“I’m fine,” he said.
Khochen smiled at him and kept her pace. “They say dragonborn are tricky to read. But you could be a faceless thaluud and I’d still say that was a bald lie.”
“It was,” Mehen agreed, turning his eyes back to the forest. When Brin’s sending had come, with an apologetic admission that he could not convince Havilar to give up her quest and come home, that Lorcan was still there, that they were still headed north. . well, Mehen hoped his response made Brin wish he’d turned the lightning breath on him instead.
“You’re still upset about that scrap I found aren’t you?” Khochen said.
“Khochen,” Vescaras warned. To Mehen he said, “You needn’t worry. We’ll find her.”
Mehen would find Farideh. And Havilar. And Brin. Then he would lock the three of them in their rooms until. .
Mehen blew out an agitated breath. There were no rooms to lock them in. There was no sense in doing it. They were grown, all of them-and Brin, for all the boy had been like family, was not. Was in fact Mehen’s patron at this point and a lord of Cormyr. If Mehen so much as raised a hand to him, there’d be payment in kind, whether Brin liked it or not.
Still the need to do something-anything! — ate at him like rust at old armor. He’d felt as though he’d been sitting still for seven and a half long years. When Dahl’s voice had broken the tense silence of a palace hallway, two little words-they’re alive-had dissolved all that stillness and left him free falling, unsure of what to catch hold of. He’d stuffed that urge down, moved carefully.
And what good had it done him? Mehen had lost them all over again.
No more sitting still, he thought. No more waiting.
“And Dahl is with her,” Khochen added. “He’ll see that she’s safe.”
“Once he sees she’s not a traitor?” Mehen said.
“It’s only caution,” Khochen said. “If she’s honorable as you say, that will prove out.”
It had been caution that kept Tam talking and planning and thinking instead of striking while there was still time. When Brin’s message had come, when he’d heard that Havilar was not coming back, Mehen had nearly broken down the door to Tam’s offices, demanding the Harpers make up their karshoji minds and go after his daughters.
“I’m not raising an army here,” Tam told him in private. “These people are skilled infiltrators, not infantry ready to march at a moment’s notice.”
“Every moment we wait puts them farther out of reach and closer to danger.”
“Enough,” Tam had said. “You will give me the time to make arrangements so my people can do what they do best. I can promise it won’t be more than a day. In the meantime, collect yourself-we may be old friends, but I won’t hesitate to leave you behind if it’s in this mission’s best interests.”
“And I won’t hesitate to go without you,” Mehen said. “And damn your missions.”
Which was when Mehen had stormed out, cursing Tam, cursing devils, cursing Brin who had not managed to keep his word. Snapping at every Harper who had crossed his path. He’d spent the day as far from Tam as possible, knowing there was nothing left in him to keep quiet and polite while his girls were in danger, and he needed the Harpers’ resources to do anything about that.
Tam at least was true to his word, and a brief and bone-jangling portal trip later, they were in Everlund, far to the North. Closer, they hoped, to the spot Dahl indicated in his second message. Mehen shuddered-if he never traveled by portal again, it would be too soon.
The Lost Peaks, the Harpers said, would take at best eight days to reach from Everlund. Mehen tried to imagine eight more days of this uncertainty, this stillness, and fought the urge to take off into the ancient wood himself, alone. Somehow, even after seven and a half long, awful years, this was worse.
“May I ask, goodman,” Khochen said, interrupting his thoughts, “how you came to adopt tieflings?”
Mehen kept his eyes on the treeline, the path vanishing into the emerald shade. The air was turning warmer every step they neared the ancient wood. “Someone abandoned them at the village gates,” Mehen said. “It was winter. No one wanted them. I’m not heartless.”
“Fortunate,” Vescaras said. Mehen gave the half-elf a glare that did not wilt the good Lord Ammakyl. “There aren’t many villages out there that would take kindly to a delivery of tieflings in cloths.”
“Arush Vayem is different.”
“Not that different if they were going to leave them in the snow,” Khochen said. “Though I suppose there are blackguards everywhere.”
“Not just Westgate,” Vescaras murmured. Khochen snickered.
Mehen sighed and shook his head. The villagers had been cowards, not blackguards-even the tieflings among them. If you came to Arush Vayem, you’d already heard every bad thing about yourself and believed half of it. Tieflings might well be little demons, even in the cradle. Twins might easily be a dark portent. “It was the eye,” he said out loud, and regretted it immediately. “Farideh’s silver eye,” he explained. “That mark is an ill-luck sign to some of us, and the tieflings didn’t want trouble.”
“Dragonborn and tieflings no one wants,” Khochen mused, as they crossed into the wood. “Interesting village. Did you grow up there?”
“No.”
“Where is home, then?”
“Where my girls are,” Mehen said tersely.
Khochen began to reply, when the rustle of a fern brought them all up short. No one moved for a moment, their hands hovering near their weapons. Vescaras made a face.
“Daranna, if you please,” he said, “I’m not going to hoot like a bloody owl when you’ve given yourself up that way.”
“That’s not me,” a woman’s voice spoke from behind them. An elf woman with hollow eyes and loose dark hair dropped down from the spreading limbs of an elm tree. “Ebros,” she said sternly. A young half-elf man with mussy blond hair rose out of the patch of ferns, looking abashed. Daranna sighed. “Next time not the ferns.”
“If we hadn’t been allies, you’d be dead, lad,” Vescaras said.
“No,” Daranna said. She nodded to their right, where two more rangers in dyed leather had appeared out of the wood, both holding bows trained on the intruding trio. “You make a great deal of noise,” Daranna noted, her voice soft as the moss underfoot.
“It’s a fair concealment technique in the city,” Khochen said. Vescaras gave her another sour look, as Daranna’s green eyes flicked over the other Harper.
“Don’t do it anymore,” she said. “Get yourself killed.” She looked up at Mehen and sighed. “You, do your best.” And with no further introduction or warning, Daranna started into the High Forest, her scouts falling in behind her, and Clanless Mehen close on their heels.
Chapter Ten
21 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) North of Waterdeep
Havilar brushed the loose winter hair from Alusair’s coat as if there were nothing more interesting in the world, and hoped in equal measure that it would be enough to keep Brin away and that he would come and take the brush from her hand and make her have the conversation she was hiding from.
Fortunately-or maybe not-Lorcan did a pretty fair job of keeping Brin away himself. “Build it up, will you?” Lorcan snapped as Brin fed twigs to the meager flames of a small campfire. He’d shed the human visage he wore during the day, and his leathery wings were pulled close as a cloak. “Shitting winter.”
Brin glowered up at him. “We don’t have enough firewood, and I’m not interested in fighting off the sort of things a great bonfire will lure out of the hills. Cover up. Or better yet, go home.”
“Oh, come now,” Lorcan said, dripping venom. “How will you find your way without me to scout for you? How will you find this mysterious camp if you have no one to search from above?”