The powers of the Hells coiled around Farideh, ready to lash out if the guard so much as moved-
A claw of pain gripped the back of Farideh’s skull. The lights began blooming around her vision again and clustered in shadow-black and foul green around the guard’s heart, and a shimmering purple and bruised yellow around the servant’s. Blue sparked around the corner of her silvered eye. Farideh held steady, trying to channel someone cold and dangerous and not at all afraid of what was happening. Trying not to cry out.
“Don’t leave,” Nirka snapped at Tharra as she swept from the room.
Tharra shut the door behind the guard. “Shall I dress your hair while we wait? My lady?”
“Where are my weapons?” Farideh demanded.
Tharra smiled, the purple light in her pulsing. “I wouldn’t know. They brought me into the fortress just this morning. If I had to guess, I’d say someone took them to the armory.” She gestured at the chair before the mirror. “Nirka would be the one to ask. My lady.”
Farideh sat, her nerves ready to shatter. Nothing felt right, and she couldn’t shake the sensation that at any moment, she would be surrounded by all the things she feared. That if she stopped preparing, tensing for them, they would sweep her away as neatly as Sairché had swept her out of the world.
And then there was Tharra, who was so calm and falsely pleasant, it set Farideh’s nerves on edge.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what’s fashionable in Shade,” Tharra said. “Or have the skill to make it happen. But I can plait-”
“Do what you want,” Farideh said. She could tie the whole mess up in a bow, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Instead of watching her unwelcome reflection, Farideh watched Tharra in the mirror, as she deftly separated hanks of Farideh’s purplish-black hair, plaiting them into smaller sections and twisting them up into knots under Farideh’s horns. A pang of heartsickness hit Farideh-Havilar would have cheerfully pinned her hair up. Although she would have spent the time trying to convince Farideh that the combs would look much better on her.
“Do you come from Shade?” she asked Tharra. The woman’s expression turned curious.
“No, my lady,” she said. “I don’t think any of us do.”
“You just serve him for your own reasons?”
For the barest moment, Tharra’s eyes turned hard as flint. “For food. We take the best we can get in hard times,” she said. “My lady. How is it you plan to serve him?”
Farideh flushed at the unspoken implication and started to retort, but the blue lights that had been flickering in the corner of her silvered eye flashed again in the mirror’s reflection, just over Tharra’s head and behind her. Farideh pursed her lips and tried to quiet them. Sairché would have to come eventually. She’d have to tell her what it was then.
But as she watched, the lights grew and clung to each other. And, for a moment, took the shape of a woman, a tiefling.
Farideh leaped to her feet, jerking her hair out of Tharra’s hands. But the lights had gone out once again, and there was no sign in the little room that anyone but Farideh and the maid had been there.
“Is something wrong, lady?” Tharra asked. She’d taken a good two steps back from Farideh, watching her carefully. The lights around Tharra had vanished too.
Farideh blinked several times, but whatever she thought she’d seen didn’t return. She sat back down. “No. Just finish.”
Nirka returned a moment later with black leather jacks, marked with lines of gold-colored studs. Nirka made a slit in the back seam for her tail, and Farideh mutely pulled them on, still watching the empty air over the bed. The necklace looked preposterous with the high-necked armor, but Tharra draped it around her neck anyway.
“Come on,” Nirka said. She nodded to Tharra. “Clean this up, and I’ll be back for you.” Nirka locked the door behind them, and led Farideh downstairs.
Adolican Rhand waited for Farideh at the end of a long table laden with delicacies she had no stomach for. He stood as she entered, chuckling at her garb.
“I’ll admit,” he said sitting again. “I was hoping you would choose something more flattering. The red one is terribly fashionable in the city, I’m told.”
“Not in any city I’ve been in,” Farideh said, and the wizard laughed.
“Too true.” He gestured at the meal between them. “Please. You’ll have to forgive me, I did not wait.”
Farideh didn’t move. The last time she’d taken food from Adolican Rhand, it had taken tendays to get the poison out of her system. “I ate from my rations.”
“I assure you, my kitchens are much better. Have some fruit at least.” When she didn’t, he chuckled again. “Ah, still holding a grudge. Nirka- reassure her.”
Farideh tensed as the guard stepped up from behind her, a furious sneer twisting her pierced face. But Nirka only took Farideh’s plate and filled it, cutting and eating a bite of each item as she did. Then she stood, glaring at Farideh, as if this indignity were purely her doing.
“I can promise you,” Rhand said, “I’m aware of where we stand now. Of what you can do for me and my patrons. Of what your patron desires. Whatever you think of me, I hope you realize I wouldn’t jeopardize such a privilege unnecessarily.”
Farideh hoped none of her puzzlement showed. She thought of Rhand’s notes, of his crude intimations, of the drugs he’d slipped into her wine, muddling her thoughts and senses. There didn’t seem to be another way to take any of that.
But she remembered Dahl insisting that it was probably nothing, Havilar saying that Rhand was likely no worse than Lorcan. Maybe she was wrong to be so on edge. Maybe he was only an overeager suitor. Had he slipped her anything after all? Or was it only the sedative tea Tam had given her and the stirring of her pact magic?
You’re not wrong, she told herself. But then again, she’d been wrong and wrong and wrong lately.
“Sairché wasn’t very forthcoming about details,” she said, studying her plate. “What is it exactly she said I could do for you?”
“Isn’t that so like a devil?” Rhand said. “Vagaries and half truths? It must be a chore to work with them. Is your patron like that too?”
“Yes.” Farideh looked across the table, not knowing what he meant by “too,” but knowing it was better to seem sure. “So enlighten me?”
Whatever his own assurances, Rhand’s gaze still had an unsettlingly predatory quality and his eager smile did nothing to blunt it. Anger-at him, at Sairché-squeezed her chest.
“You are to assist my grand experiment.” He nodded at the plate of food in front of her, and since the guard was still standing, still clearly full of focused dislike for Farideh, she obliged and nibbled at a bun.
“In fact,” Rhand went on, “with the assistance of your particular powers, I should be able to make the advancements I’ve been stymied from reaching.”
Pain gripped the back of her head again, like a living creature latching on with many-bladed legs. Her eyes watered, and for a moment she could not focus on anything except the agony in her skull and getting her own breath in and out of her lungs.
Then the lights started again, shivering purple and black and deeper shades around Adolican Rhand-who hadn’t seemed to notice her discomfort.
“I don’t care for the term,” he was saying. “Not in this case. Though some come near that mythical status. Not many. Not enough to warrant such a melodramatic title.” He filled his goblet from a near pitcher. “At any rate, they are far trickier to identify in time than one would expect. Finding those with a trace of the divine about them, that’s a trifle. But”-he held up a hand, as if to stop her inevitable argument-“there is a difference, as you can imagine.”