A familiar argument. “Then why,” Ileni said, “are you so angry at her?”
“My mother was warned.” Evin’s voice was wound tight, as if the slightest waver might break it. “They sent her a message: if she continued going after the assassins, she would die. I was only ten years old. Girad was an infant. We needed her, and she didn’t care.”
Ileni hesitated. The pain in his voice seemed to preclude argument. His mother was a murderer. And yet . . . “How could she make a decision based on two people, when it affected the fate of so many others?”
Evin gave her a look of searing contempt, and Ileni’s spine snapped so straight she felt a crack.
“I never would,” she said, and for that moment she was sure of it. “I would never do the wrong thing for the sake of any one person. No matter how much I loved him.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Evin’s expression was every bit as scornful as his voice. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by your nobility of purpose. By your willingness to sacrifice someone you love.”
Her heart was pounding too hard for a theoretical conversation. “For the good of—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He stepped closer. His eyes were flat and remote, as if he was a different person. “Heap your scorn on me all you want, but don’t expect me to care. Because I, Ileni, would sacrifice millions of people I don’t know for the sake of one person I love.”
No. This wasn’t a theoretical conversation, not to either of them. “You’re talking about Girad.”
Evin’s mouth twisted. “He’s more powerful than even I am. The Empire needs him, too. But they won’t have him. I’ll be their soldier, but Girad is going to have a different sort of life. No matter what I have to do to protect him.”
Ileni swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t it be his choice?”
Evin gave her a withering look. “Who gets to make their own choices?”
None of us, Ileni thought. Every one of them had been raised to be a weapon.
But she had refused. She was here, among people who would all be dead if she agreed to be what Absalm had designed her to be. Despite what she had seen at Death’s Door, she could still choose not to be a weapon.
Which didn’t change the fact that Evin was right. It was too late to choose to be anything else.
The last thing Ileni wanted to do, after Evin flew away, was return to the plateau. But she did it anyhow, one laborious step after another. If she was to have any chance at all of being a weapon of her own choosing, she still needed more answers.
She was in luck; Cyn and Lis were engaged in battle, magic flying fast and furious between them. Neither glanced at Ileni as she crossed the plateau to where Arxis sat, cross-legged and straight backed, watching them. By now, the sky was roiling with dark gray clouds, and a few damp drops dotted the top of the plateau.
“I found Bazel,” Ileni said, sitting beside Arxis with a thump. “In the city.”
He didn’t react—though that meant nothing; he was an assassin. Ileni gambled. “How did you know Bazel would be there to meet me?”
Lis cried out, and Arxis returned his attention to the fight. “I didn’t know. My guess is, he’s been in the city for a while, watching for you. As soon as we entered the city, he signaled me that you were to come with him.”
“Signaled you how?”
Arxis laughed. “You don’t really expect me to tell you that, do you? As teacher, you had access to a few of our secrets. Don’t imagine you know them all.”
A wind whistled across the plateau, scattering stray droplets on Ileni’s face. Cyn adjusted her spell swiftly to compensate, but Lis’s next strike went wide. “Right. Well, Bazel and I were interrupted. I don’t think I saw everything I was supposed to see.”
A volley of green light flashed between the sisters. “Yield,” Cyn called, and Arxis got smoothly to his feet, as if Ileni had ceased to exist.
“Wait,” Ileni said. “The master—”
He looked down at her, eyes hooded. “The master, apparently, sent Bazel to show you what you need to see. Go pester him.”
“Yield!” Cyn said again, and Lis gritted her teeth and shook her head. The droplets were now a steady drizzle, hitting Ileni’s hair and face.
“Great,” Arxis said. “This match will end well.”
“Our conversation isn’t over,” Ileni snapped. “This is Bazel we’re talking about. You want me to rely on him?”
Lis glanced over at them, and Arxis’s face immediately dropped into an expression of concern, focused on her. His voice, though, was cool. “It doesn’t matter what I think. The master sent him. That’s all I need to know.”
The master is dead. I killed him. She had to bite her lip, hard, to keep from saying it. Rain slid across her face and under the neck of her dress.