He picked up the cube, focusing on a star peeking through the branches of the oak beside him, so that when the violet portal opened and Magros stepped out, the agony of clutching the frozen cube was nowhere for the other devil to see.
“Ah, good,” Magros said. “You’ve come around.”
Lorcan regarded him coolly. “Where is Sairché?”
Magros raised an eyebrow. “Have you lost her?”
“Don’t be coy,” Lorcan said. “You must have heard by now.”
“I did hear something about Lady Sairché prowling the halls of Osseia once more. Though, I don’t generally countenance the gossip of imps. I take it she’s escaped.”
“As if you don’t know,” Lorcan replied. But perhaps he didn’t-ah Lords of the Nine, keep it balanced, he told himself. Remember he thinks you’re an idiot half-devil with an erinyes’s temper. “She came straight to you, didn’t she? What did you tell her?”
Magros’s smile flickered, as if he might laugh. “Dear boy, why would she ever come to me?”
“To ruin me?” Lorcan said. “To make certain I failed? What did you tell her?”
“I told you,” Magros said. “She hasn’t come to me.” He tilted his head. “It seems she’s given you ever more reasons to flee Malbolge, though. Have you seen to my agent?”
“It would help if you told me who it was,” Lorcan said.
Magros smiled. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that?”
Lorcan fell quiet, considering the misfortune devil. He’d assumed that Magros had wanted Lorcan to act-swiftly, rashly-and ruin Asmodeus’s plans by simply killing the Stygian agent or Rhand or Farideh. It had been a slapdash maneuver, one Lorcan assumed grew from the devil’s disdain for the cambion siblings.
But Magros had never told Lorcan who to kill.
“Well, you’re a sly one, aren’t you?” Lorcan said. “Let me think you don’t expect much at all from me, let me think you think I’m stupid enough to kill your agent and upset the plan so plainly. And all the while-what? What were you doing right under our noses?”
Magros shrugged, smiling all the while. “The world will never know. I notice you say ‘our.’ I take it Sairché is not escaped so much as freed? And still, you cannot find her. How interesting.”
“Not as interesting as the puzzle of your Thayans,” Lorcan tossed back. Magros’s smile flattened. “Didn’t think I knew about those, did you?”
“I hadn’t,” Magros admitted. “Until dear Zahnya alerted me to your intrusions. Whyever are you trucking with Harpers?”
Lorcan smiled wickedly. “The world may never know.”
“Well your Chosen won’t,” Magros said. “At least, not unless you get her free of that place in the next few hours.”
Lorcan froze again. “What happens in the next few hours?”
Magros spread his hands. “What do you think we’re doing here? Asmodeus’s plan must continue apace. The gathering must happen. If she’s within its reach. . well, you can guess, and we’ll see how His Majesty feels about that.”
Every drop of his mother’s blood urged Lorcan to seize hold of Magros, to shake the answers from him-Where was the agent? What was the gathering? Where in the Hells was Sairché?-but he fought it. Magros would have his due, but that wasn’t as important as getting Farideh away from that camp, nor as important as protecting his own skin.
“I think we can consider Prince Levistus’s offer rescinded,” Magros said, opening his own portal. “We have no need of the second-best leavings of discredited erinyes in Stygia.”
Lorcan watched the violet swirl of the portal surge and then fade, the wind of a frozen layer sending goosebumps across his red skin. Not an ally he wanted, Lorcan reminded himself, and he hoped Harpers and tieflings and the Chosen of Asmodeus made a better army than what powers Prince Levistus could muster from the heart of his glacier prison.
He pulled the portal to Malbolge open again. A few hours was not enough time to find out. Especially when he couldn’t find Sairché.
But he could find the erinyes she’d taken with her, he realized as he stepped through the portal. He crossed to the balcony and peered out over the suppurating landscape of Malbolge. Near Glasya’s garden walls, a group of erinyes loitered. Even at a distance he could spot Sulci’s shock of yellow hair. He glided down to land among them.
“Well, well,” Nisibis said, “are you in charge again?”
“Think we might want Her Highness’s input on that,” Noreia said lazily from her perch to the side.
“Where’s Sairché?” The erinyes all chuckled.
Sulci swung her blade up onto one shoulder. “We left her with the wizard.”
“What?” Lorcan cried.
“She invoked the disputation clause,” Nisibis said, “and offered a proxy. I thought he’d take Sulci there-gave her quite a look-but he chose Sairché instead. You’ll get her back in three days.”
Lorcan shut his eyes and silently cursed his sister’s damnable hubris. Sairché would not be back in three days, because she had not invoked the disputation clause of her contract with Rhand-she had only bluffed him, and Asmodeus would hand down no judgment on a contract that was still in force.
And worse, Lorcan knew Sairché was in danger. “I wish you had not told me that,” he said to Nisibis.
Havilar frowned at the space in front of her. It looked as if the mountain continued up, the trees blocking much of her view of the peak. But there was a faint distortion to the air, a not-quite-shimmer that made her eyes ache. She blinked hard a few times, then reached to touch it as the scout who’d found it had prompted. There was something smooth and hard there where there seemed to be nothing. With her other hand, Havilar squeezed the ruby necklace in her pocket.
“Beyond,” the Red Wizard declared, “is the camp. And here is where my aid is of no more use to you: I cannot pass the barrier.”
Vescaras considered Zahnya. “How is it you plan to claim Shar’s weapons if you can’t get inside?”
“I have a confederate,” she replied. “My spells will center on her. After. .” She shrugged. “I’ve been told I can access the camp then. But I can’t make promises for anyone left inside.”
“You expect that we’re going to stand here and let you kill a camp full of people?” Vescaras demanded. “We outnumber you as of yet, goodwoman. By still more than when we began.”
“Don’t be dramatic, saer,” Zahnya said. “You and I both know that a weapon in Shar’s hands is far more dangerous. The number of lives at stake should she raise herself any higher, gain any more kingdoms, or worse, rebuild her Shadow Weave, pale in comparison to the number of souls inside these walls. So yes, I will act. And you will have time-if, of course, you can enter-to stage a rescue. My spell will take hours to cast, after all.”
Havilar watched the Harpers, but none of them seemed to react to that. Good or bad? she wondered. Zahnya talked too much like Lorcan-made too much sense of things that shouldn’t make sense at all-and it set Havilar’s tail lashing. Beside her, Brin slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it furtively.
“How long?” Mehen asked.
Zahnya smiled. “Ten hours. It is complex.”
Vescaras narrowed his eyes. “Very well.” He looked at Havilar. “Have you still got the bead your father mentioned?”
She pulled the necklace from her pocket and held it up. “Bomb, charm, beacon, passwall,” she recited.
Vescaras crossed to her and plucked the passwall bead from the necklace. He held the red gem up to the growing light. “How certain are you?”
Havilar glanced over to Zahnya and her apprentices, who were clearing a square off the forest floor and taking various items out of their packs. Preparing for the casting.
“Sure enough for this,” Havilar said.
“I suppose we haven’t another option.” He gave Khochen a grim look and beckoned the others closer. Then the half-elf stepped forward and slapped the bead against the invisible wall. A ripple spread out through the seemingly empty air, then another, then a third that came with a crackle of rock. The air seemed to part like a pair of drapes, and there beyond was a valley-a crater, Havilar corrected herself-filled with small, close together huts and dominated by a shining black tower. The Harpers and Mehen hurried through, and Havilar followed. The spell faded quickly after, sealing the wall once more.