She blinked. He glanced swiftly over his shoulder at her, not a hint of levity in his expression, then looked straight ahead.
Ileni watched his back, since that was all she had to look at. His gray tunic pulled tightly against his shoulders as he moved, and one unruly tuft of golden hair stuck out near the top of his head. “Which of my predecessors taught you that trick?”
“Absalm,” Sorin said. “Cadrel was not here long enough to teach me anything.”
Absalm had been the assassins’ tutor for ten years before his death, so no one had been suspicious when he died earlier that year and the summons came for his replacement. The Elders had sent Cadrel, a mid-level sorcerer with a friendly smile and a talent for cooking. That had been soon after the Elders decided that Ileni’s fading powers should be put to another Test, so she hadn’t been paying much attention.
By the time a messenger came two months later to report that Cadrel, too, was dead, the Test had confirmed her worst fears. Even the rumors about how Cadrel had died hadn’t pierced her fog. Not until the Elders summoned her had she started to take some interest. By then, of course, it was too late.
But she wouldn’t have avoided the summons, even if she could have. Ever since the Elders had told her that her entry into the sorcerers’ compound was a mistake, that her powers were going to fade away just as they did for the hordes of Renegai commonfolk, she had survived by focusing only on whatever step was immediately in front of her. The Elders had helped by giving her a new and almost impossible task: find out what had happened to the two tutors who had come to these caves before her.
Perhaps their deaths were accidents, the Elders had said, but without sounding like they believed it in the slightest. Truly, Ileni didn’t want their deaths to have been accidents. All that would mean was that she had no purpose at all, that she had been sent here to bide her time until her own death. That she was truly disposable. Untangling an assassin plot seemed highly preferable.
If she could do it.
She might as well get started. “Cadrel lived here for nearly two months, didn’t he? Surely that was sufficient time to teach you something.”
“Not much,” Sorin said. “I was on a mission for most of the time he was here.”
On a mission. She knew what that meant. “Do you know how he died?”
Sorin stopped walking and turned to face her. The yellow glow illuminating his face . . . or maybe the knowledge that he had murdered someone a few weeks ago . . . made him look hard and dangerous. “He fell down the last of those staircases and hit his head. These caverns can be dangerous to those who aren’t used to them.”
“I’ll be careful, then,” Ileni said. She flicked her wrist, and all at once the passageway was filled with a bright white light emanating from nowhere in particular. It wasn’t much harder than calling up a magelight, but she felt her power flutter weakly, deep in her stomach. “That should make it easier to see my footing.”
The yellow glow around Sorin’s hand was nearly invisible in the sudden brightness. “I’m sure Cadrel made it just as light.”
“He wasn’t as powerful as I am,” Ileni said flatly. It was true, in a way. “I’ve heard that Absalm was more so. Did he die in a fall?”
“No.” Sorin closed his hand, and the yellow light vanished. “Absalm drowned.”
Ileni glanced around at the dark walls of dry rock surrounding them. “Drowned where?”
“We don’t know where he died. We only know where we found his corpse.”
Before she could ask the next obvious question, he turned his back on her and continued walking.
Ileni resisted the urge to look back toward the stairwell. Even if Sorin was telling the truth about where Cadrel had died—and it seemed like a silly thing to lie about—he had to be lying about how. Cadrel would have been very careful, a mere two months after arriving at the caves.
They emerged at the top of another staircase descending into a large cavern, this one brightly lit by hundreds of glowing stones set into the walls. Ileni had never seen so many glowstones in one place before. She let the white light go, and forced herself not to sigh with relief as the effort of holding it eased and the passageway went black behind them.
The walls of the vast cavern were raw and jagged, and the high ceiling dripped with stalactites. The glowstones illuminated dozens of young men, stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat, attacking each other with swift, deadly movements. No one ever made contact, so despite the jabs and kicks clearly meant to cause harm, the bouts resembled dances more than fights. It was terrible, graceful, and oddly beautiful.
It also, Ileni discovered when she got close enough, stank.
The assassins ranged in age from as young as ten to as old as . . . not very old; none of them was even close to thirty years of age, as far as she could tell. The rank smell of sweat was almost enough to take Ileni’s mind off the weapons they were training with. Not one of them held a sword or dagger. Instead they danced at each other with circles of metal, pieces of rock, wooden staffs, whirling strips of rope—the variety was as mind-numbing as it was frightening. Another myth confirmed: assassins could kill with anything.
Some of them were practicing with no weapons at all.
The Elders had told her that she would be safe, that the assassins’ discipline and obedience were strong enough to protect even a lone girl trapped in their caves. And of course, they all thought she was powerful enough to defend herself with a word. That should help. Even so, she found herself walking as close to the wall as she could.
Sorin moved the way they fought, with graceful purpose, every part of his body taut and controlled even though he was merely walking. He lifted an eyebrow at her, and Ileni attempted—too late—to look unperturbed. He led her around the edge of the cavern, far too close for comfort to several of the duelers—none of whom glanced in their direction, even though they must never have seen a girl here before.
On the other side of the cavern, several narrow archways had been cut into the wall. Sorin led her through one of them into a smaller cavern, as craggy as the one they had passed through, but completely empty.
“This is where you’ll be giving lessons.” Sorin turned in a tight circle, his eyes darting swiftly across every surface in the room, as if searching for danger. “Absalm would only train one pupil at a time here, to avoid injuries. Though you can do what you like.”
Absalm had, no doubt, made up that rule to slow down his pupils’ advance. At home they had all trained together, in a large stadium surrounded by majestic trees. The memory cut through Ileni’s defenses, quick and sneaky, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.
Sorin looked at her sideways, and she said swiftly, “I won’t be teaching spells that can cause injuries.”
The side of his mouth lifted slightly. “I’m told that’s what Absalm thought, too, when he first came here. It didn’t take him long to learn that to an assassin, anything can be a weapon. It might take you a little longer.”
Ileni turned and scowled at him, feeling dangerous. “I would advise against comparing me to your previous tutors. You might be in for some unpleasant surprises.”
He just looked at her. The expression on his face was intolerable. It said, You’re not dangerous at all. I see right through you.
He knows . . . but no, he couldn’t. If they knew how useless she was, she would already be dead.
So Ileni closed her eyes and reached for the memory of the last spell she had learned. She hadn’t mastered it fully yet, but she didn’t care. She spat out the words of the spell, flung out her hand, and unleashed all her fury on the smirking, self-important killer in front of her.
A flare of green light hit Sorin in the chest and threw him backward, flipping him head over heels. To Ileni’s amazement, he landed on his feet, dagger in hand.
And then he was in the air again, flying toward her with the blade pointed straight at her.
He was only inches from her when the air around Ileni exploded, and Sorin shouted. The dagger flew out of his hand, bouncing off one of the craggy walls of the cavern, and his body flew in the opposite direction, crumpling against a particularly jagged outcropping of rock. He did not land on his feet this time.
Ileni stepped forward, afraid she had killed him. As her wards had reacted, she’d realized the dagger was slicing at her hair, not her throat. But then he leaped to his feet, one hand pressed to his side, staring with an expression that should have gratified her: astonishment and fear.
Except he wasn’t staring at her.
Ileni followed his gaze. The cacophony of clinks and thuds and grunts from the main training area had gone silent. A cluster of assassins stood in the arched cavern entrance, staring, the pretense of disinterest wiped off their faces.
Her role as their tutor, apparently, was off to a great start.
Chapter 3
Despite her exhaustion, Ileni had no trouble forcing herself to stay awake that night. The tiny chamber felt small and heavy, as though the mountains of stone pressing around her compressed the very air. It was cold, though not as cold as she would have expected—an effect of the glowstones, probably, that dimmed and brightened over the course of the day, following the rhythms of a sun whose light never touched them. Ileni lay in her narrow cot, staring up at the utter blackness, trying not to imagine the mountains suspended above her head.
She’d had a lot of practice, over the last few weeks, in not thinking about things. About the life she had lost, and the life she now had, and the overwhelming probability that life was not going to be a relevant concept for her much longer. She focused instead on the task immediately ahead: finding out if Sorin had been telling the truth about Cadrel’s death.
She wove a spell to enhance her hearing, paying special attention to the accents of the ancient words. This was a tricky one, and even some of the advanced Renegai students had never mastered it. She chose it because the concentration it required left no room for her own thoughts.
There were two aspects to working magic: the power she drew from within herself, and the skill required to weave the spell. Her strength was dwindling, but her talent was the same as it had ever been . . . which was achingly frustrating, but also useful. With her skill, she could craft the magic to require as little strength as possible, and keep the dregs of her once-abundant power for as long as possible.
Pathetic, that she should be reduced to this. A familiar fury flared in her. How could the Elders have made this mistake? The whole point of the childhood Test was to confirm that a novice’s power was permanent, not merely the bright energy of childhood. They had based her life on that mistake, raising her in the sorcerers’ compound, training her in the spells and techniques that would soon be all she had left. That would be useless once her power was gone.
But they weren’t useless yet. She finished the spell with short, precise hand movements, then sat and listened with sharpened ears to the silence that echoed against the thick stone surrounding her.
When she stood, the glowstones flickered softly in response to her movements, and she startled in reaction. Her breath caught, excitement and fear making her skin tingle. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, exactly. But it was a feeling, piercing the dull, numb fog she had been wrapped in for months, and she clung to it as she pulled her door open and stepped out into the hall.
The glowstones flickered on as she passed them, though not as brightly as during the day. She reached out and used a nudge of power to stop them. She wanted no sign of her passage.
With her enhanced hearing, she could use the echoes of her footsteps to sense where the walls and openings were despite the complete darkness. That, combined with her memory of the walk with Sorin earlier, got her to the spiral stairs with only a few bumps and bruises. Once there, she had no choice but to let the hearing spell fade so she could call up a light.
She tensed all over as brightness flared around her, feeling horribly exposed. She strained her ears for the sound of footsteps, even knowing that she would never hear a trained assassin coming.