Endless Water, Starless Sky

  Benario Valiet Catresou bravely volunteered for this task. May he find his way swiftly to the Paths of Light. For he died in the attempt; the bond was made, but it destroyed him. The magi believe that the Juliet, already having a Guardian, could not shield another from the power of the seal. The Juliet herself was driven mad, and in her rage slew nine of us before she was brought down. We have permitted her burial in the sepulcher, for it was only the treachery of her Guardian and then the weakness of her own mind that turned her against us.

  There was a line drawn across the page, and then under it, in the same hand:

  A girl, three years old, accepted the first two seals, but died upon the third.

  Runajo sat back, her stomach twisting. She’d already read several accounts of Juliets turning against their clan, and always it was blamed on their Guardians, their families, or their weak minds. Always the records said that they were permitted burial in the sepulcher, as if they had not already paid more dearly for it than anyone else. She wondered if this Juliet had really been betrayed by her Guardian, or if that was just a lie to prop up the Catresou pride.

  One Guardian replacing another. Her first thought was of Romeo, whom Juliet had tried to make her Guardian. But he was dead. And even if he weren’t—even if there were anyone left alive whom Juliet could bear to have as a Guardian—there would still be the problem of the new Guardian dying. Runajo believed that part of the chronicle was true, for Juliet had told her much the same thing once: the magic that created the bond between Juliet and Guardian was too powerful for any normal human to bear. The Juliet could survive it only because her body had been trained since infancy to accept magic, and the Guardian survived only because the Juliet shielded him through the bond.

  So it wasn’t a solution at all. It hadn’t saved that long-ago Juliet, and it wasn’t going to save the Juliet that Runajo was so desperate to help now.

  But it did mean that the rules could be bent. There might yet be some other way around them, a way to set Juliet free.

  She just couldn’t find it.

  She wanted to scream, or maybe weep. She was out of ideas. She was out of time. Because three days ago, a revenant had risen before it was even a single day dead.

  Runajo had hardly slept since.

  The other Mahyanai had been terrified, of course. But now they were all sleeping in their beds. Runajo felt that this was on account of them being idiots, but she knew that really, it was because they hadn’t spent time among the Sisters of Thorn. They hadn’t been trained in the lore of the Ruining, and the magical walls that the Sisterhood wove to keep it out of the city.

  They knew that a revenant rising after just one day was frightening. But they didn’t know what it meant.

  A year ago, when Runajo had joined the Sisters of Thorn, she had learned that the walls around the city would not last forever. That the blood sacrifices would have to be offered more and more often to maintain the walls, and in the end no amount of blood would be enough. That they only had forty years left. The knowledge had made her desperate enough to break every law of the Sisterhood, looking for a solution.

  If the dead were rising faster, that meant the Ruining was changing, growing stronger. They might only have months. Weeks. Who knew?

  Juliet’s life was not worth the whole of the city. Runajo knew this. She knew that Juliet would scream it at her, if given the chance. She knew that if the city were falling, she would do it, would sacrifice Juliet the same way that everyone else in her life had been willing to sacrifice her.

  But she didn’t want to. She was desperate not to.

  Runajo stared at the page, her eyes watering, and tried to believe that if she kept reading, there would be an answer. But she was losing hope.

  In her dream, she was trapped somewhere small and dark, her throat dry as she tried endlessly to explain something, but her words were never enough, and everyone was laughing at her, saying Never forgive you—

  Somebody knocked on the door.

  Runajo sat bolt upright, her head swimming. She was in her bedroom. She was not, at the moment, failing at anything besides all the things she had been failing at last night.

  Juliet was gone.

  The knocking kept on. “Yes?” Runajo called out, trying to clear her head.

  The door eased open a crack. A young serving girl looked in at her.

  “If you please,” she said, “there’s a visitor waiting for you. The blue room.”

  A visitor.

  Hope and fear sparked in her stomach. Maybe somebody from the Cloister. Maybe somebody had finally, finally listened—maybe she was going to get help—

  Runajo dressed as quickly as she could, ignoring the cosmetics and the silver combs. She all but ran for the sitting room painted with blue trim.

  Waiting for her was a plump, pale girl with long dark braids.

  Sunjai.

  It took Runajo a moment to recognize her, because she no longer wore the plain gray robes of a novice. Nor did she wear—as she must have in her childhood, though Runajo hadn’t known her then—the brightly colored dresses favored by the Mahyanai, with their wide, embroidered sashes. Instead, she was wrapped in the translucent white silks worn by the Old Viyaran nobility—the people who had originally created Viyara, long before the refugees of half the world arrived on their doorstep. A gold chain hung around her neck, and there were thick gold rings on her fingers.

  Sunjai dimpled. “You’ve done well for yourself,” she said, looking Runajo over. “A guest of Lord Ineo? Keeper of the undead Juliet?”

  The smug, honey-poison tone of her voice hadn’t changed a bit, and Runajo suddenly remembered that they had never been friends. That the last time they talked, Sunjai had called her a heartless monster.

  She hadn’t been far wrong.

  “Juliet’s not undead,” Runajo said flatly.

  “But the High Priestess said so. It must be true.” Sunjai’s grin was sarcastically wide. “Besides, you did drag her out of the Mouth of Death, didn’t you?”

  “Did you leave the Cloister and get a place at the Exalted’s court so that you could argue with me about this?”

  “No,” said Sunjai, her smile draining away, “Inyaan summoned me. I obeyed.”

  “And did very well for yourself,” said Runajo, looking at Sunjai’s gold rings because she suddenly didn’t want to look right in her eyes.

  Inyaan was the younger sister of the Exalted. She had been a novice alongside them—a silent, expressionless girl. Runajo had thought Inyaan’s blank stares were filled with pride and disdain. She’d thought that Sunjai had befriended her only out of ambition. She’d been wrong on both counts.

  “Excellently well,” said Sunjai. “But aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”

  Runajo swallowed, and then made herself look back into Sunjai’s eyes. It was silly to feel humiliated now; she’d given up her pride five letters ago.

  “I hope,” she said, “you came here about my letters.”

  Sunjai’s eyebrows raised. “Letters?”

  Runajo felt like the worst idiot in the world. Of course the High Priestess would never have allowed any novice to receive letters from a girl who had been cast out of the Cloister in disgrace.

  “I wrote you,” she said. “Several times. About the Ruining. What I found in the Sunken Library—”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Sunjai. “None of us lowly novices were supposed to know what you said in the Hall of Judgment, but there are rumors.” Her lips pressed together, and then she went on, “Have you heard what’s happened in the Cloister since?”

  Cold fear started to swirl inside Runajo. “No,” she said.

  But she remembered the hordes of revenants seething through the Sunken Library, far below the Cloister. She could imagine them pounding at the doors, breaking them down—if the Ruining was getting stronger, if the dead were rising faster—

  “The Mouth of Death is dry. And the walls are failing.”

  The words we
re so unexpected that it took Runajo a moment to understand what Sunjai had said.

  Then she stared.

  “What?” she said.

  She had known the walls were failing. That was not a surprise. But the Mouth of Death?

  In her mind, Runajo could see the way it had been when she sat vigil. The little pool of perfectly still, perfectly dark water. The souls walking in silent procession, departing the world forever.

  Every night for three thousand years, souls had walked into the dark water. It was why Viyara and the Sisters of Thorn existed. To guard the Mouth of Death.

  “It’s dry,” said Sunjai. “I’ve seen it myself.” She gestured. “Just a little hollow in the rock now. They still sit vigil, but nobody sees any souls. And meanwhile, we’ve been working the calculations. The walls will last another week.”

  One week.

  Runajo felt dizzy and numb. She’d imagined so many terrible things in the past few days, once she realized the Ruining was changing. But she hadn’t imagined this.

  She hadn’t imagined that she was already too late.

  If the Mouth of Death was dry, she couldn’t use it to walk into Death. Her last chance was gone. Runajo had braved the Sunken Library and learned the secret of how the first Ruining had been stopped three thousand years ago, and it didn’t matter anymore.

  She had destroyed Juliet’s life, and it didn’t matter.

  “They’re planning a great sacrifice,” said Sunjai. “Twenty lives. They think it will keep the walls alive a little longer, but no one’s sure how long.”

  If Runajo hadn’t felt so sick with fear, she might have laughed at the understatement. It wouldn’t be long at all. Not if the Ruining had become so strong it could crumble the walls in a week, and raise the dead in one day. They would have to offer again and again, and by the time the city finally fell, half the people might already be dead by a Sister’s knife.

  “So,” said Sunjai, “if you really did learn anything about the Ruining, down in the Sunken Library, now’s the time to share it.”

  We’re all going to die, thought Runajo. We’re all going to die, and it doesn’t matter that you have fine gold rings or Inyaan is the Exalted’s sister, nothing will save you.

  “Nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing left we can do. That’s what I learned in the Sunken Library.”

  Sunjai started back. “But—”

  “Go back to Inyaan and tell her a comforting lie if you want,” said Runajo. “But we are all going to die.”

  And then she fled the room.

  3

  THE NIGHT WIND SANG WITH the promise of sorrow and blood. The moon shone down, bright and pale as death.

  Romeo crouched on the rooftop, watching the street below, and tried not to think of Juliet. But it felt like every stone of the city, every breath of the wind, was crying out her name: Juliet, Juliet, Juliet.

  It was a month since Makari had delivered the letter. Romeo had kept going back to wait at the spot he’d told Juliet she could find him: the rooftop where he once asked her to marry him.

  She never came.

  It was only right that she wouldn’t forgive him. It was more than he deserved that she hadn’t come to kill him. But that meant he had to find another way to pay his debt.

  His foolishness was the reason that the Catresou were now fugitives without allies. It was only right that he protect them.

  Voices echoed from below. Romeo startled into readiness, his hand on his sword as he peered down into the shadows.

  A girl was hurrying down the street, shoulders hunched, pulling her cloak tight. But the wind had blown her hood back, and her red hair whipped free.

  There were people in Viyara who had red hair and weren’t Catresou. But not many.

  Two men were following her.

  Carefully, silently, Romeo swung himself off the roof and onto a window ledge, then dropped to the ground. He landed in the narrow alley between two houses just as the two men overtook the girl. He heard their voices—loud, harsh, and laughing.

  “Going somewhere, little girl?”

  He strode out of the alley, drawing his sword. The men weren’t touching the girl, but they had her crowded against the wall of the house, her shoulders hunched, her eyes darting back and forth as she looked for escape.

  “Get away from her,” said Romeo.

  He’d done this a lot in the past three weeks. He still half expected them to laugh and call him a child.

  One of the men flinched. The other one snarled, “You.”

  He knew why they stared: because he wore a Catresou mask, painted blue and gilded at the edges, covering his face from forehead to cheeks. No Catresou dared to wear one now, but Romeo had donned one every night since he chose this way to pay his debt.

  “Go home. Last chance.” Romeo stepped forward, the cold tension winding through his body. There were only two of them. He could handle two.

  One of the men started forward, and Romeo didn’t even think. He whipped his sword forward to slice a thin cut into the man’s cheek. Then he lunged and slashed the same shallow line of red into the other man’s face.

  They stumbled back, cursing. Romeo settled into a perfect dueling position, sword ready for the moment they would charge, and he would have to—

  But they fled.

  Romeo’s heart pounded painfully. He noticed the sweat trickling down his neck, the cramp in his hand as he gripped the sword. There was a thin line of blood on the blade, but he hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t had to.

  His hands shook only a little as he lowered the sword and turned back to the girl.

  She still had her back pressed to the wall. “You,” she said, wide-eyed. “You’re real.”

  Romeo shifted from one foot to the other, his mask suddenly a guilty weight. It was good for people to tell stories. That was half of why he’d donned the mask, so that people would think twice before trying to harm the Catresou. But he’d never expected the stories to spread so fast. In less than a month, he had become a legend.

  “Yes,” he said. “You need to get home. I’ll walk with you.”

  The girl didn’t move. “Is it true what they say?” she asked. “That you’re going to punish the Juliet for what she did to us?”

  The words bit at him like knives, and Romeo caught his breath. Because there was a time when he would have proclaimed that they deserved to be punished for what they had done to her. He’d said as much to Paris more than once.

  But that had been when the Catresou were still one of the three high houses.

  “I’m going to protect you,” he said. “Come on.”

  The girl watched him a moment longer; then she turned and strode forward. Her home was only a few buildings away; Romeo hung back as she knocked on the door. When it swung open and she slipped inside, he sighed and stepped back to vanish among the shadows of the nearest alleyway.

  He’d protected another Catresou tonight. He should be proud, or at least satisfied.

  But his debt would never be paid. Juliet was still enslaved to the Mahyanai. Makari was still pretending to serve the Master Necromancer. And Paris—

  A hand clapped him on the shoulder. Romeo whirled, his sword coming up.

  “You know,” said Vai, “staring sadly into the darkness is a lot safer in a locked room.”

  Vai was a lean boy in a long coat, with dark skin, dark braids tipped in bright-blue beads, and a smile like a curved knife. Vai was actually a girl, but she hadn’t told him that until after Paris died. Paris knew, so I suppose you might as well, she’d said, and Romeo hadn’t understood that logic, but he knew the two of them had been close.

  Vai’s only brother had died to necromancers, and the custom of her people dictated that she had to become a man in his place, so she could raise up heirs for his family. It had seemed like a cruel custom to Romeo, but it wasn’t worse than what Juliet’s people had done to her, and he knew what Juliet’s duty meant to her; so he’d said nothing.

  Romeo sigh
ed and lowered his sword. “I could have hurt you,” he said.

  “I mean, theoretically you could have,” said Vai. “You were pretty formidable that one time we dueled. But honestly, were you actually going to do anything except glare at me and think of how to complain about this in a poem?”

  “I don’t write poems anymore,” Romeo muttered. That was something he’d done back when Juliet was free, and he’d thought there was a chance he could be with her.

  “Probably why you’re so sad,” said Vai.

  “How did you find me?” asked Romeo. He hadn’t gone near Justiran again since the night a month ago, when Makari had appeared and told him to flee. He hadn’t gone back either to the underground room where Vai held court as King of Cats, champion duelist of the Lower City.

  “You’re really not as stealthy as you think you are,” said Vai. “And you’ve already got a reputation.” She looked at the house. “So this is where the Catresou have taken refuge?”

  “You can’t tell—”

  “—anyone, I know. Do you really think I’d sell them out?” And there was no laughter at all in her voice as she said, “Paris was my friend too.”

  But neither of them had been able to save him.

  “It’s just one family,” said Romeo. “I’ve seen others in the streets, but I don’t know where they live.”

  “Might be just as well that you don’t,” said Vai. “Secrets have a way of getting out.”