of the groves of the Ashmadai, the proud and bloodthirsty cultists of Asmodeus.
Lords, how Lorcan had panicked when he’d seen her reaching for the sign of Asmodeus. If he hadn’t been scrying, she might have been lured into the Ashmadai’s hands. Whatever they did next, he’d have lost his Kakistos heir for certain. He ran his fingers through his hair. Lost her in a bloody, bloody fashion. The residual magic of a hundred sacrifices packed those groves. They didn’t play nicely with other archdevils’ pawns either.
Ashmadai in Neverwinter Wood, he thought. The archduchess’s only agent in Neverwinter, his mother had said. And Glasya was doing something her father shouldn’t know about.
Stop thinking about it, he admonished. He didn’t want to puzzle it out. He didn’t want to stumble on the answer. But he needed to know enough to keep Farideh safe.
“She won’t go to Neverwinter,” he said. “She’s going to Luskan.” He smiled. “And the little nit will be dead by morning.”
Vartan, Rohini thought, was no Brother Anthus.
In the midst of one of his interminable lectures, the half-elf poured her a glass of zzar, and Rohini smiled and thanked him. Inwardly, she was twisting with an impatience to rival Invadiah’s, but outwardly she had a face to maintain.
“So the question is obvious,” Vartan said. “Why might a god like Helm’s mantle be taken up by another, while a god like Mystra’s portfolio is left untouched?”
“That is a good question,” Rohini said. He did not want her opinion. He wanted her to listen to his. It left her plenty of time to study Vartan for weak points.
Rohini had come to Neverwinter with a simple task: corrupt Brother Anthus, the Sovereignty’s darling, and turn him into a tool for Glasya’s cause. Don’t ask what the cause is, just make him amenable the way she knew best, and await further orders. She’d remade herself a stern and capable healer-pretty, but the sort who doesn’t notice or worry about her prettiness. The sort a certain kind of man felt clever for noticing.
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 …
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
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.
