“You want me to stay here more than the next few breaths, yes I can.” He looks up at his cousin. “I think Helindra will be pleased I remember I have something she wants. Open the stlarning cell.”
“Where,” Mehen says, almost a roar, “are my daughters?”
And every ounce of imperiousness is gone from Brin’s face. He is young, painfully young, and Farideh’s heart aches thinking of what he’s done: he’s bought Mehen’s freedom with his own-shackling himself to his scheming family once more-not only because Mehen deserves to be free but because no one else in all the world can help him figure out what to do now.
“They’re gone,” he says, and Farideh shuts her eyes. She cannot watch the rest.
Chapter Four
17 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep
The last time Farideh had stood in the hall of the portal to Suzail, she had marveled at how peaceful it seemed, how much like a temple. But now the frescos were all covered with heavy cloth to protect the paint, the wooden columns gouged by too-wide goods. The fine marble floors were covered with crates and bales and supplies meant for a distant war, and there were cracks where something too heavy had been pushed wrong over the tile. Farideh stared at the zigzag of broken stone and imagined what could have found the weakness in the rock and shattered it just by passing through.
The last time she had stood in the hall of the Cormyrean portal had been seven and a half years ago, and it had been the last time she’d seen Mehen.
“Leave Havi and me here,” she’d said, when the portal had been too expensive to carry Mehen, the bounty and both girls to Suzail. He hadn’t wanted to, but she’d convinced him. “What can happen in a few days?” she’d asked.
Everything, she thought, running her gaze up and down the crack in the marble. Days became tendays, became months. Became years.
She couldn’t bear to watch the portal itself. Every flash and crackle that marked another successful traveler from the forest kingdom of Cormyr to Waterdeep made her heart jump. Seven and a half years ago, she’d already been nervous about finding Mehen again, about how angry he might have been that they’d taken too long to get to Cormyr. But seven and a half years later, she had no way to guess what his reaction would be when he stepped through the portal to see his daughters alive and well.
He’ll be furious with you, Farideh thought, eyes still fixed on the crack. He’ll be twice as angry as Havi. She felt as if a squall had blown through the core of her and left everything tumbled and nauseated. She folded her arms across her stomach to stop from shaking.
Tam squeezed her shoulder. “It will be all right.”
Farideh said nothing. Beside them, Havilar stood, eyes locked on the screen that hid the portal. She had not so much as looked at Farideh since the moment they found out how much they had lost.
The portal flashed again in the corner of her eye, and Farideh heard Havilar’s sharp intake of breath a moment later. Every drop of blood in her seemed to rush down to her feet, and she made herself look up.
Her father stood on the first of the three stairs that led down from the portal, unmoving. The scales of his face had grown paler around the edges, but Clanless Mehen still looked as if he could wrestle down a dire bear himself. His familiar well-worn armor was gone, replaced by violet-tinted scale armor with bright silvery tracings. There was a blazon on his arm as well, the mark of some foreign house. The sword at his back was the same, though, the one he had carried since even before he had found the twins left in swaddling at the gates of Arush Vayem.
For all her life, Farideh had known that reading her father’s face was a skill she’d been fortunate to learn. A human who couldn’t spot the shift of her eyes or Havilar’s would certainly see only the indifference of a dragon in Clanless Mehen’s face. But the shift of scales, the arch of a ridge, the set of his eyes, the gape of his teeth-her father’s face spoke volumes.
But every scale of it, this time, seemed completely still-the indifference of a dragon, even to Farideh.
Farideh’s breath stopped. In her mind’s eye she replayed the last time they stood in the halclass="underline" Mehen putting his arm around her, hugging her close, the edge of his chin ridge rubbing against her hair. The sound of his heart where she had laid her head against his chest.
“When we get the bounty settled,” Mehen had said, releasing her and mussing her dark hair with one massive hand, “first thing, we get you a new cloak.” He’d reached over and tugged on Havilar’s long braid, teasing. “And you need a haircut. Getting to be a damned axe man’s handle.”
Mehen’s jaws parted, showing yellowed teeth. She saw the flutter of his tongue tapping the roof of his mouth, tasting the air for trouble. As if he suspected a trick. Far more likely, wasn’t it, than his foster daughters returned from a grave seven and a half years cold?
She shook her head as if she could will it not to be so, maybe pass through the portal and come out again seven and a half years back, no matter what Sairché said. Her knees seemed miles away, and her lungs were useless, unable to draw air past the sob that exploded from her before she could clap a hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry!” she managed around the gasps. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry-I thought it would be all right.” Every eye in the hall was on her, and she pressed both hands to her mouth as if she could smother the thoughtless, stumbling words; the sobs that made her breath buck and hiccup. She couldn’t. This was her fault. Even Mehen couldn’t forgive-
Then he was there, his great arms around her and around Havilar, crushing her close enough to drive the uneven air right out of her. For a moment, Mehen, too, was wordless, and there was only the dragonborn’s soft, shuddering sobs as he held his daughters close again.
“My girls,” he whispered. Farideh buried her face in his shoulder. “My girls.” And for the first time since they’d returned to Toril, Farideh thought there might be some things that weren’t completely ruined. She wept and wept and wept.
Over Mehen’s shoulder, Farideh saw a young blond man with a reddish beard, standing at the foot of the platform watching them, his expression guarded. For a moment, his intrusiveness embarrassed Farideh-was there nowhere else to look?
And then that closed expression slipped, just a bit, as Havilar lifted her head, noticed him. And Farideh realized it wasn’t a stranger standing there. It was Brin.
His clothes fit much better-a suit made for a lord of Cormyr all in pale wools with a dark emerald cloak-and with the beard, he finally looked his age. But it was Brin all the same.
Havilar stood poised on the edge of motion. But Brin didn’t move, didn’t speak. Mehen held both his daughters tight, but he was watching the floor behind Havilar, tense with worry. As if, perhaps, he knew what was happening over his shoulder. As if he were doing his part to stand in the middle of it. To keep Havilar safe and apart.
For so long, none of them moved, none of them spoke, and the sick feeling in Farideh’s stomach rose up like a maelstrom, threatening to overtake her again. She held Mehen tighter, wanting back that fragile moment of peace, unable to look away from the sad expression fighting through Brin’s studied calm.
Sairché stood in front of the scrying mirror, watching Farideh hanging off the dragonborn, weeping her little heart out. Though rage boiled through Sairché at the mere sight of the tiefling, she smiled. Her revenge wasn’t complete, but already it was going so well.
It had been Farideh-and Lorcan too-who had gotten Sairché trapped in this unenviable mess. While Glasya, the Archduchess of the Sixth Layer, had seemed to favor Sairché by raising her up in the hierarchy and making her a powerful agent in executing Asmodeus’s sprawling plans, it was an illusion. Sairché’s life hung on a balance so finely weighted that the merest mistake would drop her into immeasurable torments.