Death Sworn (19 page)

“I—” She dug her fingers into her blanket. “What makes you think I ever didn’t care?”

“You told me. Several times, if I recall correctly.”

She hadn’t realized he believed her.

“And even before that, it was the first thing I noticed about you. You weren’t frightened of me—not as frightened as you should have been. I could have killed you so easily. And I wouldn’t have cared.”

He didn’t sound regretful; he sounded wistful. Like he wished he
still
didn’t care.

“I wasn’t quite that dumb,” Ileni said coldly. “I warded myself against you.”

He blinked, the certainty disappearing from his face. Ileni reached under her bed and pulled out her bag. The flat black stones spilled onto the floor.

“Warding stones,” she said. “Extremely powerful ones. I set the ward the day I arrived. So you couldn’t have touched me, no matter how much you
didn’t care
.”

Sorin’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you Renagai weren’t permitted to take your magical devices out of the village.”

“We weren’t. Aren’t.”

“Then how—you
stole
them?” He seemed genuinely shocked, but when she glared up at him, his tone turned mocking. “You, the paragon of Renegai virtue?”

“No,” Ileni snapped. “They were given to me.” She hesitated, then added, “By Tellis.”

Sorin’s grin didn’t fade, but suddenly it had a different slant. “I see. Not quite as righteous as you, is that it? Or did he abandon his principles out of love?”

“I don’t want to talk about Tellis.”

“Good. Neither do I.” He looked at the warding stones. Hurt thrummed in his voice, layered far below his outwardly level tone. “So that first day, when you plucked one of my hairs . . . .”

She blinked. “You remember?”

He gave her a sideways glance. “I remember every move you made since the moment you walked into these caves.”

Ileni felt suddenly breathless again.
Don’t be stupid,
she told herself, and said archly, “The advantage of an assassin’s training, I suppose.”

His shoulders hunched slightly. There was something vulnerable in his stance, and Ileni’s heart twisted unexpectedly. She hadn’t realized she had the power to hurt him. “If you’re warded against me, how was I able to teach you to fight? Or are the wards so sensitive they can distinguish between true and false threats?”

“They can tell whether I feel threatened or not. And anyhow . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’m not. Warded against you, I mean. Anymore.”

He straightened as if in response to an attack.

The wary hope in his eyes made her chest constrict. She forced her words out, awkward and halting. “I don’t have any defenses against you, Sorin. At all.”

When Sorin spoke, his voice lacked its usual smooth assurance. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know,” Ileni said.

The moment stretched, clumsy and painful. Then, with an almost inhuman swiftness, he closed the distance between them.

Her power acted without her conscious intent, and the door slammed shut. She didn’t care, just then, how stupid it was. And neither, evidently, did he.

It wasn’t until late that night that Ileni heard the rap on her door, but she was wide awake and still fully dressed. She pulled the door open a crack and was back sitting cross-legged on the bed by the time Bazel stepped in, his reddish hair rumpled by sleep.

Ileni inclined her head. “You brought the stone?”

“He brought something else,” Irun said, and stepped through the door behind Bazel.

Ileni scrambled to her feet as Bazel stepped to the side and Irun came across the room toward her. Before she could move, or even think, he jerked her around and pressed her down with her face to the bed. He yanked her arm behind her back at an angle that sent pain screaming along her shoulder.

The thin blanket pressed into her face, suffocating her. She twisted her head to the side and opened her mouth to gasp in air. Something thick and rough slid between her teeth and tongue. She choked, heaved, and tried to reach for the gag. Irun did something to her arm that made the world go black with pain.

When she could hear again, Irun was saying—his voice light and conversational—“That’s the thing about sorcerers, see. If they can’t speak, they can’t work any serious spells.”

He spun her around and threw her on the bed. The back of Ileni’s head hit the stone wall. When she had blinked away the stinging tears, Irun was standing over her. She looked past him at Bazel, who stood with his back to the door. His pale blue eyes slid away from hers.

Irun followed her gaze. “See how easy it was? Just like I said. We’ve lived so long in fear of sorcerers, letting them prop up the Empire, holding us back from an all-out attack. And it’s so, so easy to make them helpless, once you’re not afraid. We can do whatever we want to her now.”

“Just kill her,” Bazel said.

Irun flexed his hand. “Are you sure? If I hurt her enough, I can control her even with the gag off. I can make her work the stones for you.”

“I don’t want to work them.” Bazel did meet Ileni’s eyes then, though he was talking to Irun. “I never want to see Karyn again.”

Irun stepped back from the bed. “You’re a pathetic excuse for an assassin,” he sneered. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep our bargain. You’ll be protected. But what happens to
her
is no longer up to you.”

“Just kill her,” Bazel said again. Ileni supposed she should be grateful. She reached for the gag, and Irun backhanded her across the face. She rolled to the side, her cry strangled in her throat.

“You lack imagination, Bazel,” Irun said. “There are so many more interesting things we could do first.” She didn’t have to turn to know exactly what his smile looked like. “Besides, I can use her to send a message to Sorin.”

She flinched. Irun laughed. “Sorin the untouchable. I bet
your
death would touch him. But you didn’t tell him about
this
meeting, did you,
Teacher
?”

She rolled onto her back and managed, defiantly, to nod.

“I don’t believe you.” He leaned over and, with a negligent motion, broke one of her fingers.

Ileni screamed through the gag, an ugly rattling sound. She shook her head frantically, blinking away the sudden flood of tears, just in time to see Irun straighten and tilt his head to the side. “Still, maybe we should make it quick. Just to be safe.”

Ileni didn’t see where the dagger came from, but suddenly it was there in his hand. She twisted and lashed out with her foot, a move Sorin had taught her. Irun avoided the kick easily, grabbed her ankle, and pulled up. She landed in a heap on the floor, with an impact that must have knocked bones out of place.

She tried to turn herself over, and Irun planted his foot on her back. “Would you like to do it?” he asked Bazel, politely mocking.

Everything hurt so much. Ileni reached under her bed with her uninjured hand, pulled out her bag, and flung it behind her. The movement twisted her shoulder and sent new agony arching down her back. The warding stones tumbled out of the bag and across the floor.

Irun jumped away, the crushing weight of his foot gone from her back.
We’ve lived so long in fear of sorcerers. . . .
But he
did
still fear sorcery, and he didn’t know what these stones would do. She grabbed the nearest one and sent it skidding . . . not toward Irun, but toward Bazel.

He leaped out of the way, and Ileni scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, kicking stones wildly as she went. She wasn’t even halfway there when Irun grabbed her by the hair, pulled her around as if she weighed nothing, and slid his blade neatly across her throat.

She jerked her head away, ripping hair out of her scalp, the knife slashing up along her jaw and cheek. Too late. The blade had cut through skin and breath and blood, ripping right through her airway.

It hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. She grabbed her throat, and blood spurted through her fingers in hot bursts of pain, searing through her mind and her sudden blind panic. Irun let go of her, and she fell to the floor, dying.

Except Irun had also cut through the gag.

The panic of death fueled her remaining power in one final, focused effort. The spell was short, a single word. She opened her mouth and screamed it, through the blood choking her, through the agony and terror of her death. The word rushed out of her slashed throat and into silence.

A new torrent of blood followed it, spilling between her fingers; but then there was air instead of blood, filling her dying lungs and forcing its way through her body. She didn’t even stop to take a deep breath. She leaped to her feet, grabbed the knife held carelessly in Irun’s hand, and plunged it into his back.

It wasn’t hard. Physically, it took all her strength, but it was still one of the easiest things she had ever done. He wasn’t on guard—he thought she was dead—and she wanted him to die with every fiber of her being, wanted it so badly that when he screamed, she shoved the blade in farther. He half-turned and fell, and the knife, still embedded in his flesh, was wrenched out of her hand.

She went after it. She was going to kill Bazel, too.

She should have known better. Like her, Irun was a danger even when he was dying. He grabbed her wrist and flung her—only halfway across the room, but now Bazel was closer to the knife than she was. Ileni snarled up at Bazel from the floor, her hair clinging to her face in tangled sticky strands. He didn’t need a knife; even he could kill her with his bare hands.

But he didn’t have to know that.

“Araskinbalum,” she shouted, lifting one hand as if to throw something at him. And she realized she wasn’t pretending. She was reaching inside herself for whatever magic was left to her, ready to spend it all on Bazel’s death. She didn’t care. She wanted him dead. She wanted him dead
now
.

Except there was nothing left.

Not weak dregs of power, not pathetic scrapings of magic.
Nothing.
An emptiness that, as soon as she realized it was there, rose from within and engulfed her completely.

Her magic was gone. And this time, it was gone for good.

She dropped her hand, too sickened to go on pretending. It didn’t matter. Bazel was gone, a flash of terrified eyes and auburn hair. The door slammed shut behind him.

I’ll kill you anyhow.
She threw the thought after him, and her fingernails scraped against the rock floor.

She got slowly to her feet. Irun lay twisted on his side, completely still. She looked at his dead body, at the knife she had used to end his life, and felt a sweet, savage joy. Even now that he was dead, she hated him. She wished she could kill him again.

She should have been horrified at herself. She wasn’t.

She went over to the corpse, moving with ease. The healing spell had also knitted her bones and skin. Blood was drying on her neck and tunic and hair, and her throat ached, but otherwise she felt fine. Better than fine; even her muscles weren’t sore, as they had been constantly since she’d started training with Sorin. She knelt by Irun’s corpse, rolled him onto his stomach, and eyed the dagger hilt protruding from between his shoulder blades. She might need it.

She closed her fingers around the hilt. She looked down at her hand, at her slim fingers covered in blood. She felt herself smile.

And all at once, she knew who had killed Cadrel.

Chapter 17

“A
bsalm!” Ileni shouted. “Show yourself!”

Her voice echoed in the large, empty training area. She stormed through it, her shoes hitting the stone floor in short, hard thuds.

“Absalm. I know you’re alive, and I know you killed Cadrel, and I know you’re here. If you don’t talk to me, I’ll—”

She strode into the smaller training room, and there he was.

Ileni stopped in the entrance. Absalm sat cross-legged in her spot—in the teacher’s spot. He turned his head slowly and nodded at her.

She recognized him at once. Not by his face, but by his age. She had spent so much time surrounded by young men and children that she had almost forgotten what old age looked like: wrinkled and spotted skin, deeply lined brow, hunched shoulders.

“Ileni,” Absalm said. He held his palm out in the traditional gesture of greeting, Elder to student.

She almost stepped forward to lay her hand in his, but stopped herself. Traditional or not, Elder or not, she was not going to greet him with respect.

He had no right to any Renegai greeting at all.

“I should have known.” She tried to sound frigid, but her voice shook. “From the moment I found out Cadrel was killed by sorcery, I should have realized who murdered him.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Absalm asked. His voice was gentle, probing, as if he was helping her correct an error.

Ileni clenched her bloodstained fingers into fists. “Because I had the wrong idea about killing. I thought it was hard. I thought it was something you had to be trained to do.”

Absalm stroked one finger across his chin, examining her thoughtfully, and Ileni’s jaw clenched. She understood, now, why Sorin had always turned away her questions about how the assassins were persuaded to kill.

He was amused, that she thought killing another human being was such a difficult thing. As if it was he, and not she, who had been trained.

“Why?”
she said. “Why did you fake your death? And why kill Cadrel? And why—”

“One question at a time.” Absalm raised a finger. “First. I faked my death because it was time for you to succeed me.”

Utter silence. She stared at him, unable to speak.

“They were supposed to send you.” He shook his head regretfully. “Not Cadrel.”

“Me? Why would you expect them to send—” Her words died as she realized the answer. “You
knew
what had happened to me? That I would lose my magic? How could you know?”

Absalm’s eyes were very gentle. “You don’t remember, of course, but I was the Elder who gave you your first Test.”

Ileni had a vague recollection of her first Test, but of the Elder who had tested her, all she remembered was a shimmering blue robe and a faceless adult. She looked up slowly at Absalm’s face, at his wrinkled skin and dark gray eyes.

“You were very powerful,” Absalm said. “You passed without half-trying. A child prodigy. But I could tell, even then, that your powers weren’t permanent.”

The attack Sorin had taught her
did
work. Ileni was across the cavern in a second, her forearm pressed against Absalm’s throat, her breath hissing between her teeth.

“You
knew
?” She pressed down, hard enough to hurt, not caring if she overdid it. “You let me grow up believing I was powerful,
knowing
that when I got old enough I would lose it all—”

A blast of wind lifted her off her feet and slammed her against the far wall. Instinctively, Ileni tried to raise a defense, but it failed completely. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“It was necessary,” Absalm said.

“
Why?”

He inclined his head. “This is not the time to explain. You must gain control of yourself.”

Ileni’s anger was a burning space inside her chest, making it hard to breathe. She wanted to hit something. To smash things, break things, turn this cave into a shambles. To destroy something other people cared about and make them feel the way she did.

But she couldn’t do any of that. All she could do was clench her fists and spit out hot, futile words. “You’re lying to me! There’s no way the Elders would have gone along with—for all these years—they
believed
in me! They weren’t pretending.”

“No. They weren’t.” Absalm’s voice, and his face, were infuriatingly calm. “But I knew that once the truth about your powers was discovered, the Elders would jump at the opportunity to send you here. That’s why I faked my death. To give them that opportunity. I don’t know why Cadrel was sent instead.”

“He volunteered,” Ileni said numbly. “His wife died. . . .” His eyes assessed her, unblinking. “And you killed him. So they would send me next.”

“Don’t blame yourself—”

“I do not,” Ileni said, “blame myself.”

“Or me,” Absalm finished, a bit hastily. His assessment had turned wary. “I didn’t want to kill him. I thought he could fake his death, as I had, create an illusion of a corpse and remain hidden. But he was . . . he wouldn’t listen. I tried to explain.”

“Explain
what
?”

Absalm shook his head.

Ileni’s fingernails bit into her palm. “What use could I possibly be to you? I have no magic. I’m
worthless
!”

“You are far from worthless, Ileni. You have skill. More skill than anyone I’ve ever seen. And you have been trained to use it to its fullest.” He got slowly to his feet. He was wearing not an Elder’s blue robe but the nondescript gray clothes of an assassin. “That’s why this deception was necessary. So you could be trained in earnest. I truly regret the pain it caused you.”

The pain it caused you.
Ileni clenched her fists.

“Who else knew?” she whispered.

“No one.”

“Not even the master of the assassins?”

“Well. Of course the master.” He sounded shocked. “Korjan and I have been . . . friends, I daresay. Since we were young. He was the one who showed me how much could be accomplished if only the Renegai and the assassins would combine our talents.”

“Since you were young . . .” She drew in her breath. “You mean, since he spent time in our village so he could murder one of us. A
Renegai
!”

Absalm tugged at his earlobe, then dropped his hands to his lap. The calm, remote expression dropped over his face again. “Who died for the greater good.”

She had heard that before. “
What
greater good? What are you planning? Tell me!”

Even to herself, she sounded hysterical, and she wasn’t surprised when Absalm shook his head. “I’m sorry that we’re having this conversation now.” He didn’t sound sorry, though. He sounded tolerant and paternal. “You weren’t meant to discover the truth this early. I wanted to wait until I was sure. . . .”

“That I was like you?” She brushed a clump of hair away from her cheek and hoped it hadn’t left blood on her face. “One of them? That was never going to happen.”

“No?” He said it very softly, and she was suddenly sure he knew about everything: the celebration, the fighting lessons, and—most of all—Sorin. Blood rushed to her cheeks.

“Come, Ileni. You must have realized by now that the assassins are not precisely the way the Elders painted them.” Absalm leaned forward, his gray eyes soft, and went on in that terrible, kindly, inexorable voice. “I think you should take some time. This has been a lot to absorb. When we talk again—”

She didn’t wait for him to finish. More than anything in the world, she wanted to be away from this room where she had taught killers, where one of her own Elders had trapped her in the master’s mysterious plans. She was through the door before she could think, footsteps pounding in her ears, running down the stairs and through the passageways and toward the only person in these caves she could even think of trusting.

Sorin was fast asleep when Ileni flung open his door, but only for a second. Then he was across the room, pressing her to the wall, holding a blade to her throat. Ileni froze, her breath coming in painful gasps.

His eyes met hers, cold and deadly, and the dagger’s edge pressed against her skin. Then his expression shifted into horror. He lowered the dagger and stepped back. “Ileni. That was not smart.”

“I know. I’m sorry. . . .” And this time, she didn’t even try to stop the tears.

But this time, he didn’t watch her sob from across the room.

“He’s not dead,” Ileni gasped against Sorin’s shoulder, his arms tight and strong around her. His lips brushed her hair. Her blood-streaked hair. “Absalm. He’s here, and he . . . he . . .” She pulled back slightly at his jerk of surprise. “Irun is, though. Dead, I mean.” She burst into louder sobs and buried her face in his tunic again.

To Sorin’s credit, he waited until she had calmed down before saying, in a very tight voice, “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

So she did, starting from Bazel’s knock on her door. The only thing she left out was the worst thing that had happened that night: the final loss of her magic. She thought about telling him that, too, but she choked on the words.

By the time she was done, they were both sitting on the bed, side by side. Sorin held both her hands in his, and squeezed occasionally. When she was done, he said, “And you have no idea what he wants of you?”

Ileni shook her head. Her face felt tight with dried tears and blood. “But it’s part of something he’s been planning since . . . since before I was born, I think.”

“He said it was time for the Renegai and assassins to combine their talents? How is that supposed to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“But the master knows.” Sorin let out a relieved breath.

Ileni jerked her hands out of his. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“If we go to him—”

“He’ll tell me the truth? Even though Absalm wouldn’t?” She scrambled off the bed. “No. The best person to give us answers is still Karyn.”

Sorin shook his head.

“We know now that she didn’t kill anyone. Or, well, she didn’t kill Absalm and Cadrel. So she has no reason to kill me. She’s here for something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But it has something to do with Absalm’s plan. He’s the one who contacted her, and it wasn’t just because he wanted chocolate. Bazel said he was asking her about magic. . . .” Ileni took a deep breath. “If she’s still here, I have to find her. And I can’t do that without your help.” She reached for his hands again. “Sorin,
please
.”

Sorin leaned closer, his face all lines and shadows by the dimmed light of the glowstones. “Why do you need my help? Can’t you use magic?”

Ileni hesitated. She should tell him the truth, finally. She had come to him because she trusted him . . . but that was before he had brought up the master. “I have nothing of hers to use in a finding spell. If she’s somewhere in these caves, we’ll have to rely on your skills to find her.”

“And what skills would those be?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you track her or something?”

“Starting where? The caverns extend so far that no one has explored them all, not even me. Karyn could be anywhere. We could spend years looking and never find her.” Sorin stood. “Couldn’t you try to detect her magic use?”

“She knows I’m here. She’ll be shielding against me.”

“And you’re not powerful enough to break her shields?”

She couldn’t find her voice. Fortunately, Sorin misread the reason for her silence, and held up both hands. “I’m sorry, Ileni. I didn’t mean—”

“Will you help me, or not?”

Sorin let out a breath and said, his face remote, “We’re thinking about this the wrong way. If Karyn is still here, she didn’t come back to hide somewhere in the distant regions of these caves. She wants something. If we go back to the river, maybe
she
’ll find
us
. Or at the very least, be close enough for us to find her.”

Ileni swallowed a
thank you
she suspected he didn’t want to hear. “You might be right.”

“Well, then.” Sorin pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

The riverbank was dark and silent when Ileni and Sorin made their way down the narrow path along the cliff. Ileni, who had used Sorin’s basin to wash the blood off her hands—and, less successfully, out of her hair—stepped off the ledge with a breath of relief and wrenched her eyes away from the large dark smear on the white rock.

Sorin partly unrolled the thick coil of rope he had retrieved from a storage room on their way and tied a loop at its end, then closed his hand around the four-pronged hook at the other end.

“The rope Bazel used is gone,” he said. “Does that mean she came back and pulled it up?”

“Not necessarily. She could have created it with magic, and it would have vanished shortly afterward.” A feat that would have drained even Ileni at the height of her power. If she was wrong about Karyn’s motivation, it would take a sorceress that powerful less than a second to kill her.

Ileni swallowed hard. She was carrying a knife, strapped to her side beneath her tunic—Sorin had insisted—but she felt completely defenseless. She resisted the urge to step closer to Sorin.

He nodded, leaned back, swung the rope in a few rapid circles, and flung it up over the cliff. The metal hook at its end thudded sharply high above them. “Do you want to go first?”

She looked at him incredulously.

“Right.” He had a way of smiling without smiling. It was her favorite of all his expressions. “There’s only one rope, so we’ll have to go one at a time.”

“Couldn’t we just go around the path?” Ileni suggested weakly.

“Straight up would be easier for a sorceress, no? If Karyn wanted to hide deeper in the caves, she would have gone straight up the cliffside. If we go that way, too, I won’t miss anything.” He tugged the rope twice and turned to her. “I’ll pull you up after me. It’s not that hard.”

“Right.”

Sorin put one foot up against the cliffside, leaning back. The rope went taut. “You should probably have your own magelight, or it will be pitch-black once I’m gone.”

Ileni shook her head. “I should conserve my magic. If I do have to fight her, I’ll need every bit of power I have.”