The attack Sorin had taught her did work. Ileni was across the cavern in a second, her forearm pressed against Absalm’s throat, her breath hissing between her teeth.
“You knew?” She pressed down, hard enough to hurt, not caring if she overdid it. “You let me grow up believing I was powerful, knowing that when I got old enough I would lose it all—”
A blast of wind lifted her off her feet and slammed her against the far wall. Instinctively, Ileni tried to raise a defense, but it failed completely. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“It was necessary,” Absalm said.
“Why?”
He inclined his head. “This is not the time to explain. You must gain control of yourself.”
Ileni’s anger was a burning space inside her chest, making it hard to breathe. She wanted to hit something. To smash things, break things, turn this cave into a shambles. To destroy something other people cared about and make them feel the way she did.
But she couldn’t do any of that. All she could do was clench her fists and spit out hot, futile words. “You’re lying to me! There’s no way the Elders would have gone along with—for all these years—they believed in me! They weren’t pretending.”
“No. They weren’t.” Absalm’s voice, and his face, were infuriatingly calm. “But I knew that once the truth about your powers was discovered, the Elders would jump at the opportunity to send you here. That’s why I faked my death. To give them that opportunity. I don’t know why Cadrel was sent instead.”
“He volunteered,” Ileni said numbly. “His wife died. . . .” His eyes assessed her, unblinking. “And you killed him. So they would send me next.”
“Don’t blame yourself—”
“I do not,” Ileni said, “blame myself.”
“Or me,” Absalm finished, a bit hastily. His assessment had turned wary. “I didn’t want to kill him. I thought he could fake his death, as I had, create an illusion of a corpse and remain hidden. But he was . . . he wouldn’t listen. I tried to explain.”
“Explain what?”
Absalm shook his head.
Ileni’s fingernails bit into her palm. “What use could I possibly be to you? I have no magic. I’m worthless!”
“You are far from worthless, Ileni. You have skill. More skill than anyone I’ve ever seen. And you have been trained to use it to its fullest.” He got slowly to his feet. He was wearing not an Elder’s blue robe but the nondescript gray clothes of an assassin. “That’s why this deception was necessary. So you could be trained in earnest. I truly regret the pain it caused you.”
The pain it caused you. Ileni clenched her fists.
“Who else knew?” she whispered.
“No one.”
“Not even the master of the assassins?”
“Well. Of course the master.” He sounded shocked. “Korjan and I have been . . . friends, I daresay. Since we were young. He was the one who showed me how much could be accomplished if only the Renegai and the assassins would combine our talents.”
“Since you were young . . .” She drew in her breath. “You mean, since he spent time in our village so he could murder one of us. A Renegai!”
Absalm tugged at his earlobe, then dropped his hands to his lap. The calm, remote expression dropped over his face again. “Who died for the greater good.”
She had heard that before. “What greater good? What are you planning? Tell me!”
Even to herself, she sounded hysterical, and she wasn’t surprised when Absalm shook his head. “I’m sorry that we’re having this conversation now.” He didn’t sound sorry, though. He sounded tolerant and paternal. “You weren’t meant to discover the truth this early. I wanted to wait until I was sure. . . .”
“That I was like you?” She brushed a clump of hair away from her cheek and hoped it hadn’t left blood on her face. “One of them? That was never going to happen.”
“No?” He said it very softly, and she was suddenly sure he knew about everything: the celebration, the fighting lessons, and—most of all—Sorin. Blood rushed to her cheeks.
“Come, Ileni. You must have realized by now that the assassins are not precisely the way the Elders painted them.” Absalm leaned forward, his gray eyes soft, and went on in that terrible, kindly, inexorable voice. “I think you should take some time. This has been a lot to absorb. When we talk again—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. More than anything in the world, she wanted to be away from this room where she had taught killers, where one of her own Elders had trapped her in the master’s mysterious plans. She was through the door before she could think, footsteps pounding in her ears, running down the stairs and through the passageways and toward the only person in these caves she could even think of trusting.
Sorin was fast asleep when Ileni flung open his door, but only for a second. Then he was across the room, pressing her to the wall, holding a blade to her throat. Ileni froze, her breath coming in painful gasps.
His eyes met hers, cold and deadly, and the dagger’s edge pressed against her skin. Then his expression shifted into horror. He lowered the dagger and stepped back. “Ileni. That was not smart.”
“I know. I’m sorry. . . .” And this time, she didn’t even try to stop the tears.
But this time, he didn’t watch her sob from across the room.
“He’s not dead,” Ileni gasped against Sorin’s shoulder, his arms tight and strong around her. His lips brushed her hair. Her blood-streaked hair. “Absalm. He’s here, and he . . . he . . .” She pulled back slightly at his jerk of surprise. “Irun is, though. Dead, I mean.” She burst into louder sobs and buried her face in his tunic again.
To Sorin’s credit, he waited until she had calmed down before saying, in a very tight voice, “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
So she did, starting from Bazel’s knock on her door. The only thing she left out was the worst thing that had happened that night: the final loss of her magic. She thought about telling him that, too, but she choked on the words.
By the time she was done, they were both sitting on the bed, side by side. Sorin held both her hands in his, and squeezed occasionally. When she was done, he said, “And you have no idea what he wants of you?”
Ileni shook her head. Her face felt tight with dried tears and blood. “But it’s part of something he’s been planning since . . . since before I was born, I think.”
“He said it was time for the Renegai and assassins to combine their talents? How is that supposed to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“But the master knows.” Sorin let out a relieved breath.
Ileni jerked her hands out of his. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“If we go to him—”
“He’ll tell me the truth? Even though Absalm wouldn’t?” She scrambled off the bed. “No. The best person to give us answers is still Karyn.”
Sorin shook his head.
“We know now that she didn’t kill anyone. Or, well, she didn’t kill Absalm and Cadrel. So she has no reason to kill me. She’s here for something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But it has something to do with Absalm’s plan. He’s the one who contacted her, and it wasn’t just because he wanted chocolate. Bazel said he was asking her about magic. . . .” Ileni took a deep breath. “If she’s still here, I have to find her. And I can’t do that without your help.” She reached for his hands again. “Sorin, please.”
Sorin leaned closer, his face all lines and shadows by the dimmed light of the glowstones. “Why do you need my help? Can’t you use magic?”
Ileni hesitated. She should tell him the truth, finally. She had come to him because she trusted him . . . but that was before he had brought up the master. “I have nothing of hers to use in a finding spell. If she’s somewhere in these caves, we’ll have to rely on your skills to find her.”
“And what skills would those be?”
“I don’t know. Can’t you track her or something?”
“Starting where? The caverns extend so far that no one has explored them all, not even me. Karyn could be anywhere. We could spend years looking and never find her.” Sorin stood. “Couldn’t you try to detect her magic use?”
“She knows I’m here. She’ll be shielding against me.”
“And you’re not powerful enough to break her shields?”
She couldn’t find her voice. Fortunately, Sorin misread the reason for her silence, and held up both hands. “I’m sorry, Ileni. I didn’t mean—”
“Will you help me, or not?”
Sorin let out a breath and said, his face remote, “We’re thinking about this the wrong way. If Karyn is still here, she didn’t come back to hide somewhere in the distant regions of these caves. She wants something. If we go back to the river, maybe she’ll find us. Or at the very least, be close enough for us to find her.”
Ileni swallowed a thank you she suspected he didn’t want to hear. “You might be right.”
“Well, then.” Sorin pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
The riverbank was dark and silent when Ileni and Sorin made their way down the narrow path along the cliff. Ileni, who had used Sorin’s basin to wash the blood off her hands—and, less successfully, out of her hair—stepped off the ledge with a breath of relief and wrenched her eyes away from the large dark smear on the white rock.
Sorin partly unrolled the thick coil of rope he had retrieved from a storage room on their way and tied a loop at its end, then closed his hand around the four-pronged hook at the other end.
“The rope Bazel used is gone,” he said. “Does that mean she came back and pulled it up?”
“Not necessarily. She could have created it with magic, and it would have vanished shortly afterward.” A feat that would have drained even Ileni at the height of her power. If she was wrong about Karyn’s motivation, it would take a sorceress that powerful less than a second to kill her.
Ileni swallowed hard. She was carrying a knife, strapped to her side beneath her tunic—Sorin had insisted—but she felt completely defenseless. She resisted the urge to step closer to Sorin.
He nodded, leaned back, swung the rope in a few rapid circles, and flung it up over the cliff. The metal hook at its end thudded sharply high above them. “Do you want to go first?”
She looked at him incredulously.
“Right.” He had a way of smiling without smiling. It was her favorite of all his expressions. “There’s only one rope, so we’ll have to go one at a time.”
“Couldn’t we just go around the path?” Ileni suggested weakly.
“Straight up would be easier for a sorceress, no? If Karyn wanted to hide deeper in the caves, she would have gone straight up the cliffside. If we go that way, too, I won’t miss anything.” He tugged the rope twice and turned to her. “I’ll pull you up after me. It’s not that hard.”
“Right.”
Sorin put one foot up against the cliffside, leaning back. The rope went taut. “You should probably have your own magelight, or it will be pitch-black once I’m gone.”
Ileni shook her head. “I should conserve my magic. If I do have to fight her, I’ll need every bit of power I have.”
“Right.” Sorin blew out a breath, and a new magelight flared to life above Ileni’s head. Then he turned and was gone, shimmying up the rope with a speed that made her heart catch in her throat.
For a few moments she was alone, the rock flat and white except for that dark bloodstain, the black river whispering past. She turned in a slow circle, staring warily at the shadows, imagining the sound of someone else’s breathing. Then the rope went still. Sorin had reached the top.