Death Marked

by Leah Cypess

  Fear ran through Ileni, a taut thread. Only four days ago, she had seen Karyn hold Sorin suspended over a chasm, the ugly coiling of a deathspell emanating from her chants. Karyn was an imperial sorceress. Torture came easyto her.

  “What you’ll also tell me,” Karyn said, “is who you were really talking to. Now that you’re gone, there is no fully trained sorcerer in the Assassins’ Caves. Certainly no one capable of breaching our wards.”

  Ileni wished that were true. But if there was one thing she would never tell Karyn, it was that Absalm was still alive. That was the thread that could lead the sorceress to the whole tangled conspiracy—to the real reason she had been in the caves, and the real reason she had left.

  Her chance to discover whether the Empire was as evil as she had always been taught—not to mention of surviving the next ten minutes—depended on Karyn believing she was no threat. She had to look at Ileni and see a naive, powerless ex-sorceress. Not a . . . weapon.

  The sense of betrayal, thick and dark, rose in Ileni’s throat. Absalm was an Elder of her people, someone she had trusted, and he had twisted her entire life for his own purposes.

  She swallowed her hurt and fury. She was not a weapon—not yet, anyhow. She was not here to be Absalm’s tool, but to decide for herself which side she was on.

  Right now, the Empire’s side wasn’t looking very promising.

  “I don’t know how they broke through your wards,” she said. “But I could help you find out.”

  Karyn’s eyebrows went up. “Really. You do switch sides rather easily, don’t you?”

  There was enough truth in that to make Ileni flush. “I was never one of the assassins. I was forced to go to the caves, forced to tutor them in magic. And I left.”

  “So you did. To return to your own people. Apparently you are still attached to them, despite your dalliance with killers.”

  The slight emphasis on dalliance made it clear Karyn knew what Sorin had been to her. Ileni struggled to keep from blushing and failed spectacularly. “Yes. I was going home.”

  She hadn’t planned to say home. It just slipped out.

  Karyn curled her fingers slowly into a fist, and the blue-white light shrank into her palm and disappeared. “For what purpose? From what I understand, the Renegai don’t have much use for sorcerers who have lost their powers.”

  Another truth. It doesn’t matter, Ileni told herself, as different kinds of shame roiled within her. As long as Karyn didn’t figure out the deepest truth of all.

  I may not have magic, but I have the power to kill you all. And I’m here to decide whether to use it.

  Although it wasn’t her power, not really. She was just the vessel—trained in magic even though her power had always been temporary. The only magic she could ever draw on, now, would come from others’ deaths. A caveful of assassins would, at a word, kill themselves so she could have their power. With that much power, she could destroy the Imperial Academy of Sorcery, the epicenter of the Empire’s might. With the Academy gone, the Empire would have no adequate defense against the assassins.

  She could be the one to accomplish the goal both the assassins and her own people had been working toward for centuries: wipe the Empire off the face of this earth.

  Unless she died here first, killed by that very Empire. Which she would be, if she couldn’t keep up with her lies.

  She made herself say, in a small, helpless voice, “I had nowhere else to go.”

  Karyn snorted. “And now that you’re here, you’ll just throw in your lot with us?”

  “I could help you,” Ileni said. “I lived in the caves for months. I might know things that would be useful to you.”

  Karyn tilted her head sideways, a pose that could have been mistaken for amused if not for the cold suspicion in her eyes. A tic started in Ileni’s eyelid as the silence stretched. Then the sorceress said, “All right. You can stay.”

  “I—” She managed not to say what or why, mostly by biting her lip so hard it hurt.

  “For now,” Karyn added. “But I’ll be watching you.”

  Ileni nodded.

  Karyn slowly opened her hand. The blue-white light was gone. “I’ll find a way to explain the breach—say it was a mistake during your preliminary testing. And then I’ll have you enrolled as a new student. Nobody has to know where you came from.” She flexed her fingers. “You realize that if anyone discovers you used to be an assassin, you wouldn’t survive a day here.”

  “I wasn’t an assassin.”

  “You taught them magic, didn’t you? Trained them to kill us?”

  The bite in Karyn’s voice killed Ileni’s next question. There could be only one reason Karyn was letting her stay: because she believed Ileni could help her fight the assassins. But did she really believe Ileni had turned traitor? Or did she have some other plan, a way to use Ileni against her will?

  Well. That would be nothing new.

  Karyn crossed the room and touched her finger to the mirror. “Right now, I’ll summon the nearest sorcerer. Some luckless student will be here shortly to escort you to the testing arena.”

  She closed her eyes and murmured a brief spell. A shimmer of magic, distant and tantalizing, brushed Ileni’s skin. She shivered despite herself.

  Karyn’s eyes opened just in time to catch that. She watched Ileni from beneath hooded eyelids. “I have access to as many lodestones as I want. If you had known that, I assume you wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to steal the one I had last time we met.” She pursed her lips. “Though I suppose if you had managed to hold onto it, you could have tasted power again.”

  It was such an obvious, childish taunt. It shouldn’t have worked.

  “It’s interesting, though.” Karyn was practically purring. “How do you think you’ll feel, being surrounded by sorcerers-in-training? Once you would have been the best of them, isn’t that right?”

  Ileni knew exactly how it would feel. She had left her own people for the Assassins’ Caves just so she would never have to feel like that again.

  She didn’t trust herself to control her expression. She turned away from Karyn just in time to see two young men about her age appear in the doorway.

  Literally, appear: a second ago, the space outside the door had been empty.

  “Good,” Karyn said, still sounding like a stroked cat. “This is Ileni. She’ll be—”

  One of the new arrivals looked at Ileni. She froze when she recognized him, but his face remained perfectly pleasant, as if he had no idea who she was. He bent toward his boot, a smooth feline movement, without losing his placid expression for a second.

  Ileni went for her dagger, but he was faster.

  Assassins always were.

  “Whoa,” the other boy said mildly, and Karyn snapped, “Ileni!”

  The assassin’s hand was around her wrist, tight enough to hurt, yet he exhibited no strain. His other hand was curled but empty. Too late, Ileni realized that he hadn’t been reaching for a blade. He had merely been bending to brush off his breeches, which were marked by a long smudge of chalk.

  “What are you doing?” the assassin asked, voice high-pitched and shaking. His eyes were wide, his breath fast, as if he was the one who was afraid. But his eyes glinted with amusement that only she could see.

  Ileni’s heart sank. She didn’t dare look at Karyn. She forced her fingers open and heard her dagger clatter to the floor.

  The assassin didn’t glance down, and he didn’t let go of her wrist. He was wiry and muscular, with a crop of unruly red hair, and was wearing green and black instead of the assassins’ typical gray.

  “Sorry,” Ileni said. Her voice emerged high and scratchy. “I . . . thought you were someone else.”

  She didn’t check to see if anyone believed her; she knew for certain that Karyn wouldn’t. She kept her eyes on the assassin, to find out if she was going to die for her mistake.

  A moment of silence. Two. The killer’s pale blue eyes stared into hers. Then he let go of
her wrist and stepped back, and she couldn’t help a sigh of relief that sounded long and loud in the small room.

  “I think,” he said, “you know exactly who I am.”

  Ileni’s mouth was too dry for speech, even if she had been able to think of something to say.

  “Arxis?” the other boy said.

  The assassin glanced at him sideways. “I traveled with a band of traders, for a while. One of our ventures into the mountains took us to Ileni’s village, and she and I . . . well. Apparently, she thought it was more than it was.”

  “We did not—” Ileni began hotly, and stopped. The glint in his eyes was no longer amused. She recognized that coldness.

  She could almost feel the dagger on her throat.

  “I did not think it was more than that,” she said finally. Her face burned, but she went on. “It was more than that. You told me it was.”

  “Oh, Arxis,” the other boy said. “You need to rein in that silver tongue of yours.”

  “What I need,” Arxis said, “is to stay away from naive, romantic village girls.” He swooped down, picked up her dagger, and held it out to her. “You might need this, in case you come across someone who’s actually dangerous.”

  Ileni had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep silent. She took the dagger, wishing her hand wasn’t shaking.

  “Enough,” Karyn snapped. Arxis glowered at Ileni convincingly. Ileni glared back. She didn’t have to try to be convincing, because she meant it.

  Karyn sighed. “Evin, congratulations on being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s your responsibility now.”

  Ileni glanced at the second young man. His eyes were wide, his hair a mass of brown tufts fanning out around his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it exactly as disheveled as before.

  “I do have a talent for that,” he said, as calmly as if there hadn’t been a dagger drawn just a minute ago. “Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I mean. Though yesterday I was in the wrong place at the right time, and that didn’t go much better.”

  Everyone ignored him. Ileni kept her eyes on Arxis, on his remorseless face and coiled body. She had seen, a dozen times over, how fast assassins could strike. Sorin had taught her some basic defense moves, but they had only worked because he had held back. If Arxis decided to kill her, she was dead.

  And if he knew she had killed his master, nothing would stop him from killing her.

  Finally, Arxis took another step back. Ileni’s shoulders relaxed, even though she knew he could easily kill her from all the way across the room. She forced herself to sheath her dagger.

  “Interesting,” Karyn said. It wasn’t clear who she was talking to. “Evin, why don’t you show Ileni to the testing arena. I will meet you there.”

  Ileni opened her mouth, then closed it. Karyn knew perfectly well that Ileni had no magic left. She had grown up more powerful than any of her people, but when her power had begun to ebb, she had been sent to the assassins to serve as their tutor for the rest of her life. From future leader to useless sacrifice over the course of a few months.

  If Karyn thought she had something to gain by demonstrating Ileni’s powerlessness during a “test,” she was making a mistake. Ileni was quite resistant to humiliation by now.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she said.

  “Good.” Karyn seemed sincere, which puzzled Ileni.

  “This way,” her new guide said, and waited for her to start walking before he led her out the door and into the Imperial Academy of Sorcery.

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  Having a solid wall between her and the assassin was a huge relief. Ileni tried to put Arxis out of her mind as she followed Evin through winding passageways. These corridors were narrower and prettier than the ones in the Assassins’ Caves, better-lit by glowstones that lined the walls in decorative, almost fanciful patterns. The air was filled with a faintly flowery scent that struck Ileni as unpleasantly artificial, a peculiar contrast to the hulking, solid stone that surrounded them.

  Magic.

  And that was the key. The Empire was vast and powerful, but it depended on magic for everything from transportation to communication—and, most importantly, to win its wars, quash its rebellions, and defend itself against the relentless strikes of the assassins. Without magic, there was no way it could keep control over a vast continent. If she could take that magic away—or even cripple it—that would be the beginning of the end of the Empire.

  “So,” Evin said, as they trotted down a few shallow steps, “looks like things are going to get a little more interesting around here. Where did you say you were from?”

  Ileni took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with. “I’m a Renegai.”

  Evin nodded politely. “Oh, really? From the Kerosian Grasslands?”

  There were other Renegai? Did the Elders know? “No. From the Kierran Mountains.”

  “Oh, right! The separatists in the grasslands call themselves the Singers. My apologies.” His voice was higher than she was used to hearing from men, and she realized that what she had thought was Karyn’s high-pitched voice was actually the way people spoke here.

  They reached a fork in the passageway, and Evin took the corridor on the left. He was tall and lanky, and walked with a loping, casual stride. It looked awkward to her, compared to the focused grace she was used to from the assassins. From Sorin.

  His voice, too, was nonchalant. “What happened back there, with you and Arxis?”

  He didn’t sound condescending, but he did sound faintly amused. Naive, romantic village girls, Arxis had said. Ileni bristled. “It’s not what he said. It was a misunderstanding.”

  “Do you always solve your misunderstandings with knives?”

  “I find it saves time.”

  He looked at her sideways and grinned. “I’d better be careful what I say around you, then.”

  “I would advise it.”

  Evin’s eyebrows rose. Ileni knew she sounded unfriendly, but that was all right. He was an imperial sorcerer. She had grown up hating him, even if he had grown up not knowing who her people were. “How long has he been here?”

  “Arxis? Not long,” Evin said.

  “What does he—” she began, but then they turned a corner and, all at once, weren’t underground anymore.

  They never had been.

  They were standing on a ledge on the side of a mountain. Below the ledge—very, very far below—a mass of tiny treetops swept downhill in a cascade of blurry green. Above, the sky unfurled, brilliantly blue. The rocks stretched up behind her, steep and craggy, with a hardy bush clinging to a crack in the cliff face above her.

  “What is this?” she breathed.

  “The way to the testing arena, of course.” Evin was already walking along the ledge—which, Ileni realized, was actually a path that hugged the side of the mountain. His heels practically touched the edge of the ledge, but he seemed not to notice the precipitous drop. “The Academy spans a couple of mountain peaks. You can see why it’s the ideal location for magic-users.”

  Ileni didn’t see that at all. But she nodded. “Right. Of course.”

  Evin continued down the path, clearly expecting her to follow. Ileni wanted nothing more than to shrink back into the darkness of the cave, far from the vast space below. She couldn’t make her feet move forward.

  We know how to overcome fear, Sorin had told her once. She could imagine his scorn. He might have been afraid, if he was here, but he would never let fear stop him.

  She set her jaw and took one step out, then another. The ledge was solid white stone, but terribly narrow. She put one hand flat on the pitted rock of the mountainside and inched forward. She kept her eyes focused straight ahead and did not—did not—look down.

  Evin glanced back. His surprise was a prickle of heat against her skin, but she couldn’t fo
rce herself to move faster. Once, she would have been as fearless as he was, but now she didn’t have the safeguard of magic. One misstep and she would fall, shattered to pieces far below.

  Her life was full of fears like that now, reminders of small safeties she no longer had.

  By the time she caught up to Evin, her entire body was shaking, little tremors that made her legs weak and her hands unsteady. Evin waited for her at an archway that led back inside the mountain. The opening, where light shaded into darkness, was such a welcome sight that Ileni stopped caring how pathetic she looked. She lunged past Evin into the dimness, pressed her back against the rock, and took several deep breaths.

  “Fear of heights?” Evin said sympathetically. His face was open and earnest, his mouth twisted slightly, but with empathy rather than mockery—another difference from the caves. “I’ve seen it before. It will pass.”

  Ileni wanted to say something nonchalant, but she couldn’t stop trembling. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something calming. It had been a long time since anything in her life could be described as calming, but she reached all the way back, to before Karyn had grabbed her, before she had been sent to the Assassins’ Caves, before the Elders had told her she was losing her magic. She remembered sitting with Tellis in one of the Renegai practice rooms, back to back, focusing on the rhythms of a relaxation spell.

  She had let her discipline go in the caves, hadn’t bothered with the mental exercises designed to hone magic she no longer had. Now they came slowly and jerkily, and she forced them gracelessly through her mind. Eventually the rhythms came back to her, halting but effective, and her breath fell into the pattern. No magic accompanied the rhythm, of course, a lack that scraped sharply and painfully against her concentration. But slowly, steadily, her muscles relaxed.

  She wasn’t sure how long it took. When she opened her eyes, her hands were steady, and Evin was leaning on the opposite wall watching her. There was no hint of impatience in his stance, which probably meant he was very good at hiding it.