“We’re in the midst of a war and someone in a Netherese fortress just pulled a high-level handler out of the heart of our operations,” Tam retorted. “We’re not taking chances.”
“And the tiefling?” the half-elf man said. Tam was silent.
Mehen bared his teeth. “She stands exactly where she did before.”
“With a devil?” the half-elf said skeptically.
“You can’t think she’s a traitor,” Havilar said. “You can’t.” There were a lot of bad things she could say about Farideh, after everything, but not traitor. Never traitor.
The woman threw open the door, out of breath and clutching another scrap of paper. “Netherese,” she panted. “Was in one of the books she had out.”
Tam took the paper-and Havilar marked the writing, the same sort of writing she’d seen all over the place, when they’d sought out that creepy Netherese arcanist before. Tam considered the paper, his expression becoming harder and harder.
“Havilar,” Tam said gravely. “If you know anything about this, you need to speak up.”
The wine was turning sour in her stomach. Farideh might be stupid enough to listen to Lorcan’s sister, but she wasn’t on the devils’ side. She wasn’t a traitor. And if Havilar said the wrong thing-if all her anger tricked her clumsy, tipsy tongue. .
“I don’t know anything,” she said quietly. “Can I go to my room?”
Tam studied her, as if he might search out what she wasn’t saying written on her face. But after a moment he nodded, waved her toward the door. “Don’t leave,” he said tersely.
Mehen followed her out of Tam’s offices.
“They’ll find her,” he said. “They’ll know she’s not a traitor. And I will make sure of that. Everything will be fine.” When she didn’t stop, he grabbed her arm. “Havi, wait.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I drank too much, all right? I’m no good to them, not now. I’m just going to sleep.”
Mehen didn’t look as if he believed her either. “We could sit. Talk about this?”
Havilar shook her head. “Tomorrow,” she promised. She hugged him tight and kissed his scaly cheek. He held her so long she felt guilty for turning him down. But she slipped away anyhow, went back to her room, to her half-empty bottle of wine, to her sadness and her quiet. She pulled the blanket up over her head and resolutely did not think about anything at all.
The door opened. She didn’t look out.
“So the Harpers think Farideh is a traitor,” Lorcan said. “And they don’t know where she is. Anything else?”
Havilar curled up tighter. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough,” Lorcan said. “It sounds like you’ve gotten everything you wanted.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means she’s not coming back. Not this time.”
“Of course she’ll come back,” Havilar said, throwing back the cover and sitting up. “She always gets out of these things.”
Lorcan shrugged. “I won’t pretend I know her better than you. But I do know that my sister has a way with her deals. Whatever she’s caught Farideh in is no simple task. And if your Harper friends do find her, well, there’s a war happening out there. They’re going to treat her as a traitor from the sound of it. How could they do anything else? So if her captors don’t do her in, her rescuers well might.” He turned away to toy with the window latch. “I’ll admit, I never thought you’d be the sort who could wash your hands of her. But then if it were my sister, I would do the same without thinking. Maybe we’re not that different.”
“You and I are not the same.”
Lorcan smiled. “And yet both of us would be much better off as only children.”
Havilar balled her fists as if she could squeeze all the fury out of her. “I know what you’re doing,” she said, her voice shaking. “You think I’m stupid, but I know what you’re doing. You want me to feel bad for her. To feel like I have to save her. It won’t work. She can save herself.”
Lorcan tilted his head. “Can she? Who killed the plaguetouched succubus before she could kill Farideh? Who stared down a Zhentarim assassin? Who rescued her sister from a green wyrmling at the tender age of twelve? Farideh would be dead a dozen times over without you, Havilar. Make no mistake.”
Havilar’s fists loosened. “Who told you about the dragon?”
“Farideh, of course,” he said.
“She said you didn’t talk about me.” She had said that once, Havilar felt sure, after Havi had been jealous and demanded to know.
“I don’t,” Lorcan admitted. “But she’s always been impressed with you. Always a little envious of your skills.”
“You’re doing it again,” Havilar said. “I’m not stupid.”
“No,” Lorcan said. “You’re not. And you know I’m right. Those Harpers will be too slow in the first place. And then they don’t have all the facts, and even if Mehen would never turn on Farideh, they will outnumber him by a dozen. If you want to save her-and I think you do-we’re her only hope.”
Havilar folded her arms across her chest and glared at her glaive leaning against the wall. “I hate you,” she said after a moment.
“We can work on that,” Lorcan said. “But first we need to get far away from here.”
“You don’t know where to go,” Havilar pointed out. “She could be anywhere.”
“She could be, but she isn’t,” he said. “They had no clues?”
“Cold. Up high. And there was a note in Netherese.”
Lorcan smiled. “Then it sounds as if we start by heading north.” He tensed and magic crackled over his frame, dissolving his wings and horns and turning his red skin pale. He blinked and his dark eyes were human. “Let’s find some horses, shall we?”
Chapter Seven
19 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep
Farideh did not sleep. She sat on the bed with her back against the wall, watching the door. Every time she started to doze off, she thought of waking in the dead of night with Adolican Rhand standing over her, and she jolted into alertness.
She kept her cloak pulled close around her, her rod in her hand, her sword in easy reach. The room was cold-like a cave more than anything, all smooth-planed black glass-same as the halls they passed through to reach it. The rich furniture-a canopied bed, a raised chest with a ewer and bowl beneath a large mirror, and a brazier burning hot and magically smokeless on the thick carpet-couldn’t hide it, nor did it blunt the faint vibration the stone seemed to give off. Not enough to hear. Just enough to make her even more on edge, as she sat and waited for Rhand’s inevitable return.
Coming back into the world from Sairché’s confinement had been so like waking from a nightmare, only to realize she was still trapped within another dream-one where she couldn’t control her powers and monsters she was sure she’d vanquished rose up out of the ground, undeterred.
“I seem to recall we had unfinished business, you and I,” Rhand had said after he’d shown her into the room. “What a fortunate coincidence your mistress’s plans aligned with mine.”
One of the guards stirred up the brazier and a second laid out a pale nightdress on the bed-he’d draft her proper servants tomorrow, he’d said. Farideh didn’t dare look away from her captor even as her nerves sent up plumes of shadow-smoke, as if they could blur her edges and hide her from his sight. “I seem to recall you drugged my wine,” she said. “And then set your guards after me and my friend.”
Adolican Rhand wagged a finger at her. “Ah, but you were the one who destroyed the site I was so close to reclaiming. A score of my men died in the blast, you know,” he said, as if these were impish pranks. He smiled and it was still unpleasant. “Shall we let bygones be bygones?”
The way he’d looked at her while she drank the poisoned zzar, the feeling of his hands on her waist where they didn’t belong, the way he’d smiled like she wasn’t a threat at all and asked if she wanted to lie down while the crowds around her dissolved into laughing devils and her feet stopped obeying her- Farideh suppressed a shudder. Nothing is bygone, she thought.