Endless Water, Starless Sky Read online

  “The Jularios family, they were killed by a servant of the Master Necromancer,” he said. “One of the living dead. He told me himself, it was on his master’s orders—”

  “I know,” said Meros. “He told me. That family was planning to sell us out.”

  For a moment the words didn’t make sense. Romeo gaped at him, trying to understand.

  It was the silence that brought it home. This was the assembled council of the Catresou lords. These were common Catresou guards holding him. And nobody was saying a word.

  They all know, thought Romeo, and his heart broke as he remembered how horrified Paris had been when he learned about the previous Lord Catresou’s conspiracy. But it was a conspiracy no longer.

  “You can’t do this,” Romeo burst out. “You can’t possibly work with the man who raises living dead and tried to end the world. Isn’t this against zoura?”

  Suddenly Gavarin’s fingers gripped his hair. “Don’t imagine you understand zoura,” he said, his voice low and angry.

  I know because Paris taught me, thought Romeo. It was the sacred Catresou word that meant “correct knowledge”—it meant their lore for embalming the dead, the charms they thought would protect them in the afterlife, but it also meant the knowledge of how to be correct. To live rightly.

  It had been everything to Paris. To Juliet as well. But it seemed that now zoura was nothing to their people.

  “Of course you’re condemned to death,” said Meros. “But since you know so much, the Master Necromancer may want to question you first. Gavarin, since he’s shown such concern for our dead, lock him up in the quarantine room.”

  “Please,” Romeo begged, “you have to listen. For the sake of your people, you have to—”

  “No, I don’t,” said Gavarin, dragging him down the corridor. The other guards were gone; the Catresou seemed to have decided that Romeo was not a threat. Without his sword—and bound by his vow—that was true enough. He could never raise his hand against Juliet’s clan, even if they had turned to evil.

  But he could raise his voice.

  “Doesn’t it shame your clan to serve murderers?”

  Gavarin looked back at him, eyes narrowed in scorn. “Which murderers? Seems the city is full of ’em.”

  “The Master Necromancer isn’t just—”

  “The Sisters kill someone every six months, and you Mahyanai call that noble.” Gavarin’s voice was soft and furious. “Your father made the streets run with our blood, and you call that necessary. But the Master Necromancer uses the lives given him in the Night Game, and he is too shameful for us to serve?”

  It’s not the same, Romeo wanted to protest. He understood now why the Catresou hated the sacrifices so much, but they did keep the Ruining out of Viyara. He was horrified at what his father had done, but at least Lord Ineo had been trying to make the city safe from necromancers. Meros and the surviving Catresou—

  Wanted to live.

  As everyone in Viyara wanted to live.

  Then he remembered the girl who had died in his arms the night before.

  “And the Jularios family?” Romeo demanded. “Was that acceptable?”

  Gavarin winced as he turned away. But his voice was flat and steady as he said, “We’d all be dead if they talked.”

  He dragged Romeo the last few steps down to the end of the hallway,

  “That girl died begging for a Catresou burial,” said Romeo. “I promised she would have one.”

  Gavarin laughed: a low, bitter sound. “Not yours to give,” he said, unlocking the heavy bolt on the door in front of them. “Not exactly ours to give either, now.”

  “What?” said Romeo.

  The door swung open. Gavarin shoved him inside.

  There was nothing in the room but three cages—huge, heavy cages. Romeo had seen such cages before at the Night Game, where people brought prisoners for the Master Necromancer to sacrifice, hoping he would deign to raise their loved ones in return.

  Something moved inside the nearest cage.

  More prisoners, Romeo thought. It made sense—more people waiting to be sacrificed to the Master Necromancer’s power, perhaps other Catresou who had resisted the bargain—

  Then he heard the hissing. He saw one of the figures throw itself against the bars.

  It wasn’t a prisoner, because it wasn’t a person anymore. It was a revenant. Once it had been a boy about Romeo’s age, and it still looked like a boy, its pale skin smooth. It wasn’t yet rotted or withered. But in its eyes was a hollow, absolute emptiness.

  It clawed at the bars, still hissing. It could smell their living flesh and blood. It wanted them.

  “You’re . . . you’re punishing them?” asked Romeo, sick with horror. He couldn’t think of another reason to keep the dead in cages and deny them rest. “If you won’t embalm them, at least burn them—”

  “Embalming doesn’t work anymore. None of our people can walk the Paths of Light.”

  Gavarin said the words without emotion, but Romeo’s heart turned to ice in his chest. Because he knew what that meant. The Catresou believed that a realm of bliss awaited their clan after death, but that they could enter it only if their bodies were laid to rest with proper spells and prayers, embalmed with the brain and heart and stomach removed and placed in jars.

  That embalming had always been enough to keep their dead from rising again as revenants. It was why they, alone out of everyone in the city, had been permitted a sepulcher.

  “The Master Necromancer can make them rest,” said Gavarin. “But he makes us earn their entrance to the Paths of Light with our service. We’ve only bought peace for two so far. And there are more every day.”

  He nodded toward the nearest cage. Romeo looked, and realized that it wasn’t empty like he’d thought: the dead in it just weren’t moving. They lay piled together on the ground, blood soaked into their clothes and hair—

  It was the Jularios family.

  “Think on that, while you wait,” said Gavarin, turning away.

  “Wait!” Romeo called. He couldn’t look away from the pile of motionless bodies, couldn’t stop watching for the first twitch, but he had to ask. “The girl who died last night. You found me with her. What was her name?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I made her a promise,” said Romeo.

  And if he had to watch her rise again as a mindless, crawling thing, the least he could do was remember her name.

  “Emera Jularios Catresou,” said Gavarin, and shut the door on him.

  They left him there all day.

  Romeo waited. And watched. Every time the revenants moved in one of the other cages, he flinched, wondering if Emera was moving. He’d seen dead people before, and sat vigil for them, familiar faces turned still and empty. But he’d never seen them twisted into the Ruining’s cruel mockery of life, and when he imagined Emera like that, he felt sick.

  He didn’t want to see her that way. The very thought seemed like a violation.

  Right now, from where he sat with his back pressed against the wall, he couldn’t see her face at all. But he could see several strands of her red hair, trailing across the floor of the cage. He remembered her voice as she asked if he was going to protect them.

  She wasn’t only her wounds and her dying request, either. She’d been a person, with her own loves and hates. Her own story.

  Romeo just didn’t know any of it except the ending.

  He’d never bothered very much with wondering what happened to people after death. What did it matter if they were dust and nothingness, as the Mahyanai sages said, or feasting with the nine gods, as the Sisters of Thorn said? Either way, they were never coming back.

  When he’d met Juliet, and she’d told him—her face alight with a defiant joy—about the Paths of Light, he’d thought it a beautiful story. But he’d also thought it unspeakably dreary, how the Catresou were shackled to spend their whole lives preparing for those paths. And he’d loathed their belief that the spells m
aking Juliet their protector would also keep her from the paths, and doom her to become a witless, nameless ghost that faded into nothing.

  Then Juliet had died.

  And when Romeo had been able to think again—when he’d been able to think of her again, without his thoughts splintering into a thousand bleeding shards of grief and shame—he still hadn’t believed anything the Catresou said. But he had desperately wished that some part of Juliet remained somewhere still, and could be at peace.

  He wished that for Emera now. And he finally understood why the Catresou served the Master Necromancer. If he had thought it the only way to save his loved ones from eternal darkness, he might have done it too.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly—to her body, to her nothingness, because the Catresou were wrong. There was nothing left of her but a name in his mouth and a memory in his heart. “Emera, I am so sorry.”

  Her fingers twitched.

  Romeo shuddered. But he didn’t look away. As she began to move, he forced himself to keep speaking: “I will stop the Master Necromancer. I will save your people. I will get you a Catresou burial.”

  All the dead in Emera’s cage were moving now. They didn’t seem to know how to walk at first, not even whether they should use legs or arms. They rolled into each other, crawled over each other, a writhing mass of limbs.

  And then they smelled him.

  They scrabbled their way to the edge of the cage, grasped the bars, and hauled themselves up. They slid arms out between the bars and clawed at the air, jaws yawning open and then snapping shut with desperate hunger. Emera’s red hair was a tangled veil across her face, but Romeo could see her eyes, gray and sightless and inhuman.

  The grief he felt was as dark and vast as the night sky. He grieved for Emera, and for Juliet, and for Paris—for everyone whose life had been shattered by the Master Necromancer—for everyone alive, and therefore doomed to die and become nothing. Like Emera.

  “But none of that can save you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  The bolt rattled. Romeo was on his feet in a moment; he turned and saw the door opening.

  Paris stood outside. And Romeo’s heart shattered in his chest again, because while the cruel smile of the night before was gone, now there was no life in his face at all. Just the grim, relentless obedience that Romeo had once seen in Tybalt’s eyes, when the Master Necromancer sent him to kill them.

  Makari had been living dead as well, but he remembered himself.

  “Paris,” Romeo whispered, “this isn’t you, I know it, you don’t want—”

  “What’s that you’re saying about my brother?” asked Meros, stepping into view behind Paris. His voice was smug. “I’m afraid he understands his duties now. Death has a way of helping some people.”

  He ruffled Paris’s hair.

  You know he’s a slave, Romeo thought, sick with sudden fury. And you like it.

  “Anyway, it seems the Master Necromancer wants you alive a little longer,” said Meros. “So we won’t be putting you into a cage yet. If you give me your oath of obedience, I’ll even let you out of this room.”

  He thought that Romeo was intimidated, broken by fear of the revenants. It was clear in the smug sneer of his voice, and it made Romeo want to defy him.

  But he had come here to save Juliet’s people. He couldn’t do that locked away in a room full of revenants.

  He couldn’t save Paris while he was locked up either. And Paris could still be saved. Romeo believed that, he had to believe that.

  “I will obey you on two conditions,” he said. “Give Emera Juliaros a proper burial. And don’t ask me to harm Juliet.”

  “You think you can make demands of me?” said Meros.

  “I can tell you,” said Romeo, “it is the only way I will serve you. I made Emera a promise. And rather than harm Juliet, I would lock myself in one of those cages and let the revenants tear me to shreds.”

  Meros snorted a laugh. “Really?”

  Romeo’s heart thudded. Then he strode back to the cage where the Jularios family clawed at the air. He slammed his back into the bars and faced Meros.

  “Yes,” he said.

  His heart was beating very fast. His whole body crackled with fear. Nails scrabbled at his arm, trying to dig through his sleeve into flesh. A mouth closed on his shoulder, drooling and gnawing. A hand wrapped around his neck—he choked, but he wouldn’t move, he couldn’t—

  Paris lunged, sword flashing.

  The revenants shrieked. A moment later they had let go, and Paris was dragging him forward.

  Romeo stumbled, all the strength going out of his legs, and fell to his knees. Suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath; he could only gasp, and stare up at Paris’s face—now blank of all expression—and think, He saved me.

  Surely that meant something.

  “I see you’re just as foolish as they say.” Meros looked down his nose at him.

  “Yes,” said Romeo.

  It was true. He’d always been a fool. He was going to die one.

  But at least he might die helping the ones he loved.

  “If I agree to your absurd conditions, will you swear to serve me?” asked Meros. “As a true and loyal servant?”

  And suddenly, Romeo was just as terrified as when the revenants had wrapped their fingers around his neck. Because if he took this oath, there would be no turning back. He would not be able to change his mind, to run away again and find another secret way to be a hero. If he couldn’t persuade the Catresou to defy the Master Necromancer, he would have to serve along with them.

  Romeo felt like he was falling. But he’d already made this choice. He had made it when he first put on a mask. When he had agreed to help Paris fight necromancers. When he had asked Juliet to marry him. When he had seen her for the first time, lonely and beautiful.

  From the very first, he had belonged to the Catresou.

  So he said, “Yes,” and then he swore an oath.

  6

  THE NIGHT SKY YAWNED OPEN like the gates of death. The moon was down, but the stars pierced the darkness with a glitter like swords. All the world seemed to be holding its breath.

  By now, Romeo was used to crouching on rooftops. He was used to keeping his head low, his breathing soft and steady as he watched the people below. He was used to the tension coiling tighter and tighter as he waited for the violence to begin.

  He wasn’t used to waiting with someone on each side of him.

  He wasn’t used to doing the errands of the Master Necromancer.

  They weren’t here to free the few Catresou prisoners that Lord Ineo kept on his personal estate. They were going to do that—Gavarin had all but demanded it, had insisted to Meros and the rest of the Catresou lords that it would be an excellent distraction, and their duty besides. But that wasn’t why they had come.

  There’s a dead Catresou girl made living dead, and Lord Ineo keeps her for a pet, Meros had told them. The Master Necromancer is sending us to bring her home.

  The other Catresou had been wild to rescue her. They hadn’t asked who she was, or where she had come from. Romeo knew: she was the living dead girl who had once sat in a glass cage in Lord Catresou’s secret study. He’d called her the “Little Lady” and used her to bargain with the Master Necromancer.

  Paris had been horrified when they discovered her. Now he was living dead himself, and he would bring the Little Lady back to a Catresou cage—or worse. Romeo had no idea what the Master Necromancer might want her for, but it couldn’t be anything good.

  (He tried not to think about what the Master Necromancer might be doing to Makari right now.)

  Romeo had wanted to go with Paris, but he wasn’t trusted that far. He was to help breaking out the prisoners; there were fifteen of them, split into five groups. So there were only two people crouched on the rooftop with Romeo.

  “Everything look normal to you?” asked Gavarin, his voice a barely audible rumble.

  “Yes,” said Romeo, his stomach tigh
tening as he looked down at the empty courtyard. As a child, he’d been so desperately excited when he was allowed to visit.

  He wasn’t used to leading an attack on his own clan. But the Catresou prisoners surely deserved to be saved.

  Ilurio snorted. “It’s empty. Don’t need any hero to tell us that.” He was Romeo’s age, and he’d imperiously introduced himself as Ilurio Alabann Catresou, as if it were an important name everyone ought to know. Maybe it was.

  “Quiet,” said Gavarin, still watching the courtyard.

  “What’s he ever done for us?” Ilurio muttered. “I don’t see why everyone wants to treat him like a hero when he’s one of our enemies.”

  Without looking, Gavarin reached over and cuffed the back of his head. “I said quiet.”

  Ilurio huffed indignantly, but held his tongue.

  “Time to go,” said Gavarin. “Masks on.”

  Ilurio pulled out his mask and started tying it on. Romeo, who’d already put on his, took a slow breath, trying to control his heartbeat. Now. He was going to start fighting his own people now.

  Suddenly Gavarin seized Romeo’s wrist. His grip felt tight enough to snap bones. He looked at Romeo, his gaze slicing through his mask.

  “Wasn’t my call to bring you with us,” said Gavarin, voice still barely above a murmur. “Wasn’t my place to choose. But you ruin this, and I will gut you.”

  Like the Jularios family? Romeo wanted to say. But he knew better than to pick fights on the cusp of a battle.

  “I swore to serve your people,” he said. “I will keep my oath or die.”

  The room was small and windowless and heavily bolted. Inside, on a little wooden stool, sat a girl. Her head was bowed, gold ringlets falling forward over her shoulders. Her face was pale and still as a wax doll.

  She was living dead.

  “I know you can speak,” said Runajo, though she knew no such thing.

  But the girl had walked into this room when they led her from the Catresou compound. She had settled into her chair and clasped her hands. She hadn’t moved since, but she should be able to speak.