Fire in the Blood, page 22
“And if I asked you to look again?” he asked. “Would you?”
Farideh sipped the ale. He’d been so insistent before that she not look, not tell him what else she could read in the letters on his soul. “How much have you had to drink?”
“I’m not that drunk,” he said, affronted. “I can hold my ale.”
And your whiskey, she thought. “You didn’t want me to before.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Ask me when you’re definitely sober.” He started to protest, but she stopped him. “Dahl, I’m not looking while you’re drunk, even if you’re not that drunk. Ask another time.”
“I will ask,” he said stubbornly. “I want to know.” He settled back against the seat and drank his ale. “Maybe that’s something you can’t imagine—having a god jerk you around with cryptic messages and cruel acts.”
It nearly made her laugh, but she stopped herself. She wasn’t explaining that to Dahl. “Why did you want to be a paladin?” she asked. “I mean, in the first place.”
Dahl regarded her warily. “Why shouldn’t I have? I liked books. I liked learning things, finding answers.”
“But why a paladin then? I mean you can do those things in all sorts of ways. Why aren’t you a wizard? Or a scholar? Or a courtier or something?”
“Why aren’t you a wizard?”
Farideh laughed. “Do you know I learned a little from a wizard? Garago—he lived in our village. Not magic, not quite. But sums and things. History. How to read a scroll, but that was it.”
“But not even rituals?”
“He didn’t do ritual magic. He was … a little odd. I think he ended up in Arush Vayem because something magical happened to him. I don’t know if he could have taught me magic if he’d wanted to. He didn’t always remember things, and there were times you knew not to go visit Garago, because he was in a black mood, slinging spells at ghosts.” She smiled wanly at her flagon. “But he was nice other times. Lent me books.”
“Better than most wizards I’ve met,” Dahl said.
“Well, my tally’s up two horrible wizards—assuming we count the arcanist—and two very nice ones,” she said. “So I’ll hold off judgment.” He chuckled. “So what’s the real answer?” she asked. “Why did you want to be a paladin?”
Dahl shifted as if uncomfortable. He looked off at the innocent tavernkeeper. “I liked to read,” he said slowly. “And I liked swinging a sword. And I liked being around people who weren’t puzzled by that. And I loved Oghma. So it all fit, for a time.” He picked up his flagon before adding, “I thought about some of those other things—a wizard or a priest or maybe bookseller. But …” He shrugged and looked back at her, maybe a little sheepishly. “I know where I’m from. My father wouldn’t have really understood giving up farming for books alone.”
Farideh rested her head on her hand. “Does he understand your being a Harper?”
“No, he … he died. Two years ago. Of a heartstop. He, um”—Dahl cleared his throat—“he thought I was a secretary in Waterdeep at the time.” He looked down at his ale. “Which he didn’t really understand either.” He sank into a gloomy silence, and Farideh’s stomach twisted, like it was pulling down her heart. He finished off the ale in a great gulp.
“There’s rumors,” he said, suddenly, almost frantically, “that the Shadovar are marching on Harrowdale. But I can’t make heads or tails of what’s true and what’s not, and I can’t find anyone who knows and I can’t leave the city. So.”
“Oh Dahl,” she said. He shook his head, as if to cut her off, and she bit back her sympathies. She looked away, out at the taproom. A man in dark leathers was watching them from one of the heavy lumber posts, but then there was no cover to keep anymore. She watched Dahl from the corner of her eye, perversely reminded of the time Dahl had confessed the story of his fall from grace with Oghma—the feeling that she had to say something, or that there was something right to even say, pulled on her nerves. But anything she could say seemed faint or false or the sort of thing that would just irritate Dahl. She saw him look over at her, still frowning.
“You know I can tell you’re doing that,” Dahl said. “You’re looking right at me.”
Farideh colored. Karshoj. She’d forgotten again about the disguise spell. “Sorry,” she said quickly.
He smiled at her crookedly. “You do that, don’t you? Now I know. Now I’m going to watch for it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and she no longer had any idea what to do with her face. She looked down at the table. “I was trying to decide if it was better to tell you I’m sorry about your father, and I doubt he thought poorly of you—even if it felt like it—or if you didn’t really want to hear that now, because it’s long past and you didn’t want to bring it up in the first place. But I am sorry about your father.” She folded her hands under the table. “I’m not trying to irritate you.”
“You’re not irritating me,” he said.
“You have to call a truce to spend more than a few minutes with me. I irritate you.”
“Everyone irritates me then,” Dahl said. “Anyway, I’d rather be out with you than Vescaras. Or Brin. Or Dumuzi.” She didn’t say anything. “Thank you,” he added. “About my father.”
She nodded, looking again out at the taproom. The man by the post was still watching. Farideh’s nerves itched, the unseen shadow-smoke trying to coil from her frame. He looked away, without really looking away.
“I do know what that’s like,” she said, keeping her eyes on the man. “Not knowing what your father really thinks of you. Not knowing if he appreciates who you are. What you want.”
“Mehen adores you,” Dahl scoffed.
“He adores Havilar,” Farideh corrected. “And I know he loves me, but I also know he probably wishes I were more like her. She, he understands.” She wrapped her hands around the flagon. “I would bet your father loved you as much. Even if he didn’t understand.”
Dahl said nothing, and so Farideh kept her eyes on the taproom, wishing she had let it lie. She hardly knew how to talk to anyone anymore, after so long alone. She sighed quietly. The man by the post turned away again.
“I think we should leave,” Farideh said.
“Why?” Dahl said. “Do I irritate you?”
“There’s someone watching,” she said quietly. “There aren’t any Sharrans here, and if there are, you are certainly in no shape to deal with them anymore.”
He scowled. “I could manage. Who’s watching?”
“The fellow by the post. He’s been looking over for the last quarter hour at least.”
Dahl looked without looking—he was still steady enough for that. “Might just be an admirer.”
Farideh blushed. “I doubt that.”
“Maybe he’s admiring me. You don’t know.” He frowned at the table. “All right. We go. Just a breath.” He took the ale she’d hardly touched and drained half of it.
“Come on,” she said, standing. She reached up to take her cloak off the peg.
A man came up out of a door she hadn’t noticed, a cask under one arm and another hauled up on his shoulder. “Found them!” he called to the tavernkeeper as he backed the door open. “You have to tell the keghands to stop moving things around down there—I have a system, gods blast it.”
Farideh stopped, one hand on the cloak. The cellarer hadn’t been in the room when she’d looked before. She summoned the soul sight and sure enough, the cellarer’s form became pocked with dark vortices, as if the touch of the goddess had rotted him. He looked over at Farideh, with a mild, puzzled expression. Farideh went cold.
Dahl set a hand on her shoulder, and she jumped. “What’s wrong?”
“The Sharran,” she murmured. “The cellarer is the Sharran.”
Dahl’s eyebrows flew up. “Are you sure?”
“It’s him, it’s definitely him.”
That was when Ilstan’s spell peeled off of her with a crackle and a snap, and she was suddenly the only tiefling in the taproom, scintillating with a failing disguise spell and with every eye upon her.
LORCAN WATCHED THE inn’s taproom through the surface of a mirror, the busy noises of the customers tinny and distant through the scrying’s magic, and utterly unimportant. Lorcan focused on the young couple in the back corner—Farideh, without her horns and with a human’s eyes and hair, and Dahl. The Harper sat close—too close—murmuring in her ear while she looked around the taproom. A sudden grin split her face and she turned to look at him, laughing—and even if the human scowled at that, it wasn’t honest. His eyes were laughing too.
Something deep inside Lorcan sheared off like an iceberg.
He reached for the scourge pendant.
Behind Lorcan the portal set into the marrow-weeping wall split, sending a faint shudder through the fingerbone tower. He whipped around, fire flooding his hands. A human woman with steel-colored hair and damp robes strode toward him. “You need to come.”
“What’s happened?” Lorcan demanded.
“A pair of godsbedamned imps showed up,” Sairché said through the human’s mouth. “And there are gnolls. You need to come right now.”
“Beshaba shit in my eyes!” Lorcan shouted. He glanced back at the hateful image in the mirror, as Farideh turned back to the room, as Dahl’s eyes drifted down to the scoop of her collar. He stormed toward the portal. “If this is anything short of an emergency,” he snarled at his sister, “I will make sure you never leave that doomed little plane.”
Sairché said nothing as they passed through the portal—and that put Lorcan on edge more than her sudden appearance. He stepped through the passage and into a small clearing in a dense forest. Havilar stood, clutching her glaive, amid the scattered corpses of five gnolls and a human man.
Lorcan stopped, staring at the corpse. Not a human.
“Where did you pick up a—”
“Not the issue,” Sairché said. The air was thick with the brimstone smell of Hellsportals, and the forest echoed with shouts and the hoots of more gnolls.
“What is going on?” Havilar cried. Lorcan forced himself to smile at Havilar. “Well met. I hear you’re having some trouble with imps?”
Havilar looked at him as if he were completely mad. “How do you know Desima?”
Lorcan kept smiling. Beside him, Sairché was stiff as a rod. “Well you don’t think I’d leave you all alone, do you?” he said. “We’re allies, remember? And if I have to watch over your sister in Suzail, someone else clearly should be here with you.”
“She’s a spy?”
“She’s an ally,” Lorcan said. In the distance, a gnoll screamed.
“They’re getting closer,” Sairché noted.
Lorcan didn’t break his gaze. “She said a pair of imps appeared. Did you call those?”
“How would I call an imp?” Havilar turned on Desima. “Maybe she did it. Did you … you tracked us down. You pretended to need work. You’re … Who in the Hells are you?”
“Just an ally,” Sairché said, still watching the border of the clearing. The calls were coming from all sides, it seemed, echoing through the ancient forest. “You should get her out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” Havilar cried.
“Imps,” Lorcan reminded Havilar. “Did they say anything?”
“No!” Havilar said. “They just … showed up and attacked and …” She looked out into the darkness. “I have to go.”
“You have to tell me everything,” Lorcan said. Sairché cast a straggly branch of lightning from her wand into the shadows. “Did you hear anything? Smell anything? See anything?”
Havilar’s gold eyes looked from him to Sairché in her human disguise. “Felt something,” she said, as if she wished she hadn’t. “Like something snapped. I thought … I thought I got hurt, but then …” She looked back at the dead man and then at Sairché. She shook her head, as if she couldn’t do this. “It’s starting, isn’t it?”
Perhaps. Or perhaps the imps were an overture from another devil. Perhaps this was how Invadiah made her move, or perhaps this was all a trick of Sairché’s. “It might be,” Lorcan allowed. “Which means you need to be careful.”
Two gnolls broke through the brush. Lorcan moved to pull Havilar out of their reach, but the tiefling woman turned, glaive in hand and shock nowhere in sight. The blade shot out, faster than Lorcan would have imagined, spearing the creature through the hollow of its throat and sending a spray of blood through the rain. The second gnoll raised its dull blade over her. Another fork of lightning arced past, crackling so close to Havilar’s scalp that Lorcan caught his breath. The gnoll convulsed, Havilar’s glaive swept up into its belly and it screamed.
“Shit and ashes, Sairché!” Lorcan cried. “What did I just say?”
“Sairché?” Havilar straightened, glaive still ready. The pit of Lorcan’s stomach dropped.
Lorcan stepped in front of his sister now, the requirements of their deal making it impossible to do anything else. “Havi, think this through. She’s the only one who saw what happened—do you want the blame for that fellow’s death?”
“They’ll believe me.”
“Brin and Mehen will.” Havilar stiffened, glanced at Sairché. “She’s not ideal,” Lorcan went on. “I know that. I wouldn’t have sent her if there were any other devil I could trust—no, not trust. I don’t trust her, and I wouldn’t ask you to either. Not completely. You’re not stupid.”
Havilar didn’t move, eyes flicking from Lorcan to Sairché and back.
“Whatever just happened,” Lorcan said, spreading his hands, “you’re right: it’s beginning. We don’t know what you’ll end up with, and we can’t say that you won’t be safer far, far away from everyone. Someone needs to stay here, someone who can pull you away if need be.”
Havilar shook her head. “Not her. Not her. Karshoj …”
Voices in the distance shouted for Havi, for Desima, for Crake. “Havilar,” Lorcan said, “you don’t need to trust her, but you need to trust me. She can’t hurt you again. And she’s the only one who I can guarantee won’t hurt you if these powers turn out to be stronger than your sister’s.” Mehen’s voice shouting for his daughter, all too near.
“Choose, Havi,” Lorcan said.
Havilar swallowed. “Fine. Fine. For now.”
One down, Lorcan thought. “Good girl.” He turned to Sairché. “I trust you can manage from here?” Before she could answer, he opened the portal again, returning to the fingerbone tower, the scrying mirror, and Farideh.
AT THE ROYAL palace, the clouds broke just wide enough to let the moon shine through, even though the patter of rain still rattled against the windowpanes of the prince’s sickroom. Raedra sighed.
“At least you’re sleeping through this wretched weather,” she said. “I think I might go mad at the sound of rain some days.” She reached over and brushed her brother’s hair off his forehead with the edge of her ring fingernail. “Everyone seems to be inside nearly all the time, soaked through the moment you step outside. I asked after the horses for you. Only Bitter and Solace have rainscald—you know they love the rain, silly things.
“Granddad has a cough, and wouldn’t you know? So do Turin Huntcrown, Stossian Ambershield, and Pheonard Crownsilver. Unbearable toadies, the lot of them.
“Oh, I know Mother would have words if she heard me say that—but I’m right. And she’s … sleeping.” Raedra tucked Baerovus’s hand back under the thin gray blanket, pressing his palm between her hands briefly. She sighed again. “Rover, if you can hear me, we’re not giving up. None of us is giving up. Promise you aren’t either …” She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat.
“You’re going to miss the funeral as well,” she said. “Mother’s through making plays and excuses. The only one who still believes Father’s alive is Aubrin. And if he doesn’t come back soon—”
The door opened, and the cleric’s assistant scurried in, trailed by a dark-haired man of middling years. Erzoured, the “Baron Boldtree.” Raedra schooled her expression into a mask, though it meant little. Erzoured knew exactly how she felt about him.
“My lord,” she said.
“Your Highness,” Erzoured said. “You’re up late. I hope you’re well—well as can be, that is.”
“I was hoping to have a private moment with the prince.”
“Is he not crown prince yet?” Erzoured asked.
“Give His Majesty time to grieve. There’s no need to declare it when the line is clear.”
Erzoured shrugged. “Unless he decides not to declare Baerovus. One couldn’t blame him—it’s all a terrible tragedy. Not that our Rover can’t pull through—stubborn rascal.” He reached over and gently tousled Baerovus’s hair, a perfect gesture of avuncular warmth. The cleric’s assistant smiled, and Raedra thought she would scream.
Emvar Obarskyr had not only fathered Halance Crownsilver—sometime after, he had taken up with a merchant’s daughter, Solatha Boldtree. He had died before Erzoured was even born, and Solatha had brought the child to court nine months later, claiming the crown prince’s descent. And when King Foril had ascended the Dragon Throne, still full of grief for his brother’s death, he’d broken with centuries of tradition and made Erzoured an Obarskyr, officially.
“We do not leave family out in the cold to beg for scraps and status,” he’d said. But whatever wrong he’d meant to right, it seemed too late. Erzoured was nothing but a blackguard, with an eye for the throne and not a care at all for those who stood between him and it—family or not. Raedra had been watching him from amongst those in the audience chamber the day Helindra Crownsilver had presented her long-lost grandnephew as Emvar’s lost scion. If Erzoured had dropped dead, there and then from utter rage, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Why do you hate him?” Baerovus had asked her later. “If things had been different, he would be crown prince, would he not? Isn’t he just jealous? It seems everyone is jealous.”
But there was jealousy that ate at the soul and was cause for worry, for pity, and there was a jealousy that drove a man to act violently. And Raedra was all but certain Erzoured would come after Baerovus, dagger first.
