Erin Evans - The Adversary

“Just a night and the morning,” Brin said, not quite meeting Mehen’s gaze.

Mehen made a low growling sound in his throat. He looked down at Havilar-she grinned back.

“I killed a veserab,” she told him. “It’s a flying lamprey thing.”

“Well done,” he said, setting an enormous hand on the back of her head. Mehen looked back as the Harpers came to stand beside them. They introduced themselves to Havilar.

“Zahnya says the camp is at the top,” Vescaras said. “Unless we’re waiting for further instructions? From a demon prince perhaps?”

Mehen scowled at him, then looked up the last slope of the mountain. “Is there a path?”

“Don’t know,” Brin said.

“You didn’t scout for one? You had the time.”

“In the dark?” Brin demanded.

“It’s not steep,” Havilar pointed out. “Not that steep. And the trees aren’t nearly as thick. We can just climb until we reach it.”

“Daranna seems to have had the same thought,” Khochen said dryly. They looked back at the rest of the party, at the scouts disappearing up the slope.

“Watching Gods,” Vescaras swore. “ This is why no one wants to work with Daranna.”

Lorcan examined his face in the still scrying mirror. Such a waste of a healing potion, and the cure had been worse than the broken nose, by far. But he’d weighed turning up bruised and battered, considered what Farideh would do when she saw, when she asked what had happened.

No, he thought. No sympathy from that quarter. Not yet. She’d take Mehen’s side right off, and everything he’d done to coax her back would be worth far less-the apology, the rescue, the kiss. . He hadn’t considered the consequences of that as carefully as he should have-but the memory of her shifting toward him in those last fractured seconds, changing from a body to a participant, boded very well indeed.

He looked around the room-still no Sairché. She was supposed to lock down the situation with Rhand, then sort out Magros, while Lorcan saw to their more heroic tools. They’d agreed to meet back here once they’d both discharged their duties.

Lorcan took the dark braid of hair from the pouch on his belt and rubbed his thumb over the ridges of purplish-black hair. He considered his reflection in the scrying mirror a moment longer, then sifted through the rings he still wore to find a familiar iron band. This one he pulled off the chain and placed on his left hand-Sairché wasn’t getting his scrying mirror back.

He waved the trigger ring over the mirror’s surface, one hand on the leather scourge necklace he wore-the necklace imbued with Farideh’s blood. The surface of the mirror shimmered like a slick of oil, before resolving into Farideh, looking as though she had never slept a day in her life and never intended to remedy that. A line of people moved past her, and she studied each with a pinched expression, waving them to one side of the space or the other.

Lorcan narrowed his eyes. She hadn’t said she planned to sort the prisoners-why? And what other surprises were going to crop up in his absence?

He looked around the room again-still no Sairché, and Lorcan needed to get to Farideh as soon as possible. He walked back to the room with the portal, but found no sign that Sairché had returned. He waved his ring before the scrying mirror again and got. . nothing. He cursed. Sairché would-of course-find a way to block her own scrying.

Or she might be in trouble.

“Shit and ashes,” Lorcan cursed again. Whether this fell under the terms of their agreement or not, he’d have to go after her. Acting without being sure of Rhand or Magros would be suicide. He opened the portal to the primordial forest, the same little grove where he’d spied Magros the first time. He took from his pocket the iron cube, and unfolded the cloth wrapped around it. Frost still etched its surface.

Despite his agreements in the interim, Lorcan found himself tempted.

Lorcan had never lived anywhere but Malbolge, never sworn allegiance to any archdevil but Glasya, and that only by virtue of his birthplace. He was not angry enough or foolish enough to think that Stygia would be a paradise, or really anything except a different sort of game, a different battle for survival. A different Hell.

But Stygia would not have Glasya-and how could he not want that? For himself, for his warlocks. .

Warlock, he corrected himself. The rest were gone. And whatever dangers fickle Glasya brought to Farideh, Levistus and his legendary appetites would be another world of danger.

He picked up the cube, focusing on a star peeking through the branches of the oak beside him, so that when the violet portal opened and Magros stepped out, the agony of clutching the frozen cube was nowhere for the other devil to see.

“Ah, good,” Magros said. “You’ve come around.”

Lorcan regarded him coolly. “Where is Sairché?”

Magros raised an eyebrow. “Have you lost her?”

“Don’t be coy,” Lorcan said. “You must have heard by now.”

“I did hear something about Lady Sairché prowling the halls of Osseia once more. Though, I don’t generally countenance the gossip of imps. I take it she’s escaped.”

“As if you don’t know,” Lorcan replied. But perhaps he didn’t-ah Lords of the Nine, keep it balanced, he told himself. Remember he thinks you’re an idiot half-devil with an erinyes’s temper. “She came straight to you, didn’t she? What did you tell her?”

Magros’s smile flickered, as if he might laugh. “Dear boy, why would she ever come to me?”

“To ruin me?” Lorcan said. “To make certain I failed? What did you tell her?”

“I told you,” Magros said. “She hasn’t come to me.” He tilted his head. “It seems she’s given you ever more reasons to flee Malbolge, though. Have you seen to my agent?”

“It would help if you told me who it was,” Lorcan said.

Magros smiled. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that?”

Lorcan fell quiet, considering the misfortune devil. He’d assumed that Magros had wanted Lorcan to act-swiftly, rashly-and ruin Asmodeus’s plans by simply killing the Stygian agent or Rhand or Farideh. It had been a slapdash maneuver, one Lorcan assumed grew from the devil’s disdain for the cambion siblings.

But Magros had never told Lorcan who to kill.

“Well, you’re a sly one, aren’t you?” Lorcan said. “Let me think you don’t expect much at all from me, let me think you think I’m stupid enough to kill your agent and upset the plan so plainly. And all the while-what? What were you doing right under our noses?”

Magros shrugged, smiling all the while. “The world will never know. I notice you say ‘our.’ I take it Sairché is not escaped so much as freed? And still, you cannot find her. How interesting.”

“Not as interesting as the puzzle of your Thayans,” Lorcan tossed back. Magros’s smile flattened. “Didn’t think I knew about those, did you?”

“I hadn’t,” Magros admitted. “Until dear Zahnya alerted me to your intrusions. Whyever are you trucking with Harpers?”

Lorcan smiled wickedly. “The world may never know.”

“Well your Chosen won’t,” Magros said. “At least, not unless you get her free of that place in the next few hours.”

Lorcan froze again. “What happens in the next few hours?”

Magros spread his hands. “What do you think we’re doing here? Asmodeus’s plan must continue apace. The gathering must happen. If she’s within its reach. . well, you can guess, and we’ll see how His Majesty feels about that.”

Every drop of his mother’s blood urged Lorcan to seize hold of Magros, to shake the answers from him-Where was the agent? What was the gathering? Where in the Hells was Sairché?-but he fought it. Magros would have his due, but that wasn’t as important as getting Farideh away from that camp, nor as important as protecting his own skin.