More footsteps crunched up behind Farideh, and she hoped it was Mehen, come to scold Havilar and make them both go back inside. She couldn’t leave Havi, but she knew this would end badly.
“I don’t want to get out,” Farideh told her, and she wiped her tiny nose on the back of a mitten. “And you can’t move it, anyway.”
“I can so!”
“Hey,” Dahl said, and Farideh startled, suddenly grown again and watching her memory of Havilar. His breath turned into steam on the air. “Are you all right?”
Farideh knew she should ask him how he was there, why he was there. She knew she should ask why Dahl had shouted at them to stop as the wizard’s finest took effect. She should ask about the cold, and the footprints they made as they moved through the snow-that wasn’t like what he’d told her.
But when she opened her mouth she said, “She’s going to break her arm. The log falls and pins her. I have to stop her. Mehen will be so angry.”
“You can’t stop it,” Dahl said. “It’s already happened. This is just a memory, all right? You have to focus on that. You can’t stop it. You just have to ride it out.”
The top of the log wavered dangerously. Farideh shut her eyes. “Right. The wizard’s finest.”
“Exactly,” Dahl said. “Only a bit worse. Tharra added something to the goblet. I think it’s meant to amplify the effects, make it harder to come out of it.”
“Bastard,” Oota spat. “Knew she had a blade for my back.”
“Worry about that later. Just stay alert and watch for the amplifications.”
“They’re already happening,” Oota said. “You don’t feel the cold or the heat in these things. You don’t leave marks. Are we going to be wishing for weapons?”
“I suspect that will depend on how your question comes across.”
A shriek, a heavy whump-Farideh’s eyes snapped open as a scream tore out of her throat. Havilar lay half under the log, pinned in the snow. She started forward, even as her younger self did the same-ready to push the log with all her might, terrified to find Havi dead under there- Dahl caught her arm and stopped her. “Hey! It’s not real!”
Farideh kept pulling against him, watching her younger self snatch up the stick Havilar had held and lever up the log enough for Havilar to wriggle out. Overhead the pale clouds began to darken and billow, heralding a storm.
Dahl held her tight. “You were very. . strong little girls.”
“Swordswomen need to be strong. Mehen makes us lift rocks,” Farideh said flatly, as the little her wept and cradled her wailing sister.
“Made you lift rocks,” Dahl said, turning her toward him again. “Made. This isn’t real. You have to remember that.”
Farideh shook her head. “Then what is it?”
Who do you serve? Oota’s question echoed over the snowy village, dragging behind it a roll of thunder. The snow, the village, the girls clinging to each other bled together like ink on wet parchment. Only the wooden palisade remained. The sky darkened, swollen with clouds and blood-red lightning while the rest of the world faded.
And Farideh was suddenly very afraid.
“It’s not real,” Dahl reminded her. “Gods’ books, you have to calm down.” She looked over at him. His breath was coming hard and rattled. “Farideh, this is all coming from you-the visions, the sounds, all of it. You have to calm down.”
But out of the palisade’s shadows a figure unfolded: Havilar, all armed and armored, and eyeing the group of them with a very un-Havilarlike malevolence. She carried a glaive, but at its tip there was a crystal like the end of a warlock’s rod instead of a metal spike.
Rohini, Farideh thought, trying to step back, to move away from Havilar. The succubus who had possessed her sister. Dahl was still holding onto her arm, and someone else was holding her by the hair.
“You’ll be fine,” Mehen said. “You’ll have your sister with you. A blade at your side.”
“They love her, don’t they?” Lorcan was suddenly there, so close by her side that she could feel the heat of him. “But only so long as you keep after her, cleaning her messes and making sure no one realizes that she’s causing so much trouble.”
“Havi’s not trouble,” Farideh said, not taking her eyes off the devil nested in her sister’s skin, even though her thoughts were all on Lorcan. The memory of him kissing her-when had that been? Not here, not now. He chuckled. Dahl squeezed her arm.
“Stop that too. It’s not real,” Dahl said, and it sounded as much like he was reminding himself as her. “Farideh, what. . what are we looking at? Tell me what happened.”
A stone wall erupted out of the ground on their left, followed by a crag of pale rock that looked like broken bone ahead. Havilar slipped into the shadows between them and vanished.
“I can help you, you know,” Lorcan crooned. She shut her eyes. “Simple as it comes. No one will ever hurt you. No one will ever hurt her either.”
“It’s Lorcan from the day I took the pact,” she said. “After Havi summoned him. He tells me all the ways I can use it to protect myself, protect her, and I say yes, even though I shouldn’t. Mehen is from the day I went out on patrol for the first time. I don’t want to go, I know it will end badly-it does. I nearly take the blacksmith’s foot off, jumping at a marten. Havilar. .” Her blood flooded with the powers of the Hells. She had to save Havilar, somehow, without hurting her too. “It’s not Havilar, but it is. A devil in her skin. We have to be careful-she’ll fight and not care if Havi-”
“It’s not real,” Dahl reminded her. “The only dangers are the feelings it stirs up.”
“There is dangerous,” Mehen said. “And there is dangerous.”
Oota cried out suddenly. Farideh opened her eyes as Dahl pulled her behind him-she glimpsed Havilar darting past, her grin wicked and her glaive dripping blood. Oota held a hand to her upper arm.
“Gods’ books,” Dahl swore. He looked around and grabbed the dagger Mehen wore at his belt. It came away, solid as the real thing. The memory of her father made no sign he’d noticed or cared-after all, Dahl hadn’t been there when Mehen had readied Farideh for patrol. Dahl tested it in his hand. “Remember someone with a sword,” he told Farideh.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Oota said grimly. She checked her wound. “ ’Course it doesn’t usually work like this either.”
“Think, Fari!” Dahl said. “Anyone with a sword.”
Who do you serve?
“There’s a very rare heir among the Toril Thirteen,” a woman’s voice said. The room sizzled and dissolved into a city in the heart of summer, and another cambion stood in front of them: Sairché, flanked by two erinyes. “The descendent of Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel herself. Only three other devils have collected Kakistos heirs. Lorcan must have one. I think it’s you.”
Farideh’s pulse started drumming again. Three, and herself-and Havilar, who was somewhere here, all too near. Sairché couldn’t be allowed to find her.
Dahl moved toward the nearer erinyes, as if convinced she would strike. He pulled the sword and the devil didn’t so much as flinch. But as soon as the weapon was free, Sairché and the erinyes vanished.
And Havilar’s glaive swung out of the shadows once more, aimed straight for his neck. Farideh cried out, and Dahl turned in time to drop out of the polearm’s path. He ducked under its swing and slashed at Havilar’s face with the dagger. A line of blood appeared across her cheek. But she smiled.
And a line of pain seared over Farideh’s cheek, right up to her silver eye. She touched her face, and met Dahl’s gaze over her bloody fingers. Havilar laughed and vanished into the shadows again. Dahl cursed loudly, and both he and Oota moved to stand at Farideh’s back. Red lightning raced over the sky and the roll of thunder echoed Farideh’s runaway pulse.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Fine,” Farideh said mechanically, studying the shadows for Havilar again.