Death Marked

by Leah Cypess

  “A little late for that, don’t you think?” Arxis said as the last paper fluttered against the far wall.

  “We can clean that up,” Evin said. “Karyn is disorganized. If they’re out of order, she’ll assume it was her fault.”

  That didn’t sound like Karyn, but Ileni was in no state to argue. Her mouth hurt. Power tingled in the air, tantalizingly distant, and she reached for it and drew it in. Karyn’s office must be just close enough to the testing arena. She could use magic to . . .

  No. She stopped herself. Not this magic. Never again.

  But she remembered the helplessness of falling through the air, of lying trapped in the dark, and she didn’t let the magic go.

  They were in a square, windowless chamber, its white rock walls lined with an assortment of bookcases, boxes, and large statuelike objects whose purpose Ileni couldn’t begin to guess at. Boxes and papers and food-stained bowls were piled around the walls and filled much of the floor space.

  “I’m sorry,” Evin said. “Transportation is exhausting, even for me. I should have made it smoother.”

  Ileni swallowed hard before attempting to speak. Her mouth tasted foul. “Since your transportation spell also saved my life, I’ll forgive you.”

  He grinned. The sight of his smile sent a surge of unexpected gladness through her. “I assume that comes with an offer to help clean up? We have some time, but not much—Karyn is in the city fixing the sandstorm shields.”

  Arxis was already collecting and stacking papers, with the same efficiency assassins used to spar—or kill. Evin joined him, slow and lumberish by comparison. A zigzag pattern of glowstones near the ceiling lit the chamber brightly. High on one of the walls, across from Karyn’s desk, hung a large parchment map.

  Aware that it was rude not to help clean up, Ileni walked to the map. There were no words on it, and she couldn’t tell what the symbols meant, but she could see that it covered a vast territory. The Empire?

  She lifted a hand toward the map, then snatched it away when the parchment’s surface shimmered and changed. Another map, filled with curving lines and angles that seemed oddly familiar, covered the parchment.

  The sudden stillness made her aware that the cleaning had stopped. She wasn’t surprised when Arxis stepped up beside her. But there was something so predatory about his movement—as if he had dropped his mask—that only her fascination with the map kept her from stepping away from him.

  “What is this?” Arxis asked. His voice was light and nonchalant, at odds with his grim expression.

  “I don’t know.” Evin, still behind them, couldn’t see the fierceness in Arxis’s eyes. He sounded as casual as the assassin was pretending to be. “The first map is the Empire, of course. This one shows whatever specific area Karyn’s been looking at most recently.”

  Of course. Those curves, those lines—they were familiar to Ileni because she had memorized them, once.

  It was a map of the Assassins’ Caves.

  Karyn had mapped them when she was there. And now she was using what she knew to plan an assault.

  This map was of the inside of the caves, not the mountains around them. Karyn must have gotten farther into the caves than anyone had realized, back when she had been posing as a trader.

  But Sorin knew about the river entrance now, which meant he would be guarding it—or, more likely, had blocked it off entirely. Whatever attack Karyn had planned was no longer feasible. I’m right back where I started, she had told Ileni.

  But Karyn hadn’t given up, clearly. She was still searching for a way in. Still readying an attack.

  How soon would it come? Ileni’s heart pounded. Her choice lay in front of her, stark and clear. She could prevent this attack. With the Academy in ruins and the lodestones buried—with Karyn dead this plan would die stillborn.

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” Evin said.

  Ileni half-turned, tearing her eyes from the map. “What?”

  “Karyn will realize you’ve escaped. The only way to stay out of her reach is to go back to your own people. I know you don’t like the idea. . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t like it, either. But in the mountains, you’ll be safe.”

  Would she?

  For a moment the prospect was unbearably tempting. She could go back to being a Renegai, wrapped in empty dreams of someday—someday—making a difference.

  But those dreams were gone, and she could never get them back. When she had believed she could learn the truth and make her own choice, she hadn’t realized that truths could not be unlearned, that knowledge would rob her of choices as well.

  She turned her back on the map, just in time to see Evin hold up the silver key and mutter a quick spell. The key sparkled briefly, and Evin placed it on top of one of the towering piles of paper on Karyn’s desk.

  Ileni blinked. “That’s where you found it?”

  Evin shrugged. “Karyn’s messy.”

  “And busy planning a war,” Arxis added. A hint of steel pierced his voice, then vanished, and he slouched against the white stone wall. “Which is probably distracting.”

  Ileni opened her mouth, then shut it. She was part of Karyn’s plan for that war. She didn’t believe for one second that Karyn would have been careless with the key to Ileni’s prison. Not if Karyn really wanted her to die.

  Karyn had intended for Evin to find the key.

  A long shudder ran through Ileni. There was nothing heartwarming about this revelation. If Karyn didn’t want Ileni dead, it was only because she still had some use for her. She still thought Ileni might be turned against the assassins, might choose the Empire, even after what she had seen.

  Was she banking on Ileni’s need for power? Did she really think Ileni would turn her back on everything she believed so she could keep using magic?

  Or had she planned for Evin, specifically, to rescue Ileni? Was she hoping Ileni’s gratitude would keep her from doing anything that would hurt her rescuer?

  And was she right?

  Ileni’s head hurt. She missed Sorin. He never had doubts. If he was here, maybe he could convince her not to have doubts, either.

  Sorin would say they all deserved to die.

  But she was not Sorin, and she didn’t have to play by his rules. She could use the shattering spell, bury the lodestones—but warn the others first. Evin, especially, deserved that from her. Cyn, too . . . even Lis. She would get them out somehow, protect them.

  Sorin wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t even understand it, but that was too bad for him.

  “We need to get out of here,” Arxis said, “before Karyn comes back.”

  Evin nodded. “Ileni, if you tell me where to transport you—”

  “I can’t go back.” Ileni said it as fast as she could, in an attempt to make it hurt less. “I have no magic of my own, and my people don’t steal magic. If I go back, I’ll be powerless.”

  “There is more than one type of power,” Evin said.

  Easy for you to say. She shook her head. “I was the most powerful sorceress of my people, once. But there was . . . they made a mistake.” It hadn’t been a mistake. They designed me to kill you. “My power started fading, when I got older, and it faded until it was gone. And then I came here, and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t resist it. If my people knew what I did here, the sort of magic I used, the way I used it . . .”

  “But you can’t stay here,” Evin said. “Is there anywhere else you can go?”

  “Maybe.” Ileni didn’t dare look at Arxis. “But I can’t leave yet. There’s something I have to do here first.”

  Arxis’s voice was sharp and smooth. “And what’s that?”

  Ileni hesitated.

  “If what you need to do here is a secret,” Arxis said, “it’s going to be harder for us to help you with it.”

  Ileni choked down a laugh. They both focused on her, and she bit her lip hard, using the pain to hold back her growing hysteria. She didn’t know which side was right, or even less wrong. She didn�
��t know if destroying the Academy was an act of heroism or of murder. But she knew one small thing that was simple and right, one choice she could be proud of.

  “I made a promise to a dying girl,” she said. “I have to keep it before I go.”

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  The knife thudded into the target with a force that made the man-shaped cloth swish against the stone wall. Another knife followed it, and then another. All three knives quivered, inches apart, exactly where the man’s heart would have been.

  “Impressive,” Absalm said.

  Sorin walked over to the weapons rack and pulled out a blade. The slight hitch in the sorcerer’s breathing told him that Absalm knew which knife he had drawn.

  He flipped it up in the air. The blade twirled, a deadly circle of steel, until he caught it by the hilt.

  “Shouldn’t you be careful with that?” Absalm asked. He had recovered his usual gentle cadence—what Sorin thought of as his wise teacher tone.

  “Should I?” Sorin said. “Can’t the Renegai heal poison?”

  “Not that poison.”

  Sorin threw the blade up again, spun on his heel, and was facing the sorcerer when he caught it.

  “So if I nicked myself,” he mused, “I would die. And what would you do, then?”

  “Not heal you,” Absalm said. “Because I can’t.”

  “I believe you. I meant, after I died.” Sorin’s arm tensed, wanting to fling the knife up again. Restraint, the master’s voice whispered, is more impressive than courage. “Who would become the new leader?”

  Absalm tugged his earlobe, watching Sorin warily. “There is no obvious candidate.”

  “No, there isn’t, is there? It was always going to be me or Irun. And Irun is dead.” He ran one thumb down the spiral design on the knife hilt. “So there would be chaos. Several hundred killers, trained to follow orders, with no orders to follow. Who do you think they would turn on?”

  “I understand your point,” Absalm snapped. “I need you. So? You need me, too.”

  Sorin moved like lightning. The sorcerer didn’t have time to utter the first word of a spell before the dagger’s edge was against his throat, so close it must feel like it was brushing his skin.

  “Actually,” Sorin said, “I’m not sure I need you at all.”

  Only Absalm’s mouth moved. “But are you sure you don’t?”

  Sorin laughed, low and soft, then twisted sideways and threw the poisoned dagger. It landed in the center of the other three.

  “No,” he said. “That’s why you’re alive. But if you ever contradict my orders again, I will change my mind.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “You met with Bazel, before he left on his mission.”

  Sorin saw the sorcerer consider lying and decide against it. Absalm tugged his earlobe again. “How do you know?”

  “You’re not asking questions right now, Absalm. You’re answering them. What did you tell Bazel to do?”

  Despite Sorin’s best effort, his voice hardened, just a bit. It wouldn’t have given him away to most people, but Absalm had lived in the Assassins’ Caves for decades. His gray eyes narrowed. “I think you know.”

  Anger is a weakness. Sorin had to work to keep his face cool.

  “You told him,” he said, “to kill Ileni.”

  “Only,” Absalm said, “if he believes she’s going to betray us.”

  “Bazel hates Ileni. I think he’ll find that easy to believe.”

  “He’s an assassin. He won’t let personal feelings interfere with his mission.”

  Sorin allowed his anger to show, and told himself it was a calculated decision. “How very subtle.”

  “It was the master’s intent,” Absalm said. “To kill her if she wouldn’t go along with his plan. He didn’t leave loose ends.”

  “She won’t betray us,” Sorin said. “She will see the truth about the Empire, and she will help us destroy it. She’s not a loose end.”

  “If you’re so sure,” Absalm said, “why are you recruiting people to convince her?”

  Recruiting, not sending. Sorin’s expression didn’t change, but Absalm looked satisfied anyhow. “Oh, yes. I know about the Renegai boy.”

  “I’m reminding her who she is,” Sorin said. The edge in his voice made the sorcerer flinch, but not step back. The air between them felt hot. “But I’m not worried. She’s on our side.”

  “In that case,” Absalm said, “she’ll be in no danger at all.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  The front of Death’s Door was far more respectable than its side entrance. A façade of pink-veined white marble stretched beside a narrow street, occupied only by a trio of slouching young men, a mangy dog, and an old woman squatting next to a basket of apples. None of them seemed startled when three sorcerers popped out of thin air in front of the imposing building.

  They did glance over when Ileni pitched forward onto her hands and knees and vomited on the dirt street. But only for a second.

  “Oh, good,” Arxis said. “That’s inconspicuous.”

  “Too many translocation spells,” Evin said. “I wish I had Karyn’s silent-spelled boots—they’re the only thing that would make them easier. But you understand why I couldn’t put in a request.”

  “I’m fine,” Ileni said through gritted teeth. Sourness burned her mouth, her face muscles hurt, and she was more chagrined than she wanted to admit that Evin was seeing this. Without thinking, she used a trickle of magic to clean her mouth and breath. As she did, the blond girl’s desperate eyes floated through her mind, reminding her what she was using. Where this power came from.

  She got to her feet. Evin flicked his fingers at the small puddle of vomit, and it vanished.

  An auspicious beginning. Cheeks hot, Ileni faced the front entrance of Death’s Door. Ironically enough, it consisted of two doors, austere and imposing, both built of heavy dark wood and inscribed with symbols she didn’t understand. Nothing like what hid behind them, the lines of beds with their suffering victims, waiting to be tortured and killed.

  “What now?” Evin said.

  Ileni squared her shoulders. “We go inside and ask where that woman’s child is.”

  “Ask who?” Arxis drawled.

  The silence stretched. Ileni frowned at Evin. “Don’t you know?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “But you knew where it was.”

  “Sure. I’ve heard of it. But I’ve never had a reason to come here.”

  Of course not. That way he didn’t have to see the beds, hear the cries, truly understand where the Academy’s lodestones were coming from. “Fine. We’ll just have to figure it out as we go.”

  “That should be easy,” Arxis said. “We’ll explain to them that you want to rescue a baby, but you haven’t the first idea what its name is or where it might be.”

  “She,” Ileni said. “It’s a girl.”

  “Oh, good. That should narrow things down considerably.”

  “You said you promised her mother,” Evin interrupted, before Ileni could retort. “What do you know about her?”

  “That she’s dead, and she died at Death’s Door.” Ileni couldn’t resist adding, “She died to give her magic to the Academy. She traded it for her child’s care.”

  Evin nodded. “Then the Black Sisters will take care of her child. If we can find her.”

  Disappointment dropped right through Ileni’s throat and into her stomach. She wasn’t sure why. Had she really thought that Evin might not know? Or if he knew, that he would care?

  “Of course,” Arxis said, “that brings us right back to the finding her problem. If neither of you have any idea where to start, may I suggest—”<
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  “Actually,” a familiar voice behind Ileni said, “I believe I can help.

  Ileni whirled. One of the wooden doors was now partly open. Bazel stood in the entrance, wearing a white robe and a large blue belt.

  “Welcome,” he said. “Please enter.”

  Absolute silence. Bazel glanced over Ileni’s shoulder at Arxis. Not a trace of recognition on his face, of course. No matter his weaknesses, Bazel was assassin trained.

  “Someone you know?” Evin said.

  “Just someone I met last time I was in the city.” Ileni smiled at Bazel. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”

  Bazel stepped back into the hall and swept his hand out in a welcoming gesture.

  Arxis strode in, passing within inches of Bazel. Every muscle in Ileni’s body tensed, even though the two didn’t touch or even exchange a glance.

  “Coming?” Arxis inquired.

  “Ileni?” Evin’s voice was soft, his brows furrowed.

  If Evin had picked up on her tension, the assassins certainly had. Bazel’s eyes were blank and steady, but Ileni detected—thought she detected—a hint of mockery in their depths. Since it was Bazel, she was probably right. He wasn’t as good as the others at anything, including hiding his intent.

  But what was his intent?

  There’s something you need to see. He had said that last time, and brought her here, and made no attempt to harm her. But last time, her body hadn’t screamed danger at her.

  “We don’t have to go in.” Evin stepped up beside her. “I can take you somewhere else. He is wearing a blue belt.”

  Which meant what, exactly? But this wasn’t the time to ask. Ileni pushed her unreasoning fear away and shook her head. “Thank you. But I do have to.” She met his long-lashed brown eyes. “You—you don’t have to. If you don’t want to.”

  “Ileni.” Evin sighed. “Don’t you know anything about me by now?” His hand closed around hers, hesitantly. She pulled away. “I never do anything I don’t want to.”

  She laughed, and the corners of Evin’s eyes crinkled. She walked ahead of him through the large door, into a long hall lit by glowstones.