“Of course it will,” Havilar said. “We routed three different threats. We ought to have stayed behind and been called heroes.”
Farideh kept quiet. There was no way, not with the Ashmadai as numerous as she’d seen, that she would stay in Neverwinter another moment. Worse, she wasn’t sure they’d been all that successful. “Did you see Rohini’s body?”
Havilar smirked. “On the end of my glaive. Do you think that monster’s going to eat her?”
“She didn’t burn up.”
“Of course she didn’t. No one set fire to her corpse. That would be horrible.”
“She’s a devil, Havi. If she died, her body should have burst into flames like those erinyes’ did.”
“Oh.” Havilar looked down at the city a moment longer. “Maybe she’s a strange kind of devil?” she said in a small voice. Farideh only hoped Rohini wouldn’t come looking for them once she’d healed herself. Whatever the Sovereignty had made of her, she was as angry as she’d been before and far more powerful.
Havilar went to sit beside Brin. Farideh broke another stone. Perhaps he would be able to convince them. Perhaps he’d be all right.
From the road to the south, the steady sound of horses thudded. Glancing back, Farideh saw a figure mounted on a heavy charger, plate mail gleaming in the sunrise. She cursed to herself. Tired as she was, it would be easier to let the rider hurl insults and ride on.
Brin had collapsed into a pile near the middle of the road, Havilar beside him. “I feel as though I could sleep for all the rest of my life. Where are we going after this?”
“I need to be in Waterdeep,” Tam said, grimly studying the curve of the High Road as it traveled away from the coast. “I’m expected there by the end of the tenday.” He paused, looking back at the twins, as if he was no longer certain what to make of them. “You’re welcome to travel with me until then.”
“If we stop in Waterdeep,” Farideh said, “we might have better luck finding a bounty. Or a guard’s job.”
“Fair enough,” Mehen said, tucking the map away. “We need to reach—”
But the rider coming up the southbound path kicked the charger into a gallop. Farideh started to step out of the road, to make way, but the rider, a woman with cropped black hair slowed, staring fixedly at the lot of them.
“Aubrin Crownsilver!” the woman bellowed.
Brin turned, and his eyes widened. “Hrast,” he said.
“Does she mean you?” Havilar asked.
The rider pulled her charger up short a dozen feet from Brin and drew her sword from its sheath. “All of you put your hands atop your heads and leave your weapons untouched.”
“Or what?” Mehen said.
“Or I shall make certain you are charged with the full range of your crimes,” she said. “Put your hands atop your heads.”
“I think we can beat her,” Havilar whispered, moving closer to Brin. “Wait,” Brin said.
“It’s better than letting her arrest you!”
“She’s not going to arrest me,” he said. “It’s Constancia.”
“Who?”
“Your bounty,” he said. “My cousin.”
The woman in the armor set her blade even with Farideh’s chest, not an ounce of fear in her cold gray eyes. The hair that had been so neatly coiffed in the printing was disheveled and filthy, but her armor put mirrors to shame.
The tip of her sword twitched, motioning Farideh aside. “Step away from His Grace.”
“His what?” Havilar cried. She gave Brin a little shove. “What did she call you?”
“His Grace,” Constancia said, “Lord Aubrin Crownsilver of Cormyr. Stand aside or I shall detain you for kidnapping.”
“You can try,” Farideh said, drawing on her powers. She’d be damned if she would let this woman push her aside after everything else. Whatever Brin was or wasn’t, he’d stood beside her while Rohini tried to destroy Neverwinter.
Mehen stepped forward, peering at the woman, a slow smile curving the corners of his mouth and baring his yellowed teeth. He pulled the bounty poster from his breastplate. “I beg your pardon, good-woman. But I think you’re the one under arrest.”
Constancia looked at the printing, then at Mehen’s terrible smile. She looked past him at Farideh, and the warlock met the gray-eyed glare without flinching. Constancia blinked first and took in the shimmer of violet flames in Farideh’s hands.
“Oh, they’re what you think,” Farideh said hotly.
The knight stared at Farideh a moment longer, before dropping her sword in the dust and setting her hands upon her own head. “Oh Aubrin,” she sighed. “What have you gotten into?”
THE PALACE OF OSSEIA, MALBOLGE, THE HELLS
THE SOUND OF GLASYA TAPPING HER SCOURGE AGAINST THE SIDE OF her throne was all Lorcan knew. Even the hellwasps had ceased their buzzing as the archduchess surveyed the devils held before her by myriad spells that left Lorcan at least, if not all of them, still and mute. He did not dare look up from the pattern of the floor.
The hellwasps had made their report, given the statements of the lesser devils for them, and fallen quiet long ago. All that remained was for Glasya to pass judgment. All that remained was for Lorcan to die.
“Well,” Glasya said after an eternity, “there seems to be plenty of blame to share. Invadiah for failing in her mission. These erinyes who served her for failing in their task. The cambion”—and Lorcan’s prison seemed to turn to fire; he still couldn’t scream—“for interfering and for murdering my agents, for sowing discord. The erinyes, Aornos and Nemea, for failing in their task and being murdered. And of course … Rohini.”
Tap, tap, tap.
“The traitor has not been recovered?” she asked. No one answered Glasya, and she sighed, a sound that sent shivers of horror through his own breath. Like a great beast opening wide its jaws—Glasya’s displeasure meant all of their heads.
What would she do if she knew Lorcan suspected her true plans? If she had any inkling that Farideh had marked Glasya’s strange machinations and picked out the far more plausible case—that Glasya sought foremost to make an enemy for Asmodeus of the Sovereignty? Would Glasya care? Would Glasya strike him down for merely guessing? Would she send spined devils to hunt Farideh across Toril’s face?
He stared fixedly at a spot on the floor and wished to never, never know.
Lorcan’s vision went suddenly blank, as if his wish and his fear had been granted in the same moment—but no, he was still breathing. Then he felt his knees buckle, pressing him down into the floor, and heard the thuds of the rest of the court forced to prostrate themselves.
The sound of the god of evil entering his daughter’s court was no sound—and yet Lorcan’s ears felt as if someone were blasting cannons beside his head. The air was suddenly hot enough to make Lorcan’s skin sting and the smell of brimstone burned his nose.
“My lord father,” Glasya said. “You honor us.”
You overstep your bounds, child. If Glasya’s voice made Lorcan shiver, Asmodeus’s made his stomach threaten to empty. Shards of glass ground into his brain would seem less wrong. I am here to see to your own punishment.
“I beg my lord’s pardon,” Glasya said without a trace of fear. “Am I to be punished for the failings of a few of my retinue in completing their tasks?”
Do not take me for a fool. I am all too aware of the damage you have done in Neverwinter.
All at once, Lorcan’s remaining senses were snuffed out like a candle—he could not hear the archdevils, could not smell the scorched remains of previous prisoners, could not feel his own breath coming into and out of his lungs. He simply wasn’t.
Whatever Asmodeus had to say to Glasya, it was not for a mere cambion’s ears.
Just as abruptly, everything returned, and though he had no sense of how much time had rushed passed, he was sure every other devil in the palace—perhaps every devil in Malbolge—had felt the same thing.
“You have me mistaken,” Glasya said. “I
would have the reports of the circumstances on Toril read again, if my lord father commands it.”
Do you seek to overthrow me child?
Glasya paused before replying. “Do you know you’ve never asked me that before, my lord?”
Answer the question. Here and now.
“I would not insult your intelligence, my lord. I am your daughter—of course, I would overthrow you given the opportunity. You’d be disappointed, Papa, if I did not.”
Asmodeus’s pride and rage mingled into a white-hot heat that burned across the court.
“But,” the archduchess continued, “you will be pleased to note I am not a fool either. My court is barely established. My powers are at a meek and tender stage. I am your vassal and your willing servant—I would not pretend to your throne. Not yet. Not for quite some time.”
I should kill you, whelp.
“You won’t,” Glasya said, without pride or daring. “There is not a Lord in the Hells who would be so honest with you. I am of use to you still. Without me you would have not been apprised of the Sovereignty’s growth. Or what they have down in that Chasm.”
Again Lorcan’s senses stopped, as if something at the core of his being had been snuffed out. This, he thought, must be what the dead feel. When the sensation of Malbolge returned around him, he nearly swooned.
“My lord father is quite wise,” Glasya said, her voice now slightly rattled, “and very generous. We shall of course cede the battle to you and your blessed followers.”
As you should.
As she has wished all along, Lorcan thought, and wished he did not think.
“Since you grace our court, my lord, would you like to pass judgment as well? The traitor succubus is lost, for now, but I have a flock of erinyes, some cultists, my dear Invadiah, and her cambion son. My lord surely knows, wise as he is, what has occurred: who is to be punished for this failure?”
If Lorcan could have done anything he would have wept, shivered, fallen to the ground—the terror that gripped his very core at Glasya’s disdain, at her father’s consideration was more than he could bear, and yet he was forced to bear it. No demotion for cambions. He was going to die.
The erinyes, Asmodeus said. Invadiah is demoted.
“Of course,” the archduchess said lightly. If Asmodeus had thought to crush her by ordering the demotion of her most exalted erinyes, he was not satisfied, and the air burned hotter still. “For it is, after all, the parent who shapes the children and plants the seed of their success or failure. A wise decision.”
Invadiah’s screams drowned the sound of the scourge and the sound of the splintering bones and splattering blood. They rivaled the terrible drone of Asmodeus’s presence.
An ear-splitting crescendo, and both Invadiah’s screams and Asmodeus’s presence ended, clearing Lorcan’s vision. The god of evil was gone.
Lorcan looked to his mother. Huddled in the torn red flesh of her former body, a shivering creature with long black hair and pale, cool skin with a pair of batlike wings curled around her stiff and bloodied form, glared down at the talons of her hands, still pressed flat against the oozing floor. Invadiah, the succubus. For his mother, it might be worse than dying.
“As further punishment, Invadiah’s holdings shall pass to her children. But”—Glasya snapped the scourge against the throne once more—“because the lot of you have failed me in spectacular ways, I place control over all her holdings and offspring in the hands of the only one who has shown any promise.”
For a horrible moment, Lorcan did not dare look up, afraid to see which of his cruel erinyes sisters was being given such power. Or worse—Glasya pointing the scourge at him.
“Your highness is most kind,” he heard Sairché say. She kneeled before the dais, her head lowered and a smirk tugging at her mouth. “I shall endeavor to serve you better than my predecessor.”
“See that you keep your troops in line,” Glasya said. “You shall be too easy to kill, Sairché.”
“Of course, your highness. I would request one thing?” Sairché glanced back at him. “I do not think Lorcan has learned his lesson in this. I should like him confined to the apartments of the third tower until his messes are sorted out.”
Glasya’s regard fell fully on Lorcan, and once more he made a point of keeping his eyes locked on the floor, his mind racing. Imprisoned was temporary. Imprisoned was changeable.
But if Sairché wanted him imprisoned, she wanted him out of the way—and there was only one thing Sairché wanted that she could not take with him in her path: his Kakistos heir.
“Acceptable,” Glasya said.
From the edges of the courtroom, a chain shot out, wrapped around his chest, and jerked Lorcan from his stasis, the shrapnel of the spell ripping across his nerves and leaving him breathless as the devilish jailor, itself wrapped in the heavy, spiked chains, dragged Lorcan from the court of Osseia.
As he was marched along, the sensation of a hand toying with his hair played along his scalp, and Lorcan froze. The chained devil stopped a moment, as if waiting for the presence. Lorcan held his breath.
Don’t think I’m not grateful, Glasya’s horrible voice crooned in his ear. Your sister may be persuasive, but you and I know your warlock kept things in check. Do be careful, little Lorcan. I may have need of you and her in the future.
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