Runajo dressed as quickly as she could, ignoring the cosmetics and the silver combs. She all but ran for the sitting room painted with blue trim.
Waiting for her was a plump, pale girl with long dark braids.
Sunjai.
It took Runajo a moment to recognize her, because she no longer wore the plain gray robes of a novice. Nor did she wear—as she must have in her childhood, though Runajo hadn’t known her then—the brightly colored dresses favored by the Mahyanai, with their wide, embroidered sashes. Instead, she was wrapped in the translucent white silks worn by the Old Viyaran nobility—the people who had originally created Viyara, long before the refugees of half the world arrived on their doorstep. A gold chain hung around her neck, and there were thick gold rings on her fingers.
Sunjai dimpled. “You’ve done well for yourself,” she said, looking Runajo over. “A guest of Lord Ineo? Keeper of the undead Juliet?”
The smug, honey-poison tone of her voice hadn’t changed a bit, and Runajo suddenly remembered that they had never been friends. That the last time they talked, Sunjai had called her a heartless monster.
She hadn’t been far wrong.
“Juliet’s not undead,” Runajo said flatly.
“But the High Priestess said so. It must be true.” Sunjai’s grin was sarcastically wide. “Besides, you did drag her out of the Mouth of Death, didn’t you?”
“Did you leave the Cloister and get a place at the Exalted’s court so that you could argue with me about this?”
“No,” said Sunjai, her smile draining away, “Inyaan summoned me. I obeyed.”
“And did very well for yourself,” said Runajo, looking at Sunjai’s gold rings because she suddenly didn’t want to look right in her eyes.
Inyaan was the younger sister of the Exalted. She had been a novice alongside them—a silent, expressionless girl. Runajo had thought Inyaan’s blank stares were filled with pride and disdain. She’d thought that Sunjai had befriended her only out of ambition. She’d been wrong on both counts.
“Excellently well,” said Sunjai. “But aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”
Runajo swallowed, and then made herself look back into Sunjai’s eyes. It was silly to feel humiliated now; she’d given up her pride five letters ago.
“I hope,” she said, “you came here about my letters.”
Sunjai’s eyebrows raised. “Letters?”
Runajo felt like the worst idiot in the world. Of course the High Priestess would never have allowed any novice to receive letters from a girl who had been cast out of the Cloister in disgrace.
“I wrote you,” she said. “Several times. About the Ruining. What I found in the Sunken Library—”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Sunjai. “None of us lowly novices were supposed to know what you said in the Hall of Judgment, but there are rumors.” Her lips pressed together, and then she went on, “Have you heard what’s happened in the Cloister since?”
Cold fear started to swirl inside Runajo. “No,” she said.
But she remembered the hordes of revenants seething through the Sunken Library, far below the Cloister. She could imagine them pounding at the doors, breaking them down—if the Ruining was getting stronger, if the dead were rising faster—
“The Mouth of Death is dry. And the walls are failing.”
The words were so unexpected that it took Runajo a moment to understand what Sunjai had said.
Then she stared.
“What?” she said.
She had known the walls were failing. That was not a surprise. But the Mouth of Death?
In her mind, Runajo could see the way it had been when she sat vigil. The little pool of perfectly still, perfectly dark water. The souls walking in silent procession, departing the world forever.
Every night for three thousand years, souls had walked into the dark water. It was why Viyara and the Sisters of Thorn existed. To guard the Mouth of Death.
“It’s dry,” said Sunjai. “I’ve seen it myself.” She gestured. “Just a little hollow in the rock now. They still sit vigil, but nobody sees any souls. And meanwhile, we’ve been working the calculations. The walls will last another week.”
One week.
Runajo felt dizzy and numb. She’d imagined so many terrible things in the past few days, once she realized the Ruining was changing. But she hadn’t imagined this.
She hadn’t imagined that she was already too late.
If the Mouth of Death was dry, she couldn’t use it to walk into Death. Her last chance was gone. Runajo had braved the Sunken Library and learned the secret of how the first Ruining had been stopped three thousand years ago, and it didn’t matter anymore.
She had destroyed Juliet’s life, and it didn’t matter.
“They’re planning a great sacrifice,” said Sunjai. “Twenty lives. They think it will keep the walls alive a little longer, but no one’s sure how long.”
If Runajo hadn’t felt so sick with fear, she might have laughed at the understatement. It wouldn’t be long at all. Not if the Ruining had become so strong it could crumble the walls in a week, and raise the dead in one day. They would have to offer again and again, and by the time the city finally fell, half the people might already be dead by a Sister’s knife.
“So,” said Sunjai, “if you really did learn anything about the Ruining, down in the Sunken Library, now’s the time to share it.”
We’re all going to die, thought Runajo. We’re all going to die, and it doesn’t matter that you have fine gold rings or Inyaan is the Exalted’s sister, nothing will save you.
“Nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing left we can do. That’s what I learned in the Sunken Library.”
Sunjai started back. “But—”
“Go back to Inyaan and tell her a comforting lie if you want,” said Runajo. “But we are all going to die.”
And then she fled the room.
3
THE NIGHT WIND SANG WITH the promise of sorrow and blood. The moon shone down, bright and pale as death.
Romeo crouched on the rooftop, watching the street below, and tried not to think of Juliet. But it felt like every stone of the city, every breath of the wind, was crying out her name: Juliet, Juliet, Juliet.
It was a month since Makari had delivered the letter. Romeo had kept going back to wait at the spot he’d told Juliet she could find him: the rooftop where he once asked her to marry him.
She never came.
It was only right that she wouldn’t forgive him. It was more than he deserved that she hadn’t come to kill him. But that meant he had to find another way to pay his debt.
His foolishness was the reason that the Catresou were now fugitives without allies. It was only right that he protect them.
Voices echoed from below. Romeo startled into readiness, his hand on his sword as he peered down into the shadows.
A girl was hurrying down the street, shoulders hunched, pulling her cloak tight. But the wind had blown her hood back, and her red hair whipped free.
There were people in Viyara who had red hair and weren’t Catresou. But not many.
Two men were following her.
Carefully, silently, Romeo swung himself off the roof and onto a window ledge, then dropped to the ground. He landed in the narrow alley between two houses just as the two men overtook the girl. He heard their voices—loud, harsh, and laughing.
“Going somewhere, little girl?”
He strode out of the alley, drawing his sword. The men weren’t touching the girl, but they had her crowded against the wall of the house, her shoulders hunched, her eyes darting back and forth as she looked for escape.
“Get away from her,” said Romeo.
He’d done this a lot in the past three weeks. He still half expected them to laugh and call him a child.
One of the men flinched. The other one snarled, “You.”
He knew why they stared: because he wore a Catresou mask, painted blue and gilded at the edges, covering his face from forehead to cheeks. No Catresou dared to wear one now, but Romeo had donned one every night since he chose this way to pay his debt.