Death Sworn(39)

“Unless they’re hiding it,” Sorin pointed out.

“Magical skill is not an easy thing to hide. No.” She had been thinking about this all morning. “It isn’t one of the students, which means it must be one of the teachers.”

Sorin vaulted to his feet and began a series of punches, blocks, and kicks, his slow grace masking the controlled violence of the movements. “Why would a teacher want to kill the Renegai tutors?”

Ileni didn’t know. But there was a lot she didn’t know. “Did Absalm spend a lot of time with any of the other teachers?”

“With all of them,” Sorin said. He leaped into a double kick and landed in a light crouch. “He sat at their table, after all.”

“You brought out the small table just for me?” She had intended it to sound light, but even she heard the bitterness in her voice.

Sorin straightened. “No. Cadrel sat alone.”

“Then why didn’t Absalm?”

“Absalm had the master’s favor from the beginning.”

“Are you saying I don’t?” she asked, and surprised a laugh out of him.

“Perhaps not at the moment.” He was still poised to continue his exercises, but hadn’t yet moved. “In time, you’ll be accepted, too.”

“I don’t want—never mind. It’s not important.” Ileni got to her feet. “It’s not as if Absalm was teaching magic during mealtimes.”

“He wasn’t giving the teachers lessons at any other times, either,” Sorin said. “No one here has much free time.”

“You have time to give me these lessons,” Ileni pointed out.

He gave her an inscrutable look. “Officially, you are giving me private magic lessons.”

“Only you? Doesn’t that bother the others?”

He looked away, his shoulders stiff.

“It must bother Irun.”

“Irun,” Sorin said, “has his own suspicions about what we are doing with this time.”

Heat flooded her face. “Oh.”

Something flashed deep in Sorin’s eyes, something that made her wonder if he wished Irun was right. He stepped toward her, and her skin tingled all over with sudden anticipation.

Then he rushed her.

She was so startled, she reacted without thinking. She grabbed and twisted as she had been taught, and Sorin slammed down on his back.

A thrill of pure, fierce joy ran through her. She grinned savagely as Sorin rolled smoothly to his feet, and her sense of triumph didn’t die until he grinned back. Then it drained away in a flash.

“You let me do that.” Without the adrenaline coursing through her, it was obvious.

“Of course,” Sorin said. He balanced on the balls of his feet. “But if I had let you do it last week, you still wouldn’t have been able to.”

Ileni stepped away from him, eyes burning. “This is stupid.”

Sorin blinked. “What?”

“This is stupid.” She glared at him, breathing hard. “And you know it. Four days of intense training, and I can manage to throw you one time, when you let me. I’m not going to be able to defend myself against any of you.”

“Well,” Sorin said, stretching his arms above his head and twisting his neck from side to side, “four days is not long. We have years to practice.” He let his arms drop. “I guess that’s a good thing.”

No, it wasn’t. She was supposed to die. That was why she had come here. And here she was, buried beneath the earth, practicing pathetic new skills against someone she could never really fight. Someone whose body would never betray him the way her magic had betrayed her, someone who had no idea what it was to be ordinary.

Someone who’s going to die, too, she thought, and a pang twinged through her. It wasn’t right that he should die. That all his skill and physical prowess, all his fierce devotion and simmering wildness, should be so temporary. One command and he would be gone, just like Jastim.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said, dropping out of her fighting stance. “I have to . . . to talk to the teachers.” Would any of them even talk to her? So far, they all completely ignored her. “I have to figure out which one of them might have magic.”

Sorin nodded. “Arkim is the only possibility I can think of.”

Ileni had been prepared for an argument. “What?”