Death Marked

by Leah Cypess

  Ileni’s heart froze, then went on beating, loud and slow. She could hear it, an echo in her head, overwhelming the silence on the bench.

  It was a moment before she recovered her voice enough to say . . . what? She had to speak, to cover up the disappointment that must be burned into her face, to say anything other than, I thought you were Sorin.

  What an idiot she was.

  “I could tell people what you are,” she managed finally, in an almost steady voice. “I could scream assassin right now.”

  “You could. I don’t think you will.”

  “Are you sure?” Ileni said. “Don’t forget, you tried to kill me.”

  “It was necessary at the time. But I’m not trying to kill you anymore.”

  “I’m so glad.” Her disappointment ebbed slowly away, and rage rushed in to replace it. She remembered lying trapped on the bed, her finger broken, choking on the thick gag. “I can’t say the same.”

  Bazel shrugged. “When it comes to killing, you’re an amateur. I’m not surprised you would take it personally.”

  She remembered driving the knife into Irun’s back. The moment she had realized how easy it was to take someone’s life, and how little separated her from the killers around her.

  Bazel was one of those killers. Yet here he was, trading barbs with her on a park bench. Bazel might be the least competent of the assassins, but he still knew a dozen ways to murder her before she could move. And all the assassins now knew it was possible to kill a sorceress. Someone must have ordered him not to.

  It wasn’t hard to guess who. Sorin.

  “Of course,” Bazel added, “if you do reveal my identity, I’ll have to tell your new sorcerer friends all about it. About the time you spent in our caves helping us learn to kill them. About your skulking in dark corners with our new leader.”

  Ileni flushed. “Why are you here, Bazel? Who are you on a mission to kill, since it’s obviously not me?”

  Bazel got to his feet, like a snake uncoiling. “Surprised, are you? I’m sure you thought I would never leave the caves.”

  She had, and for good reason. The thread of pride in his voice made her stomach twist, and the way he loomed over her made her intensely aware of his physical presence and strength. Once again she felt Irun’s hand on the back of her head, the sudden pain and the gush of blood. . . .

  She closed her eyes as the garden whirled around her. It had been Bazel’s fault, but he hadn’t been the one to slash her throat. That had been Irun, and she had killed Irun, with far less magic than she had right now. She didn’t have to be afraid.

  “Nobody thought you would leave the caves,” she said scornfully, to remind herself that she didn’t have to be afraid. She opened her eyes in time to see fury flare on Bazel’s face. Oddly, that made her braver. “And frankly, I didn’t think Sorin would ever let you leave alive.”

  “Our new master—” said with a tinge of bitterness—“is not about to waste an assassin for the sake of an infatuation. We are too valuable for that. Even I am.”

  Infatuation was his way of striking back. Ileni dug her fingernails into the bottom of the bench. “But if this involves me, it’s a rather important mission. Why would Sorin choose you?”

  He flinched—a movement so slight that no one but she, who had spent weeks among assassins, would have noticed it. He said tightly, “Sorin designed the mission. Absalm is the one who chose to send me.”

  “Was he trying to get you out of the caves before Sorin killed you?”

  Bazel leaned over, placing both hands on the back of the bench, on either side of her. Ileni cringed away from him despite herself. “You killed the master. Do you think Sorin could get away with punishing me for trying to kill you? The last thing he can afford to reveal is how much his obsession with you is skewing his judgment.”

  Despite the fear roiling through her, Ileni couldn’t help a surge of satisfaction. So much for infatuation. “He’s just biding his time, then, before he makes you pay.”

  Bazel leaned closer. She turned her head to the side, and his breath wafted hot against her cheek, stirring stray strands of hair. “Don’t count on him. He might be the new master in name, but he’s made mistakes. He’s not powerful enough to pursue vengeance.”

  Ileni pressed against the bench so hard that tiny splinters dug into her back. She shifted sideways, then lifted her chin and looked Bazel straight in the eye. “Yet.”

  Bazel’s jaw clenched. He straightened. “I’m here to show you something. Come with me.”

  Ileni remained seated. “Come with you where?”

  “My mission is to show you, not tell you. Come.”

  Ileni bit her lip. But if he wanted to kill her, he would have done it before she had time to get suspicious. Besides, Sorin would not have ordered him to do anything that could cause her harm.

  She was almost completely certain of that. Which was certain enough to get her off the bench when Bazel walked away.

  “How did Arxis know you would find me?” she said as he led her down a long, slanted street and through a crowded market.

  Bazel didn’t react.

  “Now that Sorin is your leader,” Ileni said pointedly, “you might want to start being a little nicer to me.”

  He turned fully to face her, stopping in the middle of the street. “Why? It’s not exactly your opinion he values.”

  Ileni’s skin shrank inward at the scorn in his voice. She couldn’t even deny it. Her opinions had never had the slightest impact on Sorin’s firm, clear faith.

  “He’ll kill you if I ask him to,” she said finally.

  “Are you going to ask him to?”

  He waited until it was clear she had nothing to say, then strode forward.

  At the end of the street, Bazel turned down a wide set of stairs that descended to an alley below. Paper and debris littered the steps, and signs inked with symbols Ileni didn’t recognize hung on the stone walls, half-torn off. By then, Ileni had thought things through, and she hesitated before following. Bazel must know he would never be safe from Sorin . . . assassins could be very patient, but they never gave up. Which meant Bazel’s loyalty—to the extent he had any—was to Absalm, not Sorin.

  But Absalm didn’t want Ileni dead, either. Not when he had been molding her for more than a decade. She was too valuable.

  She hurried to catch up. They crossed the alley at the bottom of the stairs and continued down yet another stairway to the next street, and then the next. A line of guards wearing lodestone bracelets crossed in front of them, and Bazel paused, waiting for them to pass with apparent unconcern.

  Four streets later, Ileni’s knees hurt, and the stairways had grown noticeably rougher, with cracks and loose stones that forced her to pay close attention to her footing. Halfway down the fifth flight of stairs, a large crate leaned against a wall, cutting the width of the steps in half. An old man huddled against the crate, wrapped in a bundle of foul-smelling rags. He watched them pass with pus-filled eyes.

  How much longer? would sound like an admission of weakness. But maybe Is this where we’re going. . . yes, she could say that. Ileni cleared her throat, but just then Bazel stopped short. He gestured at a narrow brown door in the stone building on their right.

  “Side entrance,” he explained.

  Well, that cleared everything right up. Still determined to show no hesitation, Ileni placed the flat of one hand on the door and pushed. The door didn’t budge.

  She reached for magic, then stopped herself. This far from the Academy, there were no lodestones she could use to replenish her power. Impressing Bazel was not worth the risk of being left defenseless.

  “After you,” she said.

  Bazel reached under his tunic and pulled out a thin metal wire. After a few seconds of swift, silent work, the door swung open, revealing yet more stairs, narrow and dim.

  “Not that I haven’t enjoyed all the mystery and drama,” Ileni said, “but I’m not following you down there until you tell me where we�
��re going.”

  “Death’s Door,” Bazel said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t blame me; that’s what they call it. It is overdramatic, I agree.” He stepped through the door. “It’s a sickhouse.”

  “Then why—”

  But he was already halfway down the stairs, moving without making a sound.

  Ileni hesitated. The wise move would be to turn around and make her way back to the upper part of the city. She had followed Bazel through unknown passageways before, and that had not ended well.

  She started down the stairs.

  He was waiting for her at the bottom. By then her eyes had adjusted to the near darkness, so she saw at once he had been telling the truth: this was a sickhouse. A large square room stretched in front of her, lined with cots and filled with a thick, sour smell. Most of the figures in the cots were unmoving, lumps under blankets, but a few tossed and turned, and enough of them were moaning to make the air quaver discordantly.

  Ileni’s stomach twisted, shaming her. She had never been drawn to healing, the most important magic of all. Sick people made her feel slightly ill herself. And she had never seen this many sick people in one place before.

  She glanced sideways at Bazel, and caught his expression a moment before it slid off his face—a faint grimace that matched her own unease. Bazel, too, was uncomfortable around this much illness. This much weakness.

  She squared her shoulders. “What’s important about—”

  Bazel put a finger to her lips. Ileni jerked away from his touch and rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth. Bazel smirked.

  Somehow, that smirk—its assurance, its superiority—was the last straw. He was acting like she was still powerless, like she was someone to be toyed with. He didn’t know what she had learned over the past three weeks.

  Ileni coiled her power within her, flicking her fingers in the beginning patterns of a spell—a combat spell. One that would take only a minimal amount of power, but would hurt nonetheless. Bazel’s smirk faltered and vanished.

  Then a familiar, high-pitched voice cut through the room: “He said it was urgent. He’s usually right.”

  Ileni almost let go of the spell—but Karyn would have felt the magic being released. Instead, she pulled it tight within herself as Bazel grabbed her hand and yanked her beneath the stairs. The empty space under the staircase was filled with boxes, but the two of them squeezed in.

  Footsteps clattered down the wooden steps above them. Ileni’s head hurt. Holding magic in was a basic Renegai exercise, once practiced daily. But that had been months ago, and the combat spell she was holding was sharper and more slippery than any spell she had held as a Renegai, like gripping a tangle of fragmented glass shards.

  Somewhere in the room, a blanket rustled, and a quavering voice said, “Leave me alone.”

  “I don’t think that’s what you want,” Karyn said.

  Ileni leaned out, just far enough to see the room. Karyn was sitting on a low stool beside one of the beds. In the bed, a bald man lay propped up on pillows.

  Behind Karyn, arms crossed over her chest, stood Lis.

  Karyn took the old man’s hands in hers—he allowed it without looking at her—and spoke to him in low, earnest tones. Ileni could make out a word or two—”Empire,” “right time,” “sacrifice”—but most of what Karyn said was too low to hear. When the old man responded, his voice weak and faltering, Ileni couldn’t make out even a few words.

  Karyn’s tone turned sharp, which made it more audible. “It is very selfish of you. It is not a worthy end to your life.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Lis,” Karyn said.

  Lis’s still face went even stiller.

  “Lis,” Karyn snapped.

  Lis walked forward and put one hand on the old man’s forehead. His whole body twitched, a long shudder.

  He screamed.

  Lis stepped back abruptly, releasing the spell. It rushed away from the old man’s body, tight and coiled and ugly.

  Ileni recognized that spell. She had felt it before, in a sparkling white cavern far beneath the earth. Then, it had been Karyn wielding the spell, and Sorin had been the one screaming. It was a spell like the one she still held coiled within her: designed purely to cause pain.

  Karyn and Lis were torturing the man.

  The old man’s shriek ended in a gulp. He was trembling so hard that even the loose skin on his face shook.

  “That won’t be enough,” Karyn said calmly.

  Lis did not reply. She took another step away from the bed—this one slow and deliberate. Her hair, tied in a long ponytail, slapped against her back.

  “You disappoint me,” Karyn said. Her voice was still cool, but the menace in it made Lis flinch. Karyn got to her feet abruptly, making the iron bedframe shake. “You’ll get only one more chance.”

  It wasn’t clear who she was talking to, but both Lis and the old man hunched their shoulders. Karyn stalked away, across the room, and disappeared through a door in the far wall.

  Lis reached back and pulled her ponytail over her shoulder. She stood for a moment gripping her own hair, and she looked so lost—so hopeless—that for the first time, Ileni felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Then Lis dropped her hand and followed Karyn.

  Ileni waited until the door slammed shut behind Lis before letting her own combat spell go. She sighed with relief as magic rushed harmlessly out of her, not even caring about the waste. “That’s what Sorin wanted me to see?”

  Bazel’s scowl was as thunderous as Karyn’s had been. “No. It wasn’t.”

  “Then why did you bring me here?”

  “Because there’s more to see. But not now,” Bazel said, biting off each word. “We have to leave before your new friends come back.”

  Ileni wrapped her arms around herself. Bazel’s clear fury frightened her—had she already grown unaccustomed to being surrounded by people who wanted her dead? But she peeked out and watched the old man slowly close his eyes and sink against his pillow, while in the bed right next to him, a woman let out a sob in her sleep.

  She reached out and confirmed what she had already guessed: every person in this room had power. Not a great amount, most of them . . . not enough to be worth training, probably, though they would have been competent mid-level sorcerers had they been Renegai.

  There were a few with vast amounts, though. Maybe the Academy had another way of deciding who was worth training and who was just worth . . . harvesting.

  This was what she had been searching for. This was where lodestones’ power came from.

  But if it was, how could Karyn and Lis have walked away?

  “I know some healing magic,” she said. “I could help these people.”

  “Yes,” Bazel said, through gritted teeth. “Maybe later.”

  “It will just take a minute—”

  “A minute in which you’ll be seen. Do you want to explain what you’re doing here?”

  When Bazel started up the stairs, Ileni followed.

  It was a relief to emerge into clean, cool sunlight and then climb up the stairs onto a street filled with noise and movement. Ileni let a deep shudder go through her before she turned to Bazel. “That’s how they fill the lodestones, isn’t it? Every sick person in there has power, and they’re just waiting for it to be tortured out of—”

  The space beside her was empty. Bazel was gone.

  Ileni swore. The street was narrow and dilapidated, filled with people whose gazes shifted away from her. She guessed she had to go up—that was easy enough, with the mountain rearing against the sky to her left but she had no idea which street was best to take. If she set out on her own, she would probably run right into a dead end.

  She should ask someone, but all the people passing by seemed so . . . disreputable. She turned in the direction of the next staircase going up.

  And found her way blocked.

  By Karyn.

  The sorceress had her arms crossed
over her chest, lips pressed into a flat line. There was no sign of Lis.

  “What,” Karyn said, each word an arrow shot. “Are. You. Doing. Here.”

  “I, um,” Ileni said. “I got lost?”

  It didn’t sound convincing even to her.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  They brought him in with his head covered by a burlap bag, his hands bound behind him. They thrust him to his knees so hard he lost his balance and, after a brief, humiliating struggle, fell over sideways.

  “Gently,” Sorin said from his chair at the end of the room. “There is no need for excess.”

  The two assassins straightened, but a flash of . . . something . . . preceded their obedience. Sorin wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it was something the master had never seen when he ruled these caves.

  That was a problem for later. He turned his attention to the man flailing on the floor. “Help him up and remove the bag.”

  The assassins obeyed, but they were not gentle. Their captive gasped with pain as the bag scraped over his face. It was a face raw with bruises, bloodstains over purple welts, one eye swollen black. A gag was stuffed deep into his mouth and tied behind his neck. His one good blue eye glared defiance, and his mouth worked at the gag, but no sound emerged.

  Sorin nodded at the two assassins. “You have done well,” he said.

  They bowed and withdrew. The captive drew his lips back, as far as the gag would allow, and managed a muffled snarl.

  “Welcome to my caves, Tellis,” Sorin said. “I have a proposal to discuss with you.”

  The Renegai man couldn’t spit, because of the gag, but he jerked his head in a spitting motion anyhow.

  Sorin got off the seat, calm and unhurried, and crossed the room. “If I remove the gag, I assume you’ll try to kill me with magic? Oh, I forgot. Renegai don’t kill. Ileni told me that, once.”

  Tellis went very still.

  “Yes,” Sorin said. “She’s still alive.”

  Tellis closed his eyes, just for a second, relief and joy unmistakable on his face. Since his captive’s eyes were closed, Sorin allowed himself a scowl, but kept his voice smooth. “I need your help to keep her that way.”