“I’m trying to protect you!”
The ground rumbled, shattering the bars of her cage and raining pieces onto Farideh. A great, spiked beast-a dragon made wormlike and twisted by the Hells-burst out of the rock and shot skyward. The creature went stiff, clawed arms waving almost boneless and vinelike, before splitting neatly into three parts that fell away like the petals of a hideous blossom around a heart of stone.
Standing atop the heart was a devil-not merely a devil, Farideh knew down to her marrow. Where Lorcan was beautiful in a way that had made her listen when she shouldn’t, the man on the stone, holding a ruby rod, was beautiful in a way that she wasn’t sure she ought to be looking at. As if her eyes were going to turn inside out at the sight. He pointed the rod at her and spoke, in a voice like ground glass.
You have one task: Stay alive, tiefling. Give no ground. You may find we have more than one goal in common.
The core of the archdevil glowed suddenly blue and bright as a falling star, the light resolving into another of the strange glyphs that marked the Chosen.
“That’s the secret,” the devil-Havilar said.
For a terrible moment, Farideh couldn’t breathe.
Then she shot up, out of the vision, gasping and wet. Dahl stood over her, similarly soaked, and holding a bucket. She sat, trying to make sense of the world. Trying to forget the threat of her possessed sister and the disappointment of her true one.
Trying to forget the glorious, terrifying devil standing on the stone heart.
Trying to pretend she wasn’t sure with every fiber of her being that that had been the king of the Hells himself, Asmodeus.
She covered her face with her hands and fought the urge to wail, to scream, to be sick all over the floor.
“It’s all right,” Dahl said, easing her up to a seated position. “It’s all right.”
“Get her down to the shelter rooms,” Oota said. She was sitting beside the big human man, drenched as well. “You’ve got ’til morning to recover, tiefling.” As Dahl helped Farideh to her feet, Oota turned her furious gaze to Tharra, sitting bound and stern-faced between two more guards.
“Lock her up,” Oota said. “I want to be at my best before I deal with this traitor.”
Chapter Eighteen
25 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks
When the guard in the tower opened the door to Farideh’s quarters, Sairché was waiting, along with four erinyes. The shadar-kai woman’s dark eyes flicked from Sairché perched on the foot of the bed, to Faventia and Fidentia sulking silently at the posts, to Nisibis standing beside the window and leaning on a massive sword, and finally to one-eyed Sulci standing alltoo-close to the door. Sulci grinned.
“Fetch your master,” Sairché ordered.
The guard did not, as Sairché had hoped, try to test her steel against the erinyes, but turned and vanished down the dark corridors.
“Pity,” Nisibis said, as if she read Sairché’s thoughts. “That one seemed entertaining.”
“The wizard will be entertaining,” Sulci said. She grinned at Sairché. “They always think they’re so clever. But a clever mind doesn’t hold your skull together when my hoof comes down.”
“You’re not killing him,” Sairché reminded her half sisters. “Not yet.”
“Nor are we to kill Lorcan,” Faventia drawled. “Isn’t that strange?”
“There are complex deals in place,” Sairché said. “Deals that will end one day.” She smiled at her half-sister, easily one of the most reckless erinyes she commanded. “Which Lorcan surely knows. Savor his fear. You’ll get your chance.”
“And the wizard?” Fidentia asked.
“Is less aware,” Sairché said, turning her eyes to the door once more. “Which is why I’ve brought you along. Now play your parts.”
Rhand arrived, wand in hand and regarding her with that easy contempt she’d come to expect and loathe. But there was something worse there this time. His robes were tidily arranged but spattered with blood. A lot of blood, Sairché observed. She’d interrupted something.
“Well,” he said. “You’ve returned. How fortunate.” He looked around the room, his gaze hesitating momentarily on Nisibis and the twins and stopping altogether on Sulci. His expression shifted in a way Sairché had not been expecting. “And how intriguing. Where is my Chosen? She has much to make up for.”
Sairché feigned surprise “My dear Saer Rhand-don’t you read your agreements?”
“Always,” Rhand said, icily.
“Then I shall remind you of the sixty-first section of our contract,” she said sweetly. “And let you choose her proxy.” She gestured at the erinyes, then leaned in, conspiratorially. “I would personally opt to waive the proxy option. They are none of them polite company. Particularly Sulci here. She has many impolite ideas about your skull, for example.”
Rhand stared at Sairché, as if his gaze alone could make her quail, and despite herself, Sairché checked her shields. “They are none of them capable of the sort of magic I require,” he said. “Bring me my tiefling.”
Sairché feigned surprise. “The messenger hasn’t reached you? My, my.” She did not break her gaze but activated the little serpent ring she’d reclaimed, and reached into the pocket it created. In the cold void, her hand closed on Rhand’s agreement. She jerked her head to Faventia as the heavy scroll broke into the plane, and her much stronger sister took hold of it and held the voluminous parchment up for Sairché to read. “From the third section: ‘They will be kept and maintained within the walls of the camp Adolican Rhand builds with assistance from the Nine Hells,’ ” she read. She waved Faventia away. “And I come to find that you have decided that means ‘any camp you build with any assistance which might have once had its origins in the Hells.’ Those are not, if you ask me, the same thing.”
“Does your lord care?” Rhand said. “There are plenty of souls for his use left in this one.”
“My lord cares about mere mortals assuming his preferences,” Sairché said. “And I care about being made to seem a fool. So it would seem,” she went on, as she’d rehearsed all the hours of the night, “I’m very fortunate to have that sixty-first section to fall back on. You’ll find it very clear: in case of dispute, His Majesty, Asmodeus, Lord of the Ninth Layer and All the Hells Beyond, Ascended God of Evil, claims temporary ownership over all Hellish assets involved for three days, during which the dispute is decided. By him. You are entitled to a fiend to stand as proxy for said assets and your requirements are not in force during the deliberations-although I don’t suggest you dawdle, you have quite a few souls outstanding-and your own soul is not in forfeit.”
“Until it is,” Rhand said.
“Now, now,” Sairché said. “We have rules about this sort of thing. That’s why they’re in the contract.”
Sairché kept smiling, wishing privately this had been Lorcan’s problem to deal with. What she’d said was true-every word-but she hadn’t claimed the contract in dispute, and she wouldn’t. Even if there was no chance of Rhand being in the right, Sairché wouldn’t run the risk of drawing Asmodeus’s attention to what she had or hadn’t been doing. Since Farideh hadn’t left the camp, she remained-in the most technical of senses-in Rhand’s possession and all the terms of their agreement were being met well enough to stand. Still, it made Sairché’s nerves itch-too close to failing the agreement. To finding out what happened if she reneged.
“It does get a bit dull by the sixty-first section,” Sairché said, to cover her nerves. “I don’t blame you for skimming.”
The dark rage lingering under Rhand’s calm facade took over. “I don’t have three days to spare. You call her back.”
Sairché shrugged. “Alas, I cannot.”
Rhand pointed the wand at her head. “Yuetteviexquedot.” The shielding spell dissolved with a dull whine. Sairché tensed, but in the same moment, the erinyes struck. Sulci’s sword swung up like a club, setting off Adolican Rhand’s own shield. He startled as it erupted, throwing Sulci back to the floor, and giving Nisibis a chance to dart in and clout him hard behind the head. The wizard fell to his hands and knees. . and found Nisibis’s sword held close under his chin.