Death Sworn(28)

“Like a picture,” he said finally. “One man walking, one man falling.”

“That’s how it was, when the Empire exiled us. Half of us died before we reached the mountains. From starvation, from exhaustion, from arrows. Some of the emperor’s archers came after us and picked us off. We managed to capture one and ask him why. He said it was for fun.”

She did turn then, after the silence got long enough. Sorin was staring at her as if he had never seen her before. “That was four hundred years ago,” he said.

“Yes. We don’t forget.” She reached back and touched the tattoo. Her fingers brushed his, and he snatched his hand back as if suddenly noticing where it was. “We make sure to never forget, because someday we will return.”

He kept looking at her, and this was different from his usual controlled silence. She had actually put him at a loss for words. Finally he said, “You’re all tattooed?”

“Every last one of us.”

“But Absalm wasn’t. . . .”

“Our parents choose where to put the tattoo. Some families like for it to be more visible than others.” Tellis’s tattoo was on his shoulder.

His fingers twitched, but he didn’t reach for her neck again. “Then shouldn’t you be glad to tutor us? Our goal is the same as yours. We also want to release the world from the Empire’s grip. We also want to make the Rathians pay for all they have done.”

“Our methods are not the same.” She smoothed her hair back over her shoulder, and it brushed across her neck, hiding the tattoo again. “The Renegai don’t murder innocents.”

“What we do is not murder.” The contempt in his voice stung her. He wasn’t trying to convince her; he was explaining the obvious to a slow child. “Every person we kill dies to serve a greater purpose.”

“I’m sure they would be happy if they knew it,” Ileni said sarcastically, but her voice sounded weak even to her. “If you would explain it to them, perhaps they would volunteer for your knives.”

Sorin shook his head. “Every leader makes decisions about other people’s lives. Didn’t your Elders do the same, when they decided to send you here?”

She stepped back as if from a physical blow. “And who did you kill, on your last mission? What purpose did that murder serve?”

He turned his head away from her, and for a moment, in profile, looked as dangerous as she knew he must be. “An imperial noble. Do you have a problem with that?”

She shouldn’t have asked. He had ended someone’s life, plunged a man into terror and pain and watched the hope die from his eyes, and he was proud of it.

“Does it matter if I do?” she asked.

Sorin regarded her with narrowed eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft, and a shiver ran up Ileni’s spine. “No. It’s just . . . surprising.”

“That I’m the only one in these caves who knows what life is worth?”

“I don’t think you do.” His eyebrows slanted in thin lines downward. “How can you know what your life is worth if you don’t know what you would trade it for?”

“Get out of my way.” She forced the words out, before her throat closed up and made speech impossible.

He stepped aside without a word, but she could feel him watching her as she walked back down the dark passageway.





Chapter 8

It took three days for Ileni’s magic to come trickling back, heartbreakingly slowly. Dozens of times a day, she reached deep within herself, worrying at the emptiness where her power had been. Every time she did, it made her stomach twist, but she was unable to stop.

She had plenty of time to brood about it. She taught her three classes every morning, reviewing skills her students already knew, dodging their veiled and not-so-veiled demands to learn more. She devised dozens of ways to teach magic without spending any herself. Most of them involved insulting their competence and skills, something she found dangerously satisfying. Her unhappiness made her sharp-tongued and vicious, and even Irun began to hesitate before challenging her. At least, she thought he did.

After her third class each morning, Sorin took her to the midday meal and then to her room, where she was left to do whatever she wanted until he came to pick her up for dinner. In theory, she was supposed to be spending some of that time building up the wards around the caves, wards strengthened for centuries by generations of Renegai tutors. She wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed she wasn’t doing that part of her task.