Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(35)

“All right,” the girl said finally. “This way.”

She led Ileni through a curving corridor to the top of a spiral staircase, then gestured curtly at the stairs and walked away.

The stairs wound their way down a narrow column inside the mountain and ended in a large cavern, walls studded with a mix of glowstones. A dozen students stood in the center of the cavern, in a circle around a tall man holding up a lodestone while demonstrating a spell. Arxis looked exactly like the other students, right down to his rigid posture and the attentive angle of his jaw.

Ileni settled on the base of the bottom step, jiggling her foot against the stone floor. The instructor was running through a fairly simple sound-enhancing spell, one every Renegai sorcerer perfected by the age of five. Ileni had figured it out at the age of two and a half. It had been the earliest sign of her great potential.

When it was the students’ turn to attempt the spell, half of them fumbled it, and one managed to make herself deaf—Ileni felt that spell going wrong and winced, but remained where she was, hidden in the dimness of the stairwell. Arxis was one of the students who failed, but as the spell fizzled out around him, he looked over his shoulder directly at Ileni.

She should have realized he would know she was there. Giving in to her escalating impatience, Ileni got to her feet and walked into the cavern.

The instructor held up a hand to silence the students. He had a gaunt, dark face, with white markings coiling up his right cheek.

“I need to speak to Arxis,” Ileni said.

She had no idea how he would react—among the Renegai, interrupting a lesson would have earned her at least an evening of kitchen duty, and in the caves it might have gotten her killed. But the instructor just nodded. “Take it outside.”

They walked in silence until almost the top of the spiral staircase, where Arxis stopped. The threat in his stance made Ileni pull her power in tighter, readying it for a spell.

Arxis’s voice was flat. “Coming here wasn’t particularly discreet. You’re an advanced student. You’re supposed to ignore me.”

“Like Evin does?” Like Lis does? she almost added, but didn’t quite dare.

“Everyone knows Evin doesn’t care about his status. That doesn’t mean I can rub shoulders with all of you. I am trying not to stand out, you know.”

“Your secrets are not my concern,” Ileni retorted, keeping her voice low. Even with the sound-enhancing spells, the students in the cavern below shouldn’t be able to hear them, but there was no point in taking chances. Well. Unnecessary chances. “I need you to take me to the source of the lodestones. Now.”

Arxis stepped up one stair. “I thought we discussed this. You have four days left.”

She had to crane her neck to look up at him, which she didn’t like; but he was standing in the middle of the stair, so she couldn’t step up without pushing him out of the way. Or trying to push him out of the way.

“Take me,” she said, “or I’ll expose you.”

“Will you, indeed?”

“Yes.”

Arxis leaned against the wall. “And yet I could keep you from exposing me—or annoying me—in just a second, couldn’t I? I could make it look like a fall. Or an accident. I could be far away by the time they found you. Do you believe me?”

She did. Ileni stepped up next to him on the stairs. “Then why are you talking about it, instead of doing it?”

Back when she had entered the Assassins’ Caves, she had managed to say things like that without the slightest tremor. But somewhere in the interim, she had started to care again whether she lived.

That was going to be very inconvenient.

Arxis’s lip curled. “I’m still making up my mind.”

His eyes were cold and ruthless and familiar. She had been surrounded by eyes like that not so long ago. A primal fear rose in her: Irun’s hand pressing her face against the blanket. The gag in her mouth. The blade against her throat. She reached for the magic within herself, pulling it all recklessly into a ward, but it wouldn’t be enough. The assassins knew how to kill sorcerers now.

Her voice still emerged cool. Later, she would be impressed with herself. “The master will be quite unhappy with you if you do.”

Because she was used to assassins, she saw the tiny tic in his cheek. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why not? I am also part of the master’s plan. You’re an assassin on a mission—nothing unusual about you. I am far more important than that.”

Arxis grabbed her arm, so fast she didn’t have time to block him with a spell. His breath was hot and sour on her face. “Why would the master send you without telling you about the assets we already have here?”

His fingers squeezed painfully against the bones of her wrist. She lifted her chin. “Who knows why the master does anything?”

He laughed, short and harsh, and released her. Ileni pitched backward—she had been pulling back without realizing it—and slammed her arm against the stone wall to steady herself.

“True enough,” Arxis said. “Maybe he was testing you. And maybe you failed.”

Maybe I killed him. “All interesting possibilities. Here’s another: maybe you’re the one failing, right now. A plan you won’t change is a plan that will get you killed.”