“Rest,” she said, and he did not move again.
25
THERE WAS A STRANGE EMPTINESS to the world, now that half the world was gone.
Juliet gave Paris’s body to the City Guard for disposal. She took Justiran’s daughter by the hand and led her back to the same room where she had sat before. She explained obediently to Lord Ineo what had happened.
And she went back to her post at the gate. She watched, and waited, and wondered if Romeo was still alive.
Runajo came back at sunset. She told Lord Ineo that she had been attending the funeral of a Sister who had given her life for the wall. Her face and voice were faultlessly calm as ever, but Juliet could feel grief and guilt oozing through the cracks in the wall around her mind.
When they went back to the study together, where the other Juliet waited, Runajo didn’t even try to study. She slumped to the ground, hugging herself, and didn’t move. Her face was still perfectly calm.
Juliet waited beside her.
“Paris is dead, isn’t he?” asked Runajo finally.
“Yes,” said Juliet.
“I thought so,” said Runajo. “I felt it.”
The bond. Of course. Juliet hadn’t thought about that part of it; she’d been shielding her mind from Runajo’s for so long.
“He didn’t suffer at the end,” she said, remembering the peace that had been on his face, despite how horribly deformed it had been.
She remembered cutting his head off—she had to, just in case—and then she hoped desperately that Runajo hadn’t seen that memory.
“He was nothing to me,” said Runajo. “But I felt him die.”
Juliet sighed, and decided that she could at least sit beside Runajo. That didn’t count as forgiveness.
“He was hardly anything to me,” she said. “But he was my kin. And he wanted to serve me.” Her throat tightened with a sudden spike of grief—because Paris was dead, and if he hadn’t been much to her, that was only because of her family’s wickedness and cruelty. Because of all the people who had died today, he was one whose face and name she had known, whom she could mourn at least a little.
“He served me very well,” she whispered, hands clenching as she bowed her head.
There was a moment of silence, and then she felt Runajo, very gently, lay a hand on her head.
Accepting comfort was not forgiveness, so Juliet let her.
After a while, Runajo spoke, her voice low. “The Sister who died—she wasn’t really a Sister anymore. It was Sunjai. You met her, briefly.”
Juliet nodded. “Your friend.”
“She was never my friend,” said Runajo with sudden fury, drawing her hand back. “I never liked her. I hated her. But she—she lied to me about her half of the calculations. There wasn’t enough power for the spell. She let Inyaan cut her throat to make it work, and I had to stand weaving over her body as her last blood spilled out. I hate her.”
Runajo’s voice cracked on the last words. Suddenly she stood, and strode over to where the other Juliet sat in a chair, staring impassively at the both of them.
Runajo took the girl’s hand, turned it over, and examined the wrist. Then she did the same with the other one. Juliet couldn’t tell what she was looking for.
“I suppose it will help fulfill your vow,” she said, her voice calm and polished once more, “that I was forced to help kill someone.”
And Juliet knew her heart was fully traitor, because she hadn’t even thought of it.
“I suppose it does,” she said. “But it’s not so amusing as it would have been once.”
Lord Ineo sent for them early the next morning.
Runajo looked calm as they walked to his sitting room together, but Juliet could feel the worry coiled tight inside her.
Juliet herself was not afraid. Lord Ineo surely wanted revenge for what she had done yesterday. He surely also wanted a way to control her now. But the very worst that could happen . . . was that Romeo waited in that room for her to kill. Juliet was not sure that even Lord Ineo would willingly kill his own son, and even if he would—she was already doomed to kill him.
There was little more Lord Ineo could do to her.
But Romeo did not wait beside Lord Ineo in his room hung with exquisitely embroidered wall hangings.
Instead—blue kerchief garishly bright in the morning light—Vai stood, his arms crossed, before Lord Ineo. Beside him was Subcaptain Xu.
“Well,” Vai was saying, as they walked into the room, “if you didn’t want us in here, you should have locked us out to die.”
Then he turned to look at Juliet, and grinned. “Good morning.”
Juliet bowed as gracefully as she could and said, “What is your will, my lord?”
Lord Ineo’s face twitched slightly. “It seems your former clan has infiltrated the Upper City.”
“If you want to call sitting with the other refugees in the Great Court that,” said Vai. “They’re also under my protection. Over half the refugees are wearing my colors, and by the way, that puts me in the same position that your ancestors were a century ago, when you were important enough to sign the Accords.”
“That’s an interesting line of argument,” said Xu, her voice faintly amused.
“To be debated another time,” Lord Ineo said flatly. “However. It might be inadvisable to instigate a full-scale hunt for them at this time.”
“The City Guard cannot allow that kind of chaos,” said Xu.
“And however much the Catresou have betrayed us, the power of their necromancers is broken,” said Lord Ineo.
He doesn’t know that, Runajo said silently, her voice wrathful.
He knows it’s no longer convenient for him to hunt them, Juliet replied bitterly.
“So I am prepared to offer the Catresou a mercy,” said Lord Ineo. “Don’t your people have a custom of trial by duel? I will allow them to send a duelist against you, and if he wins, I will consider the remaining Catresou innocent of necromancy.”
Juliet stared at him. He must not have told Xu or Vai his plan before, because they were staring at him too.
This makes no sense, Runajo said furiously into her mind. I have read your records; the Catresou haven’t practiced trial by duel since—
It doesn’t matter, said Juliet. He knows you released me from his orders. I’m a weapon he can’t depend on anymore.
And she felt Runajo’s sick dread as she understood what was happening: if Juliet won, he would have an excuse to drive out the Catresou. And Juliet herself would have willingly destroyed her kin; he must be counting on that to finally break her will.
If Juliet lost . . . at least he would be rid of her.
“That kind of trial has no place in the laws of Viyara,” said Xu.
“The Catresou have forfeited their place before the laws,” said Lord Ineo.
“It’s still not—”
“I am the Right Hand of the Exalted,” said Lord Ineo. “Have you heard him to complain about me?”
Xu looked at him expressionlessly. “Not yet,” she said, and was silent.
“I’m not sure how you think—” Vai started.
“I will fight,” Juliet interrupted.
Vai looked at her, met her eyes. After a moment, he nodded.
What are you doing? Runajo demanded silently.
Winning, said Juliet.
All she had to do was fail.
It was a terrible gamble. They might send her someone with blood guilt upon him, and if that happened, she did not know if she could restrain herself long enough for him to kill her.
(They might send her Romeo, if they were very cruel, if he was very brave. And she knew how brave he was, and how cruel her people could be.)
But this might be the best chance she’d ever had to set things right. To save both her peoples.
You can’t die yet, said Runajo. You—you’re the key to death, I need you—
You have the girl who saw the Ruining start, said Juliet. You have time. And you ar
e very clever. She could feel Runajo’s icy desperation rising like a wave, but she couldn’t let it drown her.
It’s not mathematical to die now, she said. But I am done with reckoning lives against each other. Will you forbid me?
Runajo was silent a moment, and then she said, No.
Vai managed to catch Juliet quietly in the corridor before she left.
“Did Paris come back?” he asked.
“No,” said Juliet. She didn’t want to speak of it again, but she knew Paris had cared about Vai; she owed him this much. So she told Vai the story.
Vai listened without interrupting. When she was finished, he let out a slow breath and said quietly, “Thank you.”
“For killing him,” said Juliet, “or for telling you about it?”
“For letting him die in your service. I know what that meant to him.” Vai paused. “Do you have a message for Romeo?”
Juliet’s heart pounded against her ribs. She remembered, suddenly, holding her sword to Romeo’s pale throat, the night after he killed Tybalt. She had nearly taken vengeance in that moment.
Instead, she had pressed her lips to his, and then taken him to her bed. That had been their third night together, the night that had made them husband and wife by Mahyanai custom—if not Catresou.
She could no longer offer any such mercy.
“Tell him,” she said, “not to fight me.”
“I will,” said Vai. “And you don’t know how much it means, that I am actually prepared to tell the truth. But you might want to consider exactly which man it was that you married.”
“I must fight her,” said Romeo, to the remaining high lords of the Catresou—because not all of them had made it out of the Lower City.
Including Meros.
Remeo heard the rustle of whispers: he wasn’t alone with the high lords this time. The Catresou had been luckier than many of the refugees—Vai had managed to wrangle them a few abandoned houses to shelter in—but they were still crammed together; there was no room for private audiences.
“You’d claim the right to fight for us?” said one of the lords.
“Enough of your people have died already,” said Romeo.
“You think you can win for us?” a man called.
Romeo turned, looking about the room. “I killed Tybalt,” he said.
The hush that fell on the room was slightly shocked.
“He was your best, wasn’t he? I defeated him. I think that’s proof enough. And if I can’t win—at least he’s finally avenged.” He turned back to the Catresou high lords. “Don’t you think that’s fair?”
“You do realize,” said Gavarin from the corner, “that to win this duel, you’ll have to kill the Juliet?”
“Yes,” said Romeo, his heart breaking for the thousandth time.
“Can you kill her?” asked Gavarin.
“I took an oath to this clan,” said Romeo. “Yes.”
He knew Juliet. He knew that she wasn’t planning to live at the cost of her people. He didn’t see any way he could prevent that fate.
But if he could be the one who met her in battle—if they could somehow manage to both die on each other’s swords—
That was something he could accept.
26
THE DUEL WAS AT SUNSET, before Lord Ineo’s house.
The Catresou champion did not come alone. Vai was with him, and five of his men, as well as several Catresou.
He came masked, but Juliet knew him even before he bowed and removed his mask. Now that she knew he was alive, she didn’t need to see his face.
It felt like her heart turned over in her chest with dread—but no surprise. Since the instant she had agreed to the duel, she had half known she would face Romeo.
Perhaps she had always known.
They had met on the Night of Ghosts, when Juliet had performed the sword dance before her people, and Romeo had caught the sword from her hands and danced with her. Perhaps from that instant, they had been doomed to end this way, dancing with swords.
Lord Ineo was saying something, but Juliet didn’t hear it. The moment Romeo cast aside his mask and she saw his face, the rest of the world ceased to exist. There was only him, and her, the blood she could smell on him.
And her endless, furious need to kill.
They met in the center of the courtyard. Romeo had a Catresou rapier, Juliet a Mahyanai sword. Unfamiliar weapons for both of them, but the whisper of steel through air, the clash as their blades met—that was all too familiar.
Juliet could have killed him in that first exchange. She saw the opening in his defense. But she fought the compulsion burning in her veins, forced her sword to slip, to let him catch her blade and push it aside.
For a moment they were caught together, blade to blade, fingers almost close enough to brush.
Romeo’s eyes were wide and dark. “I can’t lose to you,” he whispered.
“Then why did you come?” she snarled, and wrenched herself back. In another instant, she would have lunged forward and killed him—but he attacked instantly, sword moving swifter than she had ever seen him fight. For a few moments, he actually drove her back.
This was the boy who had killed Tybalt Catresou, and now he was pouring all his skill into fighting the Juliet herself—not so he could defeat her. Not so he could escape. So that he could give her these last moments to say good-bye.
So that he could kill her in the same moment that he died upon her sword.
She didn’t doubt for an instant what he planned. It was exactly what she would have done had their places been reversed, and she hated him for it as fiercely as she loved him for it.
And nothing she felt mattered next to the terrible power driving her sword.
In the next moment, her sword slashed forward, and she barely turned the killing blow into a shallow slice of his cheek. Then he parried, and his rapier slashed her arm.
Her own was the only blood she had never been bound to avenge. The pain steadied her, gave her a moment of control where her sword wavered and their eyes met.
Then she kicked him solidly in the ribs and sent him sprawling to the ground. The next moment she was kneeling on top of him.
I love you, she thought desperately, I love you, I love you, I—
“I judge you guilty,” she whispered, pressing the sword against his throat, every muscle trembling with the effort of holding it back, not killing him yet as she lowered her head and pressed her mouth to his in a desperate ghost of a kiss.
And she knew what she was about to do, knew exactly how it would feel to push her sword that last inch and shed his blood across the white stone of the courtyard, knew it so well she almost thought it was happening—
His palm slammed into the side of her head with a deafening clap, rocking her to the side, and then he was out from under her, grabbing his sword.
“I love you,” he said.
And as Juliet lunged for him again, she remembered the song he had once sung to her: Journeys end in lovers meeting.
Runajo shuddered as Juliet lunged again at Romeo. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Because she didn’t deserve to look away.
She had put this fate on Juliet. She had no right to find it too horrifying now.
But even as she thought that—as she helplessly braced herself for the moment that she would feel Juliet die, the same way she had felt Paris die—her mind was still scrabbling for a way out.
There had to be a way to countermand the Juliet’s killing. It was the only thing that made sense. Why would the Catresou create a weapon they couldn’t choose how to wield?
Romeo was bleeding from his arm, but he was still on his feet, still moving quickly. Runajo didn’t know anything about sword fighting, but even she could tell that they were drawing this out. Juliet couldn’t stop herself from killing, but she could make everyone watch, make all the Mahyanai know what they were doing.
What Runajo had done. Because this was all on her, and her sudden, brilliant idea to s
ave Juliet from dying by making her a killer.
Maybe it was just as well that she couldn’t find a way to free Juliet. It might turn out just as terribly as when Runajo had handed her over to Lord Ineo. She had been so sure of herself then, sure that she was doing the right thing, but when had she ever known what she was doing?
The thought caught, shivered, and repeated: When did you ever know?
She hadn’t known there was an answer in the Sunken Library. She hadn’t known there was a way to end the Ruining. She had guessed, and gambled her life and Juliet’s—the same way she’d gambled all Viyara when she and Sunjai and Inyaan bullied their way into the Cloister to remake the walls.
And maybe it was foolish to gamble again, but what did she have to lose?
The moment that Paris had died, it had felt like the air was gone from Runajo’s lungs. She had staggered, the world dimming in her eyes, for several endless moments unable to separate herself from his death. Unable to realize that her heart was still beating. The gap where he had been still yawned in her mind.
Even though they had been bonded for no more than a day, and their minds had barely touched ever, and he had been nothing dear to her.
If she lost Juliet—
Runajo was moving before she finished the thought, pushing her way to Lord Ineo’s side, where he stood watching the duel.
“You have to stop this,” she said quietly, rapidly. “Do you want your son to die?”
Lord Ineo gave her a look of weary disdain. “No traitor is a son of mine.”
But she noticed the tendons in his tightly clasped hands. He wasn’t as calm as he pretended.
“Do you want to be known as the man who had his son killed? Because that will be your legacy. That’s what they will remember, not his treachery. Not even that you saved the Upper City.”
“There’s no way to stop her,” said Lord Ineo. “You know that.”
Runajo knew nothing. She only had a wild guess, and a hope that it could be true.
“Yes, there is,” she lied. “If you pardon him, and declare his people kin. I read it in one of the records we stole from the Catresou. The Juliet enforces justice, but she must abide by the treaties of her clan. Do you think they’d want a weapon they couldn’t control?”