“You’re welcome,” he said, with a light bow.
Ileni had found the dagger in her backpack the first time she opened it on the mountain path. She had no idea how Sorin had put it there without her noticing, but she had immediately stuck it into her boot. It was still there, alien and heavy, yet comforting at the same time.
Their eyes met. His gleamed, like sunlight hitting black stone, and an answering spark lit in Ileni. She almost reached for him, as if she could touch him, as if he was right there in the room with her.
“Are you absolutely certain you don’t want help?” Sorin said. “If you need me, I will come. Once the imperial sorcerers find out you lived here in our caves, your life won’t be worth much.”
She hesitated, wondering if he had seen through the casualness. He could help her. He had hundreds of assassins who were his to command. He had a sorcerer, who apparently obeyed him at least some of the time. All she had to do was say yes, and he would bring her back.
She made her voice firm. “They won’t find out. Someone will be coming to investigate any moment now. So you had better go.”
“I will. Ileni . . .”
Her voice emerged low and steady. “I’m glad you contacted me.”
Something hot flickered deep in his cold black eyes. His voice, though, was as steady as hers. “It was worth putting up with Absalm’s pouting, then.”
Ileni stepped back. “Don’t do it again.”
He didn’t say good-bye. His image vanished in a swirl of colors. The surface of the mirror turned black, darker than black: so dark it made the rest of the room seem dim, even though the glowstones shone bright. Then the blackness was sucked away into the mirror, and Ileni was left staring at her own reflection.
She had just a moment to note the stricken expression on her face. Then the door to the room slammed open, and a burst of magic threw her away from the mirror and across the room.
Pinned against the wall, she looked at the black-haired woman in the doorway and said, weakly, “Karyn. Nice to see you again.”
Sorin stepped back from the mirror, keeping his breathing relaxed and even. Gray fog moved steadily across the glass surface, as if driven by wind. Across the black stone room, Absalm cleared his throat.
“Well done,” he said.
Sorin whirled to face him. The old Renegai sorcerer nodded at him, an approving, fatherly gesture.
Sorin kept his voice cold. “If you want to reopen the portal, can you?”
“It’s still there, yes. I could reopen it easily.” Absalm’s voice was gentle, patronizingly so. Sorin didn’t need gentleness. Certainly not from this man. “But why would we want to? There’s a reason the master never made contact with an assassin until his mission was completed.”
But Ileni was no assassin. She wasn’t even a sorceress, not anymore. She could die out there, alone in the Empire, and he wouldn’t know until it was too late to save her.
Sorin struggled to gain control. His feelings for Ileni were not just a weakness, but something worse: a sign of weakness. Among his fellow assassins—his disciples, now, at least in theory—many suspected, but few were sure. Absalm, of course, would be busy stirring their suspicions into certainty.
The best strategy would be to pass off his involvement with Ileni as a dalliance, a bit of sport. Or, better—as something he had undertaken upon the master’s command, an inducement for her to play her part. He had half-convinced himself that was how it had started.
But he had let her go. She was in the Empire now, with the master’s blood on her hands—and he had stood at the entrance of the caves and watched her walk away. He had no explanation for it. None that would satisfy Absalm, or the other assassins, or even himself.
He shouldn’t have to explain himself to anyone. He was the leader of the assassins now. But he was not the master, who had held absolute power in these caves for nearly a century. Absalm had been the master’s friend, worked with him, been privy to more of his plans than any of the assassins themselves. Absalm could undermine Sorin’s authority easily, if he chose to.
Which meant Sorin had to find a way to make Ileni’s presence in the Academy work for him. To make them believe it had been part of his plan all along.
If he could do that, he might not have to kill her.
“Ileni,” he said, “is a well-honed blade. And now she needs to be aimed at her target.”
“Was that the purpose of this conversation?”
Sorin tried to smile mysteriously, the way the master would have; but the memory of the master made grief twist within him, and he could tell by Absalm’s flat stare that the sorcerer wasn’t convinced.
“It was a start,” Sorin said.
“And how do you intend to continue?”
“You don’t need to know that.”