Erin Evans - The Adversary

“Thank you,” she said.

Dahl nodded absently. “Where have you been?” he asked after another interminable pause.

Farideh swallowed against the pulse in her throat. “It’s a long story.”

“What do you mean?” Havilar asked. “Where should we have been?”

“Well,” Dahl said carefully, “the last I heard. . people seemed to believe that you had died. On the way to Cormyr.”

Farideh drew a sharp breath. For Dahl to have heard would have taken time-time for Brin to give up, time for him to get to somewhere he could get a message to Waterdeep, time for that to filter down to Dahl.

She was right. Sairché had snatched them away. A whole summer, a whole winter just gone.

Havilar squeezed her hand tighter, and Farideh could not look at her. “Where did you hear that?” she asked. “ How did you hear that? We’ve only been gone a month.”

Dahl eyed her again with a puzzled expression. “It’s longer, isn’t it?” Farideh said.

Dahl seemed to struggle to answer. “Yes.”

The door opened, and Tam entered, his irritation evident even beneath the patina of peace he exuded. Farideh’s heart stopped cold as he smiled pleasantly at Dahl. “I hear there’s something terribly important to-” Farideh stood up, and he stopped in his tracks.

When they’d left Waterdeep, the Calishite priest’s dark hair and beard had been liberally scattered with threads of gray. Now every hair on his head shone silver as his goddess’s emblem. That doesn’t happen in a few months, Farideh thought, her head spinning. The world felt as if it were closing down on her. Even Havilar noticed-she tensed, pulling her sister nearer.

“Shar pass us over.” Tam shut the door behind him, his eyes never leaving the twins. “You’re alive.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Havilar asked, sounding as if she dreaded the answer. “How long have we been gone?”

“She thinks it’s been a month,” Dahl said.

A pretty number, don’t you think? Sairché had said. I’ll protect you and your sister from death and from devils, until you turn twenty-seven. Farideh couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t slow her pulse. She looked at Tam, at Dahl, at Havilar. They weren’t just tired. They weren’t just thinner. It hadn’t been months. It can’t be, she thought. It can’t be.

“How long?” Havilar repeated, firmer.

“They turned up in the taproom,” Dahl said. “Nera had given the signal to throw them out.”

Tam shook his head. “Lucky timing.”

“ How long ,” Havilar demanded, “have we been gone?”

“It’s ten years,” Farideh said, hardly more than a whisper. She looked up at Tam, at Dahl. “It’s been ten years, hasn’t it?”

“Seven,” Dahl said, “and a half.” Farideh sat back down, all the blood draining away. That wasn’t better.

Havilar stared at Tam and Dahl, as if either might contradict Farideh, might say this was all a prank or a misunderstanding. They looked back, sadly.

She let out a breath, half a cry, and yanked her hand from Farideh’s. “Seven years,” she repeated. “ Seven. Karshoji . Years .”

“I didn’t know,” Farideh said, shaking her head. She felt as if her whole body would turn itself inside out if she twisted wrong. “I didn’t think-”

“Of course you didn’t!” Havilar said. “You never think!”

There was a tap at the door-the tavernkeeper with the food. Dahl poured a few fingers of whiskey for each of the women, and some for himself. Farideh watched, feeling as if these things were happening on the other end of the world. When he handed her a glass, she took it with numb hands and only held it, cupped in her lap.

Every fiber of her being was coiled tight, vibrating with the knowledge of how badly she’d erred, how completely she’d destroyed so many lives, because Sairché was cleverer than she. Every bit of her hurt.

Only a tiny part of her mind clung screaming to the fact that seven and a half years meant her deal with Sairché wasn’t done. That she’d see Sairché again.

“All right,” Tam said, shaken. “All right. You’ll stay here. That’s easiest. We have healers. A wizard who can. . Right.”

Havilar drained her cup. “I want my own room.”

That drove the last of the air from Farideh. “What?” Havilar did not look at her.

“Of course,” Tam said. “You’ll need to answer questions. Be checked. We need to be sure this isn’t something bigger.”

“It’s not,” Farideh said, but she could hardly get the words out. “It’s only us.”

Tam sat down in the desk’s chair. “We need to make sure you’re well enough, too. I’ll stay with you.” He turned to Dahl. “Send for Mehen. Right now.” He hesitated before adding, “Brin too.”

Farideh clung to the cup as if it might be an anchor, and shut her eyes tight as the world started swimming. She had to fix this. She had to make Sairché fix what she’d wrought.

There were, Dahl thought, standing before the closed door, a hundred other things he could be doing. That sending to Everlund. Re-sorting the handler’s reports. Attempting to contact Sembia again. Get Tam an hour or so to get his hair cut and his beard trimmed. He took a mouthful of whiskey from the flask in his pocket, rubbed a thumb nervously over the card case in his hand, and then knocked anyway.

Khochen had been on him the very breath the door to the guest room had closed, but Dahl had brushed her off, unable to form an appropriate answer to any of her questions: Who are they? How do they know Tam? What’s going on? He couldn’t fathom the full answer to that last one in particular, even as Tam repeated the wizards’ and healers’ findings, the twins’ answers to the same questions.

“They’re remarkably healthy,” Tam said. “Aside from a little muscle weakness, a little slowness of the reflexes. Aside from losing seven and a half years of memories.”

“They just volunteered that it was a deal with a devil?” Dahl asked.

Tam studied his desk. “Could be worse, I’m sorry to say. At least it seems to be an isolated event, not some harbinger of a new invasion. Another front to the wars.”

Dahl held his response in-not wanting to disagree, not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to be right-until he was quite sure he might burst. “But why would a devil just set a person-set people aside for over seven years? There has to be more to it.”

“That I won’t doubt,” Tam said. “But it’s not either of their doing. Neither one has the sort of mark such evil leaves. Perhaps it was some kind of punishment.”

“Or a small step in a greater plan?” Dahl suggested. “I’m not saying she’s wicked, but you’re not going to argue in Lorcan’s favor.” He thought of the devil Farideh had an agreement with, the smirking human face he’d worn the last time Dahl had seen him, the last time Dahl had left a gift for Farideh. If Dahl was a prat, that one was a straight bastard.

Tam sighed. “I would argue he has moments of goodness, and I suspect he’s not the sort to lead an invasion of the mortal plane. But I wouldn’t trust him to black my boots, no.” He paused. “When will Mehen arrive?”

“The day after tomorrow. Earliest appointment for the portal.”

“So you have that long to tease anything useful out of them then,” Tam said. “Once Mehen’s here, I doubt he’ll let anyone near them for a time, and if you’re right. . well, it might be too late.”

“I don’t-” Dahl stopped himself and tried again. “Is that the wisest course? Surely there’s someone else. Someone they’re more likely to talk to.”