Erin Evans - The Adversary

“They’re,” Dahl said.

“- someone you trust and care a little about. If she weren’t a tiefling, I’d guess old lover and be done.”

Dahl rolled his eyes. “ There we are. She’s not. Not even close.”

Khochen waggled her fingers at him. “You say that, but you’re loitering around her room with gifts?”

“I got both of them gifts.”

“I’ll spare you the obvious ribbing about twins,” Khochen said dryly, and Dahl scowled. “I’ve never heard of you going for anything more complicated than a half-elf, so it’s not that.”

“It’s not that, because I said it’s not that.”

“So I’m left with two options,” Khochen went on. “Either your mother had a tumble with a devil-child at some point and those are your misbegotten sisters, or you have a very good story you’re not sharing with me. And I know you’ll tell me your mother is practically Chauntea come to mortal flesh.” Khochen patted the seat beside her. “So do you want to tell me, or shall I just keep guessing?”

Dahl stayed standing. “It’s personal.”

“ Everything is personal with you, Dahl. That’s part of your problem.” When he didn’t speak, Khochen rolled her eyes. “I figured out about Oghma and your fall,” she said. “I’ll figure this out too.”

“Please don’t,” he said.

“You’re upset,” she said. “So you’re feeling guilty, I suspect. Embarrassed. It’s old, because you’re not angry-and you, poppet, stay angry a long time. You’ve had time to cool off and realize this might actually have been your fault and not hers or the world’s. Which means it’s something rather bad, isn’t it? Accidental though-you can be thoughtless but never cruel.”

“Stop.” But Dahl knew there would be no stopping Khochen, and his heart was too close to the surface to ignore. He dropped into the opposite seat. “Look, it’s complicated. It’s terribly complicated, and embarrassing, and it’s not for gossip, all right?”

Khochen’s brown eyes met his. “I’ll trade you,” she said solemnly. “I’ll tell you something personal, and you tell me this.”

Dahl snorted. “Be serious. You’ll tell me some fancy full of shocking details that I can’t verify-or won’t dare to. Nothing’s personal with you, Khochen.” He sighed. “Which is probably quite wise of you.”

“Poor Dahl,” she said. She regarded him a long moment. “I’ve started sleeping with Vescaras.”

Dahl waited for the jest, the sly mockery to come. But Khochen watched him, as if she’d done no more than remark on the possibility of finding currants in the market this time of year.

“You have not.”

“Have so,” she said. “You know how it is-you carry out a mission, you get to talking, one thing leads to the next. Naturally, we’ve agreed it’s no one’s business but ours-Tam would have opinions. Vescaras’s family would rather he settle down. And I lose a certain amount of. . effectiveness if my network gets word I take a man who wears silk smallclothes to my bed and he leaves keeping all his coin.” She snickered as Dahl looked away. “But,” she added, “now it’s your business too. So trade me.”

Dahl tried to tell her that wasn’t fair, he hadn’t agreed. He tried to tell her that wasn’t such a terrible secret, not worth his own. He tried to ask her what in the world she saw in Vescaras.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I didn’t know. I should have kept my tongue about him.”

Khochen waved him off. “Oh, why? You’re not sleeping with him. Come on, out with it. Or I’ll start telling you more personal things.”

“Gods.” Dahl rolled his eyes. “Shortly after I joined the Harpers,” he said. “They assigned me to Tam, and. . I don’t think I ever got the full story, but he was watching out for the twins. Only I convinced Farideh to go to this revel. And the host-do you remember Adolican Rhand?”

Khochen frowned. “The mission that-” She bit off what she’d been about to say, a skip so quick and subtle anyone else might have missed it. But Dahl knew what she meant: the mission that broke you.

“-you were on before you were pulled into the house?” she finished. “What was the twist? Something unpleasant.”

“Four bodies,” Dahl said quietly. “Mutilated coin lasses. And an apprentice.” He’d found the apprentice, the freshest victim, himself, and he never had shaken the memory. She’d been one of the sources Rhand was playing him through. If he’d been quicker, if he’d found out Rhand had been feeding him false information sooner, she, at least, might have survived.

“Right.” Khochen shuddered. “You ever catch him?”

“No. He’s still in Shade for all we know. Untouchable. Seven years ago, he held a revel,” he said, “and he’d invited Farideh. He’d marked her, I suppose. She was afraid, and I needed to get into that revel. Tam was going to do something dangerous, and we were going to lose the artifacts we needed to get ahold of-I thought.” He rubbed his forehead, the tension that rose there. “I convinced her it was safe, and then as soon as I walked away, Rhand drugged her. If I hadn’t dragged her off. .”

Khochen was quiet a moment. “He liked to take pieces unevenly, as I recall. A hand. A foot. Some fingers. Let them bleed out eventually.”

It wasn’t until they’d found those bodies years later, that he’d realized what a terrible set of cards he’d dealt her. And then there were the scraps of rumors about what had happened to the twins-and no one could say, only that they’d disappeared on the road to Suzail-well within reach of Adolican Rhand.

“I wasn’t nice to her,” he said, “even after, although she was just as bitter with me. I just sort of decided she was exactly what you’d expect a tiefling to be-wicked and sharp-tongued and not half as clever as they seem. She embarrassed me once, in front of Tam, and not on purpose and that was it, I-”

“You don’t have to describe it,” Khochen said mildly. “I’ve seen you with Vescaras.”

But it was not the same as Vescaras. If Vescaras pointed out Dahl’s shortcomings, it was to put him in his place. But when Farideh had called him out-told him he thought he was so smart but that every other word out of his mouth was another assumption that wasn’t fair-she’d been right.

And it had made Dahl wonder if that was why he had fallen from Oghma’s grace, if perhaps he hadn’t failed at one of the many strictures of paladinhood but done something more fundamentally opposed to Oghma’s doctrine. For the first time in the years since he’d lost his place as one of the God of Knowledge’s paladins, Dahl had an idea of what he could remedy.

But it hadn’t been enough, and the world had yanked Dahl around like an errant hound as he tried to find the answer. He’d started to curse Farideh for even putting the thought in his head-wasn’t it just like her to get under his skin like that?

He’d nearly given up, nearly decided that he’d wasted time and energy on utter nonsense that some tiefling girl out of the mountains had poured in his ear.

And then Oghma spoke to him.

But after that, it had been the Church of Oghma’s turn to speak, and Dahl had lost his hope, his future, his father’s respect, all in one awful year. And part of him still traced the thread of heartbreaks back to a mission in the Nether Mountains and to a tiefling girl whom he couldn’t stop fighting with.

Who is she? Khochen had asked. A devil, an angel, an ally, an antagonist, a symbol, a nightmare? I don’t know, Dahl thought. I don’t know.

“So your secret shame,” Khochen said, “is that you were a smug, reckless hardjack to someone and you feel bad about it?”