Brimstone Angels

anymore.

The power poured into her, like slick, dark water filling a basin, and churned through her, stirring through every vessel, every part of her.

“Say adaestuo,” Lorcan said.

She opened her eyes. “Adaestuo.”

The power seemed to burst into being in the air before her mouth and, channeled by her outstretched hands, streamed across the clearing and exploded against a fir tree with a sickly violet light.

Farideh stared, agape, at the force of it. The wood had splintered and charred where the blast had struck it, and embers of purple light still scintillated at its edges. A single word and she’d blown off a piece of the tree nearly as large as her head.

She might never please Mehen with her sword work, she might never rival Havilar’s skill with her glaive, but this … this was breathtaking.

It was also loud. At the explosion, Havilar sat bolt upright. Mehen did not wake so much as materialize on his feet, falchion in hand. His eyes went straight to the tree, with its ring of strange, purplish embers … and then followed the path of the blast back to Farideh, her hands in Lorcan’s.

She tried to leap away, to put as much space between her and the cambion as she could, but she couldn’t move. Lorcan had folded his arms around her, as if this were nothing, as if no one were watching, as if Mehen weren’t advancing on him with his bare blade.

“You were made for this,” he whispered, and kissed her, just under her cheekbone. He vanished, and Farideh lost her balance and fell to the ground under the astonished stares of her sister and guardian.

CHAPTER ONE

The high road, two days south of Neverwinter 10 Kythorn, the Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

(six months later)

The wagon limped along the high road more slowly than Brin could have walked, but after well over a month, he was tired of walking. To be honest, he was tired of wagons as well, and ships and horses too. He was tired of moving, and the call from the lead wagon that the caravan had reached the city of Neverwinter couldn’t come soon enough.

Brin watched the road behind them, stretching on beyond another four lumbering carts of former refugees returning to rebuild the city that had fallen nearly a quarter century ago. He did not see-as he feared-the cloud of dust on the horizon that half-a-dozen knights on chargers would kick up as they pelted along the dirt road.

This didn’t calm him the way it should have. In fact, the longer he didn’t see any sign of his cousin, Constancia, the more he worried she was just behind the last hill, ready to grab him by the ear and haul him home. He looked up at the clouds hanging in the blue summer sky and wondered if he had made an enormous mistake.

Constancia would say so: It was irresponsible. It was foolish. It was possibly illegal. And why, she would ask, by the lions of Azoun, Neverwinter?

The call had gone out halfway across the continent that the Open Lord of Waterdeep was rebuilding Neverwinter out of its shattered ruins, and all her citizens-and their descendants-were encouraged and invited to return. Among the thousands of people filtering in through the city gates, no one would notice one more boy.

And there was the city’s history-the famed clockworks and fanciful buildings, the artisans whose creations were still prized-that had caught Brin’s attention. And the catastrophic death of the city by earthquake and volcano, that had held it.

But perhaps most of all, it was far enough away that no one would know who he was or what he’d done or what he might have done if things were a little different-

“Is something troubling you?”

Brin looked up at the man sitting beside him, who had also paid the cart’s owner to carry him to Neverwinter.

“No,” Brin lied. “Just thinking.”

The man was a Calishite, perhaps in his forties or fifties, slim and muscular. The threads of gray in the man’s hair might as well have been ornaments and the crinkles in his brown skin, paint for all he wore his age. He smiled, one corner of his mouth crooked by a small scar where something had once cut the skin deeply. Brin wondered how someone came by a scar like that, and his eyes strayed briefly to the chain the man wore wrapped around his waist like a belt.

The man gave Brin a look that Brin was accustomed to getting from adults, down his broken nose, as if the man knew very well that Brin was lying. He nodded at the flute Brin wore tucked into his own belt. It was the only thing Brin had taken that he didn’t strictly need. It had been his father’s.

Brin’s hand tapped the holes of the flute.

“You seemed nervous,” the man said. “Do you play?”

“Oh,” Brin said. He set his hand back down on the cart bed. “Yes.”

“But you’re not a musician?”

“What makes you say that?”

The man shrugged. “You haven’t played it once since you joined us in Waterdeep. In my experience, someone who depends on their skills to eat doesn’t give them a chance to get rusty.” He smiled again. “You’ll have to forgive me. There’s not much to do on this stretch of the road but observe each other. I’m called Tam.”

“Brin.” Whatever other attributes Constancia and the rest of their family had tried to impress onto Brin, they had succeeded in making him curious about other people and observant enough of the minor details that hinted at a whole. His eyes dropped to the silver pin on the man’s shoulder-a pair of eyes surrounded by seven stars. The symbol of Selune. Another pin sat below it. But it was pinned from the inside of his cloak. Curious.

Tam followed his gaze. “Suppose the game’s a little duller if I wear my profession on my sleeve, hm?”

“Suppose so,” Brin said. “Do you like being a priest?”

Tam studied Brin for a moment, as if he were trying to divine whether Brin was making conversation or if he was really curious. Brin made himself stay quiet-let him guess.

“It’s a calling,” Tam said finally, “and it suits me. Mostly.”

Which, as far as callings went, sounded like a decent set of cards to be dealt in Brin’s opinion. Maybe the Moonmaiden was a more generous mistress than most.

“What doesn’t suit you?”

Tam leaned forward. “Traveling,” he said in conspiratorial tones.

Brin smiled because he was supposed to-the pin might be the mark of a Selunite, but the spiked chain that looked older than Brin had nothing to do with the Moonmaiden and neither did the canny look in Tam’s eye. At least I’m not the only liar in this wagon, he thought. He wondered if the priest realized his little game of observation went both ways.

“Aren’t you a little young to have fled Neverwinter?” Tam asked.

“Not me,” Brin said. “My parents.” The parents had been part of the story since the beginning-they were his ticket to Neverwinter.

“Ah,” Tam said. “Of course. Where did they head?”

“Darromar,” Brin said, the same city he’d told the wagon driver. Before, it had been Westgate and before that Yhaunn. Later, he thought, he might say Waterdeep-a city big enough that even if he met a Waterdhavian, they wouldn’t bat an eye if they didn’t know the same people or the same areas.

Lying out in the world was easier than lying at home-for one, nobody here assumed Brin was lying when he opened his mouth, and nobody criticized his lies once he told them. The tricky part was keeping his story straight when he had to keep changing things.

“Oh?” Tam said. “I lived in Athkatla for some years.”

Brin nodded, racking his brain. Athkatla … was the capital of Amn-south. Not so far south as Darromar, and while Athkatla was closer-probably-to Darromar than they were now, they were far enough apart that Brin would have no cause to have visited the larger town … except-