Erin Evans - The Adversary

“Gods’ books,” Dahl swore. “Do you have any idea of who the agent might be?”

“None,” Farideh said. “Apparently the other devil’s been coy. But they’re almost certainly among the prisoners. They wouldn’t be drawing a lot of attention to themselves. They’re probably quiet, not trying to stir things up. If you’ve told people about our plans to escape, they might have stopped them.”

Dahl’s expression hardened. “Tharra.”

Farideh’s memories of the previous night cleared. “Oh gods. She’s a Harper though.”

“She says she is,” Dahl said. He shook his head. “I never checked. I never even thought-” He broke off with another curse and turned the flask in his hands once more. “We need to talk to her. Before Oota decides to make an example.”

“Tell me what you’ve planned while we walk.” Farideh stood and her stomach threatened to invert itself again. She leaned against the packed earth wall. Dahl stood as well, frowning.

“If you need longer-”

“We don’t have longer,” Farideh reminded him. “Tharra’s devil is going to tell her any day now to carry out the gathering-if he doesn’t try to sabotage us first. Rhand only expects me to be gone three days. We need to move and a sour stomach doesn’t change that.”

Dahl’s expression was grim, but at least he didn’t insist on holding her up as she shouldered her bag and pulled her cloak on once more. He rolled the flask between his hands.

“Will you do something for me?” he blurted. He thrust the flask at her. “Take it? I can’t. .” He looked away. “I can’t quite bring myself to throw it out. But I know better than to drink it. Not now.”

“What is it?” Farideh started to open the flask, but Dahl clasped a hand over hers.

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s the shadar-kai drink, the one they use in the wizard’s finest. I took it on the way out of the fortress.”

Farideh looked at him, puzzled, and he scowled under her scrutiny.

“I haven’t drunk it,” he said tersely. “I’m. . just about fifty ales dry at this point, and I would really like something to dull this edge, and this is just about the only thing I’ve found. But we all know what it does on the way down.”

“And you can’t pour it out?” she asked.

Dahl looked away. “Will you just take it away? Please.”

She tucked the flask into her pocket. She’d pour it out later, away from Dahl. “Tell me what you’ve planned,” she said again.

They slipped through the dark tunnels and up pounded dirt stairs, while he numbered their assets-the weapons they’d stolen, the Chosen they’d retained. The potential aid of the enclave of elves on the farther end of the camp. “You break the cages on their fingers, they might just kiss you on the mouth,” he said.

Farideh flushed deeply. “I’ll settle for having the assistance of more wizards. It’s not going to be easy getting the tower down.”

“Right,” Dahl said, nodding at a male dwarf who stood at the base of the stairs, and handing him the lantern. “Any news?”

“Nothing that new,” the dwarf said. “Last I heard, they got Tharra locked up. Oota’s still out. You got a damned garden of elves up there waiting for yon tiefling’s blessings, and-” He broke off and pointed his sword back the way they’d come. “Hold, drow.”

Farideh looked back over her shoulder and startled at the ebon-skinned man standing not a foot and a half behind her. He grinned at her. “Well met. I see the Harper’s as good as his goals.”

Something seemed to press on Farideh’s thoughts, something small and alien and serious, that made her pulse speed. The drow tilted his head at her, still smiling.

“Knock it off, Phalar,” Dahl snapped. “What do you want?”

“It sounds like you’ve got quite the little conspiracy going on,” Phalar said. “I’m assuming you’re planning to ask for my assistance at some point?”

“Not if I can help it,” Dahl said.

Phalar clucked his tongue. “You wound me, cahalil. After all we’ve been through?”

“You shoved me through a roof!”

“And you told Oota I’d given you up to the guards,” Phalar pointed out. “Well done.”

Farideh squinted at the drow and focused on the thread of power that seemed to wind up her spine and clasp her brain. The lights flared into being-purple and silver and threads of deepest night, twining together to form a sinuous rune that seemed to slip in and out of the light. “Chosen,” she said. She looked back at Dahl-and swiftly set her eyes instead on the dwarf, whose god’s mark shimmered in shades of silver and steel gray. “Is that what these rooms are for?” she asked. “To hide Chosen.”

“Aye,” the dwarf said. “Anybody too obvious.” He glared past her at Phalar. “Or too dangerous. Tharra’s idea,” he added grimly.

She let the lights fade and looked back, past Phalar and down the long, dark corridor, wondering what trick was caught up in the underground rooms. Would they collapse and consume the Chosen? Were there portals to the Hells nestled in the rooms? Or would they just mean that the prisoners were nowhere to be found when the gathering went off-would this flaw of the camp be laid on Sairché’s lap? “How many are there down here?”

“Right now?” the dwarf asked. “A score, maybe. A fair number went up to see what Oota’s about. Those as can pass,” he amended.

“And how many can it hold?”

The dwarf waggled a hand. “Eh-few hundred if they pack in tight.”

Not the whole camp, Farideh thought. So whatever Tharra’s plans were, they couldn’t take everyone. “Can you get those twenty somewhere else on short notice?” Farideh asked. “We need to make sure of something.”

“Most of ’em,” the dwarf said. “Not the drow.”

“If you want my help,” Phalar said, “it will cost.”

“Never doubted it,” Dahl said. “Go back to your room.” He grabbed Farideh’s hand again and started up the stairs. They were nearly to the door when she managed to yank her hand back.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He looked down at his own hand and cursed. “Sorry. It’s. . His powers get to me. I didn’t mean anything.” He closed his hands into fists, then pushed through the door, out into the low light of late afternoon.

There were, in fact, a great many spellcasters waiting for Farideh to return and grant them the same assistance she had given Armas. The half-elf sat off to the side of the crowded court, one arm around the long-legged Turami boy. Even at a distance, Farideh could see the tension that claimed the boy’s frame when she walked in with Dahl.

“We talk to Tharra first,” Dahl said, and she followed him past the spellcasters, and toward the rear of the space where the two big guards from the night before stood before a door hung in the space between two buildings.

“Oota’s not handling the aftereffects well,” the human man admitted. “She’s been up once to question her, but had to lie back down again.”

“Give me a chance?” Dahl asked.

The big man reached back and pulled the door open. “No secrets, Harper,” he warned.

Tharra sat alone, her arms bound behind her back, her face drawn and puffy. She met Farideh’s eyes as she entered. “I’ve got nothing more to say.”

Dahl reached down and pulled a pin from the inside of her jacket, a round shield the size of a gold coin. “Were you ever a Harper?”

Tharra sighed, as if Dahl were asking all the wrong questions. “Yes. I’d say I still am, but I’m bound to hear you cite the code and call me a traitor, so why bother?”

“We can still set things right,” Farideh said.

“Can we now? And how is that?” Tharra said. “Ask your brightbird-no clemency for Harpers, no matter the circumstances, when treachery comes up.”