The sneer in Karyn’s voice made Ileni want to lie, just to spite her. Yes. My people can break your wards. What do you think of that?
But the imperial sorcerers still believed the Renegai were a backward group of ragtag exiles, no threat to them. If Ileni pretended they had the ability to breach the Academy’s wards, that might put them in danger. The assassins, on the other hand, were already perceived as a threat. And besides, they could take care of themselves.
“No,” she said. “Someone from the Assassins’ Caves.”
Karyn straightened, and Ileni was glad she hadn’t lied. The sorceress was now looking at her as if she represented a true danger. As if she was someone to be reckoned with.
That might or might not be a good thing. Reckoning with her could very well translate into killing her. But it felt good, in that moment.
“What did they want?” Karyn asked.
Lies spun through Ileni’s mind, some senseless, some unbelievable, some contradicting each other. But seeing Sorin again, even for a few minutes, had reminded her how to take risks. She smiled directly at Karyn and said, “I’m not going to tell you.”
“Oh,” Karyn said, very softly, “I think you will.” The blue-white light around her hand expanded, forming a crackling ball of barely restrained power.
Fear ran through Ileni, a taut thread. Only four days ago, she had seen Karyn hold Sorin suspended over a chasm, the ugly coiling of a deathspell emanating from her chants. Karyn was an imperial sorceress. Torture came easily to her.
“What you’ll also tell me,” Karyn said, “is who you were really talking to. Now that you’re gone, there is no fully trained sorcerer in the Assassins’ Caves. Certainly no one capable of breaching our wards.”
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?”