“I got the boys through,” Hamdir said, shouted in that way Dahl was uncomfortably familiar with. “I wasn’t expecting the grays, I didn’t lose hold of her on purpose.”
Tharra fixed him with a hard stare. “Tell him what you heard.”
“Screams. Definitely Vanri. And then. .” Hamdir swallowed. “A roar. A terrible roar.”
“She manifested.” Tharra glared at Armas. “All those nightmares, all those worries about the ocean taking her. . If she isn’t dead, gods know what horrors are whispering in her ears now.”
“If she isn’t dead,” Dahl said, “we can still save her.”
Firm up, he thought, shaking. If Rhand was killing Chosen, it was because Rhand was angry. If he was angry, Farideh was in more danger than before. There was no time to wait for Cereon. There was no time to wait for the appointment he and Farideh had agreed upon. There wasn’t even time to figure out whether he could trust Phalar. “We need to get in there, now. We need to get her out, get to the Chosen-”
“Get the rest of us killed?” Tharra said, as if he were her fledgling scout as well, as if Dahl were in need of censure. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Save those of us who can still be saved,” Dahl said. “Including Vanri.”
“Do you have a plan?” Oota interrupted, calmer than any of them. “Or are you just expecting to walk in through the gates and come back out with all our lost following behind?”
Dahl faced her. He didn’t have a plan-not as such. He didn’t have a way to be sure no one else was going to die or be caught, or to prove to them once and for all that Farideh was someone to trust. But he could be certain it wasn’t better to stay here, huddled together and waiting for the shadar-kai to come to them.
Nor was it better to leave Farideh in the tower when Rhand was slaughtering innocents.
“Do you?” he said calmly. “Or are you planning to just hope the tower collapses and the wizard drops dead? You were right before-you’re going to have to make a stand, and the longer you wait. .” He spread his hands. “This will keep happening.”
“And a dozen daggers and a devil-child won’t change that,” Tharra said. “People’s lives are at stake.”
“Are they any less at stake right now?” Dahl demanded. “Right here?” He looked out into the crowd. “Can any one of you say you’re better off holding your breath and hoping you’re not the next one to be caught? You’re the Chosen of the gods-are you going to spit so merrily in their eyes and lie down to die on Shar’s altar?”
No one answered. It felt as if every eye were on him. Waiting for someone to do something. For something to change.
“This isn’t a nursery tale,” Tharra said. “The blessings we carry aren’t weapons.”
Dahl held her furious gaze. “How fortunate for me,” he said. “Isn’t that right?” She looked back, unblinking, no sign of the treachery he suspected save the sudden stillness of her features. He looked to Oota. “I’m in this alone, fine. Let’s hope the gods still smile on those of us who give two nibs about the world. I’ll find my own way in. I’ll get Farideh out. And then we’ll see what plans can come together.” He leaned toward Tharra.
“And if you tell the guards that, fellow Harper,” Dahl murmured, “I’ll know.” He turned without waiting for Tharra’s reaction, and headed out into the darkening night. Reflexively he pulled the flask of Shadowfell liquor out of his pocket, passed it from hand to hand, then shoved it back again. If no one else was going to be the hero, then the Chosen were stuck with Dahl.
“Show me Lorcan again.” Farideh doesn’t care what it shows, or when, or why. She misses him and Sairché’s words ring in her ears over and over. He’s done with you. She might never see him again, never get to explain herself, and whatever Rhand’s apprentices think about that, she doesn’t care either. They haven’t moved from their stations in nearly an hour-waiting, it seems, for some other development. There’s no more blood, no more whispers, and no more hints about what might be, save for a pair of them fussing with the shelf of ancient scrolls, arguing over whether any of them could be useful. And Farideh wonders if all her plans are doomed to fail this badly.
A taproom in a waystation, sometime before Proskur. Farideh can’t remember the name of the inn or the village. She remembers the night, though, and the taproom. There’s a fiddler and a bard with a lute, another with a drum. The music is raucous and cheery. The dancers are wild and carefree, and the room feels like a hive of bees. Brin and Havilar are whirling, giggling, not caring that people are giving them looks. They crash into the table Farideh keeps between her and the mayhem and look abashed. Brin offers Farideh a hand. “Do you want to take a turn?”
“No thank you,” she says. They whirl off.
“Don’t you like dancing?” Lorcan drawls beside her. She hates it when he talks like that.
“Why would I like dancing?” she says irritably. “I don’t like people staring at me. I don’t like being crowded. I don’t like strangers grabbing at me.” She sips her ale. Farideh remembers wondering if he was going to ask her to, and if she’ d say yes. And she remembers knowing he wouldn’t. “Do you like dancing?”
Lorcan shrugs. “Why would I?”
Farideh sighs. “Right. You don’t like anything.”
“I like surviving,” Lorcan says.
“Do you like anything that you don’t need?”
Lorcan gives her such a puzzled look, and standing over the waters, Farideh is embarrassed all over again. How many times has he hinted at the terrors of Malbolge? Everything Lorcan does is, by necessity, to save his own neck-one way or another. Even when he saved her life, there was a payoff, a reward. Passage to the Hells, safety from his sisters, an alibi when he returned to his terrible mistress. Lorcan does nothing because it’s just pleasant. She knows that now. She suspected it then. Enough she should have known better than to ask such a silly question.
“Never mind,” she says and looks down into her ale. It’s the first time, Farideh thinks now, she started to understand he would always be something alien, something inhuman.
But as the waters continue reflecting, she notices something she hadn’t in the taproom that night: Lorcan’s puzzlement fades into something bare and uncomfortable as he watches her. As if she wears him out. As if she vexes him. As if he’s confused and frustrated. As if he knows all of this, and still, he wants her to stay there, beside him. He sighs, so quietly she never heard him.
“I like,” he said finally, “this ale. I think I’ll have another.”
The vision fades, the waters stop, and there is only Farideh’s reflection on the glassy surface. She wonders why the waters chose that moment, why they revealed it from that angle, why they let her see that strange look Lorcan gave her that makes her heart quicken. To teach her a lesson or to break her heart swiftest? To tease her or taunt her or none of it? The waters might be good or evil or neither.
Neither, she tells herself. The magic doesn’t care one way or another. It’s only her melancholy that makes it feel that way. It’s only knowing that perhaps Lorcan wasn’t as alien as she’ d always thought that makes her feel as if she’s failed him too.
Chapter Seventeen
24 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks
Concentrate, Farideh admonished herself, as Lorcan climbed down from the windowsill, into the empty study. Between the embarrassing way Lorcan’s embrace flooded her with want and the utter terror that gripped her when they took flight from the bedroom window, she had plenty to distract her from the Nameless One’s powers nibbling at her thoughts.