Sairche scowled and flexed her wings again. She waved the erinyes out. “If you want to die so badly, there’s the window. Or if you can’t manage it yourself, I’m sure Bibracte would be delighted to assist.”
“Of course she would,” Lorcan said. “That’s hardly worth mentioning.” He squinted. “You can’t find her.”
Sairche matched his false and feral smile. “Why are you protecting her?”
“For one thing, it amuses me to keep you from getting your way.”
“Enough to die for it?”
“Are you going to pretend you aren’t going to kill me anyway?” He clucked his tongue. “Don’t be tedious, Sairche.”
“You’re hiding something.”
Lorcan kept his smile, but his thoughts went to Glasya, to the terrible voice whispering in his ear as he was led from the palace to be lost in the little room. It amused him much more not to cross the archduchess.
“Aren’t we all?” he said instead. “For instance … why is it you want my Brimstone Angel so badly? You don’t collect warlocks. So you must have a buyer in mind. But I can say with fair certainty that there are no devils in Malbolge who want her and would be willing to deal with you. So you’re crossing the layers.”
Sairche shrugged. “Simple enough to figure out. I never hid it. I’m more interested to know why you’re being so coy. So careful. I thought you might do better to have a little more … slack in your lead.” She pulled the drape of linen aside to reveal a heavy iron-framed mirror leaning against the curved wall. Its surface stirred gently, as if a sheen of oil marred the glass. A scrying mirror, for viewing the plane of Toril, the world of Faerun.
Lorcan smiled to himself, though his stomach started to churn. “You really do think I’m a fool.”
Sairche ran a finger across the surface of the mirror, swirling the sickly colors and distorting the reflection. “Twelve of your pacts have very distinct signatures. I found the five whose souls you’d laid claim to almost before I started looking. Tracing the lines of power from the Hells to the rest was bothersome, but not difficult.”
“Yes, yes,” Lorcan said, dismissively. “You’re very clever.”
“The thirteenth … well, you know perfectly well there is no such signature for her, no line of power-at least, not one I can find. It’s as if it dissolves into nothing.” She stared at her brother’s reflection in the mirror, her golden eyes burning. “It’s as if she doesn’t exist.”
“And yet she does,” he said. “Sounds like you’re not as clever as you think.” He watched her reflection beside his, searching for some sign of her intentions in the shared shape of their eyes, the shared curve of their smirk.
“Who’s got you trapped?” he asked again.
“I’m not discussing my business with you.”
“I don’t know that you have to,” Lorcan said. There was nothing she could have said that would have taken away the clear desperation in Sairche’s actions. She didn’t want Farideh. She needed her. Someone thought Sairche could get them a Brimstone Angel, and the price for failure was too high.
But then … why was Lorcan not writhing in a dungeon bleeding out of his eyes?
“Is it Glasya?” he asked.
Sairche smirked back. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Enjoy the mirror.”
“And distract myself from my window?” he asked. “I might miss another succubus scuffle.”
She crossed to the door, chuckling to herself. “You think you know me? I know you, too, Lorcan. I know it’s taking everything you have not to push me aside and check on your warlocks-I’d lay good coin on my being no more than ten steps out the door before you’re checking up on her in particular.” Her gaze flicked over him. “Five, if the erinyes broke you as much as it looks. Good day.”
He’d prove her wrong. Lorcan waited until she’d left, until the door had shut and merged back into the still-living marrow of the walls, until he glimpsed the troop of erinyes passing into the distance, before dropping to his knees in front of the scrying mirror.
It would be swaddled in protections and magic to trace its use-even if he couldn’t sense the spells’ presence, he knew Sairche wouldn’t forget such a simple precaution. He called up the mark of his Phrenike heir. The reflection shivered and blurred and changed to reflect a young man with horns, bloodless skin, and a tail that lashed the frame of the bed he lay snoring in. Lorcan sneered. Even to thwart her brother, Sairche wouldn’t take that one.
He called, again and again, each of the heirs of the Toril Thirteen, the circle of warlocks who’d aided Asmodeus in his ascension. The Nicodemus heir shimmered with the mark of a rival from another layer. So did the heir of Caisys the Vicelord. The Elyria heir lay dead in a puddle of her own viscera. Lorcan scowled. He’d been fond of that one.
Four were lost altogether-stolen by other collectors of warlocks or dead of refusing them. The other eight might well have never known he was gone, as little as their routines had changed. None seemed to be focusing on the sorts of rituals that might rescue Lorcan from his captivity.
Bastards, he thought. Couldn’t count on a one of them.
Lorcan held the pendant he wore, a piece of leather shaped in the form of Glasya’s copper scourge-the one piece of ornament he’d been left, since it was the only one without a clear enchantment-and worried it with one thumb.
He drew a steady finger down the center of the mirror-pointedly did not think of Farideh, the heir of Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel, rarest of the Toril Thirteen-and pretended it wasn’t such a hard thing to do.
CHAPTER SIX
WATERDEEP
2 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)
Mira found the note from her father tucked into a crack in the window frame of her room, after she and Dankon returned from moving the artifact to the manor grounds. Cloudcroft had as many guards in his manor as he had vulgar works of art, and Chansom had given his guards the morning to themselves.
Dankon nodded at the little scroll as she reached to palm it, shedding armor pieces and weaponry. “Who’s that for?”
Mira unrolled it. “You have a brightbird you’re expecting love notes from?”
The half-orc chuckled. “Do you, Lady Ice Storm?”
Plans are in place and the way is clear, the note read in a simple code she could have managed in the cradle. Meet me at the statue’s head in North Ward, once your duties are discharged. Be prepared to leave. She sighed-a less obvious message with the innkeeper would have sufficed.
“What’s your paramour have to say then?”
“Nothing I want to hear,” she said. “I need to go out.”
Dankon heaved his chestplate over his head and onto the floor. “Well, come in quietly. I intend to sleep every heartbeat we’re given.”
Mira slipped down the stairs and out the rear door of the inn. She sighed again-she could only hope that by leaving he meant to go to Everlund, the city that held the Harpers’ stronghold in the north, but even then the portal meant that none of her prior plans were going to be of use. You make Beshaba proud, Fisher, she thought. She’d have to make tentative arrangements for supplies in Everlund, and send word to her own contacts that their plans had changed.
The Fisher had wanted her unsettled, but she wouldn’t give him that pleasure. She could keep a calm face and a calmer tongue. She could ride alongside her father and not rise to the myriad reminders that he didn’t trust her, didn’t expect enough of her. That he thought things could be simple between them because here and there in her life he’d stopped in and dropped advice on her like a sudden hailstorm, nothing but puzzled when she had ideas of her own. She would show the Fisher he’d made no roadblock, but only a side path. She was clever enough to get through this, she thought, leaving the inn in the pale hours of dawn to find a more private place to contact Maspero.