“Where’s Dahl?” Tam demanded.
Farideh’s mouth tightened again. “Behind me.”
Mother of the moon, Tam thought, give me patience. “What part of ‘No one goes anywhere from now on without a partner,’ did you misunderstand?”
She folded her arms. “My partner didn’t seem to think that was important.”
“Enough,” Tam said, as Dahl returned a moment later. “Did you get the door open?”
“No,” Dahl said sharply. “And worse, Rhand and his people are on the other side of it.”
“Hrast,” Tam spat.
“I set an alarm to go off if they make it through,” Dahl said quickly. “It should slow them down and warn us too.”
Maspero sneered. “Does it sound like a rockfall? How in the broken planes does an alarm slow a body down?”
Dahl spared him a glare. “It will be very loud.”
“Good work,” Tam said, assessing the situation. Six of them back, no way out the doors. Still no Mira. The shade’s cryptic worries repeating in his mind. And Zhentarim-gods, the Zhentarim.
There was no more time to wait. “Everyone get your weapons ready and come along,” he said. “We may have more trouble than we thought.”
The ritual deposited Lorcan back in the room of the fingerbone tower as unceremoniously as it had dropped him in the cavern. He stood and brushed the traces of marrow grease from the knees of his breeches. His luck the spell would work so neatly-it couldn’t have dropped him outside the tower, closer to some other portal, no. She’d had to do it right.
Gods be damned, he thought. Who had helped her? She’d distracted him with that nonsense about Bryseis Kakistos, and then …
It was probably that gawking paladin. Probably thought he was impressing her. Probably thought he could save her. Lorcan thought of the frayed feeling the divine powers around Dahl had possessed. A fallen paladin ought to be useful for keeping her virtuous streak in check. Just not that one.
Not any one, he thought, that waves swords at you and calls you a monster. Puts the wrong ideas in her head.
Self-consciously, he wiped his cheek. Was that the wrong idea or the right one? It meant she wasn’t going to leave him. I don’t think of
our pact that way, she’d said. Not anymore. If she wasn’t going to corrupt all at once in a spectacular collapse of morals for love of power, bit by bit through good intentions and fond feelings was nearly as good.
Except …
It was true, what he’d said. There was no one else on any plane who cared whether he lived or died or hurt. It got under his skin, right from the start, and he was glad she was worried about him.
And Lorcan wasn’t completely sure that, had Glasya never said a word to him, he wouldn’t keep defying Sairche all the same. Which was dangerous, he thought, scanning the room. Alliances were for players, tools of the hierarchy. Alliances tangled you in other devils’ schemes and tied you to other devils’ fortunes. Alliances mired you in the hierarchy, whether you were a miserable lemure or a Lord of the Nine, no mistake.
Glasya’s voice echoed in his head-Do be careful, little Lorcan. I may have need of you and her in the future-and he shivered. He was already in it, up to his neck. Even if he abandoned Farideh, he was still caught in the Lord of Malbolge’s plans.
All the more reason, he thought, to get out.
He turned toward the window and froze.
Leaning against the lacy bone balustrade was another succubus, one he’d recognize anywhere in any skin. She’d kept her deepnight hair and her eyes, sharp and shining gold. But her skin was as pale as dunes beneath the moon and the batlike wings that she held high, as if ready to launch into the air and attack her traitorous son, were mottled brown and bronze.
“Mother,” he said, wondering if he could summon up a burst of flames fast enough. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I can see that,” she said. As an erinyes, her voice had been as terrible as the roar of waves dashed against the rocks. Now when Fallen Invadiah spoke it was a melody that threatened to calm Lorcan, to make him drop his guard. “Nor does it seem you need me all that dearly. Does your sister know you have a portal?”
“She doesn’t,” he said. “And to be fair, I don’t. I have an enterprising warlock with more ambition than sense. I gather you got my message?”
“I’d hoped it was that slattern’s idea of a jest.” Invadiah swept into the room, her wings filling the space. “That no son of mine was so foolish as to ask for favors from someone he wronged so deeply.”
Lorcan bit back a laugh. “You’ll recall, I was wronged right alongside you. Sairche’s the one who pitted us each against the other. She’s the one you want. She’s the one we both want.”
Invadiah gave him a pitying look, unsuited even on that unfamiliar face. “If you’re going to try and sway me, kindly put a little effort into it. I’m not one of your mortals.”
“What is there to convince you of?” he said. “Sairche’s the one lording over your armies, decking herself in your treasures, wielding your authority. She’s the one who drew Glasya’s eye to your mission when Rohini turned on you. You cannot tell me you still favor her.”
Invadiah’s mouth quirked into a smirk, and now that she’d lost her fangs, Lorcan realized he’d inherited his mother’s mouth. “An improvement,” she allowed. “But I never favored Sairche.”
“She had the pradixikai beat me within an inch of my life,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me for painting her with too broad a brush.”
“That temper doesn’t suit you. You’ll never have the power and the strength of an erinyes to follow through on it.” Invadiah considered him, as a snake considers a vole. “I hear you’d like access to Toril again. I can provide that.”
The change Glasya’s punishment had wrought in Invadiah carried from her skin down to her very core-clever as she’d been as an erinyes, she’d been prouder and crueler too. If she’d come at all, she would have surely denied him and perhaps cuffed him for asking. He almost preferred the certainty of his mother as he’d known her.
“What’s the price?” he asked.
Invadiah’s smile shifted, flashing some measure of that missing cruelty. It was comforting in a way he was sure didn’t exist outside of the Hells. “You know, it’s a pity you and Sairche never got along.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She’s a clever girl. Secrets unfold for her like a man’s heart under a sword. But for all her cleverness she is not nearly so silver-tongued as you are. You might rather hide from what you know, Lorcan, but you know how to bring unlikely allies to your side.” She tilted her head, considering him in the singularly predacious way succubi had. “How to make them forgive and forget you as a nuisance and nothing more. Together, you might have been something to make even devils quake. Together you might have proved me wrong.”
“A pity Sairche sees a better use for me dead. What do you want for the portal?”
“Your sister’s reign won’t last forever,” Invadiah said. “Nor will my demotion. Eventually the tide will shift and I will rise and shed this hateful form. When that happens … you’ll serve me however you can until Sairche is overthrown.”
Lorcan smiled. “Gladly.”
“Don’t be too certain.” She held out a hand and in the center of her palm was a small pouch. He took it and found a pearl the size of his thumbnail inside. “Crush it,” she said, “and have a good idea where you want to go. It will pull you through my aerie’s portal.”
The surface of the pearl seemed to swirl gently in the nauseating light. “And if I want to come back?”
“Then you wait until I come for you,” Invadiah said, and she turned to leave. She paused at the edge of the balcony. “Sairche doesn’t know, does she?” She looked back over her shoulder, over the curve of her wing. “She has no idea you’ve kept a spare all this time. Twins-it’s clever really.”