Bright Smoke, Cold Fire

by Rosamund Hodge

  Lord Ineo looked at her thoughtfully. Then he said, “I’ll be direct with you as well. I mean you and your friend no harm, but our clan must always come first. You have trained as a Sister; you know how fragile our city is. The Exalted does not care to rule, while the Catresou plot our downfall. I will use you and the Juliet however I must to protect us.”

  A little of the tension in her stomach uncoiled. It was a ruthless speech, but it was exactly the sort of thing that Runajo might have said, if she ruled the clan. She knew how to deal with that way of thinking.

  “But what you’re asking is a small enough favor,” said Lord Ineo, “and fair besides. I can do it.”

  “Thank you,” said Runajo, feeling a little dizzy. She had bargained with Juliet’s obedience as her price. There was no going back from this path. “Shall I fetch Juliet?”

  “Yes, but you can take the time to bathe first,” said Lord Ineo. “And one more thing before you go. The Juliet is bound to avenge the blood of the Catresou family, isn’t she?”

  31

  RUNAJO HAD NEVER THOUGHT SHE missed her home. But as she walked into one of Lord Ineo’s guest rooms, having washed in a properly scented bath and wearing a silky blue robe of exactly the kind she had grown up wearing, she felt strangely comforted, as if something hanging out of place for years had shifted back. There was a traditional calligraphy scroll hanging on the wall; the bedroll was the right size and shape. There was a slightly different smell to the air, and Runajo couldn’t say what it was, but it felt right.

  Juliet, on the other hand, clearly didn’t feel that things were all right, and Runajo didn’t need the bond to know it. The other girl paced back and forth in the little room, her hands restless.

  “Well?” said Juliet, spinning to face her. “What did he say?”

  The servants had dressed her in Mahyanai robes as well, dark crimson embroidered with gold, and coiled her dark hair up on her head with sticks. The outfit sat flawlessly on her, and yet Runajo could tell she was uncomfortable with it from the way she moved.

  And now she had to decide which bad news to break first.

  “He will protect us,” said Runajo.

  “And the price?” Juliet asked flatly.

  “You need to become the Juliet,” Runajo said bluntly, all in a rush. “Our Juliet. You told me the seals aren’t yet complete, right? There’s still a final ceremony before you are bound to avenge your clan?”

  Juliet went still, and Runajo could feel her horror through the bond.

  “You can’t,” she said. “There are no magi.”

  “Do you need them to draw the seals?”

  “It would be a blasphemy,” Juliet said slowly and deliberately, “to finish it without them. Do not ask it of me.”

  The problem was that Runajo didn’t have a choice. The Mahyanai were the only ones with the power and the will to protect Juliet from both the Sisterhood and the Catresou, and they weren’t willing to do it unless they got a Juliet of their own in return.

  Not to mention that if the Catresou necromancers weren’t stopped, the whole city could be revenants in a week.

  “I don’t care if they kill me,” said Juliet. “I am willing to die. I would rather die.”

  “You are trying to preserve the sacred rites of the people who made you a slave,” Runajo snapped. “And who are confirmed necromancers. Did you ever suspect that, when you served them? Your father and several of his closest friends have been arrested for necromancy.”

  She felt Juliet’s sudden, stabbing sense of betrayal, and she knew that she was the one who Juliet felt had betrayed her.

  “That’s a lie,” Juliet whispered.

  “They were caught in the act this morning,” said Runajo. “Lord Ineo himself told me.”

  Trust me, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t, not even through the bond. Not when Juliet was looking at her like this, her face hard-edged and bitter.

  “Lord Ineo said so.” Juliet’s voice dripped with scorn. “And of course he bears my people no prejudice.”

  “Of course he hates them and wants to believe the worst of them,” said Runajo. “But he is not going to stake our clan’s reputation on arresting somebody without cause. Your people betrayed you. They would have betrayed you if they only made you the Juliet and did not turn to necromancy. Why do you cling to them?”

  “They are my people,” said Juliet. “Tell me the truth, would you do differently?”

  “Yes,” said Runajo. “I did differently when I stepped over my own mother’s body so I could join the Sisterhood. And when I left the Sisterhood so I could save you. I will always do what is right, and not what my family tells me.” She took a breath, trying to get control over her temper. “And I will not let you stay a slave to your family. Tell me how to complete the seals.”

  Without another word, Juliet undid her sash and turned, pulling down her robe to expose her back.

  Halfway between her shoulders and hips, right over her spine, was a symbol painted in swirling calligraphy. It was about as big as Runajo’s palm. Over and around it was outlined a shape like a crescent moon with the horns turned downward. Inside the crescent was a series of little symbols so densely intertwined it was hard to tell where one ended and another began.

  “The downmost stroke of the symbol,” said Juliet, her voice emotionless. “Add a teardrop hanging from the tip, and the word for justice will be complete. Put the family seal underneath, with lines connecting it to the crescent. That is all.”

  “Do we need a special kind of ink?” asked Runajo, kneeling to look more closely.

  “Not at this point,” said Juliet. “The seals have their own power by now. But please. Do not do this.”

  The please hurt more than the raw misery Runajo could feel through the bond. Juliet had never begged for anything before, and Runajo felt sick, but there was really no other way.

  “Among your people, the wife joins the husband’s family, doesn’t she?” she said. “You’re already one of us.”

  “Then Romeo should be the one to write the signs on me,” said Juliet. “Send me to the grave so he can do it with his own hand.”

  Runajo hesitated, then laid a hand against Juliet’s shoulder. Felt her flinch, but refused to let go.

  “You think you’re just a weapon,” she said. “You think that we will treat you as just a weapon. Neither of those things is true. And someday, you will thank me for this.”

  Juliet’s emotions had gone away, hidden from the bond. “Just get on with it,” she said wearily.

  “Lie down on your stomach,” said Runajo, and fetched a brush and some ink. Slowly, carefully, she painted the Mahyanai crest at the base of Juliet’s spine. She drew lines from the left and right of the crescent to connect it.

  And then she laid her brush to the word for justice and drew the final teardrop.

  For a moment nothing happened. Then Runajo felt something like what she had felt standing over Vima’s body: the slow, terrible weight of an enormous magic that was about to begin.

  I can bear it, she thought, and then everything went dark.

  It turned out she couldn’t bear it. Fire seared through her mind. Her body. There wasn’t a difference. It felt like all the world had turned to fire: fire and light and meaning, too terrible and intense for her to comprehend. She would have screamed, but she didn’t seem to have a voice left. She didn’t have any breath left, either. She was smothering and she was burning and she forgot everything except the pain.

  Slowly she came back to herself. She was lying on the floor with Juliet—fully clothed again—sitting over her, face expressionless. The sunlight coming in the window hadn’t changed; she hadn’t been unconscious for long.

  At first all Runajo could do was breathe. Breathe, and feel desperate, helpless relief that her body was whole and not in pain.

  Juliet said nothing. She didn’t move. Runajo couldn’t feel her through the bond, either, and after several moments Runajo’s mind started working enough that she
realized it might be a bad sign.

  She managed to sit up. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “We nearly died,” said Juliet, her voice strangely calm. “The ceremony is not supposed to be like that.”

  “We’ve nearly died before.” Runajo rubbed at her forehead; it still ached.

  “I wish we had,” said Juliet, still calm, and then Runajo was burning, just like before, only this was worse because then she had been too dazed to fully feel it, and now she could.

  “Stop,” Runajo managed to choke out, and abruptly the fire was gone; she was doubled over, gasping for breath, with tears in her eyes.

  Memories. Juliet was using her memories against her. She knew she should have expected this, but it still felt like betrayal.

  Until you, too, would rather be dead, said Juliet, with precisely the same viciousness with which she’d told Runajo that she lived in a charnel house.

  She wondered how long Juliet had been saving up drive her to suicide as a loophole in the order don’t kill me. Probably she should admire her determination, and sometime soon she would, but right now—right now she hurt. The fire hadn’t just been physical, and the whole inside of her mind felt like it had been scraped raw and bleeding.

  “Stay out of my head,” said Runajo.

  She gulped a breath. She was shaking. With exhaustion, and remembered pain, but mostly with fear. And grief. Because she had thrown away everything for one girl, and now that girl would never stop trying to kill her.

  “Don’t play with my memories.” Her voice was rough in her throat. “Don’t share your feelings. Don’t talk to me, and if you can figure out a way to give me dreams, don’t do that either. Stay out of my head as completely as you can until I give you specific and unambiguous permission.”

  “As my master commands,” said Juliet, her voice dull and emotionless.

  They were truly back to the beginning. Runajo would understand this and not blame her for it soon, but right now—right now she wasn’t able to face it.

  “Get up,” she said. “Lord Ineo wants to see us.”

  Lord Ineo was waiting for them in his study. So were several members of the City Guard, including a subcaptain—a tall, Old Viyaran woman, with her white hair braided in a crown around her head—and two middle-aged men, dressed in fine clothes that were rather rumpled and dirty. They both looked Catresou, but they had lost their masks. One of them had a bruised face, while the other had a drooping red mustache and a goatee.

  Runajo didn’t recognize them.

  But Juliet stopped in the doorway and said hollowly, “Father.”

  The taller prisoner, the one who was bruised, looked at her. What little color he had drained from his face.

  “Juliet,” said Lord Catresou.

  “My lord Father.” Her voice sounded distant and dreamy. “I am sorry.”

  Then she crossed the room in two strides, kicked his legs out from under him, and when he fell to his knees, she snapped his neck.

  It happened so quickly that nobody could react. As his body toppled to the floor, she turned and reached for the other prisoner. But the guards were lunging for her now, as Runajo shouted, “Stop!”

  Juliet stopped. She might have been a statue for all she moved, for all the notice she took of the guards holding her arms. Her eyes were wide, staring at nothing.

  “What is this?” the subcaptain demanded.

  “A regrettable accident,” said Lord Ineo.

  Runajo felt numb. Nothing seemed real: not the sprawled body, not the panicked gasps of the surviving prisoner, not Juliet’s terrible stillness.

  Lord Catresou was dead. Juliet’s father. She had killed her own father.

  “I am the Juliet. I belong to the Mahyanai. That man shed Mahyanai blood.” There was no expression to Juliet’s voice whatsoever. “He had to die. So must this one.”

  “Don’t touch the other one,” Runajo said. “Don’t. Don’t.”

  “I once thought an order from my Guardian might stop me from obeying the adjurations,” said Juliet. “I was wrong.”

  All of a sudden she dropped, like a puppet with its strings cut, her arms twisting out of the grip of the guards. They scrambled to catch her, but it was too late: she had already caught the man with the red mustache and snapped his neck.

  Then she went still again.

  “Ineo,” said the subcaptain, her voice dangerously low with fury, “what have you done?”

  “It’s my fault,” said Runajo. She felt like she was hearing the words from far away. “I saved her when her people betrayed her, and I bonded her to us. You see what happened.”

  “It is the right of the Juliet to mete out justice,” said Lord Ineo.

  “Your people were granted no Juliet in the Accords,” said the subcaptain.

  “The Catresou were granted no necromancers, and yet they have them,” said Lord Ineo. “We can settle questions of the law later. Right now, the question is: are we going to rule the city tomorrow, or will the necromancers? Because I believe this girl can help us.”

  They argued a little longer, but Runajo hardly listened. She knew what was coming, and she was trying to think of a way out, because no matter how much the Catresou might deserve this, Juliet did not.

  Lord Ineo turned to her. “Runajo,” he said, “I don’t want to risk you in the fighting. Order the Juliet to obey me as she does you, and I promise I will bring her back to you safely.”

  It was impossible. She couldn’t do it. She’d thrown everything away to save Juliet; she couldn’t hand her over to this awful fate.

  Juliet didn’t look at her, but waited silently. As if she knew what Runajo was going to do.

  And there was only one thing that she could do.

  Blood for blood. Price for price. Runajo needed somebody to shelter Juliet from the Sisters of Thorn. She still needed to save Viyara, and that meant freedom and resources to find the necromancer and the key to Death.

  Lord Ineo was the only one who could give her any of that. And there was only one currency he would accept.

  She remembered speaking to Vima: I never go back on my plans.

  “Juliet,” she said, calmly and clearly, “until tomorrow, obey Lord Ineo as you would me.”

  32

  JULIET CAME BACK TO HER that evening.

  Juliet came back to her after an endless, horrible afternoon full of blood-curdling rumors. The Catresou were all dead. The Catresou were slaughtering the entire city. People were fighting each other in the streets.

  Runajo listened to every rumor, no matter how sick she was with dread. She had sent Juliet to this fate. She had known how many terrible things might happen, and accepted them all as the price of Juliet’s life. She had no right to shield herself from any part of it.

  When the sunlight slanted low and golden across the roofs, Juliet came back with Lord Ineo. They were both cheered in the courtyard, because they had helped save the city. The Catresou were pacified, the necromancers wiped out. All was well.

  She was spattered in blood, but it didn’t seem to be hers. She moved calmly, each step graceful as she followed behind Lord Ineo.

  He bowed to Runajo when he approached her—deep enough to show true gratitude, not just politeness—and Runajo bowed to him in return.

  “My lord,” she said. Juliet wasn’t meeting her eyes, but that was hardly surprising. Runajo could feel nothing through the bond from her, but she’d commanded that.

  “You have done us a great service,” said Lord Ineo.

  Runajo bowed again, very deeply, and said, “I am honored to serve my clan.”

  Her voice didn’t tremble. Her hands didn’t shake. She was the only person left who could possibly protect Juliet, and that meant she had to be perfect.

  “She’s a little tired now,” said Lord Ineo, in a bid for mastery of understatements. “Take her back to her chambers and have her cleaned up.”

  “Of course,” said Runajo, and looked at Juliet. “Follow me.”

  Ju
liet followed her silently. But as soon as they were alone inside the hallway, she said quietly, “This is your fault.”

  Runajo choked on tears or a scream, she wasn’t sure; then she grabbed Juliet’s wrist and dragged her back to the room.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said. “How many of them were guilty?”

  I’m sorry, she wanted to say. But Juliet wouldn’t accept it. Not when Juliet had been forced to know how well her kinsmen deserved their death.

  Something tilted the edges of Juliet’s mouth. It wasn’t exactly a smile. “Not nearly enough.”

  “What?” said Runajo, confused. Why would Juliet want more of her kin to be guilty of murder?

  “Did you command me only to kill the guilty?” asked Juliet, her voice soft and patient.

  “No,” said Runajo. It felt like the world was turning end over end. Nothing made sense. “Why? How many did you kill?”

  “As many as your Lord Ineo told me to. What did you think he would do with me? What do you think he ever wanted, besides the destruction of the Catresou?”

  Runajo flinched, but she made herself meet Juliet’s eyes and say, “I know you think that now. But without your father—”

  Juliet laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “You think I only killed my father today?”

  “No,” said Runajo, sick with guilt, “but the necromancers—”

  “I destroyed the Catresou,” said Juliet. “Lord Ineo got the Exalted to give him an order of death for the whole clan. He gave everyone in the compound a choice: renounce their names and submit to his rule, or die as Catresou. And I killed them. Nearly half would not renounce, and I slaughtered them with my own hands.”

  It took Runajo a moment even to understand the words. She had dreaded so much death and destruction. But not this. Nothing like this.

  “That’s not possible,” she said. “Why would he do that?”

  Viyara was at peace. Viyara would always be at peace. A hundred years ago, when they drew up the Accords, the three high houses had sworn that there would never be war between them, because they were all that was left of the world. Runajo didn’t entirely trust Lord Ineo, and there were many things she didn’t like about her clan, but they weren’t bloodthirsty monsters. They weren’t insane.