Ileni fought to keep her face calm. Everyone was still convinced that she and Arxis had been in a torrid, dramatic relationship. Ileni wondered if Lis thought so, too, if she saw Ileni as some sort of rival for Arxis’s affections.
It would have been funny, if its conclusion hadn’t been so inevitably tragic. Eventually, everyone would know Arxis’s true, terrible purpose here. And then they would realize that Ileni had known it all along and kept it hidden.
Lis laughed, softly, as if she was the only one in the room who understood the joke. “If Karyn is letting you go, Evin, she’ll let anyone go.”
“I didn’t say she let me go, precisely.” Evin swung his legs over the bench. “But I bet she will. She’s probably in the Mirror Chamber now.”
“Wait—” Ileni began. But Evin was already halfway to the door, and she wasn’t sure what she had been going to say anyhow.
Arxis was waiting for them outside, standing close to the outer edge of the path, with the same careless lack of concern the advanced sorcerers showed—even though he, surely, didn’t have enough skill to fly. But a trained assassin would never fall. He glanced at Ileni with cool disinterest.
“Slight detour,” Evin said. “Ileni wants to come, so we have to check with Karyn.”
Arxis blinked. “I thought the idea was to avoid Karyn.”
A faint pink touched Evin’s cheekbones. Ileni hadn’t realized he was changing his plan so she could come, and judging by the irritated look he shot Arxis, he would have preferred that she didn’t know. “Ileni’s a bit new to be breaking rules the way I do. But I’m sure Karyn will say yes.”
“Are you?” Arxis stared hard at Ileni, then stretched his arms over his head, a sinuous, almost feline movement. “Let’s go, then.”
The two young men strode along the ledge. Ileni followed at her own cautious pace. When she finally caught up to them, they were waiting for her at a stone door in the interior of the mountain—Arxis with exaggerated patience, and Evin, as usual, looking like he had nothing better to do.
Ileni felt the by-now familiar shrinking in her stomach. Once she had been in the lead, not the one holding everyone back.
“Ready?” Arxis drawled, and pushed the door open.
The cavern inside was a perfect octagon, each side covered by a large mirror—but the mirrors didn’t reflect Karyn, who was turning in a slow circle in the center of the room. In one, a bald woman wearing blue robes sat with her hands folded in front of her. In another, a city was in flames, red fire and black smoke bursting within the glass. In a third, a mob rampaged through a marble building, mouths open in screams that couldn’t be heard through the glass. In the other mirrors, a pair of riders raced across a desert on black horses, a family of giant serpents curled around each other on a large gray rock, and a ship sailed peacefully on a surface of vast blue water flecked with white.
Karyn glared at them over her shoulder, and Evin and Ileni stopped in mid-step, simultaneously and automatically. Arxis took one step forward and stopped a fraction before he entered the room, with precise, almost unnatural control. The move would have given his identity away to anyone who had spent time among assassins. Ileni glanced quickly at Karyn, but the sorceress didn’t seem to have noticed.
Karyn turned her back on them, focusing on the blue-robed woman. “Send the fifth section of fourth-levels to Siandar,” she said crisply. “The serpents will have to wait, for now, and I will send Cyn to Askarli to quell the riot.”
The woman in the blue robe nodded. “Will you send someone to court?”
Karyn swiveled and focused on one of the mirrors near the door. “No. I can’t spare anyone. Once a new high sorcerer is appointed, I’ll send a delegation.”
The blue-robed woman nodded, bowed her head, and disappeared. Her image was replaced by the view of a snow-speckled forest.
Evin stepped calmly into the room, and Ileni followed. From inside, she could see the mirrors nearest the door. One showed what must have been a battlefield, round tents stretched across a grassy plain. The other revealed a vast throne room, where hundreds of men and women in elaborately layered robes milled about in front of a throne. On the throne sat a tall, black-haired man, wearing a crown and a bored expression.
The emperor. He had been a figure in songs for so long it was difficult, even staring right at him, to think of him as a real person. He was more imposing than she would have thought. Since long before the exile, the emperor had been ruler in name only, dependent upon the Academy and its sorcerers for his pretense of power.
Evin cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Ileni requests permission to go to the city with us.”
Everyone seemed to want to stare menacingly at Ileni today. She met Karyn’s glare with the same unmoved calm she had used on Arxis. Finally the sorceress shrugged one shoulder and said, “You have my permission.”
Too easy, that familiar voice warned. Ileni nodded. “Thank you.”