Murder should not buy safety for gentle, helpless lives. It was wrong. It was obscene.
It was the only reason she was alive, and weaving the wall between her hands.
At last the pattern was strong and steady. She dropped her hands then—her arms ached with weariness—and flexed her fingers. Half-dried blood made her palms sticky.
Inyaan’s and Sunjai’s faces were equally dead, their eyes equally sightless as they stared at her.
“You killed her,” said Runajo. “You planned this.”
“Yes,” said Inyaan, for once looking back at her.
You made me part of her murder, Runajo thought. I had a choice and no choice and I will have to remember her blood forever.
As Juliet remembered the blood of her people.
“I will never forgive you,” she said.
Inyaan shrugged. “That is no matter to me,” she said. “I am the blood of the gods. Her life was mine to sacrifice.”
24
PARIS COULD STILL HEAR THE screams, but they were very faint now.
It was partly because of the fog, which muffled sounds. His boots made only a soft patter against the cobblestones even when he ran. When he called for the Little Lady, his voice did not echo; the sound was tiny and fell short.
Mostly, it was because this far out, there was nobody left alive.
A revenant that had once been an old man shuffled past him on the street. It didn’t look at Paris: the living dead, he had quickly found, were of no interest to revenants.
He was doubly glad now that Vai had gone back. He hoped that she had made it to the Upper City in time.
Paris turned the corner of the street, and found a marketplace. The place was a shambles: stalls overturned, skinned rabbits and broken cups and a rainbow of scarves scattered across the ground.
Wisps of fog drifted across the sky but did not blot out the sun. In the early morning light, all the colors looked pale and raw and dreamlike.
The square was completely empty. All the new-made revenants were gone, drawn toward the base of the Upper City, where they could smell the living flesh and blood. Perhaps nobody was left out here but Paris and the Little Lady.
He drew a breath and called again, “Lady Juliet! We need you!”
He had no other name to call her. He wanted to believe that she would remember that name, that it would still mean something to her, as serving his Juliet still meant something to him.
But there was only silence in reply.
The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Paris didn’t understand, at first, why he felt such sudden dread clutching at his chest.
Then he realized: at the far end of the marketplace, he couldn’t see the buildings anymore. Only a curtain of merciless white fog.
It was everywhere in the Lower City already. But so far the fog had only been in stray clouds and banks, easily avoidable. Paris hadn’t let it touch him yet, hadn’t yet tested his guess that he could survive it.
He realized, suddenly, that he was at the edge. That beyond this point, there was only the fog, no gaps, no spaces to hide.
And it was coming closer. White tendrils of fog slid across the ground, reaching like greedy fingers to touch the dead rabbits, the abandoned scarves.
Paris couldn’t move.
The fog was death. He knew that. He could feel it. And one part of him yearned to crawl toward it, drink it down, let it embrace him.
One part of him was desperate to escape.
He remembered Vai laughing as she kissed him. And Romeo throwing an arm over his shoulders. And Runajo saving him for no reason. And Juliet letting him kiss her hand, trusting him with a mission even though he was now living dead, an abomination who would never find the Paths of Light.
And slowly, he walked forward.
The fog came to meet him, rushing forward like a friend. One tendril reached out to meet his hand, twined around his fingers—he shuddered—and then it was all around him.
It was icy-cold against his skin, and burned like acid. His eyes watered with pain and his heart stuttered in his chest.
But a moment and a moment later, he was still alive. And still dead, but still himself.
He opened his mouth, breathed in the fog. It burned in his lungs.
Paris could hardly see now. But as the fog trickled into the hollows of his ears, suddenly the muffling was gone. He could hear ten thousand voices and footsteps and heartbeats; he could hear the shape of the city around him, and the screaming crowds still trying to force their way through the gates to the Upper City, and the relentless crowds of revenants following.
And before him—not near, but not too far—he could hear one quiet set of footsteps, and one quiet heartbeat.
The Little Lady.
“You deserted us,” said Lord Ineo.
Juliet knelt before him in one of the wide courtyards of his house. Several guards stood beside him. People crowded around the edges of the courtyard—she thought she saw Arajo’s face—the whole city was already awake for the disaster.
“I was in the Lower City, killing a necromancer,” said Juliet. “But it’s true, I left the Upper City in defiance of your will.”
Lord Ineo frowned. He was silent a moment, and in the distance, Juliet could hear the faint clamor at the gates.
“Did Runajo go with you?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Juliet. “Now she is at the Cloister. They are remaking the walls to keep the Upper City safe.”
“Did Runajo order you back to us?”
“No,” said Juliet, meeting his eyes, and she knew that he would understand these words, even if no one else watching did. “She released me from all the orders she ever gave me. I came back of my own accord.”
It was a testament to Lord Ineo’s courage that he stared her down, barely flinching. The seals on her back still kept her from shedding any Mahyanai blood, but he had to know exactly how much destruction she could find a way to inflict, if she chose.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
“It is the end of all things,” said Juliet. “I must be with my people.”
She didn’t quite hear—she felt the way that the people watching shifted, breathed out, listened. She knew without looking that they were all looking at her as she said to Lord Ineo, “You are the lord of my clan. You have the right to punish my trespass. I am here to submit to your judgment.”
And then she waited, heart pounding, for him to reply.
Obedience was the one thing that nobody could take from you.
Lord Ineo’s faint sigh was endlessly weary. But his voice, when he spoke, was calm as ever. “Rise. You will tell me everything about the walls. And then you will atone by standing guard at our gates.”
The fall of Viyara did not last much longer.
Juliet should not have been surprised. She knew quite well how quickly destruction could be accomplished. And yet she was surprised by how soon the screaming at the gates fell silent. There were still crowds trying to break in from the Lower City—she heard this from the people who passed by the gates of the Mahyanai compound; she did not see it herself—but they were silent. They climbed over each other as desperately as the refugees once had, their hands reaching and pounding; but as they scraped and crushed each other, as they tried to beat their way into the Upper City, they were absolutely silent, every one.
A young guard told her that, his eyes haunted, before he went in to make his report to Lord Ineo.
Juliet stared at the street before her—the immaculate white stone, gleaming in the morning sunlight—and wondered if the walls would hold, and tried to comprehend what had happened.
It was Makari who had broken the walls. He was the one who had twisted the adjurations on her back, who had threatened Romeo to make her come to him, who had worked the final spell. She knew this, and hated him for it. And she knew that she had fought him in every way she could.
But she hadn’t expected him to be so strong, there in his lair, and she couldn’t help thinking—if she had never gone, if she had let him kill Romeo—
The walls had been breaking anyway. This would have happened soon, anyway.
That horrible thought was her only comfort.