Erin Evans - The Adversary

“I doubt even the gods would grant that deal,” Sairché said. “Much as I’d love to strike a bargain. Time isn’t to be toyed with.”

Farideh looked down at her lap. “Tell me what you’ve done with Lorcan.”

Sairché reached over and patted her cheek. “Poor girl. He has a lot of other warlocks to worry about. Maybe he’s just washed his hands of you?” She chose a ring off the necklace and slipped it over her finger. A portal opened in the air behind her, leaking fumes of brimstone and ash. “Do cheer up,” she said, before backing into the portal. “There are plenty of people in worse straits than you.”

Is it the waters of the Fountains of Memory that make the air so cold? Or is it the magic that holds them? Farideh leans over the stone basin, watching her breath curl like the unearthly fog had that first day and asks the apprentices if they know. The wizards eye her and then each other, as if they can’t decide whether it’s their place to make her leave. The brown-bearded one finally offers that it’s both-the source is frigid, the magic keeps it so. Farideh takes a pinch of the blue petals from the bowl beside the waters and crushes it into a powder that smells like heavy perfume and bitter roots as she watches the look his peers give him-they don’t know what to do with her at all.

Let them think she’s charmed by the Fountains of Memory. The fortress won’t give up its secrets, its master hides away, and the guards only smirk as she searches-the apprentices might not be so cautious. Or maybe the waters will have the answers. But not this first time.

The first vision she summons is for her own satisfaction, her own penance. The crushed petals dissolve into the clear water, lending it a momentary murkiness before the waters reflect a dragonborn man sitting in a prison cell-her father, Clanless Mehen. He has been there for two months, most of the summer. They’ve taken his armor and the falchion he prizes for reasons Farideh knows he pretends are entirely practical. The Crownsilvers have imprisoned him for kidnapping their secret scion, even though nothing of the sort has happened.

A guard stands off to the left, beside a woman with a dark bob and a stiff back, her tabard marked with the symbols of her family and her god. Mehen glares at the knight of Torm, as if waiting for an answer.

“If he doesn’t return,” Constancia Crownsilver says, “then. . we will have to decide what to do with you.”

“Clever plan,” Mehen says. “Are you going to keep me here? Feed and clothe me? Or are you going to get out the executioner’s axe for a crime you know I didn’t commit?”

“Do I know that?” Constancia asks coolly.

Mehen snorts. “Fine. You don’t know it. But your god does. How about that?”

Constancia scowls at Mehen. “He’ll come back. He’s a good boy.”

A commotion comes from where the waters don’t show-both turn to look off to the left, Constancia’s hand on her sword. Farideh hears the sound of the guard apologizing and apologizing. “Your aunt commanded it,” he explains. Constancia’s perfect brows raise and the relief on her face is clear.

“And I command you let him out,” Brin says in a voice Farideh has only heard him use once or twice-something that will grow into imperiousness given proper exercise. “No one kidnapped me, you plinth-head.” He steps into view. “Unlock this cell.”

“Where are my girls?” Mehen says, unmoved by Brin’s changed demeanor. The answer is in Brin’s drawn expression, his ragged clothes. It hurts to look at him, but Farideh keeps watching.

“Hail and well met,” Constancia says. “Where are your manners, Aubrin? You can’t just countermand Helindra.”

“You want me to stay here more than the next few breaths, yes I can.” He looks up at his cousin. “I think Helindra will be pleased I remember I have something she wants. Open the stlarning cell.”

“Where,” Mehen says, almost a roar, “are my daughters?”

And every ounce of imperiousness is gone from Brin’s face. He is young, painfully young, and Farideh’s heart aches thinking of what he’s done: he’s bought Mehen’s freedom with his own-shackling himself to his scheming family once more-not only because Mehen deserves to be free but because no one else in all the world can help him figure out what to do now.

“They’re gone,” he says, and Farideh shuts her eyes. She cannot watch the rest.

17 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Waterdeep

The last time Farideh had stood in the hall of the portal to Suzail, she had marveled at how peaceful it seemed, how much like a temple. But now the frescos were all covered with heavy cloth to protect the paint, the wooden columns gouged by too-wide goods. The fine marble floors were covered with crates and bales and supplies meant for a distant war, and there were cracks where something too heavy had been pushed wrong over the tile. Farideh stared at the zigzag of broken stone and imagined what could have found the weakness in the rock and shattered it just by passing through.

The last time she had stood in the hall of the Cormyrean portal had been seven and a half years ago, and it had been the last time she’d seen Mehen.

“Leave Havi and me here,” she’d said, when the portal had been too expensive to carry Mehen, the bounty and both girls to Suzail. He hadn’t wanted to, but she’d convinced him. “What can happen in a few days?” she’d asked.

Everything, she thought, running her gaze up and down the crack in the marble. Days became tendays, became months. Became years.

She couldn’t bear to watch the portal itself. Every flash and crackle that marked another successful traveler from the forest kingdom of Cormyr to Waterdeep made her heart jump. Seven and a half years ago, she’d already been nervous about finding Mehen again, about how angry he might have been that they’d taken too long to get to Cormyr. But seven and a half years later, she had no way to guess what his reaction would be when he stepped through the portal to see his daughters alive and well.

He’ll be furious with you, Farideh thought, eyes still fixed on the crack. He’ll be twice as angry as Havi. She felt as if a squall had blown through the core of her and left everything tumbled and nauseated. She folded her arms across her stomach to stop from shaking.

Tam squeezed her shoulder. “It will be all right.”

Farideh said nothing. Beside them, Havilar stood, eyes locked on the screen that hid the portal. She had not so much as looked at Farideh since the moment they found out how much they had lost.

The portal flashed again in the corner of her eye, and Farideh heard Havilar’s sharp intake of breath a moment later. Every drop of blood in her seemed to rush down to her feet, and she made herself look up.

Her father stood on the first of the three stairs that led down from the portal, unmoving. The scales of his face had grown paler around the edges, but Clanless Mehen still looked as if he could wrestle down a dire bear himself. His familiar well-worn armor was gone, replaced by violet-tinted scale armor with bright silvery tracings. There was a blazon on his arm as well, the mark of some foreign house. The sword at his back was the same, though, the one he had carried since even before he had found the twins left in swaddling at the gates of Arush Vayem.

For all her life, Farideh had known that reading her father’s face was a skill she’d been fortunate to learn. A human who couldn’t spot the shift of her eyes or Havilar’s would certainly see only the indifference of a dragon in Clanless Mehen’s face. But the shift of scales, the arch of a ridge, the set of his eyes, the gape of his teeth-her father’s face spoke volumes.