“You can order her to stop sulking and eat, surely.”
A hundred furious words coiled behind Juliet’s teeth, and she couldn’t say a single one, because Runajo had told her, Be silent.
Runajo sighed. “Consider yourself at liberty to sit up and speak.”
Juliet was hungry. And all her fighting couldn’t change a thing. The magic that bound the Juliet to her Guardian was absolute. There was no chance of escape.
But she didn’t have to pretend to like it. Not until Runajo ordered her to.
So she remained kneeling, her head bowed. She listened to the clink of the dishes as Lord Ineo and Runajo ate their breakfast. She listened to Lord Ineo tell Runajo about the audiences he had been granted with the Exalted, the ruler of the city, and how the stolen Catresou children were learning the ways of the Mahyanai clan and would soon be part of it.
Juliet felt sick. She had helped drag the screaming children out of the Catresou compound. She had been the sword that Lord Ineo used against all of the Catresou clan, when he told them that they must renounce their ways and assimilate into the Mahyanai or die.
“I don’t see how it’s important to make them renounce,” said Runajo, still infuriatingly calm. “What matters is that they abjure necromancy, isn’t it?”
“Now of all times,” said Lord Ineo, “we don’t need dissension in the city. It was a mistake ever allowing the Catresou to become one of the three high houses, when they despised the magic that protected Viyara.”
We despise you and your magic, thought Juliet, because you murder people to keep the city walls alive.
She said nothing.
At last Lord Ineo rose, bid Runajo good-bye, and left the room, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
There was a moment of silence.
“He’s gone,” said Runajo. “You can look up now.”
Juliet stared at her hands, pressed against the ground, and wished that anything she did mattered.
“You know,” said Runajo, “you could make things a lot easier for yourself if you just pretended to be obedient.”
“What does it matter?” Juliet demanded, raising her head. “I have nothing left to fight for. You made sure of that.”
Runajo flinched. But this time she looked Juliet steadily in the eyes as she said, “If we weren’t here, if Lord Ineo weren’t protecting us, we would be dead.”
“I would be dead,” said Juliet. “And I wouldn’t mind that.”
“We would both be dead,” said Runajo, “because I would have refused to kill you in the Cloister.”
She said the words with a flat, unsentimental defiance, as if there had been no friendship between them in the moment when Juliet accepted that Runajo would cut her throat open, and Runajo didn’t.
I do not owe you for this, Juliet thought furiously.
Out loud, she said, “The world is dying. When we were in the Cloister together, you cared for nothing except finding a way to stop the Ruining. But now that you have Lord Ineo’s favor and can put silver combs in your hair, suddenly it doesn’t matter to you. Did it ever?”
And without waiting to hear Runajo’s answer, she fled.
Juliet went to the shrine of the dead.
Unlike everyone else in the city, the Mahyanai did not believe in the nine gods. They did not think that anything awaited the souls of their beloved kin after death. But they did want to honor their dead. So in each household was a wall of wood paneling, carved with the names of all the dead members of the family.
Romeo’s name was in the lower left corner. Juliet knelt and pressed her fingers to the swirling lines, still sharp and new.
He wouldn’t be on this wall, except for her.
The Mahyanai reckoned inheritance through the female line; as Lord Ineo’s son by a concubine, Romeo had not been heir to the clan. It was only after seizing the Juliet for his clan that it had become in Lord Ineo’s interests to claim a connection with the boy she had tried to marry. So he had posthumously adopted Romeo, carved his name in the family wall, and declared their marriage valid.
If not for her, Romeo wouldn’t be on this wall, because he would still be alive.
There was no one here for her to be angry at, and suddenly the feeling swept over her again: the cold emptiness that filled her every time she remembered Romeo. It wasn’t like the grief she’d felt for Tybalt or her mother. She’d wept for them when they died, but she’d still felt alive.
Now Juliet felt like there was nothing inside her but the infinite darkness and heavy stillness that waited in the land of the dead.
She had felt that way once before, after Runajo had dragged her out of the Mouth of Death. Juliet had hated Runajo for saving her from dying beside Romeo. But then she had discovered Runajo’s dream of protecting the city—so like her own desire—and as they had plumbed the depths of the Sunken Library, faced revenants and reapers together, Juliet had become impossibly, treacherously happy—
When the Sisters of Thorn had discovered Juliet and condemned her to death, she’d been at peace. She had found a friend. She had done what she could for Viyara. She was going to meet her husband. It was enough.
But Runajo had saved her a second time . . . by handing her over to the Mahyanai. By twisting the spells painted on her back, so that she was compelled to avenge their blood, be their sword.
Now Juliet’s people were dead, and she was left to wait for the rest of the world to die, because Runajo didn’t seem to care about saving it anymore.
Juliet leaned her forehead against the cool wood.
Romeo, she thought, I’m sorry.
He had admired so much her determination to protect the whole city. He would be disappointed that she was giving up now. But she had been twisted and broken into a weapon for the Mahyanai, and she couldn’t fight it anymore. There was no fire and no strength left inside her, just this cold, raw emptiness.
If Romeo were alive, if he were in her place, he wouldn’t give up. After all, he’d looked at a Catresou girl who was more than half weapon and fallen in love with her. He’d talked his way into her heart, and brought hope along with him.
Juliet wasn’t Romeo.
Juliet wasn’t anything, anymore.
Juliet didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when she heard the sniffle.
She looked up. A little girl, perhaps ten years old, stood in the doorway. Her eyes were red and swollen; she wore a shabby gray dress. She was staring at Juliet with an anxious, wide-eyed expression.
“You’re the Juliet,” she said.
“Yes,” said Juliet.
It was no surprise to be recognized. Juliet knew that her bright-blue eyes instantly marked her as a Catresou.
“They say you have to help us,” said the girl.
A memory slammed into her: the Catresou children, when Lord Ineo had brought her to purge the compound. They had thought she was going to help them. They were all prisoners now, and most of their parents were dead at her hands.
She forced herself to take a slow breath.
“Yes,” she said. “I serve you.”
The girl bit her lip, clearly on the edge of fleeing. Then she said—words tumbling out on top of one another—“Will you come sit with me, please, just for a little, I’m all alone with her and I’m frightened.”
“Who?” asked Juliet.
“My mother,” said the little girl. “She’s dead.”
Juliet stared at her a moment before she understood. Like everyone in the city but the Catresou, the Mahyanai cremated their dead. It was the law. But perhaps they felt a little guilty at burning their family like so much trash, because they had a tradition of sitting vigil over the body for the first day.
“Show me,” she said, standing.
She couldn’t save anyone. But she could keep this little girl company.
Romeo would have liked that.
The girl led her through narrow hallways to a room in the servants’ section. In the doorway was a little bronze incense holder, with three sticks of incense still smoldering.
It had been knocked over.
“Oh no,” said the little girl, bending down to pick it up. “Who—”