Then she heard screams again.
A moment later, she saw people fleeing down the street. Two of them—a man and a woman—bolted toward the gate she was guarding.
“Revenants!” the man gasped as he shoved past. “Here! Summon the guards!”
For one horrifying instant, Juliet wondered if the gates had broken, and the revenants were surging through the Upper City.
But if that had happened, there would be far more commotion. It must be someone who had died just now and not been noticed.
“Get back!” said Juliet, drawing her sword, and she charged forward.
Then she turned the corner, and she saw what had found its way into the Upper City.
It was Paris.
He was deathly pale. His veins were swollen and visibly black through his skin, and black blood oozed out of his eyes.
He was a monster, and Juliet’s heart turned over as she thought, I sent him to become this.
But he wasn’t trying to attack anyone. He was stumbling forward, leading a girl with a perfect, doll-like face.
Justiran’s daughter. The other Juliet.
Then Paris saw her. His mouth made something like a smile.
“Lady Juliet,” he said. “I found her.”
Juliet lowered her sword. “Everyone stay back!” she called out.
Paris let go of the girl’s hand and stepped forward to meet Juliet. She thought he was still himself—he was certainly no revenant—but the sight of him still set her stomach churning with instinctive fear, the knowledge that this was a dead thing walking in broad daylight—
He stumbled.
Juliet caught him. The movement was unthinking, and then he was in her arms, coughing up black blood. Her throat tightened in revulsion, but she couldn’t thrust him away.
Paris sighed and went limp in her arms. Juliet staggered under the sudden weight and sat down heavily.
“I found her,” Paris whispered. His eyes squeezed shut and opened again; she didn’t think he could see anything. “Did I—did I—”
“Yes,” Juliet said. “You did.”
It was tears that made her throat hurt now, but she couldn’t let herself weep. She was the Juliet, she was his Juliet, and there was only one thing left she could do for him.
“You were very brave,” she said, “and you have served me very well. You can rest now.”
She pressed her lips to his cold forehead.
“Rest,” she said, and he did not move again.
25
THERE WAS A STRANGE EMPTINESS to the world, now that half the world was gone.
Juliet gave Paris’s body to the City Guard for disposal. She took Justiran’s daughter by the hand and led her back to the same room where she had sat before. She explained obediently to Lord Ineo what had happened.
And she went back to her post at the gate. She watched, and waited, and wondered if Romeo was still alive.
Runajo came back at sunset. She told Lord Ineo that she had been attending the funeral of a Sister who had given her life for the wall. Her face and voice were faultlessly calm as ever, but Juliet could feel grief and guilt oozing through the cracks in the wall around her mind.
When they went back to the study together, where the other Juliet waited, Runajo didn’t even try to study. She slumped to the ground, hugging herself, and didn’t move. Her face was still perfectly calm.
Juliet waited beside her.
“Paris is dead, isn’t he?” asked Runajo finally.
“Yes,” said Juliet.
“I thought so,” said Runajo. “I felt it.”
The bond. Of course. Juliet hadn’t thought about that part of it; she’d been shielding her mind from Runajo’s for so long.
“He didn’t suffer at the end,” she said, remembering the peace that had been on his face, despite how horribly deformed it had been.
She remembered cutting his head off—she had to, just in case—and then she hoped desperately that Runajo hadn’t seen that memory.
“He was nothing to me,” said Runajo. “But I felt him die.”
Juliet sighed, and decided that she could at least sit beside Runajo. That didn’t count as forgiveness.
“He was hardly anything to me,” she said. “But he was my kin. And he wanted to serve me.” Her throat tightened with a sudden spike of grief—because Paris was dead, and if he hadn’t been much to her, that was only because of her family’s wickedness and cruelty. Because of all the people who had died today, he was one whose face and name she had known, whom she could mourn at least a little.
“He served me very well,” she whispered, hands clenching as she bowed her head.
There was a moment of silence, and then she felt Runajo, very gently, lay a hand on her head.
Accepting comfort was not forgiveness, so Juliet let her.
After a while, Runajo spoke, her voice low. “The Sister who died—she wasn’t really a Sister anymore. It was Sunjai. You met her, briefly.”
Juliet nodded. “Your friend.”
“She was never my friend,” said Runajo with sudden fury, drawing her hand back. “I never liked her. I hated her. But she—she lied to me about her half of the calculations. There wasn’t enough power for the spell. She let Inyaan cut her throat to make it work, and I had to stand weaving over her body as her last blood spilled out. I hate her.”
Runajo’s voice cracked on the last words. Suddenly she stood, and strode over to where the other Juliet sat in a chair, staring impassively at the both of them.
Runajo took the girl’s hand, turned it over, and examined the wrist. Then she did the same with the other one. Juliet couldn’t tell what she was looking for.
“I suppose it will help fulfill your vow,” she said, her voice calm and polished once more, “that I was forced to help kill someone.”
And Juliet knew her heart was fully traitor, because she hadn’t even thought of it.
“I suppose it does,” she said. “But it’s not so amusing as it would have been once.”
Lord Ineo sent for them early the next morning.
Runajo looked calm as they walked to his sitting room together, but Juliet could feel the worry coiled tight inside her.
Juliet herself was not afraid. Lord Ineo surely wanted revenge for what she had done yesterday. He surely also wanted a way to control her now. But the very worst that could happen . . . was that Romeo waited in that room for her to kill. Juliet was not sure that even Lord Ineo would willingly kill his own son, and even if he would—she was already doomed to kill him.
There was little more Lord Ineo could do to her.
But Romeo did not wait beside Lord Ineo in his room hung with exquisitely embroidered wall hangings.
Instead—blue kerchief garishly bright in the morning light—Vai stood, his arms crossed, before Lord Ineo. Beside him was Subcaptain Xu.
“Well,” Vai was saying, as they walked into the room, “if you didn’t want us in here, you should have locked us out to die.”
Then he turned to look at Juliet, and grinned. “Good morning.”
Juliet bowed as gracefully as she could and said, “What is your will, my lord?”
Lord Ineo’s face twitched slightly. “It seems your former clan has infiltrated the Upper City.”
“If you want to call sitting with the other refugees in the Great Court that,” said Vai. “They’re also under my protection. Over half the refugees are wearing my colors, and by the way, that puts me in the same position that your ancestors were a century ago, when you were important enough to sign the Accords.”
“That’s an interesting line of argument,” said Xu, her voice faintly amused.
“To be debated another time,” Lord Ineo said flatly. “However. It might be inadvisable to instigate a full-scale hunt for them at this time.”
“The City Guard cannot allow that kind of chaos,” said Xu.
“And however much the Catresou have betrayed us, the power of their necromancers is broken,” said Lord Ineo.
He doesn’t know that, Runajo said silently, her voice wrathful.
He knows it’s no longer convenient for him to hunt them, Juliet replied bitterly.