Brimstone Angels

She’d wiped down the trunk she perched upon, before settling herself behind a spell of invisibility.

Lorcan pulled down a case from one of the tidy piles and opened it. Inside lay an axe of shining mithral, with black runes inlaid down its haft. “Take it,” he said. “It will hunt the blood of your enemies.”

The orc lifted the axe with his good arm and tested its weight, his eyes shining and awed as though he held a relic. It was a relic, of sorts, Sairche thought. No one laid curses quite as strong as the one on that axe anymore.

“Now,” Lorcan said, snapping the case shut. He waved his hand to activate the portal of the Needle and seized the orc by his wounded arm. “Get going.”

Both flashed out of existence for a moment, but Sairche knew when to be patient. Secrets didn’t uncover themselves, even if Lorcan was being exceedingly sloppy with this one-especially for him. While she could count on one hand the number of her half-sisters who could aspire, perhaps, one day, to Invadiah’s levels of intrigue-if they didn’t get demoted by crashing in where they didn’t belong, or killed in some skirmish with another Layer-Sairche and Lorcan were different. Cunning Invadiah had no other cambion children.

Sairche wondered sometimes if their sire had been as cunning-or perhaps, craftier still; Invadiah still had the savagery her sisters became known for after the Ascension. But his identity was one secret Sairche had never managed to flush out. Invadiah had taken what she needed-twice-and never dealt with him again, as far as anyone knew. Certainly not to gain more offspring-Lorcan was the last of Invadiah’s efforts to expand her ranks. If she wasn’t going to get erinyes, she wasn’t going to bother.

And she certainly wasn’t going to see to the cambions’ inheritance.

The portal flashed again, and Lorcan stepped through.

“Does your orc know that axe’s cursed?” Sairche asked. With her words, the invisibility ceased.

To his credit, Lorcan didn’t look up at her. “Does it matter?” he said. “It will lead him where he needs to go and keep him from stopping along the way.”

“And when he can’t set it down?”

“Once he kills the people he’s hunting, he’ll be able to set it down.”

Sairche shook her head. “That’s the orc who wants to kill your, ahem, paramour isn’t it?” Now, that startled him. She fluttered her silvery lashes. “He won’t put it down until she’s dead, will he?”

“He doesn’t even know her,” he said, shaking his head. “But you’re right; he wants someone else dead, someone I’d rather he didn’t kill.” He finally turned to face her. “Who have you been talking to?”

Sairche shrugged. She didn’t need to talk to a soul as long as Lorcan blustered and shouted from the battlements about the orc staying away from his warlock. Connecting the orc to the fresh-faced little tiefling she’d caught him with had been a gamble.

One she wasn’t certain she’d won at yet-Lorcan might be a fool in some ways, but in others, Sairche had to give him his due. She was never completely certain if Lorcan was lying or not. With all those warlocks, he might be telling the truth, after all.

“Why?” she said, approaching from another tack. “Do you have confederates in stealing mother’s things?”

“Well, you, now that you’ve watched me and not bothered to do anything about it.” Pulling the door open, he added, “We both know she’ll be just as unhappy about that.”

“Hmph,” Sairche said. “Well-played.” But the game wasn’t finished.

Lorcan paused in the doorway, and for a moment, Sairche tensed, afraid he’d come after her with a spell or his sword-Sairche knew magic aplenty but her spells were better for ferreting out secrets than blasting attackers.

“Do you know,” Lorcan said, “how old you are?”

“Older than you. Younger than the Ascension. Why?”

He shook his head. “Curiosity,” he said, with a grin so wicked, she wondered if she ought to be worried about what he could do with such a detail.

CHAPTER NINE

Neverwinter 12 Kythorn, the Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Farideh kept her eyes on the horizon of the road as it wound down through the high hills, in and out of Neverwinter Wood. Eventually, the city would be there. Eventually, she would have to tell Mehen she wasn’t going on with them to Luskan. She was staying in Neverwinter. Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t said a word to Mehen since the night before, and after another night of fitful, interrupted sleep, Farideh didn’t trust herself to make it through a conversation as fraught as the one she intended, and she ran through it for perhaps the thousandth time in her imagination.

First she would say, “I’m staying in Neverwinter.”

“No,” Mehen would say, “you’re not.”

“I am, I need better training. I will stay here and find a warlock who knows what I can do. Who knows how I can do … Who knows how to do what we do better.”

She chewed her lip. She needed to be more convincing than that.

“You want me to control Lorcan better. How am I to do that without training?”

Mehen would say, “I don’t want you to control Lorcan. I want you to get rid of him.”

As if it were that simple. As if she only had to say “Begone!” and he’d vanish forever. As if she would be happy once she had no pact, no devil, no Lorcan-as if the sword would suddenly be enough.

No, she thought, as if having Mehen and Havilar as my protectors would suddenly be enough. Stay here. Keep out of the way. You’ll just cause trouble.

Surely Mehen did not want her to continue clinging to his elbow like a little girl-no weapon, no profession, no future? He would never say such a thing, but everything he did say to her seemed to draw a heavy line under the idea: Nothing was as good as being the foster daughter of Clanless Mehen. To look outward was to imply the life Mehen wished for them was not enough.

But it wasn’t enough, she realized now. For so many years, it had been fine-better than fine-but now … now it was as if she’d outgrown her leash and choked on the collar. She couldn’t bear, she realized, to be nothing but the daughter of Clanless Mehen.

Havi … Thinking of leaving Havilar was even harder.

Sometimes it felt as if the world looked at them and saw one person. And all that person’s attributes had to be divided between the twins. If Havilar was the reckless one, Farideh must be the responsible one. If she was the cheerful one, then Farideh was the gloomy one. If Farideh was the clever one, Havilar was the foolish one. How much, Farideh sometimes wondered, are we who we are because of that divide? Was she gloomy, because people had said all along Havilar was cheerful? Did Havi act foolish sometimes because people called Farideh clever? Did Farideh worry because there could only be one reckless one?

But I am reckless, she thought. I took the pact. I won’t leave Lorcan. I’m planning to abandon my family before they can abandon me.

She had always known Havilar was Mehen’s favorite-a little detail that rubbed against her heart like a grain of sand, until she hardened against it. It just was. But last night … last night, he had been afraid-they all had been afraid-and he had blamed Farideh for everything.

In fact, she thought, the only person who had asked her if she was all right at any point in that terror of a night, was Lorcan.

She rubbed her arm where her scar lay, dull and ordinary as it had been for the rest of the night and the entirety of the morning, and wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning, whether Lorcan was all right.

Lorcan was lying about the rod. Farideh had gone off into the woods before they left and tested it. Nothing but her usual spells. Nothing extraordinary. It didn’t make the wave of fire happen on its own. The fact that Lorcan had lied to her-or at least talked her in a circle again-had her grinding her teeth.

But at the same time she was so grateful he had wrapped his arms around her and given thanks she wasn’t dead. Even though the archer had shot Havilar, Farideh looked into his eyes and saw-without a doubt-that the orc