Inside, the low bed was empty.
There was a feeling like ice from the back of Juliet’s neck all the way down her spine. She was suddenly aware of every sound—her heartbeat, the little girl’s gasp, an echo of voices from outside.
“How long was she dead?” asked Juliet.
“She’s not—she can’t be—”
Juliet dragged her into the room. “How long?”
“Since last night,” the little girl gasped. “No more.”
Ever since the Ruining began, all who died rose again as revenants, mindless and hungry for the living. But they did not rise until they had been three days dead. It was the only reason that the city of Viyara still survived: there was enough time to collect the bodies and burn them.
Something moved in the corridor outside.
“Stay here,” said Juliet.
She didn’t have a sword, but the knife never left her side. She drew it as she edged toward the door.
Her heart was pounding. She wanted to believe the body had just been taken—a mistake, a theft, anything less terrible than a revenant rising in only twelve hours—but she wasn’t fool enough to trust in hope.
She leaned out the door.
From barely a single pace away, the revenant looked back at her.
Once, it had been a chubby, plain-faced woman with gray streaking her dark hair.
It was not a woman any longer.
It was not like the revenants Juliet had faced in the Sunken Library: shriveled, desiccated things, dead for a century. This one still had smooth cheeks and bright black eyes. But the horrible, moving emptiness in its face was exactly the same.
The revenant lunged.
Juliet dodged back, her knife coming up. She meant to slash its eyes, but then the little girl screamed, and Juliet was back in the Catresou compound, listening to the children scream as she dragged their parents away and killed them. She was fighting the magic that forced her limbs to move, she was wanting to die, she was—
Flat on her back, with the revenant on top of her.
Juliet slashed wildly. She didn’t even get its eyes, just its face, but the revenant still recoiled and hissed at her. Juliet punched it, then grabbed it by the hair so it couldn’t bite her.
She looked over the thing’s shoulder and saw the little girl still huddled in a corner of the room, too afraid to run.
“Go!” she snapped. “Run to the yard, get someone with a sword!”
There were people out in the courtyard, practicing their sword work. She’d seen them earlier. A sword would make quick work of the revenant, so long as Juliet could keep it from running loose.
The girl whimpered. The revenant writhed against Juliet, trying to claw at her face. Juliet shoved its arm back and yelled, “Go!”
The girl ran, and Juliet was alone with a revenant.
Grimly, Juliet slashed at its throat with the knife. If she could cut enough, she might get its head off even without a sword.
She managed two deep cuts. The blood oozed instead of spurted: it had long since clotted. Then the revenant clawed at her face, and when she flinched, it broke free.
In an instant it was on its feet and running for the door. But Juliet launched herself after it; grabbed it by the neck—she felt the slick, bloody edges of its cut throat against her fingertips—and hauled it to the ground again.
She was on top of it now. The power of the Juliet—the magic that made her stronger and faster—was singing in her veins now. She cut and cut and saw bone and ground the knife down again.
The blade broke.
She seized the head and wrenched.
The writhing thing beneath her was still.
Juliet’s heart was pounding in her ears, loud as a drum. Her breath came in great gusts. Her whole body felt numb and tingling and hot and cold at the same time.
She heard a noise, and looked up.
In the doorway stood a Mahyanai girl her own age. She held a sword—of course, Juliet had forgotten that the Mahyanai allowed their daughters to train in fighting—and she was staring at Juliet in wide-eyed shock.
The revenant’s head was heavy in Juliet’s hands. She dropped it, and flinched at the thump.
“Don’t let her see,” she said. “It’s her mother.”
The young woman stared at her a moment longer, then said, “She’s out in the courtyard.”
Juliet nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say. Runajo was not giving her orders. Since the revenant was already dead, the magic of the Juliet had not compelled her to kill it.
She had never yet helped a Mahyanai when she was not compelled to.
“You should come out,” said the young woman. “She was afraid for you.”
Juliet nodded and rose. She followed the young woman out into the courtyard, feeling like a sleepwalker—the sunlight dazzled her eyes as if she had been asleep—and then the little girl slammed into her, clutching at her robe and crying.
Juliet knelt and took her into her arms.
She was aching and trembling with the aftermath of a battle. But for the first time in a month, the cold emptiness was gone.
I am the Juliet. I am the sword of my people.
She had known this ever since she could remember. Now she was the sword of the Mahyanai and the world was ending, and she had thought that made everything she was meaningless.
But the little girl was tiny and weeping and alive in her arms. Even if the walls fell tomorrow, right now she was alive.
Right now, Juliet had saved her.
Romeo had looked at a Catresou girl and loved her. He had believed that Juliet was more than a weapon, and that it was worthwhile to love her, however little time they might have. He had died believing it.
Juliet had believed that once, too.
She couldn’t free her people. She couldn’t free herself. And she couldn’t save the city from its doom.
But she could be like Romeo, and learn to love her enemies. She could protect these people around her for whatever time they had left.
It wasn’t exactly hope, but maybe it could be enough.
2
THERE WAS A PECULIAR, MUSTY smell to the Catresou manuscripts. Whenever Runajo read them for more than a few minutes, she sneezed. If she rubbed her eyes after she’d been turning the pages, they’d start to water and itch.
But she couldn’t afford to stop reading them, though the night was more than half over and her head ached with weariness.
The world was dying. Runajo was going to die trying to save it.
She was probably going to fail.
I could have saved us, she thought, and felt sick and shaky with rage and fear. Because she knew how to stop the Ruining. When she and Juliet went into the Sunken Library, where hordes of revenants roamed among the abandoned bookshelves, they had found a hidden text, bespelled to appear only when the world faced disaster.
Three thousand years ago, there had been another Ruining. The Ancients had tried to give themselves eternal life, and doomed the world to living death. Until the five handmaids of the last Imperial Princess had gone to the Mouth of Death, the black pool where souls walked into the land of the dead. They had written on their skin sacred words—the lost power of the Ancients—and one by one they had walked living into death. The first four all failed and died. The fifth died as well, but succeeded: she spoke to Death herself, and bargained to end the Ruining. When Death delivered the successful handmaid’s body back to the princess, she had mourned and honored her friend—but she had also guessed that someday another Ruining might occur, and someone else might need to speak with Death. So she had carved from the handmaid’s bones a key, to open the land of the dead; then she had founded the city of Viyara and the Sisters of Thorn.
Runajo had found that key kept in the Cloister, its purpose lost.