Rhand and Lorcan were not the same, she told herself. Even if Havilar thought so, even if half of Waterdeep thought so.
And even if she was wrong, she thought, heading down the hallway, being alike didn’t mean she was bound to tolerate both of them. Karshoj to Havi, for implying so.
On a pillar at the middle of the hallway, a woman in a garb of sleek, deepnight blue so snug and seamless it seemed to be a second skin, posed contorted into a knot-resting on her forearms with her feet curled over and pointed down.
“Astonishing isn’t she?” a voice said beside her cheek. Farideh jerked away and saw Adolican Rhand standing beside her. “She assures me it’s quite uncomfortable.”
“It looks so,” Farideh said, taking a step back. Rhand handed her a tiny glass of bubbly gold wine-pressed it into her hand in such a way that she had to take it or let it smash on the floor. He toasted her with his own glass.
“Zzar,” he explained. “Have you had it?”
She shook her head and took a tentative sip. It tasted more like a sweet cake than anything else-until the burn of alcohol exploded in her mouth. She swallowed a cough. “Almonds,” she managed.
“Yes, quite a bit,” he said, staring into her. “It’s fortified with almond liquor, but the base is a rather nuanced elven wine. People say it tastes of summer. Honey and sweet hay. Violets.”
Farideh took another sip. All she could taste was almonds and alcohol. She held the glass back out to him. “Thank you. I was just leaving.”
“Now, that doesn’t sound right,” Rhand said, not taking the glass. “My doorjack says you’ve only just arrived. Not even time to have a glass of wine and see my new collection.” He gave her a sharp grin. “Not time enough to say well met and thank you for the gift.”
Farideh took another sip, another second to think of what to say. Already her cheeks were flushing and her thoughts looser-a good thing the zzar came in such small quantities. “It’s … Thank you. It’s too much.” And worse, it made her mouth dry. “But I worry I’ve given you the wrong idea. I …”
Farideh trailed off. The acrobat had lowered herself down onto the pillar and brought both feet to rest on either side of her face. She looked between her feet at Farideh with golden eyes, fringed with needle-sharp lashes of silver, and gave her a mirthless smile.
Farideh’s heart skipped. Sairche.
Sairche, and here Farideh was, alone and unprepared. Sairche, and Havilar was here, unaware and unprotected. Sairche, and what did that mean for Lorcan? If she had found Farideh, was Lorcan dead? Was she here to claim her own Brimstone Angel? All this time worrying about the Netherese and the Harpers and Farideh had let herself become complacent about the very real threat of the Hells. Of Sairche, and the danger of the Toril Thirteen.
Try it, Farideh thought, drawing up the powers of her pact, what else could she do? Try it, she dared the cambion in the woman’s skin. I’m ready.
“Are you well?” Master Rhand said, sounding distant. “Do you need to lie down?”
The woman settled her feet on top of the pillar and flipped herself upright, and Farideh could see, now, her eyes were only a lovely hazel and perfectly human, the lashes pasted on. The smile was still cold and empty, but now it wasn’t for Farideh but for the man beside her.
Not Sairche. Just an acrobat.
She cursed at her fancy. Were the dreams bleeding through after so many nights of broken sleep? She’d drunk twice as much tea the night before and dreamed only fitfully-perhaps she was paying for it now.
Master Rhand stood too close, waiting for an answer. “No,” she said. “I need to go.”
“Oh, you can manage a little longer surely,” he said, folding his arm around hers and holding it there. He led her back toward the ballroom, keeping her drawn close. “Come see my latest acquisitions and tell me how you’ve enjoyed your gift. Shall I assume you’ve been sequestered, learning new skills?”
“No,” Farideh said. She tried to disentangle her arm from his, without resorting to striking him, but her thoughts couldn’t sort which way to pull. He held her firm. “I mean … thank you, it’s very nice. But those rituals-”
“Not at all,” he said. “You ought to bring the book by again. I have several more rituals in mind that will suit you very well.”
This was going all wrong. “You hardly know me,” she said, trying to sound sharp. “What do you think will suit me so well?”
Rhand regarded her, amused. “You’ll find, Farideh, that you are not unique in so many ways as you believe. Though”-he drew a strand of hair between his fingers-“still unique in the important ways.”
Such a strange comment-Farideh found herself unsure of how to answer it. But it struck her in that moment it was very much the sort of thing Lorcan might have said to her once, if only Lorcan were not quite so clever.
The thought crossed her mind so knotted and complex she could hardly unravel it once it had. She frowned at the empty zzar glass she was still holding, and tried to remember emptying it.
Rhand steered her through the sea of staring guests, toward the display that held the shifting page and ancient stone. As they passed, Farideh picked out faces in the crowd-cruel glowing eyes, sly smiles, crowns of horns. Devils. Her heart started to race. No one else was noticing. No one else seemed to find anything to stare at but her.
Her arm started to ache where it pressed against Rhand, where her brand had etched her skin, and the ache became a burn. Her breath was getting harder to draw by the time they stopped before the display. His guests seemed to give him a wide berth-because the devils fear him, a voice in her thoughts seemed to say, or because he’s one of them?
“My latest acquisition,” Rhand said. “Perhaps you’ve heard about it?”
The murmuring voice was louder here, clearer. Ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. Brought through rock and flood to this? She kept her eyes locked on the shifting page. The rest of the room seemed to shift too.
“ ‘The treasures of Tarchamus,’ ” she said. “Yes, a time or too.”
Rhand chuckled. “Little minx-who knew you read Netherese? Most of this lot still believes it’s the remnants of a dragon’s hoard. I’ve had four fools try to buy it off of me already.” The page’s text swirled into a fluid calligraphy, trailing dots that wafted away like spring blossoms. Farideh blinked heavily. “Are you sure you’re well?”
“Fine,” she said, automatically. The wine might have gone to her head, but the Hells were boiling up into her veins, ready in case Sairche tried anything. Ready. Except … she was forgetting something.
Rhand’s arm went around her waist, but she only noted it-too distracted by the shifting text and the nagging sense her plans weren’t going to work. “He was quite the power, it seems. Even among the arcanists of ancient Netheril. Stories say he managed to work around the Weave. To harness the powers of wild magic and the planes beyond. They say he tore a portal to the Hells, for example, to destroy a rival’s floating city.” He chuckled and the sound made Malbolge’s energy suddenly surge in her. “Not a fellow to make angry.”
“A portal to the Hells?” she repeated. Suddenly the ink turned rust red and skittered across the parchment like insects, leaving a spiral of sharp-edged letters that seemed to smolder and burn the parchment. The page’s muttering changed. A rune formed in the midst of the smaller letters. A rune she knew.
Lorcan crouched a distance away and scratched a rune into the layer of frost and dead moss: a sinuous thing of smoothly angling lines that seemed to suggest a much more complex symbol, as if there were lines to it that Farideh couldn’t perceive.
“Draw the rune,” she heard Lorcan say. “Say laesurach.”
She looked up from the page, through the shimmer of magic, to the other side of the display. He was standing there, just on the edge of the light that poured down on the artifacts, watching her. “Say laesurach,” he repeated.