Brimstone Angels (32 page)

“What is this?” Mehen demanded. “Where am I?”

The orc clucked his tongue. “Don’t you remember?” he said, and suddenly it wasn’t an orc standing there but Arjhani.

It’s not Arjhani, his mind insisted. You haven’t seen Arjhani in years.

But all the same his heart knew no one else could be standing in front of him, giving him that wry look he knew all too well. No one else had those brassy scales. No one else made Mehen’s heart collapse with the words, “I thought you were helping me. Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” he murmured, as the dream took hold again. “Never.”

Sairché had to wonder if Lorcan had noticed her trick yet, as often as she’d been using it. Invisible, she slipped in behind Rohini and watched as the succubus threatened her brother. She settled down on the same chest of drawers and waited as Rohini left and Lorcan picked himself off the ground and started swearing at the mirror again.

Neverwinter, she thought. Interesting. She hoped the warlock Rohini was so furious about and Lorcan was still swearing at was the same one she wanted. Neverwinter made an excellent smoke screen.

The only trouble was that Lorcan wasn’t leaving. She waited longer than she liked for him to step away from the mirror, before she dropped her invisibility. “Do you need some assistance?”

Lorcan looked up, scowled, and hurled a bolt of magic at her. Sairché ducked and it hit the living wall with a faint squeal. “Stay out of it,” he snapped.

“Mother’s coming,” she said cheerfully. “Looking for something. I passed her on my way. You may want to consider scarpering off.”

Lorcan’s scowl didn’t shift. Only when the thunder of Invadiah’s hooves approached, did he reach for the charm on his shoulder. With a ripple of magic, her brother vanished.

Inelegant, Sairché thought, resuming her own invisibility. But more interesting.

Invadiah burst through the door a moment later. The still-active scrying mirror caught her attention, and she froze, scanning the room in a slow sweep. As her gaze passed Sairché, the cambion plucked one of the gold coins from the pile beside her and flung it at her brother.

The coin hit Lorcan right across the knuckles. He cried out and let go of the charm. Invadiah whirled on him.

“What,” she growled, “are you doing in my treasure room?”

Lorcan shook his wounded hand. “Looking for you?”

“Get out.”

“Of course, Mother. But before I do, you might want—”

Invadiah seized him by one arm and hurled him bodily from the chamber. Sairché covered her mouth to keep from laughing. Too perfect indeed. Invadiah pulled a great urn of some sort out of one of the larger piles and stormed from the room.

She had hardly passed the threshold, but Sairché was up and dragging a heavy battle-axe from the corner. As the door shut behind Invadiah, Sairché threw the latch and felt the handle move beneath her hand as Lorcan tried to turn it.

Sairché heaved the battle-axe up and jammed the upper edge of one blade into the soft floor, so that it lay across the door, its haft wedged against the bony corner of the entry. The handle shook as Lorcan tried to open the door, but the axe and the lock held.

“I’ll only be a moment,” she called.

In the mirror, the tiefling warlock sat beside a fountain, looking around as if she were waiting for something. People swarmed all around her, but Sairché was ready for that. She’d pulled her wings down around her shoulders and draped her cloak over them, tying it
shut. With the hood up, she’d pass well enough as a tiefling, as long as no one looked closely.

And if anyone looked closely, it was no skin off Sairché’s nose to vanish right then and there.

The Needle dropped her in an alleyway, half blocked by stacks of cut stone tiles, out of sight but not
too
far from the wyvern fountain. She crossed the street with a determination she knew would keep people from looking to closely, and planted herself in front of the tiefling girl.

“Well met,” she said. The girl looked up with those odd eyes, startled. She searched Sairché’s face and seemed to recognize her. The cambion grinned.

“I’m Sairché,” she said, “although I’m certain Lorcan’s already told you all about me.”

The girl regarded her with a stoniness that Sairché had to admire. She was wise enough to be afraid, and wiser still to hide it. Skilled too—if Sairché had been a mortal, she might have thought the girl wasn’t cowed.

“It’s polite,” Sairché said, sitting down beside her on the edge of the fountain, “to give your name as well.”

“Is it?” she said.

“Yes. Especially”—Sairché gestured at the people around them, particularly at a knot of tiefling children racing back and forth trying to grab at the leader’s tail—“when in unfamiliar company?” She drew a bead of magic, the beginnings of a spell, to her fingertips. “You don’t want to insult me, do you?”

The girl hesitated. “Farideh.”

“Well met, Farideh,” Sairché said. “Waiting for Lorcan?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you like being his warlock? I imagine he’s rather tiresome. All flash and temper.”

“I don’t know. I’ve no one to compare to. Why are you here?”

“To get to know you better, of course.” Maybe give you someone to compare to.” Sairché leaned in closer as if sharing a secret. “He’s never mentioned,” she asked, “why you?”

Farideh shook her head. “I said yes?”

Sairché smirked. Such a foolish answer. “Anyone can say yes. But a warlock is a bit of a burden, isn’t it? You don’t
want
just anyone.”

Farideh watched the street and didn’t respond.

“There are essentially two kinds of devils who pact with warlocks,” Sairché said. “Harvesters and collectors.”

“Those sound the same.”

“Only because you don’t know what they mean. Harvesters are after souls. That’s the price of the pact, or sometimes they spend their efforts corrupting their charges.” She shrugged. “They find it amusing. But the result is that their warlocks are not meant to be in the world long, especially if they’re not corrupting anyone new. Collectors”—and she gave Farideh a long, appraising look—“are after sets. They want warlocks that match. Certain traits. Certain bloodlines. Certain circumstances. Gets them a little prestige in certain circles.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Lorcan has what’s called a Toril Thirteen. Thirteen warlocks descended from the original thirteen tieflings who made the Pact Infernal with Asmodeus himself. It’s a tricky set, as you can imagine.”

Farideh plucked at her cloak. “He has twelve other warlocks?”

Sairché grinned. Poor little lamb. “Indeed. But he seems to spend an awful lot of time around you. I wonder why that is? I’m not an idiot,” she said gently. “You’re not his paramour. The fact that he thought I’d believe that means either
he’s
an idiot … or he’s desperate.” She leaned in closer to Farideh. “I have a guess,” she whispered.

“Oh?”

“I think he’s desperate to hide you,” Sairché said. “There’s a very rare heir among a Toril Thirteen. The descendent of Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel herself. Only three other devils have collected Kakistos heirs. Lorcan must have one. I think it’s you.”

“And?”

Sairché chuckled. “And if that’s you, you have quite a little bargaining chip my brother’s been keeping from you. There are collectors scattered across the Nine Hells who would do … well, anything
you
wanted to be sure, to gain an heir of Bryseis Kakistos. Lorcan is no one. Whatever he can give you, he’s already done—and that was begged, borrowed, or stolen.”

The girl searched Sairché’s face, as if she were trying to decide whether to believe her or not. Oh, Lorcan had her good—but he
had counted on her never finding out about Bryseis Kakistos, Sairché wagered. On no one ever offering Farideh something better.

Farideh pursed her lips and looked away, off toward the north. “Four,” she finally said. “There are four of … us?”

Another good reason not to keep warlocks, Sairché thought. Mortals focused on the damnedest things. “Three and yourself. You have some long-lost cousins out there, I suppose. Is that it?”

Farideh shook her head. “It’s not as many as I would have thought. There must be lots of devils looking out for … that sort of heir. A Brimstone Angel.”

“Loads,” Sairché promised.

“Is there any way to block their eyes?” She swallowed. “I mean, if you didn’t want to be overwhelmed by collectors.”

“Possibly,” Sairché said. “But I don’t see why you should. There are plenty more suitable options for you. Why not consider them all?”

“I’ll think about it.” She stood as if to go.

“What’s there to think about?” Sairché said. “The sorts of devils that want a Kakistos heir include the peers of archdevils.” She stood too, and looked down her nose at Farideh. “Unless … you have
other
reasons for staying.”

Farideh shook her head, her expression distant. Perhaps Sairché had read her wrong. “It simply isn’t the sort of thing I intend to jump into again. Good day.”

Sairché hooked her arm into Farideh’s before the girl could stop her. “I’ll see you home. We can talk on the way, as you must have a hundred questions for me. You’re staying in that old temple that Rohini’s holed up in, correct?”

“How did you—”

“The best thing about temples,” Sairché said, her voice low and gossipy, “is that the scrying glass my brother’s so fond of doesn’t work so well through the blessings. You’ll be safe inside.”

“I’m …” She looked down at Sairché’s arm. “I have some errands to run before I return there.”

If she thought to flee with such a pitiful excuse, she was mistaken. Sairché had only a short time before Lorcan found a way to Neverwinter, and she’d better have his warlock set on leaving before then. Sairché squeezed Farideh’s arm more tightly. “Then I’ll come along with you.”

“Just a little farther,” Yvon called back to the orc, who’d told him rather brusquely he was called Goruc. He looked up at the sky, gauging the passage of time: they would be early. He smiled to himself and wondered if Goruc would take that as a comfort or a threat. The path widened into a little grove, and Yvon gestured broadly at the empty space. “And here we are.”

The “grove” Yvon brought Goruc to was no such thing: it was a single pine tree. In the center, the oldest trunk rose up, so thick three men together could not stretch their arms around it. From that trunk, snaking branches, warped by spellplague and themselves as thick as birch trunks, had become roots, plunging back down into the needle-strewn ground, and giving birth to new trunks that sent out new root-branches.

Yvon found himself a seat on one of the low-slung trunks and watched as Goruc spent several moments winding his way around the spellscarred pine, his eyes tracing connections between branch and trunk as complex as any cavern map.

He came around the main trunk and his gaze dropped to the level of his face. Yvon smirked to himself. There was a symbol burned into the tree, overlapped by fresh branches. Goruc reached out and pushed aside enough of them to show … three triangles arranged to form a larger triangle. He frowned and ran a finger over the charred wood.

There was a rustling from the other side of the grove. Yvon kept watching the orc.

Goruc went completely still. He gripped the axe in both hands and edged his way around the thick trunk, scanning the shadowy wood. “What was that?”

Yvon shrugged. “A squirrel? How is it you know the tieflings?”

Goruc’s eyes kept moving over the trees and the shadows created by the low sun. “Got a mutual acquaintance.”

A branch moved behind him.

Goruc spun. Yvon kept watching him.

“Your friends coming soon?” the orc asked.

“Soon,” Yvon said. “What sort of mutual acquaintance?”

“A patron,” Goruc said. He whipped his head around at another rustle of movement. “If you’re trying to trick me with all this, I’ll make certain you regret it.”

A flash of red between those two trunks. Like a bit of cloth waving behind a person as they ducked behind a larger tree. Goruc bared his teeth and leaped toward it.

He bared his teeth. “Show yourself!” Goruc bellowed. “Come out or I’ll kill the shopkeeper.”