“I have read an ancient book or two,” said Justiran.
Juliet snorted. “Don’t take me for a fool. That was nothing like the art of the Catresou magi. What is that power you used, where did you learn it, what have you done with it, and do you know anything about the necromancer who’s still loose in the city?”
Justiran’s eyebrows raised slightly. “I am not calling you foolish,” he said gently.
Juliet crossed her arms, and Runajo felt a sudden ripple of frustration from her. An echoed memory of the Catresou elders who had liked her but thought she asked too many questions. Juliet had let them silence her, had hidden her doubts away and confessed them to no one but Romeo and—just one time—to Paris.
Now Juliet crossed her arms and looked Justiran in the eyes.
“The walls of the city are failing. The dead are rising after only one day. There is a necromancer turning others into the living dead. My people have been slaughtered, imprisoned, or forced into hiding. If you still want to keep secrets now, then you are a fool, and Romeo was a fool too for ever trusting you.”
For a moment, Justiran stared at her. Then he let out a laugh that was half a sigh. “You remind me so much of her.”
“That is not an answer,” said Juliet.
“It’s the start of one,” said Justiran. “You remind me of my daughter. I loved her very much. And then she died.”
“She wasn’t the first or last,” said Juliet.
“You might say she was both,” said Justiran. “She died a hundred years ago.”
19
THERE WAS A MOMENT OF silence. Runajo turned the words over in her head—she died a hundred years ago—and yes, Justiran had really said that, and it sounded impossible but he had no reason to lie, and if it was true—
Numbly, she thought, He saw the Ruining start.
He had to have helped cause it. How likely was it that somebody, for some unrelated reason, would become immortal at the exact same time the nature of death changed?
“Did you start the Ruining because you wanted to live forever?” she asked.
“You jumped to that conclusion quickly,” said Justiran.
“I’ve done research,” said Runajo, bristling—Because nobody would help me learn, she thought.
“—so I happen know that there was another Ruining three thousand years ago, that it destroyed the Ancients, and it was begun when they used the sacred words in an attempt to live forever.”
And the amusement drained out of Justiran’s face. “I researched that too,” he said, and looked at Juliet. “I didn’t want to live forever.”
“Then what did you want?” asked Juliet.
Justiran shrugged and smiled sadly. “I told you. My daughter died.”
Runajo remembered her mother kneeling beside her dying father, and kneeling herself by her mother’s deathbed in turn, and she felt a strange, sharp pang of fury.
Her mother had wept so much. People had told Runajo they felt so sad for her. As if there could have been any other ending.
“That was a stupid reason,” she said. “Didn’t you know she was mortal?”
“I did,” said Justiran. “But you see, I killed her.”
He looked at Juliet again. “She was very like you: she fell in love with a Mahyanai boy. Our peoples were not friends even then. I could see no future that would give them any joy. So when his family called him away, I told her that he was done with her. That he’d told me he was no longer in love. But she couldn’t believe me. She demanded to know the truth, so finally I . . . I told her that he was dead. Murdered by our kin when they caught him trespassing. And she killed herself. She left me a note saying she would not accept any world that could be so cruel to one whose only crime was loving.”
Justiran’s voice remained soft but steady, as if he’d told the story a thousand times before. And maybe he had, in the privacy of his own mind at least. Runajo could have recited the tale of how she bound Juliet to the Mahyanai in just such a voice.
She didn’t want to think she had anything in common with the selfish idiocy of someone who would start the Ruining to heal his private grief. But she had destroyed a clan and betrayed a friend to save herself from bereavement. She was just as bad.
“It was my fault,” said Justiran, “so I sought to change it. I learned from the Catresou magi, and when they would teach me no more, I sought other teachers. I found the boy my daughter had loved and got him as my ally, and together we tore the world apart, looking for secrets. Until at last we found it: the sacred word for life.”
The same that the Ancients had tried to use, when they destroyed themselves. A chill ran down Runajo’s spine.
“We broke into the sepulcher and stole my daughter’s body. We wrote the word over her heart and raised her back to life. But she never smiled. The only thing she would say was that she wanted to die. She tried to kill herself, again and again, but the power of the sacred word was such that she could not die, no matter what she did. Until at last she climbed into a furnace and burned herself to ash.”
Justiran stared blindly at the ground, and for a few moments he was silent. Then he sighed and went on. “What else is there to tell? By that point, the fog had already crawled across half the continent. We fled, as so many did. We discovered that we were no longer mortal. And in the end, we came to Viyara.”
“Why are you immortal?” Runajo asked curiously. “There were no sacred words written upon your skin, were there?”
Justiran shrugged. “When we raised her from the dead, we broke the balance of life and death. It is my theory that, being at the center of such powerful magic, we were also changed.”
“So you came back here and set up shop as an apothecary,” said Juliet.
“There was no way I could amend what I had done. I thought at least my skills might help someone.” Justiran looked her in the eyes again. “I dared hope for nothing more, until Romeo brought you to visit me. And I thought that I might set one thing right, by helping you to be with him.”
Runajo’s fury was a sudden, white-hot thing. And then she realized that it wasn’t just her revulsion that she felt; it was Juliet’s, spilling through the bond unbidden. She saw what Juliet was remembering: the first time she had met Justiran, when she was drunk on the freedom of walking the city without a mask, and all the world seemed fresh and new, because nobody looked on her as anything except another girl.
With quiet intensity, Juliet said, “I did not fall in love and nearly die for it so you could feel better about your daughter. I was not born to give you peace.”
Justiran’s eyes widened, and then he dropped his gaze.
“If you had really wanted to make amends, you could have gone to the Sisterhood and compared notes,” said Runajo. “Do you have any idea how desperately we need this sort of information?”
And that was when someone knocked on the door.
The curtains were drawn, but Runajo could tell with a glance that it didn’t matter, because the window didn’t have the right angle for seeing who was at the door.
“It’s probably just a customer,” said Justiran, but Runajo barely heard him because she was overwhelmed by the stark rush of fear she felt from Juliet. There were no words, but she knew why Juliet was afraid: because Romeo was quite likely to come here. Because if he was here, she would have to kill him.
“Order me upstairs,” said Juliet.
“Go,” said Runajo without hesitation. As Juliet bolted up the stairs, Runajo called silently after her: Stop your ears and do not come down until I tell you. If Romeo is here, do not kill him.
“It’s probably not Romeo,” said Vai, getting to his feet. “But that’s a clever precaution.”
Justiran opened the door.
And Runajo found herself staring at Romeo’s tutor, Mahyanai Makari.
His dead tutor.
Beside him stood the living dead boy who had attacked Runajo a few nights ago. Paris.