“I know.” Karyn gave the canoe a final shove, sending it into the river, then leaped in. “You can come with me.”
That was the last thing Ileni had expected. “What?”
“You’re not dead—yet. Wouldn’t you like to stay that way? You can jump overboard as soon as we’re out of the caves and return to your own people.”
Your own people. People who wouldn’t be trying to kill her, or turn her into a killer. Her teachers. Her fellow students. Tellis. Ileni shook her head, her hair whipping into her eyes. “Why should I believe you?”
“I don’t care if you do or not. You can risk coming with me, or you can stay here and die for certain.” She lifted the oars.
The canoe picked up speed. The stretch of water between it and Ileni was now too wide to jump; she would have to swim. Ileni strode to the water’s edge, then stopped.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave. My people sent me here for a reason.”
Karyn snorted. “What reason? To die?”
“Yes,” Ileni said.
Karyn shrugged and began turning the boat. The canoe raced forward with the current, turned around a bend in the river, and was gone.
When Sorin returned, he was alone. Ileni heard his feet thudding against the cliffside as he flew down the rope, but didn’t turn around until he had leaped to the ground and was standing a few feet away from her. He looked completely unruffled except for a faint smudge of dirt on one cheekbone.
“Where’s Bazel?” she asked sharply.
Sorin ignored the question. He frowned at her, a crease between his eyes. “I thought you wouldn’t be here.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Ileni knew her bitterness should be directed at herself—stupid, stupid kept going through her mind—but she couldn’t help aiming some of it at Sorin. She hated him for making all of this happen, for the blood on the white rock, for the dead man in the water, for the canoe racing away down the river. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your master will figure out a better way to have me killed.”
Sorin went on looking at her. Ileni leaned down and scooped river water into her mouth, spitting it out along with the acrid taste of vomit. Then she turned and stalked across the slick stone, giving the puddle of blood a wide berth. She started up the path.
“Why didn’t you leave with her?” Sorin asked.
Ileni whirled, putting one hand on the white rock to steady herself. She had a sudden feeling that she had miscalculated badly. “Wouldn’t you have stopped me?”
“I was up on the rocks. How could I have stopped you?”
That was why he had gone after Bazel. To give her a chance to escape.
The door to her prison had been wide open, and she had turned away.
Ileni felt her lips twist as she gave him the truth, knowing he wouldn’t believe it. “I was sent here for a reason. And I’m certainly not leaving until I find out who killed Absalm and Cadrel.”
Something passed swiftly over his face, something that wasn’t disbelief, before it went blank again. “Or until you become the next victim?”
She turned away from him. “Or that.”
Sorin had left Bazel bound hand and foot on a slippery, tilted rock, using a section of the rope they had climbed up on. There was, Ileni saw instantly, a practical reason for that cruelty: Bazel was so busy struggling not to slide off that he had no opportunity to try to get loose. But she doubted that was the only reason, and she shot Sorin a glare as they approached the trussed-up assassin.
Sorin had no attention to spare for her. He reached out with one hand, grabbed Bazel’s tunic, and hauled him to his feet. Bazel stopped struggling immediately, his entire body limp, his face miserable with resignation.
Sorin looked at him, just looked. Ileni shrank away. The implacable menace on Sorin’s face was terrible, and it wasn’t even directed at her.
Something shivered deep inside her. Right now, she could easily imagine Sorin killing Absalm for his betrayal. For endangering the mission he was so devoted to.
She knew he could kill. He had killed before. He was no different from any other assassin in these caves.
Except none of them would have given her a chance to escape.
“I didn’t know what they were,” Bazel whispered. “I swear I didn’t. I know what you think of me, but you can’t imagine that even I would knowingly allow the Empire’s spies into our caves.”
“And do you imagine,” Sorin asked softly, “that it will make a difference whether you knew or not?”
“No,” Bazel said. “I don’t.”
Sorin jerked Bazel closer, so their faces were only inches apart. “That was a clever trick with the rope. How long did you have that set up?”
Bazel didn’t answer. Sorin shook him. “This is your chance to make it easier for yourself. Answer me.”
A defiant light flared in Bazel’s eyes, without changing the defeated set of his face. “You won’t get to torture me,” he said. “Too many traded with me and would be implicated if I talked. They’ll make sure I’m dead before I have a chance to betray them.”
“Then you die,” Sorin said.
“I would rather die,” Bazel whispered, “than have to face the master when he finds out what I’ve done. And I will die. You can’t protect me against all of them.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Sorin said, “but to be on the safe side, I could torture the answers out of you right now.”
“Sorin,” Ileni said.
Sorin held Bazel upright without any sign of strain. In the dim light, his jaw was a grim line. “I said he wouldn’t die. I made no promises about how pleasant his life would be.”
Bazel’s head came up sharply. He looked at Ileni, then Sorin, then back at Ileni. “Why?”
“I don’t like it,” Ileni said, “when people die. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I meant why did you tell him?”
The anguish underlying his voice made her drop her eyes. She was very conscious of Sorin watching her. “Because it’s true. They are imperial spies.”
“You tell me everything you know,” Sorin said to Bazel, “and maybe I can figure out a way to deal with this without implicating you.”
“I don’t know anything,” Bazel whispered. “Absalm told me about them. I don’t know how he found them.”
“And did Absalm teach you that trick with the rope? Or was it her?”
Ileni hissed through her teeth. “It wasn’t me.”
“Absalm always thought we might need an escape route.” Bazel wriggled slightly as Sorin’s fist tightened on his shirt. “He prepared the rope. It’s an easy enough spell to uncoil it.”
So it was . . . and would have required much less power than Bazel had spent. Was that lack of skill and training? Or was he lying?
Sorin let Bazel drop to the ground. Bazel hit the rock with a thud and struggled frantically to keep himself from sliding off, all without uttering a sound. Sorin watched him, expressionless, then drew a dagger and cut through the rope in three neat slashes. “Let’s go. I think that’s about enough of this.”
It was enough a long time ago, Ileni thought angrily at his back. Then she devoted her attention to keeping up with the two assassins as they scrambled nimbly over the rocks and through the tunnel.
As soon as they were back in the built-up part of the caves, Bazel vanished down a side corridor, and Ileni followed Sorin to the now-familiar section where her room was. Sorin didn’t say a word or even turn around, but when they reached her room, he stepped in with her and closed the door.
She turned, and their eyes met. From this close, his face was all lines and angles. She couldn’t believe she had ever thought he looked like Tellis.
“Ileni.” Sorin’s voice was very quiet. “Why did you stay?”
“I . . . don’t know.” It was the last thing she had expected him to ask, but his tone was so grim she didn’t even think of avoiding the question. His eyes were like night shadows, with no guessing what was hiding in them. “What would be the point of going? I was sent here for a purpose, and I haven’t accomplished it yet.”
“You could have been free.” He was so still she could barely tell he was breathing.
“Free to go back home and be despised? To never do anything that matters, ever again?”
Something flickered in the black depths of those eyes. Respect? “You could have been safe.”
“You’re the one who’s been telling me how unimportant safety is.”
“And you’ve been listening?” he said, with such undisguised astonishment that, despite everything, she laughed. The laugh had an edge of hysteria to it, and she cut it off before it could dissolve into tears.
“Not on purpose, I assure you.”
He shifted his weight toward her, and her heart began to pound. Then he turned abruptly and put one hand on the door handle.
“Sorin,” she said, and he looked back with his hand still closed around the dark wood. His arm was so tense it shook a little. “Was it your master who told you to give me a chance to escape?”
He blinked. “What would the master gain from your disappearance?”
“What would you gain?”
His expression didn’t change, but all at once she recognized it. Only Tellis had ever looked at her like that. Her throat went dry.
“Did you really think I would run?” she said.
She could hear his indrawn breath. “I hoped you would.”
Ileni stood frozen, not sure what to think. All this time believing she was nothing but a duty to Sorin . . . all this time, telling herself she didn’t care. When she cared so much she could barely breathe.
“I shouldn’t have done it.” He said it like he was angry. “I try not to think about you. But then you go and do something so stupid, put yourself in such danger, and if you died . . .” He ran out of breath then, and stared at her across the room.
Ileni’s voice came out in a whisper. “It’s all right.”
His breath hissed out, and she realized he was angry. “Of course it isn’t. The way I feel, it’s not—”
“Safe?” She stepped toward him, hardly aware that she was doing it. “Do you even like being safe? That wasn’t my impression.”
“I have no right to risk my life for this.” He stepped back against the door, as if she was a threat. It was the most flattering thing he had done since she entered the caves. “It means nothing. It was inevitable, even. After all, you’re the only girl I ever see.”
That was rather less flattering.
“I thought, once I go out on a longer mission—I mean, once I get the chance to be with other women—” Sorin’s jaw clenched. “I’ll forget about you.”
That did it. Ileni launched herself forward, with more determination than grace, and kissed him.
After a startled moment, he responded, his hands coming up hesitantly to her face, then dropping to her shoulders. After another moment—or several—Ileni leaned back and stared at him in disbelief.
Sorin flushed to the roots of his hair and dropped his hands, a bit unsteadily, the first movement she had ever seen him make that was less than completely graceful. “I told you. You’re the first girl I ever—um—”
Ileni started to laugh. “You’re one of the assassins, famed for their allure and irresistibility to women. And you’ve never kissed a girl?”
“I’ve only been on one mission,” he said stiffly. “And it was a short one. Who would I have kissed?”
“I guess I assumed that would be part of your training. You know, how to seduce women to make it easier to kill their husbands. Or something like that.”