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“You see what she’s done?”

“Yes,” Xyraadi murmured, leaning close as if the proximity improved her view of Kheshiri’s magical structure. “Look at that mess! That’s exactly the kind of shadow magic I’d expect a succubus to be able to handle—unfocused, crude, all but unusable by itself. But she’s saturated herself with it! She wouldn’t have been able to channel but a trickle at a time. This, at a guess, must have taken over a year of steady work.”

“Subtle work, too,” Natchua agreed. “She was doing it practically under the nose of a dragon. Shadow magic would be the only kind she even might be able to slip past a creature like that. And most impressively of all, it actually worked! You saw the reliquary fail to function.”

Kheshiri twitched at that, darting a sharp look rapidly between them; Natchua could almost see the connections forming behind her eyes. Right; this would be her first hint of who had possession of her reliquary at the moment. Barely a second later her expression shifted back to the tremulous and cowed face she’d been showing them. There was, she reminded herself, little point in trying to judge what a creature like this was feeling based on what her face betrayed.

“And,” Natchua continued, smiling, “you see what I mean. Unlike revenants, Vanislaads are such tightly constructed pieces of spellcraft they’re as functionally un-alterable as ‘natural’ demons. Unless one has gone and created a handy backdoor into her own inner workings.”

“I suppose I can see why it seemed a worthwhile risk, given the existence of that reliquary,” Xyraadi said, her own face crossed by a pensive frown. “Very few warlocks on this plane would be able to perceive this—and I think I would not have noticed, had you not called my attention to it. Yes, Natchua, I see your meaning, but be careful.” She turned a concered expression on the drow. “If you go tampering with the innermost workings of one of his pets, you’ll draw the ire of none less than Prince Vanislaas.”

“Oh? And when was the last time he dared show his face on earth? This bitch has my friend in some dark hole, Xyraadi. I don’t have time to be afraid of boogeymen.”

Kheshiri surprised them both by laughing. It was a hoarse sound, befitting her battered condition, but she raised her head again, now grinning openly up at Natchua.

“Boogeymen aren’t real,” she rasped. “You’ve managed to make your point very emphatically, Natchua. Don’t undercut it by taunting powers you know could crush you with a thought.”

Natchua stepped forward and knelt in the melting snow next to Kheshiri’s head, allowing the glowing chain that still bound them together to pool on the ground.

“You’ve probably seen enough now to intuit that I am not a typical warlock,” she said quietly. “I gained power in an unconventional way. An accidental one, in fact. But I’m not the only warlock like this in the world. The other devoured one of your kind. Destroyed their soul entirely to take on their gifts. As far as I know, that might be the only time a Vanislaad has ever been truly annihilated, instead of bound or returned to Hell. If your precious Prince decides to come to this plane and avenge his creations, he won’t start with me. And yet…where is he? There’s been no sign he knows anything of the condition of his wayward pets. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t care.”

“You’re not special, either,” Kheshiri whispered, still smirking. “Your kind love to embrace deadly risks. And that’s the thing about deadly risks: you’ll win right up until you suddenly don’t.”

Natchua flicked the chain, making her wince. “Call your Prince down here if you can, Kheshiri. I’ll put his ass on a leash, too.”

The succubus shifted on the ground to look up at Xyraadi. “I bet you’ve known enough warlocks to recognize the early signs of the insanity. That god complex is always where it starts, isn’t it?”

“Don’t speak to me, dead thing,” Xyraadi said disdainfully. “I must acknowledge, Natchua, she has a point. Obviously I know nothing of your history, or this other warlock you speak of, but I am aware of incidents of mortal warlocks trying to tamper with a child of Vanislaas. He is known to intervene directly in such cases.”

“When he learns of them,” Natchua said, straightening up. “He hasn’t gone after Chase. Vanislaas is one of Elilial’s favored pets, and spends much of his time crouched at her feet like a good dog. His only personal source of information on the comings and goings of this world are reports brought to him by incubi and succubi freshly killed here. Even less is he able to maneuver, at least in this day and age. No, I agree, it’s not a negligible risk, but I’m already operating on a short timetable. It’ll all be moot before he can do anything, and likely before he learns of it.”

“Still, there are safer and easier avenues that can be pursued before you embrace that particular risk. May I see that, please?” She directed her gaze to the Wreath shadow-jumper still dangling from Natchua’s fingers.

She paused for only half a second before tossing it lightly to the khelminash. The twisted double ring drifted to a stop in midair as Xyraadi held up her hands, finally coming to rest between them. An intricate circle of runes in white and violet appeared between her fingers around the talisman.

“These things are crafted by my people,” she said, watching the runes shift about like the calculations of an abacus. “The Dark Lady trusts the Wreath only up to a point; they are not told everything about the functions of their tools. If one knows how, one can track where a talisman has…been…” She trailed off, narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and then turned a downright incredulous stare on Kheshiri.

The felled succubus began shuddering with silent laughter.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Natchua exclaimed.

“One can also erase its history quite easily,” Xyraadi said in open annoyance, “if one knows how, which no humans and surely none of her kind should! Who taught you this trick, you insufferable creature?”

Kheshiri pressed her forehead into the ground, still chuckling weakly. “Natchua, my dear, would you kindly remind your associate that I am under her orders not to speak to her?”

“Well, still,” Xyraadi grunted. “I can do things with this that she simply cannot, whatever secrets she has poked her nose into. There are still traces…faint, but extricable. Give me but a few moments, and I can at least track it to the last two, possibly three places it has been. That will mean Second Chances, and then wherever she stashed Hesthri.”

“That’s an exotic name, Hesthri,” Kheshiri murmured. “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say it sounds…khelminash.”

Natchua stared coolly down at her while Xyraadi fiddled with the talisman. So Kheshiri hadn’t known her victim was a disguised demon. If she was telling the truth and had placed Hesthri somewhere safe for a human, the hethelax was almost certainly in no danger. Unless…no, Kheshiri wouldn’t have been able to take her somewhere saturated with divine magic.

“I have it,” Xyraadi announced, grinning in triumph. “Un moment, Natchua. I shall be back shortly, with our missing friend.” So saying, she vanished in a swell of shadows, still clutching the talisman but not twisting it to activate.

Kheshiri began struggling up to her knees. “Well,” she said somewhat hoarsely, “since we’ve established that I’m not going anywhere until you say so, I trust you won’t begrudge a girl a little self-care.”

Natchua continued staring at her; the succubus turned to give her a questioning look, which she did not acknowledge. She wasn’t interested in making small talk or even eye contact with the demon, but in continuing to analyze her interior structure. True, Kheshiri appeared far too blasé for someone whose last scrap of leverage was about to be taken from her, but she was also a master of appearances and had clear evidence from the last few minutes that a show of fear earned neither sympathy nor lax attention from her captor.

She had not bothered to examine Melaxyna this closely, though in retrospect, Natchua realized it probably wouldn’t have been as easy. Kheshiri’s inner coating of shadow magic was all but undetectable save to a practitioner of considerable knowledge, who happened to be analyzing her quite closely, but once those conditions were met it actually served to make her own magical structure more amenable to analysis. Magic was not perceived directly with the eyes, but some of the principles were similar. The searing threads of bright infernal power stood out the more clearly against a thick backdrop of murky darkness.

Natchua had the stray thought that, given sufficient time to study Kheshiri in detail, she could reproduce this work. Not as a revenant or similar half-measure, but an actual succubus of her own—and possibly better, for what she could examine and understand to that extent, she could improve upon. Not that she had any use for such a thing, nor any intention of acquiring a soul upon which to base one. One succubus was as much as she wanted to handle, and that was with Melaxyna evidently feeling positively toward her.

Whether she meant to or not, Kheshiri more than obliged Natchua’s examination. Perhaps she didn’t know what the drow was doing, or counted on what she did next to startle her into losing concentration. If that was the goal, it didn’t work; Natchua focused all the more closely, but it was a startling thing to behold.

Kheshiri’s body rippled, squirmed, and began to shift. Not into a new form, though; she started with her left hand, flexing the mangled appendage. The color of its skin flickered through several shades, then a few configurations, changing swiftly from the maimed hand of a deft painter to the maimed hand of a muscled and calloused laborer. And amazingly, as she did so, her fingers grew back into place.

That was something to see. According to what she knew of the children of Vanislaas, injuries they took could be healed by a warlock, but they couldn’t do it themselves; anything severe enough that could not be healed would afflict every form they took on until they were destroyed and received a new body on returning to Hell.

Natchua was briefly frustrated when Kheshiri paused to yank the piece of branch out of her thigh with a grunt of pain. The succubus set about healing that, too, which wasn’t as impressive in terms of the physical achievement, but still fascinating. And still supposed to be impossible.

She focused closely as Kheshiri, now almost seeming to preen under the attention, went to work on her severed right arm, regrowing it a fraction of an inch at a time through a series of rapid transformations. The healing of the comparatively minor leg wound had been an entirely other matter, a clever craft of exploiting her own inner workings—now laid bare to Natchua’s intent study. The inhibitions on her shapeshifting ability interfered with the healing, but were not meant to bar it specifically, and Kheshiri had found just the tiniest bit of wiggle room in her component spells using the inherently transitional nature of her physical body. It would have required an immensely focused self-examination and a great deal of practice even to discover this. Most Vanislaads, afflicted with that itch of theirs, couldn’t fix their minds on such a tiny task for so long, nor would it have occurred to them to try. Hell, most mortals couldn’t do it; this was the work of someone trained in deep meditation. Another thing that should have been beyond the reach of a succubus.

The work of regenerating limbs was still impressive, but a more brute-forced measure. While she should have been forced to shift into another form with the same injury, it seemed she could adjust the extent of the stump by infinitesimal amounts with each shapeshift. That explained why she had been so blithely willing to hack off her own arm to escape a trap; even Natchua had been impressed by the guts that took, especially given how quickly and without hesitation Kheshiri resorted to it. That effect was somewhat lessened by this discovery, but it was really no surprise. A Vanislaad would always rely on some hidden trick above anything that required physical bravery.

Kheshiri had painstakingly restored her upper arm and was working on rebuilding her elbow—which, to judge by her grimacing, was more difficult—when the shadows shifted again and Xyraadi returned.

The khelminash had nothing with her but the shadow-jumper and an aggravated scowl.

“I cannot believe what this creat— Zut alors! What is she doing now?”

“Showing off,” Natchua replied, trying to suppress the swell of emotions that came with this new lack of Hesthri’s reappearance. She had been too focused on one thing and another to wallow in worry, but at having this new hope dashed it surged upward to the point of threatening her concentration.

She could reject her heritage all she liked, but Natchua had been raised Narisian. If there was one thing she could manage, it was to master her emotions. Her face and tone were both cold when she ventured to speak again.

“Have you ever known one of her kind who could do this?”

“I have taken pains not to associate with them,” Xyraadi sniffed. “Yet still… No. This is something none of them should be able to do.”

“Stop, I’m gonna blush,” Kheshiri trilled. She appeared to be a lot less beaten-down in general than she had moments ago, and not just due to the restoration of her arm, which had extended into the forearm now.

“I gather your trip was unsuccessful,” Natchua said, turning to Xyraadi. Fascinating as it was to watch Kheshiri work, she had seen the method now. Still, she kept the succubus in the corner of her eye in case something else of interest developed.

“Again, we run afoul of the old maxim: the best tricks are simple tricks.” Xyraadi handed the talisman back over, glaring down at Kheshiri. “This abominable pest took the time to lay a false trail! After Second Chances, the next destination was a mountaintop so high the air was scarcely breathable. I managed to pry one more destination out of it, and that was a ruined fortress in the middle of some desert. Hesthri was nowhere in the vicinity of either. I can locate a hethelax by proximity, with little effort, and nothing this one can do would interfere with that craft. She simply went elsewhere after ditching Hesthri. At least twice!”

“A hethelax,” Kheshiri said in surprise, still focused on her arm. “Hah, I was right! It is a khelminash name—those critters have no culture of their own. So, is she the demon’s pet, then, or is that just happenstance?”

“She was barely out of my sight for thirty seconds before you poked me with that dagger,” Natchua exclaimed.

Kheshiri actually paused in her work to look up at her with an obnoxious simper. “You’re not the only one here who’s the best there is at what you do, poppet.”

“It is not inconceivable,” Xyraadi said reluctantly, “that if she already knew how to erase the talisman’s tracking function, she would know that a khelminash sorceress would be able to pry traces from it still. What baffles me is why she bothered. She did not know what kind of being I am before entering Second Chances, of that at least I am certain. That information is known only to those who live there, and the three paladins.”

“Paladins, huh,” Kheshiri murmured. “What interesting lives we all lead, n’est-ce pas?”

Xyraadi took one aggressive step toward her, forestalled by Natchua’s hand on her arm. “She also claimed to be surprised at my presence. Assuming that you’re right, and that that wasn’t a lie… It suggests this is someone so accustomed to playing against people who think three steps ahead in every encounter that she just does so habitually.”

“This really has turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant outing,” Kheshiri hummed, once again re-growing her arm. She had it almost down to the wrist now. “Fresh mountain air and all the flattery I could possibly ask for!”

“Thank you for trying, Xyraadi,” Natchua said. “It was a good idea, and would have made all of this much simpler. I guess now we have to proceed with my original plan.”

Kheshiri shot her a sidelong glance, her expression going still.

“You think you can…what? Alter her composition such that she must tell you the truth?”

“That’s an incredibly sophisticated piece of tampering,” Natchua mused, peering closely at the succubus, who was now watching her back with her full attention, right hand still missing. “Prince Vanislaas could do that… I might be able to, after weeks or months of study. Hesthri doesn’t have that kind of time, though. I can only deal with simple, comparatively brutish measures.”

“Or,” Kheshiri suggested, “you can make a deal with me. All I want in this world is my life and my freedom. I can’t see a single reason why that should be so much as an inconvenience to either of you. Especially since we’re not even in your city anymore!”

The two warlocks exchanged a glance, and did not need to exchange a word. Even assuming they had both been willing to unleash what they now understood was probably the most dangerous Vanislaad in existence on the world with no one able to contain her, there was the fact that Kheshiri had seen and heard a great deal by this point, and if nothing else, was certain to remember the two of them—and Hesthri—as individuals who had severely inconvenienced her in the past. Whatever else resulted from this encounter, she could absolutely not be allowed to go free.

“I can’t make her speak, directly,” Natchua said, reaching out with her mind to touch the strands of magic animating the woman crouched in the snow before her. “But to my eyes, she is chock full of interesting features. Dials I can turn, levers and strings to pull…now that I know how.”

“I warned you,” Xyraadi said warily, “inflicting pain on her will not coerce her to do anything.”

“Oh, of course, I’m aware of that. She doesn’t fear pain, or any sensation. What she fears is the lack of it.”

Natchua clenched her mental grip around the relevant pieces of Kheshiri’s component magic and pulled.

The succubus went still, eyes widening.

“What did you do?” Xyraadi demanded.

“I shut off her physical sensations,” Natchua said with more than a little satisfaction. She raised her hand, a whip of pure infernal fire appearing in her grasp.

Kheshiri reflexively raised her good arm to block the blow; the whip struck her with a brutal crack before Natchua discarded it back into nothingness. The succubus lowered her arm, dispassionately studying the still-smoking line that had been seared across it.

“She feels…nothing?” Xyraadi breathed. “Mes dieux. That, now…that is the only true torture to one of her kind.”

“It would be more correct to say that she feels whatever I decide she feels,” Natchua said grimly, part of her enjoying the growing concern in Kheshiri’s expression. “I believe I can also shut off…yes.”

The succubus’s face went entirely blank. She blinked languidly at them, then poked disinterestedly at the fresh scar across her forearm with the stump of her opposite wrist.

“Even her emotions?” Xyraadi said, clearly impressed. “Ah, mais non. You will not compel a creature of pure calculation—she must have fear to be properly…persuasive.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” Natchua agreed, restoring Kheshiri’s emotional state to its default. The demon’s expression did not change, which didn’t fool her; having had her very fingers in them, so to speak, she could sense Kheshiri’s feelings as clearly as she could read a written page, and as usual her face betrayed little. Now, though, Natchua could see her fear.

She was a little discomfited to find that Kheshiri’s fear for her own well-being was dwarfed by burning determination. And behind that, a blaze of analytical curiosity that seemed like nothing ever shut it off. Unfortunately, she could only see these things; actually tweaking specific emotions in the succubus would require a great deal of time and study that Hesthri could not spare. For now, all she could do was turn the whole apparatus on or off.

Discerning that the physical sensations were far less sophisticated, Natchua decided to change tactics. “Alternatively, perhaps we can apply the carrot as well as the stick.”

Here, too, her ability to achieve specific results was limited. Sensations were simpler things than emotions, relatively simple knots of data as opposed to vast networks spread through the succubus’s entire consciousness. They were only relatively simple, though; their complexity would not afford her any degree of fine control. In fact, all Natchua could really discern in particular came from examining the mental apparatus that made Vanislaads equally responsive to pleasure and pain. That required the matrix of spells animating her to specify those two values in terms she could reproduce.

Which she did.

Kheshiri abruptly heaved upright and then over backwards onto her broken wings, arching her back. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she thrashed in insensate ecstasy, squealing.

Natchua immediately released her grip, and Kheshiri slumped back to the ground, gasping for breath. That was a little harder than she’d intended to push… No, she had to acknowledge, a lot. A sudden burst of sourceless pleasure like that might have neurologically damaged an elf or human.

“Whoops,” she said lightly. “Let me see if I can’t even that out for you a bit.”

This time, she applied a lighter touch when pushing in the other direction. Not too light; Kheshiri immediately jerked, and then turned over on her side, curling up around herself in steadily increasing agony that wracked every nerve in her body. Natchua pushed it harder, in small and steady increments, as Kheshiri began spasming violently and only released her with blood began to spray from her lips.

Again, the succubus flopped against the ground, struggling to breathe through the sheer exhaustion of what she had just been through.

“This,” Xyraadi said very evenly, “is distasteful.”

“I don’t disagree,” Natchua acknowledged. “What about it, Kheshiri? Are you about ready to start cooperating?”

Shakily, and with apparent effort, Kheshiri rolled back over onto her side, slowly raising her head.

The expression on her face was absolutely avid; her eyes practically seemed to glow.

“Where,” she slurred drunkenly, gazing up at Natchua with something very like adoration, “have you been all my life?”

Natchua stepped back in surprise, incidentally causing the fiery chain between them to go taut. She took the precaution of focusing on the magical data that betrayed Kheshiri’s real emotional state, and her own worry began to increase. The fear was still there, but diminished. The determination and curiosity had not diminished, and to them was now added a sense that Natchua could only parse as eager fascination with a newly-revealed realm of possibilities.

Well, shit.

“All right,” she said grimly. “With a relatively little bit of time and effort, I’m quite positive I can isolate the itch function. If none of this is making an impression, ramping that to maximum and denying her any possibility of satisfying it will surely do so.”

The fear rose sharply. As did all the others, suddenly accompanied by a kind of…giddiness.

Shit.

Kheshiri began crawling through the half-melted snow toward Natchua’s feet, provoking her to back away.

“Oh, you have such potential,” the succubus cooed, and Natchua was distinctly alarmed by the very sincere fondness that had begun to bloom in the demon’s mind. Could she possibly be faking emotions inside her own head? Could anyone do that? She was probably clever enough to realize that if Natchua could inflict them, she perceived them on some level… “You’re so close, you know? The instinct is there, but you have no technique, no control.”

“Excuse me?” Natchua snapped. “I have no control? Who’s the one crawling on the ground like a dog at my feet?”

“It was a good effort!” Kheshiri said sincerely, rising up to her knees and beaming up at her. “For an amateur. But consider: you’ve put me in a position where you have all the power, and all I have is my leverage. You know, now, exactly how much abuse I can take—which is to say, everything you’re capable of dishing out, and more. You know I can’t give you my only card just like that. You know you can’t force me to. So this is where we are: if you want your friend back, you are going to have to provide me with some…assurances.”

Natchua stared down at her, eyes slitted. Kheshiri gazed back, but the drow was hardly seeing her. She was examining, not the woman kneeling in the snow, but the bundle of magic that formed her, and what information she could interpret from the plainly written emotional state behind those crystalline eyes.

Kheshiri remained silent for nearly a minute while Natchua looked, and frantically thought, and finally was forced to the bitter conclusion that nothing in her arsenal was going to overcome this infernal creature’s power of will.

Xyraadi cleared her throat. “In my day, there was a great adventure over the creation of an artifact which could apply perfect control to a Vanislaad demon. If it could be found…”

It was a forlorn hope, even in the best case scenario; Xyraadi was grasping at straws, even disregarding what Natchua had to tell her now.

“Yes, a collar, I encountered word of it when I was pumping my contracted djinn for potential resources. It’s in the possession of Razzavinax the Red now.”

“A dragon?”

“Yes.”

“Merde.”

That was all the discussion there need be of that. Parting a dragon from one of his treasures required nothing less than a crusade.

Natchua clenched her teeth, seething, and finally acknowledged defeat. “What is it you want, Kheshiri?”

Satisfaction surged in the succubus, but she had the good taste not to betray it on her features. Natchua had no intention of relaxing this awareness of the demon’s emotions now that she’d discovered how to detect them, but at moments like this it was more annoying than useful.

“Freedom,” Kheshiri answered promptly, “and security. Those are all I was after in the first place; I will require that you guarantee them on oath before the eyes of your contracted djinn.”

That was no surprise; it was a standard provision of infernal contracts. A vow witnessed by the djinn carried serious consequences if it was broken. The djinn in question would immediately know of it, and a warlock considered forsworn would never get cooperation from any other demon or warlock again. Worse, they were likely to become the target of persistent predation, both by certain demons who took it upon themselves to punish such transgressions, and more opportunistic figures who would seek to take anything useful or valuable in their possession, secure in the knowledge that no one on hell or earth would defend them. A forsworn warlock was pitifully easy to find; the djinn were gleefully happy to send everyone who asked (and some who didn’t) right to them.

“But now,” Kheshiri crooned just as Natchua opened her mouth to answer, “I have an additional requirement.”

Natchua heaved an annoyed sigh as the succubus paused, apparently for effect. “Well?”

Kheshiri’s tail began whipping back and forth behind her, very much like an ecstatic dog’s. “I like you, Natchua. You are just so…fascinating. So very full of possibility!”

“Oh, no you fucking don’t, you—”

“That is the deal, dearest. I’m going with you. Whatever it is you’re up to, I am in.”

“I will see you damned first,” Natchua stated. “Again. Harder.”

Kheshiri grinned broadly. “You’ll come to value me in good time, my love. But for now… Do you, or do you not, want to see your dear Hesthri again?”

She stared down at the succubus, and through her, and saw an intractable wall she had no way of getting past.

“I told you not to torture a Vanislaad,” Xyraadi said wearily. “Congratulations, you have discovered the worst case scenario.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Natchua exclaimed, her voice rising in agitation. “Not now, and not in the future! I simply can’t ride herd on this creature while I deal with— With everything else.”

“Ahh,” Kheshiri breathed, still looking up at Natchua like a starving woman might look at a steak. “But don’t you see? What you’ve showed me is so much more than ways to hurt me or mess me up. You can do things for me…thing I would not have believed possible. I don’t care if you’re aiming to topple Elilial herself. Whatever you’re up to, I’m certain I have done madder things just to see if I could. I’ll earn that trust, my dearest.”

Natchua scowled at her. For just a moment, there, only the knowledge that killing her would be the same as throwing a gauntlet at the feet of Prince Vanislaas himself kept Kheshiri from being blasted off the mortal plane entirely.

“And there is still the short term,” Kheshiri added after a pause, smirking. “Dear Hesthri is not in any danger…immediately. She has plenty of air, at least I’m pretty sure. You probably want to resolve this before there’s a flood, though.”

A flood… Some cavern at the waterline below Ninkabi? No, too obvious; Wreath shadow-jumpers had no limit on the distance they could travel, and something like two thirds of the planet was covered by water.

“So,” Natchua said finally. “Guarantees of freedom, security…” She twisted her lips bitterly. “…and participation. Those are your terms?”

“You won’t regret this,” Kheshiri promised, and somehow the fact that she was absolutely sincere, as far as Natchua could tell from perusing her emotions directly, was not reassuring.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Natchua held up a hand. “We have a starting point, not a deal. Invoking a djinn will have to be done in a secure environment, and before that…” She turned to the other demon present. “Xyraadi, does Mr. Agasti still actively practice contract law?”

“For this,” Xyraadi said with grim approval, “I believe he will gladly step out of retirement.”

Natchua found, at least, a little satisfaction in the abrupt disappearance of Kheshiri’s smile.

---

It turned out her hunch was right; it was a cavern at the base of the canyon below Ninkabi after all. The place was dark, dank, and filled with the sound of rushing water, but at least it was somewhat upstream of the city and thus didn’t reek of sewage.

The cave had evidently been abandoned for a long time, to judge by the rotted state of the old barrels and crates that remained, but it looked to have been used as a smuggler’s den at some point. Natchua was rather curious how Kheshiri had found the place so quickly when she had apparently only been in Ninkabi for a short few days and spent almost none of it unsupervised or outside the Inquisition’s headquarters. If the wretched woman could be trusted in the slightest, she might well turn out to be more useful even than Melaxyna, but that was a comically huge “if.” At minimum, she could be pumped for a lot of information, which Natchua meant to be about as soon as possible.

But this was more urgent.

Hesthri had not been sitting on her claws like some damsel in distress. The old tunnel entrance to the cave had been boarded, bolted, and barred, but despite having been down there less than an hour and in pitch blackness, she had almost gotten it open. The half-rotted boards were now lying about in shreds, and finding the iron door itself rusted shut, she had begun laboriously bashing into the surrounding stone with her blunt claws.

Now Hesthri spun, crouching and raising those claws in a threatening pose even as she squinted against the glare of the hovering flame Natchua had conjured over her shoulder.

“It’s me,” Natchua said, stopping and waiting for Hesthri’s eyes to adjust. The hethelax was still in her fancy costume, now soaking wet, but had removed her disguise ring at some point to reveal her armor plates and claws. “Hes, I’m so sorry this took so long. I was forced to negotiate with that damned succubus. Are you—”

She broke off and started to rear back as Hesthri abruptly charged her. Natchua was by far the quicker of the two, but on simple instinct she did not evade the rush as she could have. Maybe she deserved a punch across the jaw, after all.

None such came. Instead, Hesthri nearly toppled them both over, wrapping her arms around Natchua in a desperate embrace and burying her face against the drow’s collarbone.

Natchua had to struggle to keep them both balanced upright for a moment, but then found herself wrapping her own arms around the demon in turn.

“Did she hurt you?” she asked quietly.

Chitin armor chafed her skin slightly as Hesthri shook her head. “I wasn’t… I’m sorry, Natch. I just wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Of course I came,” Natchua said sharply, then tried to inject a little feeble levity into the situation. “After all the trouble I went to, to summon you?”

That only brought to mind exactly what trouble that had been…which hadn’t seemed like a lot of trouble at the time, but was definitely troubling her now. This was the second time that night she’d had Hesthri’s arms around her. The first person who had touched her with any kind of affection since…since Jonathan. Who had been the first since Juniper had put an polite end to their occasional fooling around over a year ago. There hadn’t been much in the way of warmth or closeness in House Dalmiss. This, now, was warm, and comforting, and safe, and oh shit she was in trouble.

“After all,” Hesthri said, emitting an exhausted little chuckle of her own, “aren’t we all in this to die?”

“Not like this,” Natchua said fiercely. “Not alone in the dark. We may die, but we won’t be abandoned or forgotten. Nobody gets left behind.”

Hesthri clutched her tighter for a few long moments, before finally pulling back. Her expression, as she stared closely at Natchua’s face in the firelight, was intensely curious. As if she were studying a puzzle she couldn’t quite work out.

Natchua cleared her throat. “Well. Mission accomplished, after a fashion. We’ve got what we came for, but there have been some new complications I’ll have to bring you up to speed on. For now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

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