Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(3)

Ileni’s feet dangled a yard above the floor, and Karyn’s spell pressed her hard against the rough wall. She tried to think up an excuse—an explanation—anything to buy her time, to convince Karyn she was too valuable to kill. But she, who had lied for weeks to the assassins around her, was suddenly afraid that she couldn’t pull it off, that Karyn would see right through anything but the truth. As if, exhausted by the strain of constant deception, she could no longer pull up another lie.

She had told her last lie in the caves without even intending to, right before she had walked away, the black mountains a shadow on her back. Only three days ago, she had promised Sorin: I’m not going back to the Renegai village. She had meant it. But half a day later, as she strode down the winding trail with her pack digging into her shoulders, she had realized it was impossible.

Sorin or any of the other assassins would have known exactly which roads led to the Empire, and could have journeyed there with no more provisions than she carried in her pack. But Ileni had never been trained to leave her village at all. And that village was the only place she knew how to get to.

Even if it was the last place she wanted to go.

Ileni had a lot of practice, by then, in doing things she didn’t want to do. So she had set her face toward her village, promising herself it would only be a short detour, trying not to think about how she would explain why she had left her exile in the caves. Or—even more unthinkably—why she was headed into the Empire.

Then Karyn had ambushed her.

Ileni supposed she should feel some measure of gratitude to the imperial sorceress. She hadn’t had to return, to face her people after failing them twice. She hadn’t had to see Tellis. Instead she had been taken—magically transported, even—straight to the center of the Empire’s power: the Imperial Academy. The source of the magic that kept the Empire running, and the ideal place to discover if that Empire was as evil as she had always been taught.

To decide if she was, in fact, going to help destroy it.

Assuming the imperial sorcerers didn’t just kill her, this had actually worked out quite well. The trouble was, Ileni couldn’t think of a single reason why they wouldn’t kill her.

She had spent the last three days locked in a stone room, and as far as she could tell, no one but Karyn knew she was there. The fact that Karyn hadn’t killed her already was her one slim thread of hope.

She had only a brief memory of the encounter with Karyn, the two of them facing each other on the narrow road. Then Karyn had flung out her hand in a flash of violet light, and the next thing Ileni remembered was waking up in this windowless room. It had taken her only a few minutes to sense the wards around her and realize where she was.

Since then, food had appeared regularly on a tray on the floor, and her chamberpot had occasionally disappeared and reappeared—casual uses of magic she had once been accustomed to. But she’d had no contact with any human being. How long would Karyn have left her here if Sorin hadn’t forced her hand?

The magic holding Ileni loosened, and the stone wall scraped against her back as she slid to the floor. Karyn lifted one hand, and blue-white light sizzled between her fingers. “If you helped an assassin breach our wards, I will kill you right now. So I suggest you explain what just happened.”

Fortunately, Ileni had just spent several weeks keeping fear hidden. It was instinctive by now. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I have no magic left. I can’t help anyone do anything.”

“Every sorcerer in the Academy felt the magic coming from this room. Your presence here is no longer a secret.”

So it had been a secret? Interesting.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Ileni said. “Someone was trying to contact me.”

“Someone from the Renegai village?”

The sneer in Karyn’s voice made Ileni want to lie, just to spite her. Yes. My people can break your wards. What do you think of that?

But the imperial sorcerers still believed the Renegai were a backward group of ragtag exiles, no threat to them. If Ileni pretended they had the ability to breach the Academy’s wards, that might put them in danger. The assassins, on the other hand, were already perceived as a threat. And besides, they could take care of themselves.

“No,” she said. “Someone from the Assassins’ Caves.”

Karyn straightened, and Ileni was glad she hadn’t lied. The sorceress was now looking at her as if she represented a true danger. As if she was someone to be reckoned with.

That might or might not be a good thing. Reckoning with her could very well translate into killing her. But it felt good, in that moment.

“What did they want?” Karyn asked.

Lies spun through Ileni’s mind, some senseless, some unbelievable, some contradicting each other. But seeing Sorin again, even for a few minutes, had reminded her how to take risks. She smiled directly at Karyn and said, “I’m not going to tell you.”

“Oh,” Karyn said, very softly, “I think you will.” The blue-white light around her hand expanded, forming a crackling ball of barely restrained power.

Fear ran through Ileni, a taut thread. Only four days ago, she had seen Karyn hold Sorin suspended over a chasm, the ugly coiling of a deathspell emanating from her chants. Karyn was an imperial sorceress. Torture came easily to her.

“What you’ll also tell me,” Karyn said, “is who you were really talking to. Now that you’re gone, there is no fully trained sorcerer in the Assassins’ Caves. Certainly no one capable of breaching our wards.”