“I assure you, my kitchens are much better. Have some fruit at least.” When she didn’t, he chuckled again. “Ah, still holding a grudge. Nirka— reassure her.”
Farideh tensed as the guard stepped up from behind her, a furious sneer twisting her pierced face. But Nirka only took Farideh’s plate and filled it, cutting and eating a bite of each item as she did. Then she stood, glaring at Farideh, as if this indignity were purely her doing.
“I can promise you,” Rhand said, “I’m aware of where we stand now. Of what you can do for me and my patrons. Of what your patron desires. Whatever you think of me, I hope you realize I wouldn’t jeopardize such a privilege unnecessarily.”
Farideh hoped none of her puzzlement showed. She thought of Rhand’s notes, of his crude intimations, of the drugs he’d slipped into her wine, muddling her thoughts and senses. There didn’t seem to be another way to take any of that.
But she remembered Dahl insisting that it was probably nothing, Havilar saying that Rhand was likely no worse than Lorcan. Maybe she was wrong to be so on edge. Maybe he was only an overeager suitor. Had he slipped her anything after all? Or was it only the sedative tea Tam had given her and the stirring of her pact magic?
You’re not wrong, she told herself. But then again, she’d been wrong and wrong and wrong lately.
“Sairché wasn’t very forthcoming about details,” she said, studying her plate. “What is it exactly she said I could do for you?”
“Isn’t that so like a devil?” Rhand said. “Vagaries and half truths? It must be a chore to work with them. Is your patron like that too?”
“Yes.” Farideh looked across the table, not knowing what he meant by “too,” but knowing it was better to seem sure. “So enlighten me?”
Whatever his own assurances, Rhand’s gaze still had an unsettlingly predatory quality and his eager smile did nothing to blunt it. Anger—at him, at Sairché—squeezed her chest.
“You are to assist my grand experiment.” He nodded at the plate of food in front of her, and since the guard was still standing, still clearly full of focused dislike for Farideh, she obliged and nibbled at a bun.
“In fact,” Rhand went on, “with the assistance of your particular powers, I should be able to make the advancements I’ve been stymied from reaching.”
Pain gripped the back of her head again, like a living creature latching on with many-bladed legs. Her eyes watered, and for a moment she could not focus on anything except the agony in her skull and getting her own breath in and out of her lungs.
Then the lights started again, shivering purple and black and deeper shades around Adolican Rhand—who hadn’t seemed to notice her discomfort.
“I don’t care for the term,” he was saying. “Not in this case. Though some come near that mythical status. Not many. Not enough to warrant such a melodramatic title.” He filled his goblet from a near pitcher. “At any rate, they are far trickier to identify in time than one would expect. Finding those with a trace of the divine about them, that’s a trifle. But”—he held up a hand, as if to stop her inevitable argument—“there is a difference, as you can imagine.”
“Yes. Well. I would think so,” she said, nearly choking on the words. Nirka was watching her, a jagged, lashing green light at her heart.
“My first attempts,” Adolican Rhand went on, “were focused only on those traces. It works well enough to gather some, but then I end up with too many false identifications, clogging up my experiments.”
Blue lights appeared into the empty space over his head, one after another. They grew and bled together, even as more popped into being. Farideh winced and she could hardly hear Rhand now, saying, “You can imagine the mess. It works but it’s no good for the rest of them, waiting.”
The lights once more took shape, becoming a tiefling woman trailing tattered robes. She shifted and flickered, like light cast across the surface of water, and the movement made the image of her peel away and build back up, showing skin, then muscle and viscera, bare bone, black shadow and back again—all drifting back and forth at different times, different speeds. As the light drew smooth skin over her face, the woman smiled at Farideh, and laid a bony finger to her lips.
Farideh leaped out of her seat and the ghost vanished.
“Eager indeed!” Rhand crowed. He stood as well. “Come, I’ll show you my arrangement, then we can see how you fare. Garek, Sharit, go get a group ready. Come,” he said again, holding out an arm for Farideh to take. Farideh steeled herself and took his arm, uncomfortably aware of the similarities to the last time he’d offered—the sick feeling in her stomach, her unsteady gait, the strange visions she couldn’t control.
But the lights had come on twice before she ever put a morsel in her mouth. The lights had to be something else . . . some symptom or side effect . . . some clue . . .
She had just worked up the courage to excuse herself, to try and get back to her room where she might have a modicum of privacy to sort things out, when they reached a pair of doors flanked by two more shadar-kai. Rhand eased her in ahead of him, releasing her arm.
Equipment cluttered the room—glass retorts, shelves full of components in jars and pouches and envelopes, shelves of scrolls. Another brazier, burning hot and fragrant with dried herbs. Two large tomes lay open on lecterns at either end, and between them sat three vessels of water the size of shields, magic bristling around their edges. Windows lined one wall of the room, and the guards pushed the shutters open to let in more light. Two younger men in wizards’ robes hunched over open scrolls. They stood straighter as Rhand entered, but he didn’t acknowledge them.
“This tenday’s draw,” Rhand explained gesturing at the basins. “It has to be distilled carefully, with much of the ordinary water removed. A score of buckets full, and this is what’s left.”
Farideh peered at the water. It swirled gently in its confines, looking thick and cold and gleaming with an oily opalescence in the light that streamed through the wall of windows. “And what is it?”
He was silent so long that Farideh wondered if perhaps he’d already said, and now she’d exposed her inattention. When she looked up, though, he had a faraway expression as he gazed at the basins. He looked at her and smiled.
“They are what remains of the fabled Fountains of Memory.”
Dahl crept back down the hillside as dawn broke over the mountains. Late, he thought. Which meant he was farther north than he’d guessed. The dozens of buildings he’d seen multiplied to scores—no, hundreds in the gray light. He slipped in between them, down alleyways, past dark doorways, past closed windows . . . past gardens with the last weedy tops of carrots and parsnips gone to seed. Past laundry lines, a hobbyhorse carved from a gnarled branch. Dahl frowned.
Lord of Secrets, he thought, ducking into the open door of an empty hut at the corner of two larger pathways. Don’t let me have sent such a dire message over a village.
But a village should have had more than just huts—there were no smiths or markets or farmlands to be seen. No pigs in the streets, no dogs. No horses or carts. No taverns, he thought, all too aware of the faint headache he’d woken with. He had his flask still—a sip here and there would keep it from getting worse.
He took another before he nudged the shutters open and watched, crouched in the shadows as people started coming out into the streets. With each one, his suspicions were confirmed: the “villagers” didn’t belong, all mixed together, by the shores of the icy lake.
Dahl counted men, women, and children. Skins of every hue. Humans, elves, a dwarf, a pair of half-orcs. A full orc walking alone and cutting his eyes back and forth across the street. If it were a village, he thought, everyone in the North would have heard of it.
Not enough to warrant using the second sending. There was no doubting this wasn’t a village. There was no being sure—not yet—what exactly it was.
Dahl peered closer at the group of humans standing outside, at the villagers who passed by in the meantime. Not one pe
rson wore a weapon of any sort, not even the fishing knives you’d expect to see in a lakeside village.
Except for the shadar-kai. Dahl heard the gang of three jangling up the street before he saw them. The villagers heard as well, and quickly got out of sight. A woman, her auburn hair gathered under a black kerchief, leaped in the door of Dahl’s hiding place.
Dahl froze. The woman stepped behind the wall between the door and the window, watching past the doorjamb as the shadar-kai, dripping chains and blades and sneering laughter, passed by. The woman cursed softly and rested her head against the wall.
Not villagers, Dahl thought. But not Netherese soldiers either.
“I’m going to ask you to be quiet,” Dahl said, low and quick, “and tell me if you can see any of those guards from where you stand.”
To her credit, the woman didn’t jump at the sound of Dahl’s voice. She stood a little straighter, and without looking over at Dahl swept her gaze over the street. “No.” She turned and looked Dahl over, not a little fear tensing her frame. She wore the same faded, mended clothes the rest of the villagers wore—as if she had only the one set. All the buttons were missing from her padded jacket and she’d tied a string around her chest, to keep it shut.
“What are you doing out of the fortress?”
Dahl held up his hands. “I’m not with the guards.”
The woman’s eyes flicked over Dahl’s stolen uniform. “Is that a fact?”
“Tharra!” a child’s voice shouted from outside. “You can come out!”
“Go on without me,” the woman called back, eyes on Dahl. “Tell Oota I’ll be there shortly. So whoever you are, keep that in mind,” she said more softly to Dahl. “Obould’s shieldmaiden’ll care if I disappear. Is your scheme worth that?” She shifted back from Dahl, making her jacket gape. Out of the corner of his eye, Dahl registered the edge of something rounded and metal that dragged on the fabric of the woman’s shirt.
“I don’t know what that means,” Dahl said, coming nearer, hands spread. “And I don’t have a scheme.”
It was the wrong move, and Dahl should have known it, he’d realize later. Not a sign he trusted Tharra so much as giving the woman the opportunity to strike out, punching Dahl hard enough to make the Harper see stars and fall back onto the cot. When he sat up, Tharra had fled.
Idiot, he thought, pressing gently on his nose and wincing at the blood his fingers came away with. Even a stranger would rather hit you than help you. At least Tharra hadn’t pulled that weapon in her coat—
He frowned to himself, looking up at the reed roof. Not a weapon. A pin. The edge of metal under her jacket had had the same shape, the same curve as the old Harper pin Dahl had worn for a time. Watching Gods—he rolled to his feet and went to stand in the doorway of the hut. There was no sign of the woman, no sign of the child who’d called to him. Only the strange villagers passing this way and that, bundled in their thin cloaks and worn jackets.
And a trail of white daisies peeking merrily through the half-frozen mud, too early in the season to be in such bright bloom.
Mehen made himself wait for Havilar to wake up and come down for morningfeast, uncertain it was the right course. He had hardly slept, arguing late into the night with Tam and his Harpers, until Brin made him leave. They weren’t saying Farideh was a traitor. They weren’t planning to hunt her down. But Mehen knew Tam well enough to know he wasn’t going to throw out the evidence for being absurd, and no amount of shouting from Mehen would make the difference. They’d go as soon as Dahl had better information.
He wished he’d kept Havilar close all the same. He wished he’d bundled both girls up and whisked them out of this filthy city, out of harm’s way.
He’d made the Harpers swear to take him with them. No one was going to tell Clanless Mehen to cool his heels while Netherese and devils and planes knew what else menaced his daughter. Just the thought enraged him—and he held tight to that rage, knowing the alternative would undo him all over again. He wouldn’t lose Farideh again.
Mehen considered the stairs up to the inn’s rooms, and tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Havilar would need to come as well—a thought that nearly made him willing to stay behind. She wasn’t strong enough yet.
But he couldn’t abandon Farideh. And he couldn’t abandon Havi either.
Mehen sighed and stretched the tension from his neck. The sun was well up and still no Havilar. Probably nothing, he thought. Probably just wants to be alone a bit. He went up the stairs anyway, unable to stand another lonesome moment.
Once upon a time, Havilar had insisted on sleeping on the floor beside his bed—not crawling in like a baby—and once she’d drifted off, Mehen would have lifted her in beside him, off the cold boards. But Havilar wasn’t his wild little girl anymore, seeking comfort from a nightmare. He sighed as he turned down the hall. So many years without them—he felt as clumsy and out of practice being their father as Havilar did with her glaive.
Listen to your gut, he told himself, because there was nothing else he could do.
Brin was standing in the hallway, staring at Havilar’s shut door. Mehen paused, watching the young man for a moment, wanting as much to leave them both to their privacy and to run him off before he could do something to break Havilar’s heart on top of everything else.
There was no word for the knowledge you weren’t supposed to have—how differently would things have turned out if Mehen had found out about the Cormyrean lordling and his daughter a few short tendays after the fact? He couldn’t imagine being anything but furious. But years after? When the boy had become something like a son, something like a friend? Mehen didn’t know what to hope for anymore, except that Brin would be kind to her.
Brin looked up at Mehen and gave him a wan smile. “Well met.”
“Well met. Any news?”
Brin shrugged. “Lot of talk. Tam’s pretty convinced this is bigger than just Farideh. He wants a full expedition, but the others are trying to hold him off until Dahl gets another sending through with more information.” Brin sighed. “Assuming he can. Tam won’t admit he’s worried about Dahl too.”
“Worried he’s a liar,” Mehen said. “Why would she work with Shade?”
“Tam knows,” Brin said. “Still, it bears investigation. Why else would Dahl mention it?”
Mehen bristled. “Because he’s excitable and he doesn’t like her. He said as much.”
“He told you they fought because you scare the piss out of him, much as you do everyone,” Brin reminded him gently. He shook his head. “And who doesn’t Dahl fight with? But all I mean is, there are Netherese involved. So the Harpers need to be involved.”
“They could be involved faster,” Mehen said. If they were too slow, too cautious . . . He tapped his tongue against the rough roof of his mouth, reminding himself to be calm. “Did you sit down with her yet?” Mehen asked, nodding at the door.
“Almost. I will. It’s not easy.” Brin shook his head. “You know. You know exactly. Terrible and wonderful and . . .”
“And the words aren’t there,” Mehen finished. “Might be best. You lay everything out too quick, you’ll send her running. You don’t need to be the thing that breaks her.”
Brin nodded, as if he didn’t believe it, but he didn’t have a better plan.
“Might be the gift hiding in all this,” Mehen said. “There’s more time before we have to go back.”
Brin chuckled once, bitter and aching. “Not much of a gift.” He turned away from the door. “She’s still asleep.”
Mehen squeezed past him and pounded on the door. “Havi? Havi, you need to get up!”
Silence.
Mehen pressed the side of his head to the door and tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. There were no sounds—not the faint drone of Havilar’s sleeping breath, not the slight shift of her, awake and annoyed—and the taste of her scent was dull and old. Mehen’s heart thundered in his ears as he wrenched the door open.
&nbs
p; The bed was empty. Her glaive, her haversack, her cloak—all gone.
There was only a note on the bed.
And Clanless Mehen, for the first time since Brin had shown up in Suzail and told him his daughters were gone, felt panic sink its frozen claws into the deepest part of him, and pull him earthward. You think the world has hurt you? it might have whispered. There is so much more pain for you.
Steady, he told himself. Steady.
Brin pushed past him, read the note, and cursed. “She’s left. With Lorcan. They’ve gone after Farideh.” He scanned the note again. “They took horses.”
Mehen reached for the note. “She wouldn’t have gone with Lorcan.”
Brin held tight to the sheet. “No. He says he has some way to find Farideh, so they’re following that. North. Gods damn it, Havi.”
“That karshoji henish!” First Farideh, now Havilar—you fool, he thought, you utter fool. He should have killed the devil when he’d had a chance. He should have stopped this, all of this, ages ago. “Tell Tam I’ve gone.”
“Wait!” Brin called. “Mehen you can’t—”
“Don’t you tell me I can’t,” Mehen roared. “I know what I can do. I’m not going to sit here and—”
“Mehen you can’t get to them both,” Brin said. “You know it. There isn’t a horse in that stable—in any stable—that can carry you that fast. By the time you get Havi back, the Harpers will have gone. And they’ll have made up their minds about Farideh, with or without you.”
It was true. He couldn’t be sure how long Havilar had been gone, how far she’d traveled, but with the scent of her so cold and stale it had to be hours and hours.
“If I go now,” Brin said. “I might be able to get her back before the Harpers leave. But if I don’t, you can still go after Farideh.”
There was no part of Clanless Mehen that didn’t rebel at the plan—he would not sit back like an old man and wait for others to do his duty He would not let the boy who held his daughter’s heart in his hands shatter it out in the wilds, where that devil might pick up the pieces.
The Adversary Page 15
