“Will you.”
“Of course. If you truly are as skilled as Karyn thinks, you’re quite valuable now. Besides, it will be nice to have someone around who’s almost as good as I am.”
“Almost?”
Cyn laughed and leaped to her feet, somehow managing not to trip on the hem of her gown. “Come on. No one else will be at the training plateau. We can get in some practice before the others manage to drag themselves out of bed.”
Ileni stood and had to pause as a wave of dizziness made the room whirl around her. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. But fasting was a regular part of Renegai discipline, and she was sure she could make it until breakfast.
The question was: Should she?
Yes. This was an opportunity to find out if Cyn knew anything about how the lodestones were created. An opportunity to prove to the sorcerers that she was who she was pretending to be.
And an opportunity to use the magic thrumming through her.
“All right,” she said, and heard the eagerness in her voice. It would have been a good act, if she had been acting. “Let’s go.”
Ileni had finally beaten Cyn for the first time, using a spell that sliced through Cyn’s wards and skin simultaneously, when Evin and Lis swooped from the cloudless blue sky and landed on the plateau. Ileni brushed her sweat-soaked hair away from her face, pretending she didn’t care that they had an audience.
Or that they had, apparently, missed breakfast.
“I yield,” Cyn said, sounding genuinely pleased. “You are full of surprises, Renegai girl. How do you weave that much power at once?”
They had been sparring for hours, Ileni concentrating on Cyn’s spells and doing her best to imitate them. About twenty minutes ago, it had finally clicked, how to hold the magic sharp and use it to hurt. A backward shiver ran through her every time, as if she was doing something wrong. But in the intensity of the match, that was easy to ignore.
Cyn held up an arm. Her skin was laced with blood. “I’ll figure out your secret, don’t worry. In the meantime, care to do that healing thing?”
“Sure.” The healing spell felt dull in comparison to the fighting spells, running through well-worn grooves in her mind. But even that, Ileni had to admit, was not as smooth as it should have been; the grooves were rough, neglected. She was going to have to start doing regular exercises again.
“You know,” Cyn said thoughtfully, “you should use healing while you fight. It makes you impervious to injury. You could attack when you should be blocking, let my spell get through, and then just heal your injury once you’ve struck me.”
“I suppose so,” Ileni said after a moment.
“So why don’t you?”
Because she had never thought of healing as a weapon. “It would still hurt, you know.”
Cyn flicked a finger dismissively. “We learn how to handle pain. If you let it interfere with your magic, you’re useless as a battle mage.”
Pain is nothing but a distraction. Sorin’s voice was so clear in her mind that Ileni almost turned to look for him.
“We,” she said as haughtily as she could, “learn to avoid it.”
Evin’s laugh, from the edge of the plateau, was low and smooth. Behind him, the Academy’s main mountain peak rose into the sky, a sharp line of dark gray against the brilliant blue. “Is it too late to join your side?”
Ileni tried to match his casual tone, as if they weren’t truly on different sides. “Is that allowed?”
“Nope,” Evin said cheerfully. He was dressed in threadbare black breeches and a green tunic almost as bright as Cyn’s gown. “But since Karyn isn’t here to snarl at me about it, I’m not sure it matters.”
“Karyn will be gone for a few days,” Lis said. She had landed on the opposite side of the plateau from Evin and was standing with her feet braced apart, arms crossed over her chest, the edges of her hair brushing her elbows. Unlike the others, she was wearing drab, functional clothes, in a shade of gray that reminded Ileni of the assassins.
A few days. That would give her time to find out more. Maybe she could discover the source of the lodestones before Karyn came back.
And, while she was doing that, she would also get to use her magic.
Not mine.
“You wouldn’t want to join our side,” she said to Evin. “We don’t have lodestones.”
The sentence plunked into the conversation awkwardly, but after a strained moment, Evin gave a friendly shrug and said, “Yes. That would seem to be a disadvantage.”
Ileni strove hard to keep her voice nonchalant. Lis was eyeing her sharply, but Cyn’s expression was preoccupied. “I’d heard of them before I came here, but never seen one. Where does their power come from?”
“It’s given to us,” Cyn said.
Power stolen, power misused, power drawn from pain and death. Every muscle in Ileni’s body tensed. “Given to you? What does that—”
But Cyn was still focused on Lis. “Why the delay? It really shouldn’t take a few days just to mop up some Gaeran rebels, should it?”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Evin agreed. “I don’t even know why Karyn had to go handle it herself. Lis, did Karyn tell you any details?”
Ileni shoved her frustration aside. She couldn’t risk pushing for more information, not with the way Lis had looked at her.
Though now Lis was studying the smooth gray ground as if it was more fascinating than any of the people standing on it. Her voice emerged sullenly from behind the dark curtain of her hair. “The governor of the Gaeran territory died after the revolt started. They think it was poison.”
“Assassins?” Evin said, with an edge in his voice that made Ileni snap her head around to stare at him.
Casual. Relaxed. She didn’t think she was pulling it off. Fortunately, none of them was paying enough attention to notice.
“That’s the suspicion,” Lis mumbled. “Karyn is trying to find the culprit.”
Ileni concentrated on keeping her breathing slow and even, at odds with the racing of her heart. She cleared her throat. “Why would Karyn think she could find an assassin? I thought . . . I mean, I was told . . . even among my people, we heard they were never caught alive.”
Evin was holding himself still—something Ileni should have been used to, after weeks among assassins, who never made an unnecessary motion. But on him, it was unnatural. It drew her gaze toward him, even as she focused on Lis.
Lis pushed her hair back, giving a brief glimpse of her set, pale face before the shiny strands fell back into place. “It’s true. They aren’t.” She sounded almost proud of that, as if she was looking forward to Karyn’s failure. “Most people would know better than to try.”
“The assassins are a threat to the safety of everyone in the Empire,” Cyn said. “They need to be eliminated.”
“It’s more than that, with her,” Lis said.
“What is it?” Ileni asked, and heard her voice emerge a bit too eager. She hesitated, then pressed on anyhow, heedless of the risk “Why is she so obsessed with the assassins?”
In the short, awkward silence, a bird called out high overhead. Cyn said, cautiously, “They killed some of her family.”
Cyn was being cautious, and Evin was being somber? Even after one day, Ileni could tell that meant something was wrong. She glanced over at Lis and was almost relieved to see bitter sullenness settled on her face.
Then Evin twitched his shoulders. “We’re wasting time. What should we do for the next few days? I have some ideas.”
No one answered. Cyn watched Evin with her eyebrows drawn together, while Lis remained stone-faced. Clearly, they all knew something Ileni didn’t and had no intention of sharing it.
Hunching her shoulders, Ileni turned and stared over the edge of the plateau. Against the bright blue sky, two slate-gray pillars rose into the air, sides unnaturally smooth and even. They looked like long, narrow stone triangles with their points cut off.
“Dramatic, aren’t they??
?? Evin said, stepping up to her side. Whatever had been on his face earlier was gone; he looked like he hadn’t had a serious thought in a decade.
But that exchange had been a good reminder: Don’t underestimate anyone. He was an imperial sorcerer. He used magic to fight. And he, too, might know the truth about the lodestones.
Evin’s eyebrows lifted almost to his unruly hair, and Ileni realized that she was staring at him. She resisted her first impulse and didn’t look away. The breeze stirred her hair, so that it tickled her face and floated a few stands in front of her eyes. “What are they?”
Evin grimaced. “Somewhere you never want to be.”
“The Judgment Spires,” Cyn filled in, somewhat more helpfully, from behind them. “Karyn will stick students up there sometimes, for punishment. When serious punishment is required.”
“Fortunately,” Evin said, “Karyn has never sent anyone to the spires for slacking off.”
“Are we slacking off?” Cyn said.
“Not yet,” Evin said. “But we’re about to.”
“We’ll be in trouble later,” Cyn warned.
“So we will.” Evin made a tossing motion with his hand. A ball of colored lights flew up from his palm, spun in the air, and exploded into a shower of rainbow sparks. “But the fun thing about later is that it’s not right now.”
Cyn rolled her eyes, a bit too exaggeratedly. “Do whatever you want. Ileni, let’s keep going.”
Ileni was still trying to think of a way to ask Evin about the lodestones. “I . . . um . . . I need a break.”
Cyn wrinkled her nose dismissively, and Ileni tensed. But before she could strike back—or change her mind—Cyn stepped away from the edge in a long swish of skirts. “All right, then. Lis?”
“What, because your preferred partner isn’t available?” Lis said.
Ileni turned around, feeling the abyss at her back. She was just in time to catch the poisonous look Lis shot her.
Cyn wielded her words like a blade, sharp and deliberate. “Really, Lis, you should get used to being second choice. It’s going to happen a lot in your life.”
“I volunteer to be third choice,” Evin said promptly. He propped one elbow back, resting it on thin air, and tilted his head at Cyn. “In fact, if there’s a fourth place available . . .”
Lis ignored him. She glared at her sister. “Someday, you’ll realize that not everybody loves you as much as you think they do. I’m looking forward to that moment.”
“How nice,” Cyn said. “It’s not as if you have much to look forward to.”
“What about that slacking?” Evin said hastily as Lis stepped forward. “We all have that to look forward to. I’m brimming with anticipation.”
Lis made a sound that was almost a snarl. Her gaze snagged on Ileni, and her mouth worked as if she was tasting something sour. “And I’d imagine you’ve never been anyone’s first choice in your life.”
“You’re wrong,” Ileni said, but her voice cracked. She had always thought she was first . . . but it had been an illusion. Only her power had mattered. She hadn’t even been first to Tellis, not in the end.
And she had never dreamed she might come first to Sorin.
Ileni stood in front of the mirror that night, marveling that she looked the same. Soon after that morning’s conversation, the training plateau had been taken over by a dozen younger students, whom Cyn had dismissively referred to as “noble novices.” The advanced students had gone to the dining cavern for lunch, and then Ileni had spent the rest of the afternoon training in her room, despite Evin’s and Cyn’s invitation that she join them in some sort of flying game—and despite Lis’s clear delight that she had declined.
She stared at her reflection for a long time, feeding herself reasons for not killing the four people who propped up the Empire, reasons more substantial than I don’t want to.
Or, worse: I like them. They don’t deserve to die.
Those thoughts were betrayals, signs of weakness, so she came up with others. Reasons that would make sense to Sorin.
I don’t know enough yet.
There might be a better way.
The magic hummed within her, calling her a liar.
She had thought, in the Assassins’ Caves, that she was strong. She had wanted Sorin so desperately—she still did want him—and she had left anyhow. But that had been nothing compared to this.
Sorin was a part of her, a piece of her heart. The constant ache inside her, the pain of ripping out that part, was her price for walking away from him. But magic was all of her. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to walk away from it.
Knowing your weakness is itself a strength. The master’s words, in Sorin’s voice.
Ileni flung the blanket aside and got to her feet. She could not spend weeks here, as she had at the caves, learning the truth and making up her mind. She couldn’t trust her mind. Another few days of using magic and she would be trapped by her own weakness.
She had to find the source of the lodestones’ power. Find out if there was another way. If she could stop the flow of power into stones, without killing anyone, she would do it now. Tonight. Rip away her own magic along with the Empire’s, before it hurt too badly.
Too late. It would hurt, and terribly. But she would do it anyhow.
She pulled her dagger from under her pillow—the dagger Arxis had handed her, as a taunt and a warning. More fool him. A finding spell based merely on touch was immensely difficult—but power filled her, pulled from the testing arena with its hundreds of lodestones, and she knew it wouldn’t be difficult at all.
She shouted the words of the spell, and the silence swallowed them. The magic flowed through her, vast and intoxicating, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. What she could do, with this much power . . .
Knowing your weakness.
She didn’t let herself stop to think. When the dagger flared red and violet, when a spark from it hovered in the air, she banished the magic. Then she hastily pulled on a too-loose dress from the wardrobe and followed the spark out into the dark corridor.
By now, Ileni knew better than to surprise an assassin. But she also didn’t want to alert anyone else to her presence in Arxis’s room. So when her initial soft knock elicited no reaction, she spent a few minutes wrapping a ward around herself, then used a sliver of magic to open the door. She slipped inside and braced herself.
Arxis’s first dagger bounced off her chest. His second slid sideways across her throat without leaving a mark and dropped to the floor at her feet. Then he was behind her, a thin wire wrapped around her neck, jerking Ileni’s head back even as the wire pressed harmlessly against her warded throat.
“I just want to talk,” Ileni croaked.
Arxis’s response was to pull the garrote harder. If Ileni’s ward had been less tightly made, she wouldn’t have been able to make a sound. Irun’s method for killing sorcerers was, apparently, now common knowledge among the assassins.
But she had been prepared for this, and what would have worked on an imperial sorcerer was less effective against a carefully prepared Renegai ward. Ileni drew in a breath and uttered a spell.
The garrote snapped in half. Arxis rolled and came to his feet in front of her. With a word, Ileni froze him where he stood.
“I’m on your side,” she snapped. Well, sort of. “Stop trying to kill me.”
Arxis didn’t bother to strain against her spell. He didn’t try a counterspell, either—which was smart; against Ileni, it would have been futile. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.
“I came,” Ileni said, “because I need your help to accomplish my own mission.”
Still Arxis said nothing. Cautiously, Ileni released him, holding the spell ready just in case. The assassin didn’t move.
She took a deep breath. “I am here to stop the flow of power to the lodestones.”
Arxis leaned back slightly, and she tensed, but all he did was smile scornfully. “Are you.”
“Yes.
But in order to do that, I have to know where the source of that power is.” Sweat tickled the edge of her brow. She resisted the urge to wipe it away, though she was sure he had already noticed it. “The master told me you would take me there.”
Silence.
“He said . . .” A surge of inspiration. “He said you would understand what had to be done.”
A muscle twitched in Arxis’s jaw.
In her village—and, probably, in the Empire—people spoke of the assassins as blindly obedient, killing tools with no thoughts of their own. Ileni knew better. The master had always challenged his students to make their own decisions.
“And he said,” Ileni added, “that we are both being tested.”
Arxis’s lips remained curled in a sneer, but his eyes were thoughtful. The master’s tests were both legendary and constant within the caves. It was a rare advantage to actually be told one was being tested.
At least, it was an advantage when it wasn’t a trick.
Ileni couldn’t tell whether Arxis believed her or not. Finally, he jerked his chin and said, “I will show you. But not tonight.”
When? and How? and Show me what? jostled against her teeth. Ileni said, “Why not tonight?”
“Because my own mission takes precedence. I have no excuse for going into the city in the middle of the night. If we’re caught, I’ll be exposed.”
“In the city? That’s where they keep them?” Ileni frowned. “Wouldn’t it be safer to keep them here?”
Arxis tilted his head to the side. “When you say them, Teacher, who exactly do you mean?”
The way he said Teacher reminded her of Irun, of his fingers clamped over her mouth. She shivered slightly. “The slaves.”
Arxis remained perfectly still for a moment, and then he began to laugh.
A flush crept over Ileni’s body. “You know what I mean. The people they breed and keep in cages—” He laughed harder, though no louder, and she ground to a halt.
His laugh shut off as abruptly as her words. “You know, Teacher, I find it hard to believe the master sent you here still believing Renegai children’s stories.”
The sense of danger overwhelmed Ileni’s embarrassment. She tried to fight down her blush, and when that didn’t work, she tried to ignore it. “He told me I wouldn’t understand the truth until I saw it.”