“Seven,” Dahl said, “and a half.” Farideh sat back down, all the blood draining away. That wasn’t better.
Havilar stared at Tam and Dahl, as if either might contradict Farideh, might say this was all a prank or a misunderstanding. They looked back, sadly.
She let out a breath, half a cry, and yanked her hand from Farideh’s. “Seven years,” she repeated. “Seven. Karshoji. Years.”
“I didn’t know,” Farideh said, shaking her head. She felt as if her whole body would turn itself inside out if she twisted wrong. “I didn’t think-”
“Of course you didn’t!” Havilar said. “You never think!”
There was a tap at the door-the tavernkeeper with the food. Dahl poured a few fingers of whiskey for each of the women, and some for himself. Farideh watched, feeling as if these things were happening on the other end of the world. When he handed her a glass, she took it with numb hands and only held it, cupped in her lap.
Every fiber of her being was coiled tight, vibrating with the knowledge of how badly she’d erred, how completely she’d destroyed so many lives, because Sairché was cleverer than she. Every bit of her hurt.
Only a tiny part of her mind clung screaming to the fact that seven and a half years meant her deal with Sairché wasn’t done. That she’d see Sairché again.
“All right,” Tam said, shaken. “All right. You’ll stay here. That’s easiest. We have healers. A wizard who can. . Right.”
Havilar drained her cup. “I want my own room.”
That drove the last of the air from Farideh. “What?” Havilar did not look at her.
“Of course,” Tam said. “You’ll need to answer questions. Be checked. We need to be sure this isn’t something bigger.”
“It’s not,” Farideh said, but she could hardly get the words out. “It’s only us.”
Tam sat down in the desk’s chair. “We need to make sure you’re well enough, too. I’ll stay with you.” He turned to Dahl. “Send for Mehen. Right now.” He hesitated before adding, “Brin too.”
Farideh clung to the cup as if it might be an anchor, and shut her eyes tight as the world started swimming. She had to fix this. She had to make Sairché fix what she’d wrought.
There were, Dahl thought, standing before the closed door, a hundred other things he could be doing. That sending to Everlund. Re-sorting the handler’s reports. Attempting to contact Sembia again. Get Tam an hour or so to get his hair cut and his beard trimmed. He took a mouthful of whiskey from the flask in his pocket, rubbed a thumb nervously over the card case in his hand, and then knocked anyway.
Khochen had been on him the very breath the door to the guest room had closed, but Dahl had brushed her off, unable to form an appropriate answer to any of her questions: Who are they? How do they know Tam? What’s going on? He couldn’t fathom the full answer to that last one in particular, even as Tam repeated the wizards’ and healers’ findings, the twins’ answers to the same questions.
“They’re remarkably healthy,” Tam said. “Aside from a little muscle weakness, a little slowness of the reflexes. Aside from losing seven and a half years of memories.”
“They just volunteered that it was a deal with a devil?” Dahl asked.
Tam studied his desk. “Could be worse, I’m sorry to say. At least it seems to be an isolated event, not some harbinger of a new invasion. Another front to the wars.”
Dahl held his response in-not wanting to disagree, not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to be right-until he was quite sure he might burst. “But why would a devil just set a person-set people aside for over seven years? There has to be more to it.”
“That I won’t doubt,” Tam said. “But it’s not either of their doing. Neither one has the sort of mark such evil leaves. Perhaps it was some kind of punishment.”
“Or a small step in a greater plan?” Dahl suggested. “I’m not saying she’s wicked, but you’re not going to argue in Lorcan’s favor.” He thought of the devil Farideh had an agreement with, the smirking human face he’d worn the last time Dahl had seen him, the last time Dahl had left a gift for Farideh. If Dahl was a prat, that one was a straight bastard.
Tam sighed. “I would argue he has moments of goodness, and I suspect he’s not the sort to lead an invasion of the mortal plane. But I wouldn’t trust him to black my boots, no.” He paused. “When will Mehen arrive?”
“The day after tomorrow. Earliest appointment for the portal.”
“So you have that long to tease anything useful out of them then,” Tam said. “Once Mehen’s here, I doubt he’ll let anyone near them for a time, and if you’re right. . well, it might be too late.”
“I don’t-” Dahl stopped himself and tried again. “Is that the wisest course? Surely there’s someone else. Someone they’re more likely to talk to.”
“You and I are the only souls in this building-maybe even in this whole city-who they know,” Tam had said, in a way that said he would hear no argument. “And as you are so fond of pointing out, I am terribly overextended. This is your task.”
This is my next failure, Dahl thought, standing in front of the door to Farideh’s room. His chest was a knot of guilt and fear and anger-a snarl of feelings all pulled up and pressed together into something new and unnameable and awful.
She hated me, he thought, considering the grain of the door. She convinced me to do things I still regret. Or did he have it all jumbled-did she try to save him and he scorned her? Was she more a herald bearing the god’s message than a devil sent to vex him? He couldn’t deny-not even in his worst moments-that he’d been the one to lead her into terrible dangers, that he’d had good reason to wonder if he bore a portion of the blame for her rumored death. But he thought surely he could remember Farideh laughing, smiling, talking in a serious but comradely way. So which way was he wrong?
After more than seven years, Dahl still wasn’t sure.
He was sure, however, that if he couldn’t get a little information out of someone he knew Tam would be right to throw him out of the Harpers. “Farideh?” Dahl called through the door. “Are you in?” There was no answer. She does remember, he thought. You were the worse one. He turned to go. Maybe Havilar was still awake.
The door cracked open, and Farideh peered out, her silver eye framed in the gap of the door. “Yes?”
A flood of fear rushed through him-without realizing, he’d been hoping she wouldn’t open the door. “Well met,” he said. She eased the door wider. Her face was red and swollen from crying-ah, gods. “I thought you should know. Mehen will be here the day after tomorrow.”
Whatever sorrow she’d pushed down threatened to burst free for a moment, but she looked down, overcame it. “Oh.”
Gods, don’t make her cry, he thought. “He’s well. If you’re worried about that. Not. . not a Harper. I think he thinks we’re all making things harder than they have to be.” He gave a nervous laugh. “I was surprised, when I first met him, you know? I didn’t know your father was a dragonborn.”
“Is he angry?” she asked, and in that moment, Dahl couldn’t imagine why he’d ever cast her as a devil.
“No,” he said gently. “Not at you, anyway.” He hesitated. “I assume. . he’s going to be mad at Lorcan.”
She gave him a strange look he couldn’t read. “Lorcan didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Oh. Well. . whoever it was,” Dahl said, “do you think they’re likely to come after you?”
Farideh shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you have any idea what. . the devil wants? Why they took you? Why they brought you back?”
She swallowed hard. “I said before. I don’t know.”
Stop asking, he told himself. Just go. This is not the time.
He held the card case out instead. “Here. They’re Wroth cards,” he added as she took them from him. “I was trying to buy just a playing set. That’s what they had. They’re meant for fortune-telling, but you can divide the numbers and it will work.”