Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(37)
“Ready?” Arxis drawled, and pushed the door open.
The cavern inside was a perfect octagon, each side covered by a large mirror—but the mirrors didn’t reflect Karyn, who was turning in a slow circle in the center of the room. In one, a bald woman wearing blue robes sat with her hands folded in front of her. In another, a city was in flames, red fire and black smoke bursting within the glass. In a third, a mob rampaged through a marble building, mouths open in screams that couldn’t be heard through the glass. In the other mirrors, a pair of riders raced across a desert on black horses, a family of giant serpents curled around each other on a large gray rock, and a ship sailed peacefully on a surface of vast blue water flecked with white.
Karyn glared at them over her shoulder, and Evin and Ileni stopped in mid-step, simultaneously and automatically. Arxis took one step forward and stopped a fraction before he entered the room, with precise, almost unnatural control. The move would have given his identity away to anyone who had spent time among assassins. Ileni glanced quickly at Karyn, but the sorceress didn’t seem to have noticed.
Karyn turned her back on them, focusing on the blue-robed woman. “Send the fifth section of fourth-levels to Siandar,” she said crisply. “The serpents will have to wait, for now, and I will send Cyn to Askarli to quell the riot.”
The woman in the blue robe nodded. “Will you send someone to court?”
Karyn swiveled and focused on one of the mirrors near the door. “No. I can’t spare anyone. Once a new high sorcerer is appointed, I’ll send a delegation.”
The blue-robed woman nodded, bowed her head, and disappeared. Her image was replaced by the view of a snow-speckled forest.
Evin stepped calmly into the room, and Ileni followed. From inside, she could see the mirrors nearest the door. One showed what must have been a battlefield, round tents stretched across a grassy plain. The other revealed a vast throne room, where hundreds of men and women in elaborately layered robes milled about in front of a throne. On the throne sat a tall, black-haired man, wearing a crown and a bored expression.
The emperor. He had been a figure in songs for so long it was difficult, even staring right at him, to think of him as a real person. He was more imposing than she would have thought. Since long before the exile, the emperor had been ruler in name only, dependent upon the Academy and its sorcerers for his pretense of power.
Evin cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Ileni requests permission to go to the city with us.”
Everyone seemed to want to stare menacingly at Ileni today. She met Karyn’s glare with the same unmoved calm she had used on Arxis. Finally the sorceress shrugged one shoulder and said, “You have my permission.”
Too easy, that familiar voice warned. Ileni nodded. “Thank you.”
But Karyn had already dismissed her and was focused on Evin. Ileni wasn’t sure whether she was trying to intimidate him, too, or whether that was just leftover menace. “And you?”
Evin bent his head humbly. “May I please have permission, too, Gracious One?”
Karyn folded her arms over her chest. “Will you see your brother?”
“Yes,” Evin said, keeping his head bowed.
“Why don’t you bring him back with you for a visit? It’s past time—”
“Of course,” Evin said, lifting his head.
Karyn narrowed her eyes. “Good. Bring him to me when you get back.”
Once they were back on the ledge outside the mountain, the sky vast and blue above them, Arxis asked, “Did you mean it? Girad will be coming back with us?”
“No,” Evin said flatly. “But whatever excuses I would have made now will be far more effective later, when it’s too late for her to argue.”
“She’s going to be furious,” Arxis said.
“My, you are a bearer of great wisdom. Tell me, which way is the city? Up or—”
Arxis shoved him—a little too forcefully, a little too close to the edge—and every muscle in Ileni’s body tensed. But Evin just laughed and shoved back.
You’re walking with two people who might kill you, Ileni thought at him.
He glanced back at her, as if feeling the force of her gaze, and she looked quickly away. She wasn’t sure what he might read on her face.
CHAPTER
13
The city started before the mountain ended, wooden huts and streets clinging to the slopes, harried-looking men carrying gigantic packs up narrow stairways. Within two minutes, Ileni had seen more people—and more different types of people—than in her entire seventeen years of life. She did her best not to gawk, aware that both Evin and Arxis were watching her.
But when they finally got to level land, she couldn’t help herself. The city stretched ahead of them, a warren of streets and alleyways, weathered stone and iron rails, and people. Most of them were walking calmly down the streets, turning into the narrow alleyways, hair streaming behind them in the breeze, or cropped short, or wrapped in colorful kerchiefs. All around her conversation hummed, and it took her a moment to realize, through the cacophony, that much of it was in a language—or languages—she didn’t understand.
A man ran in front of her pushing a large wheeled crate, shouting at the top of his lungs, as if the noise itself would blast any obstacles out of his way. Ileni stopped short.
The vastness of the city spilled over her, making her feel small. It made everything she had ever known feel small. How tiny and insignificant her people really were, and how peculiar her life would seem to these masses. Even if she had fulfilled her destiny and become the greatest leader the Renegai had ever known, she still would have been nothing and no one to any of the hundreds of people milling in the streets in front of her.