Beyond the Ruby Veil

by Mara Fitzgerald

  He tugs me backward, and I whirl around just as three men in red coats burst through the bedroom doorway.

  They don’t scare me. I just pushed the watercrea off a balcony. Nothing scares me anymore.

  “No! No, wait!”

  Ale’s mamma runs in behind the guards.

  “Don’t take him, please—” she’s saying. “It wasn’t him—it was all her—she did this. I saw her—she did this—”

  But the guards are already lunging at us. Ale is frozen in terror, but I’m more awake than ever. I yank him to the side, scrambling up onto his bed. I toss the sheets onto the guards, who are already being bombarded by Ale’s screaming mamma, and in the chaos, we just manage to dive through the door and slip into the hall. We careen down the nearest stairs. A guard on the next floor spots us and runs, but Ale belongs to the elaborate halls of the Morandi manor. He takes over, yanking me into a nearby study that somehow leads all the way down to the kitchens. And then we’re bursting out of the servants’ entrance, and then he’s leading me down a back street. Around the next corner, he lets go of my hand and stops short.

  “What—” he gasps out. “What do we do?”

  It’s obvious to me. I’m free. I can go back to the being the girl I’m supposed to be.

  “Wait!” Ale grabs me again as I start walking. “Where are you going?”

  “My family’s house,” I say.

  “You can’t,” he says.

  “Of course I can,” I say. “My papá will help us.”

  We have a lot to do. We have to get all those people out of the watercrea’s prison. We have to—

  “Emanuela.” Ale’s grip on my wrist is too tight. “You can’t. The guards will catch you. They’ll put you back in the tower.”

  “And how are they going to keep me there?” I say. “Who’s going to stop me with their magic? Who’s going to steal my blood?”

  I’m laughing again.

  I can’t believe it was this easy. I’ve spent every day since I was seven terrified of the watercrea and her tower, but with one little shove, I made it all disappear.

  I wonder if she was just as surprised as I was. I wonder if she even had time to be surprised before her neck snapped.

  All at once, my vision goes black around the edges. A loud ringing noise fills my ears, and my knees wobble. The next thing I know, I’m in Ale’s arms.

  “You’re starved,” he’s saying. “You’re starved, and you’re not in your right mind—that’s why you—”

  “I found them! They’re over here!”

  The voice comes from the end of the street. It’s a guard. I catch a glimpse of his red coat, and then Ale is sprinting. Everything turns into a dark, disorienting blur. All I can hear is the pounding of Ale’s feet, and abruptly, we’re racing down a set of stairs. I cling to his shirt, feeling very precarious and jostled. He skids to a stop at the bottom and sets me on the cold ground. Then he turns and runs back up the steps.

  “Wait—Ale—” I crawl after him and immediately find dust on my hands and in my mouth. “Where are you going? Where are we?”

  His whispery footsteps are already returning. There’s a decorative lantern in his grip that looks like it was stolen from somebody’s window. I try to get to my feet, but everything starts spinning again.

  “Stop, Emanuela,” he says. “Don’t try to stand up. Hold this.”

  He puts the lantern in my hands, then scoops me up once more. I watch as we descend down a long, narrow hall of stone. The walls are interrupted every few steps by arched doorways leading into darkness.

  I’ve never seen this place with my own eyes, but I know what it is. It’s Occhia’s catacombs.

  Long ago, people used the catacombs to memorialize the dead. Everyone got a small spot where their family could visit and leave offerings. My history tutors told me that we stopped the custom because the watercrea wanted us to focus on the city, not on the people who’d already left it. My nursemaid told me that most families had started to avoid the catacombs even before that. The halls of memorials were getting crowded, stretching deeper and deeper under the city, and sometimes, people went away for quiet reflection and never came back.

  Now the doors to the catacombs sit abandoned in alleys all over the city, marked with a holy symbol. A couple of months ago, my rascally little cousins got in trouble for touching the door behind the House of Conti. They never would have been brave enough—or desperate enough—to actually open it. They’ve heard the stories.

  Ale takes us into a side hall and stumbles around a few corners before he comes to a halt, wheezing. He sets me on the ground, and I slump against the cold wall, the lantern between us. We sit there in our little bubble of light, and for a long moment, he just stares at me.

  The two of us have spent our entire lives with family or chaperones a moment away. We’ve never been so alone with each other, and we’ve certainly never been so far from the rest of our city. The quiet makes my ears ring.

  “The catacombs?” I say. “Really, Ale? I told you to go to my family’s house. We could have snuck in the back, if we were quick.”

  Ale doesn’t say anything.

  “Well, I’m not staying here,” I continue. “For one thing, I can’t work in the presence of such…”

  I glance over his head at the row of memorial nooks carved into the wall. They’re filled with cobwebs. My nursemaid has a lot of dramatic tales about spirits who were sinful in life and found themselves unable to return to the veil. According to her, they roam the catacombs, trapped and furious.

  “Uninspired decor,” I finish, turning my eyes away. “We need to know what’s happening in the city. We need food. We need—”

  The next word turns into a knot in my throat.

  “Water?” Ale’s voice is barely a whisper.

  Water. We need water.

  “The city has lots of water,” I say. “It’s stored under the tower. Haven’t you ever looked at a map?”

  “And what are we going to do when that runs out?” Ale says.

  “We’ll…”

  The watercrea has been making our water since the city began. There’s no other way. Everyone knows that. I know that.

  “We’ll just…” I try again.

  The watercrea is dead. The watercrea is dead, and I killed her, and everyone saw me do it.

  Occhians spend a lot of time reminding one another how precious our existence is. In the middle of the endless veil, God created a tiny pocket of life for us. The most important thing we can do is serve the city and keep it the way it’s always been, because the city is fragile.

  That’s what the priests say. That’s what my mamma says. I’ve always thought it was a load of nonsense. There’s no point in being alive unless you’re going to do more than everyone before you has done. Things should get better, not stay the same. And our city isn’t so fragile that it could be destroyed by one person.

  Our city can’t possibly be that fragile.

  I swallow hard, and I force myself to look Ale in the eyes.

  “We’ll find another way,” I say with all the confidence I can muster. “We don’t need her.”

  For a long moment, he’s silent.

  “The city is almost a thousand years old,” he says finally.

  “I know,” I say.

  “We’ve always had the watercrea,” he says.

  “I know,” I say.

  He’s silent again.

  “Don’t look so grim, Ale,” I say. “My papá will help. He can get us into the records of Parliament. Surely, in the past thousand years, somebody has—”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Ale’s voice is loud, and it startles me into silence. I can’t remember the last time he raised his voice at me.

  “If we can’t find more water, we’re all going to die,” he presses on. “Our families are going to die. The whole city is going to die. And that includes you, Emanuela. You realize that, don’t you?”

  My heart is pounding
in my ears. “Yes,” I say, and I’m impressed by how calm I manage to sound.

  “And does it concern you?” he says. “At all?”

  I shrug. “It’s not like I could have stayed in the tower.”

  “Well—” he says.

  He cuts himself off. But he has more to say. I can see it on his face.

  I narrow my eyes. “Well?”

  “You—” He’s floundering and avoiding my gaze. “You got your omens. Even if they weren’t spreading very quickly, it still means—”

  “It means nothing,” I snap. “Nothing. Do you understand?”

  “But the law—” he says. “You can’t just—”

  “I’ve had an omen since I was seven,” I say. “I just kept it hidden, and guess what? It never spread. It still hasn’t.”

  Ale looks stricken.

  “You—” His voice is suddenly small and betrayed. “You’ve—had it since…”

  I’m not going to apologize for keeping this secret from him for the last ten years, even if we have spent every day of those ten years together. I had my reasons.

  “The watercrea tried to kill me,” I say. “It wasn’t some kind of noble mercy killing, or whatever it is you tell yourself she does. It was murder.”

  “But…” he says. “Emanuela, are you sure—”

  “Am I sure about what?” I say. “The mark on my own skin? Am I sure about the things I saw her doing with my own eyes? The watercrea got what she deserved. If you disagree, then you shouldn’t have attacked her and run off with me, because now you’re my accomplice.”

  “That’s not what I—” he says.

  “Would you rather be back in your room with your new wife?” I say. “I’m so very sorry about that. My efforts to stop us both from getting murdered took you away from her.”

  The look he gives me is wary. “Emanuela—”

  “How did you two get on, by the way?” I say.

  “Valentina and me? We just—”

  “The conversations must have been scintillating,” I say. “Every conversation with you is so scintillating.”

  “I—she—” He’s stammering hopelessly.

  “Oh, and just how terrible was it?” I say.

  “How terrible was what?” he says.

  “Bedding her,” I say.

  The look he gives me is pure horror, and I find myself relishing it.

  “We didn’t—” he says. “Her betrothed went to the tower last week. She was— We were both—”

  “You would have had to bed her eventually,” I say. “And cried the whole time, no doubt. What a nightmare.”

  He flushes. “Why do you care? It’s not like either of us wanted… that.”

  “I don’t care,” I assure him.

  “Then why are we talking about it? We have more important—”

  “Nobody wants that with you,” I say. “Nobody wants you at all. Do you even realize how pathetic your life is without me? What did you even do while I was in the tower? Hide in your room like a child? What would you have done with the rest of your miserable days?”

  He’s not looking at me anymore.

  “Well?” I demand.

  He doesn’t answer me. But he doesn’t need to.

  I didn’t belong in the watercrea’s tower. I know it. He knows it. Everybody should know it.

  I get to my feet. I’m weak and shaking, but I keep myself upright through sheer force of will.

  “I’m not sorry,” I say.

  I’m not sorry about any of it.

  Then I march off into the dark.

  I make it around the next corner before my legs give out. I collapse, biting back my scream of frustration, and urge my body to crawl, but it won’t. I’m too hungry. I’m too thirsty. I’ve lost too much blood.

  Ale creeps around the corner, lantern in hand. Without a word, he sits down across from me.

  I crawl away.

  “Emanuela—” he says.

  When I’ve escaped the light of his lantern, I stop, curling up on my side. Maybe, in this exact moment, I’m not capable of sprinting off. But I’m trying to make a point.

  The watercrea got what she deserved. It wasn’t like I killed her for no reason. It wasn’t like she was a person the way the rest of us are. She didn’t have family or friends. She didn’t have anyone. She just had a tower and magic and prisoners, and now all those prisoners are free. I’m free.

  I’m not going to think about the sound she made when she hit the ground. I’m not going to think about the way her blood seeped out of her broken body like she was an ordinary person.

  But now that I’m lying here in the dark, it’s all I can remember.

  I curl tighter into myself. I have to stop shivering, or Ale is going to notice.

  The watercrea wasn’t an ordinary person. She was just a thing holding our city captive—a thing that tried to kill me and my best friend. But she failed.

  She’s gone. She can’t touch me anymore. And that’s what matters.

  When I was very small, I was sick. I had fits—bad ones. I would seize up out of nowhere and black out and, apparently, thrash around and hurt myself. Paola carried me up and down the stairs to head off a fall. Ale surrounded me with pillows whenever we played on the floor. They found my sickness terrifying, but I mostly found it aggravating. I’d be in the middle of doing something important, like making an exhaustive list of Chiara Bianchi’s worst qualities to read out at her next party, when I’d feel funny and warm. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor with ink everywhere and my mamma standing over me, crying noisily.

  I hated losing time. I hated that, no matter how much I pressed them, nobody ever properly described what my fits looked like. It was my body, and I wanted to know what it was doing without me.

  When the fits got so bad I became bedridden, it didn’t strike me as anything more than another bothersome obstacle. I was used to feeling terrible and exhausted, so I assumed that I would just carry on my business from bed until it subsided again. One afternoon, I was sitting under my covers with an array of dolls in my lap. They were a gift from the House of De Lucia, known for their intricate porcelain sculpting. I was prying off the dolls’ beautiful heads and swapping them. It was a very involved ritual, so at first, I didn’t notice the commotion in the hall. Then my door opened to reveal one of the doctors who was always rotating in and out of my room. He was one of my least favorites. His beard was distractingly ugly.

  “I believe you, Signor Ragno,” he was saying. “But you know how quickly they spread.”

  My papá ran into the room after the doctor, and I sat up straighter. My papá was very busy. I usually didn’t see him until the evening.

  “She doesn’t have any,” my papá was saying.

  “I believe you,” the doctor said again, pulling on a pair of black gloves. “But it could happen at any moment—”

  My papá dove in front of my bed.

  “Of course you believe me,” he said. “Because it’s the truth, and there’s nothing more to be done. She’s engaged to the heir of the House of Morandi, you know.”

  “I know,” the doctor said.

  “What shall I tell them, then?” my papá said. “That you’re questioning the loyalty of both our houses to the city?”

  I had no idea what was going on, but I held my breath nonetheless. My papá wasn’t a tall man, but he’d somehow managed to draw himself up in a way that I found very intimidating. There was a power in his voice that I’d never heard before.

  The doctor, on the other hand, had gone very quiet. He wavered for a moment, but then he took a small step back.

  “If it gets any worse—” he said.

  “It won’t,” my papá said.

  “I know you won’t hesitate to do your duty for the city,” he said.

  “We won’t,” my papá said, in a way that made it very clear the conversation was over.

  Without another word, the doctor disappeared. My papá turned to face me. He looked flushed,
like he’d run from the Parliament buildings in his crisp black suit.

  “What’s happening, Papá?” I said, and my voice came out very small.

  He took up the chair at my bedside. “Nothing,” he said coolly. “Now, tell me about your dolls, my little spider. They look rather… headless.”

  That night, it was Paola sitting at my bedside instead, a pile of shoes to be polished in her lap. I was supposed to be sleeping, but I was just staring at the ceiling, until finally, the words tumbled out of my mouth.

  “Why did the doctor want to take me away?” I said.

  “He’s not going to,” Paola said without looking up. “Your papá made sure of that.”

  “I know, Paola,” I said. “I saw it. But why did he want to take me away?”

  She paused in her work, and she was quiet for a long moment. Too long.

  “The doctors wanted to keep a closer eye on you,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Because they think I’m going to die,” I said.

  Paola opened her mouth. She shut it.

  The doctors thought I was going to die, which meant they also thought my first omen was about to appear. They wanted to make sure they were nearby to rush me to the watercrea’s tower before my omens spread. Anybody could get their omens at any moment, but with very sick people, it was a certainty.

  Everybody said that when we died, we went back into the veil. They said God was in the veil. They said everyone who had ever lived was in the veil. But they never explained it in a way I could really understand. They never explained how it would look or what it would feel like.

  When I tried to imagine it for myself, I couldn’t. Instead, I just pictured my family and Paola and Ale going on without me. I imagined them growing older and filling up their lives with other people and not even noticing when my birthday passed by. Now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t believe I’d ever been able to not think about it.

  “Paola,” I said.

  “Yes?” she said slowly.

  “I’m not going to die,” I said. “Do you know why?”

  “Why?” Her voice was quiet.

  “Because I don’t want to,” I said.

  The look on her face was impossible to read. I was terrified she was going to laugh, because sometimes I said things that were very serious, and grown-ups just laughed. She smiled, and I tensed defensively as she picked up the washcloth at my side and reached out to dab my clammy forehead.