Brimstone Angels (8 page)

“They’re … it’s … It’s a refugee caravan,” he said after a moment. “But in reverse, I suppose. Returning to Neverwinter.”

“Neverwinter?” Farideh said. “I thought Neverwinter was destroyed ages ago.”

“It was. But they’re rebuilding it. And the Lord Neverember—well, he’s the one taking control of all the rebuilding and such—has called back the people who fled when Mount Hotenow erupted.”

Havilar looked at him askance. “Aren’t you a little young to have survived a catastrophe from thirty years ago?”

“Not me,” he said. “My parents. They fled and went to, um, Amn. I thought … I thought there would be something better for me in Neverwinter.”

Havilar squinted at him. “How old are you? Fifteen?”

“Seventeen,” he said hotly, forgetting to lie.

Havilar snorted. “You weigh as much as my glaive. What exactly do you think you’re going to be doing in Neverwinter?” she asked. “Not exactly fit for city-building. Also, your leg’s hurt.”

Brin scowled. He shifted to his feet and stood, gingerly applying weight to the leg. It bore him, even though it smarted. The axe handle hadn’t hit his knee. He could walk well enough until it could be healed.

“You’re still not about to clear a volcano’s remains,” Havilar said.

“It’s not all hauling stones and hammering posts,” Brin said. “Which I
could
do. It’s planning. And … constructing things. Opening stores. Making it a place worth staying in.” He dusted off his breeches. “It’s better than hunting criminals.”

Criminals. Constancia—Loyal Fury, it tore at him to think of casting her off to hunters like these. He wondered if Constancia rode
with the holy champions. He wondered if it mattered against Havilar, quick and eager as she was with that glaive; stern Mehen; and Farideh with her magic. He’d never met a wizard who cast spells like that.

Sorcerer, he corrected himself. Wizards have books. Sorcerers just have magic.

Regardless, he owed Constancia. And now he owed these two—better they shouldn’t meet his cousin with her keen blade.

“If …” He hesitated deliberately. “Look, I haven’t seen your bounty, but if I were her and I were heading North … probably I’d go to Luskan.”

Havilar shook her head. “We do
not
want to go to Luskan.”

“It could be worse,” Farideh said, her eyes back on the cart behind them. “At least Luskan is the sort of place where no one cares what you look like.”

“It’s also the sort of place where you get stabbed in the night by
pirates
for no reason.”

“You’ve never even met someone who’s
been
to Luskan,” Farideh murmured. “You’re just repeating things you like the sound of.”

“Why are you such—”

Mehen returned then in a fouler temper than he’d left. After showing his leaflet to as many of the former refugees as would listen, he’d discovered that none of them had seen Constancia. Or at least, none would admit to it. And a fair number of them went out of their way not to talk to him at all.

“Brin says we should go to Luskan,” Havilar said.

Mehen scowled at Brin. “Did he? Which are you, boy, a thug or a hunter?”

“N-Neither?”

“Then I suppose I won’t be taking your advice,” he said. “Luskan can wait until we run out of options.
Nobody’s
going to help us in Luskan. It’s a Hellhole.”

See?
Havilar mouthed to Brin.

Mehen looked up at her, then over her head, back at the caravan. “Farideh! Get back here! What in the Hells is wrong with you?”

Farideh was hurrying back from the lead cart, her cheeks scarlet. Brin hadn’t even seen her leave. The lead cart had been hit hard—the driver lay splayed across the seat with an arrow protruding from his
ribs while his sister pressed a hand to the wound. Fortunately, she was also pouring a healing draft into his mouth.

Brin frowned.

The healing draft was in the same metal vial Farideh had been trying to press on him.

“Are you all right?” Mehen demanded.

“I’m
fine,
” she said. She turned rather deliberately away, to fuss with her haversack.

On the cart, the woman wrenched the arrow from her brother’s chest and he gasped. He sat up, wiping at the blood that slicked his skin, and breathing heavily—but breathing.

“Time to go,” Mehen said with a pointed look at Brin. He herded both twins ahead of him and down the road, without so much as a farewell. Both sisters glanced back once—Havilar with a jaunty wave, Farideh with a more solemn look—and it was only moments before they were down the road, and out of sight.

Brin went back to the cart. The cart owner was still alive—though nursing a wounded arm—and so were his daughters, and Brin said a little prayer of thanks.

“Monsters,” the man said, watching as the tieflings and the dragonborn headed down the road. “As if anyone with any sense would hand someone over to a pair of devil-children. One’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy. That and a dragonborn. Never know what those types are thinking.”

“Yes,” Brin said, shame in his chest. “Well.”

He realized hadn’t apologized for thinking they were devils. What had seemed like an honest mistake turned cruel and thoughtless when he heard the cart owner saying the same. He hadn’t thanked them for saving him either, or for saving the rest of the caravan. Brin turned to help Tam with another man, a farmer with a broken arm, wishing for all the world he was traveling with a pair of devil-children and a dragonborn.

P
ATCHES OF BLUE LIGHT SCINTILLATED ALONG THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE
sleeping man. The four acolytes arrayed around his cot could not seem to take their eyes off them, nor would they come closer than a few steps from the spellplague-touched man. Rohini pursed her lips.

“Come on,” she coaxed, holding out the cotton bandages. “He doesn’t bite.”

“But …” one of the acolytes, a fair-haired human girl ventured. “Isn’t he contagious?”

“If you are going to care for the victims of the Chasm,” Rohini said, “you are going to have to firm up.” She set the bandages on the table beside her and took up shears to cut the previous dressing loose. “You can’t take on the guardsmen who fall in the river or take a tumble down a pile of rubble and leave all the interesting patients to your colleagues. Now, make certain you don’t bind the dressing too tightly. He needs his blood still.”

The acolytes eyed each other uneasily, still wary of the spellscar. Even in the sunlight streaming down from the many broken windows, the blue light was unmistakable. Rohini risked a glance through the archway and across the corridor. The door was still shut.

“Couldn’t we just cast a healing on him?” a dark-skinned young man asked. “Isn’t that why we’re here? Because we have Oghma’s blessing?”

“You are here,” Rohini said, a little more sternly, “to serve Oghma by assisting Brother Vartan’s studies of the Chasm. And to serve
Neverwinter by taking care of her guardsmen.” She wound the clean bandage around the man’s arm. “Neither of which you do by wasting your god-given magic on a flesh wound.”

“But the spellplague—”

Rohini cut him off with a sharp look that held more than the promise of punishment, though she knew from experience that was all the human boy would see. “I trust, Josse, that you don’t believe you can heal the spellscarred when not even the god of knowledge has managed it?” The boy dropped his eyes.

Rohini’s eyes flicked back to the door. Still shut, but there was most definitely a stirring behind it, quiet and easy to dismiss … but more than she’d heard all morning.

“You are all very blessed,” she said, her voice light and sweet again. They all lifted their heads. They wanted to please her. “But you must learn these simpler skills and save your prayers for when they are needed. You will see wounds far more traumatic than this. Far more deadly. Infection. Disease. Poisons. If you have already worn yourself out casting healing magic on a scrape, then where shall you be?”

Definitely a stirring. Vartan’s guest was preparing to leave. She tied the dressing neatly closed, imagining for the barest moment what would happen to the wound if she
had
bound it good and tight—the sickening of the blood, the putrifying wound—and then locked that part of her mind away again. That wasn’t who Rohini was any longer.

“There,” she said. “Now the four of you take care of the rest. The bandages are here, and be certain your hands are clean.”

No sooner had she set them to their task but the door opened and two men came out. Brother Vartan—the head of the researchers and of the makeshift hospital the ancient temple to the god of knowledge housed—waved the shorter human through the door ahead of him. Rohini moved closer to the archway, making certain she did not seem obtrusive.

“I beg you to only consider—” Vartan began.

“We have considered,” the other man said. He met the half-elf priest’s impassioned expression with an equally dispassionate one, not bothering to wipe away the sweat that streamed down his temples and beaded his brow. His suit was damp with it. “We have no interest in what you offer. Anyone can study the Chasm. It brings my patrons no gain.”

“You were happy with Brother Anthus’s work,” Vartan said.

Very bad, Rohini thought. That was not a path to test. If Vartan pushed the representative of the Sovereignty too far, everything would be in jeopardy. She stepped into the corridor.

“Brother Vartan?” she said. The priest turned to her, as did the other man. Well dressed and haughty, Rohini thought, but he carried with him an odor not unlike a dockside at dusk—cold and wet and dank and vaguely fishy. A necessary evil, she thought, remembering her orders.

“Ah,” Vartan said, “Rohini. This is my second-in-command—as it were—Rohini. She was Brother Anthus’s assistant before his untimely death. Rohini this is—”

“That is not necessary,” the man said. His pale eyes bored into Rohini for a moment. She fought the urge to stare him down and made a polite curtsey.

“Well, nevertheless, I wish you good health,” she said, as if she did not notice the man’s consideration. “I must steal Vartan away from you, I’m afraid. I do hope your talks went well?” She toyed with a frizzy curl of her hair.

The man did not answer. Not for the first time, Rohini cursed that she did not quite know what she was dealing with in Vartan’s nameless, would-be patron. He might look like any other mortal, but looks could be deceiving. Tempting as it was to test his boundaries, she had been warned not to.

“Another time perhaps,” she said.

The man looked at Vartan. “Perhaps.”

“Yes,” Vartan said, giving Rohini a hard stare. “Another day. Farewell, sir.”

The sweating man turned and walked away down the corridor without responding.

“Things were improving,” Vartan said. “Why did you chase him off that way?”

“Because you were losing him,” Rohini answered. “What did you say? What did you promise him?”

“That isn’t your concern.”

“Your concerns are my concerns. What did you promise him?”

Vartan’s dark eyes flicked over her face, as if he were trying to remember why he felt the need to tell her. “Access to my findings,” he
said. “Access to Anthus’s findings—the ones we know about.”

Rohini shut her eyes. Whatever secrets Anthus had recorded, the Sovereignty not only knew about them now—they knew he had recorded them.

“He ought to see the merit in my goals,” Vartan said, frowning in the direction the Sovereignty’s agent had taken. “In
our
goals,” he amended. “Who wouldn’t see the virtue in curing the effects of spellplague? In resurrecting the dead gods?”

“Oh, Vartan,” she said. She looked up at him, making sure her eyes were brown and soft. He always paid attention when they were brown and soft. She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm, where he’d rolled his sleeve up from the heat. The muscles beneath her hand twitched, but Vartan didn’t break his gaze.

“It’s important,” she said, “that you convince our friend there that you are worth his time. You are not going to do so unless you give him something that he wants.”

“Something that he wants?” Vartan said.

“Yes. And he isn’t going to tell you outright what that is, so you are going to have to tease it out of him.”

“Tease it out of him.”

“I’m well aware it’s not your strong suit,” Rohini continued. “But you want to do it. You want to find a way into the Sovereignty’s good graces. And soon. We both know that.”

“We do,” Vartan agreed.

Rohini stood and stepped in close. She pressed her mouth to the half-elf’s cheek, and with that kiss, wrapped his every thought with a trust for her so complete he would not realize she’d planted every word in his head.

He blinked, glanced around at the hallway, and blinked a few times more. “What … what were we …”