Interesting. Sorin had thought so, too. But she didn’t want to be interesting. Interesting meant that she was different, that she didn’t fit anywhere, that she couldn’t be part of anything. That there were parts of her that didn’t fit together, that rubbed against each other jaggedly, that hurt.
She wanted to be like everyone else. For a moment she didn’t even care which everyone. Whether in the Academy or the caves, or even back among her own people, she wanted to be whole again, to be moving in the same direction as the people around her, filled with certainty and surrounded by agreement. To be part of a tide, instead of a sinking straggler who had no idea which way she wanted to go, much less how to get there.
CHAPTER
10
The walls of the small cavern were black, but the surface of the mirror was blacker—a darkness so intense it sucked the light out of the small room, making the glowstones flicker and the moon outside the window seem dim as starlight. The two men standing before the mirror did not falter. Neither was afraid of darkness.
“I don’t think I have to tell you,” Absalm said, “why this is a mistake.”
“No,” Sorin said curtly. “You do not. Nor do I have to explain to you why you are wrong.”
Their eyes met. The chalk pattern on the black floor glowed, subtly but unmistakably.
A muscle jumped beneath Absalm’s eye. He drew his lips back, uttered a short phrase, and unleashed magic on the mirror.
The glass surface exploded with color. Absalm closed his eyes, deep lines creasing his brow. Sorin considered taking the opportunity to let out a breath, but chose the safer path. He stood perfectly still while the sorcerer wrestled with the spell.
But for all Sorin’s control, when the colors vanished, he leaned forward.
On the other side of the mirror was a colorfully decorated bedroom. There was a window, a wardrobe, and a desk. Otherwise, the room was empty.
Sorin did not straighten. That would have been a bigger mistake than leaning forward in the first place. He examined the room carefully, noting every detail.
“Whose room is it?” Absalm asked. The sorcerer’s forehead had smoothed, though it was still beaded with sweat.
“Ileni’s,” Sorin said shortly.
“How can you be sure?”
Sorin poured scorn into his voice. “We are trained to observe.”
And he had been observing Ileni for weeks. A dozen subtle signs told him it was her room: The blanket shoved carelessly against the wall toward the foot of the bed. The tunic folded carefully but unevenly on the chair. The faint dust that covered both the top of the wardrobe and the dark corners of the floor, but not the wide windowsill.
“It doesn’t look like a prison room,” Absalm observed.
“No.” Sorin’s voice was steady. “It does not.”
“So she could have contacted you by now. She chose not to. What does that mean?”
Sorin didn’t know. For all his scrutiny of Ileni, he had never been able to fully predict what she would do.
A failure in his training, perhaps.
Or perhaps not. The master’s voice whispered in his memory: Never be confident in your knowledge of your enemy. No one, no matter how predictable, can be fully understood.
Except—the clear implication—by the master himself. Who understood everyone.
Sometimes, Sorin wondered if the master had foreseen his own death. If they were all, still, enmeshed in his plans. It wasn’t hard to believe.
Especially since, if it was true, Sorin had no reason to hate Ileni for killing him.
Despite all his training, keeping still was impossible. Sorin spun on his heel and stalked across the room. He wanted to hit the black wall. Ever since the master had died—ever since Ileni had left—the wildness in him had simmered close to the surface, urging him toward unplanned violence.
He could not afford to give in.
He stood for several seconds facing the black rock, fists clenched at his sides. Absalm’s gaze jabbed at him, two hot pinpricks beneath his shoulder blades. When Sorin turned, he kept his face impassive.
“Someone needs to go after her,” he said.
Absalm drew in a breath. Sorin watched him in complete silence for two, three, four seconds.
“To do what?” Absalm said finally. “Murder is a blunt tool. I can’t see what it would accomplish here.”
It was meant as a challenge, but fell flat. The balance of power between them shifted subtly but unmistakably in Sorin’s favor.
Sorin knelt and, very deliberately, rubbed out a corner of the chalk pattern. Absalm gasped, a small, pained sound. The image of the room in the mirror vanished, and the mirror’s surface roiled with dense gray fog.
Sorin straightened, daring the sorcerer to say something. Outside the window, the wind howled and then went still.
“I’m not going to kill anyone. Yet.” Sorin walked to the window. Far below, the narrow path curved between the mountains, winding away from the caves. “There are things in the Empire Ileni should know about. Things she should see. And I intend to make sure she sees them.”
CHAPTER
11