“Please,” Romeo begged, “you have to listen. For the sake of your people, you have to—”
“No, I don’t,” said Gavarin, dragging him down the corridor. The other guards were gone; the Catresou seemed to have decided that Romeo was not a threat. Without his sword—and bound by his vow—that was true enough. He could never raise his hand against Juliet’s clan, even if they had turned to evil.
But he could raise his voice.
“Doesn’t it shame your clan to serve murderers?”
Gavarin looked back at him, eyes narrowed in scorn. “Which murderers? Seems the city is full of ’em.”
“The Master Necromancer isn’t just—”
“The Sisters kill someone every six months, and you Mahyanai call that noble.” Gavarin’s voice was soft and furious. “Your father made the streets run with our blood, and you call that necessary. But the Master Necromancer uses the lives given him in the Night Game, and he is too shameful for us to serve?”
It’s not the same, Romeo wanted to protest. He understood now why the Catresou hated the sacrifices so much, but they did keep the Ruining out of Viyara. He was horrified at what his father had done, but at least Lord Ineo had been trying to make the city safe from necromancers. Meros and the surviving Catresou—
Wanted to live.
As everyone in Viyara wanted to live.
Then he remembered the girl who had died in his arms the night before.
“And the Jularios family?” Romeo demanded. “Was that acceptable?”
Gavarin winced as he turned away. But his voice was flat and steady as he said, “We’d all be dead if they talked.”
He dragged Romeo the last few steps down to the end of the hallway,
“That girl died begging for a Catresou burial,” said Romeo. “I promised she would have one.”
Gavarin laughed: a low, bitter sound. “Not yours to give,” he said, unlocking the heavy bolt on the door in front of them. “Not exactly ours to give either, now.”
“What?” said Romeo.
The door swung open. Gavarin shoved him inside.
There was nothing in the room but three cages—huge, heavy cages. Romeo had seen such cages before at the Night Game, where people brought prisoners for the Master Necromancer to sacrifice, hoping he would deign to raise their loved ones in return.
Something moved inside the nearest cage.
More prisoners, Romeo thought. It made sense—more people waiting to be sacrificed to the Master Necromancer’s power, perhaps other Catresou who had resisted the bargain—
Then he heard the hissing. He saw one of the figures throw itself against the bars.
It wasn’t a prisoner, because it wasn’t a person anymore. It was a revenant. Once it had been a boy about Romeo’s age, and it still looked like a boy, its pale skin smooth. It wasn’t yet rotted or withered. But in its eyes was a hollow, absolute emptiness.
It clawed at the bars, still hissing. It could smell their living flesh and blood. It wanted them.
“You’re . . . you’re punishing them?” asked Romeo, sick with horror. He couldn’t think of another reason to keep the dead in cages and deny them rest. “If you won’t embalm them, at least burn them—”
“Embalming doesn’t work anymore. None of our people can walk the Paths of Light.”
Gavarin said the words without emotion, but Romeo’s heart turned to ice in his chest. Because he knew what that meant. The Catresou believed that a realm of bliss awaited their clan after death, but that they could enter it only if their bodies were laid to rest with proper spells and prayers, embalmed with the brain and heart and stomach removed and placed in jars.
That embalming had always been enough to keep their dead from rising again as revenants. It was why they, alone out of everyone in the city, had been permitted a sepulcher.
“The Master Necromancer can make them rest,” said Gavarin. “But he makes us earn their entrance to the Paths of Light with our service. We’ve only bought peace for two so far. And there are more every day.”
He nodded toward the nearest cage. Romeo looked, and realized that it wasn’t empty like he’d thought: the dead in it just weren’t moving. They lay piled together on the ground, blood soaked into their clothes and hair—
It was the Jularios family.
“Think on that, while you wait,” said Gavarin, turning away.
“Wait!” Romeo called. He couldn’t look away from the pile of motionless bodies, couldn’t stop watching for the first twitch, but he had to ask. “The girl who died last night. You found me with her. What was her name?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I made her a promise,” said Romeo.
And if he had to watch her rise again as a mindless, crawling thing, the least he could do was remember her name.
“Emera Jularios Catresou,” said Gavarin, and shut the door on him.
They left him there all day.
Romeo waited. And watched. Every time the revenants moved in one of the other cages, he flinched, wondering if Emera was moving. He’d seen dead people before, and sat vigil for them, familiar faces turned still and empty. But he’d never seen them twisted into the Ruining’s cruel mockery of life, and when he imagined Emera like that, he felt sick.
He didn’t want to see her that way. The very thought seemed like a violation.
Right now, from where he sat with his back pressed against the wall, he couldn’t see her face at all. But he could see several strands of her red hair, trailing across the floor of the cage. He remembered her voice as she asked if he was going to protect them.
She wasn’t only her wounds and her dying request, either. She’d been a person, with her own loves and hates. Her own story.
Romeo just didn’t know any of it except the ending.
He’d never bothered very much with wondering what happened to people after death. What did it matter if they were dust and nothingness, as the Mahyanai sages said, or feasting with the nine gods, as the Sisters of Thorn said? Either way, they were never coming back.
When he’d met Juliet, and she’d told him—her face alight with a defiant joy—about the Paths of Light, he’d thought it a beautiful story. But he’d also thought it unspeakably dreary, how the Catresou were shackled to spend their whole lives preparing for those paths. And he’d loathed their belief that the spells making Juliet their protector would also keep her from the paths, and doom her to become a witless, nameless ghost that faded into nothing.
Then Juliet had died.
And when Romeo had been able to think again—when he’d been able to think of her again, without his thoughts splintering into a thousand bleeding shards of grief and shame—he still hadn’t believed anything the Catresou said. But he had desperately wished that some part of Juliet remained somewhere still, and could be at peace.
He wished that for Emera now. And he finally understood why the Catresou served the Master Necromancer. If he had thought it the only way to save his loved ones from eternal darkness, he might have done it too.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly—to her body, to her nothingness, because the Catresou were wrong. There was nothing left of her but a name in his mouth and a memory in his heart. “Emera, I am so sorry.”
Her fingers twitched.
Romeo shuddered. But he didn’t look away. As she began to move, he forced himself to keep speaking: “I will stop the Master Necromancer. I will save your people. I will get you a Catresou burial.”
All the dead in Emera’s cage were moving now. They didn’t seem to know how to walk at first, not even whether they should use legs or arms. They rolled into each other, crawled over each other, a writhing mass of limbs.
And then they smelled him.