Death Sworn

by Leah Cypess

Page 14

  Author: Leah Cypess

  Sorin’s arm knotted, but his voice remained even. “Everything that happens here is part of the master’s plan. What happened to Absalm and Cadrel, what happened to Jastim, what Irun did . . . it’s all part of a pattern, and the master is the one weaving the pattern. But I can only see pieces of it. I don’t understand the whole thing. ”

  “Even I can see this part of it. The part where I’m going to be the next sorcerer to die. ” She said it without feeling much of anything at all. A film of clammy sweat covered her forehead.

  “No,” Sorin said, with a fierceness that surprised her. He sounded as if he really cared.

  But she was only surprised for a moment. The master had, after all, assigned him to keep her safe. Had given him permission to care.

  Which meant it somehow fit into the master’s plans that he care. But she couldn’t think about that right now. Her fear receded, very slightly, and that was all that mattered. He was on her side. Perhaps she did have a chance after all.

  “Thank you,” she said, and Sorin looked at her sharply.

  “I can’t be with you all the time, Teacher. I think it’s time I taught you to fight. ”

  She stared at him as if he had started spouting poetry. “What? No. ”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a Renegai. We don’t fight. ”

  He laughed. “You threw me into a wall the day you arrived. What was that?”

  “A defensive spell!”

  “Fine. I’ll teach you defensive maneuvers. ”

  She could still feel Irun’s hands on her mouth, and her complete helplessness as she struggled for air. Defensive maneuvers . . . But she was forgetting something. She said, as haughtily as she could, “I’m a sorceress, remember? I have certain defenses of my own. ”

  “They didn’t do you much good today, did they?”

  And how was she going to explain that? “I was overconfident. I thought I had time, once he stopped talking. Next time I won’t make that mistake. ”

  “Neither will Irun,” Sorin said. “He must be able to sense it when you draw upon your magic, or he wouldn’t have talked at all before he attacked. But does it matter? Two weapons are always better than one, especially when neither has to be carried. The more skills you hold within yourself—”

  “Spare me the pithy one-liners of assassin philosophy. ”

  “It’s one of the master’s teachings,” Sorin said stiffly.

  Despite herself, Ileni thought of the fighters on the training floor, the deadly graceful dances she walked past every day. As a child she had been athletic, outstripping most of the others at races and games. She had left all that behind, of course, when it came time to focus on her truly important skills.

  Sorin was watching her with smoky coal eyes. “You could never match one of us, but any ability at all would give you the advantage of surprise. And what if you were fighting another sorcerer, one more powerful than you? A physical attack wouldn’t be expected among your kind. It could give you an edge. ”

  She would never fight, or even meet, another sorcerer again. It came back to her in a second, how it felt to be surrounded by people who thought the way she did, accepted her, respected her. And then, just as fast, the memory rushed away, leaving a dull ache behind.

  “All right,” Ileni said abruptly.

  “How gracious of you to agree. ” He walked over and held out his hand. “But first things first. Are you calm enough to use magic yet?”

  “Yes,” she said, hoping it was true. Ignoring the hand, she pushed herself to her knees, then to her feet. She swayed a little bit, but he didn’t try to steady her. Instead he stepped back.

  “You’re not even bruised,” he observed.

  She wasn’t? Ileni held up her unblemished arms, white but for some faint brown freckles, and saw that he was right. She still felt hurt, but that was just memory.

  Healing magic had always been a focus for the Renegai, and those spells were so well practiced and so ingrained that using them was an instinct. She had used the healing spell without even realizing she was doing it. It had taken so little power she hadn’t felt the difference.

  “Of course not,” she said, but despite her best effort, her voice didn’t sound even slightly confident. “I’m a sorceress. ”

  “Then let’s get that knife. ” He held out his hand, and she stared at it until he dropped it. “You’re going to do the spell, and I’m going to see the results. Don’t even try to trick me this time. ”

  “I won’t,” she whispered.

  Sorin hesitated, and she thought he would say something else. Instead he turned and led her out of the cavern.

  It was a long walk to Sorin’s room, and on the way they passed numerous boys Ileni had never seen before, most of them younger than her students. Some were mere children. She should have pitied them—would have, an hour ago—but every time one of them glanced at her, her skin shrank inward. One was a child who looked no older than six, his face round and unformed, in contrast to the determined set of his mouth. She looked at him, at his smooth cheeks and soft chin, and thought, Enemy.

  Despite the healing spell, she still felt as if her whole body was damaged from Irun’s attack: her neck, her jaw, her side. Her sense that there was something sacred and inviolable about her own skin.

  Was attack even the right word, when it had been so easy for him?

  She found herself drawing closer to Sorin, even though he was the same: a killer, strong enough to snap her neck, trained to do so without compunction. Her ward might protect her, but she had no doubt he could find a way around that, given time. The only difference between him and the others was a command. And that command could be withdrawn at any time.

  She drew near to him anyhow, until she was so close her sleeve brushed his. He moved his arm away, and she felt briefly bereft. For a ridiculous moment she wished he would take her hand in his, hold it tight, and make her feel protected.

  It would be an illusion, but it would be better than nothing.

  A few seconds later they were in his room, which was even smaller than hers. No tapestries or rugs softened the austerity here. The entire inside of the room was smooth black stone.

  Sorin knelt, reached under his bed, and pulled out the knife. For some reason, the fact that they had the same hiding place struck Ileni as funny. She giggled, hearing the edge of hysteria in it, and Sorin turned and looked at her.

  “Never mind,” Ileni said, though he hadn’t asked. “Are you going to tell me now how you got the knife?”

  He nodded. “We keep all our blades in the knife-training room, and rotate them so they can be regularly sharpened. Any missing one would have been noticed eventually, so I knew the one that killed Cadrel had to have been returned there. I used a spell to find out which one was blooded at the time Cadrel died. ”

  He sounded very proud of himself. It was an easy enough spell, but Ileni didn’t find it difficult to say, “Very good. ” If he had asked her to do it, she might not have been able to.

  She went to his washing bowl and spilled some of the water onto the stone floor, where it spread slowly and irregularly. Then she knelt and used her finger to trace a pattern around the shallow puddle. “Give me the knife. ”

  Sorin knelt beside her, knife hilt out. Ileni laid it carefully in the center of the puddle and waited until the ripples had subsided.

  “Absalm never showed us how to do this,” Sorin said.

  Ileni gathered in her power, pushed away her fear that it wouldn’t be enough, and unleashed it with a word.

  The puddle shrank in toward the knife, gathering around it as if toward a whirlpool. They both leaned forward at the same time, and their heads almost cracked together. Sorin pulled back just in time, but remained so close she could feel his breath on her cheek.

  For another moment the water was still again, and then it rippled and shimmered, g
ently at first, then so violently the knife began to shake. Ileni leaned closer, frowning, and the water spurted from the floor and hit her directly in the face.

  It wasn’t a lot of water, but the surprise knocked her backward. Sorin reacted with a single leap that took him to the corner of the room, but by then the water was gone, splattered all over the floor and walls. A drop fell from the ceiling and landed on Ileni’s shoulder. The knife remained where it was, motionless on the floor, completely dry.

  “Was that supposed to happen?” Sorin inquired, from his position in the corner.

  “No,” Ileni said, and burst into tears.

  It was difficult to say who was more horrified, her or Sorin. Ileni tried to gain control of herself, but it was all too much. Nothing, nothing, was going the way it was supposed to. She wasn’t supposed to be this helpless, or this scared. She was supposed to have her magic to protect her. She wasn’t supposed to be forced to the ground like a hunted animal, waiting to find out whether she would suffocate before her neck snapped.

  She pressed her hands to her cheeks as she sobbed, her humiliation drowned in the enormity of everything else. She could be humiliated later, when she was less terrified and frustrated. The only tiny bright spot was that Sorin looked as helpless as she felt.

  How to throw assassins off balance: cry in front of them. She would have to find a way to pass that along to the next tutor.

  When it was clear that she wasn’t going to be able to stop crying within the next few seconds, she decided to talk through her sobs. Sorin would have to deal with it. “It was supposed to show the hand that threw the knife. Instead it showed me, as best it could, what threw the knife. It wasn’t a human hand. ”

  Sorin was still watching her as warily as if she might explode. “What was it?”

  The wild movement. The controlled outburst of power. She recognized it in her blood.

  “It was magic,” she said. She turned her head away, feeling her sobs begin to die as a cold horror wormed its way into her. This was even worse than knowing a regular assassin was after her. “A very complex spell. Nobody in these caves should have been able to perform it, but someone did. Cadrel was killed by magic. ”

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Ileni began testing her students for magical skill. She couldn’t really believe any of them had the ability to throw a knife with magic—while random throwing spells were easy enough, aiming and throwing a blade was as difficult with magic as without it—but she couldn’t think of any other possibility. Someone in these caves had done it, and she had to find him before she became his next victim.

  Despite the urgency, she put off testing Irun until she had no choice. On the fourth morning, after she had found every other student lacking, she finally called him up. Her skin shrank in on itself as he crossed the floor toward her, his wrist still wrapped in a tight white bandage.

  In the four days since his attack on her, Irun had not changed his behavior in the slightest, and she had been doing her best to return the favor—mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. Her chest constricted as he came close. She wanted to hurt him, to make him pay for what he had done. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything to him.

  But when his knife bounced off the far wall, hilt first, then skittered across the floor back to him, she allowed herself a faint sneer. “Clearly, this skill is too advanced. We’ll go back to the basic exercises we practiced last week, and I’ll try to think of a simpler technique to start with. ”

  Irun had stepped on the knife hilt to bring it to a stop. Complete silence fell while she waited for his retort. If she had targeted any of the other students like this—even Sorin—there would have been at least a snicker. If it had been Bazel, everyone would have been smirking. But the cavern was completely silent.

  “This is the first useful thing you’ve taught us,” Irun said at last. He flipped the knife up into the air and caught it by the hilt, all without looking at it. “You do know what it is we do, don’t you, Teacher?”