Death Sworn(13)

Later that night, as she slept fitfully on her narrow bed, someone touched her elbow. She rolled over and murmured sleepily, “Tellis?”

And thudded off the bed onto the floor.

The fall drove the breath out of her body, leaving an empty space that was immediately flooded with grief. She gasped, not caring that she was flat on her stomach, completely vulnerable—

—to whomever had woken her in the first place.

She scrambled to get to her feet and turn around at the same time. Sorin took several slow strides back, his hands held up before him.

After a moment, Ileni decided to be furious rather than frightened. If he had come to kill her, he wouldn’t have bothered to wake her first. “What are you doing here?”

By the faint light of the glowstones, Sorin’s face looked sharp and feral. “Who is Tellis?”

“No one you have any right to ask about. Any more than you have a right to be here, in my room, in the middle of the night! How did you open the door?”

He smiled at her, a quick flash of white teeth. “It was already open.”

She stalked past him. There—a thin wedge of cloth, jammed into the corner between the doorpost and the floor. It would have kept the door from closing completely, and, therefore, the wards from working.

Furious—mostly at herself, for not being more careful—she kicked the cloth out into the corridor before turning back.

Sorin was watching her in a way that made her suddenly remember she was wearing only a long sleep-tunic. He was in the same gray tunic and gray pants he wore during the day. She fought not to blush, failed, and lifted her chin.

He spread his arms out from his sides, in a manner she suspected was supposed to look innocent. It didn’t. Like every move he made, it radiated honed menace. “It is not your room. You have been given the use of it, that is all. Everything in these caves belongs to the master.”

“Thank you for the lesson in assassin ideology—”

“And he wants to see you,” Sorin said. “I was sent to summon you.”

In the ensuing silence, Ileni discovered that it was possible to be simultaneously furious and frightened. “All right,” she said finally. “Will you wait outside while I dress?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“The master wants to see you immediately.”

“I think you’re being a bit too literal—”

“He said specifically that you weren’t to get dressed first.” Sorin’s face was like stone, all hints of emotion wiped from it. Did that mean he was embarrassed?

“Does he think I have spells woven into my clothes?” But even as she said it, Ileni knew that wasn’t it. He wanted her vulnerable; wanted her to understand that she was under his control. That, as Sorin had pointed out, everything in these caves was his. Including her.

She understood it perfectly. But she would be buried before she paraded the fact in her nightclothes.

Sorin was silent, waiting. She said, “All right, then, don’t leave,” and walked past him to the clothes chest near the far wall.

His eyes widened slightly as she pulled out a skirt. She could practically see him running his options through his mind. He didn’t have many—at least, she didn’t think he did. She hoped he wasn’t coming up with any she hadn’t considered.

Apparently not. As she reached down to lift the hem of her sleeping tunic over her head, he spun around and stared hard at the wall.

Ileni dropped the hem, instead pulling the long brown skirt over it and lacing on her scuffed leather shoes. She did it so quickly that the right felt too loose and the left too tight, but she didn’t take the time to fix them. Impatience and disapproval radiated from Sorin’s tight shoulders. “I’m done,” she said.

“Then come,” Sorin said tersely, and strode out the door without bothering to turn around.

He walked fast, making Ileni scurry to keep up. She considered demanding that he slow down, but having won the argument about her clothes, she wasn’t about to start another, especially one she would probably lose. The top of her left shoe cut into her ankle with each step, which did nothing to improve her mood.

Sorin led her through the dark corridors, in the opposite direction from the dining cavern and training area. The faint light of the glowstones was barely enough to let her see his back and the ground in front of her. She concentrated on memorizing the way.

After numerous twists and turns—some of which, she darkly suspected, were unnecessary—Sorin paused in an irregularly shaped cavern. Masses of thin stalactites hung from the ceiling like tiny knives, the dusky light of the glowstones reflecting off them as if they were macabre chandeliers. In the center, a large stalactite hanging from the ceiling and an equally large stalagmite growing from the ground had met and fused together, forming a long column of almost pure-white rock, thick at its base, narrowing at its center, and then thickening again when it met the ceiling. Hundreds of little marks were carved into the sides of the natural pillar.