“So I am prepared to offer the Catresou a mercy,” said Lord Ineo. “Don’t your people have a custom of trial by duel? I will allow them to send a duelist against you, and if he wins, I will consider the remaining Catresou innocent of necromancy.”
Juliet stared at him. He must not have told Xu or Vai his plan before, because they were staring at him too.
This makes no sense, Runajo said furiously into her mind. I have read your records; the Catresou haven’t practiced trial by duel since—
It doesn’t matter, said Juliet. He knows you released me from his orders. I’m a weapon he can’t depend on anymore.
And she felt Runajo’s sick dread as she understood what was happening: if Juliet won, he would have an excuse to drive out the Catresou. And Juliet herself would have willingly destroyed her kin; he must be counting on that to finally break her will.
If Juliet lost . . . at least he would be rid of her.
“That kind of trial has no place in the laws of Viyara,” said Xu.
“The Catresou have forfeited their place before the laws,” said Lord Ineo.
“It’s still not—”
“I am the Right Hand of the Exalted,” said Lord Ineo. “Have you heard him to complain about me?”
Xu looked at him expressionlessly. “Not yet,” she said, and was silent.
“I’m not sure how you think—” Vai started.
“I will fight,” Juliet interrupted.
Vai looked at her, met her eyes. After a moment, he nodded.
What are you doing? Runajo demanded silently.
Winning, said Juliet.
All she had to do was fail.
It was a terrible gamble. They might send her someone with blood guilt upon him, and if that happened, she did not know if she could restrain herself long enough for him to kill her.
(They might send her Romeo, if they were very cruel, if he was very brave. And she knew how brave he was, and how cruel her people could be.)
But this might be the best chance she’d ever had to set things right. To save both her peoples.
You can’t die yet, said Runajo. You—you’re the key to death, I need you—
You have the girl who saw the Ruining start, said Juliet. You have time. And you are very clever. She could feel Runajo’s icy desperation rising like a wave, but she couldn’t let it drown her.
It’s not mathematical to die now, she said. But I am done with reckoning lives against each other. Will you forbid me?
Runajo was silent a moment, and then she said, No.
Vai managed to catch Juliet quietly in the corridor before she left.
“Did Paris come back?” he asked.
“No,” said Juliet. She didn’t want to speak of it again, but she knew Paris had cared about Vai; she owed him this much. So she told Vai the story.
Vai listened without interrupting. When she was finished, he let out a slow breath and said quietly, “Thank you.”
“For killing him,” said Juliet, “or for telling you about it?”
“For letting him die in your service. I know what that meant to him.” Vai paused. “Do you have a message for Romeo?”
Juliet’s heart pounded against her ribs. She remembered, suddenly, holding her sword to Romeo’s pale throat, the night after he killed Tybalt. She had nearly taken vengeance in that moment.
Instead, she had pressed her lips to his, and then taken him to her bed. That had been their third night together, the night that had made them husband and wife by Mahyanai custom—if not Catresou.
She could no longer offer any such mercy.
“Tell him,” she said, “not to fight me.”
“I will,” said Vai. “And you don’t know how much it means, that I am actually prepared to tell the truth. But you might want to consider exactly which man it was that you married.”
“I must fight her,” said Romeo, to the remaining high lords of the Catresou—because not all of them had made it out of the Lower City.
Including Meros.
Remeo heard the rustle of whispers: he wasn’t alone with the high lords this time. The Catresou had been luckier than many of the refugees—Vai had managed to wrangle them a few abandoned houses to shelter in—but they were still crammed together; there was no room for private audiences.
“You’d claim the right to fight for us?” said one of the lords.
“Enough of your people have died already,” said Romeo.
“You think you can win for us?” a man called.
Romeo turned, looking about the room. “I killed Tybalt,” he said.
The hush that fell on the room was slightly shocked.
“He was your best, wasn’t he? I defeated him. I think that’s proof enough. And if I can’t win—at least he’s finally avenged.” He turned back to the Catresou high lords. “Don’t you think that’s fair?”
“You do realize,” said Gavarin from the corner, “that to win this duel, you’ll have to kill the Juliet?”
“Yes,” said Romeo, his heart breaking for the thousandth time.
“Can you kill her?” asked Gavarin.
“I took an oath to this clan,” said Romeo. “Yes.”
He knew Juliet. He knew that she wasn’t planning to live at the cost of her people. He didn’t see any way he could prevent that fate.
But if he could be the one who met her in battle—if they could somehow manage to both die on each other’s swords—
That was something he could accept.
26
THE DUEL WAS AT SUNSET, before Lord Ineo’s house.
The Catresou champion did not come alone. Vai was with him, and five of his men, as well as several Catresou.
He came masked, but Juliet knew him even before he bowed and removed his mask. Now that she knew he was alive, she didn’t need to see his face.
It felt like her heart turned over in her chest with dread—but no surprise. Since the instant she had agreed to the duel, she had half known she would face Romeo.
Perhaps she had always known.
They had met on the Night of Ghosts, when Juliet had performed the sword dance before her people, and Romeo had caught the sword from her hands and danced with her. Perhaps from that instant, they had been doomed to end this way, dancing with swords.
Lord Ineo was saying something, but Juliet didn’t hear it. The moment Romeo cast aside his mask and she saw his face, the rest of the world ceased to exist. There was only him, and her, the blood she could smell on him.
And her endless, furious need to kill.
They met in the center of the courtyard. Romeo had a Catresou rapier, Juliet a Mahyanai sword. Unfamiliar weapons for both of them, but the whisper of steel through air, the clash as their blades met—that was all too familiar.
Juliet could have killed him in that first exchange. She saw the opening in his defense. But she fought the compulsion burning in her veins, forced her sword to slip, to let him catch her blade and push it aside.
For a moment they were caught together, blade to blade, fingers almost close enough to brush.
Romeo’s eyes were wide and dark. “I can’t lose to you,” he whispered.
“Then why did you come?” she snarled, and wrenched herself back. In another instant, she would have lunged forward and killed him—but he attacked instantly, sword moving swifter than she had ever seen him fight. For a few moments, he actually drove her back.
This was the boy who had killed Tybalt Catresou, and now he was pouring all his skill into fighting the Juliet herself—not so he could defeat her. Not so he could escape. So that he could give her these last moments to say good-bye.
So that he could kill her in the same moment that he died upon her sword.
She didn’t doubt for an instant what he planned. It was exactly what she would have done had their places been reversed, and she hated him for it as fiercely as she loved him for it.
And nothing she felt mattered next to the terrible power driving her sword.
In the next moment, her sword slashed forward, and she barely turned the killing blow into a shallow slice of his cheek. Then he parried, and his rapier slashed her arm.
Her own was the only blood she had never been bound to avenge. The pain steadied her, gave her a moment of control where her sword wavered and their eyes met.
Then she kicked him solidly in the ribs and sent him sprawling to the ground. The next moment she was kneeling on top of him.