“There’re enough wounds here to mark a caster, a blademaster, and someone with a club,” the woman said. She shook her head. “This is too strange.”
“It’s not a sacrifice,” the thicker tiefling said. “It would be a sacrifice if it were other cultists that did it. And they left the bodies.” He nudged one with a foot. “Won’t be the Thayans then.”
“Do you know any of them?” the human man asked. “Any of you?”
“Bought supplies from Yvon a time or two,” the woman said. “He’s probably in there somewhere.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the thicker tiefling said. “They were Ashmadai. Their deaths are an affront to the king of the Hells, and so an affront to us.”
“All well and good,” the taller one said. “But we have no idea who-”
The body the shadow devil had climbed into threw up a hand to claw at the open air. Together, the living Ashmadai pulled him free, a tiefling man with the insignia of a cell leader, his chest blistering and cracked by magical fire, his face a ruin of shattered bone. He could not stand on his own, and so they settled him on the floor.
“Who did this?”
The man swallowed, blinking his eyes at the world around him, as if he weren’t sure it was really there. “It was the warlock,” the shadow devil said in the man’s voice. “The tiefling. She came from the hospital-her robes were their blue ones. She … and orcs. Orcs with blades and terrible spellscars.”
Sairche had to give the little monster credit: it remembered every line and sold it all well. Spellscars, Sovereignty, and a mad-eyed tiefling. Sairche frowned. She hoped it wasn’t the Brimstone Angel she was setting up.
Don’t be so foolish as to hope, she told herself. You’ll have to deal with that later.
He shuddered, his breath caught, and his last words rushed out of him in a whisper. “She led them here. She said it was at the behest of the Sovereignty. Her powers came from the Chasm. You must stop them before …” The man shuddered and collapsed, dead.
“Well,” the woman said. “That’s a stroke of luck. Hail Asmodeus indeed.”
“Don’t be flippant,” the man said. “We must bring this to the others.” He looked out over the bodies. “I swear we will avenge this slight.” The other three repeated the promise, and Sairche rolled her eyes.
“What of the bodies?” the tall tiefling asked.
“Get Pellegri up here to guard,” the thicker one said. “And round up some fuel. We’ll have to burn the place down before the city guard notices.” They clomped back up the stairs.
Exactly, Sairche thought, as Glasya had ordered. They ate up every word. Though why this was necessary and why the Sovereignty needed to be implicated in the deaths of some cultists still made no sense. People killed Ashmadai every day, and it was no surprise. Why did Glasya care about these? The shadow devil squirmed free of the dead tiefling and flowed across the floor to her.
“Well done,” she said.
“Home now?” the little devil asked.
“In a sense,” Sairche replied, grabbing hold of its neck. It squalled and kicked, but she held it tight and slammed the little thing’s body against the stone edge of a support column. Its neck gave a sharp crack, and the corpse burst into flames.
Her first mission finished, Sairche left the dead Ashmadai behind as she passed through the portal, but they remained on her mind for quite some time afterward.
The last thing Havilar remembered was knowing she ought to be terrified. The almost overpowering calm that pressed on her when she opened her eyes again stirred a momentary storm when mixed with her panic, and she sat up thrashing even harder against whatever might be there.
Nothing. No claws trying to grab her. No devils in the shadows. Just a quiet little temple that she’d never seen before and Havilar, in her bloody, bloody armor.
“Gods,” she breathed. It was an obscene amount of blood.
“Havi?” Havilar looked around and saw her sister-her robes spattered with black gobs of dried blood, her eyes haunted, and her cheeks streaked-nearly running down the short aisle that the benches made. “Havi, are you all right? Are you …” She trailed away and stopped a step from Havilar. “Havi?”
Havilar’s head spun. “Whose blood is it?”
Farideh kneeled down beside her. “People who were trying to kill you,” she said.
“How many?” she asked, and Havilar heard her voice shake. “What happened? What happened?” Farideh hugged her tight, and despite the insistent calming magic of the temple, Havilar burst into tears.
M’henish, Havilar thought bitterly, somewhere under the roiling panic that made her cling to her sister as if there were no better anchor in the world. Now she’d be the delicate one too. But the sobs came in great crashing waves, and she could no more rise above them than she could swim the Sea of Fallen Stars.
“It’s going to be all right,” Farideh said, but she didn’t sound sure at all. “We’re going to be all right.”
“It should have always been all right!” Havilar cried, pushing her away. “What happened?”
Farideh sat back on her heels. “I did something … unwise-”
“Oh, there’s a surprise-”
“I went back to that shopkeeper. I was looking for … for a way to make Lorcan leave me be. He said he could help. I think he mistook me for something else. A cultist of Asmodeus.”
Havilar blinked at her, hiccupping from the sobs. What did that have to do with anything? “Did you tell him you are from Tymanther?”
“That’s not … They were devil-worshipers!” Farideh shook her head. “They think the hospital is arranged against them-I don’t understand why-but they figured out I was staying there and they were about to kill me and …” She pursed her lips. “You came in.”
“I don’t remember that.” Havilar looked down at the mess of her armor. “So I saved you?”
“Sort of,” Farideh said. “Something was … in you. Fighting through you. I’m not sure … Tam said you were ‘tampered with.’ By a fiend.” She peered at Havilar. “Do you remember anything?”
Havilar wrapped her arms around her knees. She searched her memory but there was nothing. She had been practicing with her glaive in the House of Knowledge … and then she’d woken up on the floor covered in the blood of devil-worshipers.
“How did you get me here?” she asked, still staring into the hollow of her legs.
“Knocked you out and put you on a donkey,” Farideh said with a little, empty laugh. “I think we can agree your record stands, under the circumstances.”
Havilar didn’t laugh. She was shaking and crying like an infant, she’d been manhandled or mindhandled or something by a devil, and Farideh had managed to knock her out cold in a fight. Nothing was all right. “I want my glaive. I feel naked.”
“Havi?” Havilar looked up. “Could it have been Lorcan?”
She made a face. “I don’t remember. I can’t … He wouldn’t have done that, right?”
Farideh shook her head again, as if she didn’t know, as if no one could know. “Lorcan sent that damned orc. He might do anything.” She got that faraway look again, as if she were trying to decide what would go wrong next tenday, and Havilar sighed. At least that was the same.
“I found something out that you should know,” Farideh said. “About warlocks. About us. I-”
The world lurched and flashed bright, and Havilar fell half a foot, landing hard on gravel and stone chips that cut into her palms. Beside her, Farideh broke off with a yelp and landed on her hands and knees. Havilar’s nerves exploded and she sprang forward and grabbed her sister’s arm tight.
The temple was gone.
“It’s all right,” Farideh said. “It was only temporary. We need to get moving.”
Havilar searched the shadows around them. Could she even recognize a soul-seizing devil if she saw one? She kept clinging to Farideh as they stood together. “Where?”