Brimstone Angels (28 page)

“My tutors would disagree,” Brin said.

Tam stopped and pulled Brin to a stop beside him at the end of the bridge. Brin’s stomach started doing flips. “Answer me one question, and do me the courtesy of honesty,” Tam said, all seriousness. “Are you fleeing Netheril?”

Brin nearly sighed in relief. Netheril, the shadow empire north of Cormyr, had swallowed whole nations in its expansion. They worshiped Shar, the goddess of loss and the ancient enemy of Selûne, and
generally had the rulers of every other nation on their toes and hoping their successors would do something about the Empire of Shade. If that was all the silverstar was worried about …

“No,” Brin said. “Only in the sense that I’m farther from them here than there.”

Tam pursed his mouth. “One hopes. Come along.”

At the end of the bridge, a strange sort of procession crossed their path: a small man, his fine lightweight suit soaked through with sweat, followed by two other men, similarly … damp. It was hot, to be sure, but even the tieflings in their heavy cloaks didn’t sweat so much. Brin tried not to stare and failed.

The last man in the line, a lanky sort of fellow, turned and looked Brin directly in the eye. His own eyes were colorless. Eerie. They gave Brin the sense he was staring into the space between the stars somehow … like a hole between worlds …

Tam grabbed ahold of Brin’s shoulder again, and Brin blinked. The effect was gone.

The man turned away, and the procession passed on, up the crossroad toward a row of houses, leaning precariously over the sluggish river. They disappeared into the third one, a bluish monstrosity that looked as if it were being held together only by luck and a whim of the Weave. But like the man’s eyes, there was something strange about the building. Something wrong.

“Stay away from there,” Tam said too lightly, “would you?”

“Do I look a fool?” Brin asked. He looked back at Tam. “What were they?”

“I don’t know,” Tam said, heading again into the shattered quarter. “Based on what I’ve seen in this city, I don’t believe I wish to know.”

Brin hurried after him. “You can’t riddle me with questions and then turn around and drop vagaries like that. What do you mean?”

“When a city gets as old as Neverwinter, old powers entrench themselves in all the gaps and crannies.” He slowed, scanning the broken buildings and piles of rubble that replaced the rebuilt structures. “And when a city this old
falls
, that just makes the gaps and crannies much, much larger. If there
aren’t
Netherese agents here, I’ll be surprised. If there aren’t worse things—”

“What’s worse than Netherese?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Brin watched him a moment. “Are you really a Harper?”

“I couldn’t tell you if I were. Are you really a holy champion?”

Brin scowled and didn’t answer.

A few blocks on, a patch of ruins had been cleared, leaving behind a large, more-or-less flat plot of land, waiting to be built upon. Tam paced it out and found the approximate center.

From his pack, Tam took out four sticks of incense, smelling of sandalwood and vinestars and shimmering faintly silver.

“Here,” he handed them to Brin. “Put them in the corners of the square.” As Brin went around the plot and pressed them into the corners, Tam followed, murmuring prayers to Selûne and lighting the incense in smooth, ceremonious gestures. Then, he sat down, cross-legged at the center of the space and beckoned Brin to join him.

“Do you know this ritual?” he asked. Brin shook his head. “That’s all right. You’ve assisted before with other rituals? It’s not much different. Just call down what power you can from Torm and add it to mine. I want this one to last as long as possible.”

“Will they mix?” Brin said sitting down across from him. “Torm and Selûne?”

“Of course.” Tam shrugged. “Might change the look of the place a little, but nothing dramatic. Close your eyes.”

Brin tried to clear his mind, to focus solely on the scent of the incense, the sound of the blade on the whetstone, the weight of duty … and not the concern that the men from the eerie house were something worse or that Constancia might catch him and drag him back to
do
his duty or that there were Netherese hiding in the shadows. He started to pray, the hard tones of the prayers to Torm mixing with the soft, cyclical chant to the powers of the Moonmaiden, Selûne.

An hour passed. Brin did not notice. Only that suddenly, the incense burned away and the sun was no longer hot on his back. He opened his eyes.

Instead of an empty space, the cleared land now held a temple made of marble and trimmed with silver foil. He and Tam sat in the middle of the temple, rows of backed benches facing an altar below a skylight that would let in the light of the full moon when it rose that
night. Over the altar, a statue of a woman with long white hair and a patient smile stood guard, framed by seven silver stars.

“Is that what she looks like?” Brin asked, standing.

“Yes,” said Tam, coming carefully to his feet, “and no. I’ve not seen her face, but the ritual creates the statue, so in a sense, she decides. Does it look like someone …” He turned and trailed off.

It was missing some of the more obvious features. But if you added horns, the swell along the brown, the solid eyes …

The statue of Selûne looked suspiciously like the tiefling twins. Tam studied the statue, his brow furrowed.

“What does it mean?” Brin asked. “Is it a warning?”

Tam pursed his lips. “It means something’s brewing. Where are you staying?”

“The House of Knowledge.”

“I suggest you head on back there,” Tam said, still frowning at the statue, “and start thinking about where you’re going to go next.”

F
ARIDEH WAS A PROBLEM
. A
N UNKNOWN
.

No, Rohini thought, watching the girl as she scrubbed heavy sample jars. Not so unknown. The coincidences laid atop each other, too thick to be ignored: Lorcan’s warlock in Neverwinter. Lorcan’s warlock, who traveled with a dragonborn who thought she was his daughter.
Invadiah’s
son’s warlock, who always seemed to be watching Rohini.

Rohini leaned against the wall and gnawed at a thumbnail. Too many coincidences meant
something
was brewing.

It must be Invadiah. If Invadiah wanted to keep an eye on Rohini, her son’s pretty-faced tiefling would make a fair spy. But Invadiah would surely know Rohini would suspect something the moment the tiefling’s connections came out—and there was no scenario where they wouldn’t come out. Rohini was nothing if not thorough.
He has a Toril Thirteen
, Invadiah had said, had
taunted
. She should have seen this coming.

But then there was Lorcan: How did Lorcan fit? Would he try to undermine his mother? Would he have tried to undermine Rohini without Invadiah’s prompting? As far as Rohini knew, not a devil in the Hells who knew of Lorcan thought he was anything but useless, the reason Invadiah had no more offspring—she didn’t want another one like him.

But if he had a Toril Thirteen … well, you had to be a little clever to manage that, Rohini knew. Was he clever enough to play a fool
and slip beneath the notice of most of Malbolge too? Was he clever enough to train his warlock to act like a babe in the woods? How clever did Invadiah know he was?

The question of what to do with Farideh was no different, a matter to be most thorough and thoughtful about. To kill her would send a message to Invadiah. Better still, to dominate the warlock and make her act according to Rohini’s will. Make her kill Lorcan. Make her feed Invadiah the sort of lies that would label Lorcan an oathbreaker. Invade her form and take her to the Hells, an assassin with no will and a disposable body.

I will show them what they’ve miscounted in me, Rohini thought. I will punish the erinyes for all they’ve—

Rohini calmed herself. Those were ancient thoughts, suited to another era, another battle. The erinyes were not the succubi’s enemies, however they antagonized one another now, however they’d clashed in the Blood Wars before. It might sting to defer to the erinyes as her betters, but it was far, far better than being the wisest demon in the chaotic Abyss.

And the fact that the same Ascension that granted the erinyes mastery over the succubi also took away the erinyes’ wings—and their beauty—soothed that sting a little.

A little, but not much.

For if someone tore the truth out of the secret center of Rohini’s thoughts, there was nothing she wanted so dearly as the promotion that would transform her into an erinyes. She would take their ugly hooves, their heavy fangs, their monstrous forms for the proper fear and respect they garnered. To be a succubus was to be overlooked. To be thought mad and weak. To be deemed a devil’s whore. Even Rohini, who they rightly feared, who Glasya honored with a mission into Stygia, still sat low on the devils’ precious hierarchy for being
only
a succubus.

For the moment. She would miss her wings. She suspected all the erinyes did.

Rohini kept watching the girl, who for once was not looking at Rohini, but looking back over her shoulder at her twin twirling the broom like a polearm.

It seemed lately that every time Rohini looked up, there was Lorcan’s tiefling giving her a troubled stare. Though, she admitted, it
was possible that it was the other one some of the time. She couldn’t seem to tell them apart. One has a glaive, she thought. One has a rod. One has the gold eyes, one has the silver one.

What either was watching for, Rohini couldn’t fathom. To another eye, the girl would seem perfectly innocent—but Rohini knew better. Who had ever heard of a guileless warlock? There was no point in such a thing.

Rohini chewed her lip. Whatever was happening, it was anything but simple.

Much as it boiled in her brain, Rohini had other, more important things to attend to. She would have to decide what to do about the girl later.

Farideh looked over at Rohini then, held her gaze a moment and nodded in acknowledgment, as if she’d known all along Rohini was watching. As if she knew what the succubus was thinking.

Rohini nodded back, accepting the challenge. Farideh could make things as complicated as she liked; Rohini was anything but simple herself.

Havilar didn’t care for Rohini or her ideas about good uses of time and building character, but she had to appreciate the hospitaler’s punctuality. The very second Rohini headed down the corridor, Havilar knew she wouldn’t be back for ages. She shoved her broom into a corner, blurted an excuse about needing to use the privy to Farideh, and went to the kitchens instead. She snatched a clay pitcher full of water and a couple of mugs and brought them to the courtyard on the other side of the temple.

Brin, covered in sweat and stone dust, looked up as she came out and smiled. “Did you get it?”

“No, I couldn’t find Mehen.” Havilar set the pitcher and glasses on one of the larger blocks and pulled herself up beside them. The courtyard was as large as one of the sick rooms she’d been made to clean and littered with shattered rocks and pieces of glass and molding. A
pleasant breeze stirred the air, and the only sound was a robin chirping on the roof. “Rohini probably has him up on the roof, she’s so good at giving people
exactly
the wrong chore.” She poured water for both of them. “I had to
sweep
and
mop
. Meanwhile, Farideh Fumblehands is washing knives and glasses and things for the healers. And you’re hauling stone.”

“Ha ha,” Brin said. “Better than sweeping.”

Havilar smiled. She hadn’t
lied
when Farideh asked if she were fond of Brin. “Fond” was an awfully strong word, after all. But she was so tired of Farideh’s gloomy attitude. She’d slipped off yesterday to see him, and had fun for a change. She was starting to wonder if Brin might be fond of
her
. Or at least, more fond of her than he was of Farideh. And when she teased him, he always laughed.