Death Sworn (5 page)

“We are permitted to stay alive, if we can do so without compromising our mission. But the mission comes first.”

“I’m sure,” Ileni said.

“We are not afraid to die. And we know how to overcome our own petty desires and fears.” He met her eyes. “Something you might consider learning.”

“Really.”

“I don’t mean to be insulting,” Sorin said, managing to make it sound completely sincere and completely untrue at the same time. “I can help make your time here more successful, if you’ll listen to my advice.”

“How kind.” At least this was distracting her, and delaying the inevitable.

Sorin’s shoulders rose and fell with his sigh. “I want you to succeed.”

“You do?”

He looked faintly irritated. “If I didn’t, why would I be helping you find Cadrel’s killer? Magic helps us accomplish our missions. We all want you to be our tutor for as long as possible.”

“All?” Ileni said. “That wasn’t my impression.”

As soon as she said it, she wished she could take it back. She hadn’t meant to show how much Irun’s attack had shaken her. But Sorin’s voice softened. “Irun is . . . a problem. He’s an imperial noble.”

Ileni blinked. Back home,
imperial noble
was the filthiest insult possible. The thought that Irun had actually been one of them . . . well. It made sense. “If he’s a noble, how did he—”

“He was kidnapped at a young age. No one knew why at the time. It was years before the master revealed his reasons.”

Ileni chewed her lower lip. “Kidnapped? Does he know?”

“Of course.”

“Is that how all of you—”

“Not usually. About half of us are abandoned street children. The other half are sent by secret pockets of supporters throughout the Empire. They send us their sons, when they can.”

“Supporters of what?” Ileni said. “The right kind of knife thrust?”

Sorin’s lips tightened, but he went on without responding. “We’re also not . . . discouraged . . . from fathering children, while we’re on our missions. If we have time.”

And did you have time?
Ileni’s cheeks flamed. She had heard that assassins had a reputation in the Empire, that women found them irresistible . . . and she didn’t particularly want to hear the details. But she was too curious to stop. “And then you go collect them afterward? How do their mothers feel about that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sorin said. “The children belong here.”

A shudder ran through her. “Do you remember
your
mother?”

Sorin’s face returned to complete blankness. “I don’t. My earliest memory is of living with a group of other children, digging food from garbage heaps, stealing it when I could. For all I know, she abandoned me at birth.”

Like other Renegai children with both talent and power, Ileni had been taken to the training compound at an early age, so she didn’t feel the connection to her mother that ordinary children did. But she had always known she
had
a mother, who loved her and was proud of her. She had refused to see her mother after her final Test, afraid all that love and pride would be gone.

“When I was five years old,” Sorin said, “I was caught stealing. The punishment was to cut my hand off.” His voice was as flat as his expression. “That’s the punishment for theft all through the Empire, no matter the age of the thief. I had taken two silvers from a nobleman’s belt-pouch. He wouldn’t even have missed them.”

“Sorin—” She shifted her feet, but stayed where she was. She knew, of course, how brutal life in the Rathian Empire was. She had heard dozens of stories, each more horrible than the last. But she had never before met anyone who had lived there, who had been forced to endure it.

“I got away from the nobleman. And I killed one of the soldiers who came after me with his own knife.” His shoulders hunched slightly. “But there were too many, and I was a child. They broke my arm, and I was sentenced to death.” He spoke in a calm, even monotone. “Fortunately for me there had been an assassin in the square, on a mission. He saw what I did, and he was impressed. After he completed his kill, he got me out of the prison and brought me here.”

The stone wall was cold through Ileni’s thin shirt. Her back pressed against it so hard she could feel the tiny ridges in the stone. “Which one is he?”

For the first time, Sorin’s voice betrayed an emotion: surprise. “That was over ten years ago, Ileni. He’s dead.”

She could think of nothing to say to that.
I’m sorry
seemed ridiculous, when he didn’t sound sorry himself. And of course, the man
would
be dead. How long did any assassin live?

Sorin leaned back to gaze up at the column of names—his mentor’s name must be on it, somewhere; she wondered if he had the space memorized—then glanced sideways at Ileni. His expression seemed unreadable, but then she placed it; it just wasn’t one she had expected. Or wanted. Pity. He shook his head and said, “Are you ready to continue?”

Ileni pushed herself off the wall. “I’ve been ready all along.”

He gave her a longer version of the same look, then led her through several corridors until, in the middle of a downward-slanting passageway, he turned sideways and vanished. It took Ileni a few seconds to find the narrow slit in the rock he had disappeared into, half-hidden by a curve in the wall. Sorin was already yards ahead of her by the time she squeezed through and emerged into the long narrow passageway on the other side.

Something in her rebelled. The Elders’ voices whispered in her mind:
The master sits at the center of a web, spinning intrigues and deceits across the Empire. Death is simply one of his tactics.

What if she didn’t follow Sorin at all, what if she turned and went the other way, and never faced what lay ahead?

Then she would die anyhow, alone in the dark, when her magic ran out and she starved to death. And she would die without helping her people, without finding any answers, without even buying time. A death as useless as her life.

She strode after Sorin, following him through a series of twists and turns that made it feel like they were walking in circles, until they reached a steep stone staircase that wound upward into darkness.

Sorin glanced at her sideways and said, “You should go first.”

“Why?”

“So I can catch you if you fall.”

“I don’t—” she began, and then suspicion made her go silent. His face was perfectly stolid and unsmiling. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Do you truly imagine I would ever do that?” he said, still not cracking a smile. “It wouldn’t be properly respectful.”

“Good thing I’m not in my nightclothes, then,” Ileni snorted, and started up the stairs. She was almost sure she saw his lips twitch as she went past.

It was a long, weary trek to the top of the stairs. By the time the end was in sight, Ileni was no longer sure that Sorin had been joking about catching her. She was dizzy, and wished she had thought to insist upon something to drink as well as clothes. Her calves ached, and her left shoe had rubbed her ankle raw.

She looked at the heavy wooden door that ended the stairway, then turned to Sorin. He was standing a few steps below her looking irritatingly unaffected by the long climb. Ileni pushed strands of hair off her sweat-slicked forehead. Her voice shook. She hoped he would think it was because of exertion. “What am I supposed to do—knock?”

“Is that how they do it where you come from?”

Ileni turned, placed both hands flat on the door, and pushed.

The door was heavy, but swung inward far more easily than she had expected. Ileni managed not to stumble, but she rushed into the room with a bit less dignity than she had planned. She let go of the door and heard it slam shut behind her. Sorin hadn’t followed her in.

That seemed like a bad sign. She dug her fingers into her skirt. The room was irregularly shaped, about six paces across, and there was no one in it. Two lamps, set in the black stone walls, lit the space murkily. There was a patterned rug in the center of the floor, a high-backed cushioned chair in the corner, and a window in the far wall.

Ileni headed for the window. It was deep and recessed, but placing her elbows on the sill, she could lean out far enough to see the dark velvet of the sky, carelessly embroidered with tiny pinpoints of stars. Ahead of her was nothing but blackness. She knew the darkness hid trees and mountains, but it was as if she was staring straight into a sky that folded back on itself to stretch over her head. A shiver ran through her. She hadn’t realized how badly she missed the sight of sky and open space, the feel of the wind, after only two days underground. What would she feel like in a week—a month—a year? The rest of her life?

Someone cleared his throat behind her, and she remembered that the rest of her life might not be that unbearably long. She pulled back in and turned.

She hadn’t heard the door open, and she hadn’t heard footsteps. But a man now sat in the high-backed chair, his face and form almost hidden by the dark.

Chapter 5

A
prickle ran up Ileni’s spine as she pressed her back against the windowsill, looking at the tall dark figure in the chair. It wasn’t magic that had gotten him here so silently; she would have sensed a spell. The wooden door was still closed, and Sorin was nowhere in sight.

The man was so still he might have been dead. Ileni opened her mouth and couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mind whirled in panic as she stood frozen to the spot. What she came up with, finally, was, “Nice view.”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had managed to sound sardonic, or even cool. Instead her voice emerged shaky and frightened. The master leaned forward, bringing his face out of the darkness and into the shadows. She still couldn’t make out his features, but his eyes, fierce and bright, shone in the lamplight like those of a hunting animal. The silence settled as heavily as before.

Ileni drew in her breath. The pressure of his gaze made her feel as if she was forcing out words. “Where’s Sorin?”

The master’s voice was soft and dry, and unexpectedly gentle. “He doesn’t need to be here.”

Why not?
Her own heartbeat filled the dark chamber. She felt tiny and powerless, like a mouse in the shadow of a hawk. “Why do
I
have to be here?”

“I never got to meet Cadrel before he died.” The voice was almost a purr. “I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

“Of not meeting me before I die?” Her voice shook. She couldn’t help it, but she was starting not to care.

Instead of replying, the master rose.

That was all he did, yet she felt as if a dozen daggers were pointed at her chest. She had thought Sorin and the other assassins exuded menace, but they were pale imitations of this man.
He can kill with a flick of his fingers
, the Elders had said, and she believed it.

She wanted to back away—no, she wanted to
run
—but his eyes pinned her where she stood. Small and dark though they were, they took over his entire face, and their focus on her drove the breath out of her body. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. His eyes burned like flames, lit up from within by . . . wisdom? power? madness? Something else, something that was all those things and more.

He smiled sympathetically, as if he understood. Very slowly, he moved his head to the side and shifted his gaze away.

Ileni gasped, and air came pouring back into her lungs. Her legs felt as if they couldn’t support her body, but there was no other chair in the room. Besides, she was afraid to move.

“Sorin says you seem different from the other tutors,” the master of assassins said. “And he’s a perceptive boy. Have you found him helpful in easing your adjustment to your new life?”

“I . . .” She tried to think. “Not . . . not really.”

“That’s unfortunate.” He swung his head back toward her, but this time the effect of his gaze was muted—deliberately, she thought, and was grateful despite herself. She had no desire to be trapped again in that black stare. “Sorin is in many ways the best of my pupils. He has influence with the others. You are at a disadvantage to begin with, being so young. . . .”
And female
, he didn’t add. “How do you plan to deal with the fact that your students will not respect you?”

A flash of defiance made it through her fear. “I plan to not care.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure you have that option.”

Ileni managed a shrug. Her voice emerged slightly firmer. “Even if one of them is going to kill me, that doesn’t mean I have to care what he thinks.”

For the first time, she thought she got a reaction out of the man. Nothing obvious, no movement or actual change of expression, but his face went still for a second.

“You don’t want to be here,” he said, his voice gentle, “but you are. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be for you.

Ileni set her jaw. “I volunteered to come.”

“Did you?”

“I was chosen, and I did not refuse.”

He studied her, and she felt pierced, as if he was seeing through her words and through her skin. “But you would have, if there was anyplace but here you could get away to.”

How could he possibly know that? She hadn’t told anyone. It wasn’t until the journey was nearly over that she had realized it herself.

“I want to be of service to my people,” she said. Her voice sounded shrill and childish in her ears.

“Even though you hate them?”

Her hands came halfway up, as if she was defending herself against a physical blow.
That
, she hadn’t even admitted to herself.

The master chuckled, low and dry. “I am not calling you a liar. You can want more than one thing at once. You can desire the respect of people you resent. You feel that way about Sorin already.”

Stop,
she thought. When someone knocked on the wooden door, she almost gasped in relief.

The master didn’t take his eyes off her as he raised his voice. “Come in.”

Sorin pushed the door open and stepped into the dim room. A short, thin boy followed him.

Finally, the master turned away from her. He sat back down, placing both forearms on the arms of his chair. “Jastim, is it?”

The boy nodded stiffly, his face bleak as stone. Terror radiated from him so palpably that Ileni nearly backed away.

“You honor our cause.”

It wasn’t a question, but the pause that followed seemed to demand an answer. The boy jerked his head in another nod.

The master’s voice turned rhythmic—almost lyrical. “You honor it more subtly than others do. But you honor it nonetheless. Your courage will be remembered.”

The boy met his master’s eyes, and some of the terror went out of his face. He lifted his chin, and this time, his nod was smooth and firm.

“Please show the sorceress,” the master of assassins said, “how completely my commands are obeyed in these caves.”

Sorin stepped back, and Jastim moved across the room, straight toward Ileni. He was short, but ropy muscles twisted through his arms. His mouth was a thin, determined line, and his eyes were shining. With fear . . . no, pride. Or at least, mostly pride.

Panic gave Ileni strength to pull up a defensive spell. It wavered unevenly, a lack of finesse that would have been unthinkable for her a year ago, but it held.

He walked right past her, his face exultant, and vaulted onto the windowsill in a fluid movement. He poised there, crouched, his body taking up all the space in the square opening. He didn’t have enough room to look back in at them, had he wanted to.

“Jump,” the master said.

Jastim launched himself into the night.

Ileni screamed. She was at the window instantly, half-expecting to see a slim, dark shape soaring up toward the stars.

Far below, something hit the ground with a distant, sickening thump.

Bile rose in Ileni’s throat, and she forced herself to swallow it. Her fingers dug into the stone windowsill so hard they hurt, but she didn’t turn around, and she didn’t—she
didn’t
—look down. She stared straight out at the black mountains and blacker sky, at the view that no longer looked like freedom.

The Elders’ voices were dim and distant in her mind:
He will kill for reasons that make sense to no one but him.

But he always has a reason.

“Thank you,” the master said behind her. Who was he saying it to? “You may go.”

She whirled, tears tracking down her cheeks. The master’s eyes were still gentle—terribly, horribly gentle. He smiled at her, utterly calm, as if Jastim was a chess piece he had flicked off the board, not a human boy with scared blue eyes whose blood and bones were now splattered on the rocks below.

Ileni walked across the small room, feeling the master’s gaze on her back, between her shoulder blades. Sorin waited until she was only a step away, then turned and led the way out.

The master’s voice stopped her when she was already in the doorway. “Sorceress?”

She stopped with one hand on the doorpost, not quite able to look back at him.

“If you assume everyone here is about to attack you, you’ll go through a lot of defense spells.” He chuckled, low and dry. “And you’ll need to preserve your power, won’t you? For as long as you can.”

He knew.
How could he possibly know?

She gave up on the pretense of dignity and fled, almost falling down the stairs in her haste to get away.

She and Sorin were halfway down the steps before she could speak. “You knew what you were bringing that boy up there to do.”

Sorin said nothing. He was a step ahead of her, so she couldn’t see his face.

She stumbled, and reached out to steady herself on the wall. “How could you do it?”

“Would you have me arrange for him to live forever?” Sorin asked softly. “We all die, eventually. Jastim’s death had a purpose. Death, to us, is not something to fear. It is simply a tool. Any one of us would die if so commanded by our master. Any of us would be
glad
to.” His tone twisted slightly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“So you would waste your life—”

“Not wasted.” Sorin’s voice was firm. “The master does not waste lives. If he spent Jastim’s death to impress you, there’s a reason that was important.”

She couldn’t imagine the master caring whether she was
impressed
with him. Even if she was the most powerful Renegai sorceress born in centuries. Or had been thought to be so, once.

But the master knew she wasn’t. He had gained that information, somehow, just by looking at her, just by talking to her for a few seconds. She wrapped her arms around herself, then forced them back to her sides before Sorin saw.

When would the master tell him—tell everyone? He could jerk away her pretense of power, and leave her at his students’ mercy, any time he wanted.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and she quickened her pace. But Sorin sped up, too, so she was still staring at the back of his head. “So you’re just his tools? No thoughts or will of your own? You don’t care?”

“Not quite.” Sorin still hadn’t glanced back at her. “I assure you, every person in these caves is doing his best to ensure he is too valuable to be given that command.”

He did slow down then, and Ileni found herself striding beside him. He didn’t look at her—his profile was carved in stone—but it was as good as an invitation to keep talking. “Your master said you could ease my transition. Is that your task—to make sure I obey, and kill me if I don’t?”

Sorin turned sideways, cutting in front of her. She half-pulled up a defense spell before she realized that they had reached the narrow entrance back into the main caverns, and she had almost walked past it. She sighed and let the spell go. The master of assassins was right. If she didn’t become less jumpy, her power would be completely drained in a week.

Tonight’s events were certainly not going to help her be any less jumpy.

“My task is to protect you,” Sorin said.

“And you don’t think there might be more to it than that?”

Sorin made an irritated gesture. “I don’t presume to guess the master’s motives. I can’t fathom his reasons for wanting me to help you, just as I wouldn’t try and figure out his purpose in tonight’s summons.”

“Then you’re stupid,” Ileni said, more sharply than she had intended. “I know what his purpose was. To make sure I’m as afraid of him as everyone else in these caves.”

“Did it work?” Sorin asked.

His dark eyes were grave and serious, and he watched her with an odd intentness, as if her answer was important.

Ileni couldn’t bring herself to shoot back a flippant reply. So she told the truth, grudgingly. “Yes.”

Sorin sighed, a sound so small it could have been merely an uncontrolled breath. Then he walked on, and they made their way through the long passageways and empty caverns in silence.

After the sorceress and Sorin left, the master sat silently for several heartbeats, contemplating the empty window where the boy had crouched. A few brief minutes ago Jastim had been alive, his mind bright with fear; now he was a crushed pile of bone and blood. At times, even after all these years and all these deaths, the contrast still struck the master. Once, it had seemed important.

He tilted his head and said, “What do you make of that?”

A man stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the room. He was thin to the point of gauntness, the bones of his face jutting out around his narrow features. He watched the master, his hands clasped behind his back. “I think it was effective.”

“She wasn’t completely cowed. I like that.” The master stroked the side of his chin. “And so, I think, did Sorin.”

The thin man pressed his lips together. “We’ll have to put a stop to that.”

“Will we?” the master said.

His voice was smooth and level, but the thin man cringed slightly. “I mean—I would suggest that we don’t allow any interest to develop. It could be dangerous.”

“Or it could be useful.”

The thin man tugged at his earlobe, and immediately regretted it. It was a nervous habit of his, and he wished to appear calm . . . not that he thought he could fool the master. But there was no need to be obvious. “I know your pupils’ reputation out in the Empire. But this girl is no easy picking. And it would not be wise to encourage your students to . . . think of her that way. It’s risky enough as it is, bringing a girl into these caves.”

“Is it?” The master smiled faintly, and the thin man bit his lip. He knew that smile. It meant he had fallen prey to the master’s misdirection, had missed some crucial part of his plan. Or plans. The master always had more than one. “I don’t think so. My students are, as you have seen, well trained in controlling their natural instincts.”

“Not that it wasn’t impressive.” The thin man cleared his throat. “But killing yourself takes only one second. Control takes
every
second. Your students are extraordinarily disciplined, but they are still boys beneath it all.”

“True enough.” The master seemed to be considering this, though the thin man knew, from long experience, that he must have already considered it. Now he couldn’t tell if the master was truly reconsidering, or just testing him in some way. He waited, resisting the urge to fidget.