Bright Smoke, Cold Fire

by Rosamund Hodge

  And then she did feel something from Juliet: pure, righteous fury.

  “You don’t understand,” said Juliet. “You cannot possibly understand. All of us Catresou, we know from birth that the rest of you despise us. You prove it to us every day. You tolerate us—you have need of our blood—but you despise us. But Romeo did not. Romeo loved me, and he loved even what was Catresou in me, for all that he neither believed nor understood it, and I cannot—I loved that in him. I find I cannot dishonor it.”

  “Are you saying that you don’t want me dead?”

  There was a silence between them. And then, very softly, Juliet said, “Yes.”

  It felt like there was no air left in her lungs. The same revulsion she’d felt toward Inyaan was curdling in her stomach. But Runajo didn’t look away from Juliet. She looked right into her eyes and said, slowly and deliberately, “I’m going to turn you over to be killed. Because I made a mistake and dragged you back from death. You know that, don’t you?”

  Juliet looked straight back at her, like a Sister of Thorn facing the final knife.

  “Yes,” she said.

  And then Runajo had to look away. “I don’t mourn,” she said quietly. “I don’t often feel pity. I don’t see the point. Everyone dies anyway. People delude themselves that they’ll live forever—they say they are mortal, but they still weep when they die, when they lose somebody close, and it makes no sense. They already knew. I’ve always known, so why can’t they understand it?”

  Without looking, she picked up another scroll. Her fingers tightened on the metal caps at either end.

  “I know I should be kinder,” she said. “We’re all dead, all dying. The whole world is dying. What’s the point?”

  “What is not eternal is supposed to be nothing to me,” said Juliet. “But I thought your people were supposed to find beauty in transience.”

  Runajo laughed softly. “You’ll be very surprised to hear I am not a good Mahyanai.”

  If she were a good Mahyanai, she would not mind that the world was dying. She would find it sad, and she would contemplate its fleeting beauty, and she would prepare herself to face the end with calm stoicism.

  But she was the worst of all Mahyanai. She wanted to live, and she wanted the world to live, and she was furious that the world was dying.

  Death did not care. That was the first lesson everyone ever learned. Maybe not Romeo—he’d always lived a charmed life—but Runajo knew it. Juliet knew it. Everyone who cared to look over the walls of Viyara, across the water, knew it.

  The world was dying, and death did not care who mourned.

  All the world is dying, she thought, and the scroll was warm in her hands.

  No: it was hot, almost too hot to touch. Runajo looked down, and saw that she was holding the corroded, damaged scroll. But now the glass tube glowed with a brilliant light, and the corroded metal caps hummed in her hands. As she watched, the glowing letters appeared in the air. They flickered and twisted—and they changed. The unreadable symbols that she had seen before rewrote themselves into perfectly comprehensible text.

  If you can see this, then you have thought that the world is dying, and you have believed it. You have known it.

  You live in the same cataclysm that we do.

  I presume much, by writing this: That we will succeed. That there will be a world and generations after us. That someone in those future generations will sin as we did. (That last is not presumption; it is fact.)

  My name is yn-Iacha Ra, servant to the Imperial Princess ketu-Indaratt Ai. I have seen the dead rise and walk. I have seen the white fog of death rise out of the earth, and I know that Death herself is angry at us.

  Ketu-Indaratt Ai means to offer herself as a blood sacrifice when the moon is new. To flay the skin from her graceful feet and dance before the Mouth of Death. She will cripple herself to save this last remnant of our people, and yet we five of her handmaids fear it will not be adequate payment. So we have made our compact: to walk into the land of the dead first, and bargain with Death herself.

  We have blasphemed by writing such sacred words upon our skin as should open the gates of death. Four have gone, and nothing has changed.

  I remain. Tonight I walk into death; this evening I write down a record, for any who come after us.

  Our Emperor sought to live forever. Through unspeakable arts, he found the sacred word that means Life, and he wrote it on his body.

  The world changed. The dead crawled forth. And we, who never sinned against Death, must pay the price.

  Know this, O future generations: 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.

  Death will always win.

  And yet we face her, one by one, and hope.

  Then a new hand began writing:

  I was once ketu-Indaratt Ai. I was once princess of an empire. Now I have lost my kingdom and renounced my name, for my father sinned, and everyone has paid, last of all my beloved handmaids.

  I add my words to testify: Iacha succeeded. She bargained with Death and made an end to the ruination of our world. For my part, I have sworn to remain here forever, guarding the Mouth of Death. In friendly recompense, Death has given me Iacha’s dead body back again. She lay still in my arms as I mourned her, and so I know the curse is ended.

  Iacha believed that someday, our descendants might sin as we have sinned, and need the same recourse. Yet the last scribe who knew the sacred words is dead; that lore is lost. Therefore I have carved Iacha’s breastbone into a key, and will preserve it for future generations. Perhaps this bone that walked into the kingdom of death and returned will be enough.

  “It happened before,” Runajo whispered.

  Her whole body felt numb. This flicker behind her ribs, it wasn’t joy—it was something even more elemental. Fire. Ice. Light. (Hope.)

  She had heard the story of how Viyara was founded from the Sisters—how the last princess of the Ancients had gone to bargain with Death—and she had considered it a myth. In three thousand years, how much might be forgotten?

  Now she knew. They had remembered the fall of the Ancients, but they had forgotten how it happened, that the world had been dying just as it was now. They had forgotten how the world had been saved.

  By speaking with Death.

  It didn’t seem possible. Death was not a person, was not somebody with a face and a voice and the ability to strike bargains. Runajo had always believed that. And yet it didn’t seem possible for the scroll to be a trick—who would write a lie that could only be read after a disaster that nobody had yet imagined?

  Runajo had not come this far to ignore any chance at saving the world. If she had to question and then change everything she believed, she could bear it. She was brave enough.

  The world can be saved, she thought, and didn’t feel a thing except the terrible lightness in her chest.

  “It happened before,” she said, meeting Juliet’s eyes. “Look. There’s even a picture of the key they made after.”

  It shimmered in the air before her: a bone ring with six bone strips radiating out of it. Vima’s heirloom. She could hardly believe it had been so close all along, but her heart was pounding with hope.

  Runajo pushed the scroll at Juliet; the other girl’s eyes flickered back and forth as she read it. “You think this is real?” she asked when she had finished.

  “Maybe,” said Runajo. “If it is, it changes everything. That key in the picture? It’s Vima’s pendant. It’s right here in the Cloister. We have to tell her.”

  And then she went still, the hope turning to cold sickness. It was a risk for Runajo. For Juliet, it was a certainty.

  Juliet was dead. Therefore she had to die. And Runajo was a necromancer, and therefore she probably had to die as well, but there was at least a little chance she might be spared. It was terrifying, but it was not the same.

  We live as those already dead, said Juliet silently.

  “How
can you say that?” Runajo’s didn’t mean for her voice to be so soft and harsh, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “How can you say that?”

  Dead was dead was dead. She should be able to bear the thought. She shouldn’t be afraid.

  “I’ve been preparing to die for a lot longer than you,” said Juliet.

  Runajo clenched her teeth and admitted it: she was afraid for Juliet to die. Maybe even more than she feared her own death.

  If she couldn’t stop being afraid, she could at least stop being a coward.

  She stood abruptly. “Enough,” she said. “We’re going.”

  Juliet stood in one fluid movement. She said, “You forgot to make it an order.”

  Runajo glared at her.

  Juliet smiled back at her, strangely gentle. And then—even more strangely—she reached forward and smoothed down Runajo’s hair.

  Runajo allowed the touch. Allowed herself to look at the smile. Allowed herself to take a slow, steady breath.

  Then she picked up the scroll and marched out of the room.

  Thus with a Kiss

  WHEN SHE HEARS THE KNOCK at her window, she realizes that she has been waiting for him.

  In an instant she has bolted her door; in another, she has tied the mask back on her face. Then she draws her sword and opens the casement.

  He is clinging to the balcony outside; he would surely have been caught and killed already, if not for the tree that grows so close to her window. There was a brief rainstorm after the revelry ended, and his hair clings to his pale forehead in damp, dark strands.

  He is startled when she holds the sword to his neck, and she shivers as if she is startled too. When she looks at his dark eyes, nothing seems sure.

  “You dance very well,” she tells him. “But you are my enemy.”

  “Lady,” he says, “I am only a poor pilgrim, like those who once walked to this city barefoot and bleeding from the ends of the earth to fulfill their vows.”

  She can’t stop the smile from tugging at her mouth. “Your people have always despised the gods, and mine despised Viyara. That is a very poor argument for me to let you live.”

  “If you hate the pilgrims who vowed themselves to Viyara,” he says earnestly, “then corrupt me from my purpose, and make me yours.”

  “You,” she tells him, “are utterly a fool. You know who I am. Why did you come?”

  “Because,” he says, “I know who you are.”

  “Better than my father, who gave me this sword?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  The truth is, she feels that she knows him too, and when she looks at him, she feels as if she has a true name.

  “Tell me what you know of me,” she says, “that my own father doesn’t.”

  He grins, for all the world as if there were not a sword at his neck. “I know you will not instantly strike down an enemy at your window.”

  “You did not say, ‘will not eventually,’” she says.

  “That part,” he admits, “I have yet to discover.”

  And what sort of traitor is she, that she nearly laughs with him so easily? But she pushes away the impulse.

  “I cannot let you live,” she tells him. “You have trespassed on our home.”

  “Is that your wish?” he asks. “To kill me?”

  “Yes,” she tells him. “I have no purpose but defending my family, and no dream but protecting my city.”

  The words slip out easily into the quiet night: the dream she has not yet dared tell to anyone in her family. That someday she might protect the whole city and life within it, not just the lives of her clan.

  His eyes widen slightly: he understands what she has said, that there is a piece of her heart that is not entirely given over to her duty. But he doesn’t doubt or mock her. He looks up at her, earnest and unafraid, and asks, “Am I not part of your city?”

  “Yes,” she whispers, and she lowers the sword.

  In an instant, he has swung himself over the railing of the balcony, and they are standing together with no bars between them, only a breath of air.

  “So you are now my pilgrim,” she says. “Did you come with a petition?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Lady, may I see your face?”

  “I am Catresou,” she says. “I am the most sacred of all the Catresou, even more than my father.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Then why do you even dare to ask?”

  “I am going to live and die for you,” he tells her. “I would like to know your face.”

  “You will certainly die, at any rate.”

  “And for the past three hours I have lived, so my prophecy is true already.”

  She does laugh then; and with a twist of fear in her stomach, she realizes that she is going to say yes.

  “You cannot tell anyone,” she says.

  “How could I dare to boast of it,” he says, “when you have seen my face as well?”

  She can feel her pulse in her fingertips as she lifts away the mask. And then they are face-to-face, and she is defenseless, and she should be ashamed that she has shown so much trust to an enemy.

  But she is not ashamed. She is incredulous and afraid and delighted, and unashamed.

  Slowly, he reaches forward. She does not draw back, and very gently, his fingertips touch her face. They slide along the line of her cheek and trace the curve of her ear. She thinks he is going to kiss her, but he only looks at her as if he can drink her up with his eyes. His fingertips brush against her neck and draw away. The breath stutters in her throat.

  All her life, she has been reverenced and alone. Even when she takes off her mask—before Tybalt, before her father—she is still the sword of the Catresou.

  Here and now, she is only a girl. Here and now, she is not alone.

  She is the one who leans forward. She is the one who presses her lips to his.

  The next instant, somebody inside the house knocks at her door. “Go,” she whispers, and he vanishes into the night. She is alone, and her heart is beating very fast and her naked face is blushing, and she will never be the same again.

  27

  “WE’RE GOING STRAIGHT TO VIMA,” said Runajo. “She has the key, and she’ll listen for at least a little while before she orders us both killed.”

  They were walking down the halls of the Cloister together. Runajo’s heart was beating very quickly. This was it. This was the moment when everything she’d done, everything she’d fought for—this was when it all became worth it.

  If they could convince Vima to listen. If the scroll was telling the truth.

  If.

  They were almost to the door of Vima’s quarters when they heard the scream.

  It came from inside.

  Runajo’s hands slammed on the door, but it wouldn’t respond. It was locked.

  “Vima!” she shouted. Desperately, she wrenched at the spells, trying to release them. She hadn’t thought that she cared about anyone, but now that she knew Vima was in danger, could hear her in pain, all she could feel was panic and no, no, no.

  With shaking hands, she sliced her arm, smeared blood on the door, and tried again. Finally it gave way. Runajo flung herself inside—

  She was too late.

  Vima lay glassy-eyed and still on the floor. A reaper crouched over her body, using her blood to draw the same spiral pattern that Runajo had seen painted around Atsaya.

  Juliet made a choked noise, and Runajo gasped for breath as well, because she could feel it too: the terrifyingly ponderous weight of a great magic, rolling toward them like an enormous and inevitable wheel.

  The other Sisters had all been blood sacrifices.

  Now the magic was complete.

  The reaper hissed, and shivered, and then—it was as if it remembered that it was meant to destroy all human life. It sprang toward them, and Juliet launched herself at it with a yell.

  No, Runajo thought numbly. The reaper didn’t remember. It was released.

  Reapers did not reason. They
did not work necromancy and they did not hesitate in killing anyone around them. If this one did . . . someone had commanded it.

  Light and shadow swirled in the air over Vima’s body.

  Whatever she had been killed for, it was happening now.

  Juliet and the reaper were still battling. Runajo knelt by Vima’s body, wondering if smearing the lines of blood would stop whatever was happening.

  Then she saw what had fallen on the ground by Vima’s hand: the bone pendant that was the key to death. The chain was broken. Vima had torn it off her neck—why? What had she known?

  Runajo half saw, half sensed Juliet ripping the reaper’s head off. At the same moment, the air shivered around her. She looked up and saw the tangle of light and shadow go still. Then the light flared, so bright and sudden that it was like a punch to the face.

  She thought she had fallen over, but she couldn’t quite feel her body. The only clear sensation was the cold air in her throat as she panted for breath, driven by a panic that was half hers, half Juliet’s. Because neither of them could move.

  She couldn’t see right. Everything was too light or else too dark for her to make out the details. This much she could see: a gap opened up in the air. A man stepped out. Her vision was too blurry to make out his face, but she could tell he had pale skin and dark hair.

  He leaned over. He must be picking up the key. Runajo tried to reach for it, but she couldn’t do more than flop her hand. He chuckled—a soft, dry sound—and her heart spasmed. She felt Juliet trying desperately to move. They were both helpless. They were going to die.

  Then she heard his footsteps as he went to the door, stepped through, and walked away down the corridor.

  A necromancer. In the Cloister.

  Runajo tried to sit up. It felt like her body was loose and kept sliding out of place. Her thoughts kept sliding, too—where was Juliet? What had happened here?

  A necromancer.

  More than that. The unholy rip in the world. It felt like death. The necromancer had himself been dead, she was sure of it, and he had commanded the reaper to make the sacrifices that brought him back.