Sairche fingered the pilfered ring on her chain. “I’ll fetch them for you,” she offered, and she scurried out the door before Invadiah could tell her no.
But she hung back and pressed herself to the hard bone wall beside the door, listening as Invadiah said, “You can have the warlock. Consider her a gift for your good work. Do what you need to get things done.”
“Oh,” Rohini said, and the purr had returned to her voice, “I’ll make very good use of her.” There was a muted flash as the succubus reactivated the portal, and was gone, followed by a few choice insults from the erinyes.
Sairche pursed her lips and waited long enough to mimic a sprint to the treasury and back. Damn it, gods damn it. Rohini didn’t even know the value of what she’d been handed, didn’t even care. Sairche’s plans were ruined.
No. The game’s not over, she thought, slipping back into the room, holding the green stone ring.
“There was only one,” she said apologetically. “I suspect Lorcan has the other.”
Invadiah curled her lip and grabbed the ring roughly from Sairche. She stormed from the room and down the hall to the antechamber, her daughters trailing.
Ahead of the door, she stopped. Sairche ducked to peer around her half-sisters’ knees. Hovering beside the door to the Needle of the Crossroads were two hellwasps, smaller than the ones that had been guarding Invadiah’s chambers.
“Invadiah,” one said. “We are to assist you.”
“Assist me in what?”
“In correcting the error that resulted in the deaths of the queen’s worshipers.”
“I have my agents,” Invadiah replied.
“We are to accompany them,” the hellwasp replied. “The queen commands it, and so we must.”
“It is ill-advised to delay in this manner,” the other hellwasp said, its mandibles clicking in agitation. Or something, Sairche thought, wrinkling her nose. Who knew what the hellwasps felt. “We are ordered and we must follow orders.”
Invadiah grit her teeth a moment. “Very well. Move aside.”
The hellwasps parted, and Invadiah entered the room. As Lorcan had before, she activated the mirror. The surface shimmered and cleared to show Lorcan, skulking through the ruined streets of Neverwinter. Invadiah grabbed Aornos by the arm and hauled her in front of the mirror.
“There, that place. Study it. Fix it in your mind.” She stuffed the other erinyes’s finger into the green stone ring. When Aornos turned away from the mirror, and toward the Needle, it took several long moments of her concentrating to make the portal open.
“Grab hold of your sister’s hand,” Invadiah ordered. “The ring will allow you to carry her through. But no one else.” She turned to where the hellwasps hovered. “And that is where your orders cannot be followed,” she said. “There is no other trigger ring left in the Hells. If Aornos ferries you back and forth, she risks disrupting the portal and-worse-alerting Lorcan.”
“We are prepared,” one of the hellwasps said. “The queen has readied us.”
Its mandibles parted and from its soft, center mouth a third green stone ring protruded, thick with mucus.
Invadiah’s rage was a palpable thing, and Sairche stepped back, into the shadows.
“Very well,” she said tersely.
“We have memorized the spot,” the other hellwasp said. It hovered near to its compatriot and landed in the center of its back. “We will follow.”
Invadiah turned to Nemea. “Should you have trouble returning this way,” she said, through her teeth, “make use of Rohini’s portal?”
Nemea raised an eyebrow. “Aye, Mother.” She took hold of Aornos’s hand and with two bright flashes, the erinyes and the hellwasps passed out of the Hells and into Neverwinter.
Invadiah stood before the obelisk, her breath heaving, her teeth bared, for so long that Sairche was both too afraid and too curious to move. Invadiah snapped her gaze to her youngest daughter, and all the fury of the Hells boiled behind her eyes.
“Sairche!” she barked. “Hand me that hammer.”
From the piles of forgotten treasures, Sairche hauled an ancient terror hammer nearly as tall as she was and, trembling, dragged it to her monstrous mother.
Invadiah took hold of it as if it were nothing but a reed, testing its weight with a slow, wicked smile. With a great and terrible cry, she swung the hammer into the Needle of the Crossroads, shattering it with a great cloud of dust and a greater burst of crackling magic. Sairche threw up her hands to protect herself, and when she dared to look again, the ancient artifact was no more than a pile of mundane rubble over which Invadiah stood, panting and triumphant.
“You would do well to remember this moment, Sairche,” she said. “Before you go on dancing on the edges of my good graces.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Sairche walked the halls of Osseia, faintly dazed. The Kakistos heir was lost. Lorcan was doomed. Sairche was very much in her mother’s eye. Things were going to be very trying in the coming days. Perhaps she’d do well to find somewhere else to hole up. Beyond Osseia. Beyond Malbolge. Beyond the Hells even.
And then? she asked herself. She would always be under Invadiah’s thumb if she fled.
An imp popped into the space before her. “You Sairche?”
“What do you want?”
“Her ladyship would like you to know she was impressed with your resourcefulness. This is for you.” The imp handed her an ornate envelope, made of heavy parchment and trimmed in layers of hammered copper. Twitching scarabs struggled in the corners, and a large tassel of … well, Sairche had never been particularly good at identifying skins, but if pressed she would guess it had been a halfling. A bloodred wax seal bore the sigil of Glasya-a scourge with six thongs. She unfolded it and skimmed the contents.
“A conditional summons?” she asked.
“Indeed,” said the imp with a serrated grin. “T’will burst into flames when she’s ready to see you. I suggest you be in court before the smoke clears.”
Lorcan slammed his fist against the barrier of the shrine’s door once more. Every entry point to the temple blocked him as firmly as a brick wall. Even the skylight cut into the roof threw him back when he alighted on it. And Farideh either couldn’t hear him shouting at her, or she was still angry and ignoring him.
The options left to him were unpleasant. He couldn’t solve this himself. He needed to get someone to pull her out of there. He eyed the door once more and cursed.
Lorcan kept to the shadows as he slinked down the roads, keeping an eye out for the massive temple he’d seen in the mirror. If Rohini could put up with working there, surely the spells that barred fiends had worn down enough to slip in and grab Farideh’s sister. He just had to find the temple. And not be seen.
He ducked into an alley as he heard footsteps approaching. A group of humans in rags strolled by, taking far longer than Lorcan wanted to wait. He looked at his hands-there was a way he could move more quickly … But Lorcan hated that spell. Something about it made his skin feel like it was peeling off.
It’s fine, he thought. You won’t die of waiting. These fools will pass, you will find the temple, Havilar will be worried enough to help, and you will get Farideh out of that blasted chapel.
And then what? Lorcan hated to admit it but he wasn’t sure. The way she’d looked at him-Hells, the fact that she’d run as if he were a hungry demon … she had never been that angry at him, that afraid of what he would do, that determined to stop him. If he succeeded and pulled her out of Neverwinter, out of harm’s way, she would almost certainly break the pact. She would have never forgiven him if he’d left Havilar behind-he realized that now.
He wondered if Havilar would make him this mad.
He slipped out into the empty street again. Perhaps he ought to have told Farideh everything: the orc, the Ashmadai, Rohini’s naked threats. She wasn’t an idiot. She had to see the danger. If he sat her down and reasoned with her, surely she’d see he was only doing what was best for them both and listen to him-