Bright Smoke, Cold Fire

by Rosamund Hodge

  Runajo realized that her heart was beating very fast, which made no sense, considering that Juliet could neither harm her nor offer logical objections.

  “I mean,” she said, “that I do not particularly want to kill you. But if you’ve heard what Vima said, you must know I have no choice. And you can blame me if you like for bringing you back, but it’s beyond hypocrisy to despise me for setting it right.”

  “I heard nothing,” Juliet said after a moment. She was looking at Runajo now with a wide-eyed, disdainful bafflement. “You told me to stay out of your mind as much as I could.”

  “Oh,” said Runajo.

  Juliet’s eyes narrowed. “I only felt what you did with the knife,” she said.

  Runajo winced. It had never occurred to her that Juliet might be sharing in her punishment. She only hoped that Juliet hadn’t felt her fear as well as her pain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Juliet waved a hand. “As if that matters. But what’s this about killing me?”

  And Runajo felt sick. She’d thought the truth was out already. Knowing that she still had to say it was—

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You are Mahyanai Runajo. You can sacrifice anything.

  “You’re dead,” she said. “I talked to one of the Sisters, and she says that if even a living person walked into the procession of souls, that person would instantly be dead. I performed necromancy when I pulled you back, and for that we must both pay. I’m sorry.”

  Two apologies in one conversation. If Miryo were here, she would not believe it.

  Juliet shrugged. “You didn’t kill me.”

  “Then . . . you’re not angry about it?”

  “No,” said Juliet, her voice suddenly low and shaking. “I am furious that you are fool enough to believe cutting your own arm open is right and just.”

  It took a moment for Runajo to find her own voice. “I thought you hated me.”

  “I do,” said Juliet, calmer now. “But it’s still obscene.”

  “If I cared about you at all,” said Runajo, “then I would be angry that you don’t care about being killed soon.”

  Juliet shrugged. “I am the Juliet. I have always known that my life would be spent for others. But you—you chose this. How could you choose it?”

  “How did you?” Runajo asked.

  “I didn’t,” said Juliet. “I was born to this life. Or near enough, anyway.”

  “Near enough?” asked Runajo.

  Juliet shrugged again, and when she spoke, her voice had the inevitable, singsong cadence of somebody telling an ancient story.

  “Nobody is born the Juliet. The sigils must be applied in infancy, and they often fail. I was the first in seventeen years to survive. That’s why my father is counted as one of the greatest magi now alive.”

  Runajo had thought she knew all the horrible things the Catresou did to their own. But for a moment, this one took her breath away. “Your own father did that to you?”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “As if your father has not handed his own kin over for sacrifice.”

  “Unlike you,” said Runajo, “we have volunteers. Do you think it makes you less evil, somehow, to live by the blood of your criminals?”

  “They have earned their deaths,” said Juliet. “Your victims haven’t.”

  And then the silence stretched knife-sharp between them, because Juliet was going to be one of her victims.

  “If I’m already dead,” said Juliet, “I’m not one of your victims.”

  Runajo flinched. “I told you to stay out of my head.”

  “I did. It wasn’t hard to guess what you were thinking.” She paused. “I told you: my life has never been my own. You and your people are an abomination against justice, but I don’t resent you for my death in particular.”

  That was pretty nearly the last thing Runajo would ever have expected from her. From any of the Catresou, because everybody knew how desperately they wanted to live forever. Perhaps their abuse had done Juliet one kindness: she had learned to be brave.

  “You must be planning something first, though,” said Juliet. “Else you’d have come with all your Sisters.”

  “Yes,” said Runajo. “How would you like to kill some revenants?”

  “Where?” asked Juliet.

  Runajo grinned. “In the Sunken Library.”

  After a moment of Juliet utterly failing to be daunted or impressed, Runajo realized that the Catresou probably didn’t know that much about what lay within the temple.

  “You know that the Ruining didn’t touch Viyara, right?” she said.

  Juliet smiled faintly. “Are you about to tell me the sole exception?”

  “Deep beneath the Cloister,” said Runajo, “there’s a massive vault. Once, the Sisters used it as a library, and they had three thousand years of books within it. All the knowledge of all the world. But when the Ruining came . . . a second Mouth of Death opened up at the bottom of the library. The one you saw, at the very top of the Cloister, that’s the mouth that the dead use to leave. This one, the dead use to come back. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of revenants swarmed through. We barely stopped them. The entire library is now locked away under triple seal. They used to try, now and again, to send somebody down, but nobody ever came back alive.”

  “Why do you want to go there?” asked Juliet.

  “Because three-quarters of the Sisters died in the first week of the Ruining, including all the oldest and wisest. And because the walls of the city are failing.” She paused. “Do you know about that?”

  “I am not a child. I understand the doom of our city,” said Juliet. “Do you think you can do something about it?”

  “I think I can try,” said Runajo. “We’ve lost so much knowledge—we barely understand how half the magic in this city works. But the High Priestess thinks it isn’t worth the risk of going down into the library. Which is a ridiculous assessment when we are all doomed anyway. And that reaper in the hallway—if somebody was able to summon it, then the protections have grown very weak. If it crawled in here by itself, then the protections are practically gone. Either way, we don’t have any time to waste. So I’m going down there. I want you to come with me and help keep me alive long enough to find a way to save the city.”

  Juliet pressed her lips together thoughtfully. For a few moments there was silence.

  “Well?” Runajo said finally.

  Juliet looked her in the eyes. “You’re not going to order me?” she said.

  It would be very easy. And expedient. And probably the right thing to do, but this girl had been angry when Runajo spilled her own blood. It seemed wrong to force her—and in all honesty, she really doubted Juliet would turn down this opportunity.

  “No,” she said. “I am asking you.”

  Juliet dropped her gaze, saying nothing, and Runajo’s heart lurched. Had she just made a terrible mistake? But she couldn’t go back on her word now.

  “You never answered my question,” said Juliet. “Why did you choose this life?”

  There were several answers, and Runajo wasn’t sure which of them Juliet would believe. Which one she would even be able to understand in the slightest.

  “Do you know the history of Viyara?” she asked.

  “Blood, blood, blood, and more blood,” said Juliet promptly. “With a little evisceration.”

  Runajo snorted. “Do you know about the Ancients?”

  “They were very much the same, weren’t they?” said Juliet. “As far as blood goes.”

  “They found the Mouth of Death,” said Runajo. “And yes, here they learned to work blood magic, and they used it to build an empire across the whole world.”

  “And then,” Juliet said with relish, “the gods judged them as they will judge all murderers.”

  “They used slaves,” said Runajo. “The blood that made their empire did not flow willingly. And then they tried to find a way to undo death itself. When the disaster came upon them and their powers failed, one
princess of the imperial house fled to Viyara with her handmaidens. She prayed to all the gods for mercy, and then she flayed the skin off her feet and danced before the Mouth of Death.”

  When the Sisters told the story, they usually continued, And then Death herself appeared and bargained with her, and she alone has treated with Death and not been cheated. Runajo did not believe that, but in a metaphorical way, it was true.

  “So the first spells protecting Viyara were laid. That princess became the first High Priestess, and her son became the first Exalted.”

  According to the Sisters, the first High Priestess had not sinned by breaking her vow of virginity. The god Xinaad had seen her beauty and her bravery, and through a game of dice he had won permission from Death to visit the priestess for one night. So the royal line of Viyara was begotten.

  Runajo thought that if the legendary princess had even existed, she must have loved a handsome servant and lied when she was found with child. But in this case, what mattered was the story, and what that story had made Viyara.

  “So we have lived under this covenant ever since,” she said: “that only those who shed their own blood shall rule us.”

  Juliet looked curious. “You said ‘us.’ I thought the Mahyanai didn’t believe in gods.”

  “We don’t,” said Runajo. “I don’t, and I don’t believe half the other things the Sisters teach, either. But I do believe them when they say that the fundamental truth of the world is blood for blood and price for price. I am not a fool who thinks any blessing comes free. I want to be the one who pays the prices. I will pay all the prices that we need.”

  She broke off. She wasn’t sure she could explain it any better: the anxious, insatiable need to be the one who was not a protected child, who knew what the cost was, and who paid it in full. Who fought against the inevitable defeat, instead of waiting helplessly.

  “You,” said Juliet, “unlike the rest of your people, I might not entirely hate. Yes. I will help you.”

  Runajo let out a breath. Thank you, she thought, and wasn’t sure if she wanted Juliet to hear that or not.

  “I will still have to kill you afterward,” said Runajo.

  Juliet’s mouth curved up. “My husband is still dead. I welcome it.”

  By Any Other Name

  THIS TIME SHE GOES TO meet him.

  This time she puts on her simplest clothes, her plainest mask, and slips into the streets. Nobody stops her, because nobody expects the Juliet to flee her duty.

  She does not expect it, though she has planned it; when she meets him on a quiet street corner, when she takes the mask from her face, she feels as if she is dreaming.

  He kisses her bare cheeks before he kisses her mouth. To walk outside unmasked, where the whole world can see, is to become nobody and nothing. Every Catresou child knows this. But with him holding her hands, her face exposed to his—she almost feels as if she finally has a name.

  (She will never have a name. She will never get to keep him. There is only this moment, this sun-drenched afternoon. This kiss, and the next, but not too many after.)

  He leads her down to the Lower City. She has been there before, but only as the Juliet, needed and despised. Now she is just another girl, hand in hand with just another boy; the sellers in the market cry out to her, and the scrawny cats sniff her and rub their cheeks against her hand.

  It is as if she had been a ghost, and now is alive.

  Her eyes sting. He must see it, for he presses a hand to her shoulder and says, “Race me?”

  “Where?” she asks, and he grins at her. A moment later he is clambering up the side of the nearest building, and she follows him. Side by side, they race across the rooftops, leaping between the houses, careening off ledges. They do not laugh only because they are running too hard. The air and the wind and the sunlight are their laughter.

  At last they stop on a roof overlooking one of the many little squares of the Lower City. This one has a public fountain, and beside it sits a musician, singing and playing his lute for the coins that the passers-by throw at him. She can catch scattered bits of the tune, but she cannot make out the words.

  “What is he singing?” she asks.

  He listens for a moment longer, head tilted; then he begins to sing along with the musician:

  “O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

  O, stay and hear, your true-love’s coming,

  That can sing both high and low:

  Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

  Journeys end in lovers meeting,

  Every wise man’s son doth know.”

  Below, the song ends abruptly as a pair of children start to argue with the musician. She wonders if they are pickpockets working with him; she has heard of that trick, when her family was telling her that the Lower City was a terrible and unclean place where she must never go.

  She is not blind now to the dirt and the poverty, the anger and the tricks. She loves this place anyway.

  “How do you know that song?” she asks.

  “They sing it all over the Lower City,” he says. “I’ve heard it often.” Then he starts the song again:

  “What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;

  Present mirth hath present laughter;

  What’s to come is still unsure.

  In delay there lies no plenty,

  Then come kiss me sweet and twenty;

  Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”

  “That is a wicked song,” she tells him, when his voice has drifted away on the wind.

  “Oh?” he says.

  “We know what comes after,” she says, “and this life is only to prepare us for the Paths of Light.”

  This is why she loves him: because he does not believe in the ways of her people, and yet she sees pain in his face as he says, “But the Juliet will never walk those paths.”

  “No,” she admits, and the word holds all the loneliness of childhood, and all the loneliness that she knows waits for her hereafter.

  He does not tell her she is wrong. He does not tell her she should be resigned. He listens, and waits, and she loves him so very much.

  “You could walk those paths,” she tells him. “If I gave you the spells, if I taught you the knowledge. If you were willing.”

  He takes her hand, wraps his fingers around hers. “Not without you,” he says, and the words are pure foolishness—foolish and stupid and wretchedly foreign—but nobody has ever been foolish for her sake before.

  “I should disown you for that,” she tells him. “But I won’t.”

  His thumb traces a circle against her knuckles. “Then will you kiss me sweet and twenty?”

  He is folly and sin and everything she should not want, and yet in his eyes she has a name, as she can never have among her people. With him, she is only a girl, and he is only a boy, and that is enough. In this fragile, fleeting moment, it is enough.

  With her free hand, she brushes her fingertips against his cheekbone. She will never get used to the way his face is so open and free, never masked, never hidden.

  She will never get used to the way he looks at her as if she is the world, and yet that is how she has the courage to lean forward and press her lips against his.

  They kiss.

  She has never kissed him like this before: long and slow and sweet. She is still kissing him, and now he has let go of her hand; his fingers are tangled in her hair, and her hands are gripping his shoulders, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing in the world that matters except this easy, heart-stopping joy between them.

  19

  IT WAS TOO EASY TO get down to the door into the Sunken Library. If Runajo survived the revenants, then before she was executed, she would have a little talk with the High Priestess about making it more difficult. Surely there should be guards. Locks. Spells to sound an alarm when anyone even got close.

  Runajo stared at the smooth white stone of the door and wiped her palms against her skirt. Her whole body prickled with hot-cold fear.

 
; Because it was quite possible that the door didn’t need anything but the spells on it to keep her out. It was quite possible that trying to break the spells would bring the High Priestess down on their heads.

  And it was also pretty likely that if they got inside, they would die.

  Live as dead until thy death, she thought. That won’t be a problem, surrounded by revenants.

  Really, it was surprising the whole Sisterhood wasn’t down here.

  “Well?” said Juliet.

  Runajo glanced at her: the other girl looked more relaxed than Runajo had ever seen her, the double short swords that Runajo had found for her gripped easily in her hands. They were crafted in the Old Viyaran style, with wide, straight-edged blades; Runajo had been worried that Juliet wouldn’t know how to use them, but Juliet had said that she’d trained with some very similar swords, and liked them.

  “Unless staring is how you open it,” said Juliet. She was rocking very slightly on her feet, just a fraction forward and then back, as if she couldn’t wait to charge.

  Unlike the pain of the bloodletting, fear was inside Runajo’s mind. But fear still had to be felt in the heart for it to matter, and Runajo knew how to cast things out of her heart. She thought of stone, cold and hard and razor-edged, and she thought, You are still alive. Therefore you will die. Therefore you have no excuses.

  She sliced open her palm and laid her bloody hand against the door. Beneath the stinging pain and the wet trickle of blood, behind the cool surface of the stone, she felt a soft, living vibration, like a heartbeat.

  My blood is as the blood of gods.

  There were no gods. That aphorism of the Sisters was a lie.

  But it was true in one way: blood was blood was blood. There was no difference between what flowed in Runajo’s veins and what had laid the foundations of Viyara. Between what had sealed the door a hundred years ago and what she brought to unlock it now.

  At first Runajo thought she wouldn’t be able to do it. The spell on the door was dizzying in its complexity, with twists and turns that folded it in on itself over and over. She had no idea where to even start.

  But then she realized: the seal on the door was a mirror of the walls that she had helped weave. They were both created to keep death out.