Death Sworn(15)

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.