“Hours, if that. Mehen knows of a portal to Cormyr. He’ll want to take her through as soon as possible.” And there is no time soon enough, she thought. Constancia Crownsilver, the fugitive knight of Torm they’d been tracking when they entered Neverwinter, had been difficult every day of their return trip, sneering and snapping and cruel at times.
“Will Brin go?” Tam asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wouldn’t, if I were him.” The young man who’d joined their unlikely party had turned out to be the cousin of their bounty and was wrapped up in a political tangle that had sent him on the run. She’d be sad if they parted ways-in all their days wandering the world, she and Havilar hadn’t made friends as easily as they had with the Cormyrean boy-but he’d fled Cormyr and Constancia for reasons he was still being tight-lipped about.
Farideh yawned, fatigue suddenly swallowing her like an overlarge cloak she couldn’t struggle out of. Tam gave her another crooked smile.
“Go to sleep,” he suggested. “I’ll give your father more of the tea.”
“I told you,” she said, “it isn’t the battle-shock. I’m not fainting over my first blood.”
“Even if you’ve stood against a hundred foes and slain a thousand dragons,” he said, “you’ve stood and watched people you love suffer and risk death and be turned against you. That will take time to settle itself.” He hesitated. “And, I gather, you lost … someone you called a friend.”
She looks up at Lorcan, his wicked smile, his black, black eyes. The horns that mimic hers and his skin, red as hot irons.
The cambion holds out a hand, beckons her nearer. Cobblestones sprout from the hard-pack under her feet, and even though the ground crunches with the frost of a winter night-the night he showed her the spell that unleashed the vent of flames-the air thickens and warms. The air is Neverwinter’s and a battle is coming.
You wanted this, he says, and she does.
Farideh finished the cup of tea. “He’s not lost yet,” she said firmly, even if the echoes of the archdevil’s laughter mocked her certainty.
The day they reached Waterdeep, Brin had still not settled things with Constancia.
When Brin had fled the Citadel of Torm, he hadn’t had much of a plan-just get as far as possible before anyone noticed and leave as little a trail as he could. But despite making it halfway across the continent of Faerun, despite dyeing his hair and lying about his name and taking every precaution he could think of, his cousin, Constancia, had caught up with him and the odd friends he’d made in the bounty hunters chasing her down.
He watched Mehen leading Constancia’s big charger, Squall, down the cobbled road, his cousin riding, but carefully shackled. They needn’t have bothered, he knew. Constancia wouldn’t compound the embarrassment of having a bounty on her head like a common fleeing criminal.
Havilar dropped back to walk beside him as they passed into the city. “Have you been to Waterdeep before?”
He nodded. “Once. I was here a few days before I found the caravan to Neverwinter.”
“Is Suzail like this?” she asked. “Or nicer?”
“Different,” he said, as they passed by a gargantuan statue, frozen mid-stride, its ankles plastered with a variety of handbills. “Suzail’s Cormyrean. Waterdeep’s … a little of everything. I like it better.” He smiled. “But maybe that’s just because it’s different from what I know.”
She slipped her arm through his in that disconcerting way she had, too comfortable for him to make sense of what it meant. “I wish you could show us what’s different. I wish we were staying longer.”
He stopped walking and she stepped out of his arm. “What do you mean? How long are you staying?”
She shrugged. “An hour? Maybe a few? Mehen just wants to sell the horse, get some supplies and head straight for the portalkeeper.”
“You’re taking the new portal? Are you in such a hurry to get to Cormyr?”
Havilar shifted uneasily. “Your cousin … is not the most pleasant bounty.”
“She has good points,” Brin said stiffly.
“Maybe if she likes you.” Havilar jerked her head up the street at Constancia, who was giving them both a glare that might once have shamed Brin into punishing himself. He scowled back.
“That makes less difference than you think.”
“She does not like us,” Havilar added. “Anyway, it won’t take long this way. Maybe you can show us around Suzail instead.”
“Maybe,” he said. But his stomach was clenching tight as he said it. He didn’t want to go back to Cormyr. He couldn’t go back to Cormyr.
“Come on,” Havilar said, slipping her arm through his again. “Let’s catch up.”
They found a stable willing to buy Squall, albeit for a tragic sum. The great gray charger bucked and stamped when they took his rider, as if he knew Constancia wouldn’t be returning for him. Havilar and Mehen helped the stable boy master the reins and get a hood over Squall so they could lead him into the yard. Constancia’s dark eyes burned into Brin.
“I wish we didn’t have to,” Farideh murmured beside him. “I didn’t think you could break a horse’s heart.”
“Would that have stopped you, devil child?” Constancia asked. Farideh’s mouth went tight, and the faint banners of a shadowy protection curled out around her frame.
“What would you have them do?” Tam asked. “The portal is expensive, and I doubt its keepers want his hooves cracking their fine floors.”
“Better they take me home the way I came.”
“Better you avoided the bounty in the first place,” Tam answered. Brin felt a flush of shame rush over him: Constancia’s bounty came from his disobedience. If he hadn’t run, she wouldn’t have pursued, and his Aunt Helindra wouldn’t have assumed Constancia’d had a hand in his disappearance.
“What will you do?” Tam asked him.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Brin said, irritably. “It’s like you’re in my head.”
The priest chuckled. “Apologies. You just have the look of a man deciding something unpleasant.”
Farideh turned to regard them both. “You aren’t coming to Cormyr, are you?”
“You stop it too,” Brin admonished. “I haven’t … I don’t know.” Constancia was watching him warily. “I’d hate it if I never saw you two again.”
“But you ran for a reason,” Farideh finished.
“I ran for very good reasons,” he agreed, still watching Constancia.
Across the city, the enormous clock they called the Timehands began to chime the hour. Tam swore. “Day just burns by. I need to get to my rooms before midday. If you do stay,” he said to Brin, “I’ll be at the Blind Falcon Inn, just north of Dock Ward.” He paused. “But ask the innkeeper for ‘Yahyn.’ ”
Mehen returned then with Havilar, and Tam said his good-byes. The rest of them headed across Sea Ward to the portal that led to the other side of the continent.
“Farideh thinks he’s some sort of secret mercenary,” Havilar told Brin as they parted ways with Tam. “He doesn’t seem like a priest.”
“No,” Brin agreed, with a last glance at the Harper agent as he disappeared into the street traffic. “Not just a priest, anyway.”
“Neither do you, though.”
“I told you,” he said irritably. “I’m not a priest.” The very idea would have a true holy champion of Torm laughing in a thoroughly undignified way. Only Torm himself could say why Brin of all people could manage to heal in His name-occasionally-despite failing so utterly in training to serve the god of duty.
Havilar snickered. “I know. I’m teasing.” She looked away, up the road. “You’re not a priest,” she said, and this time there was no doubting she was serious. “You’re ‘His Grace.’ ”
Brin didn’t respond. Of all the things he didn’t want to have to speak-an apology for Constancia, a request for passage back to Suzail, a good-bye to the twins, a good-bye to Havilar-why Constancia had called him “His Grace” was still right at the top of the list.