Death Marked (12 page)

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you. But first, give me my magic back.”

The sky outside her window was faintly pink when Ileni left her room, tingling all over with magic, aching with guilt. Karyn, though clearly not finished, had left for “a meeting with the skyriders’ battle commander.” “But this is most useful,” she had added. “I hadn’t realized their fire spells were still so primitive. I will be back for another talk soon.”

“What are the skyriders?” Ileni had asked. But Karyn had simply vanished.

The assassins’ fire spells were, in fact, far from primitive. Ileni had done her best to mix falsehoods with truths, supplying as much misinformation as she thought Karyn would believe. Which wasn’t much, but was better than nothing. It seemed she had gotten away with it. Next time, when she wasn’t caught off guard, she could probably get away with more. . . .

Next time.
The contents of her stomach surged upward, making her clamp her mouth shut. How many mornings could she play the betrayer—
be
the betrayer—with an imperial sorceress, spilling secrets the assassins had kept for centuries?

Why not end it now?
Sorin whispered in her mind, and she had no coherent answer. But she never had, in the face of his certainty.

She reached for magic—finally, even though she didn’t deserve to—and called up a magelight. Power rushed through her like cool water, a thread of joy even in her turmoil.

Maybe she could get in some early practice today.

By now she knew her way through the corridors, so she kept the magelight dim, just enough of a glow to prevent her from walking into a wall. She didn’t want to attract attention—not because she was afraid, but because she was
in no mood to talk to anyone. When she heard a door creak, she stopped and snuffed the magelight out, standing cloaked in darkness until whoever it was could pass and leave her alone.

A new magelight flickered on—also softly, but bright enough to illuminate the face of the person closing the door.

Arxis.

And judging by the rumpled state of his clothes, the room he was coming out of wasn’t his own.

Ileni froze, and Arxis looked straight at her despite the darkness. Then he continued down the hall and disappeared around a curve.

Ileni stood with her back pressed against the wall, heart pounding. She wasn’t sure why this bothered her so much. Something about his expression . . . as if he was saying,
I fooled you.
Perhaps she should wonder if someone was dead in that room, but . . .

Assassins were not discouraged from assignations outside the caves, and their appeal to women was legendary. What would it have been like to meet Sorin on a mission, to sense the undercurrent of danger in him without knowing its source? She would have been drawn to him even more strongly, surely, if she hadn’t known he was a murderer.
She felt a stab of sympathy for whoever was in that room, followed swiftly by wariness.

Seduction was a perk, but it was also a tool. Her attraction to Sorin had been part of the master’s plan. This assignation might be part of a plan, too.

Which meant Ileni had to know who that room belonged to. Ignoring a squeamish reluctance, she whispered a spell, silent and invisible, to tell her who was still in the room Arxis had left.

She cast the spell, not sure she would recognize whoever it was. But she did, instantly, and heard her own gasp tear through the darkness.

So much for silence.

Fortunately, there was no one to hear. Arxis was long gone. And the spell showed Lis fast asleep in her room, hair lying in tangled black strands over her face.

This might mean nothing. It could be that Arxis was dallying with Lis just for fun. But if so . . . why Lis and not Cyn? Cyn was the prettier twin—which sounded ridiculous, but was true nonetheless. Ileni had no doubt, either, that Arxis could have found his way into Cyn’s room if he had wanted to.

Was Lis a way to Arxis’s target? The duke of Famis
had been killed when his wife’s assassin lover coated her skin with poison. But Evin and Lis barely spoke, so that didn’t make sense . . . unless Evin wasn’t Arxis’s target after all. Ileni’s mind whirled, her suspicions tilting on their axis.

Why should it matter to me?

She scowled and continued to the bridge. She didn’t want to think about any of this, not now, not when her mind was already cluttered with shame and confusion. All she wanted was to use her magic, and do it alone, in silence.

So of course, when she got to the plateau, Evin was already there.

The sky was lighter by then, the hazy beginnings of sunrise pouring over the tops of the mountains, gathering strength to break through the dusky gray sky. Evin sat on the plateau with his back to the bridge. The air around him shimmered with color, as if he was in the center of a rainbow bubble. The spell he was using—multiple spells, she realized, all working simultaneously—were immensely powerful, and he played with them as lightly as if they were magelights or umbrella shields.

A hard, hot knot coalesced deep in Ileni’s gut. Evin glanced over his shoulder at her, and she snapped, “Can you
take up a little less space with your pretty colors? I need to practice.”

Evin leaped to his feet in a graceful arc, using a hint of power to propel himself. He braced his legs apart and murmured swiftly and musically under his breath. The colors swirled and gathered in toward him, then exploded above his head, a burst of lights and colors shooting upward into the sky.

They lasted only a moment before fading into sparkles, and then into nothing. The plateau seemed empty and dull, the only colors the stark contrast of gray stone and paler gray sky.

“All yours,” Evin said, with a sweeping bow.

A shard of guilt pricked Ileni. “I didn’t say you had to get rid of it. You could have just made it smaller.”

Evin sat on the ground with a thud and leaned back on his elbows. “I
could
have, but it would have been greatly taxing.”

That was a lie—Evin had enough skill to contain a spell without even noticing. The knot in Ileni’s gut tightened. She strode to the other end of the plateau and focused on the latest thing Cyn had taught her—a complicated spell to call up and focus rain. Water, it turned out, could be an extremely effective weapon.

With her back to the bridge, Ileni found herself facing a range of mountains so high that the clouds floated beneath their snow-splattered peaks. They reared toward the horizon in a way that made the sky look low, rather than the mountains high. Above and between them, a formation of black figures circled against the gray sky; it took Ileni a moment to realize they weren’t birds, but people.
Skyriders
, presumably. She could feel, even from this far away, the massive amounts of magic surrounding them.

Behind her, Evin was silent—which was, for him, a small miracle—but she could feel him watching her, and it made her shoulders tighten. She waited until the skyriders had disappeared into the gray horizon, then tried to loosen her muscles as she waved her arms through the preparatory exercise and began the chant. His presence sliced through her concentration, like a strain of discordant music. She got an accent wrong and stumbled to a stop.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Evin said.

Ileni lowered her arms and spun around. He wasn’t watching her after all; he was lying flat on his back, hands laced together behind his head, studying the hazy sky. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not a citizen of the Empire. You don’t have to
devote your life to combat, just because you have the skill. Not if you don’t want to.”

Her jaw tightened. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”

Evin laughed. There was something odd in it—almost bitter, and very unlike him. But his voice was lazy and relaxed. “Well, you might die. That bothers some people.”

“I’m sure it does.” The scorn in her own voice surprised Ileni. She sounded, just then, like Sorin. “Shouldn’t you be glad to die for the Empire?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Evin rolled onto his stomach and clambered to his feet. “Why would anyone be glad to die?”

Ileni opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Don’t pay too much attention to Cyn.” Evin spread his hands apart, making twines of colored light dance between them. “She likes fighting, and she doesn’t mind killing as much as she should, but even
she
would prefer to avoid dying.”

Ileni didn’t doubt it. Cyn was fierce and violent, and cruel in her anger, but she was no assassin.

Evin studied her face, his broad brow creased. “I don’t know if you realized what you were getting into when you came here. I can help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Ileni said.

In the silence, she heard the echoes of her nastiness and winced. She tried to think up an apology, hoping she could manage to get it out once she did. But Evin didn’t look hurt or angry. He frowned at her, and all he said was, “Are you going to tell me why you’re always angry at me?”

It sounded so reasonable. But what could she say?
If I were you, I would do so much more with what you have.

She couldn’t say that, and she couldn’t bear the patient, open expression on Evin’s face. She whirled on her heel without a word and walked across the plateau and over the bridge.

As she reached the middle, the sky above her erupted in streaks of fiery green light. They danced in the sky, shifting and wavering, widening and narrowing, eerie ghosts that turned the entire sky unearthly.

Ileni didn’t stop. Whatever Evin was trying to say, however beautifully he was saying it, she didn’t care. It was nothing but an illusion, and she wasn’t in the mood for illusions.

She had been living with them long enough—since she was old enough to be told them. But she knew better now. She had no power and no destiny, and she didn’t even have anything to believe in. There was nothing worth
fighting for, nothing good and pure, no path that didn’t end in pain.

It was her illusions that had brought her to this point. And she was going to need more than illusions to get past it.

Ileni learned fast that the casual nonchalance of the first few days had been an anomaly. With Karyn back, the training was more intense than anything she had experienced among her own people. Ileni threw herself eagerly into the mental focus, the grim dedication, the constant tension. It kept her too occupied to think.

At least, when she was sparring with Cyn. Which was most of the time.

Lis was sometimes intense, too, but spent most of her time deep in a sulk that nobody seemed inclined to rouse her from. Evin was, even in Karyn’s presence, a slacker: refusing to take anything seriously, so powerful it didn’t matter. Sometimes Ileni admired him for his self-confidence, the ease with which he ignored Karyn’s anger and Cyn’s contempt. Other times, she hated him so much she could barely breathe.

But that wasn’t his fault, not really. So two days later, when she found herself alone on the training plateau with him, she said, “I’m sorry.”

Evin glanced at her over his shoulder. They were supposed to be practicing a ward Karyn had taught them that morning, but he was twirling a cloud of colorful sparkles around his hand, stretching and closing his fingers, playing with the ephemeral colors as if they were putty. “About what?”

“The day before yesterday, when you were doing that thing with the colors. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” He regarded her through long-lashed dark eyes, and for some reason she felt compelled to add, “I’d just come from talking to Karyn. I was in a bad mood.”

He snapped his fingers, and the colors twirled. “Well, that would do it.”

Ileni hesitated. But he seemed genuinely unresentful. “Cyn said . . . is Karyn your aunt?”

Something dangerous dropped over his carefree features, then was gone almost before she had noticed it. “Yes. My mother’s sister.”

Every social grace Ileni possessed was screaming at her to drop this topic. But she was not here to be liked. And she didn’t care what Evin thought of her. “I’ve never seen your mother here.”

“No, I would imagine you haven’t.” He closed his hand,
and the colors coalesced into a tight, swirling ball. “Why does it matter?”

Ileni didn’t know why it mattered, but she suspected it did. The assassins were known to kill people as punishment—or warning—for their relatives’ actions. And Karyn had infiltrated and attacked the Assassins’ Caves.

Evin opened his hands wide, turning the sparkles into many-hued streams. He traced them lazily through the air, forming a series of shimmering curlicues. “It doesn’t give me any sort of extra privileges, if that’s what you think. Karyn finds me quite a disappointment.” He twirled his finger, tightening the colors into a long spiral. “Of course, you agree with her.”

“No,” Ileni said, utterly unconvincingly. “Where are your parents, then?”

“Dead,” Evin said.

He said it lightly, easily, the way he said everything. The colors continued spinning fanciful designs, bright and airy. It had to be a pretense, didn’t it? It wasn’t possible that even he truly didn’t care. Not about this.

But his carefree mask made it easier to push him. “I’m sorry. How did they die?”

Evin dropped his hand, leaving his designs to fade in the
air. His tone remained mild. “This is an odd follow-up to an apology.”

Ileni turned briefly to examine the vista of gray stone and blue sky, afraid her face would flush. Impoliteness was surprisingly difficult, even when directed at someone who didn’t deserve her respect. “You don’t seem very grief-stricken, which among my people would mean—” She couldn’t figure out any sensible end to that sentence. “Never mind.”

Evin jerked his shoulders, a motion that seemed to have been intended as a shrug. “They chose to put themselves in the path of death, and they didn’t care much about me when they made that decision. So it seems only fair for me not to care about them in return. I’m sure you would be above such emotions, since you’re in general so much better than everyone here.”

“I—”
Hadn’t realized I was being obvious about it.
“I don’t think I’m better than everyone,” she finished weakly.

To her surprise, Evin burst out laughing. “Only than me?”