Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(4)

Ileni wished that were true. But if there was one thing she would never tell Karyn, it was that Absalm was still alive. That was the thread that could lead the sorceress to the whole tangled conspiracy—to the real reason she had been in the caves, and the real reason she had left.

Her chance of discovering whether the Empire was as evil as she had always believed—not to mention of surviving the next ten minutes—depended on Karyn believing she was no threat. She had to look at Ileni and see a naive, powerless ex-sorceress. Not a . . . weapon.

The sense of betrayal, thick and dark, rose in Ileni’s throat. Absalm was an Elder of her people, someone she had trusted, and he had twisted her entire life for his own purposes.

She swallowed her hurt and fury. She was not a weapon—not yet, anyhow. She was not here to be Absalm’s tool, but to decide for herself which side she was on.

Right now, the Empire’s side wasn’t looking very promising.

“I don’t know how they broke through your wards,” she said. “But I could help you find out.”

Karyn’s eyebrows went up. “Really. You do switch sides rather easily, don’t you?”

There was enough truth in that to make Ileni flush. “I was never one of the assassins. I was forced to go to the caves, forced to tutor them in magic. And I left.”

“So you did. To return to your own people. Apparently you are still attached to them, despite your dalliance with killers.”

The slight emphasis on dalliance made it clear Karyn knew what Sorin had been to her. Ileni struggled to keep from blushing and failed spectacularly. “Yes. I was going home.”

She hadn’t planned to say home. It just slipped out.

Karyn curled her fingers slowly into a fist, and the blue-white light shrank into her palm. “For what purpose? From what I understand, the Renegai don’t have much use for sorcerers who have lost their powers.”

Another truth. It doesn’t matter, Ileni told herself, as different kinds of shame roiled within her. As long as Karyn didn’t figure out the deepest truth of all.

I may not have magic, but I have the power to kill you all. And I’m here to decide whether to use it.

Although it wasn’t her power, not really. She was just the vessel—trained in magic even though her power had always been temporary. The only magic she could ever draw on, now, would come from others’ deaths. A caveful of assassins would, at a word, kill themselves so she could have their power. With that much power, she could destroy the Imperial Academy of Sorcery, the epicenter of the Empire’s might. With the Academy gone, the Empire would have no adequate defense against the assassins.

She could be the one to accomplish the goal both the assassins and her own people had been working toward for centuries: wiping the Empire off the face of the earth.

Unless she died here first, killed by that very Empire. Which she would be, if she couldn’t keep up with her lies.

She made herself say, in a small, helpless voice, “I had nowhere else to go.”

Karyn snorted. “And now that you’re here, you’ll just throw in your lot with us?”

“I could help you,” Ileni said. “I lived in the caves for weeks. I might know things that would be useful to you.”

Karyn tilted her head sideways, a pose that could have been mistaken for amusement if not for the suspicion in her eyes. A tic started in Ileni’s eyelid as the silence stretched. Then the sorceress said, “All right. You can stay.”

“I—” She managed not to say what or why, mostly by biting her lip so hard it hurt.

“For now,” Karyn added. “But I’ll be watching you.”

Ileni nodded.

Karyn slowly opened her hand. The blue-white light was gone. “I’ll find a way to explain the breach—say it was a mistake during your preliminary testing. And then I’ll have you enrolled as a new student. Nobody has to know where you came from.” She flexed her fingers. “You realize that if anyone discovers you used to be an assassin, you won’t survive a day here.”

“I wasn’t an assassin.”

“You taught them magic, didn’t you? Trained them to kill us?”

The bite in Karyn’s voice killed Ileni’s next question. There could be only one reason Karyn was letting her stay: because she believed Ileni could help her fight the assassins. But did she really believe Ileni had turned traitor? Or did she have some other plan, a way to use Ileni against her will?

Well. That would be nothing new.

Karyn crossed the room and touched her finger to the mirror. “Right now, I’ll summon the nearest sorcerer. Some luckless student will be here shortly to escort you to the testing arena.”

She closed her eyes and murmured a brief spell. A shimmer of magic, distant and tantalizing, brushed Ileni’s skin, and she shivered despite herself.

Karyn’s eyes opened just in time to catch that. She watched Ileni from beneath hooded eyelids. “I have access to as many lodestones as I want. If you had known that, I assume you wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to steal the one I had last time we met.” She pursed her lips. “Though I suppose if you had managed to hold onto it, you could have tasted power again.”

It was such an obvious, childish taunt. It shouldn’t have worked.

“It’s interesting, though.” Karyn was practically purring. “How do you think you’ll feel, being surrounded by sorcerers-in-training? Once you would have been the best of them, isn’t that right?”