The Sisters of Thorn said that there was one governing concept to the world: inkaad, a word that literally meant “appropriate payment.” It was the sacred mathematics, the holy law of bargain and exchange: life for life, price for price. It was how they justified killing someone every six months to maintain the spell-walls that kept the Ruining out of Viyara. The world had been created from the blood of the gods. It was now sustained by the blood of men.
Runajo had never believed in the nine gods. She had stopped believing in inkaad when the Sisters had told her to sacrifice Juliet, when Runajo had looked into her eyes and realized that her life was infinitely precious, and there was no appropriate payment to be given in exchange for it.
And if Juliet’s life was that precious, then so was everyone’s. Viyara and the Sisterhood were built on a murderous lie.
In one heartbeat, Runajo had come to believe that.
In the next, she’d become a murderer herself.
To save Juliet from the Sisterhood, Runajo had handed her over to the Mahyanai. She’d bound her to avenge their blood and ordered her to obey Lord Ineo. And Lord Ineo had used her to slaughter and capture the Catresou.
Now he was going to use her to kill the rest of them. And Runajo was going to help. Because for all her pride, she was no different from anyone else in the city. She wanted to live, and she wanted Juliet to live, and she would wade through blood to do it.
Runajo thought about this all afternoon. She knew that she had to tell Juliet—Lord Ineo was going to make his proclamation the next morning, and Juliet deserved to hear it from Runajo first—but she couldn’t make herself say the words just yet. So she sat in the study and stared at a Catresou record of the ancient Juliets until her eyes ached and her vision swam.
Finally, when the sun slanted low through the windows, she went to find Juliet. She had ordered Juliet not to reach out to her through the bond—after she had tried to destroy Runajo with it—but though she could no longer feel Juliet’s every emotion, she could still vaguely sense where the other girl was.
It was this sense that she followed through doors and around corners, until she stepped out into a colonnaded hallway that ringed a courtyard paved in red tiles.
Sunlight dazzled her eyes. Outside in the courtyard, metal flashed blindingly bright. Runajo blinked, and realized Juliet was holding a Mahyanai blade—long, single-edged, and slightly curved—while talking to a girl her own age. The girl had her own sword, and twisted it as they talked quietly.
Suddenly Juliet whirled into motion, dancing through the cuts and slices of a Mahyanai fighting form with the same speed and grace she’d used fighting revenants in the Sunken Library. Then she stopped, caught her breath, and looked back at the girl.
She was smiling.
A cold ache wove through Runajo’s ribs. Juliet had never smiled at any of the Mahyanai before. She’d never been willing to forgive a single one of them for belonging to their clan before.
It was only fair. The girl might be Mahyanai, but she hadn’t wronged Juliet the way Runajo had.
She strode out into the courtyard. Her eyes ached in the bright light.
“Juliet,” she said, and instantly Juliet stiffened, her face turning back into a mask.
Runajo stopped a pace away. The girl was looking at her curiously, but she didn’t matter now.
“Come with me,” she said, “now,” and instantly turned and strode away. Her skin crawled with the awareness she was being stared at, but it did not matter.
Nothing mattered, except what she had to do.
Juliet followed her into the cool shadows of the hallway. She said, “What are your orders?” and Runajo thought her heart was going to crack, because Juliet wasn’t speaking in the same dead, obedient voice she’d used for the past month. She sounded wary but . . . alive.
Runajo turned to face her, but she stared at the wall behind her head as she started to speak.
“The Sisterhood has decided we must act to save the walls. In three days, they’re going to offer twenty lives. Lord Ineo is going to use the Catresou prisoners for the sacrifice.”
She heard Juliet’s stuttering breath, but couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.
“The adults,” she added. “Not the children.”
Silence. Runajo finally dared a look, and for the first time in weeks saw actual shock on Juliet’s face.
“He can’t—”
“You know he can.”
Juliet closed her mouth, pressed her lips into a tight line. Her hands tightened into fists. Then she said, her voice low and controlled, “You could stop this. If you told someone outside this clan, he could be stopped. No Viyaran would accept it. Even by their laws, it’s obscene.”
Runajo had thought this herself. But only for a moment.
“Who,” she asked bitterly, “in this entire city, would want to save the Catresou? Who isn’t terrified of the dead rising faster? People will hate that he’s offering prisoners, but they won’t hate it enough until we run out of Catresou and have to start killing someone else.”
“So you will help him,” said Juliet.
“Yes,” said Runajo. “And you will stand guard on the sacrifices, to stop any fugitive Catresou from interfering.”
They both knew that wasn’t the real reason. Lord Ineo wanted a show of power, of how totally he had destroyed his enemies. He was going to get it.
“This won’t just destroy my people,” Juliet burst out, suddenly passionate. “Don’t you care what this will do to the Mahyanai? Do you want your clan to be murderers?”
“The walls are going to fall in five days,” Runajo said bluntly. “The Sisters have worked the equations. There is no other way to save us. If your people don’t die, somebody must, or we all will.”
Juliet stared at her. And then she said in the dead, flat tones that had become so familiar, “Do you have any other orders?”
“No,” said Runajo. “You can go.”
This much of inkaad was true, in this way the Sisters of Thorn were right: everything was bought in blood. Nothing was preserved, except that something else was destroyed.
Runajo had decided to save both Juliet and Viyara, and now she was drenched in blood. Her whole clan was guilty was well. It wasn’t right. But it was the only way there was.
Now she looked at Juliet walking away, and she thought, I will change it.
I will reshape the world. I will rewrite inkaad itself if I must. I will make this killing not necessary.
I swear it.
11
THE MORNING AFTER THE RAID, Meros went to see the Master Necromancer. When he returned, he said that as payment for their service the Master Necromancer would lay four of their dead to rest.
Romeo hated that he was grateful.
He hated how the rest of the Catresou were grateful, how there was an almost festival atmosphere among them as they prepared for the funerals. But he hated himself the most.
If Juliet knew that all her people served the Master Necromancer now, it would break her heart. If she knew that Romeo served him too, she would hate him even more.
If Makari knew—
But Makari had to know, surely, that Romeo willingly served the man who had enslaved him. Was that why he had never come to see Romeo again? Because he despised what Romeo had done?
But because of their service—Romeo’s service—the Master Necromancer visited them in secret and laid four of their dead to rest. One of them was Emera. She was going to have a Catresou burial, as she had wanted. As Romeo had promised.
If he had broken that promise, surely Juliet would have hated him for that too.
Romeo had nothing left, except his faithfulness to her people. That was how he had ended up here, in the embalming room.
The stench was awful.
Romeo knew that the Catresou embalming process involved draining the blood from the body, then removing the heart, stomach, and brain. So he’d expected the place to smell at least faintly like blood and death.
What he hadn’t expected was the smell of the embalming fluid itself—or at least, he supposed it must be the embalming fluid: an overpowering sweetness, so strong it made the air feel sticky, with a sour undertone that he could taste in the back of his throat as he breathed.