The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

If Lorcan had not flouted Sairché, if Farideh had not stolen him away from Sairché’s clutches, Glasya would not have decided to make an example of Sairché. She would not have handed her the king of the Hells’ orders and all but told her to fail at them, trapping Sairché between the two most dangerous powers she knew: the Risen God of Evil and his scheming daughter.

  Eight years of careful planning, and still Sairché was not certain she could manage. To fail without seeming to fail. To undo the work while letting someone else shoulder the blame. The other devils in the hierarchy were just as determined, just as slippery. She couldn’t give in to inconvenient emotions and let them win.

  Sairché let the mirror relapse into darkness, still seething. She liked to imagine it was a gift of her mother’s blood, the blessing and curse of being the cambion daughter of Glasya’s most infamous erinyes. It certainly felt so—a nearly uncontrollable tide on her otherwise calculating nature. She wondered if Lorcan—Invadiah’s other half-devil child—felt the same pull.

  When the little bitch had struck her, it had taken all of Sairché’s wherewithal not to return the favor. Not to make her gape and gasp over a dagger like Temerity had. She drew a slow breath, focused on the faint moan of the skull-palace of Osseia that filled the air around her. The fleshy walls twitched, and a thin line of bloody mucus dripped down a panel. Sairché clung to the calm.

  Not for the first time, Sairché wondered what would have happened if—seven and a half years earlier—Farideh had taken the pact Sairché had offered her in Neverwinter. Would Sairché have come so quickly under the archduchess’s wing? Would she have been able to broker the pact with the Brimstone Angel, selling her off to another devil quickly enough to make none of this her problem?

  Would she have found out about the twin sooner?

  Sairché thought of Havilar, of the familiar rage that flowed off the woman, the grief and sadness that seemed to choke her. Promising, Sairché thought, and mine. No collector devil would snatch up either Brimstone Angel, not while Asmodeus’s edicts were in play. She would have time to wrap the other twin up in pacts and promises, to shape her into something useful.

  And Farideh, as much as she needed her now, would make an excellent tool to do the shaping. Sairché smiled to herself as she left the scrying mirror’s room and crossed her apartments. By the end of the tenday, Farideh wouldn’t have a single ally left. By the end of this mission, there would be more than enough people determined to kill the warlock and end her treachery. And Sairché’s hands would be clean enough for the archdevils.

  The portal Glasya gave Sairché use of took the form of a gaping wound in the wall of Sairché’s apartments. Seven and a half years of it and Sairché still loathed the gift.

  “Albaenoch,” she said, and the wound widened, the wall emitting a slow, pained screech.

  Sairché wrinkled her nose—all of Malbolge was formed of Glasya’s predecessor’s body, the palace her unfortunate skull. Day in and out the very presence of the devils of Malbolge tortured the lost leader, and Glasya made special efforts to ensure it kept going. The archduchess might have claimed the layer well over a century ago, but what was time to an immortal? What was mercy to an archdevil?

  Where is her pity for the rest of us who have to listen to it? Sairché thought, stepping into the portal. The wound and world seemed to close in on her, collapsing Sairché into the space of a fist, and then scattering her in pieces on a burning wind.

  When she opened her eyes, she stood in a hallway made of glossy black stone, and Sairché cursed. The fortress had several powerful spells sheltering it, hiding it away. She had told the owner a thousand times to make specific allowances for her so that she went where she intended, but if he had, they didn’t work. Not for the first time she wondered if the wizard was intractable or merely not as clever as he presented himself to be. Likely both. She took another deep breath—now wasn’t the time to punish him.

  Like Osseia, the fortress seemed less built than grown. The wizard had done that—acquiring potent scrolls, coaxing the rock out of the ground and shaping it to his liking. A waste of magic, Sairché thought, not the least because it had thrown her timeline into disarray—the time it had taken to raise the tower meant delays in mastering the spells she’d gathered for him, meant delays in finding the best methods to collect specimens, meant that she now had to pull out a piece she’d hoped to save. At least it would be unpleasant for Farideh.

  She threw open the door to his study, still simmering. The wizard, a darkhaired man with pale skin and piercing blue eyes looked up, unruffled. If anything, it made Sairché madder.

  “Well met, Lady Sairché,” he said. He did not stand. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I’ve got your tool,” Sairché said. “I will need a few days to secure her transport. Make the most of them.” He sat, considering her, waiting—no doubt—for an apology. Sairché narrowed her eyes. Seven and a half years of this, and Sairché would be damned if she uttered anything like an apology to the man.

  “Better late than never,” the man finally replied. “Though better never late.”

  Sairché’s mother would have torn a hand right off the human’s arm, plucked it free like a spring onion from the mud, for that insolence. Sairché ran her tongue deliberately over the sharp edges of her teeth to keep that erinyes blood from replying.

  “Charming maxim,” she said a moment later. “In the Hells, we prefer, ‘Don’t forget where you stand.’ Don’t forget, goodsir, that you’re the one who advanced our timeline. You’re the one who went ahead with the experiments I schooled you in. And without my assistance, you’re the one whose superiors will overlook his good works for their lack of progress. So I suggest you reconsider your tone.”

  The Netherese wizard looked back at her. Seven and a half years of these visits and still the mortal’s gaze made Sairché’s temper flare—if he thought to cow her with that leer, that skin-piercing stare, she would gladly show him otherwise.

  At least, she thought, Lorcan’s blasted warlock will have to suffer it too.

  “Your pardon,” Adolican Rhand said. “I will be most happy to receive her.” There were words in Tymantheran Draconic that didn’t exist in the common tongue. Omin’ iejirsjighen meant the things you owed your clan because you were taught their importance, while omin’ iejirkkessh meant the things you owed your clan that you shouldn’t need to be taught. There was nothing in Common like throtominarr, the honor you showed your ancestors by improving on what they created, and Common had no use for the many words that described the nuanced markers of a dragonborn’s mood—asaurifyth, yuthom-turil, othrirenthish.

  But in neither tongue were the words Clanless Mehen needed: A feeling of relief so strong it overwhelmed any other feeling, including the anger Farideh seemed to fear. The sense of disorder, of upheaval in knowing that the horror that had defined his life for so long was only a nightmare, something that he had woken up from but found he couldn’t quite shake. The knowledge of what could be lost and the hole it could leave in you.

  If he could have bundled his daughters close and held them, like he had when he’d carried the foundling babies out of the snow and into the village of Arush Vayem, by every god he would have, and never let go. But the girls were not babes in swaddling. Not even girls anymore, Mehen thought.

  For all he felt like drawing his blade against time itself, beating the years into submission like a vicious beast, Clanless Mehen had learned a little better. He would master this. He would savor what he had. He would give his daughters what they needed first.

  “Up!” he barked, as if they’d never left. “Keep the line straight!”

  The sun dropped low, setting the sky between Waterdeep’s crowded buildings afire and casting long shadows over the Harper inn’s open yard. He had certainly not wanted to set them practicing in the yard—not now—but while he could keep them near and quiet the first day, this afternoon Havilar had taken up her returned glaive with a single-mindedness that brooked
no compromise. Mehen was so grateful Farideh had followed when he beckoned so they could all be together.

  Even though Havilar clearly didn’t want her there. Maybe didn’t even want him there.

  Seven and a half broken-hearted years had passed for Mehen, but his girls had lost only days. The relief that buoyed him up smothered any sort of anger he might have been able to muster at them—at Farideh—wasn’t there for Havilar. Farideh kept herself tucked in the shadows of unneeded equipment, knowing better than to offer to spar with Havi.

  Havilar’s blade came up hard, the point striking the dummy and tearing through the batting, lodging in the grain of the wood beneath. She yanked at it. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Here,” Mehen said gently, laying a hand on Havilar’s back. This, too, he thought: there was no word for the pure, wordless joy of feeling her solid and live beside him. He jerked the weapon free of the dummy and handed it back to her. “Maybe we should—”

  Havilar didn’t wait for him. She sprang back and threw herself at the dummy again, striking out with the butt of the glaive, the shaft, the blade.

  “Havi, you’re going to hurt your—”

  She screeched and the glaive struck the side of the dummy. The weapon jolted right out of her hands, the strike too hard for her weakened grip. She glowered at it, panting.

  “You need to go slow,” Mehen said.

  “I don’t need help!” she shouted. She glowered at Farideh. “And I don’t need an audience.” Her sister seemed to collapse further into herself.

  “Enough!” Mehen roared. He held up a hand, but Havilar turned from him and his heart ached. “All right. How about you take some time for yourself? We’ll go in, you vent some old breath. Just promise me,” he said, setting a hand on her back once more, “you’ll be careful. You’ll get your skills back, I promise. But not today. No matter how hard you hit that dummy.”

  Havilar nodded, not looking up at him, and he fought the urge to hug her tight. She would be inflexible as steel and rage against every moment of it, and neither of them would be soothed. “Come in, in an hour or so,” he said instead.

  Mehen left then, though every part of him fought it. But he knew Havilar—and while seven and a half years ago her problems might have been minor enough for him to insist she listen, to roar at her until she obeyed, to send her to bed straightaway, now . . .

  Havilar needed to be alone. He was sure of that, even if he was sure it would kill him to walk away from her.

  Farideh stood as he approached and fell into step beside him, staring at her boots as she walked. His stubborn, challenging, resourceful Farideh, and all the steel had gone out of her as if someone had drawn it like a sword from a sheath.

  Mehen wrapped an arm around her and held her close. “It will be all right. She’s grieving.”

  Farideh leaned against him, but said nothing. Mehen walked with her, leading them to the little library the Harpers kept here. They sat together on a bench.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” he asked quietly.

  Farideh shut her eyes and pressed her mouth shut. “I told you to go to Cormyr,” she said after a moment. “And then everything went wrong.”

  “Fari,” he said, almost a sigh. “Please. There aren’t words for how glad I am that you are alive.” He pulled her close again, rubbed his chin ridge over the top of her head, before he choked up too. “There isn’t room for anything else. Whatever came before doesn’t matter,” he said firmly.

  She shook her head, buried against his neck. “It should.”

  “No,” he said. “You matter. Your sister matters.”

  She made a broken little sound, half a sob, half a bitter laugh. “I almost wish you were angry,” she said. “I was ready for angry.”

  Mehen shut his eyes and cursed to himself, held his daughter tighter.

  “I made a deal with a devil,” she said after a moment. “It was supposed to protect us. It didn’t work.”

  “Oh, Fari.” Would it have happened if Mehen had killed Lorcan in the first place? If he’d marched Farideh to the nearest priest and made her renounce the pact? He’d had reasons at the time—but they were so far away, he didn’t trust them, not when his daughters were so broken. “I should have helped you get rid of him.”

  “Not him.” Farideh pulled out of Mehen’s embrace. “Not Lorcan.” She swallowed and scrunched her eyes shut once more, as if flinching away from a swell of emotion. “Lorcan’s gone. I think he’s gone forever.”

  Well there’s the dragon’s hoard, Mehen thought, pulling her near again. If they had to tangle with such a terrible tragedy, at least that good came of it.

  But at the same time, he felt his daughter’s grief acutely, and he had to admit, the cambion deserved a little mourning. After all, he’d saved Mehen once too.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “it isn’t. I made that stupid deal, and then she hid us for all that time, and I didn’t even have time to find a way to keep Havi safe. I thought I had plenty of time to figure it out.”

  “Safe from what?”

  Farideh laughed. “I found out who our birth parents were,” she said, as if she were mocking her own efforts. “Or what they were. They were warlocks too—horrible, wicked ones. And their ancestor is one of the worst warlocks, one so bad that devils seek her descendants. They’re going to come looking for Havilar, I know it.” She buried her face against his shoulder again. “And all I’ve done is made it worse. I gave those devils a hundred things to offer her, and now they can find her just fine.”

  “And you told me,” Mehen said, “and do you think I will let your sister do something so foolish?”

  “Right,” Farideh said dully. “I’m the foolish one when you get down to it.”

  Mehen hushed her, and stroked her hair. When he had found the girls by the gates of Arush Vayem, plenty of people had warned Clanless Mehen that he knew nothing of raising children, nothing of girls, and nothing at all about tieflings. But he’d been stubborn, even then, and sure that these were a gift, a reparation for what life had snatched away from him when he stood firm against his clan and was exiled. Day by day, month by month, year by year, he had struggled against the fact that they were right, every one of them—he had to learn every single thing about raising his girls.

  It was, oddly, the village midwife who set him right. He clashed with Criella over the girls more often than not, and she’d been quiet while others told him to leave those babies in the snow before he let Beshaba herself walk in the gates. But when the girls were three and Mehen was certain he had made the wrongest choice he ever could have, Criella was the one who said, “You’re not the first to think you have fallen into the mire. This has nothing at all to do with what they are, or what you are. Girls, boys, tieflings, dragonborn—no one knows what they’re doing, raising children. You guess, you mimic, you listen to your gut, and you learn as you go. And you fix what you do wrong.”

  At the moment, there was no one to learn from, no one to ape. There was nothing Clanless Mehen had learned in all the years he’d raised his twins, or all the years he’d thought them lost, that would relieve the grief in either daughter’s heart or close the gulf between them. There was nothing he could do to unmake the thousand choices that had led up to this, nor break the threads that tied his precious girls to a fate handed down by some ancient villain. There was no part of him that knew, it seemed, what to do. Listening to his gut would bring all the wrong results—and he couldn’t bear to do anything that might drive the twins away or apart.

  So there was only guessing left, only learning as he went. Only holding tight to his daughter as she wept.

  Chapter Five

  18 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep

  The glaive slipped in Havilar’s grip, the blade turning aside as it hit the dummy. She stopped and patted her sweaty hands on her shirt. When she’d taken up her old weapon again, she’d felt the first faint stirrings of ho
pe at its familiar weight. But after a long practice session, that hope felt as hard to hold onto as a greased string.

  Lorcan’s sister might have given her back some measure of her previous strength, her mind might still know how to direct her arms and legs, her wrists and hips and feet. But her muscles hardly listened and all the time the devils had stolen from her had let her calluses fall away. The skin of her hands was soft as a newborn’s and every practiced chop and jab was accompanied by the screaming pain in her hands and the burst of blisters.

  Havilar took up the weapon again, gritting her teeth.

  In the back of her thoughts, Havilar was as frightened as she’d ever been, and wishing she’d gone with Mehen when he’d asked her to, instead of telling him to leave her be. She wished she’d stopped Brin by the portal and held him tight. She wished she could have just screamed at Farideh, and maybe let out some measure of this anger, this sense of betrayal. She wished she could curl up and cry for a bit.

  But if Havilar knew she felt these things, they were buried deep behind a certainty that before anything could be made right, first she had to master the glaive again. Before anything could go back to being right, the one true thing about her life had to be so once more.

  And to master the glaive, she had to keep drilling.

  She aimed a chop at the dummy’s neck. The glaive broke out of her slippery grip and flipped back over her shoulder to clatter to the ground.

  “Karshoj!” Havilar shrieked, stamping her feet. It was wrong, everything was wrong. She lashed out at the wooden dummy’s chest until the bones of her arms rattled and her breath came hard. She looked at her hands—not just sweat, but blood.

  In the distance, the clock they called the Timehands chimed the hour. She counted the bells as she bent to retrieve the glaive. It had been three hours since she’d last noticed the time. No wonder she was so tired.

  As she straightened, she saw him standing on the edge of the practice field, all garbed in fine clothes and carrying a battered wooden box.