Death Sworn(37)

She pressed her hands to her cheeks as she sobbed, her humiliation drowned in the enormity of everything else. She could be humiliated later, when she was less terrified and frustrated. The only tiny bright spot was that Sorin looked as helpless as she felt.

How to throw assassins off balance: cry in front of them. She would have to find a way to pass that along to the next tutor.

When it was clear that she wasn’t going to be able to stop crying within the next few seconds, she decided to talk through her sobs. Sorin would have to deal with it. “It was supposed to show the hand that threw the knife. Instead it showed me, as best it could, what threw the knife. It wasn’t a human hand.”

Sorin was still watching her as warily as if she might explode. “What was it?”

The wild movement. The controlled outburst of power. She recognized it in her blood.

“It was magic,” she said. She turned her head away, feeling her sobs begin to die as a cold horror wormed its way into her. This was even worse than knowing a regular assassin was after her. “A very complex spell. Nobody in these caves should have been able to perform it, but someone did. Cadrel was killed by magic.”





Chapter 10

The next morning, Ileni began testing her students for magical skill. She couldn’t really believe any of them had the ability to throw a knife with magic—while random throwing spells were easy enough, aiming and throwing a blade was as difficult with magic as without it—but she couldn’t think of any other possibility. Someone in these caves had done it, and she had to find him before she became his next victim.

Despite the urgency, she put off testing Irun until she had no choice. On the fourth morning, after she had found every other student lacking, she finally called him up. Her skin shrank in on itself as he crossed the floor toward her, his wrist still wrapped in a tight white bandage.

In the four days since his attack on her, Irun had not changed his behavior in the slightest, and she had been doing her best to return the favor—mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. Her chest constricted as he came close. She wanted to hurt him, to make him pay for what he had done. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything to him.

But when his knife bounced off the far wall, hilt first, then skittered across the floor back to him, she allowed herself a faint sneer. “Clearly, this skill is too advanced. We’ll go back to the basic exercises we practiced last week, and I’ll try to think of a simpler technique to start with.”

Irun had stepped on the knife hilt to bring it to a stop. Complete silence fell while she waited for his retort. If she had targeted any of the other students like this—even Sorin—there would have been at least a snicker. If it had been Bazel, everyone would have been smirking. But the cavern was completely silent.

“This is the first useful thing you’ve taught us,” Irun said at last. He flipped the knife up into the air and caught it by the hilt, all without looking at it. “You do know what it is we do, don’t you, Teacher?”

“I know.” Magefire. She should have been more careful. All the students were watching them, and she couldn’t think of a way to back down from this confrontation. All the respect she had gained was slipping away. “But you’re not ready. Eventually—”

“Eventually,” Irun sneered. “How typically Renegai. You know, sometimes waiting is wise, but only—”

“—if you know what you’re waiting for.” The students on their mats chorused it together.

Ileni turned and stared at them.

“One of his teachings,” Irun explained, as if she should have known.

Ileni wanted to match his sneer with one of her own: Quoting other people is fine, but only if you actually have the ability to think on your own. It was on the tip of her tongue. But all at once she could feel his hand on her jaw, the helpless panic burning through her chest.

Irun was enjoying himself, she could tell. Enjoying her fear.

“Basic exercises,” she said. “Now.”

As soon as she said it, she was sure that he—that all of them—were simply going to ignore her. But after a long, insolent stare, Irun sauntered back to his mat, dropped gracefully onto it, and closed his eyes. The other students did the same, except Sorin. His eyes met hers, and then he, too, closed them.

They were all sitting in what she had once thought was the exact same pose. But now she could see how Bazel’s shoulders were just the tiniest bit hunched, how Irun’s chin was tilted a fraction higher than everyone else’s, how Sorin’s body was coiled as if about to explode off the mat.