Brimstone Angels (20 page)

Anthus had noticed. He’d brought her into his circle, shared his wisdom with her, drawn her into his confidences. Not even Invadiah could have complained of her progress, and none of it had required more magic than the shapeshifting. Rohini was the best, after all.

She picked up the glass of zzar and swirled the pale liquor.

Anthus had been an older man, his hair thin and silver and his face gaunt, but his appetites robust and his eyes sharp. It was not such a lie that her little nurse might find the good brother attractive enough to bed.

Rohini suspected not even the devils knew, but abed with a succubus, one was cracked open, vulnerable as a sacrifice pinned to an altar. In Anthus’s arms she’d seen his thoughts, his fears, the truth of his connection to the Sovereignty. She ran a tongue over her lips. Nothing as exhilarating as digging your hands into someone’s secret heart.

Afterward, Anthus had poured glasses of zzar, sat down in his chair, looked her in the eye, and said, “I know you, succubus.”

Rohini had acted hurt, that he should call her such a name. But he went on. “You’re not the first to come to Neverwinter,” he said. “I’ll wager you knew that one. You wouldn’t go around with that hair otherwise.”

He swirled the zzar in his glass, oblivious to the challenge he was laying on her. Rohini pulled her magic to her, prepared to cast the net of her domination, when Anthus spoke again.

“Arunika,” he said, and her spell shattered into pieces. “That was her name. Herzgo’s redheaded slut.”

Had Glasya known? Rohini had wondered, and still wondered. Had Invadiah? Had they sent her because her sister had fled the Hells and holed up here in Neverwinter? Had Arunika been one of the failed scouts? Had they sent Rohini to find her or did they already know she’d find nothing?

“Where is she?” Rohini had asked.

“Dead of course,” Anthus said, and she realized for the first time how cruel and cold his eyes were, how empty. “Silly bitch hitched her wagon to the wrong man.”

Which, Anthus would later have admitted, had he voice to, was the wrong thing to say.

Rohini stared into the glass of zzar she held, while Vartan expounded on dead gods and dead ways. She had removed Anthus’s body, rearranging things to make it clear one of the dreadful creatures of the Chasm had killed him—after all, what else would dismember a body so?—as he took a walk through the less protected part of town. The Lord Protector ordered more patrols to beat back the Chasm’s horrors. Rohini made herself distraught and clung to Anthus’s colleagues, searching for a likely replacement. She had chosen Vartan because he was eager and a little desperate, but also a little rash.

But it wasn’t enough. Her mission was still in peril. Killing Anthus had been the greatest mistake she had ever made.

No—not a mistake. A flaw. She had killed Anthus because she wasn’t wholly a devil. Not yet. The rage that had seized her when Anthus taunted Rohini—called her sister a silly bitch—had made the erinyes’ cold fury look like a tantrum. It had been imprudent. It had been a passion of the moment. But it had sated something dark and frenzied that curled around the core of Rohini, that mad, demon spark the devils always whispered about.

I will not do so again, Rohini swore to herself. She would not end as Arunika had, a slave to her no-longer-constant nature. She was a devil now. She could become anything she wished if she played their game long enough.

“Have you discovered,” she asked Vartan, “how the … masters of the Chasm fit into this mystery?”

Vartan stopped, stunned that she’d interrupted him. He flushed. “Well. It’s not so simple is it? They are … well, we aren’t sure what they are, are we? Only that Anthus believed they were there, and so do … 
does
the gentleman from before.” He waved a hand. “I’m beginning to believe there are much worthier areas of consideration. The Order of Blue Fire, for example …”

Rohini smiled tightly and let him go on again. Vartan was certainly no Anthus. When she’d killed him, Anthus had already been well-corrupted by the Abolethic Sovereignty. He’d had their secrets and a modicum of their trust, but also a strange power that made him speak in riddling prophecy on occasion. It hadn’t helped him see Rohini’s blades. Vartan had come to her a blank slate.

Whatever mortals liked to believe of themselves, Rohini knew a pretty face and a warm body weren’t the keys to a true seduction. Often enough with other succubi—sloppy, overeager ones like Arunika had been—that might be all the effort they put forth. Simple, satisfying, but not particularly convincing—a pretty face only worked longer than a night on the weakest sorts, and whatever mortals believed about themselves, most of them were not so desperate as that.

No, to truly seduce someone away from the path they’d made themselves took cunning and skill, took attention to detail and to the subtle shades of other people’s hopes and fears. Vartan might have been a lonely scholar of a man, and Arunika could have gotten him in bed and all his secrets out in the span of breaths. But Rohini didn’t need secrets: she needed action. She needed someone who desperately wanted to impress her, to surpass her. Pull the right levers and he’d do everything she needed without being told.

That plan didn’t please Invadiah at all.

“You have three days,” she’d said. “And if you do not have the aboleth for me, I will hand you back to Glasya and take care of matters myself.” And end up, Rohini thought, with a score of dead or spellscarred erinyes and a riled pack of aboleths, the ancient creatures that lurked in the depths of the Chasm.

Why Glasya wanted one of the giant, tentacled monsters from beyond, Rohini didn’t know. It was the sort of secret she knew better than to know. For all Rohini cared, Glasya wanted a new mount and thought a slime-coated tentacle-whale would do nicely.

Lords of the Hells, she
hoped
that was Glasya’s plan. When she’d been sent into Neverwinter, she’d merely been told to corrupt Anthus. Then to corrupt Vartan and to get him to tell her everything he knew about the Chasm. Then it became find out everything he knew about the aboleths. Then it was to goad him into gathering
more information and putting himself into the circle of the Abolethic Sovereignty’s proxies, their mind-controlled servitors.

Now it was to get Invadiah an aboleth.

With every step, Invadiah’s words and actions spelled one thing very clearly: this mission was a gamble. If everything went well, Rohini and Invadiah both might be promoted.

If the wrong person found out, they were all in a great deal of trouble. And since the archduchess herself had set things in motion, the “wrong person” could only be another archdevil.

She drained her wine and dabbed at her mouth, staring down Vartan. He would
not
become useless to her now. Not with Invadiah breathing down her neck, not with everything breaking down and everyone ready to look for a scapegoat.

“You seem …” She held the pause for long enough that she seemed uncertain and worried. “Preoccupied. I do hope the, ah, gentleman didn’t trouble you yesterday.”

“Oh,” Vartan said. “No … No more than usual.”

“Vartan,” she said, her mouth stern, but her eyes soft—pleading even. “I don’t appreciate being lied to.”

“What?” he said. “Whyever would you think I’ve been lying to you?”

“I had thought,” she said, “I had
hoped
. That we were carrying on Anthus’s work
together
. But that isn’t so. You see me as a hindrance. As a nuisance.” She forced her lower lip forward in a pout so slight he would think it unintentional. The force of her feelings.

“No! No, not at all,” he said. He laid a hand on hers, the guilt in his gray eyes exactly what she was aiming for. “You’re right, I am distracted. Anthus’s … work is more complex than I expected, and points in different directions. But I assure you no one thinks you’re a hindrance.”

“Has the Sovereignty turned you away?” she said.

Vartan startled. That had him, she thought. “How do you know that name?” he demanded.

Rohini made sure her eyes sparkled with admiration as she said, “You ask me how? I learned from the most intelligent man on the Sword Coast and you ask me how?” She clasped her hand over his and held him there. “A bit of information here, a careless word there,
a feverish tale told too loudly at a tavern. It’s true then? What they say? That they are creatures of astonishing knowledge?”

Vartan eyed her a moment. “You mustn’t go around speaking of this. It could be dangerous.”

“I’ve spoken to no one but you, I swear it. But that is … that is who Anthus was speaking to.”

Vartan didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Rohini knew his part almost as well as her own, and didn’t need any cues to say all the right things.

“You are … brilliant, Vartan,” she said earnestly. “Wiser, I sometimes think, than Anthus ever was. And if their agents have not realized it and taken you into their confidence, then it is
their
blindness and nothing more.”

“You are kind,” he said. “But courting the Sovereignty is not akin to gaining a lordling’s attention. Even their servants are wiser than most people dream of. They know things … Even the weak-willed servitors they craft know things I cannot. My approaches have not been favored.”

Of course they hadn’t—Vartan had no doubt been coy and subtle as an old maid. Rohini sighed. “Would that there were some way, somehow, that you might channel your knowledge, your theories of the Chasm and the planes, into something grand. Something to astound them and make them take notice. Something to make them realize all they have lost by not hearing you!”

“I very much doubt the Sovereignty has any interest in curing spellplague, or reviving the gods.”

Rohini’s smile was small and sad, but inside, she felt like a wolf with bared teeth, gloating over a kill.

“I suppose they’d rather you infect people to get their attention,” she said offhandedly. A poor jest. A comment without any thought at all behind it. A comment that sparked something in Vartan’s thoughts.

He gave her a considered look. “That … Perhaps. They want servants to walk abroad for them, I believe. Improving them would doubtless please the Old Ones.”

“Stronger,” Rohini said, her voice high with wonder, “cleverer, faster, and imbued with spellscars. They would be well-protected by such, considering the fear of the Chasm.”

“Precisely.” Vartan turned to her, his features troubled still. “I … it would be dangerous. The odds—”

“You could, Vartan,” Rohini said. Passionate here, she thought. A touch overbold. Spread it thick. She laid a hand over his. “If anyone could, it is you. You are the wisest man I have ever known. Or ever will, I suspect.”

“You flatter me. There is so much I don’t know. They have reason to turn me away …”

Rohini nearly snarled—ages of this, and suddenly, Vartan was humble? To the Hells with subtlety. She thrust the domination over him.

“Harness what they have not,” she said, pulling the charm tighter, “and they cannot deny you are worthy of their knowledge. Their minds may be great, but they do not understand what it is that mortals fear—only they come upon it by their nature. Your servitors would show you can supply what they lack. In exchange for their knowledge of the rift. How to harness the rift.”

“You speak of madness,” he said, but there was no reprobation in his voice. He wanted to be convinced.

“I speak of your destiny,” Rohini said, letting the net of her charm close around him completely. “You were not made to play nursemaid to the Lord Pretender’s guards. I have seen your and Anthus’s notes, I have seen your work. You know how to all but guarantee a spellscar, and keep the infected from dying.” She placed her mouth close to his ear. “And I know how to make certain it inspires loyalty.” She kissed him, and like countless others before him, Brother Vartan was lost.

“And I will aid you,” Rohini said, as Brother Vartan nodded to her words like the puppet he was. “I will gather the army that it will take to prove to the Sovereignty you are worthy of their secrets.”

And get Invadiah, she thought, her damnable aboleth.

F
ARIDEH AND
B
RIN DID NOT SPEAK UNTIL THEY REACHED THE CAMP
.
The sun had set and Mehen and Tam were strapping on their armor by the firelight. Havilar paced—already armed and armored—her face drawn and pale. When she saw her sister and Brin break through into the clearing, she dropped her glaive and rushed at them.

“Gods!” she cried. “There you are! What happened? I lost you!”

“Nothing,” Farideh said. “We just got separated.”

“Right,” Brin said, too quickly. “Just a little turned around.” Havilar stared at both of them.

“You got a little turned around?” Havilar said, her voice slipping into a panicked pitch. “I didn’t know where you were. You might have been lost!”

“We weren’t,” Farideh said, waving her off.