relaxed.

  “Well,” he said smoothly, still toying with her hand, “you’ll at least give me the chance to make a counteroffer. I’d hate to lose you because other people’s mistakes kept me away.” He brought
her hand to his lips and she exhaled unevenly. What sort of idiots were those other collectors if they couldn’t sway Temerity? “Haven’t I given you everything you want?”

  “Not everything,” she said.

  “Well we’ll have to see about remedying that, won’t we?” he murmured, even though he knew what she was asking for and he wouldn’t dare try to get it. It didn’t matter—not now. She was listening, and that was enough. “But in order to do that I do need a small favor. A little ritual—no,” he cut himself off and leaned a little nearer, close enough to kiss her just below the ear. “We can get to that later, of course, darling.” Temerity raised an eyebrow and smiled. He drew another slow circle across her wrist.

  The bells chimed again, and Lorcan glanced back over his shoulder, careful to hold tight to Temerity as he did. Things weren’t nearly far enough along that he could risk her getting distracted by some customer.

  But it wasn’t some customer. Farideh stared back at him, frozen.

  No, not at him. At Temerity’s hand in his.

  Lords of the shitting Nine, he thought.

  “Well met,” Temerity said, the picture of a sweet-tempered shopkeeper. But Lorcan knew better and heard the sudden venom in her voice. She yanked her hand free and moved around the table. “Can I help you?”

  “I . . . um . . . ,” Farideh trailed off and she looked away at a chain of seedpods hanging down from one of the heavy shelves. Shit and ashes, Lorcan thought, already sorting through all the things he was going to have to say to soothe her. Every option would turn into something far more complicated than he wanted to handle. Why couldn’t she be like Temerity, wanting to be soothed?

  If she were like Temerity, Lorcan thought, you’d have a much bigger problem on your hands. For now, he needed space and quickly, before anybody got any more ideas.

  “You’re interrupting,” he said.

  When Farideh looked up at him, her expression was guarded—nothing for Temerity to see there. There at least was that. “Clearly.” She looked to Temerity and held out a hand. “You must be Temerity.”