Death Marked

  “They’re fine as they are,” Ileni said finally. And it was true; in exile, her people could stay true to their ideals, far from the messy complexities of the world they had left. As she had been when she lived in the Renegai compound, surrounded by people who thought exactly like her, knowing she was on the right side of . . . of everything, really. Sometimes, she had guiltily suspected their cause might be hopeless. But she had never doubted it was just.

  She missed being that person. She missed living a life where everything was simple and clear. Even if that simplicity had been a lie—and she wasn’t entirely convinced it had been—it was a lie she missed living in.

  Ileni had grown up wanting the exile to end, for the Empire to be defeated. And wishing for it had been far, far better than getting the chance to do it.

  “Leave them alone,” she said again. “They have nothing to do with any of this.”

  Karyn’s shoulder lifted, an insouciant shrug that reminded Ileni of Evin. “So you’re willing to betray the new master of the assassins, but not the people who abandoned you and sent you to your death? Interesting.”

  Ileni shoved the blanket to the wall and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  “How,” she said, “did you know there was a new master of the assassins?”

  Karyn froze for a fraction of a second. Then she straightened in the chair, resting both hands carefully on the armrests. “I know you’re trying to be careful, but you’re an amateur. You’ve betrayed more than you thought.”

  “No,” Ileni said firmly. Of this she was sure: she remembered every single word she had said to Karyn about Sorin. “No, I didn’t. So how did you know?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Karyn said, “when you’re on our side.”

  She was so smug, so sure, that Ileni’s mouth opened to protest. Silence felt like acquiescence, like the first step toward defeat. If she didn’t deny it out loud, Karyn’s certainty would seep into her mind and settle there. Ileni’s eventual betrayal would start seeming inevitable, even to her.

  But it was only Karyn’s certainty—her arrogant, superior assumptions—that were allowing Ileni to remain. So Ileni kept her mouth shut, biting the insides of her lips, until Karyn said, “Now. I have some more questions about the wards. . . .”

  Are you willing to betray the new master of assassins? Sorin asked.

  He stood behind her, one hand sliding along her waist, the other resting on her wrist. She held a throwing dagger in her hand.

  I love you, Ileni whispered. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he was about to kiss her, or because he was about to wrest the dagger from her and lay it against her throat.

  I love you, too. His fingers slid along her wrist, and then the dagger was in his hand, so fast she didn’t have a chance to tighten her grip. He whirled her around to face him, and as his mouth came down on hers, she heard the thunk of the dagger hitting the cloth target behind her.

  When he pushed her away, she clung to him blindly. It didn’t matter, of course, not against his strength. He held her in front ofhim, eyes black and blazing.

  Betray me, he whispered, before pulling her in and kissing her again, or don’t. But make a decision before it’s too late.

  Ileni woke with her heart pounding, her stomach clenched tight. She doubled over in her bed, not sure whether she was going to cry or puke or both.

  She waited for several minutes before she realized that she was going to do neither. Instead, she threw her blanket against the wall and pulled the wardrobe doors open with a surge of angry power. They flew apart with a clash, and she yanked out the first dress she saw. It snagged on the edge of a door and ripped, a jagged line across the seam of its neckline.

  Calm down. She managed to get the next dress across the room intact but didn’t bother with changing its size. It shifted loosely across her shoulders as she hurried out of her room.

  The halls were unusually busy—she had overslept—but Ileni had to ask four students before she found one who knew Arxis. The student, a plump girl with mint-green hair, nodded. “Arxis? He’s in the beginner’s class.”

  “Right. Can you take me there?”

  The girl gave her one of those looks Ileni was becoming used to. She had asked something stupid, missed something obvious. Revealed yet again how vastly ignorant she was.

  “All right,” the girl said finally. “This way.”

  She led Ileni through a curving corridor to the top of a spiral staircase, then gestured curtly at the stairs and walked away.

  The stairs wound their way down a narrow column inside the mountain and ended in a large cavern, walls studded with a mix of glowstones and lodestones. Ileni drew in some of the lodestones’ power before she realized what she was doing.

  A dozen students stood in the center of the cavern, in a circle around a tall man demonstrating a spell. Arxis looked exactly like the other students, right down to his rigid posture and the attentive angle of his jaw.

  Ileni settled on the base of the bottom step, jiggling her foot against the stone floor. The instructor was running through a fairly simple sound-enhancing spell, one every Renegai sorcerer perfected by the age of five. Ileni had figured it out at the age of two and a half. It had been the earliest sign of her great potential.

  When it was the students’ turn to attempt the spell, half of them fumbled it, and one managed to make herself deaf—Ileni felt that spell going wrong and winced, but remained where she was, hidden in the dimness of the stairwell. Arxis was one of the students who failed, but as the spell fizzled out around him, he looked over his shoulder directly at Ileni.

  She should have realized he would know she was there. Giving in to her escalating impatience, Ileni got to her feet and walked into the cavern.

  The instructor held up a hand to silence the others. He had a gaunt, dark face, with white markings coiling up his right cheek.

  “I need to speak to Arxis,” Ileni said.

  She had no idea how he would react—among the Renegai, interrupting a lesson would have earned her at least an evening of kitchen duty, and in the caves it might have gotten her killed. But the instructor just nodded. “Take it outside.”

  They walked in silence until almost the top of the spiral staircase, where Arxis stopped. The threat in his stance made Ileni pull her new power in tighter, readying it for a spell.

  Arxis’s voice was flat. “Coming here wasn’t particularly discreet. You’re an advanced student. You’re supposed to ignore me.”

  “Like Evin does?” Like Lis does? she almost added, but didn’t quite dare.

  “Everyone knows Evin doesn’t care about his status. That doesn’t mean I can rub shoulders with all of you. I am trying not to stand out, you know.”

  “Your secrets are not my concern,” Ileni retorted, keeping her voice low. Even with the sound-enhancing spells, the students in the cavern below shouldn’t be able to hear them, but there was no point in taking chances. Well. Unnecessary chances. “I need you to take me to the source of the lodestones. Now.”

  Arxis stepped up one stair. “I thought we discussed this. You have four days left.”

  She had to crane her neck to look up at him, which she didn’t like; but he was standing in the middle of the stair, so she couldn’t step up without pushing him out of the way. Or trying to push him out of the way.

  “Take me,” she said, “or I’ll expose you.”

  “Will you, indeed?”

  “Yes.”

  Arxis leaned against the wall. “And yet I could keep you from exposing me—or annoying me—in just a second, couldn’t I? I could make it look like a fall. Or an accident. I could be far away by the time they found you. Do you believe me?”

  She did. Ileni stepped up next to him on the stairs. “Then why are you talking about it, instead of doing it?”

  Back when she had entered the Assassins’ Caves, she had managed to say things like that without the slightest tremor. But somewhere in the interim, she had s
tarted to care again whether she lived.

  That was going to be very inconvenient.

  Arxis’s lip curled. “I’m still making up my mind.”

  His eyes were cold and ruthless and familiar. She had been surrounded by eyes like that not so long ago. A primal fear rose in her: Irun’s hand pressing her face against the blanket. The gag in her mouth. The blade against her throat. She reached for the magic within herself, pulling it all recklessly into a ward, but it wouldn’t be enough. The assassins knew how to kill sorcerers now.

  Her voice still emerged cool. Later, she would be impressed with herself. “The master will be quite unhappy with you if you do.”

  Because she was used to assassins, she saw the tiny tic in his cheek. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not? I am also part of the master’s plan. You’re an assassin on a mission—nothing unusual about you. I am far more important than that.”

  Arxis grabbed her arm, so fast she didn’t have time to block him with a spell. His breath was hot and sour on her face. “Why would the master send you without telling you anything about the assets we already have here?”

  His fingers squeezed painfully against the bones of her wrist. She lifted her chin. “Who knows why the master does anything?”

  He laughed, short and harsh, and released her. Ileni pitched backward—she had been pulling back without realizing it—and slammed her arm against the stone wall to steady herself.

  “True enough,” Arxis said. “Maybe he was testing you. And maybe you failed.”

  Maybe I killed him. “All interesting possibilities. Here’s another: maybe you’re the one failing, right now. A plan you won’t change is a plan that will get you killed.”

  It was one of the master’s sayings—one she had heard from Sorin—and she heard her voice drop into the rhythmic, reverent tone he always used when quoting the master. Arxis heard it too. He regarded her intently.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll arrange to go into the city with Evin. Get yourself invited along. After that, you stop interfering with me. Because if you prevent me from fulfilling my mission, I truly will kill you.”

  He strode down the stairs, brushing hard against her—deliberately, she was sure; in all her time in the caves, she had never seen an assassin make a clumsy move. She couldn’t help shrinking away, even though she knew it was what he wanted. He could kill her as easily as he breathed.

  But he probably wouldn’t. Not as long as he thought they were on the same side.

  Which, she reminded herself, they very well might be.

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  The next morning at breakfast, Ileni tried to figure out a way to get Evin to invite her to the city. This endeavor was complicated by two factors: one, that Evin wasn’t saying anything about going to the city, and two, that he wasn’t saying anything to her. His remarks, which were solely about the food, were directed at Lis. Lis was in one of her rare good moods, which seemed to often follow close on the heels of her truly horrible ones (or upon Arxis’s visits to her room? Ileni tried not to think about that). Evin was teasing her because she was already on her third bowl of spiced lentils.

  “Don’t look so intense,” Cyn said, and Ileni blinked at her. “I’m going to be your only sparring partner today, and I find it intimidating.”

  Ileni tried not to appear pleased. It had been a long time since anyone had been intimidated by her. And here was her opportunity, practically dropped into her lap. Thank you, she thought at Cyn, before saying, as casually as she could, “Why will I be your only partner?”

  “And now you’re overwhelming me with your enthusiasm.” Cyn propped one leg up on the bench. “Lis is . . . busy. And Evin’s going into the city with Arxis.”

  Ileni looked at Evin—calm, mild interest, she coached herself—who shrugged. “Arxis has business in the Merchants’ Triangle. He needs someone to show him around.”

  “Can I come with you?” Ileni said.

  Everyone stopped in mid-motion and stared at her.

  “I’ve never seen a city,” Ileni added, and watched Cyn’s suspicion fade into superiority. “I was thinking I’d like to.”

  “Sure.” Evin shrugged and took another bite of fruit. “Cyn, you get the fun task of explaining to Karyn why we’re not at practice.”

  “Don’t expect me to try too hard,” Cyn said. She pushed her bowl away. “By which I mean, at all.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Karyn before you go?” Lis said. There was something smug and knowing in her expression; even when she was in a good mood, Lis always managed to be irritating. “I’m sure she’ll permit it. And then you get the job of keeping Ileni and Arxis from killing each other on the way down.”

  “I am,” Evin said, “almost sure I am up to the task.”

  Ileni fought to keep her face calm. Everyone was still convinced that she and Arxis had been in a torrid, dramatic relationship. Ileni wondered if Lis thought so, too, if she saw Ileni as some sort of rival for Arxis’s affections.

  It would have been funny, if its conclusion hadn’t been so inevitably tragic. Eventually, everyone would know Arxis’s true, terrible purpose here. And then they would realize that Ileni had known it all along and kept it hidden.

  Lis laughed, softly, as if she was the only in the room who understood the joke. “If Karyn is letting you go, Evin, she’ll let anyone go.”

  “I didn’t say she let me go, precisely.” Evin swung his legs over the bench. “But I bet she will. She’s probably in the Mirror Chamber now.”

  “Wait—” Ileni began. But Evin was already halfway to the door, and she wasn’t sure what she had been going to say anyhow.

  Arxis was waiting for them outside, standing close to the outer edge of the path, with the same careless lack of concern the advanced sorcerers showed—even though he, surely, didn’t have enough skill to fly. But a trained assassin would never fall. He glanced at Ileni with cool disinterest.

  “Slight detour,” Evin said. “Ileni wants to come, so we have to check with Karyn.”

  Arxis blinked. “I thought the idea was to avoid Karyn.”

  A faint pink touched Evin’s cheekbones. Ileni hadn’t realized he was changing his plan so she could come, and judging by the irritated look he shot Arxis, he would have preferred that she didn’t know. “Ileni’s a bit new to be breaking rules the way I do. But I’m sure Karyn will say yes.”

  “Are you?” Arxis stared hard at Ileni, then stretched his arms over his head, a sinuous, almost feline movement. “Let’s go, then.”

  The two young men strode along the ledge. Ileni followed at her own cautious pace. When she finally caught up to them, they were waiting for her at a stone door in the interior of the mountain—Arxis with exaggerated patience, and Evin, as usual, looking like he had nothing better to do.

  Ileni felt the by-now familiar shrinking in her stomach. Once she had been in the lead, not the one holding everyone back.

  “Ready?” Arxis drawled, and pushed the door open.

  The cavern inside was a perfect octagon, each side covered by a large mirror—but the mirrors didn’t reflect Karyn, who was turning in a slow circle in the center of the room. In one, a bald woman wearing blue robes sat with her hands folded in front of her. In another, a city was in flames, red fire and black smoke bursting within the glass. In a third, a mob rampaged through a marble building, mouths open in screams that couldn’t be heard through the glass. In the other mirrors, a pair of riders raced across a desert on black horses, a family of giant serpents curled around each other on a large gray rock, and a ship sailed peacefully on a surface of vast blue water flecked with white.

  Karyn glared at them over her shoulder, and Evin and Ileni stopped in mid-step, simultaneously and automatically. Arxis took one step forward and stopped a fraction before he entered the room, with precise
, almost unnatural control. The move would have given his identity away to anyone who had spent time among assassins. Ileni glanced quickly at Karyn, but the sorceress didn’t seem to have noticed.

  Karyn turned her back on them, focusing on the blue-robed woman. “Send the fifth section of fourth-levels to Siandar,” she said crisply. “The serpents will have to wait, for now, and I will send Cyn to Askarli to quell the riot.”

  The woman in the blue robe nodded. “Will you send someone to court?”

  Karyn swiveled and focused on one of the mirrors near the door. “No. I can’t spare anyone. Once a new high sorcerer is appointed, I’ll send a delegation.”

  The blue-robed woman nodded, bowed her head, and disappeared. Her image was replaced by the view of a snow-speckled forest.

  Evin stepped calmly into the room, and Ileni followed. From inside, she could see the mirrors nearest the door. One showed what must have been a battlefield, round tents stretched across a grassy plain. The other revealed a vast throne room, where hundreds of men and women in elaborately layered robes milled about in front of a throne. On the throne sat a tall, black-haired man, wearing a crown and a bored expression.

  The emperor. He had been a figure in songs for so long it was difficult, even staring right at him, to think of him as a real person. He was more imposing than she would have thought. Since long before the exile, the emperor had been merely a figurehead, dependent upon the Academy and its sorcerers for his pretense of power.

  Evin cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Ileni requests permission to go to the city with us.”

  Everyone seemed to want to stare menacingly at Ileni today. She met Karyn’s glare with the same unmoved calm she had used on Arxis. Finally the sorceress shrugged one shoulder and said, “You have my permission.”

  Too easy, that familiar voice warned. Ileni nodded. “Thank you.”

  But Karyn had already dismissed her and was focused on Evin. Ileni wasn’t sure whether she was trying to intimidate him, too, or whether that was just leftover menace. “And you?”