“Not sick,” Lorcan reminded her. “Hungover. And your sister may be in mortal peril.”
“Fine,” Havilar spat. “She wins. I never said she wasn’t worse off. I said I don’t feel well and it doesn’t mean anything if I want to name a stupid horse. Stop trying to turn everything around.” She hesitated before he heard her add, “Sorry, Alusair. You aren’t stupid. You’re just a horse.”
“You misunderstand,” Lorcan said silkily. “She’s trapped and in danger. You’ve managed nothing more than some drink-sickness-and you’re awfully calm about the whole matter. I suppose,” he added, trying to sound reluctant, “I underestimated you.” He let the silence stretch before glancing back at Havilar. She watched him with narrow eyes.
“Probably,” she said, just as reluctant.
“I sometimes wonder,” he said, turning back to the road ahead, “if I made the right decision. Giving Farideh the pact. It seems to only cause her trouble.”
“Do you think she’s all right?” Havilar asked, after a few moments.
Of course she is, Lorcan thought viciously. Sairché had made it clear how she intended to reward Farideh’s shift of loyalty. He knew better than to believe what Sairché said without question-the idea that Farideh had sought his sister out and asked for her patronage was, on the face of it, madness.
But the hurt and the fury and the desperation in Farideh’s expression-the last thing he’d seen before Sairché brought him around again in the Hells- made it all the easier for Sairché’s version of events to burrow into his brain and make itself at home.
“What did you tell her?” he had asked Sairché.
“What goes on between a girl and her patroness is private,” Sairché said. “Isn’t that right?”
“I’m not a fool,” Lorcan said. “She didn’t call you down. You used Temerity.”
“To find you,” Sairché said, standing a careful twenty-five steps from Farideh’s unconscious body. “But I didn’t need Temerity to convince Farideh to come around. You tricked her, after all-did you really think you were the only one who could manage that?”
“Of course not,” Lorcan said, a heartbeat too slow. He’d tricked her, true, but then he’d let himself get pulled into an argument that he hadn’t shut down as quickly as possible. He’d left Farideh ready to jump into another devil’s pact. He’d practically handed her to Sairché.
No, he told himself. She wouldn’t leave.
Sairché chuckled. “Oh. You thought she was different. How funny.”
“They’re all the same,” Lorcan said off-handedly, furious that his heart was racing. “That said, they’re all a fair bit cleverer than you give them credit for, little eavesdropper. Why should I believe anything you tell me?”
Sairché had shrugged. “Well, what you believe or don’t believe is immaterial. She turned on you-that much is plain. She didn’t trust you. She hasn’t trusted you for a long time. The magic circles, the dealings with priests, going to the wizard. Does that suggest a long-term plan for the pact in your mind?”
“Lords, Sairché, you can surely spin something together without making up players. Point out the paladin. Point out all the books of lore and legend. Hells, tell me her sister was the key. But there’s never been a wizard.”
Sairché’s grin was a terrifying thing, brimming with glee and giddy surprise, and Lorcan knew in that instant he’d miscounted. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my dear brother. She never mentioned an Adolican Rhand?” Sairché giggled. “Oh, Lords of the Nine-truly? Where did you think she got her ritual book?”
Lorcan scrambled-from Dahl, that scowly fallen paladin, though clearly that wasn’t the answer. “A ritual book she needed to rescue me,” he scoffed. “Terribly clever of her to do that instead of taking the opportunity you presented her with and running off to learn spells.”
Sairché had shrugged. “Mortals are complicated. Maybe you’re right. But it makes me wonder”-and she’d smiled at Lorcan, as if she’d already won-”why she decided not to buy a book from any of the myriad sellers in the City of Splendors, and instead accept the gift of a wealthy, fine-looking wizard who was very clearly taken with her? And why she never spoke a word of him to you?”
“There’s no telling,” Lorcan said, finally answering Havilar’s question, “until we find her. She might be at the mercy of untold enemies. She might be curled up with that wizard.” He spat the word as if he could rid himself of the notion entirely. Godsdamned Sairché. The wizard didn’t matter.
“What wizard?” Havilar asked. After a moment without an answer, she asked, “That creepy Netherese fellow? The one from Waterdeep?”
“As I said, there’s no telling, is there?” Lorcan asked.
“He was shady,” Havilar said. “Even if his revel was nice. Until the poison and the assassins and things.” She paused. “I suppose the fight was sort of a thrill, too, although I wouldn’t call it nice. Anyway, she’s not curled up with him, whatever that means. I mean she might put up with you, but there’s shady and then there’s shady.”
Lorcan gritted his teeth. “We’ll have to see.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Havilar asked. “You have no idea where we’re going. I could have gone off on my own and found her quicker than this.”
Lorcan had left the ruby necklace in Havilar’s care, certain even without examining it that his prison was only one element of Sairché’s gift. The other gems wouldn’t be ordinary. One would surely be a beacon for Sairché to trace Farideh by. A few days, a tenday, a month-however long it took, eventually Sairché would check in on Farideh. Eventually she’d have to. And then Lorcan would strike.
In the meantime, he had a replacement heir to pact.
An heir that a part of him was rapidly reconsidering how dearly he wanted. He tried to ignore it, but every time Havilar piped up with some new nonsense, with some new insult that had no spark to it, with some new sigh or whine or sadness, Lorcan missed Farideh. He missed arguing with her. He missed the nuances of steering her. He missed the furtive way she looked at him and perhaps the less furtive way he looked at her. He even missed the constant pull of that damned protection spell. Farideh might have always been a difficult warlock, but Lorcan had to admit that she was interesting.
“If you’d gone off on your own,” Lorcan said, biting back his irritation, “you’d find yourself walking straight into Sairché’s hands.”
“Why should she care about me? I’m not a warlock.”
Lorcan smirked to himself. Not yet. “To begin with, you decided to push yourself far beyond your limits and then pour a bottle of wine down your throat.”
“Half a bottle,” Havilar protested.
“Does that change anything? Don’t tell me you don’t know better,” he said. “If those aren’t the actions of someone ready for easy answers, I don’t know what are.”
“I think I deserve some easy answers at this point.”
He clucked his tongue. “Easy answers lead to a perilous road. Though,” Lorcan added, “if you’re as eager to divest yourself of a troublesome sister as I am, no one would blame you.”
Havilar made a face at him. “First, everyone would blame me. Second, I don’t want her to die.” She rubbed her arm, a strange, subconscious mockery of her twin’s familiar gesture. “And anyway, it’s your stupid sister who messed things up, isn’t it?”
That wasn’t what Lorcan had been expecting her to say, and he cursed his clumsy maneuvering. She should be turning on her sister, eager for Lorcan’s approval. He reined his horse in and turned to consider her. “Your sister’s the one who made the deal. You don’t need to defend her. Not to me.”