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Paelias shone his light up into the chute. The curling end of a rope lay less than four feet from its mouth. “Ah, light,” came the voice. “See the rope? Let’s go!”

“It’s the tiefling,” Keverel said. He looked at Biri-Daar.

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were dull with weariness and fever. “It’s the tiefling. Climb.”

Obek’s saturnine visage hovered over each of them in turn as they reached the steepest part of the climb, just below the gap in the stairs. “So,” he said when all six of them were back on the stairs. “Shall we move along to the tower of the keep?”

“Not until we get some explanation,” Keverel said. “Begin with how you came to be here.”

“I went through the Road-builder’s Tomb, just as you did.” Obek looked smug. He had the upper hand on them, and knew it, and looked determined to enjoy it while he could. Sitting there on the stairs as if they were all around a tavern table, he waited for their approbation.

“You fought your way through the road crew on your own,” Lucan said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“No,” Obek said. “I went straight through the tomb, not stopping to loot or fight. The Road-builder’s crew only fights if you are still there when they arrive to do their work. Then I followed your trail to this stair, where it ended. Simple. Now. To the tower?”

Biri-Daar’s lidded gaze had remained on the tiefling during the exchange. Remy wondered whether her fever was subsiding now that they were out of the pit. “Obek,” she said.

He stopped his needling and looked at her. Something deep and unspoken hung between them. Remy understood that he would never understand it. Human history was evidence that if humans were good at one thing, it was forgetting. Dragonborn and tiefling, it seemed, kept their histories alive … and in that was the danger that the past would rise up and overwhelm the present. That was what had driven Biri-Daar out on their quest to begin with, the sense that she could and must redress the failure of an ancestor.

I’ll take the present, Remy thought. It’s all I can handle. Let the past and future take care of themselves.

“You are resourceful and strong. So are the rest of us.” Biri-Daar paused. “But why dare the Road-builder’s Tomb so you can follow us to the perils of the Keep? There is more to this than you needing political cover to get back into Karga Kul.”

The tiefling leaned forward and the smile faded from his face. When he spoke, he spoke to Biri-Daar, but his words were meant for them all. “People look at me and see a devil. They’ve all heard the stories about Bael Turath. Thousands of years ago this happened, and yet I am held to account for it. All tieflings are. We have been pariahs ever since. Soldiers, sailors, explorers … we live hard, we die young. None of it ever makes any difference.” Obek’s eyes glowed dimly in the near-darkness. “You want to know why I have to get back into Karga Kul? Because if I do not, and the Seal is broken, every demon that comes through the gate is going to mean a thousand tieflings killed in cold blood somewhere else because they are mistaken for the demon-haunted. Some of them will deserve it. Most of them will not.”

Obek stood. “I do not wish to have that on my soul when I go to meet my gods.”

“Does anyone here believe a word he is saying?” Lucan looked from one of them to the other disbelievingly. “The Road-builder’s crew ignores you if you just keep moving? Surely we are not going to believe that just because he says it.”

Obek returned his gaze. “You want answers, friend elf, or are you content to turn your friends against me?”

“I want answers,” Biri-Daar said.

“The stories of the Road-builder’s Tomb are around for certain people to hear,” Obek said. “I have heard them. I could have told you of the crew if you had bothered to ask. I know a man who survived the trip through the Tomb and the Keep. The way he told it, the Road-builder let him live to spread the story … but took his hands so he would not loot the tomb. He told the story for his bread.”

“Where did he tell this story?” Biri-Daar asked.