Bright Smoke, Cold Fire Read online

  The girl sniffed. “He worked with the Night Game.” She gave Paris a fearful look, as if she had just said something terrible.

  “What’s that?” asked Paris.

  She stared. “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve never been to the Lower City before,” said Paris. “I don’t know about anything down here. Please, what is the Night Game?”

  The girl shrugged. “Nobody who’s seen it has ever said much. But the people who run it can . . . if you’ve lost someone. You know.” Her gaze flickered away for a moment, as if checking for anybody standing too close. “They can get that person back.”

  The afternoon sunlight felt cold. Paris had already known there were necromancers in the city—but to hear it again, not in the secrecy of the sepulcher but amid the bustle of the crowds, with the City Guard one street away, the revenant’s blood still sticky on the cobblestones—

  “But you have to pay,” said the girl. “And you have to know how to find them. I had no hope. But Tybalt said something great was coming. Very, very soon. And once it was done, the Night Game would be so powerful, even he would have the power to save anyone. He said my father would live again and never die.” Her shoulder slumped. “But he died first.”

  Paris took a deep breath. He had already known that he would have to fight necromancers. He wasn’t going to panic now that he had a chance to do it.

  “The Night Game,” he said. “Where does it meet? Who runs it?”

  The girl shook her head. “Tybalt never told me any of that. It was more than his life was worth.”

  His fingers curled in frustration. Then this day had all been for nothing. They had already known that Tybalt was doing something with necromancers in the Lower City. Of course that meant he was helping raise the dead. Knowing the name “Night Game” was something, but if nobody who had seen it was willing to talk, how would that help them? They didn’t even know whom else they might be able to ask—

  Wait. Vai had probably defeated Tybalt to become the new King of Cats. Suddenly his anger was more than simple suspicion of the Catresou, or loathing for a rival. And while Vai had definitely not wanted to talk to Paris, at least he didn’t seem like he would be afraid of the Night Game.

  “Do you know where they hold the duels for the King of Cats?” Paris asked.

  “East quarter,” said the girl. “By the face of Xinaad. Every day at dawn.”

  “Thank you,” said Paris. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  The girl didn’t respond. She let out a shaky breath, still staring at the ground.

  Suddenly Romeo stood, and before Paris could stop him, he knelt before the girl.

  “I’m not asking your forgiveness,” he said, quietly and calmly. “But you deserve to hear this: because I killed Tybalt, I lost everything, including the girl I loved. And I am probably going to die myself. So I am punished. And I am sorry.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he rose and strode away into the crowd.

  The girl started crying. Paris couldn’t move. It seemed wrong to leave her, but he had no right to comfort her. He was about to give up and flee when she grabbed his hand and squeezed it so hard it hurt.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.

  She looked at him then, wiping tears out of her eyes. “He doesn’t deserve your friendship,” she said.

  “We’re not friends,” said Paris. “I just . . . I need his help.”

  The girl drew a shuddering breath. “He still killed Tybalt. I’ll probably do my best to make trouble for him.”

  There was nothing Paris could say to that.

  “But for now,” she said, “you can thank him for me.”

  18

  RUNAJO WAS AN IDIOT.

  Admittedly, she was still rattled from nearly dying at the hands of a reaper. But that was no excuse. When the Sisters started emerging from the dining hall, the solution was simple: open the door to Juliet’s room, leap through with her, close the door behind them. She could then open the door again, this time to her own room. Nobody would know she hadn’t really felt ill and gone to lie down.

  But she didn’t think. She shoved Juliet through the door and closed it from the outside, which effectively saved Juliet from discovery but left Runajo out in the open.

  The next moment the hall was full of Sisters, one of whom was Miryo.

  The woman’s eyebrows went up. “You seem to have recovered swiftly,” she said.

  And that was how Runajo ended up facing the High Priestess once again.

  “It worries me,” said the High Priestess, “that you seem to regard all our laws as your personal playthings.”

  Skipping dinner was not a terrible offense, but lying to her fellow Sisters was. And Runajo had already proved herself far too willful to deserve mercy. She was not surprised when her punishment was a shift of heavy penance.

  “Now,” said Miryo, “lest she disappear again.”

  “That seems like a wise precaution,” said the High Priestess, and looked at Runajo. “Remember this lesson in future, and perhaps you will not have to do it again.”

  The message was clear enough: Remember not to tell the truth about Atsaya.

  Runajo made a perfect bow, then looked up at them with a perfect smile as she said, “I am honored to serve my city.”

  Happy acceptance was always the best way to infuriate Miryo. By the tightening of her lips, it did a pretty good job at irritating the High Priestess too.

  So an hour later, she was back in the heart of the Cloister, standing before the sacred stone and trying not to think of the body she had found in this very room. She had stripped off her long-sleeved robe and now stood in a simple, sleeveless shift. Before her was one of the mouths of the city: a bowl carved into the floor, with a little rim of woven stone cords around it.

  This would be her first time offering heavy penance. The novices whispered about the pain, how it was much worse than any cut with a knife. But most of them took months to stop flinching from the simplest little offerings.

  Runajo had never flinched from anything. She wasn’t going to start now, when it might make Miryo happy. Maybe her heart beat a little faster than usual when she knelt before the bowl, but her hands were perfectly steady as she took up the knife. Beside her, one of the Sisters had begun a quiet chant: a simple invitation to the city, to the gods, to drink of her blood and honor her sacrifice.

  Runajo traced three straight lines on the inside of each forearm. When the blood welled up, she held her arms over the bowl.

  Drop after red drop splattered against the pale stone. For a few moments, nothing else happened.

  Then the slender, pale cords of stone that formed the rim of the bowl moved. They unwove themselves and reached up, swaying, toward her bloody arms.

  Runajo had watched other Sisters do heavy penance before. She knew how the city drank the blood that sustained it. But for the first time, it struck her how alive the writhing cords looked as they nuzzled her arms, and yet how unnatural.

  The cords went still, and she had just enough time to clench her teeth before they punched through her skin and into her arms.

  She didn’t cry out, but for a few moments all she could do was breathe slowly through her nose, blinking back tears. When she could see clearly again, the white strands growing out of her arms had begun to blush pink. The city was drinking her blood.

  It hurt with a slow, cold burn that went right to her bones. It hurt and it went on hurting, much more than the simple cuts she had learned to make, and her body couldn’t seem to get used to the feeling. But that wasn’t what made her heart beat faster and faster, what made cold, queasy fear roil in her stomach.

  It was just seeing the cords: slender white stone, brought alive by magic, eating its way into her arms. There was something unspeakably wrong about the alien strands plunged into her skin, as if she weren’t human at all, but just a piece of wall drilled for drainage pipes.

  She knew
that the spells were safe, that the city would not drink too much of her blood. But she felt like it was draining out every drop, like it was going to leave her a shriveled husk. Like the strands were still pushing deeper into her arms, and she couldn’t stop herself from imagining them pushing all the way down to the bone and burrowing up her arms to her spine. It took all her strength not to rip her arms away from the cords; she tried to hold them still, but they trembled sometimes, and the slightest movement made the pain even worse.

  The world is bought in blood and pain. That was the teaching of the Sisters. That was inkaad, the absolute and obvious truth.

  I can pay any price, Runajo told herself. I can renounce any love. I can bear any terror. I am that strong, and that ruthless.

  Her right arm spasmed, and she had to bite back a cry. I am that strong, she told herself again, and then she did something she had often done when Father was sick, when Mother was sick, and the weight of death was too much around her.

  She closed her eyes. She thought of her skin as a wall around her—and yes, it was breached, but only where she chose, to let out what she chose—and she thought, What happens outside is not your business.

  Pain happened in the heart. The dead didn’t feel pain, because their hearts had stopped beating. And she was not her mother, breaking her heart anew every day over things that couldn’t be changed. She was Mahyanai Runajo, and her heart was carved of stone. She imagined it in careful detail: a sharp-edged chunk of obsidian, nestled inside the circle of her ribs. The world could cut itself upon her heart and she wouldn’t feel a thing.

  Her heartbeat slowed. There was still pain, but she was choosing not to let it matter.

  Runajo opened her eyes and stared at the spine of the city. She breathed. She was still afraid. But she was just calm enough now that she could make herself think about something else.

  It was unheard of for there to be a murder among the Sisters of Thorn. It was absolutely impossible for a reaper to get past the protective spells and into the Cloister.

  The two could not be coincidence. Either Atsaya had been killed to summon the reaper or else she had been killed in an attempt to keep it out. In the latter case she might very well have been an actual sacrifice, killed by the High Priestess’s decree, the reason for her death covered up to prevent panic. Though it would have been foolish, shoddy work to leave her body lying out like that.

  And if Atsaya had been killed by a necromancer who wanted to summon reapers, then Runajo bringing back the wherewithal to strengthen the walls would make her a target. Which meant she wouldn’t have to bother hunting down the murderer; she could wait for her to come find Runajo.

  Somebody tapped her shoulder, and she startled, again jostling the strands in her arms.

  “It’s time,” said the Sister who had chanted for her.

  Runajo looked down and saw that the strands had turned bright crimson. She took a deep breath (her heart was stone) and thought at the strands, Release me.

  Quite easily, they did, and slithered back into place. Runajo was free, and all she could do was tremble and gasp for breath while the other Sister wrapped her bloody arms in lengths of white bandages.

  “You’ll want to go see one of the healers,” said the Sister. “Since you’re new.”

  Runajo nodded. Something in the city’s bite helped clot blood and speed healing, once it had released its grip. After enough sacrifices the body grew attuned to it and barely needed care after. But Runajo was not yet at that point.

  There were footsteps, and she looked back. Miryo stood in the doorway, come down just in time to see if she had fulfilled her penance properly.

  She still felt weak and wrung-out, but she clambered to her feet. She wasn’t going to give Miryo any satisfaction.

  “Thank you for permitting me this honor,” she said, and managed to bow.

  “We are not here to win glory,” said Miryo, looking as friendly as always. “You might try remembering that.”

  Runajo nodded obediently. “May I go to see the healer?”

  “You may come with me,” said Vima from the doorway. “I will take care of you.”

  Miryo frowned, but there was no objection she could make to that. A few minutes later, Runajo and Vima were in one of the little healing rooms, and Runajo was sitting on the bed while Vima searched in the cupboards.

  “I didn’t know you were trained as a healer,” said Runajo.

  “I have been a Sister for twenty-eight years; I have learned a thing or two.” She turned around, holding the little jar of healing cream. “And this is a simple operation. I don’t think you even need bloodwine; you didn’t give that much.”

  “Why did you want to heal me?” asked Runajo.

  “You interest me,” said Vima.

  “Why?” Runajo asked carefully.

  Vima raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps because you survived a vigil unprepared?”

  “Oh,” said Runajo, hoping she didn’t sound too relieved.

  Vima took one of her hands and turned her arm so that the bloody inner skin was visible. She began to wipe it with a damp cloth; Runajo breathed carefully and tried not to flinch.

  “During that vigil,” she said, staring at the bone pendant that hung from Vima’s neck, “I was wondering.”

  “Yes?”

  The cloth caught at a bit of half-clotted blood, and for a moment Runajo had to just breathe. Then she went on, “The souls that walk through that room, into the water. They’re dead. But they’re not in the land of the dead yet.” Probably because there was no land of the dead, but Runajo had already gotten in enough trouble debating that point with her fellow novices, and the question didn’t matter right now anyway. “Are they . . . does that mean they could be brought back to life? Unlike the true dead?”

  “Child.” Vima touched her cheek, and there was a strange compassion in her voice as she went on. “Whatever joins that procession is truly and utterly dead.”

  But I could touch her, Runajo thought desperately. That has to mean something.

  Vima took the cream and started to spread it across Runajo’s arms; it burned cold, and she couldn’t help the little hiss that escaped her.

  “You learn strange things, as the priestess of mourning,” said Vima. “There’s lore that we’ve lost everywhere except where it’s mentioned in ancient laments. There was a time when three Sisters sat vigil together, and two of them tried to walk bodily with the dead souls, to speak with Death herself and then return. But joining the procession made them dead, and they could not be saved.”

  The burn of the cream on her arms suddenly stopped mattering. Because Juliet was dead. She had already been dead when Runajo pulled her back. That meant she must die again.

  “That’s a fable,” Runajo said numbly. “That Death has a face and can be spoken to.”

  “Is that what your parents taught you?” Vima asked gently.

  “It’s truth,” said Runajo.

  All those stories of ancient heroes traveling to speak with Death, to bargain with her for the return of their loved ones—lies. And none of those stories had ended well, anyway.

  “Believe that if you wish,” said Vima. “But do you understand what I am telling you?”

  “Yes,” said Runajo.

  Juliet was dead, and Runajo was a necromancer. She hadn’t realized, until now, how much she’d started to believe it was otherwise.

  “You could not have saved your mother or your father, once the breath left them. Mourn them, but do not blame yourself.”

  “I,” Runajo choked out, “do not mourn them.”

  The dead were dead and didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that she was a necromancer.

  Miryo would be so delighted when she found out.

  They would kill Juliet. Would they kill Runajo? They would certainly never let her down into the Sunken Library.

  Vima was saying something else now, but Runajo couldn’t hear her. She was staring at the wall and thinking, The past is outside you. It c
an’t hurt you unless you allow it, and your heart is made of stone.

  There was no time for grief over what she’d done. Or what she would have to do. She had to get down to the Sunken Library, prove how important it was to get the books—and that she could—and then she would deal with Juliet. Then she would accept her punishment.

  You are pure obsidian inside your chest.

  When Runajo got back to her bedroom, she didn’t want to see Juliet again. She wanted to curl up on the mat that served as her bed, hug her half-healed arms to her chest, and sleep. She did not want to face a girl who hated her, and who would be searching Runajo’s mind for anything she could turn against her, and whom Runajo would have to kill.

  But Runajo had not joined the Sisters of Thorn so she could do whatever came easiest. She pressed her hand to the wall and opened the door.

  For all that she’d expected anger, she staggered under the wave of raw fury that she felt from Juliet. A moment later it was gone, locked away as Juliet obeyed Runajo’s earlier order.

  “What?” asked Runajo, and then realized there was one answer. “You heard, didn’t you?”

  “I felt,” said Juliet. “It was impossible to block.” She crossed her arms and looked Runajo up and down. “I know your people are twisted, but I cannot comprehend how they could make you think that good.”

  Runajo’s spine straightened. She might deserve hatred, but scorn?

  “You were trained to kill revenants yourself,” she said. “Isn’t that one of the Juliet’s duties?”

  “So?” said Juliet. She stood with her chin planted, her feet forward. Against the featureless white walls of the room, she was a gash of vivid, living color.

  “So you can hardly object when I do the same to you.” Runajo’s voice slid into the sweet, placid tones that Miryo found most infuriating. “Unless you believe revenant-killing is a virtue to be practiced only by your clan and not others, and that hardly makes sense. The dead are all alike in death, no matter their family, so surely the living are all alike when it is time to dispatch them.”

  Juliet stared at her, forehead wrinkling. “What has that got to do with anything?”