The Nameless One.”
Dahl steadied her. “Gods damn it, concentrate. What happened?”
“I looked in the waters,” she said. “The Fountains of Memory. There’s no way out, we’re trapped. And then I hid in the cabinet. There was Rhand and the girl, the nameless girl. There’s something. . he seemed ill too-
like he was falling apart and couldn’t stop it. Like he hated her and was afraid of her. And. .” She swallowed. “And now I can’t bear it. It’s like I’m smothering in my own skin. I thought I could drive it out with the knife. But I’m not brave.”
“You tried to fight an arcanist’s mummy alone, last I recall. You’re brave enough,” he said, his mind racing. “This started in the study? Had you seen that girl before?”
She shook her head. “She came today, from Shade. To see about Rhand’s works.”
Dahl cursed again. A girl that Rhand feared and deferred to must be something terrible indeed. If Phalar’s god could fill Dahl with reckless nerve, then someone blessed by the Lady of Loss might fill a soul with melancholy and numbness. He thought of his darkest days, the feeling of despair settling down on him, heavy enough to stop his breath. If a body were swallowed up by that feeling, without a source, without an outlet. .
That body would look for a cure, he thought. Something to shock it out of them. Like a knife through the palm.
“I have to save her,” Farideh said, tears welling in her eyes. “And I can’t save her. Not like this. I can’t save anybody.”
“You shouldn’t save her,” Dahl said, trying to think of a solution. “She’s a bigger problem than Rhand.”
Farideh stared at him a moment, horrified. “She’s just a girl.”
“Would he be scared of a girl?” Dahl demanded. “She’s got powers over him. You need to stay far away from her. Let Rhand handle her.”
“I’m not leaving her to be handled-or worse-by that monster.” Dahl’s mind turned to the mutilated apprentice, and he pushed it aside.
“He wouldn’t dare do anything of the sort,” Dahl said. “Not this time. Not if I’m right.”
Farideh drew back from him, rigid with fury. “Right,” she snapped. “Just like he wouldn’t have done anything of the sort at that revel.” Dahl felt himself color. “Gods’ books,” he spat. “Truly? Now?”
“You could say I’m reminded. Clearly it’s well out of your mind.”
“Do you think I don’t regret that?” he demanded. “It’s plagued me for years, that mistake. When I found out you were dead, I was convinced it had been Rhand’s hand that did it and my fault that it was you. But you’re not
dead, and I’ve apologized, and this is not the same situation, gods damn it!”
“You most certainly did not apologize,” Farideh said. “You said I wasn’t allowed to blame you-which is not a karshoji apology.”
“Fine!” Dahl shouted. “I’m sorry. Did you really think I wasn’t? It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone-of course I’m sorry. How could I not be?”
“You’re unbelievable. How is it you can turn an apology into an insult about what an idiot I am?”
“I didn’t say you were an idiot.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “Because I’m not.”
Dahl bristled, churning with Phalar’s recklessness. “Yes. Terribly wise getting us dragged off to a Netherese prison camp. Perhaps you ought to be the loremaster.”
“You don’t even know what-oh.” Farideh gave a little laugh. “It doesn’t
take a knife.” She giggled again, covering her mouth as if to stem the mad laughter.
“Oh gods,” Dahl said. “Is this a fit?”
“I’m not having a fit. I’m fine. It’s passed. Whatever it was, apparently it doesn’t go well with being really karshoji angry.” She smiled. “So thank you for being unpleasant.”
Dahl sighed, still on edge and annoyed and ready to argue. But at least he’d fixed it. Sort of. That was something. “You’re welcome. And I am sorry.”
“I forgive you,” Farideh said, still fighting back giggles. “Gods, sorry-the difference is really nice.” She frowned at him. “Why are you all wet?”
“This girl,” Dahl said, trying to steer her back to the matter at hand, “you didn’t feel strange until she was there, right? And Rhand didn’t look well?”
“He looked like he was about to fall down.”
“But you were fine before,” Dahl asked, “when you were alone with Rhand?
She’s got to be the source.”
“She’s just a girl,” Farideh protested.
And a girl could channel the powers of the gods as easily as a half-orc or a Rashemi woman or a Turmishan boy who trails flowers. “She’s probably one of them,” he said. “Are you likely to run into her again?”
“I have no idea,” Farideh said. “I keep thinking I’ve figured out what’s happening, and then it all changes.” She told him what she’d overheard, what Rhand had shared with her and what she thought she’d missed, and about the waters pulled from the Fountains of Memory. “I don’t know what he’s doing exactly,” she admitted, “but it’s important. And complicated.”
“You don’t know,” Dahl said, overwhelmingly glad that he’d been right.
She wasn’t a sympathizer. She wasn’t a traitor.
Farideh scowled at him. “I’m trying, but he keeps me out-”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Dahl said. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why are you helping him?”
Her expression shifted-was that sadness or annoyance or confusion? “I made a deal with a devil,” she said finally, and he decided it was something in the middle of all three. “Seems Rhand made a deal with the same devil, and that’s my payment. If I don’t help, she gets my soul. Worse, if I don’t help, she’ll go after Havilar. A very stupid thing to do,” she added swiftly.
“I know that.”
Dahl sighed. “I’m not going to tell you it was wise. But we are both in this now, however it happened, and it might be for the best. I don’t know when-or if-we would have found this place otherwise. And then it might have been too late.”
“Too late for what?”
Dahl frowned at her. “You really don’t have any idea what he’s doing.”
“Will you just tell me?”
“These people are Chosen of the gods,” Dahl said.
“Like in chapbooks?”
“Somewhat.” He told her about Oota and Phalar and Torden, about Samayan and the trail of daisies. About the strange things Tharra had told him. Her look of shock was unmistakable.
“So you think the Nameless One is a Chosen of Shar?”
“Fits, doesn’t it?”
She turned from him. “So what does Rhand do with them?”
“No one seems to know,” Dahl said. “They disappear. But no one’s finding bodies.”
“But knowing Rhand, it’s nothing good.” Farideh hugged her arms to herself. “And I’m helping him do it. Karshoj.”
“What are you doing?”
She shook her head. “Something happened in the Hells, I think. I can make myself see things. He says they’re people’s souls. I don’t know. I tell him which ones look different. Which ones are tied to the gods, I suppose, if they’re Chosen.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. “Did you look at mine?”
“Only for a moment.” She gave him a sideways look. “It’s-” He flushed, unexpectedly embarrassed. “Don’t. Please, don’t.” She regarded the blade lying on the floor. “Sorry. I won’t. Not anymore.” Dahl considered her. “He needs you to tell him which people are and which aren’t. So if you lied. .”
She pursed her mouth. “He can’t tell if I’m telling the truth. Not until later on, after he does whatever he does. Makes their powers come out, I suppose. So I’ll just start telling him there’s no Chosen in each group.
Send everyone back out into the camp, until we can figure something out.
I’ve looked at a hundred people easily,” she said. “Maybe I found all the Chosen already? He said he gets a lot of ordinary people. It could be that they’re all ordinary.”