Somewhere, in the dark and broken city, Lorcan was looking for her. Somewhere Rohini might be more dangerous than she’d thought. Somewhere there were Ashmadai. Somewhere Sairche might be watching.
Farideh reached the bridge and scanned the sky. No dark shapes circling the river. No devils, all fire and talons or silver tongues and hungry hands, ready to pluck her up. She hurried across the river.
Lorcan had laid bare the full extent of her foolishness: he was a monster, he had always been a monster, and she was the only one who’d gone along hoping, wishing, pretending it wasn’t so. Such a lamb-brained little idiot, she thought. Only you would be surprised he’d sent an assassin after your family.
How Mehen would crow if he knew.
She passed near the House of Knowledge and thought of what Lorcan had said about Rohini. The biggest viper of them all. Because she was dangerous to Lorcan or dangerous to Farideh? She glanced up again at the sky, at the gathering clouds. A distant roll of thunder rumbled somewhere over the sea.
Lorcan first, she thought. Whatever threat Rohini was, she could wait until Farideh was sure Lorcan wasn’t going to kill anyone.
For Lorcan … she would go to Yvon.
She hurried down the road, glancing up at the darkening sky for the shape of Lorcan diving at her. Yvon had said his warlock friends would be gathering tonight. She’d be safer with them around. And after all, Yvon had managed to protect her from the orc and-
A great clash of thunder startled her, and moments later, the rain started pouring down. Farideh pushed aside her thoughts and sprinted the rest of the way to Yvon’s shop.
The door was locked, but when she tapped, the assistant-Kalam-peered out the window and unlocked it for her. He gave her a stiff nod. “They’re downstairs.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to shake the rain from her borrowed robes. “Do you have any bandages?”
He shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Master Claven. I’m only on door duty.”
She thanked him again, and passed through the curtain and down into the room Yvon had led her through before. Cold-burning torches lit the room now, and Farideh could see it was much larger than the shop above. A dozen people sat in a rough circle near the center of the room listening to Yvon talking. He paused, looked up at her, and beckoned her down.
“This is the young woman I was telling you about,” he said, as she slid in behind a blonde elf woman. “It’s she who our late, ahem, ‘friend’ was sent after. Farideh, I shall have to introduce you around later, as we’re in the middle of discussing-”
“I don’t see what there is to discuss,” a big tiefling man interrupted. “We’ve dealt with the Glasyans.”
“This isn’t merely about Glasyans,” Yvon said, sounding annoyed. “So let me finish, Creed. The orcs were marked by Sixth Layer magic, but as before, only faintly.”
“And spellscarred,” the tiefling beside Creed said. “You’ve said that.”
“So the Glasyans are trying to use the spellplague,” the elf woman said with a shrug. “They wouldn’t be the first.”
“That would be the simple answer,” Yvon said, “but I suspect it would be the incorrect one. I followed them, you see. The house he brought the orcs to was most interesting. The edge of the Blacklake-”
“Yvon, get to the bloody point!” the elf said.
“The orcs didn’t come out. Not with our priest.”
“So?”
“So, the priest came out, one cask and one mark richer. The second mark overwhelms the first, in most unexpected ways.”
The tiefling man frowned. “Another archduke?”
“No. It was …” Yvon shuddered. “Something else. Let us simply say I did not wish to test it any further than I did. Either the Glasyans are arming some other force, or they are comrades to it. Or they are slaves of it. And more,” he added, “I did some asking. The man is no mere priest. He heads the hospital they run in the House of Knowledge.”
“Brother Vartan?” Farideh asked.
Suddenly a dozen pairs of eyes were on her. On the hospital robes she was wearing. She flushed deeply. Yvon gave her a quizzical look. “Do you know the good brother then?”
“I … I’ve met him.”
“Really?” Yvon asked. He stepped closer to her, eyeing her robes. “And how did that happen?”
She opened her mouth but the words didn’t come. Her gaze swept the gathered group, but every one of them was watching her as if she were a rat come in through the floorboards.
And then she saw between the two tiefling men, beyond them, a wide table with strange markings all over it stood in front of a hanging-
Farideh closed her mouth, her heart in her throat.
The hanging banner showed three black triangles surrounded by a larger triangle and a nine-sided circle.
You see that symbol, you run.
“I think,” Yvon said. “There’s quite a lot you have to tell us still.”
Oh gods, she thought. You must know how to turn back time to keep that orc from being sacrificed to the king of the Hells.
She had only the merest moment to feel like a fool, to chastise herself for the mistake that was about to cost her her life. Yvon’s friends were the Ashmadai Lorcan had been warning her about, and she had come to them like a supplicant.
No, she thought, noticing the many eyes on her. Like a sacrifice.
Yvon’s expression had gone cold. He’s pieced it together too, Farideh thought. “Your robes are from the hospital,” he noted. “Might I wager your Lorcan is a cambion who wears the copper scourge?”
Farideh’s tongue was not made to lie. She knew her terror was plain on her face. She couldn’t pretend that Lorcan had set her up for this. She couldn’t pretend she dressed in the robes because she was trying to undo things like a wicked cultist would. She couldn’t pretend she had any way out of the basement room.
The shadow-smoke curled out of her, and the powers rushed in. She took a step backward and felt several similar surges throughout the room-other warlocks calling on their patrons’ powers.
“It isn’t what it seems,” she said.
“Don’t be foolish,” Yvon warned. “You alone are no match for us.”
A sharp cry sliced through the door at the top of the stairs. Yvon’s gaze darted up to it, then back to Farideh. “What have you-”
The door slammed open with a crack. Thirteen pairs of eyes watched as Havilar, dressed in her armor and carrying Farideh’s rod and sword, descended into the Ashmadai’s ritual chamber.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Havi!” Farideh cried. “Get away!”
Havilar didn’t look at her sister. Her golden eyes were locked on Yvon instead, burning hot and hateful. The shopkeeper for his part seemed to scour Havilar with his gaze, as if searching for the secret at the core of her. She pointed the rod at his head. “Sixth Layer,” he hissed.
Havilar stood perfectly still, rod outstretched. For the merest of moments, no one moved and all eyes were on the quartz tip of the rod. But nothing happened.
Then the smaller tiefling man, the warlock, cast a blast of heat that washed over Havilar as harmless as a gale. She flinched away and he leaped closer, his hand outstretched with some foul spell on his fingertips, ready to end things.
Havilar struck him across the frailest part of his cheekbone with the heavy quartz tip. The strike was perfect. His face erupted in a spray of blood and snapped something deeper in his skull-a dull wheeze accompanied the crunch of bone, and he collapsed, his eyes glazing. Havilar flipped Farideh’s sword into a stabbing grip and shoved it halfway through the elf woman’s chest and back out without so much as looking. The woman gasped and collapsed onto Farideh.