Death Sworn

Total silence. Then someone snickered, and a second later, all twenty drenched young killers doubled over in hysterical laughter.

“That could have killed you!” Ileni shouted. If they had shifted the accent lower instead of higher, the water would have been boiling. She glared at each of them in turn—and noticed, suddenly, that it was nineteen drenched students. Bazel, though he was laughing as hard as everyone—albeit a bit tentatively, and keeping a wary eye on the others—was completely dry.

Ileni advanced upon Bazel. That cut off the laughter. Even a sudden, startled curse from the direction of the training area—where the assassins sometimes trained barefoot—didn’t restart the snickers, though a few students grinned.

“What happened to you?” Ileni demanded.

Bazel looked blank, as if confused by the question, but he couldn’t keep a hint of smugness from his voice. “Cadrel taught us rain-shields before he died, Teacher.”

Silence. Ileni, glancing around the room, saw that no one was grinning anymore. They must all have mastered the rain-shields—among the Renegai, three-year-olds used rain-shields—but Bazel had been the only one to think of using one.

The grins and easy laughter had turned to dark expressions and glares, all directed at Bazel. Sorin in particular looked thunderous, and Ileni could guess why: he was supposed to be the one who surprised his teachers with clever tricks, who surpassed the others without half-trying.

Ileni looked at Bazel thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should arrange some private lessons for you.”

That caused another snicker—a far nastier, less friendly one. Bazel stared at her as if she had struck him, then lowered his eyes.

Ileni sighed, and turned to face the rest of the class. Nineteen hard faces: cold, resentful, and dripping wet.

It was Irun, of course, who spoke. “Why only Bazel?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Absalm gave extra lessons to everyone who had great power. Perhaps you should do the same.”

She folded her arms. “I suppose you were one of them?”

“Me. Arkai. Elum. Efram.” He pointed to each student as he said their name, then added, with a sneer, “and Bazel.”

She followed his pointing finger, blinking. Sorin, watching her closely, spoke up. “You disagree with his assessments, Teacher?”

“No,” Ileni said, too stunned to lie. She didn’t disagree at all. Irun had correctly identified the five students in her class with the most raw power.

But correctly identifying them was not the tutors’ purpose. The Elders had been clear on that: the treaty required them to train the assassins, but they were to do it as ineffectively as possible without raising suspicion. Non-sorcerers couldn’t sense magical potential, so all the teachers were to single out the least-powerful students for the most training. Creating superior killers was the very last thing they wanted to do.

What were you up to, Absalm?

“I’ll think about it,” she said finally. They all watched her, their faces still unfriendly, and she took a deep breath. “In the meantime, let’s try this spell again.”

Chapter 7

“You’re making a mistake,” Sorin said as he walked her into the dining cavern for the midday meal.

Ileni ignored him, heading for her table. She was wrapped in her own thoughts, and Sorin walked in complete silence, so she didn’t notice at first that he was following her. Only when he walked around to the other side of the table did she realize this wasn’t going to be another solitary meal.

The food for the meal was laid out in the center of the table—enough for only one person. Ileni reached for the stew and dumped half of it into her bowl, then tore off a chunk of the bread and dipped it in, not looking at Sorin.

Sorin settled himself on the bench across from her with his typical predatory grace. He made no move toward the food, even though he had obviously spent much of the morning in vigorous training. Sweat still glistened on his forehead and upper arms. “You’re not helping Bazel by singling him out. You’re making things more difficult for him.”

Ileni swallowed a spicy mouthful of stew—someone in these caves knew how to cook, which was one small mercy—and said, “I’m going to train him to use his magic. Why would that make things more difficult for him? Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“You’re here to help us use magic on our missions,” Sorin said. “You shouldn’t waste your time on Bazel. He probably won’t survive long enough to be sent on his first mission.”

Ileni tore off another chunk of bread. “Why? What will happen to him?”

“A fatal accident during a weapons training session, I would imagine.”

Ileni wasn’t sure if he was joking. Sorin leaned back on the bench, regarding her with his head tilted to the side. “Shocked that we’re capable of murder, Sorceress?”

She thought carefully before answering. “Of one of your own? Yes.”

“Ah, you begin to understand us.” It might have sounded like a compliment, but he said it too flatly. “But I said an accident. Bazel’s fighting skills are . . . not up to our standards. And so people are a little less careful when sparring with him. The better to push him to improve, you understand. And the farther behind he falls, the higher the risk.” He twitched his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s simply the way things work.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say and couldn’t hide the disgust on her face. He straightened. “What do you Renegai do, to people born with inadequate magical ability?”

Ileni choked on her bread, but kept her eyes on her food. He couldn’t have guessed how sharp that would cut. “We don’t kill them! Among the Renegai, ordinary people are allowed to live.”

“Ordinary.” He mimicked her pronunciation of the word, and this time she did flinch at the nonchalant contempt in his voice. An exact echo of hers. “How nice for them, if they’re willing to live with that. None of us would accept it.”

Ileni pretended to be deeply involved in removing the mushrooms from her stew, not trusting herself to speak. She could feel his eyes boring into the top of her head, but could think of no way to deflect him.

Finally he said, “Death doesn’t mean to us what it does to you. We prefer it to a life of shame.”

She remembered the tight fear on the thin boy’s face, the grimness in those blue eyes as he walked to the window. But he had jumped. Jumped, and fallen, and then that thud . . . she forced her mind away from the memory.

“Bazel will improve,” Sorin said, “or he will die. There’s no in-between.”

“And you’ll try to make sure it’s the latter option, won’t you?” she said.

Even though he couldn’t see her face, he must have sensed something, because his voice softened. “Remember, he’s like the rest of us. Training to kill. You’ve made it clear you abhor us all, so why should you care about Bazel?”

Ileni tore off another chunk of bread, but couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She had been ravenous when she sat down, and now she wasn’t sure she could manage to swallow. “Why do you care?” she demanded. “Because he’s not good at fighting, he’s not allowed to be good at anything? Does it bother you so much, that he’s better at magic than you are?”

Sorin sat ramrod straight, and Ileni knew she was right. Bazel had no right, in his classmates’ eyes, to be better than they were. At anything. And by offering him lessons, she had as much as promised that his small victory today wouldn’t be a fluke, that she would ensure he continued to be better. She leaned over the table, feeling suddenly savage. “Besides, you just told me he’ll never be sent on a mission. So he’s not a killer after all, is he?”

“He wishes he could be.” Sorin leaned forward, too. His cheekbones stood out like blades below his fierce eyes. “Don’t think he’s anything like you. He’s as devoted to the master, and to our purpose, as the rest of us.”

“Purpose?” Ileni said. “You’re hired killers. Gold is your purpose.”

Sorin’s jaw clenched. “Do you truly think that’s all we are?”

Ileni put her bread down. “Are you honestly trying to tell me you’re not?”

“Money is necessary,” Sorin admitted, “and sometimes, yes, we kill for pay. But usually we kill because the target’s death, or an alliance with the person hiring us, furthers our greater mission.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Bringing down the Empire.”

She stared at him.

Sorin pulled his shoulders back. “That has always been our goal. It seems your Elders didn’t tell you the whole story.”

That stung. “Well,” Ileni retorted, “you’re clearly doing a fantastic job. You’ve only been killing people for, what, four hundred years. . . .”

“And each assassination has been a blow, disrupting the Empire, making the Rathians fear us.” His voice was like his posture, the violence barely discernible beneath his calm tone. “When the Empire does collapse, it will seem to its subjects that it happened overnight. They will not see how we weakened its foundations, one chip here and another there, for centuries. No one sees the whole picture yet. No one but the master.”

He said it as if it was undeniable, and the weight of his certainty crushed her questions. She looked away.

The blaze died out of Sorin’s eyes, and he pressed his lips together. “I need to talk to you about something else.” He stood and turned his back on her. “Follow me.”

Ileni hesitated for only a moment. Then she slid off the bench and hurried after him.

Outside the cavernous dining hall, a few twists and turns through dimly lit passageways brought them to a small chamber—barely more than a widening of the passageway, but full of thickly packed clusters of long, thin stalactites that hung from the ceiling nearly to the floor. A few daggers were lodged among them. Ileni deliberately turned her back on the tendrils of stone and crossed her arms. “What is this?”

Sorin walked over to the dense block of hanging stones and dropped to his back, a lithe, graceful movement. While Ileni stared, he grabbed the bottoms of the stalactites and pulled himself beneath them, sliding along the ground. After a second she couldn’t see him anymore.

Ileni stood where she was. “Um. I don’t think so.”

“Not willing to risk much to find out the truth, are you?” Sorin’s voice was oddly distorted by the rocks between them, but it wasn’t coming from below; clearly, he was standing. There must be a clear space between the hanging stones and the cavern wall behind them.

This is not a good idea. Ileni lowered herself gingerly to the ground and onto her back. She pushed herself with her heels until her head was under the stalactites. Their ends weren’t as pointy as she had thought, but blunt and somewhat knobby. She was fairly sure she would still die if any of them came loose and plunged down on her.

She lifted her hands, closing them around the two thickest-looking stones. They seemed solid and sturdy. She took a deep breath and pulled.

It wasn’t quite that easy, of course. Sorin had done it in one motion, but she had to pull herself onward three times before she was on the other side. By the time she stood up, her arms and back felt covered with bruises, and dirt rained from her hair.

They were in a small space barely big enough for the two of them. It seemed pitch-black until Ileni’s eyes adjusted to the faint light creeping in between the hanging stones.

“All right,” she said. “Do you have a reason for these elaborate precautions, or are you just having fun?”

“Both.” Sorin held his hand up, and something flashed in the dimness: a blade. Ileni leaned back sharply, bumping against a sliver of stone. Trapped. She felt for her ward, and sensed it as a faint tingle wrapped around her skin. “I found the knife. The one used to kill Cadrel.”