“Then you should have ordered me to,” said Juliet. She reached for Runajo’s arm and then stopped, fingertips an inch from her skin.
She could see the faint, round scars from when the Sisterhood had forced Runajo to do penance for dragging Juliet back from the Mouth of Death.
“I don’t think he broke it,” said Runajo.
Juliet probed gently down the arm with a finger. Runajo’s face screwed up, but she didn’t wince or moan.
“Probably not broken,” Juliet agreed. “Deep bruising, maybe.”
Runajo glared. “He took the living dead girl.”
“I know. She was already a prisoner, so I’m not sure how it matters.”
“It matters because she could have helped me end the Ruining. She was the last thing that possibly could. And now she’s going to be locked in a closet while fugitive Catresou mutter spells over her.”
Runajo was alight with righteous fury, her pain momentarily forgotten. It reminded Juliet of when they were in the Cloister, and Runajo hadn’t understood why Juliet was so furious to see her bleeding when they still had questions about necromancers and the Ruining to solve.
“No,” said Juliet. “Paris isn’t with the rest of the Catresou. He’s living dead, working for a necromancer who wants me left alive. Probably the same necromancer who was killing Sisters in the Cloister.”
Runajo looked surprised. “His name is Paris? You knew him?”
“Once,” said Juliet.
8
IT WAS A LONG WAY back, through the clean, wide streets of the Upper City, the great gates, and the twisting alleys of the Lower City. By the time Paris had brought the girl back to his master’s house, the sun had risen in the sky.
She walked silently, patiently, allowing him to lead her. She was dead like him, and Paris felt sure that she, too, had been raised by his master. She clearly understood the same inevitable truth: that they existed now only to serve him.
The girl’s hand was small and cold in his.
Romeo’s hands had been warm.
The memory was sudden and without warning, like a blade sliding between his ribs. Just before they left on the raid, Romeo had seized his hand, had said quietly and urgently, Paris. Paris, do you remember me?
Yes, Paris had said. You are the enemy of my master.
He didn’t know why the memory was so vivid. It wasn’t the only time that a living person besides his master had touched him. Meros especially liked to shove him by the shoulder and grab him by the hair. And since Meros was alive, surely his hands were just as warm, but Paris didn’t remember them, they didn’t seem real, not like—like—
Romeo pressed against the wall, Paris holding the blade at his throat, the stench of Catresou blood, and Romeo saying, I know you didn’t want to do this—
Paris had done far worse things on his master’s orders. He didn’t know why he remembered that one.
His head throbbed with sudden pain. There was no “worse” when it came to his master’s orders. That thought was vile. Absurd. Everything he had done in obedience, he had done right.
It was equally absurd to wish that his master’s orders were different. But Paris almost wished that his master hadn’t told him to keep Romeo alive at all costs. Because then he wouldn’t remember pulling him away from the cage of seething revenants. He wouldn’t remember—it wasn’t a feeling, he couldn’t feel things anymore—but he wouldn’t remember that strange unwinding in his chest, almost like relief.
Paris realized he had stopped walking. The girl waited, unquestioning.
I am obedient, he thought. I am obedient, and he strode forward.
Once upon a time, a prosperous man had owned a large, well-maintained tenement. (His master had told Paris this, while laughing.) Then the man’s wife had died, and he had come begging for favor to the Night Game. They were both dead now, and raised again to serve.
Paris knocked at the door. A stout, balding man answered it: the onetime owner of the house. When he saw Paris, he drew the door wide.
“Where is he?” asked Paris.
The man didn’t ask who he was; there was only one possible person who could matter to either of them.
“The ballroom,” he said.
Paris nodded, and led the girl inside.
Once, the tenement had housed men and women who were well-to-do. The large, high-vaulted room, painted in red and gold, had existed so that they could pay for the privilege of throwing parties in it.
These past three weeks, it had hosted the Night Game. The last one had been just the night before, and the room was not clean: there were scattered chairs, a few discarded masks. The cages of sacrifices still sat in the center of the room, and inside the cages, the bodies had begun to stir, hissing and gnawing at the bars.
Paris’s master knelt by one of the cages, poking at a revenant with a stick. He rose and turned as Paris entered the room.
Instantly Paris let go of the girl’s hand and dropped to his knees.
“I brought her back,” he said, and he felt that rare, exquisite sunburst of joy, because his master smiled.
Not at him. But it didn’t matter, because his master, smiling at the girl, was the happiest that Paris had ever seen him.
In two strides, he was before her, and he swept her into an embrace.
Paris, still kneeling beside them, found his head at level with the girl’s still, limp hand. He wondered if he should go, but he had not been dismissed.
“I’m so sorry,” his master whispered. “I understand everything now. I will make things right.”
The girl’s fingers flexed. Her hand began to lift—and then in one smooth motion, she had drawn the knife that hung from his master’s belt.
In the next moment, she ducked out of his arms. She rammed the knife between her ribs, straight into her heart.
Paris’s chest ached. He knew the peculiar pain of that stroke, even though now he was glad his master had inflicted it on him.
His master’s cry ripped through Paris’s mind, tore him apart. He had never heard grief like that before, felt grief like that before.
“No,” said his master, falling to his knees before the girl, “no.”
She stared at him expressionlessly. The knife sat buried between her ribs, and black blood welled up around the blade, but she did not fall.
She was living dead, like Paris, and their master’s power drove every pulse of her heart. Yet a knife driven straight through her heart should have killed her again, required her to be raised again, and Paris stared at her in puzzlement.
“I know what you need,” said his master. “I will give it to you.”
Slowly, gently, he pulled the knife free of her body.
“You know I can’t kill you,” he said. “Nobody can. But I’m almost ready.”
He pressed his lips to the wound and kissed it. Then he raised his face to her and said, black-lipped, “I only need a few more Night Games to gather my power. Then I’ll take the key, and open the gates of death, and you will be home. All the world will die, and you will finally know peace.”
The girl looked at him. In the cages, the revenants hissed and writhed.
She raised her hands to his cheeks, slid them into his hair. And then she bent down and kissed him, again and again.
9
LORD INEO WAS NOT PLEASED with either of them. But he was especially not pleased with Juliet.
“The Catresou breached our walls, killed five of our own people, and absconded with nearly seventeen prisoners.”
Juliet couldn’t see his face. She was kneeling, head bowed, staring at the ground. But she could hear the flat, clipped tone of his voice, and she could imagine the sour look on his face. It was almost amusing.
“I had believed that your mission was to protect us,” Lord Ineo went on. “Do you care to explain how this happened?”
His frustration wasn’t amusing, not when he had the power to kill her or make her kill in retribution. But it was still deeply satisfying.
“I killed the first ones I found,” she said, as meekly as she could. “Then I fought the next group, but before I could defeat them, Runajo summoned me to help her.”