Before he knew what he was doing, Paris had left the sanctum and was most of the way down the stairs toward the inner sepulcher. The next moment, his hands were pounding against the locked door. He had to get inside. He had to lie down among the bones—
With a sick, helpless terror, he realized that Romeo had given him an order. And he was obeying. The bond had been twisted to work both ways.
It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he managed to lower his hands and clench them into fists at his sides. He was a Catresou. He would not take orders from a Mahyanai boy.
After a few agonizing moments, the compulsion faded. At least the bond wasn’t forcing him into complete obedience.
Romeo had followed him down the steps. Grimly, Paris turned to face him.
“We can order each other back and forth all day,” he said. “That doesn’t change what’s right.”
From above—probably from just outside the sepulcher’s main door—they heard voices.
And to his shame, Paris panicked. He knew he should call out, or bodily drag Romeo up the stairs. But he couldn’t seem to move. What if it was Meros up there? What if it was Father?
Romeo didn’t hesitate. The stairwell had an alcove on each side, right before the door, where there were hung tapestries covered with sacred designs; Romeo hauled Paris into one of them, covering his mouth so he couldn’t cry out.
Paris struggled, but he knew he wasn’t really trying, and after a moment he went still.
Up above in the sanctum, there were footsteps, and then silence.
“She actually did it,” said Master Trelouno.
It was the last voice he had expected to hear: his dueling instructor, speaking with exactly the same distant disgust as when Paris had executed a technique particularly badly. For a moment, Paris couldn’t quite believe he was hearing it.
“So it would seem,” replied the last voice Paris had wanted to hear: Lord Catresou, his former fury turned to icy displeasure.
Lord Catresou was here. He was here, which Paris should have expected—of course he would know his own daughter well enough to guess where she would go—and he was going to find Paris cowering with an enemy.
Paris wouldn’t just be sent to the Guard, he would be thrown out of the clan entirely. He would deserve it.
And though he didn’t speak out loud, Paris heard Romeo’s furious thought just as clearly as if he had spoken it: You care about that, when Juliet lies dead?
I care about my duty, said Paris, and it seemed wrong, how easily he spoke the words straight into Romeo’s mind.
Above, Master Trelouno said, “Do you think she survived?”
“Can’t you feel it?” demanded Lord Catresou. “The land of the dead opened up here, not even an hour ago.”
Paris wasn’t sure if it was him or Romeo feeling that wave of pure, wordless wretchedness. It didn’t matter. They had both gotten her killed.
“There must have been something wrong with the revised adjurations,” said Master Trelouno. “I told you we should have tested—”
“And how would we have kept a second Juliet secret?” Lord Catresou asked sharply.
They had changed the adjurations that made the Juliet.
It took Paris a moment to understand what he’d heard. Another moment to believe it. Those spells were sacred, passed down for generations. It was Lord Catresou’s duty to preserve them unchanged, undefiled.
But he had changed the adjurations. And Juliet had died.
They killed her, said Romeo. I will tell them what I think of them.
Now it was Paris holding Romeo back. No, he said frantically. Wait. They must have had a good reason.
They are villains and they deserve to hear the truth! said Romeo. Once I have spoken it, I will gladly die upon their swords.
Master Trelouno was speaking now. “. . . don’t fancy telling our Master Necromancer that he has to wait another seventeen years.”
And Paris couldn’t breathe.
Master Necromancer.
Everyone had heard the stories of necromancers hiding in the city: of men so vile and powerful that they would harness obscene magic to drag dead souls back into the crawling, revenant bodies they had left behind. These living dead were trapped in a miserable half life. They were no longer revenants; they could think and speak and remember those they had loved. But they could not eat or drink or sleep. They could feel no rest or peace. And though they looked like normal men, if their blood was shed, it turned black as soon as the sunlight touched it.
But those stories were filthy lies, spun to bring suspicion on the Catresou. It wasn’t possible to call back dead souls, for the dead were either Catresou, safely walking the Paths of Light, or mindless ghosts who didn’t know their own names. And despite what the ignorant and the hateful of Viyara thought, Catresou magi learned spells to protect the living and guide the dead, not to rend apart the walls between them.
“Then lucky for you that we can’t speak to him just yet,” said Lord Catresou, as if necromancers were a normal problem like the City Guard.
Do you still wish you’d handed the Juliet over to him? Romeo demanded, and Paris didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.
“He’ll be back before we have a new Juliet,” said Master Trelouno. “It’s a pity this one would be useless if we raised her from the dead.”
“You’re a very fine necromancer,” said Lord Catresou, “but those spells are not the answer to everything. I learned much from this Juliet; I can make the process faster next time. Perhaps only five years.”
This couldn’t be real. Lord Catresou, the leader of the entire clan, could not really be saying such things.
Paris could believe there might be good reasons to tinker with the adjurations that made the Juliet. He could even, if he tried, imagine some reason that Lord Catresou might have to deal with necromancers: if they were threatening the clan, the city. If he had no other choice.
But for him to let one of his own clan be a necromancer—that he would use the word so casually, as if it were no more shocking or forbidden than Master Trelouno’s other title of swordmaster—
It didn’t seem possible.
He killed his own daughter, said Romeo. What did you expect?
“He won’t like it,” said Master Trelouno.
“He’ll have to bear it,” said Lord Catresou. “Remember, we still have the Little Lady.” He sighed. “But I will have that Mavarinn boy’s hide. He must have helped her.”
Master Trelouno laughed. “He doesn’t have the wit. I assure you, Paris Mavarinn has done nothing except be a useless substitute for Tybalt. It’s a pity. We could bring Tybalt back, but we can’t make him the Juliet’s Guardian when everyone knows he’s dead.”
“His fault, for getting killed in public,” said Lord Catresou, and Paris felt a sudden wave of hot, wordless grief and shame from Romeo.
“Yes,” said Master Trelouno, “but we won’t find another who can help us so well in the Lower City.”
“If you wanted an easy life, you should have renounced and asked to join the Mahyanai,” said Lord Catresou. “Come on. We have preparations to make.”
Their footsteps echoed as they left the sanctum.
Paris and Romeo were alone again.
Paris couldn’t move. He felt dazed and numb all over. He could remember every single word that Lord Catresou and Master Trelouno had said to each other—the memories were so burned into him, he wasn’t sure he could ever stop hearing those words—but he couldn’t put them all together in his head.
Master Necromancer. Revised adjurations. Tybalt in the Lower City. None of it made any sense. None of it was possible.
They killed her, said Romeo. I have to go after them.
No, said Paris, but Romeo shoved him away and climbed out of the alcove.
“Stop,” Paris ordered out loud, and Romeo staggered but kept moving up the stairs. Paris lunged after him, grabbed his arm, and wrenched. They both went tumbling back down the stair
s and landed on the floor.
“You want me to live?” Romeo demanded.
“Not really,” said Paris, “but—”
“I must die for her, surely you can see that.” Romeo’s eyes were very wide; he didn’t seem to be quite focusing on Paris. “And I cannot avenge her. I swore I would never harm her family again, so I cannot kill her father, no matter that he killed her. All I can do is speak the truth and die.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” said Paris. “They’ll just kill you and—and go on—”
He stopped, the sheer horror of the situation choking him for a moment. Master Trelouno was a necromancer. He and Lord Catresou were working with another, more powerful necromancer. They had betrayed the Juliet. They had betrayed everything.
And for what? Paris couldn’t imagine what goal might be worth such a crime to anyone. Yet there had to be a reason that Lord Catresou had turned to necromancy—something he couldn’t accomplish any other way, and Paris dreaded to know what it was. Nothing bought at such a price could have any good in it.
“We have to face this logically,” said Paris. “We have to stop what they’re doing. For Juliet. And for Viyara.”
It’s my duty, he thought, but for the first time, the word duty was not a comfort. Because he had a duty to the Juliet and to his clan, but also to Lord Catresou.
“You mean go to the City Guard?” said Romeo. He seemed to be calming down a little.
“No!” said Paris. “What are you thinking? Of course we can’t do that.”
“Why not?” said Romeo. “It’s their duty to stop murderers. Lord Catresou killed Juliet. Do you want to protect him?”
The thought of Lord Catresou stripped of his mask and bound in chains, dragged before the Exalted for judgment, made Paris feel queasy. Whatever he’d done, people who applauded the murderous blood magic of the Sisterhood had no right to judge Lord Catresou.
But he had to be stopped.
“No,” said Paris. “I won’t. But I will protect my clan. Tell the City Guard now, and they will destroy us.”
Romeo stared at him. “Why do you think they would do that?”
There were so many reasons, Paris didn’t know where to start. The City Guard carrying the bodies of the nameless, unclean dead through Catresou streets, again and again. The chains the Catresou were forced to put in their sepulcher, though their dead had never stirred. The looks and the whispers, and the relentless questioning whenever a death was reported the least bit late. Newly grieving households hauled out and questioned even though they had done everything right.
“They hate us,” said Paris. “You have no idea how they hate us. They will never believe it’s only a few people. They’ll declare us all necromancers and use it as an excuse to drive us out of the city, or enslave us, or—if you ever loved Juliet, you won’t tell them.”
“Then what do you mean to do?” asked Romeo.
Paris had never in his life been asked to come up with a plan for something. He’d had a plan to avoid being sent to the Guard, and look how that had turned out.
“We have to find out what they’re doing,” he said. “We have to get evidence, so that we can prove Lord Catresou and Master Trelouno are conspiring with necromancers, and so we can prove they’re the only ones who are guilty. Not the rest of us.”
Paris could feel Romeo’s skepticism, but Romeo wasn’t Catresou. He didn’t know how unthinkably wrong necromancy was to their people. It was impossible that more than a very few Catresou were part of this conspiracy.
“When we have proof, then we can tell the City Guard,” he said, getting to his feet. “Right now, we have to leave the sepulcher. They’ll send in people to clean up soon.”
Paris realized his hands were shaking, which said shameful things about his courage, but he couldn’t help it. He was supposed to stop Lord Catresou. And there was absolutely nobody in the world to help him. None of the Catresou would, because he had lost the Juliet and ended up bound to a Mahyanai. Nobody else would help him, because he was Catresou.
He was pretty sure that Romeo had heard those thoughts, and knew how pathetic and how lost he was.
“You really do want justice for her, don’t you?” Romeo asked quietly, looking up at him.
“Yes,” said Paris. “I do.”
Romeo watched him a moment longer and then said, “I know someone who will hide us.”
8
“BEHOLD THE MOUTH OF DEATH,” said the High Priestess. “Here you shall sit until dawn, and if you survive, you shall join us.”
Runajo crossed her arms. “I imagined it bigger.”
She was pretending, of course; behind her crossed arms, her heart was fluttering and her stomach was unsteady with fear. But she wasn’t lying, either. She had known what the Mouth of Death looked like—every child in the city had heard about the perfectly round, perfectly dark lake whose waters flowed up from the land of the dead. After all, it was to guard the Mouth that Viyara had been founded.
But she hadn’t expected the pool to be barely wider than her own arm-span. It seemed like such a tiny thing, to have once been the prize of empires, to now be the heart of Viyara, to swallow all the souls of the dead.
To be the thing that might kill her.
Miryo’s breath hissed in between her teeth. “Do you truly imagine—”
“Peace,” said Vima, who would chant laments for Runajo in the morning if she did not survive. “The girl has met her punishment.”
It was not normal for the High Priestess, the priestess of mourning, and the novice mistress to all accompany a Sister to her first vigil—but this was not a normal vigil.
“Listen,” said the High Priestess. “You are a child, and a foolish one. Perhaps you are more as well. But not less. And the souls you see tonight—they deserve a faithful witness.”
“They deserve better than you,” said Miryo.
Runajo smiled at her. “How difficult for you, to wish that I both succeed in my duty and fail in it.”
“Live as dead, until thy death,” said the High Priestess: the ritual farewell between two Sisters of Thorn.
Runajo bowed and made the traditional response: “My blood is as the blood of gods.”
Then they left her alone with the Mouth of Death.
The Mouth lay in a tiny valley with steep, ribbed sides, as if a god had reached down and scooped out a handful from the mountaintop. Nothing grew here: there was only the smooth, pale-gray surface of the rock and the slick darkness of the water. The Ancients had covered the tiny valley with a dome that looked black on the outside but was transparent from within. They had inlaid glyphs—their meaning now long forgotten—into the walls, and as the sun went down, the symbols glowed with a cold, greenish light.
Runajo walked to the rim of the Mouth and looked down at the dark water. As a Viyaran, she had heard about it all her life; and as a Mahyanai, she had been told it was no more than a pond. There were strange and deadly properties to the water, of course, no doubt caused by the ancient concentration of magical powers. But there was no land of the dead, and therefore no procession of souls every night.
So the Mahyanai said.
Runajo had spoken with enough Sisters to believe they saw something when they sat the vigil. But that did not mean they saw the souls of the dead. Or that there was anything waiting for those souls after they plunged into the black water and were unseen forever after.
There was no sound except her own breathing and a faint whisper from the wind. Her heartbeat was fast in her throat. Runajo knelt on the stone floor, carefully tucking her bare feet under her. It was the way Mother had knelt, day after day by Father’s bedside.
Sometimes Runajo had joined her in the endless vigil, but she wasn’t allowed to speak or help. She could only watch her mother watch her father. More often, she sat alone in the garden. By the time a year had passed, she knew that she was waiting for her father’s death.
It took another three years. When Mother finally sobbed over his em
aciated corpse, Runajo had felt nothing but exhausted relief.
Then Mother took ill, and it was Runajo’s turn to sit by a bed, reading poetry and spooning gruel. To wash a slowly withering body and hold ever-weakening hands. To pretend she was happy to be there, pretend she was sad to lose her mother, pretend she felt anything at all when her heart was a smooth little stone in her chest.
When Mother died late at night, Runajo did the barest minimum of her duty; she sat vigil by the body until dawn. When the sky began to lighten, she ordered the servants to tell the rest of the family, and to call the City Guard for corpse disposal.
Then she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and walked up the cold, quiet streets to the Cloister. She banged on the door, and when a sleepy-eyed Sister answered, she flung herself to the ground and begged to be admitted.
Her family was outraged that she had left before the funeral rites, but Runajo knew that if she had waited even another hour, she would never have been allowed to leave. She would have spent her whole life as that same helpless, silent little girl, smothered under the lies that people told to make themselves happy.
For the Sisters of Thorn, there was one true law to the world: blood for blood. Life for life. Price for screaming price. They had a word for it: inkaad, which literally meant “appropriate payment,” but signified the law that governed all bargain and exchange.
If there was one thing that lay at the heart of the world, said the Sisters, it was inkaad. It had governed the chaos from which the gods arose, and it would govern the death of the last human after the city walls failed, and when all the world was dead, it would govern death.
Some of the Mahyanai doubted that wisdom, but Runajo never had. She had watched it every day. Her mother could only care for her husband by ignoring her daughter. Runajo could only care for her mother by strangling herself with silence. And she could only get back the least bit of herself by abandoning everything else—including her parents, deep in her heart, long before they died.
She had paid the price willingly, and she did not regret. Not even now.
But she was afraid.
So terribly, shamefully afraid.