Death Marked (8 page)

“Sorry,” Cyn said from Ileni’s chair. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Ileni shrieked and whirled. The blanket tangled around her legs, and she nearly pitched sideways off the bed. She caught herself on the edge of the mattress and struggled to sit straight, kicking the blanket away.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped with all the dignity she could muster. Which wasn’t much.

Cyn shrugged, pretending not to notice Ileni’s display of grace. She was wearing a shockingly bright red gown. “Karyn couldn’t come. I was sent to tell you.”

I have something to take care of tomorrow.
Ileni tried to sound surprised. “Really? Why can’t she come?”

“She had to go deal with the Gaeran rebels.”

Ileni had no idea what that meant but couldn’t bring herself to ask. She’d had enough of displaying her ignorance the day before.

“Do you know,” Cyn said, “what she wants from you?”

“You heard her,” Ileni replied as evenly as she could. “She wants to learn healing.”

Cyn laughed. “I doubt that. We don’t spend much time on healing.”

“Among my people,” Ileni said, “we believe healing
is the most important use for magic.”

“How nice,” Cyn said. “But you’re here now.”

“And so are you, apparently.” Ileni swung her legs over the side of her bed. “Why?”

Cyn stood, pushing the chair back. “I was thinking we could spar, before anyone else gets up.”

Danger bells went off all over Ileni’s mind. “Why?”

“Apparently you’re good enough to be placed in our advanced group.” Cyn’s tone made it clear just how likely she thought
that
was. “I like to check out my competition.”

“Competition for what?”

“For being the best,” Cyn said with a calm assurance that sent a pang through Ileni. Cyn sounded like Ileni would have, once. When she had been the most powerful of her people, with a future and a destiny and no reason or desire to question either of them.

But the thought that Ileni could be competition—even without her own power—sent a sharp, half-pleasant thrill through her.

“The best? Is that what you are?” Ileni said, and her tone made it clear just how likely
she
thought
that
was.

Cyn leaned back on the polished wood desk. “Oh, yes.
Not that there’s much competition. Just Evin and Lis. And now, maybe, you. We’ll see.”

“So it’s really just the four of you?”

“Since the Battle of Rinzo.” Cyn lowered her voice, though she didn’t entirely lose her grin. “Before that, there were ten.”

So much for not displaying her ignorance. “Why?”

“Because the Rinzoans tricked us into an ambush and caused an avalanche.” Now the grin was gone. “It was five years ago. Evin, Lis, and I were too young to be there, and Karyn was on one of her missions to the mountains. All the sorcerers there died. We still haven’t recovered.” Her smile turned hard and brittle. “Of course, the Rinzoans will
never
recover.”

Questions beat against each other in Ileni’s mind. She went with, “I meant, why so few?”

“I just told you—”

“But even before—there were ten? Out of the whole Empire?”

Cyn’s snort was surprisingly loud and indelicate. “How many people do you
think
are talented at magic?”

Among the Renegai, it was generally ten percent of the population—though that was people with skill
and
power.
Then again, the Renegai had started out as a community of exiled sorcerers.

“There are plenty of beginner and intermediate students,” Cyn said. “They help with minor skirmishes, and of course they have plenty to do aside from war—communication, mostly. Without magic, it would take several weeks for a message to get from one end of the Empire to another. Some of them will become advanced enough for combat, eventually. But for now, it’s just us.”

Just us.

And all at once, Ileni knew exactly what Absalm wanted her to do.

This was how assassins worked: targeted strikes aimed precisely where they would do the most damage. Without these four people, the Empire would be weakened enough for the assasssins to go in for the kill.

They would do what assassins did best, spread panic and terror, and the people of the Empire would no longer believe that magic could keep them safe. It would be chaos and destruction.

It would be the end of the Empire.

Cyn stepped forward in a swirl of red fabric, eyes sparkling, and Ileni’s stomach twisted. She didn’t have to do
it. There could still be a better way, even if the lodestones were indestructible. If most of the sorcerers’ magic came from lodestones, they must go through thousands and need to replenish them constantly. And
that
was why her people had left: because of those hundreds of thousands of people who were imprisoned and enslaved and tortured until they agreed to give up their lives. Whose power, at the moment of their deaths, was sucked into lodestones and stored there for other people to use.

Maybe there was a way to stop
that
. Free the slaves, cut off the flow of power to the lodestones, without killing anyone.

From his place at the edge of her awareness, Sorin laughed at her.

“How many lodestones do you have?” Ileni asked.

Cyn’s smug expression slipped. Was that suspicion on her face, or was Ileni imagining it? Hastily, Ileni added, “It sounds like you must use up a lot of them.” A lot of lives.

“Not
us
,” Cyn said. “Lower-level magic users need a constant supply. But lodestones last a long time if you have the skill to craft spells with a minimum of power. Karyn’s bracelet lasted her seven years before she took it off to go infiltrate the assassins, and she was never exactly a light user of magic.”

“She only gets to use one lodestone at a time? Even though she’s the head teacher?”

“No one can handle power from more than one lodestone at once.”

That’s not true.
In the Testing Arena, Ileni had already drawn power from more than one, without even needing to. She looked away to hide her expression, not sure what it would be. The Renegai Elders had always claimed they were the masters at magic, more skilled than the imperial sorcerers despite having less power. It was nice to know
something
she had been taught was true.

It also meant she had a better chance of striking at the Academy. If she could draw on a hundred deaths at once, and each imperial sorcerer could only manage the power of one lodestone at a time, it evened the odds. A bit.

Cyn’s eyes narrowed, and Ileni realized that she had been silent for too long. She searched her mind for something to deflect Cyn’s attention, then had an inspiration. “And Lis? She must not be as skilled as you.”

It worked. Cyn’s face changed entirely, and when she spoke, her tone was scornful and superior. “Lis goes through a lodestone every two years or so. The lower-level sorcerers do, too. They’re not as skilled, so their spells cost them more power.”

“Then you must need a constant supply of new lodestones. Where do you get them?”

“That’s a question you should ask Lis.” Cyn tilted her head to the side, sleek hair falling over one blue eye. “The question that interests me is, what are
you
?”

A weapon.
Ileni crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you mean?”

“The Academy trains sorcerers to uphold and expand the Empire. We don’t have many applicants from rebellious fringe groups.”

Under other circumstances, Ileni might have found this directness charming. At the moment, she did not. But she summoned up her best approximation of a friendly smile and said, “I’m unique.”

“If you say so.” Cyn leaned forward. “What made you see the error of your people’s ways?”

Ileni’s breath hissed through her teeth. She was about to say something extremely injudicious when she saw the glint in Cyn’s eyes.

“I haven’t,” she said with her own shrug. It wasn’t quite as insouciant as Cyn’s, but it was passable. “I don’t care about the Empire. I just want to be powerful. I came here to continue my training in magic.”

She suspected Cyn would have no trouble believing that.

Cyn paced across the room, and even though she only took three steps, Ileni felt like she was being circled. “So your people don’t use lodestones, and your power faded after you were already trained? How often does that happen?”

“Never. Childhood power doesn’t always last to adulthood, but we have tests that can determine whose power is permanent.” The old fury rose in Ileni. Absalm had faked her test, given her a place in the world, and then ripped it away, on
purpose
. “Usually, only those with lasting power are trained. In my case, someone made a mistake.”

Even now, it was hard to say.

“Ah. Too bad.” The sympathy in Cyn’s voice was equally hard to hear.

“And no, my people don’t have lodestones.”
Because lodestones are evil.
“So this is the only place where I can still use magic.”

Cyn crossed the room and plopped down next to Ileni on the bed. “It will be all right. Wait until you see how much magic you can wield now that you’re drawing from lodestones.” She leaned back on her elbows. “I’ll show you.”

“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, an instinctive recoil against the wrongness of it. 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 to 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, “I don’t need them. But I can see how that would 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.”