by Leah Cypess
“Really, Evin,” Cyn said. She rolled her eyes and sauntered back to the other side of the plateau. “You are such an annoyance. No one asked you to get involved.”
“Call it a whim,” Evin said. His eyes were on Ileni.
“I call everything you do a whim.”
“This shouldn’t be too difficult for you, then.”
Ileni’s body finally believed it could move. A quick, easy spell healed the cut on her cheek, just as Cyn had predicted. She got to her feet and faced the other girl. Cyn propped one hand on her hip.
“I could destroy you,” Ileni said. Her voice shook. “I could destroy all of you. And I think I will.”
Cyn laughed and flicked an errant strand of hair away from her face.
“Well, Evin,” she said, “I guess that’s your cue to say, You’re welcome.”
Ileni’s throat tightened. She shouldn’t have said it. But she also knew there was no risk in saying it. No one here thought she could possibly be a threat.
She turned her back on Cyn’s smirk and Evin’s frown, soared into the air, and fled.
She didn’t soar very far. She kept close to the bridge, and, as soon as she was far enough from Cyn to feel safe, floated down and landed on it, gripping the rail with trembling hands. She was halfway across, close enough to the main peak to see a group of novices in green tunics filing along one of the lower ledges. She probably could have made it farther, but that would have meant using more stolen magic.
She had barely stepped off the bridge when someone swooped in front of her. Ileni tensed, but it wasn’t Cyn. It was Evin, and one look at her expression made him switch directions and soar upward instead.
“I’m sorry that happened,” he said. He braced himself against the mountainside, his magic holding him to the cliff face, and looked down. “It didn’t mean anything. You caught Cyn in a bad mood.”
“Sure,” Ileni said. “Among my people, we also respond to bad moods by torturing our friends.”
His brow furrowed. “We don’t all respond that way.”
“But you think it’s normal. She isn’t going to be punished, is she? Nobody’s going to treat her like the monster she is. Because you’re used to it. Because everything you do is about causing pain.”
Evin blinked, and Ileni braced herself for a scathing retort she would very much deserve. She was no better, after all—lashing out at Evin because she was angry at Cyn. And at herself.
But what Evin said was, “She will be punished, if you go to Karyn. That was unacceptable. She could have really hurt you.”
“What will she get?” Ileni asked. “A stern lecture?” Not that any of the asssassins would have gotten even that much. They were too honest to pretend brutality was beneath them. “You’re all so important, aren’t you? The sorcerers who hold the Empire together. You’re untouchable, and you know it.”
“We do get away with a lot,” Evin admitted. “In my case, that’s absolutely justified, but in Cyn’s, it’s more of an . . . unfortunate necessity.”
“Why?” Ileni said. “Why is it necessary? Why can’t you just stop? You don’t need this much power—”
“We do, actually,” Evin said. “We have powerful enemies.”
“You could leave the assassins alone, find a compromise—”
Evin’s laugh was the harshest sound she had ever heard emerge from his mouth. “The assassins want us dead. What sort of compromise do you suggest? Shall we die just a little bit?”
She had managed to forget, for a moment, what the assassins had done to him. Ileni drew in a breath.
Evin looked down at her from his spiderlike perch against the gray rock. “There is no compromise possible. Their goal is to annihilate us. They have made themselves into an enemy that must be destroyed.”
She had never heard him sound so fierce. Apparently there was one thing he did care about.
Ileni tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “They can’t be destroyed. Haven’t you figured that out? The caves are impregnable. No army could ever get in, and the wards are unbreachable—”
Her voice died.
There was a breach. There was a mirror in her room, and the portal still attached to it could reach the Assassins’ Caves despite all the wards between them.
It was as if Sorin was there, watching her. She saw herself through his eyes, holding her stolen magic tight, in earnest conversation with an imperial sorcerer. Like it mattered what excuses Evin made.
Evin didn’t seem to notice her silence. He slid down the wall until his feet touched the ledge. “I never told you how my parents died.”
She found her voice, though it was weak and hoarse. “Cyn told me.”
“Did she tell you why they were murdered?”
Ileni shook her head.
“My mother discovered that a city on the southern coast had been taken over by supporters of the assassins. She infiltrated their movement, then organized a raid. She killed them all. Three hundred, officially, though that’s probably a bit exaggerated.”
A bit exaggerated. “So how many did she kill? Merely two hundred?”
Evin’s jaw pulsed. “There are millions who live under the Empire’s protection. The assassins threaten all of them.”
A familiar argument. “Then why,” Ileni said, “are you so angry at her?”
“My mother was warned.” Evin’s voice was wound tight, as if the slightest waver might break it. “They sent her a message: if she continued going after the assassins, she would die. I was only ten years old. Girad was an infant. We needed her, and she didn’t care.”
Ileni hesitated. The pain in his voice seemed to preclude argument. His mother was a murderer. And yet . . . “How could she make a decision based on two people, when it affected the fate of so many others?”
Evin gave her a look of searing contempt, and Ileni’s spine snapped so straight she felt a crack.
“I never would,” she said, and for that moment she was sure of it. “I would never do the wrong thing for the sake of any one person. No matter how much I loved him.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Evin’s expression was every bit as scornful as his voice. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by your nobility of purpose. By your willingness to sacrifice someone you love.”
Her heart was pounding too hard for a theoretical conversation. “For the good of—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He stepped closer. His eyes were flat and remote, as if he was a different person. “Heap your scorn on me all you want, but don’t expect me to care. Because I, Ileni, would sacrifice millions of people I don’t know for the sake of one person I love.”
No. This wasn’t a theoretical conversation, not to either of them. “You’re talking about Girad.”
Evin’s mouth twisted. “He’s more powerful than even I am. The Empire needs him, too. But they won’t have him. I’ll be their soldier, but Girad is going to have a different sort of life. No matter what I have to do to protect him.”
Ileni swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t it be his choice?”
Evin gave her a withering look. “Who gets to make their own choices?”
None of us, Ileni thought. Every one of them had been raised to be a weapon.
But she had refused. She was here, among people who
would all be dead if she agreed to be what Absalm had designed her to be. Despite what she had seen at Death’s Door, she could still choose not to be a weapon.
Which didn’t change the fact that Evin was right. It was too late to choose to be anything else.
The last thing Ileni wanted to do, after Evin flew away, was return to the plateau. But she did it anyhow, one laborious step after another. If she was to have any chance at all of being a weapon of her own choosing, she still needed more answers.
She was in luck; Cyn and Lis were engaged in battle, magic flying fast and furious between them. Neither glanced at Ileni as she crossed the plateau to where Arxis sat, cross-legged and straight backed, wat
ching them. By now, the sky was roiling with dark gray clouds, and a few damp drops dotted the top of the plateau.
“I found Bazel,” Ileni said, sitting beside Arxis with a thump. “In the city.”
He didn’t react—though that meant nothing; he was an assassin. Ileni gambled. “How did you know Bazel would be there to meet me?”
Lis cried out, and Arxis returned his attention to the fight. “I didn’t know. My guess is, he’s been in the city for a while, watching for you. As soon as we entered the city, he signaled me that you were to come with him.”
“Signaled you how?”
Arxis laughed. “You don’t really expect me to tell you that, do you? As teacher, you had access to a few of our secrets. Don’t imagine you know them all.”
A wind whistled across the plateau, scattering stray droplets on Ileni’s face. Cyn adjusted her spell swiftly to compensate, but Lis’s next strike went wide. “Right. Well, Bazel and I were interrupted. I don’t think I saw everything I was supposed to see.”
A volley of green light flashed between the sisters. “Yield,” Cyn called, and Arxis got smoothly to his feet, as if Ileni had ceased to exist.
“Wait,” Ileni said. “The master—”
He looked down at her, eyes hooded. “The master, apparently, sent Bazel to show you what you need to see. Go pester him.”
“Yield!” Cyn said again, and Lis gritted her teeth and shook her head. The droplets were by now a steady drizzle, hitting Ileni’s hair and face.
“Well,” Arxis said, “this will go well.”
“This conversation isn’t over,” Ileni snapped. “This is Bazel we’re talking about. You want me to rely on him?”
Lis glanced over at them, and Arxis’s face immediately dropped into an expression of concern, focused on her. His voice, though, was cool. “It doesn’t matter what I think. The master sent him. That’s all I need to know.”
The master is dead. I killed him. She had to bite her lip, hard, to keep from saying it. Rain slid across her face and under the neck of her dress.
Magic twisted through the air, and Lis screamed and dropped to her knees. Arxis kept his anxious expression, but his voice was a sneer. “You’ve been here too long, Teacher, and forgotten how assassins treat our leaders. We don’t criticize and lounge about and disobey.”
Ileni scrambled to her feet. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand,” Arxis said, “that we had an agreement. You’ll get no more help from me.”
“If you’ll just listen—”
But Arxis was already rushing toward Lis. He dropped beside her, putting his arms around her. Lis buried her face in his shoulder, and he whispered something into her ear, his lips brushing the side of her face.
Ileni looked quickly away, heat rising to her cheeks. This was what she and Sorin must have looked like, from the outside. Sordid, and stupid, and predictable.
But this was different. Ileni had known exactly how stupid she was being, falling in love with a killer. Lis had no idea what Arxis was.
Cyn watched the pair, ignoring the rain that slicked her hair to her face. Her lips were pressed together, her eyebrows drawn sharply with concern. For Lis?
The rain was pelting Ileni now, pressing her clothes to her skin. No one was paying attention to her, which made it easy to flee yet again.
The mirror seemed misty that night, her reflection indistinct, as if something too faint to see was rippling through the glass. Was Sorin on the other side, trying to reach her? Or was she just imagining it because she wanted to see him so badly?
Or did she? If she really wanted to, she could. She could open the portal easily, from this side.
She couldn’t imagine what she would say to him once she did.
Ileni touched the mirror’s surface. She would only get one chance. Karyn would feel the portal open, and then she would repair the breach in the wards, and Ileni’s connection to Sorin would be gone.
This wasn’t the time to use it. She didn’t need Sorin, not now.
She needed to know what else she had been meant to see at Death’s Door.
But who could she ask? Arxis wasn’t going to tell her. Evin . . . Evin probably didn’t know anything he didn’t care to know.
Cyn? Cyn might feel guilty about what she had done on the plateau that day—she seemed good at feeling guilty once it was too late to change anything. Ileni could use that. She could go to Cyn right now, offering forgiveness. She would ask her why she had been so angry, steer that into a discussion about the lodestones. . . .
Ileni let her hand slide away from the mirror. It wouldn’t work. Cyn was a true believer, a soldier of the Empire. She might question the tactics, but she would never question the goal.
Ileni had been just like her once.
She tried to despise Cyn for her blindness, but gave up when the effort was only half-born. Cyn knew her place, knew it was important, knew she was striving for something worthwhile. Something great. She knew she was on the right side. And even though she was wrong, that knowledge made her strong.
While Ileni knew—deep in her bones, bound in her heart—the unhappiness that came from suspecting you were on the wrong side.
And so she knew exactly who could provide her with answers.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Outside Lis’s door, in a dim hallway lit only by her magelight, Ileni hesitated yet again. What if Lis was asleep? Worse, what if she wasn’t alone? An image flashed through her mind: Arxis leaning toward Lis, he a remorseless predator, she hypnotized prey.
Just do it. Ileni rapped hard on the wooden door.
Long moments passed in echoing silence. Knock again? Or leave? Ileni lifted her hand, lowered it, and was just stepping back when the door opened.
Lis was, to Ileni’s relief, fully dressed. But when she saw Ileni, her smile turned into a blank, disappointed stare. Seconds later, it was a scowl. “What are you doing here?”
“Where,” Ileni said, “does the lodestones’ power come from?”
Lis went still for a moment. Then her lip curled. “I think you already know the answer to that. If you’re too stupid to figure it out, that’s your own problem.” She stepped back and started to close the door.
Ileni used a burst of magic to push it back open—perhaps a bit more magic than was, strictly speaking, necessary. Lis staggered back a few steps. Ileni stepped into the doorway. “Do you want to tell me why you hate me?”
“No,” Lis said, without blinking. “Not really.”
“Fine,” Ileni said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”
“How fascinating.” Lis grabbed the door handle, obviously about to slam the door.
Ileni grabbed the edge of the door. “If you answer them, I won’t tell Cyn about you and Arxis.”
Lis laughed in her face. “You think Cyn doesn’t know? We’re sisters.”
So much for that. Ileni tried to think of another threat, and came up empty.
“Besides,” Lis snapped, “why would she care? Come to think of it, why do you care?”
The answer to that should have been obvious, given Ileni and Arxis’s supposed past. Ileni blinked, focusing on Lis. Not a hint of jealousy fueled the other girl’s anger. Somehow, she knew that story wasn’t true.
What else does she know? Slowly, Ileni said, “I have information about Arxis. You want to hear it.”
Lis rolled her eyes. “Do I? Or do you just want to say it?”
“You have to stay away from him. I know him.”
Lis leaned back. “I know exactly who Arxis is. Far better than you do.”
“I doubt that.”
Lis’s lip curled. “You don’t know anything. Haven’t you realized that by now?”
“Yes,” Ileni said softly. “I have. That’s why I’m here. To ask you for help.”
It hurt, almost physica
lly—exposing her soft side to an enemy. And it didn’t even work. Lis said, “Well, I’m sorry you wasted your time,” and used a pulse of magic to slam the door shut.
Ileni snatched her hand back and met Lis’s magic with her own—no, not my own. They were both drawing on the lodestones, but Ileni was pulling in more magic than Lis, and using it far more skillfully. While holding the door open, she gathered power into a tight pattern, and—with a final, short word—shattered the other girl’s spell.
“I know you’re not like the others,” Ileni hissed. “You know what you’re doing is wrong. So prove it. Tell me.”
Lis’s face was flushed red, but she stood her ground. “Why bother? There’s nothing you can do about it. No one person can change anything, especially not one with all your interesting . . . scruples. If you knew the truth, you would go back to your village and hide there for the rest of your life. This place ruins everything it touches.”
“In that case,” Ileni said softly, “you have nothing to lose.”
“That’s always been true.” Lis turned away, and Ileni thought she wasn’t going to say anything more. Instead, she snapped, “I know you were at Death’s Door.”
“What?”
“I saw you. I hope you enjoyed the show.” Lis lifted her chin. “You didn’t see the whole thing, though, did you? You didn’t go down a level?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ileni said.
“I’ve noticed.” Lis put one hand on the door handle. “Do you honestly think it’s only the old and sick? That we’re willing to steal two days of life—or a week—or a month—where exactly do you think the limit is, Ileni?”
Ileni stepped back.
Lis sneered. “Go deeper, if you want the whole truth. Or don’t. Because once you know it, you’ll have to live with it.”
This time, when Lis slammed the door shut, Ileni didn’t fight her. She stood for several seconds staring at the dark, opaque wood.
