“I know you can speak,” said Runajo, though she knew no such thing.
But the girl had walked into this room when they led her from the Catresou compound. She had settled into her chair and clasped her hands. She hadn’t moved since, but she should be able to speak.
“The Catresou necromancers summoned you back. That means you know what Death is like. Have you talked to her?”
The girl didn’t respond. But her laced fingers tightened. It was just a fraction of movement, but Runajo’s heart jumped, and she took a quick step back.
The living dead girl was not turning into a revenant, mindless and hungry for the living. She had sat in the same locked room for a month, ever since the Catresou purge. She had been locked in Lord Catresou’s secret laboratory for who knew how long before that.
She was not a soulless abomination; she was the abomination created when a necromancer summoned a soul back into a dead body.
“If I die,” said Runajo, “will I see Death? If I walk out of this house and throw myself off the walls right now, will I be able to speak with her?”
The dead girl was silent.
The bitter irony was that Runajo knew what nobody had for three thousand years. She had read the manuscript written by the woman who helped end the last Ruining: Death has a face. Death has a voice. Death will parley with those who unlock the gate, pass the reapers, and come to meet her.
She had read those words, won out of the chaos of the Sunken Library. But they hadn’t been enough.
“Do the dead care about the Ruining?” asked Runajo. “Do they hate it too? Because I’m trying to end it. But the Mouth of Death is dried up. The key to Death is lost. The walls are about to fail. Nobody knows how to fix this. You’re the only one who possibly could.”
The girl was utterly still, her blue eyes staring blankly into Runajo’s.
The back of Runajo’s neck prickled. Sometime while she was talking, the girl must have moved, because now she was looking straight at Runajo. Her head had been slightly bowed before.
Then she noticed the girl’s hands.
They were still in the same position as before: loosely clasped, one lying on top of the other, with the fingers curled together.
But now her tendons stood out. Black liquid oozed between her fingers.
Blood. The black blood of the living dead.
For a moment, Runajo wanted to cringe. Then she lunged forward and wrenched at the girl’s hands.
The girl was strong. It took several moments for Runajo to break her grip, and when she did, she saw that the girl’s nails had ripped tracks into her palms as her hands were torn apart.
Runajo felt sick. She hadn’t meant to hurt the girl. But this was all she did. She broke things.
“I’ll get you a bandage,” she said, rising, and then realized that of course there were no bandages in the room.
So she pulled off her sash instead. But when she knelt back down, she was surprised. There was still blood drying on the girl’s hands, but the ragged edges of the wounds were gone. Gingerly, Runajo started to wipe at the blood, and found pale, unwounded skin beneath.
The Sisters of Thorn, among whom Runajo had once been a novice, had healing ointments for use after blood penance. They were a treasured, closely guarded secret because they could close cuts in hours.
This was perfect healing in moments.
Runajo looked into the girl’s blank, helpless eyes and said, “I won’t tell anyone. They won’t study this.”
The girl didn’t respond. Her eyes were more or less directed at Runajo, but they seemed to be staring through her at something very far off.
“You don’t have to be grateful,” said Runajo. “You certainly don’t have to forgive me for being the latest person to own you. But the world is dying. You could help us.”
The girl didn’t say a thing. She didn’t even blink.
Of course she didn’t. Runajo had been a fool to think anyone would help her. That anything she had broken could ever be fixed.
One step. Two. And turn.
Juliet moved through the sword form. She’d been practicing nearly an hour now, and her arms and legs had started to burn with exhaustion, but she didn’t want to stop. She craved this moment, when all the thoughts were pushed out of her head, when there was nothing in the world but this movement, and the next.
It had been like that, kissing Romeo.
It had been like that, killing her father.
She stumbled on the turn, and the next swing of the sword came at a bad angle. With a heavy sigh, she lowered the sword.
“You do realize we’re not going to beat you if you don’t perform well enough?”
Nearby, on one of the low wooden benches, sat Arajo, leaning back on her hands—the girl who had come to help when Juliet was fighting the revenant four days ago. Since then, she had helped Juliet start learning Mahyanai sword techniques. Now she was watching Juliet with a sort of amused pity, as she so often did.
Juliet loathed that look.
“Nobody has ever beaten me,” she said.
Nobody has ever hurt me more than your people did, she thought.
But she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t keep fighting these people, when she was trying to protect them.
As she thought that, she felt the death.
Rather: she felt someone become guilty of shedding Mahyanai blood.
It was as if the whole world shifted, reoriented, and suddenly the murderer stood at the center of all things and every heartbeat hurt because she wasn’t there killing him.
Juliet could smell the blood. She could almost taste it.
“Arajo,” she said. “Somebody just died. Go find the guards.”
“What?” Arajo straightened, eyes widening. “How could you—”
“I have to go kill the murderer,” said Juliet, and she did: the next moment she couldn’t resist the pull any longer, and she was running across the courtyard, into the hallway, around the corner.
She smelled guilt. She smelled blood—real, physical blood—and then she spun around the last corner and she was upon him.
She could have made the stroke with her eyes closed. Every bone in her body knew where the man’s throat was and how to swing the sword in a clean slice that dropped him with barely more than a gurgle.
He hit the ground, and suddenly the pressure was gone, the world was right side up again, and Juliet could think.
She could notice that the man she had just killed wore a Catresou mask.
There was a shout. Then his two friends were on her.
Juliet didn’t have to kill them. She didn’t want to. But they were coming at her with swords and death in their eyes, and her body had learned every lesson of the past months too well. It wasn’t the seals on her back that sent her sword lashing out; it was simple instinct, muscle and bone.
The end was just the same. Moments later, they were on the ground. One was already dead; the other was gasping and whimpering as he bled out.
Juliet couldn’t breathe. Her knees gave out, and she sank to the ground.
They made me this, they made me this, Runajo made me this—
It didn’t matter whose fault it was. The men were still just as dead.
Except the one who was still dying. Juliet forced herself to crawl to him. Through the slits in his mask, she could see his eyes focus on her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He made a choking noise; his eyes were glazing over, and she wasn’t sure how much he understood. One hand flailed, as if trying to strike her. She caught it, and then his hand squeezed hers, as he shuddered in pain.
She tried to remember the prayers for the dying.
“Go—go swiftly and in gladness,” she said. Her voice was only a tiny whisper, but it felt like it was wrecking her throat. “Forget not thy name, in all the dark places—”
The man groaned.
“—forget not those who have walked before thee. Heed not the nameless, who crawl and weep, but carry thy name to the Paths of Light.”
He was silent. His hand was limp in hers. She gently laid it down.