He pressed his lips together. “You’re not trained to evaluate a situation the way he is.”
“Then maybe the fault lies with his teachers.”
“He received the same lessons as the rest of us.”
“No,” Ileni said, “he didn’t.” She took another step toward him. “You sat in those lessons surrounded by friends. You were allowed to take pride in who you were and who you were becoming. Bazel never had any of that. Is it any wonder he let his guard slip a little, when he finally found himself among people who didn’t think he was worthless?”
Sorin’s fingers curled slightly as if around an imaginary knife hilt. He bit off his words as he spoke. “That’s no excuse for endangering us all.”
Ileni clenched her fists. “That danger started back when you all agreed to treat Bazel like a clump of mud.”
“Stop saying you like that. It wasn’t me. I never mistreated Bazel.”
“You watched it happen and didn’t care. And now you’ll let him die—he is going to die, isn’t he—”
“Of course he is!” Sorin sliced his hand through the air. “Don’t be a fool, Ileni. Don’t you understand the enormity of what he’s done? He betrayed every single one of us! He has to die. Even you must understand that.”
The contempt in his voice stung her. She looked down in the beginning of a nod, and shame washed over her. Was she really going to agree that Bazel should die because Sorin would scorn her if she argued?
That’s it, a small part of her mind whispered. This was how her students were persuaded to kill. It wasn’t just the adulation if they succeeded. It was the contempt if they refused, or even if they hesitated.
But where she had grown up, it was killing that was contemptible. She squared her shoulders. “I do understand. That’s why no one can find out.”
Sorin’s mouth dropped open. “Ileni—”
“That was my condition. And you agreed.” Ileni drew in her breath, and her courage with it. “If you tell, I’ll warn Bazel. I’ll help him. I’ll do everything I can to get him away. There are spells, you know, that allow a person to breathe underwater—”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Sorin snarled. He was crouching slightly, as if in readiness to attack. “Do that and you’re dead.”
Ileni shrugged. “I’ve been dead for almost a month. I have no particular objection to making it official.”
Her damp palms belied that statement. But just a few weeks ago, she would have meant every word, and she was able to summon up that old conviction in her voice. Sorin’s eyes went even darker than before.
They stared at each other. Then the fierceness drained from Sorin’s body, and he sat back down on the bed. “Then I suppose I have no choice.”
Ileni very much doubted that. She remained where she was, suspecting a trick. “That’s very convincing.”
“Ileni.” His eyes were still dark, and there was a tone in his voice she couldn’t identify. Not sadness, exactly . . . sympathy? Understanding? Tenderness sprang to her mind, and she inwardly scoffed at herself. “I promise you, I will make it happen. Bazel will not be harmed. Nor will you.”
She swallowed her thanks. “My own safety wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“I’ll see to it anyhow.”
“Really.” She crossed to the other wall, suddenly unable to keep still. “How are you going to see to any of it?”
“You said the spies will return. Spend the next few afternoons with Bazel—give him those private magic lessons, perhaps. That should give you plenty of time. Convince him to tell you exactly when they’re coming, and to bring you along when he goes to see them. Then tell me.”
Ileni stared at him, at his sharp face and set mouth. The illusion of tenderness vanished. He had killed people before. He could kill Bazel as soon as he had the information. He could kill her right now. She was stupid to ever, ever not be afraid of him.
He met her gaze squarely. “Trust me.”
“Why?” she said before she could stop herself.
He sighed. “You trust me to teach you lethal skills without harming you. You trust me not to kill you. Trust me to keep you safe. It’s the same thing.”
“I do trust you to keep me safe.” She wasn’t aware, until the sentence was out of her mouth, that she meant it. “Just not to keep Bazel safe.”
His teeth flashed in a brief grin. “How perceptive. Nevertheless, I will. I’m sure if I didn’t, you would throw yourself in harm’s way just to spite me.”
“I would try to save him,” Ileni promised. “No matter the cost.”
“That’s what I meant.” He sighed and got to his feet, running one hand through his blond hair. “Even you must realize the cost would be your life.”
“Since when do you care about my life?”
“Of course I care,” Sorin said. He walked toward the door and spoke without looking back at her. “I would disappoint the master if I let you die.”
He pulled the door open and was gone before she had a chance to reply. That was probably a good thing.
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 . . .”
“Magic?”
Bazel glanced down at the half-drawn chalk pattern. “Well, only once. That I heard. I was too busy bartering to pay attention, usually, and it was all above my head anyhow. He was asking Karyn about the method for transferring power.”
Ileni stared at him for so long that Bazel stood, still clutching his chalk. “That means something to you?”
“Transferring power is black magic,” Ileni said blankly. “All people have power in them, even if most can’t turn it into magic. And when a person dies, he can pass it on to a sorcerer, if the sorcerer knows how to take it. That’s why the Rathian Empire is so powerful. That’s why they’ve always been unbeatable.”
“Because they kill people for their power?”
He didn’t sound at all horrified. Well, he wouldn’t be.
“Worse than that,” Ileni said. “The power can’t just be taken. It has to be given, voluntarily, by the person who is dying.”
Bazel nodded.
“There are many things you can do to a person,” Ileni said, “to make him beg for death. To give anything you want in exchange for ending the pain.”
Four hundred years ago, their leader, Ciara, had been subjected to those things, and had managed to escape. She had written it down, every excruciating detail, before she died—in agony, but with her soul intact. The Elders recited Ciara’s Lament in the square every year, at midnight on the anniversary of her death. Ileni still wept every time.
She supposed she would never hear Ciara’s Lament again. Maybe she would recite it on her own, as much as she could remember, on the next anniversary. . . .
And then she realized. The anniversary had passed two weeks ago.
She hadn’t even noticed.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she fought them down. Bazel started toward her, but she turned away. She didn’t want his sympathy or his mockery, whichever it was going to be. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be home.
She took a deep breath. “The rock. You have it now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll want to come with you again, next time you go meet them.”