The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

He’d tried to get his mother to leave the farm. He’d tried to convince his brothers there were good reasons to come to Waterdeep before Sembia turned north. But without divulging his allegiances to the secretive Harpers, why would they believe him? Who was he but the runaway brother who had the gall to throw away the life he was offered for another, only to fail at it? Who was he but the son who’d left their father baffled and disappointed when he’d come home to admit he was just a secretary in Waterdeep? And then armies filled the heartlands, making Harrowdale an island of relative safety in a sea of war.

  “I know you just took a break,” Tam said. “But I’m giving you another one. Let Khochen keep you company. She’s in town the rest of the tenday. We’ll come back to her reports when you’ve sorted yourself. Is Lady Hedare in?” Dahl nodded, too embarrassed at the dispensation to speak. “Send her up, get that done with.” Tam ran his fingers through his silvery hair. “You’re probably right about the barber. Find me some time, would you?”

  “Of course,” Dahl said, like a good secretary would, and shut the door behind him.

  In the parlor that marked the barrier between the inn’s public areas and the Harpers’ private floors, Khochen was waiting for him on a battered settee, tuning a lute. “If I apologize,” she said, “will you at least admit that did you a little good?”

  “What good?” Dahl demanded. “I told Tam something he surely already knew and Vescaras something he refused to believe. Then I got singled out like an errant schoolboy and gods above only know what Vescaras is telling people about me now.”

  “Nothing most likely,” Khochen said. “He’s not much of a gossip.”

  But Vescaras was thinking about it. Adding it to the list of things that proved Dahl wasn’t cut out for the Harper life anymore, right below bad temper, can’t handle shock, and botched mission, let people die.

  And possibly drunk now that Nera was telling everyone he ordered an ale too often, he thought grimly.

  “Yet you got him to tell you why he hates me?” Dahl said. “He must be a little bit of a gossip.”

  “No,” Khochen said, with a smile that was only for herself. “I’m just that good.”

  Dahl sighed. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  Khochen set down the lute and leaned on her armrest. “It seems,” she said, all drama, “many months ago, someone may have gone to a revel, had a bit to drink, and snubbed a certain someone else’s sister.”

  “What? Jadzia Ammakyl thinks I snubbed her? I hardly spoke to her.”

  “That’s what ‘snubbed’ means,” Khochen said. “At least, she would have liked you to talk more, and she apparently made an invitation for you to come back the next day.”

  “To look at her library. Which I wouldn’t bother with. It’s a pokey little—” He colored at Khochen’s smirk. “We only talked for a few minutes. About books.”

  “Girl has to make an inroad where she can.”

  And lovely Jadzia Ammakyl had absolutely no need to make inroads with a scruffy farmer’s son, Dahl felt sure. “You’re wrong. Vescaras is wrong.”

  “Vescaras is right,” Khochen said, “although he’s mad as the wizard under the mountain to still be carrying that around. Jadzia’s forgiven and forgotten, so far as I can tell. Swarmed with suitors.”

  “Of course she is,” Dahl said. “She’s rich as Waukeen’s handmaid.”

  Khochen clucked her tongue and rose to stand beside him. “I have another guess,” she said. “I think you did notice. Why else would you pick the right sister—he’s got four, hasn’t he? You noticed and you choked because you are utterly convinced no one of quality is interested in you.”

  “Why are you always picking at my love life like you can stir it up into something interesting?” Dahl demanded.

  Khochen’s wicked grin fell away and she regarded Dahl with utter seriousness. “Because it’s the safest thing I can tease you about.”

  Dahl pointedly turned toward the taproom, knowing Khochen would follow but knowing it would give him a minute to compose himself. Gods, he needed a drink. One drink.

  Khochen caught up to him. “Where you got the idea that anyone in Waterdeep gives two cracked nibs about where you grew up or what god left you behind or how you’ve erred—”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “My point,” she added, gentler now, which made it all worse, “is that you needn’t be so determined to make sure you’re right that everyone dislikes you as much as you believe. Whether that’s Jadzia or Lady Hedare or Vescaras.”

  “Vescaras does dislike me,” he pointed out as they descended the stairs. “I don’t need your pity, all right?” He paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back at Khochen. “By the way,” he said more quietly, “are you missing any agents?”

  “I lose some low-level recruits, street-eyes and such. Gangs pick them off, Zhentarim pick them up.”

  Dahl shook his head. “No, I mean agents dropping off your map. No word, no sign, no bodies. Strange things.”

  She frowned at him. “Not that I know of. But then that might be any of my lost ones.”

  “It’s probably nothing,” he admitted.

  “I’ll think about it. And,” she added, coming to stand beside him again, “might I note, if you talked to Vescaras the same way as you do me, instead of being an absolute prat, he might listen too.”

  Dahl rolled his eyes and headed into the taproom. If he drank the ale quick, if he made it a small one, Nera might not notice, might not tell Tam. It wasn’t as if the High Harper could tell if he’d had just one.

  “You already said he’s not a gossip,” he said. “So how am I supposed to talk to Vescaras like I do to you?”

  “You could tell him your sad stories about your father.”

  Dahl flushed. “Khochen, enough. I don’t need—”

  But the words evaporated out of his mouth, stolen by the sight of a ghost, standing thirty feet before him, in the middle of the Harpers’ inn.

  Chapter Three

  27 Eleasias, the Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR) Proskur

  Farideh eyed the drinkers scattered through the taproom, marking the heavy cloaks, heavy boots, the thick skirts and padded jackets. Things were far, far worse than she’d imagined.

  The cold—she’d figured it was the early morning, the higher altitude, being farther north. Maybe she shivered because she was a little ill from Sairché’s spell—she certainly didn’t feel well. But as they came down the slopes and the sun rose higher behind the clouds, the chilly air didn’t warm.

  Maybe it’s just a cold snap, she thought, a strange bit of weather here and then forgotten. She said as much to Havilar. But then they’d reached Waterdeep and she saw the old snow packed against the buildings, the bits of melting ice hanging from their eaves.

  Havilar didn’t seem to notice, her expression closed and her hands clinging tight to Farideh’s arm. If her thoughts had moved away from Brin, from her missing glaive, from poor Mehen left in Cormyr, she gave no sign at all. She moved as if she just wanted Farideh to get her to Tam so they could right everything again.

  But could they right anything, Farideh wondered, if Sairché’s spell hadn’t merely moved them? If perhaps, it had snatched away a season when it was cast?

  She couldn’t see another option, and it made her whole body jagged with fear and nerves. It was, inescapably, winter. Late winter. It was late winter and they were both frailer, thinner. And Sairché had cut their hair—to hide the loss of time? Five months, she thought, or six or seven or more? She had to find out before Havilar did, that was sure.

  You will fix it, Farideh told herself. There is nothing so broken here you can’t find a way to fix it.

  “Come on,” she said to Havilar, and pulled her up to the bar and the tavernkeeper. “Well met,” Farideh said. She swallowed and dropped her voice. “We need to see Master Zawad.”

  The tavernkeeper’s expression was puzzled. She shook her head. “Don’t know him.”

 
; Terror poured down Farideh’s bones. Calm, she told herself. They like their secrets. “He’s a friend,” Farideh said, “and it’s urgent. Please.”

  “Can’t help you,” the tavernkeeper said. She cut her eyes to the left, to where a lean human with pale skin and freckles was watching without watching.

  “Please we—”

  “You going to order?” The tavernkeeper gave Farideh a pleasant smile, an empty smile.

  “I need to talk to Tam, I need to talk to him right now.”

  “Because if you’re not going to order,” she went on, “I think you ought to be on your way.”

  “Gods damn it!” Farideh hissed. “I know he’s here! He’ll see us.” Or maybe he won’t, she thought, maybe he’s given orders to keep us away. Maybe he died. Maybe the Harpers moved. “He will,” she added softer, a plea. “He has to.”

  The woman shook her head. “Don’t know who you mean,” she said, sounding apologetic. “Maybe you should try the Rusted Anchor.”

  He wouldn’t be at any Rusted Anchor. If he wasn’t here, she had no idea where hewould be, and they would have no one who might help them find Mehen, find Brin. She squeezed Havilar’s hand. She reached for the necklace in the pouch at her belt—a bribe, maybe a bribe would do it. She said a silent apology to Lorcan.

  “Farideh?”

  She looked up to see a tall man with gray eyes and several days’ worth of stubble on his chin. He looked tired—so tired it took her a moment to recognize him.

  “Dahl,” she said, almost a sigh of relief. The Harper agent had been assigned to Tam—he’d know where the priest was. If not, Dahl was the one who’d taught Farideh rituals. He knew the sending spells. He could help them. It would be all right.

  But he was staring at her as if she were some terrible beast, risen up and asking politely about the weather. Her stomach clenched. They hadn’t parted angrily—she and Dahl had had their share of clashes, but things were settled enough between them. He had no reason to be angry at her.

  Unless word had gotten back that she’d made a deal with Sairché. “Please,” she said. “Whatever Tam thinks we’ve done—”

  “Nera,” Dahl said to the tavernkeeper, “I need a room. The griffon room. Send up . . .” He shook his head and looked the twins over. Farideh shifted uncomfortably. “Bread, cheese, and some tea? And whiskey. A pot of it. Come on,” he said to Farideh, “I’ll take you to Tam.”

  He led them to the stairs at the far end of the taproom, passing a petite woman with short dark hair. As they passed her, Farideh heard him whisper, “Go get Tam. This is the very next thing he needs to deal with.”

  Farideh’s pulse was speeding. This was the next horrible step. They knew, they had to know. Her stomach churned, but she held tight to Havilar’s hand and pressed forward. What had happened had happened, she told herself. Now you just hear it and fix it.

  But a little part of her was starting to worry that this time, there was too much to fix.

  Dahl led them into one of the rooms. As they entered, Farideh felt the faint itch of a spell cast over it. There was a bed, a table with four chairs, and a writing desk with a soot-smudged painting of a griffon tearing into a sahuagin over it. Dahl opened the heavy curtains wider to let in more of the cold, bleached light. He lit candles. He moved the table out of the way. He wouldn’t look at Farideh again.

  Farideh kept Havilar’s hand in a firm grip. When she found out that they’d lost half a year, she would be frantic. Furious. She wouldn’t understand the perils of the devils that could be after her, not right away. Farideh steeled herself for the inevitable fight.

  Dahl finally ran out of things to fuss with and turned to the twins again.

  “Do you want to sit?” he asked. “He’ll be a moment.”

  Farideh would rather have stood, but Havilar dropped into a chair, and it was easier to land beside her, still holding her hand. She didn’t like the way Dahl was watching them. They couldn’t know about Sairché, she reasoned. Why would Brin tell the Harpers anything, after all?

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Dahl nodded absently. “Where have you been?” he asked after another interminable pause.

  Farideh swallowed against the pulse in her throat. “It’s a long story.”

  “What do you mean?” Havilar asked. “Where should we have been?”

  “Well,” Dahl said carefully, “the last I heard . . . people seemed to believe that you had died. On the way to Cormyr.”

  Farideh drew a sharp breath. For Dahl to have heard would have taken time—time for Brin to give up, time for him to get to somewhere he could get a message to Waterdeep, time for that to filter down to Dahl.

  She was right. Sairché had snatched them away. A whole summer, a whole winter just gone.

  Havilar squeezed her hand tighter, and Farideh could not look at her. “Where did you hear that?” she asked. “How did you hear that? We’ve only been gone a month.”

  Dahl eyed her again with a puzzled expression. “It’s longer, isn’t it?” Farideh said.

  Dahl seemed to struggle to answer. “Yes.”

  The door opened, and Tam entered, his irritation evident even beneath the patina of peace he exuded. Farideh’s heart stopped cold as he smiled pleasantly at Dahl. “I hear there’s something terribly important to—” Farideh stood up, and he stopped in his tracks.

  When they’d left Waterdeep, the Calishite priest’s dark hair and beard had been liberally scattered with threads of gray. Now every hair on his head shone silver as his goddess’s emblem. That doesn’t happen in a few months, Farideh thought, her head spinning. The world felt as if it were closing down on her. Even Havilar noticed—she tensed, pulling her sister nearer.

  “Shar pass us over.” Tam shut the door behind him, his eyes never leaving the twins. “You’re alive.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Havilar asked, sounding as if she dreaded the answer. “How long have we been gone?”

  “She thinks it’s been a month,” Dahl said.

  A pretty number, don’t you think? Sairché had said. I’ll protect you and your sister from death and from devils, until you turn twenty-seven. Farideh couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t slow her pulse. She looked at Tam, at Dahl, at Havilar. They weren’t just tired. They weren’t just thinner. It hadn’t been months. It can’t be, she thought. It can’t be.

  “How long?” Havilar repeated, firmer.

  “They turned up in the taproom,” Dahl said. “Nera had given the signal to throw them out.”

  Tam shook his head. “Lucky timing.”

  “How long,” Havilar demanded, “have we been gone?”

  “It’s ten years,” Farideh said, hardly more than a whisper. She looked up at Tam, at Dahl. “It’s been ten years, hasn’t it?”

  “Seven,” Dahl said, “and a half.” Farideh sat back down, all the blood draining away. That wasn’t better.

  Havilar stared at Tam and Dahl, as if either might contradict Farideh, might say this was all a prank or a misunderstanding. They looked back, sadly.

  She let out a breath, half a cry, and yanked her hand from Farideh’s. “Seven years,” she repeated. “Seven. Karshoji. Years.”

  “I didn’t know,” Farideh said, shaking her head. She felt as if her whole body would turn itself inside out if she twisted wrong. “I didn’t think—”

  “Of course you didn’t!” Havilar said. “You never think!”

  There was a tap at the door—the tavernkeeper with the food. Dahl poured a few fingers of whiskey for each of the women, and some for himself. Farideh watched, feeling as if these things were happening on the other end of the world. When he handed her a glass, she took it with numb hands and only held it, cupped in her lap.

  Every fiber of her being was coiled tight, vibrating with the knowledge of how badly she’d erred, how completely she’d destroyed so many lives, because Sairché was cleverer than she. Every bit of her hurt.

  Only a tiny part of her mind clung screaming
to the fact that seven and a half years meant her deal with Sairché wasn’t done. That she’d see Sairché again.

  “All right,” Tam said, shaken. “All right. You’ll stay here. That’s easiest. We have healers. A wizard who can . . . Right.”

  Havilar drained her cup. “I want my own room.”

  That drove the last of the air from Farideh. “What?” Havilar did not look at her.

  “Of course,” Tam said. “You’ll need to answer questions. Be checked. We need to be sure this isn’t something bigger.”

  “It’s not,” Farideh said, but she could hardly get the words out. “It’s only us.”

  Tam sat down in the desk’s chair. “We need to make sure you’re well enough, too. I’ll stay with you.” He turned to Dahl. “Send for Mehen. Right now.” He hesitated before adding, “Brin too.”

  Farideh clung to the cup as if it might be an anchor, and shut her eyes tight as the world started swimming. She had to fix this. She had to make Sairché fix what she’d wrought.

  There were, Dahl thought, standing before the closed door, a hundred other things he could be doing. That sending to Everlund. Re-sorting the handler’s reports. Attempting to contact Sembia again. Get Tam an hour or so to get his hair cut and his beard trimmed. He took a mouthful of whiskey from the flask in his pocket, rubbed a thumb nervously over the card case in his hand, and then knocked anyway.

  Khochen had been on him the very breath the door to the guest room had closed, but Dahl had brushed her off, unable to form an appropriate answer to any of her questions: Who are they? How do they know Tam? What’s going on? He couldn’t fathom the full answer to that last one in particular, even as Tam repeated the wizards’ and healers’ findings, the twins’ answers to the same questions.

  “They’re remarkably healthy,” Tam said. “Aside from a little muscle weakness, a little slowness of the reflexes. Aside from losing seven and a half years of memories.”

  “They just volunteered that it was a deal with a devil?” Dahl asked.

  Tam studied his desk. “Could be worse, I’m sorry to say. At least it seems to be an isolated event, not some harbinger of a new invasion. Another front to the wars.”