by Leah Cypess
“Thank you for waiting,” Ileni said. “I’m ready to continue now.”
“Of course,” Evin replied, his voice as neutral as hers. His brown eyes were calm and steady, shaded by long dark lashes. “It wouldn’t be fair to test you when you were shaken up. The testing arena is this way.”
He led her deeper into the passageway and through a doorway to the left. Keeping her newfound calm wrapped tightly around herself, Ileni followed.
When she entered the testing arena, recognition ran through her with a chill sense of inevitability. It was smaller than the training room in the Assassins’ Caves, and the weapons lined up near one wall were fewer in number and far less exotic in type. But otherwise it was the same: round, cavernous, and sparse, lit by glowstones that covered the walls and the high arched ceiling. There were no stalactites here, though. The ceiling was a smooth, polished curve stretching from wall to wall.
“All right,” Evin said, and she forced her feet to move. In the center of the chamber was a simple raised rock, the perfect height for sitting. Evin stopped next to it and faced her.
Whatever expression was on her face, it made his brow furrow. But all he said was, “Do you want to get in some practice before Karyn gets here? We can start with something simple, like . . . can you call up fire?”
Ileni had called fire dozens of times a day, once. Nothing would explain a sudden fit of crying, so she pushed down the stab of loss and said, almost steadily, “That’s all right. I’ll wait for Karyn.”
“Are you sure? It’s not as if I have anything important to do right now.”
“Then go do something unimportant,” she snapped.
“Well. I do have a lot of that to do,” he said. “All right, then. Good luck.”
“I won’t need it.” Which was untrue as well as obnoxious. Calm down, Ileni.
Evin looked over his shoulder. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Ileni whirled. Karyn was leaning against the far wall of the cavern, watching them, the light of the glowstones turning the edges of her hair silver.
Ileni whirled again, just in time to see Evin saunter out the door.
“This should be interesting,” Karyn said. “Are you ready to begin?”
Are you ready to begin? the Elder said. His voice was kind, and that was the worst part. In Ileni’s other testings—the ones where she had been expected to excel, where failure merely meant she had to push herself harder—the Elders had never been kind. They had been harsh and pitiless.
They had not been kind until they started expecting her to fail.
Karyn stood with her feet braced far apart, fingers lightly curled. There was nothing kind in her face. Clearly, the sorceress was looking forward to this.
I could refuse. But then what? Ileni was here on Karyn’s sufferance. And she had to stay here, to discover the truth about the Empire. She needed that truth before she could make her choice.
Before she decided whether or not to help destroy it.
She had grown up believing that destroying the Empire was her life’s goal, the hope of every Renegai. But too many of her childhood beliefs had been shattered in the Assassins’ Caves. She needed to see for herself. And if she wanted the chance to do that, she had to go along with Karyn’s cruel little game.
Ileni bit her lip. She walked to the raised rock and sat on it.
The rock, it was immediately obvious, was not intended for sitting. It was curved upward and extraordinarily uncomfortable. But Karyn was watching, so Ileni remained seated, trying to appear at ease.
Karyn’s lips twitched, but all she said was, “Should we start with basic sparring?”
Ileni wondered again why Karyn hadn’t killed her already. Maybe the sorceress just wanted to play with her first.
“No? Something simpler, then.” Karyn raised her hand, fist closed, and slowly opened it. A glowing orb hovered in front of her palm, intensely white. Karyn flicked her fingers, and the orb shot through the air.
Ileni had just enough time to block her face. The orb splattered against her bare forearm and vanished. Burning pain tore into Ileni’s skin, and she bit down on a scream.
Karyn blinked at her. “What was that?”
Before Ileni could think up an answer, Karyn sent another orb flying at Ileni.
This one was aimed at her shoulder. Ileni managed to avoid it by twisting to the side, but at the cost of her balance. She slid off the rock, flailed, and landed hard on the ground.
Grunting, she got to her feet just in time for the next orb to hit her cheek. This time she did scream, tears stinging her eyes.
None of them had been large or hot enough to seriously injure her. The point of this was not to test Ileni. It was to humiliate her.
Adding a mark to the Reasons to kill them all list in her head, Ileni dodged the next orb. It flew clear across the cavern and hit the wall, where it exploded harmlessly, a shower of white sparks against the gray rock.
“Oh, come on,” Karyn snapped. “You bedded an assassin, and you’re still stuck on these stupid scruples?”
Ileni had a swift recollection of Karyn’s face bulging, her feet kicking helplessly against white stone, while Sorin’s hands tightened inexorably around her neck. Sorin had almost killed Karyn, back in the caves, when he had discovered that she was from the Empire.
It was really Sorin who Karyn wanted to hurt and humiliate. But Sorin wasn’t here, and Ileni was.
How would Sorin handle this? Ileni couldn’t imagine him ever getting into a situation where he was so helpless.
She had to throw herself to the ground to avoid the next orb. It whizzed so close over her head that her hair sizzled.
“I’ll keep throwing them,” Karyn warned, “until—”
“Until what?” Ileni shouted. But another white light spun toward her, too fast to avoid, and she gave in. She knew what Karyn wanted to see: the terrible truth, the ultimate humiliation. She wanted Ileni to try and fail.
Ileni couldn’t help it. As the white ball whizzed toward her, she called instinctively upon the powers that were lost to her, reaching inside herself for magic.
And found it.
The white orb stopped an inch from her face. Ileni was still cringing away when she realized that her block had worked. She had stopped the stone without touching it. Something so easy, something she had been sure she would never do again.
Time froze. The stone whirled impotently in the air, its brightness blinding her.
Stupid scruples, Karyn had said, and suddenly Ileni understood. It wasn’t her magic.
Stolen magic. There must be lodestones in the walls around her, magic ripped from murdered souls, their life energies trapped in stone and collected by the Academy. Black magic. Not hers.
But it felt like hers.
Ileni swirled the orb, once, then flung it back at Karyn.
Karyn’s eyes widened. She lifted her arms and soared into the air, graceful as a bird, landing lightly on the ground after the orb had passed below her. She jerked her arms together, crossing them over her chest. When she spread them apart, there were a dozen orbs hovering in front of her, so hot they shot off tiny sputtering sparks.
She smiled, a thin unpleasant smile, and the fiery balls spread apart and sped toward Ileni.
There was no way Ileni could dodge, no way she could duck—there were too many of them, taking up too much space, coming too fast. She had no choice. She drew in more power, a rush of magic that went straight through her skin.
Ileni shot upward, and the barrage of glowing stones streamed harmlessly beneath her. As they hurled toward the far wall, she twisted in midair and stopped them with a silent, magic-fueled shout.
Then, with a whisper, she extinguished the fire in the stones, leaving a dozen clear translucent orbs frozen inches from the stone wall.
She called them to her and gathered them in her arms, sparing a sliver of magic to make sure she didn’t drop any. She landed in front of Karyn, opened her arms, and let the orbs drop onto
the ground.
They landed in a cacophony of thuds and immediately began rolling in random directions. Karyn flicked a finger, and they all disappeared, but she never took her eyes off Ileni.
Ileni’s heart pounded so hard it almost drowned out the tingling in her hands, where the magic had poured out, where it had responded to her command. She had worked so hard to put this grief away, to not wish for the impossible, that she still couldn’t believe it. Doubt wriggled through her, as if the last few seconds might have been a dream.
She lifted her hand and whispered a quick spell. Call up fire, Evin had said.
The fire wreathed around her hand, flickering in and out between her fingers. She added a surge of power, and her whole arm was encased by a leaping flame that didn’t hurt her and didn’t touch her skin, even though its heat warmed her face.
“That’s enough,” Karyn snapped.
Ileni twisted her arm, murmured a word, and banished the fire. She turned in a slow circle, eyes flickering over the glowstones embedded in the wall. She chose one at random and stared at it, long enough to see the rainbow colors swirling beneath its surface. To understand that it wasn’t a glowstone at all.
Hundreds of lodestones, representing hundreds of deaths, hundreds of innocents tortured and murdered. Harvested for their power. She had grown up singing songs of mourning for those victims, swearing vows of vengeance.
In the caves, she had thought she was surrounded by evil. She’d had no idea.
That evil had been nowhere near as seductive as this one.
She met Karyn’s dark, speculative eyes. And realized, too late, that it wasn’t only her skill that was being tested.
It was how vulnerable she was to temptation.
Karyn’s smile was a white slash in her pale face. “The Academy doesn’t allow just anyone to access the lodestones. It’s a privilege. Remember that.”
The underlying threat was clear: I can take this away.
Karyn watched Ileni’s face carefully—predatorily. “That’s all I need to see. You’ll be training with the most advanced students.” She turned, and Ileni couldn’t tell whether she meant it or not when she added, over her shoulder, “Congratulations.”
On the way back along the narrow, curving ledge, Ileni tried to feel guilty. The Empire’s sorcery was evil. It was wrong to use power that wasn’t your own, power that could only be given up at the moment of death. And yet she couldn’t feel guilt—or anything, really—through the exaltation bubbling up in her.
And she couldn’t stop smiling.
Karyn led her down a long flower-scented passageway, where they passed a man in a brown cape who handed Karyn a sheaf of papers, two girls in green dresses giggling as they walked, and a very tall man who vanished in a flare of blue light. Finally, Karyn stopped at one of the closed doors. “This will be your room.”
Ileni still didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded.
Karyn gave her a dour look that only made Ileni grin wider. The sorceress continued down the passageway, her shoes clicking on the stone. Ileni pulled the door open and stepped inside.
Where Arxis was waiting for her.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The assassin was sitting on the bed by the wall, in the relaxed yet ready pose Ileni knew so well, his arms braced behind him and the balls of his feet resting on the floor.
Good, Ileni thought, and pulled the air around her into a barrier, tough enough to deflect knives. Magic, magic, magic . . .it was so easy, and she was finally as powerful as she had spent all those weeks pretending to be. Buzzing with anticipation, she said, “Well?”
Arxis bowed his head, very slightly, the faintest possible gesture of respect. When he raised it, his eyes were cold. “What are you doing here, Teacher?”
The magic sizzling through her made Ileni brazen, dying to take a crazy risk. She shrugged. “I was sent to help you.”
“And that . . . demonstration . . . earlier? Was that supposed to help? You threatened an identity I’ve spent weeks building up.”
Weeks. So Arxis had been here for most of the time Ileni had been in the caves. Assassins, once sent on their missions, had no contact with the caves until they succeeded. Which meant that not only did he not know she had killed the master, he didn’t know about her and Sorin.
He had no reason to kill her. Attacking him had been a colossally stupid move.
“I apologize.” Ileni crossed the room and sat on the bed, right next to the assassin. “That was a mistake.”
“I would say so.” Arxis stood, a smooth, fluid motion that reminded her of Sorin, and strode for the door.
“Wait,” Ileni said. “The master didn’t tell me who you were sent to kill.”
He didn’t stop until he was at the door, and then he only half-turned, so she couldn’t make out his expression. She had seen Sorin’s profile, at that exact frustrating angle, a dozen times. She hadn’t realized until now that the pose was something he had been trained in.
“He wanted you to tell me,” she added. “So I can help you.”
“You’re lying.”
He said it so flatly she couldn’t muster up a denial. Instead she said, “Oh, really? And how do you know that?”
“Because I don’t need help.” And with that, he was gone.
Assassins, Ileni thought, trying to roll her eyes and not quite managing it. She sat back down. Her hands were shaking.
Why? She wasn’t his target; she was safe. And it wasn’t her responsibility to stop him. The sorcerers were targeting the assassins. She had been in the caves when they attacked. She had almost died. The assassins had a right to strike back.
Sorin’s voice, in her mind: In war people die. You have to accept that, if you’re going to fight.
It took a few moments of steady breathing before she got back to her feet to investigate her new room. It was a small rectangular chamber, with a desk and chair along one wall and a polished wooden wardrobe along the other. With the bed, that made four whole pieces of furniture—grand in comparison to her room in the Assassins’ Caves. But this time, there were no wards on her door, reinforced by generations of Renegai. And there was a window at the end of her room, near the wardrobe, through which she could see a dusky sky streaked blue and pink. Mountains faded into the distance, solid gray behind a veil of white sunlight. To her left, the mountains sloped into a flat mosaic of red and white. A city.
She backed away from the window. It reminded her of another window carved into a mountainside, of a wiry boy who had crouched on that windowsill and thrown himself into the night. This window was far higher. If someone jumped from it, the thud when he landed probably wouldn’t be audible.
That boy had jumped at the master’s command, proud to die for his cause. The caves were full of young men just like him, waiting for the command to die. And when they did, it would be her turn to attack.
But the sorcerers had thousands of lodestones. The life force of hundreds of assassins—if she took it, and wielded it—couldn’t stand against that.
Unless it was a surprise attack. One blow, swift and sudden, struck at the moment of the assassins’ deaths.
But aimed at what? What was she supposed to attack?
Not what. Who. She knew how assassins thought. Whatever strike Absalm and the master had planned, it would be aimed at killing as many sorcerers as possible.
But the master was dead. So it would be Absalm and Sorin’s plan, now.
Thinking of Sorin physically hurt, a knife slicing at her from the inside. She had been so afraid that he would hate her, once he knew she had killed his master. But he had looked at her exactly the way he had back in the caves. As if what he felt for her mattered more than all the other things he was supposed to feel. As if being with her made him, for those brief stolen moments, less of an assassin.
But he wasn’t just any assassi
n, not anymore. He was their leader. More than ever, he couldn’t afford that weakness.
And neither could she.
She turned from the window and went to the bed. It had ornate iron rails and colorful bedding and was raised higher than her simple bed in the caves. But furniture or no, the room felt familiar, right up to the sense of rock closing in around her. She would have traded that window in a second for the possibility that Sorin could knock on her door. She wanted desperately to rest her head on his shoulder and cry.
Not that he would have much sympathy for her.
She hadn’t thought it would feel like this, after she walked away. She had never been all that comfortable around him anyhow. It didn’t make sense that missing him was a constant gnawing ache within her, a thin fog of sadness that colored everything.
And it made even less sense that seeing him today had made it worse instead of better.
How did he know where I was?
But of course he knew. He was the master now.
No. He isn’t. She forced her mind steady. He wasn’t some cold, all-knowing puppet master. He was the boy who had cradled her in caves beneath the earth, had kissed her fiercely and against his better judgment, had let her walk away when his duty was to stop her. He wasn’t the master.
Yet.
And if she did what he wanted, maybe he never would be. Would he still be a killer if this war didn’t require it?
She opened her hand. The borrowed magic surged within her, and a glowstone floated above her palm. The simplest of magics, a child’s trick, that had been impossible for her just this morning. She smiled even as tears burned her cheeks.
She had power, now, too—and even without power, she had outsmarted Sorin before. She would figure out how he had found her, and she would determine what exactly his plan was, and then she—she—would decide whether to play her designated part in it.
She kept the glowstone afloat as she readied herself for bed, its light warming the insides of her eyelids until the moment she fell asleep.
The next morning, Ileni woke with the dawn, so tense and excited and terrified she didn’t even consider going back to sleep. Magic waited for her, and she itched to use it. She sat up, rubbed her crusty eyes, and resisted the urge to vault out of bed. It had been so long since she had been eager to start her day that she didn’t trust the feeling.