Death Marked (18 page)

“I . . .” she began, choking before she even knew what to say. And then, just in time, realized that she was going about this all wrong.

Karyn didn’t expect Ileni to be convinced. She expected her to be
tempted.

“I could heal some of those people,” she said. “If I . . . if I had a lodestone bracelet of my own.”

Karyn let out a tiny victorious snort. “Could you, indeed?”

“Yes.” Deep breath. “If what you’re saying is true, if you would prefer that people
not
die, then give me a bracelet and let me serve as their healer.”

“How noble of you.” Karyn let go of Ileni’s wrist, and Ileni forced herself not to rub the indentations left by the
sorceress’s fingers. “I’ll consider it. Although you do realize that the lodestone on your bracelet will have cost a life. You’ll just be trading one life for another.”

So Karyn, too, didn’t know how to stop arguing just because she had what she wanted. Ileni shrugged. “Renegai healing spells have been honed for centuries to require as little power as possible. Unless someone is actually dying, it shouldn’t drain a lodestone to cure them. I could cure dozens of people with the power of a single stone.”

“I see,” Karyn said. “I’ll consider it.”

And now they both had what they wanted. Ileni’s mouth tasted sour.

Karyn let out a breath. “Well. Much as I would love to continue this discussion, I don’t have the time. The Oksain River is flooding again, and I need a dozen mid-level sorcerers to help me contain it.” She stepped back. “By keeping the river in its banks, we’ll save hundreds of lives and prevent a famine. But don’t let that interfere with your self-righteous horror.”

Killing people to save other people’s lives. Ileni had heard that before. She bit her lip, hard enough to hurt, and said nothing.

Karyn vanished. But right before she did, she gave Ileni a
look of such triumph, such certainty, that Ileni’s entire body clenched.

She ran the rest of the way up the mountain, racing past clustered spikes of grass and thorny bushes clinging to the rock. She pulled in power as soon as she was in range of the lodestones, healing muscles recklessly so she could keep up a breakneck pace. She slammed the door to her room, yanked open two of her desk drawers, and grabbed what she needed: a piece of a chalk and a stone paperweight in the shape of a tiny mountain. She didn’t bother to close the drawers. She dropped to her hands and knees and began to draw, so hard and fast that chalk dust sputtered up from the rock.

It was a complicated pattern to work so quickly, and that helped; she had to focus on it entirely, her mind clear and cold, distractions like life and death and betrayal becoming misty and distant. When she was done, she sat cross-legged on the floor with a thump. Then, with slow deliberateness, she placed her fingers on the right places on the paperweight.

She knew how to do this spell. She had run it through her mind a dozen times. And this time, she had to see him. Had to tell him that he was right, that she was ready to come back. . . .

Her fingers froze.

Was
she ready?

This wasn’t about running away. She was a weapon. If she opened the portal, he would think it meant she was ready to be used.

Was she?

Was she ready to set the assassins loose on the Empire, just because people were dying a few days earlier than they would have died anyhow?

The thought felt slick and ugly in her mind. No Renegai would ever think that way. All lives were worth saving. It was why healing was so central, the most important use of magic. Why they had left the Empire to begin with.

But Ileni hadn’t been thinking like a Renegai for a long time now. The Renegai were a tiny group of outcasts, clinging to centuries-old ideals while hiding away in the mountains, where those ideals were never confronted with reality. Nobody else in the entire world saw life as anything more than a bag of coins, to be counted and valued and, ultimately, traded in.

She wished she still thought like a Renegai, confident in what was pure and good. Now she knew that nothing—nothing—was pure and good.

Including her.

Once, she had believed that she was a good person, that she would always choose right. That she would know what
right
meant. Now she was so tainted, so muddled, that she couldn’t even make a choice at all.

She heard a sound, an ugly, gulping sob, and clamped her lips together before she could let out another one. Slowly, carefully, she began the finger patterns again, this time doing them backward. Unwinding the spell.

When she was done, she rubbed the floor with her hands until there wasn’t a visible trace of chalk left, then kept scrubbing until no more tears fell onto the gray stone.

Arxis was at breakfast the next morning, sitting next to Evin, the two of them laughing and jostling each other. Judging by Cyn’s irritated expression, Arxis’s presence was a breach of protocol; and judging by Evin’s insouciant grin, it was one he didn’t care about. But when Ileni walked into the room, his brow furrowed.

Arxis glanced at Ileni, too. Even the way he turned his head was taut and disciplined, and his eyes were opaque. She wondered how none of the others could see him for what he was. A hunter. A killer.

Of course, they were all killers, here.

That morning, Ileni had gotten ready without magic, so it had taken her twice as long as usual. She was only halfway through her breakfast when Cyn pushed away from the table and said, “Let’s go.”

Fortunately, Ileni hadn’t had much appetite anyhow.

When they stepped outside, the sky was so gray it melted into the mountain peaks, and mist drifted across Ileni’s skin. She trudged across the bridge while the others soared overhead, Evin towing Arxis along. Apparently they had cemented their friendship while she was watching a man be tortured.

What should I do?
She had her answer now, the truth she had come to find: The Empire deserved to end, and she was the only one who could end it. It drew its magic from murder. Torturing the helpless until they surrendered their lives, and their power. . . .

Except the old man at Death’s Door hadn’t surrendered anything. He was still alive, and Lis had walked away.

But he wouldn’t be alive for long.
You’ll get only one more chance,
Karyn had threatened. That was, clearly, an isolated act of disobedience, and one that would soon be reversed. Did it really matter that Lis felt bad about what she was doing? She was doing it anyhow.

When Ileni stepped onto the plateau, Evin and Cyn were already sparring, flinging balls of colored light at each other. Cyn’s balls were pure white, her strikes direct and dizzyingly fast. Evin’s were swirls of translucent color, more beautiful than dangerous. Even so, Evin was clearly winning. His movements were relaxed, almost lazy, while Cyn’s breath came in short, ragged bursts. On the other side of the plateau, Lis and Arxis were standing with their heads close together, sleek black and unruly red.

Evin snapped his head around when Ileni’s foot touched the plateau. He raised a hand, and a burst of power stopped all the glowing orbs in midair. The vast expenditure of magic almost knocked Ileni back over the edge. She swayed slightly.

“Match over,” Evin said cheerfully. “Well, Ileni? Want to give it a try?”

Ileni did want to, and the longing made her feel tight, about to explode.

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

She said it without thinking, and didn’t hear the haughtiness in her voice until it was too late.

Evin shrugged, but Cyn stiffened. “I thought,” she said, “that you’d given up the whole shocked-and-superior act. It’s getting boring.”

“I’ll spar with you again—” Evin cut in.

“No. I think I’d like Ileni to have a turn.” Cyn ran her fingers through her short hair. “She’s proven that she’s quite capable of being a challenge, when she can bring herself to forget that she’s a—what are your villagers called again?”

“Renegai,” Ileni snapped. “And I don’t want to forget.”

“Clearly. You have my deepest sympathies for that.”

Her tone cut deep. The contempt was not just for Ileni, but for Ileni’s people, everything the Renegai had achieved and everything they had sacrificed.

Cyn smiled—an ugly smile, the sort she usually aimed at Lis. “Angry now, Renegai girl? Does that mean you’re allowed to fight?” She flung out a hand, and a column of sand rose before her and whirled across the plateau at Ileni.

Ileni drew in power from the lodestones and blasted the column apart. Then she raised a hand, and Cyn flew backward across the plateau, slamming into one of Evin’s frozen lights. It exploded in a graceful spray of color. Cyn, less gracefully, dropped to the ground and lay still.

The plateau was suddenly, resoundingly silent. Ileni’s heart pounded in her chest, and air streamed into her throat, cold and sharp.

Cyn lifted her head and whispered a word.

Pain tore through Ileni’s body. She screamed once, a short burst of agony, then sent a pain-numbing spell into her bones. She wrenched in a breath—and magic surged from Cyn again, turning Ileni’s body into her enemy, pain searing along her bones and her blood.

She managed not to scream this time, but she wasn’t sure how. Another healing spell dulled the pain enough to let her feel the magic Cyn was pouring into the attack. She tried to raise a defense, and a sideways surge of power slapped her attempt aside.

Cyn wasn’t even using the full strength of the spell. This was just a taste. If Cyn wanted, she could kill Ileni in a split second of agony. Or she could keep her alive and make her beg for death.
This
was what imperial magic was, what the Academy strove for and the Renegai had rejected. Magic designed to do nothing but cause pain, to hurt a human being beyond endurance.

Ileni crumpled to the floor, fighting the pain, keeping it almost—
almost
—at bay. She wouldn’t scream and she wouldn’t beg. Not . . . not yet.

“Yield,” Cyn said. She was standing over Ileni. Ileni hadn’t seen her move.

Ileni spat at her feet.

Cyn’s murmured a word, and pain sliced along Ileni’s cheek. Blood trickled down her face.

“Cyn,”
Evin said.

“It’s our match,” Cyn said coolly. “Don’t interfere. I’m not causing any permanent damage. She can use one of her cute little healing spells, and she won’t even have to waste a bandage.” She closed her fist, and Ileni couldn’t breathe. Air scraped painfully at her throat, and she gasped and floundered. Panic flooded through her, worse than pain.

“No permanant damage
yet
,” Cyn added. “All you have to do is yield.”

Ileni was slowly strangling, and she couldn’t quite manage defiance, but she squeezed her eyes shut and managed silence.

“Stop it,” Evin snapped, and suddenly it was gone—the constriction in her throat, the agony, the terror. Ileni uncurled herself slowly, her muscles strange and loose with the absence of pain. The sharp thrust of Cyn’s spell was muted by the power of Evin’s blocking spell, a spell that made Ileni’s attempt at defense laughable by comparison.

“Really, Evin,” Cyn said. She rolled her eyes and sauntered back to the other side of the plateau. “You are such an annoyance. No one asked you to get involved.”

“Call it a whim,” Evin said. His eyes were on Ileni.

“I call everything you do a whim.”

“This shouldn’t be too difficult for you, then.”

Ileni’s body finally believed it could move. A quick, easy spell healed the cut on her cheek, just as Cyn had predicted. She got to her feet and faced the other girl. Cyn propped one hand on her hip.

“I could destroy you,” Ileni said. Her voice shook. “I could destroy
all
of you. And I think I will.”

Cyn laughed and flicked an errant strand of hair away from her face.

“Well, Evin,” she said, “I guess that’s your cue to say,
You’re welcome
.”

Ileni’s throat tightened. She shouldn’t have said it. But she also knew there was no risk in saying it. No one here thought she could possibly be a threat.

She turned her back on Cyn’s smirk and Evin’s frown, soared into the air, and fled.

She didn’t soar very far. She kept close to the bridge, and, as soon as she was far enough from Cyn to feel safe, floated down and landed on it, gripping the rail with trembling hands. She was halfway across, close enough to the main peak
to see a group of novices in green tunics filing along one of the lower ledges. She probably could have made it farther, but that would have meant using more stolen magic.

She had barely stepped off the bridge when someone swooped in front of her. Ileni tensed, but it wasn’t Cyn. It was Evin, and one look at her expression made him switch directions and soar upward instead.

“I’m sorry that happened,” he said. He braced himself against the mountainside, his magic holding him to the cliff face, and looked down. “It didn’t mean anything. You caught Cyn in a bad mood.”

“Sure,” Ileni said. “Among my people, we also respond to bad moods by torturing our friends.”

His brow furrowed. “We don’t all respond that way.”

“But you think it’s normal. She isn’t going to be punished, is she? Nobody’s going to treat her like the monster she is. Because you’re used to it. Because everything you do is about causing pain.”

Evin blinked, and Ileni braced herself for a scathing retort she would very much deserve. She was no better, after all—lashing out at Evin because she was angry at Cyn. And at herself.

But what Evin said was, “She will be punished, if you
go to Karyn. That was unacceptable. She could have really hurt you.”

“What will she get?” Ileni asked. “A stern lecture?” Not that any of the asssassins would have gotten even that much. They were too honest to pretend brutality was beneath them. “You’re all so important, aren’t you? The sorcerers who hold the Empire together. You’re untouchable, and you know it.”

“We do get away with a lot,” Evin admitted. “In my case, that’s absolutely justified, but in Cyn’s, it’s more of an . . . unfortunate necessity.”

“Why?” Ileni said. “Why is it necessary? Why can’t you just
stop
? You don’t need this much power—”