“No you can’t,” Farideh said. “Who told you that?”
“Everyone knows that. You use whiskey. In a little plate.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
Brin blinked at them, the fog of the fight dissipating and the reality of what he was sitting amidst dawning. “You aren’t devils, are you?”
Both girls turned toward him. Farideh’s mouth went small and tight and her cheeks flamed. Havilar burst out with a snort of laughter that she quickly smothered.
“Yes,” she said, waggling the fingers of her free hand. “Devils. We’re bounty hunters of the Hells! Come to steal you away!”
“Stop it, Havi,” Farideh said. “It’s not funny.”
“Oooooooh!” she wailed, trying to stifle her giggles. “We’ll fry your innards and spit-roast your heart! Boil down your soul for …” She looked at Farideh. “What do they do with souls anyway?”
Farideh glared at her. “They draw power from them. We’re not devils,” she said to Brin. “Haven’t you ever seen a tiefling?”
“No,” he admitted, though now he felt foolish. What would devils be doing on Faerun, chasing down errant novices like him? “I’ve … read about them. About you.”
Tieflings were the descendants of the unions between humans and fiends. While said union was many generations past, the taint of the devil’s blood bred true and all tieflings were cursed with strange, solid eyes; horns; and a tail. Many also had red skin, he had read, but the twins’ was fawn-colored-as ordinary as the Calishite priest and half the caravan in that regard. But their hair was such a black that it had a purplish cast, like a deep, day-old bruise … and their eyes …
He realized he’d been staring when Farideh said, rather delicately, “If you’d like to return to your family, we’d understand.”
“No,” Brin said. “I mean, they’re not my family, I don’t really know them. And I’m fine here. If that’s all right.” They weren’t devils. They were only girls. Girls who had saved him from marauding orcs. Orcs he had run from like a coward. He felt worse than sheepish.
Havilar and Farideh exchanged a glance, so quick he nearly missed it. “It’s all right. Is your leg any better?” Farideh said.
“Why are you traveling with them if you don’t know any of them?”
“Havi, hush. That’s none of our-”
“He doesn’t have to answer.” She looked at him. “You don’t have to answer.”
“They’re … it’s … It’s a refugee caravan,” he said after a moment. “But in reverse, I suppose. Returning to Neverwinter.”
“Neverwinter?” Farideh said. “I thought Neverwinter was destroyed ages ago.”
“It was. But they’re rebuilding it. And the Lord Neverember-well, he’s the one taking control of all the rebuilding and such-has called back the people who fled when Mount Hotenow erupted.”
Havilar looked at him askance. “Aren’t you a little young to have survived a catastrophe from thirty years ago?”
“Not me,” he said. “My parents. They fled and went to, um, Amn. I thought … I thought there would be something better for me in Neverwinter.”
Havilar squinted at him. “How old are you? Fifteen?”
“Seventeen,” he said hotly, forgetting to lie.
Havilar snorted. “You weigh as much as my glaive. What exactly do you think you’re going to be doing in Neverwinter?” she asked. “Not exactly fit for city-building. Also, your leg’s hurt.”
Brin scowled. He shifted to his feet and stood, gingerly applying weight to the leg. It bore him, even though it smarted. The axe handle hadn’t hit his knee. He could walk well enough until it could be healed.
“You’re still not about to clear a volcano’s remains,” Havilar said.
“It’s not all hauling stones and hammering posts,” Brin said. “Which I could do. It’s planning. And … constructing things. Opening stores. Making it a place worth staying in.” He dusted off his breeches. “It’s better than hunting criminals.”
Criminals. Constancia-Loyal Fury, it tore at him to think of casting her off to hunters like these. He wondered if Constancia rode with the holy champions. He wondered if it mattered against Havilar, quick and eager as she was with that glaive; stern Mehen; and Farideh with her magic. He’d never met a wizard who cast spells like that.
Sorcerer, he corrected himself. Wizards have books. Sorcerers just have magic.
Regardless, he owed Constancia. And now he owed these two-better they shouldn’t meet his cousin with her keen blade.
“If …” He hesitated deliberately. “Look, I haven’t seen your bounty, but if I were her and I were heading North … probably I’d go to Luskan.”
Havilar shook her head. “We do not want to go to Luskan.”
“It could be worse,” Farideh said, her eyes back on the cart behind them. “At least Luskan is the sort of place where no one cares what you look like.”
“It’s also the sort of place where you get stabbed in the night by pirates for no reason.”
“You’ve never even met someone who’s been to Luskan,” Farideh murmured. “You’re just repeating things you like the sound of.”
“Why are you such-”
Mehen returned then in a fouler temper than he’d left. After showing his leaflet to as many of the former refugees as would listen, he’d discovered that none of them had seen Constancia. Or at least, none would admit to it. And a fair number of them went out of their way not to talk to him at all.
“Brin says we should go to Luskan,” Havilar said.
Mehen scowled at Brin. “Did he? Which are you, boy, a thug or a hunter?”
“N-Neither?”
“Then I suppose I won’t be taking your advice,” he said. “Luskan can wait until we run out of options. Nobody’s going to help us in Luskan. It’s a Hellhole.”
See? Havilar mouthed to Brin.
Mehen looked up at her, then over her head, back at the caravan. “Farideh! Get back here! What in the Hells is wrong with you?”
Farideh was hurrying back from the lead cart, her cheeks scarlet. Brin hadn’t even seen her leave. The lead cart had been hit hard-the driver lay splayed across the seat with an arrow protruding from his ribs while his sister pressed a hand to the wound. Fortunately, she was also pouring a healing draft into his mouth.
Brin frowned.
The healing draft was in the same metal vial Farideh had been trying to press on him.
“Are you all right?” Mehen demanded.
“I’m fine,” she said. She turned rather deliberately away, to fuss with her haversack.
On the cart, the woman wrenched the arrow from her brother’s chest and he gasped. He sat up, wiping at the blood that slicked his skin, and breathing heavily-but breathing.
“Time to go,” Mehen said with a pointed look at Brin. He herded both twins ahead of him and down the road, without so much as a farewell. Both sisters glanced back once-Havilar with a jaunty wave, Farideh with a more solemn look-and it was only moments before they were down the road, and out of sight.
Brin went back to the cart. The cart owner was still alive-though nursing a wounded arm-and so were his daughters, and Brin said a little prayer of thanks.
“Monsters,” the man said, watching as the tieflings and the dragonborn headed down the road. “As if anyone with any sense would hand someone over to a pair of devil-children. One’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy. That and a dragonborn. Never know what those types are thinking.”
“Yes,” Brin said, shame in his chest. “Well.”
He realized hadn’t apologized for thinking they were devils. What had seemed like an honest mistake turned cruel and thoughtless when he heard the cart owner saying the same. He hadn’t thanked them for saving him either, or for saving the rest of the caravan. Brin turned to help Tam with another man, a farmer with a broken arm, wishing for all the world he was traveling with a pair of devil-children and a dragonborn.