Brimstone Angels

by Erin M. Evans

  Farideh flushed again, annoyed. “So you suddenly care about me?”

  The fear and the rage fled Lorcan’s features and they settled into his familiar smirk. “I take care of all my belongings. I brought you something. Timely, it seems.” As if from nowhere, he withdrew a rod as long as her forearm. Etched all over with the same swirls that made up her scar and tipped with a cloudy gray piece of quartz. As he placed it in her hands, it was as if the connection that brought her spells into being cleared and straightened, the power flowing more easily from its source.

  Her scar prickled.

  “What is it?”

  “A little gift,” Lorcan said. “To keep you safe.”

  “Unless the three triangles are around,” she said.

  “Unless that.”

  She turned the rod over in her hands. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sure you’ll return the favor soon enough,” he said. “You’re still heading to Luskan, aren’t you?”

  “That direction.”

  “Promise me this, Farideh,” he said, tipping her chin up. She stiffened at his touch. “Don’t stop along the way. The cities aren’t safe.”

  With that, he vanished.

  Brin cleared his throat, and Farideh was surprised to realize she’d forgotten he was there. She flushed to her temples.

  “It isn’t what you think.”

  “Oh?” Brin said. “Tell me what I think again?”

  “Please,” she said, a lump in her throat, “just please, listen. It’s not … I’m not evil. I’m not a devil. I’m not anything like this looks.”

  “It looks like you have a pact with a fiend. It looks like you’re not so much a sorcerer as … as a warlock.”

  Farideh bit her lip. “Yes, all right, that’s true.”

  “So that’s the truth, then?” Brin said. “Why you were cast out of your village?”

  “It’s the rest of the truth,” she said. “Taking the pact made the house explode.”

  “And you don’t see why that might make people upset?” he said. “You don’t see why they might not want you around? Loyal Torm, I thought you had a little sense.”

  She had sense enough to know that this had been bound to happen from the start. She closed her eyes a moment, to quell the fury that felt as if it might burst out of her.

  “Brin,” she said, “do you know the most mischievous, troublesome thing I’d ever done before that day?”

  Brin hesitated. “No.”

  “I taught Havilar all the Draconic swear words I’d picked up from listening in on Mehen and his friends. The most careless thing I’d ever done? I didn’t tell Mehen for a day when Havilar broke her wrist, because she begged me not to.” She opened her eyes and met Brin’s. “And I told him anyway when I saw how it had swollen.”

  “So?”

  “So, I wasn’t trouble,” she said. “I was as good as I could be. I made a mistake. I didn’t take the pact because I wanted to misbehave or hurt anyone. It didn’t happen because I was troublesome and out of hand. It was a mistake, and no matter how bad a mistake, that is not a flaw in me! The only person I hurt was myself.”

  Brin shook his head slowly. “But you made a pact with a devil. Loyal Fury. How could you? How could you?”

  “What do you want from me, Brin?” she said hotly. “I’m not like you. I can’t just decide to go off into the world and make my way without help.”

  “There are a lot more ways to get help than offering up your soul.”

  “He doesn’t have my soul,” she said. “And even if he did, so what? I’m a tiefling. A soul was never a surety.”

  “Don’t start with that,” he said. “This has nothing to do with what you are. It’s what you’ve done.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Oh? Is that so? Then you think a human girl, an elf girl, Hells, even a dragonborn girl would have gotten the same? That she would have spent her whole life doing everything they said, taking every snide comment in stride, and made one mistake—one very bad mistake—and had only her sister and her guardian and a devil on her side?” Tears blurred her sight and she turned from Brin to wipe them away. “Not one other person tried to help. Not one other person took my side. Not one pointed out that it might be possible to free me of the pact. You would have thought I’d been wicked right from the cradle the way they responded. He was right,” she said half to herself. “He’s always right.” Farideh looked back at Brin. “You’re the one with no sense if you think being a tiefling had nothing to do with that.”

  Brin couldn’t quite meet her eye. “You still said yes,” he said, more softly. “And … I cannot understand that. Why would you tie yourself to something so evil?”

  “He’s … He’s not so bad.” Farideh looked off toward the road, her heart leaden in her chest. “Haven’t you ever just … you want something, anything, to make things different than they are? You’d give anything to just have a little bit of control over your life.”

  “So you give someone else control?” Brin stopped himself. The tightness around his eyes relaxed. “Maybe,” he said after a moment.

  “Perhaps there are other ways,” she said. “And I would consider them if they came along. But that day, my choices were to be crushed under the weight of the world’s expectations or … to take a little bit of control from a devil.”

  “You’re playing with very dangerous powers—”

  “I know what I’m ‘playing with,’ ” she said. “And you’ve seen me use those powers. I saved you. I stopped those orcs. I’m not … I don’t hurt people unless I have to. Does it count for anything that I use the powers he gives me for good things?”

  “Yes,” Brin said after a moment, “for you. But you’re taking the powers of the Hells. You’re not going to convince me those aren’t purely evil.” He looked back at the spot where Lorcan had stood. “And him …”

  “Lorcan,” she said. “His name’s Lorcan.”

  “Loyal Fury,” Brin said. “You can’t tell me he’s safe.”

  “He’s safe enough. Mehen doesn’t like him. But he’s never brought me to harm.”

  “Yet,” Brin said.

  “It’s a tool,” she said. “I can use the pact to protect people. To help people. It’s better than my damned sword.”

  “Even if it is like a sword,” Brin said. “It can still hurt you. He can still hurt you.”

  As if she hadn’t heard that before. As if she hadn’t thought it herself. Farideh shook her head. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Brin didn’t have a response to that. He shook his head again, as if he didn’t like the way their conversation had gone.

  “Does he always … overreact like that? Push you around?”

  “No,” Farideh said. She thought again of the symbol and the way it pulled at her. “Something frightened him.”

  “That’s a funny way to be frightened,” Brin said. “Do Havilar and Mehen know he treats you that way?”

  “Let’s just go back to the camp,” Farideh said. She started toward the other side of the meadow, then turned to Brin. “Don’t tell anyone. Please. Especially not Tam.”

  “Why would you think I’d do something like that? I don’t like your pact, but I’m not going to get you in trouble.”

  “I … don’t,” she said. “Not specifically. I’m just worried he’ll find out.” She rolled the rod between her hands. “There’s something strange about him.”

  Brin stopped. “Strange how?”

  She shrugged. “He’s always watching, as if he’s trying to figure something out. Mehen trusts him—which is pretty strange too.” She sighed. “I am really sorry I didn’t tell you. I don’t … I don’t ever know how to bring it up.”

  Brin sighed too. “I know better than you think. I mean,” he added quickly, “not that all the running away is as dangerous as it is to admit you’re a warlock with an infernal pact.” He wet his lips. “Do you hate all priests?”

  “The woman who led the call to kick me out of the village was
a priestess of Chauntea,” she said. “A tiefling too.”

  “She’s not every priest.”

  “I’ve yet to meet one who thought much at all of me. I don’t trust them. I can’t trust them when I don’t know what to expect from them.” She kicked the deadfall. “When common knowledge is that you haven’t got a soul worth saving, it tends to make them do things I’d rather they not.”

  “I think you have a soul,” Brin offered.

  “You also think we’ll believe your hair is really that color,” Farideh pointed out. “Even when you’re sweating brown. Let’s get back to camp.”

  Lorcan released the charm and with it, the invisibility that had cloaked him fell away. He watched as Farideh and Brin disappeared into the forest on the other side of the meadow, holding firm against the rage that threatened to overtake him and drive him out across the field where he could rip that little shit’s head right off. He supposed, with a certain studied calm, that was his mother’s blood coming through.

  And Farideh …

  She hadn’t listened to the boy. Not then. But if Brin stayed around much longer, he would keep talking and cajoling and arguing. He’d wear her down the way Lorcan couldn’t seem to.

  It probably wouldn’t take much, Lorcan thought, considering how she’d threatened to go to Sairché. She was pulling away, stepping out of her proper place. Listening to Mehen. Treating Lorcan like something she could set aside.

  Like a tool. Like her sword.

  She’s not as lamb-brained as you think she is either, he mused. The most difficult warlock in his retinue by far.

  If only Lorcan could have snatched Farideh up and left Brin standing dumbstruck in the forest, so close to one of the groves of the Ashmadai, the proud and bloodthirsty cultists of Asmodeus.

  Lords, how Lorcan had panicked when he’d seen her reaching for the sign of Asmodeus. If he hadn’t been scrying, she might have been lured into the Ashmadai’s hands. Whatever they did next, he’d have lost his Kakistos heir for certain. He ran his fingers through his hair. Lost her in a bloody, bloody fashion. The residual magic of a hundred sacrifices packed those groves. They didn’t play nicely with other archdevils’ pawns either.

  Ashmadai in Neverwinter Wood, he thought. The archduchess’s only agent in Neverwinter, his mother had said. And Glasya was doing something her father shouldn’t know about.

  Stop thinking about it, he admonished. He didn’t want to puzzle it out. He didn’t want to stumble on the answer. But he needed to know enough to keep Farideh safe.

  “She won’t go to Neverwinter,” he said. “She’s going to Luskan.” He smiled. “And the little nit will be dead by morning.”

  Vartan, Rohini thought, was no Brother Anthus.

  In the midst of one of his interminable lectures, the half-elf poured her a glass of zzar, and Rohini smiled and thanked him. Inwardly, she was twisting with an impatience to rival Invadiah’s, but outwardly she had a face to maintain.

  “So the question is obvious,” Vartan said. “Why might a god like Helm’s mantle be taken up by another, while a god like Mystra’s portfolio is left untouched?”

  “That is a good question,” Rohini said. He did not want her opinion. He wanted her to listen to his. It left her plenty of time to study Vartan for weak points.

  Rohini had come to Neverwinter with a simple task: corrupt Brother Anthus, the Sovereignty’s darling, and turn him into a tool for Glasya’s cause. Don’t ask what the cause is, just make him amenable the way she knew best, and await further orders. She’d remade herself a stern and capable healer—pretty, but the sort who doesn’t notice or worry about her prettiness. The sort a certain kind of man felt clever for noticing.

  Anthus had noticed. He’d brought her into his circle, shared his wisdom with her, drawn her into his confidences. Not even Invadiah could have complained of her progress, and none of it had required more magic than the shapeshifting. Rohini was the best, after all.

  She picked up the glass of zzar and swirled the pale liquor.

  Anthus had been an older man, his hair thin and silver and his face gaunt, but his appetites robust and his eyes sharp. It was not such a lie that her little nurse might find the good brother attractive enough to bed.

  Rohini suspected not even the devils knew, but abed with a succubus, one was cracked open, vulnerable as a sacrifice pinned to an altar. In Anthus’s arms she’d seen his thoughts, his fears, the truth of his connection to the Sovereignty. She ran a tongue over her lips. Nothing as exhilarating as digging your hands into someone’s secret heart.

  Afterward, Anthus had poured glasses of zzar, sat down in his chair, looked her in the eye, and said, “I know you, succubus.”

  Rohini had acted hurt, that he should call her such a name. But he went on. “You’re not the first to come to Neverwinter,” he said. “I’ll wager you knew that one. You wouldn’t go around with that hair otherwise.”

  He swirled the zzar in his glass, oblivious to the challenge he was laying on her. Rohini pulled her magic to her, prepared to cast the net of her domination, when Anthus spoke again.

  “Arunika,” he said, and her spell shattered into pieces. “That was her name. Herzgo’s redheaded slut.”

  Had Glasya known? Rohini had wondered, and still wondered. Had Invadiah? Had they sent her because her sister had fled the Hells and holed up here in Neverwinter? Had Arunika been one of the failed scouts? Had they sent Rohini to find her or did they already know she’d find nothing?

  “Where is she?” Rohini had asked.

  “Dead of course,” Anthus said, and she realized for the first time how cruel and cold his eyes were, how empty. “Silly bitch hitched her wagon to the wrong man.”

  Which, Anthus would later have admitted, had he voice to, was the wrong thing to say.

  Rohini stared into the glass of zzar she held, while Vartan expounded on dead gods and dead ways. She had removed Anthus’s body, rearranging things to make it clear one of the dreadful creatures of the Chasm had killed him—after all, what else would dismember a body so?—as he took a walk through the less protected part of town. The Lord Protector ordered more patrols to beat back the Chasm’s horrors. Rohini made herself distraught and clung to Anthus’s colleagues, searching for a likely replacement. She had chosen Vartan because he was eager and a little desperate, but also a little rash.

  But it wasn’t enough. Her mission was still in peril. Killing Anthus had been the greatest mistake she had ever made.

  No—not a mistake. A flaw. She had killed Anthus because she wasn’t wholly a devil. Not yet. The rage that had seized her when Anthus taunted Rohini—called her sister a silly bitch—had made the erinyes’ cold fury look like a tantrum. It had been imprudent. It had been a passion of the moment. But it had sated something dark and frenzied that curled around the core of Rohini, that mad, demon spark the devils always whispered about.

  I will not do so again, Rohini swore to herself. She would not end as Arunika had, a slave to her no-longer-constant nature. She was a devil now. She could become anything she wished if she played their game long enough.

  “Have you discovered,” she asked Vartan, “how the … masters of the Chasm fit into this mystery?”

  Vartan stopped, stunned that she’d interrupted him. He flushed. “Well. It’s not so simple is it? They are … well, we aren’t sure what they are, are we? Only that Anthus believed they were there, and so do … does the gentleman from before.” He waved a hand. “I’m beginning to believe there are much worthier areas of consideration. The Order of Blue Fire, for example …”

  Rohini smiled tightly and let him go on again. Vartan was certainly no Anthus. When she’d killed him, Anthus had already been well-corrupted by the Abolethic Sovereignty. He’d had their secrets and a modicum of their trust, but also a strange power that made him speak in riddling prophecy on occasion. It hadn’t helped him see Rohini’s blades. Vartan had come to her a blank slate.

  Whatever mortals liked to believe of themselves, Roh
ini knew a pretty face and a warm body weren’t the keys to a true seduction. Often enough with other succubi—sloppy, overeager ones like Arunika had been—that might be all the effort they put forth. Simple, satisfying, but not particularly convincing—a pretty face only worked longer than a night on the weakest sorts, and whatever mortals believed about themselves, most of them were not so desperate as that.

  No, to truly seduce someone away from the path they’d made themselves took cunning and skill, took attention to detail and to the subtle shades of other people’s hopes and fears. Vartan might have been a lonely scholar of a man, and Arunika could have gotten him in bed and all his secrets out in the span of breaths. But Rohini didn’t need secrets: she needed action. She needed someone who desperately wanted to impress her, to surpass her. Pull the right levers and he’d do everything she needed without being told.

  That plan didn’t please Invadiah at all.

  “You have three days,” she’d said. “And if you do not have the aboleth for me, I will hand you back to Glasya and take care of matters myself.” And end up, Rohini thought, with a score of dead or spellscarred erinyes and a riled pack of aboleths, the ancient creatures that lurked in the depths of the Chasm.

  Why Glasya wanted one of the giant, tentacled monsters from beyond, Rohini didn’t know. It was the sort of secret she knew better than to know. For all Rohini cared, Glasya wanted a new mount and thought a slime-coated tentacle-whale would do nicely.

  Lords of the Hells, she hoped that was Glasya’s plan. When she’d been sent into Neverwinter, she’d merely been told to corrupt Anthus. Then to corrupt Vartan and to get him to tell her everything he knew about the Chasm. Then it became find out everything he knew about the aboleths. Then it was to goad him into gathering more information and putting himself into the circle of the Abolethic Sovereignty’s proxies, their mind-controlled servitors.

  Now it was to get Invadiah an aboleth.

  With every step, Invadiah’s words and actions spelled one thing very clearly: this mission was a gamble. If everything went well, Rohini and Invadiah both might be promoted.