Or had she planned for Evin, specifically, to rescue Ileni? Was she hoping Ileni’s gratitude would keep her from doing anything that would hurt her rescuer?
And was she right?
Ileni’s head hurt. She missed Sorin. He never had doubts. If he was here, maybe he could convince her not to have doubts, either.
Sorin would say they all deserved to die.
But she was not Sorin, and she didn’t have to play by his rules. She could use the shattering spell, bury the lodestones—but warn the others first. Evin, especially, deserved that from her. Cyn, too . . . even Lis. She would get them out somehow, protect them.
Sorin wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t even understand it, but that was too bad for him.
“We need to get out of here,” Arxis said, “before Karyn comes back.”
Evin nodded. “Ileni, if you tell me where to transport you—”
“I can’t go back.” Ileni said it as fast as she could, in an attempt to make it hurt less. “I have no magic of my own, and my people don’t steal magic. If I go back, I’ll be powerless.”
“There is more than one type of power,” Evin said.
Easy for you to say. She shook her head. “I was the most powerful sorceress of my people, once. But there was . . . they made a mistake.” It hadn’t been a mistake. They designed me to kill you. “My power started fading, when I got older, and it faded until it was gone. And then I came here, and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t resist it. If my people knew what I did here, the sort of magic I used, the way I used it . . .”
“But you can’t stay here,” Evin said. “Is there anywhere else you can go?”
“Maybe.” Ileni didn’t dare look at Arxis. “But I can’t leave yet. There’s something I have to do here first.”
Arxis’s voice was sharp and smooth. “And what’s that?”
Ileni hesitated.
“If what you need to do here is a secret,” Arxis said, “it’s going to be harder for us to help you with it.”
Ileni choked down a laugh. They both focused on her, and she bit her lip hard, using the pain to hold back her growing hysteria. She didn’t know which side was right, or even less wrong. She didn’t know if destroying the Academy was an act of heroism or of murder. But she knew one small thing that was simple and right, one choice she could be proud of.
“I made a promise to a dying girl,” she said. “I have to keep it before I go.”
CHAPTER
20
The knife thudded into the target with a force that made the man-shaped cloth swish against the stone wall. Another knife followed it, and then another. All three knives quivered, inches apart, exactly where the man’s heart would have been.
“Impressive,” Absalm said.
Sorin walked over to the weapons rack and pulled out a blade. The slight hitch in the sorcerer’s breathing told him that Absalm knew which knife he had drawn.
He flipped it up in the air. The blade twirled, a deadly circle of steel, until he caught it by the hilt.
“Shouldn’t you be careful with that?” Absalm asked. He had recovered his usual gentle cadence—what Sorin thought of as his wise teacher tone.
“Should I?” Sorin said. “Can’t the Renegai heal poison?”
“Not that poison.”
Sorin threw the blade up again, spun on his heel, and was facing the sorcerer when he caught it.
“So if I nicked myself,” he mused, “I would die. And what would you do, then?”
“Not heal you,” Absalm said. “Because I can’t.”
“I believe you. I meant, after I died.” Sorin’s arm tensed, wanting to fling the knife up again. Restraint, the master’s voice whispered, is more impressive than courage. “Who would become the new leader?”
Absalm tugged his earlobe, watching Sorin warily. “There is no obvious candidate.”
“No, there isn’t, is there? It was always going to be me or Irun. And Irun is dead.” He ran one thumb down the spiral design on the knife hilt. “So there would be chaos. Several hundred killers, trained to follow orders, with no orders to follow. Who do you think they would turn on?”
“I understand your point,” Absalm snapped. “I need you. So? You need me, too.”
Sorin moved like lightning. The sorcerer didn’t have time to utter the first word of a spell before the dagger’s edge was against his throat, so close it must feel like it was brushing his skin.
“Actually,” Sorin said, “I’m not sure I need you at all.”
Only Absalm’s mouth moved. “But are you sure you don’t?”
Sorin laughed, low and soft, then twisted sideways and threw the poisoned dagger. It landed in the center of the other three.
“No,” he said. “That’s why you’re alive. But if you ever contradict my orders again, I will change my mind.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“You met with Bazel, before he left on his mission.”
Sorin saw the sorcerer consider lying and decide against it. Absalm tugged his earlobe again. “How do you know?”