The next question came silently.
Did you pity the ones you killed? his master asked, and the words crawled through his mind like cold fingers, feeling out the truth.
“No,” said Paris.
He remembered the screams of the family very clearly. Their blood was still dried underneath his fingernails. But he had felt nothing except the dead, ashy certainty that he was following his orders.
And Romeo? Did you pity him?
“No,” said Paris.
The grasp on his mind withdrew.
“Excellent,” said his master.
And Paris was suddenly unsure. He hadn’t felt any pity, because pitying the enemies of his masters was unthinkable. But he had felt . . . something like curiosity.
Everything he saw, when his master sent him into the streets on errands, was like a meaningless glyph in a dead language. Faces, voices. Blood and shattered bone. None of it meant anything, so none of it mattered.
Romeo hadn’t meant anything, either.
But Paris felt like he could almost remember him meaning something.
“Did you do as I said?” his master asked.
Paris shuddered, revolted by how close he’d come to imagining something his master wouldn’t want.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I said everything that you told me to.”
“Repeat what you said and Romeo said exactly.”
And Paris did, and the treacherous half thoughts slid out of his mind, completely forgotten.
5
THEY CAME WHEN DAWN WAS barely starting to glimmer in the sky. They all recognized his mask. Some hated him, some admired him. None fully trusted him.
But when he offered up his sword, they agreed to take him to the new Lord Catresou.
Romeo had often wondered where the main body of the Catresou were hiding. He hadn’t expected them to be in the worst slums of the Lower City—he guessed that most, like the family he’d failed to protect, had the money or connections to get themselves hidden in discreet houses—but he was surprised when they took him to one of the richest neighborhoods, where the streets were clean and the houses were brightly painted, and there were even lamps hung with orbs of white, glowing stone—the same kind that lit all the immaculate streets of the Upper City.
The house they brought him to was magnificent, painted in gold and red. Its hallways had floors of polished, multicolored stone that echoed under their boots.
They halted outside a door. The leader of the guards—a tall, angular man with pale hair and a scar that slanted across his nose, narrowly missing an eye—told them to wait, and went inside. Romeo heard the murmur of voices, but couldn’t make out any words.
Then the door opened again. The guard hauled Romeo in by the shoulder and pressed him to his knees.
The room had once been a study, though it now seemed to be a meeting room of sorts—it was ringed with chairs, at which sat Catresou men, most of them with graying hair, all richly dressed. At the center was a desk.
Seated at the desk, leaning forward on his elbows, was Meros Mavarinn Catresou.
Romeo had never seen him before in his life. But he instantly recognized the wavy brown hair and the proud nose. Because this was Paris’s older brother, who loved drinking and gambling and prostitutes, who had mocked Paris for his devotion to the Juliet and (much worse) mocked the Juliet herself—
Romeo took a deep breath, fighting against the rush of memories that weren’t his.
But the worst memory was his own: Vai telling him what had happened at the Night Game while he was a drugged prisoner.
Meros had been there. He had helped Lord Catresou capture Paris. He might very well be the reason that the Catresou served the Master Necromancer still.
And now he sat at the center of them all—
“You’re the Lord Catresou?” said Romeo.
“Take off your mask,” said Meros, his voice low and angry.
The Catresou covered their faces before those they considered inferior, and took off their masks when they faced their betters. For Romeo to keep his on before the leader of the Catresou was a pointed insult.
But just as the Catresou didn’t dare wear their masks now, Romeo didn’t dare take his off.
“No,” he said.
Meros waved a hand. “Gavarin, tear off his mask.”
The leader of the guards wrenched the mask off.
Romeo could hear the gasps. He could see faces growing angry.
He knew he was about to die, and he wouldn’t keep any of his promises.
“So,” said Meros, his voice cold and venomous, “our hero is a Mahyanai.”
Juliet, I’m sorry, Romeo thought, and waited for the killing blow.
But it didn’t come.
“Tell me,” said Meros, “why are you wearing a Catresou mask?”
“Because those who hate you,” said Romeo, “should fear you.”
“You think you deserve to protect us?” Gavarin demanded, fury in his voice.
But nobody had struck Romeo dead yet. He felt a sudden, terrible ray of hope. Perhaps he could persuade them. Perhaps he could still save them.
Perhaps he could, at least, speak the truth bravely before he died. The same way that Juliet would.
“Because I am Mahyanai Romeo,” he said, looking around the room. “I loved the Juliet and I married her, and it’s my fault that she is a slave to your enemies now. So I swore that for the rest of my life, I would serve and protect you in any way I could. If all you desire of me is my death, then for her sake, I will gladly die nameless and accursed. But if you have any use at all for a slave, then take me. Let me serve you.”
There was a short pause. Even with Paris’s memories to help him, Romeo couldn’t read the cold expression on Meros’s face.
“Where’d you find him again?” asked Meros.
“The Jularios household,” said Gavarin. “They’re all dead.”
“I tried to save them,” said Romeo. “But I wasn’t fast enough. Their daughter—I don’t know her name—she begged me to make sure she was properly buried. I promised her.”
Someone in the room laughed—a harsh, skeptical noise.
“She was one of you, wasn’t she?” Romeo snapped. “She deserves that. And—” He realized suddenly that they were actually listening to him, no matter if they planned to kill him. He still might be able to save them.
“The Jularios family, they were killed by a servant of the Master Necromancer,” he said. “One of the living dead. He told me himself, it was on his master’s orders—”
“I know,” said Meros. “He told me. That family was planning to sell us out.”
For a moment the words didn’t make sense. Romeo gaped at him, trying to understand.
It was the silence that brought it home. This was the assembled council of the Catresou lords. These were common Catresou guards holding him. And nobody was saying a word.
They all know, thought Romeo, and his heart broke as he remembered how horrified Paris had been when he learned about the previous Lord Catresou’s conspiracy. But it was a conspiracy no longer.
“You can’t do this,” Romeo burst out. “You can’t possibly work with the man who raises living dead and tried to end the world. Isn’t this against zoura?”
Suddenly Gavarin’s fingers gripped his hair. “Don’t imagine you understand zoura,” he said, his voice low and angry.
I know because Paris taught me, thought Romeo. It was the sacred Catresou word that meant “correct knowledge”—it meant their lore for embalming the dead, the charms they thought would protect them in the afterlife, but it also meant the knowledge of how to be correct. To live rightly.
It had been everything to Paris. To Juliet as well. But it seemed that now zoura was nothing to their people.
“Of course you’re condemned to death,” said Meros. “But since you know so much, the Master Necromancer may want to question you first. Gavarin, since he’s shown such concern for our dead, lock him up in the quarantine room.”