Death Sworn(57)

Alone in her room, she felt suddenly drained. She checked to make sure the door was truly shut. Then she stripped off her dirt-stained clothes, pulled the blanket over her head, and escaped into a dream where she rushed down the black river and emerged under a brilliant blue sky.



The next few days were more unbearable than ever. She had thought these caverns were impenetrable, that the only way out was death. But nobody was guarding that river. She had enough magic in her to breathe underwater—and besides, she could swim. She could leave.

But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even send a message to Tellis. She felt itchy and short-tempered, and during her classes she lashed out so often that even her younger students began regarding her sullenly.

Every afternoon, after knife-throwing lessons with Sorin, she went with Bazel to an empty cavern and taught him what she called “advanced magical theory.” For the most part, she made up the theories, but she also laid the groundwork for him to perform his own spells . . . powerful spells. She wondered sometimes, watching his set, desperate face, if this was really a good idea. And she wondered all the time how long she could put off the question of why she wasn’t demonstrating any of the skills herself.

She tried not to wonder whether, after the spies returned, that would still be a concern.

She made only one attempt to ask him about Absalm, a casual question about whether the two of them had been friends. Bazel pressed his lips together and turned back to the pattern they had been chalking on the floor. Just before he did, Ileni saw a twinge of—something—cross his face.

Grief? Was that possible?

She made her voice as gentle as she could. “Absalm was the one who showed you the river, wasn’t he?”

Bazel was silent for so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “He thought it would help me. If I was the one who traded the chocolates, who had something the others wanted.”

“Absalm was trading chocolates until then?” She forgot to sound soft; her voice went high with astonishment. But Bazel didn’t seem to notice.

“Absalm made contact with the traders a few years ago. By the time I came along, they had a system, a pair of magic stones. Karyn would throw hers into a fire, and his would glow in his room, so he’d know to go meet them that night. He had been meeting them for years, and nobody knew. Possibly not even the master.” Bazel glanced furtively around the empty cavern as he said it.

Ileni didn’t believe that for a second. Years? The master had to have known. He had allowed it to go on, allowed Absalm and Bazel to believe they were getting away with it. This, too, fit into his plans. But she had no idea how. She didn’t even know how to start figuring it out.

Absalm, what were you up to? And if he’d had a way of getting messages to the Renegai, why hadn’t he used it? Had Sorin been right—had Absalm stopped caring about his own people?

There was a mute plea in Bazel’s blue eyes. Ileni didn’t know what he wanted but was sure it was something she couldn’t give him. She reminded herself that Bazel—and Sorin—had been the only two assassins who knew Absalm’s secret. If he had been killed for it, it was likely one of them who had killed him.

“Do you know why he made contact with the traders?” she asked.

Bazel looked at her dubiously. “To trade things.”

“But why? Why was it worth the risk of breaking the rules, going against your master? For some chocolates?”

“It’s not just chocolate.” Bazel hunched his shoulders. “It’s . . . I think it was having something of his own. Something that wasn’t part of the caves, of our mission. He was an outsider. He needed that.”

Sure. Absalm needed that. Ileni thought of Bazel’s laughter, of his ease as he talked with the traders. The traders who were really imperial spies. If Sorin had figured it out immediately, there was no way the spies had fooled an Elder for years. Absalm must have known the truth.

“So he liked talking to them,” she said experimentally. “More than trading with them? He just wanted someone to talk to?”

Bazel shrugged. To him, of course, it made sense. Because he didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—what the traders really were. No matter how lonely Absalm felt in a cave full of killers, how could talking to spies for the Empire possibly have helped?

“What did he talk to them about?” she asked.

“All sorts of things. Imperial politics, magic . . .”