Death Marked (17 page)

Somewhere in the room, a blanket rustled, and a quavering voice said, “Leave me alone.”

“I don’t think that’s what you want,” Karyn said.

Ileni leaned out, just far enough to see the room. Karyn was sitting on a low stool beside one of the beds. In the bed, a bald man lay propped up on pillows.

Behind Karyn, arms crossed over her chest, stood Lis.

Karyn took the old man’s hands in hers—he allowed it without looking at her—and spoke to him in low, earnest tones. Ileni could make out a word or two—“
Empire
,” “
right time
,” “
sacrifice
”—but most of what Karyn said was
too low to hear. When the old man responded, his voice weak and faltering, Ileni couldn’t make out even a few words.

Karyn’s tone turned sharp, which made it more audible. “It is very selfish of you. It is not a worthy end to your life.”

The old man shook his head.

“Lis,” Karyn said.

Lis’s still face went even stiller.

“
Lis
,” Karyn snapped.

Lis walked forward and put one hand on the old man’s forehead. His whole body twitched, a long shudder.

He screamed.

Lis stepped back abruptly, releasing the spell. It rushed away from the old man’s body, tight and ugly.

Ileni recognized that spell. She had felt it before, in a sparkling white cavern far beneath the earth. Then, it had been Karyn wielding the spell, and Sorin had been the one screaming. It was a spell like the one she still held coiled within her: designed purely to cause pain.

Karyn and Lis were torturing the man.

The old man’s shriek ended in a gulp. He was trembling so hard that even the loose skin on his face shook.

“That won’t be enough,” Karyn said calmly.

Lis did not reply. She took another step away from the bed—this one slow and deliberate. Her hair, tied in a long ponytail, slapped against her back.

“You disappoint me,” Karyn said. Her voice was still cool, but the menace in it made Lis flinch. Karyn got to her feet abruptly, making the iron bedframe shake. “You’ll get only one more chance.”

It wasn’t clear who she was talking to, but both Lis and the old man hunched their shoulders. Karyn stalked away, across the room, and disappeared through a door in the far wall.

Lis reached back and pulled her ponytail over her shoulder. She stood for a moment gripping her own hair, and she looked so lost—so hopeless—that Ileni felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Then Lis dropped her hand and followed Karyn.

Ileni waited until the door slammed shut behind Lis before letting her own combat spell go. She sighed with relief as magic rushed harmlessly out of her, not even caring about the waste. “That’s what Sorin wanted me to see?”

Bazel’s scowl was as thunderous as Karyn’s had been. “No. It wasn’t.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“Because there’s more to see. But not now,” Bazel said, biting off each word. “We have to leave before your new friends come back.”

Ileni wrapped her arms around herself. Bazel’s clear fury frightened her—had she already grown unaccustomed to people who wanted her dead? But she peeked out and watched the old man slowly sink against his pillow, while in the bed next to his, a woman let out a sob in her sleep.

She reached out and confirmed what she had already guessed: every person in this room had power. Not a great amount, most of them . . . not enough to be worth training, probably, though they would have been competent mid-level sorcerers had they been Renegai.

There were a few with vast amounts, though. Maybe the Academy had another way of deciding who was worth training and who was just worth . . . harvesting.

This was what she had been searching for. This was where the lodestones’ power came from.

But if it was, how could Karyn and Lis have walked away?

“I know some healing magic,” she said. “I could help some of these people.”

“Yes,” Bazel said, through gritted teeth. “Maybe later.”

“It will just take a minute—”

“A minute in which you’ll be seen. Do you want to explain what you’re doing here?”

When Bazel started up the stairs, Ileni followed.

It was a relief to emerge into clean, cool sunlight and then climb up the stairs onto a street filled with noise and movement. Ileni let a deep shudder go through her before she turned to Bazel. “That’s how they fill the lodestones, isn’t it? Every sick person in there has power, and they’re just waiting for it to be tortured out of . . .”

The space beside her was empty. Bazel was gone.

Ileni swore. The street was narrow and dilapidated, filled with people whose gazes shifted away from her. She guessed she had to go
up
—that was easy enough, with the mountain rearing against the sky to her left, but she had no idea which street was best to take. If she set out on her own, she would probably run right into a dead end.

She should ask someone, but all the people passing by seemed so . . . disreputable. She turned in the direction of the next staircase going up.

And found her way blocked.

By Karyn.

The sorceress had her arms crossed over her chest, lips
pressed into a flat line. There was no sign of Lis.

“What,” Karyn said, each word an arrow shot. “Are. You. Doing. Here.”

“I, um,” Ileni said. “I got lost.”

It didn’t sound convincing, even to her.

CHAPTER

15

T
hey brought him in with his head covered by a burlap bag, his hands bound behind him. They thrust him to his knees so hard he lost his balance and, after a brief, humiliating struggle, fell over sideways.

“Gently,” Sorin said from his chair at the end of the room. “There is no need for excess.”

The two assassins straightened, but a flash of . . . something . . . preceded their obedience. Sorin wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it was something the master had never seen when he ruled these caves.

That was a problem for later. He turned his attention
to the man flailing on the floor. “Help him up and remove the bag.”

The assassins obeyed, but they were not gentle. Their captive gasped with pain as the bag scraped over his face. It was a face raw with bruises, bloodstains over purple welts, one eye swollen black. A gag was stuffed deep into his mouth and tied behind his neck. His one good blue eye glared defiance, and his mouth worked at the gag, but no sound emerged.

Sorin nodded at the two assassins. “You have done well,” he said.

They bowed and withdrew. The captive drew his lips back, as far as the gag would allow, and managed a muffled snarl.

“Welcome to my caves, Tellis,” Sorin said. “I have a proposal to discuss with you.”

The Renegai man couldn’t spit, because of the gag, but he jerked his head in a spitting motion anyhow.

Sorin got off the seat, calm and unhurried, and crossed the room. “If I remove the gag, I assume you’ll try to kill me with magic? Oh, I forgot. Renegai don’t kill. Ileni told me that, once.”

Tellis went very still.

“Yes,” Sorin said. “She’s still alive.”

Tellis closed his eyes, just for a second, relief and joy
unmistakable on his face. Since his captive’s eyes were closed, Sorin allowed himself a scowl but kept his voice smooth. “I need your help to keep her that way.”

Tellis snapped his eyes open and glared at him with an absolute hatred that reminded Sorin of Ileni.

“We need her,” Sorin said, “and we need her alive. That’s why you’re here. To help her.”

He drew a dagger, reached behind Tellis’s head, and cut the gag. It fell to the floor, stained with blood and spittle. Tellis’s mouth opened.

“Kill me,” Sorin said, “and you fail her. Though I believe it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You’re lying,” Tellis said. He was astonishingly handsome beneath his injuries—blond hair, blue eyes, chiseled face. Once he used magic to heal himself, he would be even more so. Not that it mattered.

“No,” Sorin said, allowing nothing to show in his voice. “Nothing I’m about to tell you is a lie. In fact, all I’m going to do is tell you the truth. Then you can decide what to do with it.”

Tellis drew in a breath. “Where is she?”

Sorin inclined his head.

“Sit down,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion. “This might take a while.”

CHAPTER

16

B
y the time they reached the base of the mountain, up at least five staircases and four steep streets, Ileni’s calves were cramping painfully, and her upper arm burned where Karyn’s fingers were clenched around it.

They were halfway up the mountain, on a path littered with white and purple wildflowers, when Karyn finally broke the silence. “It’s difficult to get lost if you’re headed for the Academy. You just go
up
.”

Ileni gritted her teeth against the soreness in her legs. She didn’t want to waste the little power she had left, but as soon as she got close enough to draw on the lodestones, she could
get rid of the pain . . . no. No, she couldn’t use the lodestones anymore. Could she?

She had to. Even knowing where the power came from, even with the old man’s scream burned into her mind. She had to keep pretending. She had to pretend harder than ever, now that she knew what she was fighting against.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.” Karyn’s fingernails gouged Ileni’s arm. Ileni hissed through her teeth and muttered the words of a spell, recently learned, that would send pain sizzling through Karyn’s hand. Karyn brushed the spell away with contemptuous ease and sent an arc of agony through Ileni’s body.

Ileni cried out despite herself. Then she gritted her teeth and reached for more power. But she had almost none left, and the lodestones were still out of reach.

“Be careful, Ileni,” Karyn said softly. “Do you want to go back to what you were? I can take the magic away in a second if I want to.”

You should.
Shame swept through Ileni. She knew now, without the possibility of doubt, where the magic came from. She had seen the people whose lives would be ripped away to fill the lodestones with power.

And she still wanted it.

“I’m not sure why you’re angry,” she said, through her teeth. “You gave me permission.”

“To accompany Evin. Not to wander alone in the city.” Karyn gave Ileni’s arm a shake. “What exactly were you looking for?”

Careful.
Karyn was only tolerating Ileni because she thought Ileni might be won over to the Empire’s side.

But Ileni had to say something, and she didn’t think she could keep her revulsion out of her voice. Besides, she wanted to hear Karyn’s answer. Wanted to hear that this was, somehow, different from what it looked like. “I’ll tell you what I found: the people you steal your magic from.”

Karyn stopped short, swinging Ileni around to face her. “We don’t steal it. It’s given freely.” Her lips were white, her eyes dark with fury and something else. Guilt? Fear?

“Freely?” Ileni tried to laugh, but what emerged was a sob. “I
saw
you torture that man.”

“He was already there,” Karyn snapped. “We don’t force anyone to enter Death’s Door, but if they do, they are agreeing to give us their power when they die. He made a promise, and he was refusing to keep it.”

“Agreed? In exchange for what?”

“Any number of things that people are willing to die for. Gold, sometimes, for people they love. More often, protection for their families, or a place for their children at the Sisters of the Black God. It’s worth it to them, and it’s their own choice.”

It was time to start pretending to be convinced. Instead, Ileni said, “So that’s the basis of all your power. Helpless people whose lives you steal when they are too sick to resist and have nowhere else to turn. You could help them, but instead you offer them your
choice
.”
Power stolen, power misused, power drawn from pain and death.
“You think forcing them to kill themselves is somehow nobler than straight-out murdering them? Just because they’re old and sick and weak?”

Karyn snapped her mouth shut. She blinked, and Ileni had the now-familiar sense that she had missed something, revealed her ignorance once again.

“Most of them would die anyhow,” Karyn said finally. “While they live, they are weak and useless. We are giving them a way to be valuable, to serve the Empire.”

“By harvesting their lives to add to your power!”

“You can blame your assassin friends for that,” Karyn said. “We need more power for the coming war.”

For the coming . . .
Ileni drew in her breath.

Wouldn’t you rather it was our soldiers? Think how many lodestones would be in the training arena now.

“You get power from war, too,” Ileni said. “Don’t you? From dying soldiers.
They
can be a source, too.”

Karyn pressed her lips together. “Yes. We don’t waste lives.”

“And because of that, their deaths don’t matter to you.” Lis had told her the truth, but she hadn’t understood:
We win either way.

It didn’t matter, to the Empire, if they won or lost a battle. If they won, their enemies died. And if they lost,
they
died, and their power was gathered into the lodestones. Dead soldiers became power sources for sorcerer-soldiers. Even defeats added to the Empire’s strength. No wonder it was unstoppable.

“Why bother going through the motions of a fight?” Ileni snapped. “Why not just order them to kill themselves and give you their power?”

Karyn stared at her. “Who would obey that order?”

Ileni knew several hundred people who would obey. But this was, clearly, not the time to bring that up. She had to back down before it was too late.

Except she suspected it was already too late.

Karyn’s eyes narrowed. “I think your viewpoint has been a little skewed by your time in the caves. We don’t murder people for no reason. We don’t send soldiers into battle to die. We prefer to win. But if we lose, we see no reason to waste their deaths.”

Start acting convinced.
But Ileni couldn’t think of how to do it—how to pretend she thought the murder of innocents could be justified. That the Empire could value life so little, and then hide behind speeches about necessity.