The hallway was starkly clean, lined with wooden doors, and absolutely silent. Sound-dampening spells were woven into the thick wooden doors, shutting out the groans and cries from downstairs.
“Do you know who keeps the recent records?” Evin asked Bazel. “We’re trying to find the child of a woman who died here recently.”
Bazel opened his mouth to reply, and one of the doors creaked open. A tall man with gold-streaked white hair strolled down the corridor toward them. “Who are these people?” he demanded.
“They’re from the Academy,” Bazel said. “I’m helping them.”
The man nodded and walked past. He opened another door, and through it came, for a moment, the sound of a woman screaming. Then he shut the door behind him, and the hall was silent again.
Ileni drew in a series of shallow breaths, hoping that would be less obvious than a single deep one. So Bazel had infiltrated Death’s Door, was known and trusted by the people here. No surprise. That was what assassins did.
But had he done it just so he could show her this place, open her eyes to the source of imperial magic? Or did he have a target, too?
You thought I would never leave the caves. She could still hear the pride in his voice. Oh, yes. The only mission an assassin would be proud of was one designed to end in death.
But whose?
Evin touched her lightly on the shoulder, reminding her that she, too, was an infiltrator. Known and trusted by the people she was meant to kill. “Maybe you should rest,” he said. “That many translocations can leave you dizzy for a while.”
Bazel’s gaze snapped to the point of contact between Evin’s finger and Ileni’s tunic. His mouth curved in a small, smug smile.
A mistake no other assassin would have made. Ileni recognized the anticipation in that smile.
And she knew who Bazel was here to kill.
She moved without hesitating, pulling in magic, gasping out the words of the most powerful shield she knew. She moved faster than thought, because she didn’t need to think.
She knew when she was prey.
Bazel’s dagger streaked toward her, and she got the shield up barely in time. The dagger stuck in thin air, its point inches from her eye.
Arxis screamed, very convincingly. Bazel flung out a spell, wild and chaotic and immensely powerful. Ileni’s shield shattered with a force that drove her against the wall, and Bazel was across the hall in seconds. He slammed into her, pressing her to the wall, and his dagger whispered cold and sharp on the side of her neck.
“I’m so glad I get to do this,” he hissed in her ear, and sliced the blade across the front of her throat.
It shattered into a hundred pieces.
Bazel dropped the broken dagger hilt and wrapped his hands around her throat, ribbons of blood crisscrossing his face. Ileni’s throat had been stone a second ago, but a wild spell from Bazel turned it back to flesh. Ileni had forgotten how much power he had.
And someone had been teaching him how to use it.
But someone had taught her, too. She threw her weight backward, slid two fingers under his thumbs, and brought her knee up into his groin.
It was the first fighting move Sorin had ever taught her, and it worked. Bazel had expected magic, and was not defending against physical attack. His grip loosened, he staggered back, and Ileni could draw in enough breath for a spell.
Before she had even taken that breath, a thrust of power from Evin threw Bazel away from her. The assassin crashed against the far wall of the hallway and hung there, pinned.
Bazel lashed out with magic, which Evin brushed away. He strode forward and, with a viciousness Ileni had never seen in him, slammed his fist into Bazel’s cheek. Bazel’s head jerked to the side, cracking against the wall.
The hall was quiet and empty. All anyone would have heard, through those heavy doors, was a faint thud.
“Assassin,” Evin snarled. It wasn’t a question. “What do you have against Ileni?”
Bazel spat out blood. “What we have against her is that she is useless. Our master has no use for broken tools.”
Our master. It took Ileni a moment to realize: that was Sorin, now.
It was worse than watching the dagger come at her. Her breath froze in her throat, an ice-cold shard that sliced and burned. Then she saw the gloating malice in Bazel’s eyes, and she straightened.
She didn’t believe it. Sorin might have sent Bazel to influence her—but not to kill her. Not even if it seemed that she was going to make the wrong decision.
No. The person who had ordered Bazel to kill her if she was “broken” was the same person who had taught him those spells.
Absalm. The Renegai Elder who had molded her life and destroyed her hopes. She hadn’t turned out the way he had planned, so he was eliminating her.
“What is he talking about?” Evin said.
“I have no idea,” Ileni said without thinking. Then she did think—about Evin discovering that she had lived with the assassins, about Karyn discovering that she was here to kill for them—and panic spurted through her. She couldn’t let Bazel be questioned.
But she couldn’t let him go, either. He was an assassin on a mission. Nothing would stop him from coming after her if he was free.
And alive.
She knew what she had to do. She knew she could do it. She had wanted to do it, once, in a small stone room, with a dagger in her hand and blood in her hair. She would have killed Bazel then, if he hadn’t run, and she would have done it gladly. She lifted her hand, and Bazel’s eyes focused on her, recognizing her as a threat.
So many spells she could use to kill. She remembered, briefly, that she shouldn’t be using magic anymore. The thought vanished swiftly, drowned by the pounding of her heart. She chose a simple spell Cyn had taught her and spread her fingers wide.
And hesitated.
It was different now, with this vast quietness all around them, with Evin’s eyes on her. It was different when she was making the sorts of cold calculations that Karyn, and the master—and Sorin, now—must make all the time.
She had thought, in the Assassins’ Caves, that she had learned to kill. That she understood killers. But she hadn’t, not really. She had only learned to kill in moments when the choice—kill or be killed—was stark and clear.
Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed, coiled the magic within her, and began to chant.
“Ileni?” Evin said sharply. He recognized the spell.
She released the magic with a hiss, and a band of blue light shot from her fingertips. At the last moment she altered its direction, so that instead of coiling around Bazel’s throat, the glowing blue light wrapped around his body. It pinned his arms to his sides and squeezed.
In her mind, Sorin sighed and shook his head.
I know what I’m doing, she thought fiercely. Out loud, she said, “We have to bring him to Karyn. She’ll get answers from him.”
Bazel sucked in air through his teeth. But the pride in his eyes was almost frenzied when he said, “You think so? Assassins are trained to withstand torture.”
She tightened the band, enough to hurt. “So they are. But somehow, I suspect you’re not the best of assassins.”
She flicked a glance at Arxis and saw his eyes narrow. The other assassins had never respected or trusted Bazel.
A flare of magic from Bazel sliced the blue band in two. It reconnected almost instantly, but even the least of the assassins was fast enough to take advantage of that almost. Bazel flung out his hand.
The blue band snapped it back to his side, ruining his aim, and his dagger hit the wall to the left of Ileni’s head.
At the same moment, Arxis lunged sideways and slid a dagger across Bazel’s throat.
It was swift and clean, as Ileni had known it would be. Blood spurted out in vast quantities, drenching Bazel’s tunic. His head dropped forward into the blood, lolling again his chest.
Ileni met Arxis’s eyes briefly, then let the blue bands go. Bazel’s body sl
id to the ground and slumped against the wall. His chin and mouth were stained a shockingly bright red.
“He had another dagger,” Arxis said curtly. He should have tried to sound as if it bothered him more, Ileni thought. “And he was calling up magic. He was about to kill her. I had do it.”
And that was true. Not the details, but the basics. Bazel would have killed Ileni eventually, if he had lived.
But maybe not before he spilled some of the assassins’ secrets to Karyn. Which was why Arxis had done it.
Exactly as Ileni had known he would.
Weak, Sorin whispered in her mind. What difference did it make whether she killed Bazel with her own hands or arranged it so Arxis would? Did that make her better, that recoil, that cowardice? Did it matter that she was ashamed to kill, and Arxis wasn’t? This death belonged to both of them.
Evin stood silent. Bazel’s dead eyes were wide open above the red mask that covered the bottom of his face. Arxis’s dagger—not a spiral-hilt assassin’s dagger, just a standard knife—was stained the same dark red.
“Karyn will hear about this,” Evin said finally. His voice was carefully calm. “She’ll be notified as soon as the body is found. We have to get Ileni out of here before she shows up.”
“But—” Ileni said, then stopped, not sure what she was objecting to.
Evin was already striding toward the front door. “We won’t get any answers here, anyhow. Not once they discover that Death’s Door was infiltrated by an assassin. It will be chaos. We need to be far away when that happens.”
Arxis’s eyes glittered. He wasn’t bothering to hide his expressions from Ileni anymore. It would be chaos, yes, and terror. A reminder that no place was safe from the assassins.
Bazel’s body lay still in a way that was nothing like sleep, his face blank and empty. Memories flashed through Ileni: Bazel in her training room, one of twenty assassins, his round face fearful beneath his auburn hair. Bazel leaning back on white rock, grinning and raising a mug, the black river sliding past him.
She shook off those memories, replaced them with another: the dagger point thudding to a stop inches from her eyes. She forced herself to stop staring at the corpse, and only then realized that Evin was watching her.
She couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, he suspected what she had done. She said, “What now?”
“First,” Evin said, “let’s get out of here.”
“And go where?” Arxis inquired.
Evin slammed the heavy doors open with a surge of power, and they all followed him toward the sunlight. “I have an idea.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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“All right,” Evin said, when they were several streets and stairways away from Death’s Door. Here, the streets were wide and empty, lined with large elegant buildings decorated in marble. “Here’s my plan. Ileni, how old is the baby?”
“I’m not sure,” Ileni said. She was slightly surprised at how easily Evin seemed able to put Bazel’s death behind him—but then, Bazel was an assassin, one of the enemy. And Evin was a soldier, even if he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. He had seen people die before. He had killed many of them himself.
She focused. “Her mother died of childbed fever. So I suppose . . . two weeks at most.”
“Well, that’s something to start with. An abandoned baby would probably be taken to the Sisters of the Black God to see if anyone claimed her.” Evin leaned against the side of a pale yellow building and announced, in the tone of one presenting a masterpiece, “We can ask Girad to find her for us.”
Nobody said anything. Somewhere not far off, a horse neighed shrilly.
“That’s your plan?” Ileni said finally. “Ask a five-year-old for help?”
“Girad is six.”
“Oh. Well, that’s entirely different.”
“I have a suggestion,” Arxis cut in. “Why don’t we just choose any random baby in the orphanage and help her? They’re all equally in need of it.”
“Because,” Ileni said, through gritted teeth, “that’s not what I promised.”
Arxis shrugged. “The mother is dead. She won’t know. And instead of spending your time searching for one particular baby who is exactly like all the others, you could save any of them. You could even choose the one who needs saving the most.”
“No,” Ileni said.
Arxis’s lip curled. “Then you don’t really care what happens to any of them. All you care about is that it not be your fault.”
Ileni clenched her fists, but could think of nothing to say. The sickening swirl deep within her stomach was familiar. This was exactly what arguing with Sorin felt like.
“I’m a Renegai,” she said finally. “That means I keep my promises.”
It sounded weak to her, but the expression on Evin’s face was pure admiration. It sent a shiver of gratification through her, which she ignored.
Arxis’s reaction was the opposite. Not even contempt: amusement. “How noble of you. Racing around after a baby, ignoring your true goals—whatever they are.” Ileni flinched. “Do you know how many babies die, or are abandoned, in this city? Hundreds. And throughout the Empire, tens of thousands. Do you think you can save them all?”
Ileni opened her mouth, then closed it. The familiar sense of helplessness swamped her.
Evin snorted softly. “We’re not trying to save them all,” he said. “We’re trying to save this one.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in brown tufts. “Let’s go find Girad.”
“So we’re committed to the rely-on-a-six-year-old plan,” Arxis said. “Excellent.”
“Girad is more observant than most adults I’ve met. Once he—”
“Don’t,” Arxis interrupted him. “I’m not sure what I want to hear less: stories about how remarkable Girad is, or drivel about how superior the Renegai are.”
“We’ll try to split it evenly, then,” Evin said.
Ileni spun on her heel. “Come on. Let’s go talk to this six-year-old genius.”
In the Renegai training compound, students had been strictly divided by age. As a result, Ileni had never spent much time around six-year-olds; and while she had a vague memory of being six years old, she didn’t recall it being quite so . . . loud.
The orphanage of the Black Sisters was a rectangular building with an interior courtyard, which several dozen children were using as a play area. It was like being inside a storm of shrieks and wails. Evin, immediately upon their arrival, waded into the mass of children. Arxis and Ileni stood with their backs to the building wall, and the slightly wild-eyed expression on Arxis’s face made Ileni feel an odd kinship with him. There had been children in the Assassins’ Caves, too, but they had been silent and focused and disciplined.
“I don’t know what you hope to gain from this ridiculous excursion,” Arxis said. “If you were smart, you would return to your people while you still have your life.”
The tingle of empathy vanished. “Since when do assassins care about life? You don’t even care about your own. I find it hard to believe you care about mine.”
“Of course I don’t,” Arxis said.
“So what you really want is for me to leave.” Behind her, three children crashed into each other, and all three began screeching at once. “Am I interfering with your mission? How, I wonder, am I doing that?”
“Not interfering.” Arxis raised his voice slightly to be heard over the wails. “Inconveniencing.”
“Why did you help rescue me, then? Why not leave me to die?”
Arxis snorted. “I would have been more than happy to. But the master sent you. Besides, Evin would never have spoken to me again.”
“And why is that important to you?”
A ball whizzed at them from somewhere within the crowd. Ileni ducked instinctively, but Arxis caught it and threw it back with a
twist of his wrist. “Are you under the impression that if you keep asking the same question over and over, you generate some sort of force that requires me to answer it?”
Ileni’s breath hissed through her teeth. “Don’t you understand that things have changed? That your mission has to change, too? That map in Karyn’s room . . . it was of the caves. She’s planning an assault.”
“No,” Arxis said, utterly calm. “If she was planning an assault, there would have been markings on the map. She’s planning something else.”
Evin emerged from the sea of children, towing Girad by one arm. Girad did not appear happy to be called into service. As Evin approached, he twisted and raced back into the melee. Evin lunged after him.
“I was about to win!” Girad howled. His thin arms and legs flailed. “You’re ruining everything!”
“Sorry,” Evin said insincerely, and deposited him on the ground in front of Ileni, both hands firmly on the boy’s shoulders. “This is more important than your game. We need your help to find somebody.”
Girad glared at Ileni as if it was all her fault—which, to be fair, it was.
“Um,” Ileni said. “We’re very grateful. You’re helping us do something very important. Someone’s whole life might be changed.”
Girad looked at her dubiously, and Ileni flushed. “We’ll, uh, we’ll also give you candy if you help us.”
Girad glared up at his brother. “You had better not be in love with her.”
Evin kicked him, not very subtly, in the calf. Girad kicked back. Arxis sighed and said, “Just ask the question, Ileni.”
Ileni’s flush had now knitted itself permanently to her cheeks. “We’re looking for a baby,” she said. “Newborn, probably brought here two weeks ago. Can you help us find her?”
“Sure,” Girad said, rolling his eyes. “I could have done it after the game, too. Follow me.”
Evin reached down and tousled Girad’s mop of brown hair. Girad ducked away, scrunching up his nose, and a pang went through Ileni.
Once, she would have done the same—been confident enough of affection to avoid it. She found herself fixated on Evin’s hand as it slid off Girad’s head and came to rest on the boy’s shoulder.