Sairché pressed a hand to her bleeding and rapidly swelling lip. “You little bitch,” she said, half-marveling.
“Seven years!” Farideh cried, tears streaming anew down her cheeks. “You stole seven years of my life, destroyed my sister, broke my father’s heart. And then you sent us off, without a word of what you’ve done? You’re lucky I only hit you, you miserable tiamash.”
Sairché’s golden eyes seemed to simmer. “Maybe next time you’ll think about that before you throw around insults.” Her cruel smile returned. “And really, if you think about it, it’s closer to eight years.”
Much as Farideh would have liked to tackle the devil again, to lash out and drive some of the anger out of her heart, the shield was still there, shimmering faintly. She clutched her bruised knuckles.
“Why?” she said softer.
Sairché picked Dahl’s case of cards up off the floor. “Do you play cards, Farideh?” she asked, sliding the deck out. “You cannot lay just any old suit, any value down. You must think ahead, plan for what you will need.” She fanned the painted cards out. “This fortunately is not a game of cards, and so I can keep my best plays in my pocket and take them out when they are needed. Much better than laying everything out at the start or waiting for someone else to force my hand.”
“Havilar is not yours to play!”
“Not yet. But she and I haven’t gotten to know each other yet.”
“If you go near her, I swear, I’ll-”
“What? Strike me? Throw more bolts at my shield? I’ve had all this time to prepare for your little tantrums. There is nothing you can do to me.”
“Yet,” Farideh said. “You haven’t seen what I have to play.”
Sairché laughed. “Do you want a game? Fine. The next move is yours-two days to yourself. Go ahead. Figure this out. Undo our deal.”
“Then what?”
“Then it’s my turn again.” She gave Farideh a wicked smile. “And I’ll collect on my favor.”
“I owe you nothing,” Farideh said. “You didn’t keep your end-”
“I always keep my ends up,” Sairché said. “Protect you until you’re twentyseven, isn’t that what I said? And did any devil in the Hells give you the slightest trouble these last years? Hmm? No. Not a one. And I fully intend to hold to that until the Marpenoth after this. Full circle.” She sneered. “You owe me a pair of favors, make no mistake. And I’ll collect the first in two days.”
Farideh swallowed. “And if I refuse?”
“Then your soul is mine,” Sairché said.
“You said my soul wasn’t on the table!”
“I said it wasn’t the price,” Sairché corrected. “And it’s not: it’s the forfeit. You don’t carry out your end of our deal, I get your soul. That’s standard practice-I shouldn’t have to specify that.”
Farideh’s heart hung in her chest like a lead weight. If there were a way around Sairché’s deal, a secret path through the phrasing she could exploit, Sairché had already had seven and a half years to find it. Seven and a half years, and a lifetime of the machinations of the Hells. She was born to this, Farideh thought. You were not.
But that didn’t mean she could stop hunting for the answer.
“What if you fail to keep your end?”
Sairché’s expression grew stony. “Then I have my own punishments. Trust me-I won’t fail. And neither,” she added, “will you.”
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not with her soul in the balance. Not with Havilar to protect. Unless. .
“What would you take. . What would I have to do to take it all back?” she asked. “To go back. Even. . even just Havilar. If you could just put her in Proskur when-”
“I doubt even the gods would grant that deal,” Sairché said. “Much as I’d love to strike a bargain. Time isn’t to be toyed with.”
Farideh looked down at her lap. “Tell me what you’ve done with Lorcan.”
Sairché reached over and patted her cheek. “Poor girl. He has a lot of other warlocks to worry about. Maybe he’s just washed his hands of you?” She chose a ring off the necklace and slipped it over her finger. A portal opened in the air behind her, leaking fumes of brimstone and ash. “Do cheer up,” she said, before backing into the portal. “There are plenty of people in worse straits than you.”
Is it the waters of the Fountains of Memory that make the air so cold? Or is it the magic that holds them? Farideh leans over the stone basin, watching her breath curl like the unearthly fog had that first day and asks the apprentices if they know. The wizards eye her and then each other, as if they can’t decide whether it’s their place to make her leave. The brown-bearded one finally offers that it’s both-the source is frigid, the magic keeps it so. Farideh takes a pinch of the blue petals from the bowl beside the waters and crushes it into a powder that smells like heavy perfume and bitter roots as she watches the look his peers give him-they don’t know what to do with her at all.
Let them think she’s charmed by the Fountains of Memory. The fortress won’t give up its secrets, its master hides away, and the guards only smirk as she searches-the apprentices might not be so cautious. Or maybe the waters will have the answers. But not this first time.
The first vision she summons is for her own satisfaction, her own penance. The crushed petals dissolve into the clear water, lending it a momentary murkiness before the waters reflect a dragonborn man sitting in a prison cell-her father, Clanless Mehen. He has been there for two months, most of the summer. They’ve taken his armor and the falchion he prizes for reasons Farideh knows he pretends are entirely practical. The Crownsilvers have imprisoned him for kidnapping their secret scion, even though nothing of the sort has happened.
A guard stands off to the left, beside a woman with a dark bob and a stiff back, her tabard marked with the symbols of her family and her god. Mehen glares at the knight of Torm, as if waiting for an answer.
“If he doesn’t return,” Constancia Crownsilver says, “then. . we will have to decide what to do with you.”
“Clever plan,” Mehen says. “Are you going to keep me here? Feed and clothe me? Or are you going to get out the executioner’s axe for a crime you know I didn’t commit?”
“Do I know that?” Constancia asks coolly.
Mehen snorts. “Fine. You don’t know it. But your god does. How about that?”
Constancia scowls at Mehen. “He’ll come back. He’s a good boy.”
A commotion comes from where the waters don’t show-both turn to look off to the left, Constancia’s hand on her sword. Farideh hears the sound of the guard apologizing and apologizing. “Your aunt commanded it,” he explains. Constancia’s perfect brows raise and the relief on her face is clear.
“And I command you let him out,” Brin says in a voice Farideh has only heard him use once or twice-something that will grow into imperiousness given proper exercise. “No one kidnapped me, you plinth-head.” He steps into view. “Unlock this cell.”
“Where are my girls?” Mehen says, unmoved by Brin’s changed demeanor. The answer is in Brin’s drawn expression, his ragged clothes. It hurts to look at him, but Farideh keeps watching.
“Hail and well met,” Constancia says. “Where are your manners, Aubrin? You can’t just countermand Helindra.”