Beyond the Ruby Veil

by Mara Fitzgerald

  “Well,” she says, “you’re going to.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I’m not just a servant, you know,” she says. “Their papa has been gone for years, and the way their maman treated them—there’s no one else. There’s only me.”

  I assess her. “So you know about their magic?”

  “I know that they go into the underground well every day and come out bleeding,” she says. “And I fix them up. I don’t ask questions, because they saved this city, and that’s all I need to know. And you’re not going to ruin that.”

  So she doesn’t know enough to be useful to me. I suppose I am going to fight an old woman, after all.

  That’s fine. I don’t know her. I don’t care about her.

  I stuff the journal down my front for safekeeping and inch closer. Closer. The housekeeper doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  “Emanuela,” Ale says.

  I try to snatch the knife from her hands, and she jabs at me, so I kick her in the knee. She buckles, and I run past her into the parlor. I look around wildly for something I can use to restrain her.

  But she’s already running at me with the knife. I jump onto the love seat, then leap on top of her. We hit the floor so hard that something in her body crunches.

  I’ve heard that sound before. I scramble off her, certain that it’s already over.

  She’s already back on her feet, limping and grimacing, but still coming at me.

  I grab a silver platter off the coffee table and hit her in the head. The clang is resounding. I drop the platter, startled by my own force, and she staggers.

  Surely she’ll give up now.

  She’s not giving up.

  She slashes at me wildly, and I skitter back. I find a wine bottle on the coffee table and hold it up like a club. She hesitates.

  “All right, old woman.” I’m breathing hard. “Just stand aside and let us do what we need to do. We’ll be out of—”

  She slashes at me again. I throw my arm in front my face instinctively. There’s a sharp pain, and then, there’s blood. There’s more blood than I expected, and for a moment, I’m stunned by the sight of it.

  I can’t take a light touch with this woman. She’s not taking a light touch with me.

  I whack her in the face with the wine bottle, and she collapses to the floor. I drop the wine bottle and snatch up her knife instead, then back up to the far side of the room, ready for whatever she’s going to try next.

  “Emanuela!” Ale is halfway to the front door now. “What are you doing? Let’s just go—”

  “Not yet,” I say.

  On the floor, the housekeeper is stirring, and if I don’t stop her, she’s going to stop me. I have to protect myself. I have to protect Ale.

  “We shouldn’t stay in here any longer,” Ale says. “They’re going to come back—”

  From the dining room, I hear a door crack open. The door to the underground well.

  But the housekeeper is back on her feet. She grabs my abandoned wine bottle and chucks it at me.

  It misses. It hits the enormous, beautiful stained-glass window behind me—the one that depicts the white-gloved hands making the water. The bottle goes right through. For a moment, we both stare at the jagged hole.

  Then she charges.

  It happens so fast. She dives at me like she’s going to strangle me, so I push the knife into her as hard as I can. It slips right between two of her ribs, and it feels strangely neat and perfect. Like it’s supposed to be there. She makes a faint gurgling noise. Already, her blood is seeping out of her. It’s staining my fingers and her white apron, and for a moment, I just stare at it.

  She must have known this would happen if she kept fighting. If she underestimated me, that’s not my fault.

  Someone is screaming. It’s not me. I don’t think it’s me, at least. I look around, and I catch a glimpse of Verene emerging from the dining room, but then the housekeeper coughs right in my face. Her hot blood splatters my cheek, and for one horrible moment, I meet her eyes.

  She doesn’t look afraid. She looks completely certain of herself.

  I don’t understand. I’m the one who’s besting her. I’m the one who’s supposed to feel confident, because I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do. The housekeeper failed to stop me. She failed to protect her charges. She shouldn’t be at peace with that.

  I yank the knife out, and it makes a loud, wet noise. The housekeeper groans and doubles over. Blood dribbles out of the wound and stains the black-and-white tile near my feet, and I just stand there, clutching the dirty knife. It occurs to me, then, that this isn’t like pushing a woman off a balcony and snapping her neck. If this kills her, it’s going to be drawn out and messy. I’m going to have to listen to her ragged breathing and watch her struggle to stay upright and know that she’s in pain. I’m going to have to watch the omens crawl across her skin.

  So I kick her into the stained-glass window. It doesn’t feel like a decision. It feels more like a necessity. I need her out of my sight.

  It’s spectacular. The whole thing shatters in a spray of blue-and-white glass, and I have to shield my face. When I open my eyes, I can see the black veil and the street below. Tiny pieces at the edge of the window are still breaking loose and falling, like teardrops.

  I hear distant screaming from the square. I see even more lantern light coming our way.

  I can’t believe I stuck a knife in her. I can’t believe any of it just happened. It was all so quick.

  I turn around. Ale is in the same spot, his face white. At the entrance to the dining room, Theo and Verene are frozen in their tracks. They were running at me. They were trying to stop me.

  But they didn’t. They couldn’t.

  I point the knife at Verene. I heard her scream earlier, but now, she looks strangely blank. I don’t like it at all. It makes me suddenly aware of the sick feeling of wrongness that’s filled up my throat. I want to say something—something pointed and decisive and unconcerned. But if I open my mouth, I’m going to vomit.

  This is exactly what needed to happen, I remind myself. Verene needs to know how thoroughly I plan to defeat her.

  She needs to know what I’m capable of.

  I’m capable of killing someone. I can push them off a balcony, if I have to. But I can also put a knife between their ribs. I can feel their blood all over my hands.

  All I want to do is wipe this blood off. It’s sticky, and the smell is in my nose and in my throat. But I can’t wipe it off. Then I’ll look like I’m sorry about this, and I refuse to feel sorry about it. The housekeeper wasn’t going to get out of my way. She was an obstacle.

  I swallow hard.

  “What?” I say to Verene. “If you’re going to make this difficult, then so am I.”

  I’m amazed at how steady my voice is.

  Verene and Theo don’t move. They look like they still haven’t quite figured out what’s happening. All at once, I imagine them as the little children in that portrait I saw, in the arms of the woman I just threw out a window. But surely they didn’t care that much about her. She was only a housekeeper.

  “Well?” I say. “Are you just going to stand here? Because I thought you were—”

  “I’ll kill you,” Verene says.

  I can’t comprehend the words. Her face is still so blank, like she just said something matter-of-fact. Something that she says a hundred times a day.

  “I’ll kill you.”

  She says it again. Her voice is low but unmistakable.

  “You’ll kill me?” My mouth dry, and I find myself tightening my grip on the knife. “Really?”

  “She was innocent,” she says. “She never did anything to you.”

  “Actually, she attacked me,” I say. “She said she wanted to protect you. So, really, this is your fault—”

  Verene takes a step forward.

  She doesn’t have a weapon, and I do. She doesn’t have any magic that I don’t know about. She can’t hurt me.
r />   And yet, I feel suddenly outmatched. I’ve never seen this kind of cold, bone-deep determination in anyone’s eyes.

  “I’m not going to pretend I know everything about the bizarre way your people worship you,” I say. I haven’t taken my eyes off her. I’m afraid to even blink. “But I’m pretty sure that if you killed someone, your city would no longer consider you a… good person.”

  “Sometimes,” Verene says, “it’s good for people to die.”

  I notice suddenly the way Theo is looking at his sister. His hand is outstretched, but he’s hesitating, like he’s not quite sure what’s going to happen if he touches her.

  I know that the mob is coming for us. I know that if I want any chance of getting Verene under my control, I have to attack her now. But I’m suddenly certain that if I try to fight her, I’m going to lose.

  I can’t face her like this. I need more. I need more magic.

  So I run for the foyer. I push Ale ahead of me, through the short hall with the vase of white roses, and slam the front door.

  I have to stop to catch my breath, because I feel like I’m going to faint. My hands are strangely tingly. I just want to get this blood off.

  And I can hear footsteps behind the door. They’re following us, of course.

  I’m about to keep running when my eyes catch on the small statues guarding either side of the door. They’re carved to look like Verene, naturally, with her billowing skirts and her graceful neck. They’re each holding a large glass lantern with a flame inside. They’re so pretty and so perfect.

  I lunge at one of the statues and push it over.

  The lantern shatters. The flame leaps onto the door and starts to spread, much quicker than I thought it would. Instantly, I feel the heat on my face.

  I push over the other statue.

  “Emanuela,” Ale says.

  “What?” I say.

  Verene and Theo can escape through their underground well. But they don’t deserve to stay in their grandiose hiding place. This is what happens to people who steal from my city and get in my way.

  I start down the stairs. But Ale is lingering, wincing at the heat, like he thinks there’s anything he can do to stop it.

  There’s not. There’s nothing I could do either, at this point, even if I wanted to. And I don’t.

  “Ale,” I say.

  I turn back and grab his hand.

  He resists. “I—”

  “The mob is coming,” I say.

  And he follows me, because he has no choice. We race through the dark halls of the cathedral and climb out of the same broken window we used before.

  But the moment our feet touch the ground outside, we can’t evade the mob. There’s too many of them, coming out of every dark street. Three grown men surround me, yanking my arms behind my back and binding my wrists. It’s chaos. Everyone is yelling and crowding around, trying to catch a glimpse of the faces of the famed attackers.

  I decide not to fight. I let them lead me away. Because a little time in prison has never stopped me before.

  FIFTEEN

  IN THE DARK HOURS OF THE EARLY MORNING, I PEER OUT OF my cell window and watch Iris burn.

  I’m surprised the city has a jail at all, but I suppose even Verene has to lock people up when they commit crimes. It’s a tiny hall in the Parliament buildings, and Ale and I are the only occupants. We’ve been put into two cells across the hall from each other. Mine has a barred window that looks out onto the cathedral, which happens to be a very lively view at the moment.

  The banner I made is still hanging on the balcony. Behind it, the cathedral is on fire, bright and smoky against the black veil. For a city absolutely doused in water, they’re doing a very bad job of putting it out. People are running every which way with buckets of water and bags of dirt, but it’s not enough. In the nearby manors, the nobles are peering out of their windows, watching with grave faces.

  I haven’t seen Theo or Verene. But every time I think I hear a noise, I jump, certain that it’s going to be her. The hall remains empty.

  Every so often, I glance over at Ale. At first, he’s sitting on his cot, staring at the wall. Then he curls up on his side. I hear his soft little wheezing snores.

  Ale thinks that all we need to do to save Occhia is stop the vide. At first, that’s what I thought, too. But the more I learn, the more obvious it is to me that we can’t rely on anyone else for our water. We can’t rely on a capricious spirit in the catacombs or the mysterious rulers of the other six cities. We need something that’s all our own.

  We need someone all our own. We need a savior who’s so powerful that no one can ever hurt us again.

  I sit down by the bars of my cell. I pull my stolen journal out, angle it to catch the lantern light glowing in the hall, and start at the beginning.

  Most of the entries are short and matter-of-fact, and the purpose of the journal is immediately obvious. The Eyes is chronicling the lives of her family. She never talks about herself except in relation to them.

  She probably didn’t have much else to talk about. She was alive for almost a thousand years, and if she was anything like the watercrea in Occhia, she spent every single day taking scared, unresisting prisoners and turning their blood to water.

  I’ve never thought about what the watercrea’s life must have been like. But for the first time, I do. I wonder if she got bored. I wonder if she felt trapped.

  She had so much power. She could have done so much more, but she didn’t. She just stayed in her tower. The thought almost makes me sad, but I refuse to be sad for her.

  I flip through the journal, reading quickly as the Eyes paints a picture of her children growing up. She writes about keeping watch at Theo’s bedside when he had a terrible fever that took away his hearing in one ear. She writes about how Verene wouldn’t stop making friends with her assigned guards even though she’d been told to keep her distance. She writes about how after his father’s death, Theo disappeared into his room and stopped eating. Then the journal is taken over by an exhaustive account of every disobedient thing Verene ever did. She chopped off her own hair. She showed up drunk to her lessons. She lit a fire in her bedroom—though it was hastily smothered by the housekeeper.

  At the mention of housekeeper, I skip the rest of the page. I scan and scan, and every so often, I find something that gives me pause.

  They’re both disappointments. They don’t seem to understand how important this is. After a thousand years, I’m going to hand over the city. If they can’t handle it, everything will fall apart.

  She makes it sound like she was preparing to give her children her magic. As if it’s something that could be given. Or something that can be chosen.

  Perhaps I should just stay. If the others find out I’m going to turn my city over to an heir, I don’t know what they’ll do. This isn’t what we agreed on.

  But it’s been so long. And I’m so tired.

  I turn the pages faster and faster. Then I reach an entry from two years ago.

  Tomorrow morning, I’m going to bring them into the study and tell them everything. It’s time for them to do the ritual, and then I’ll have my heir.

  I just snuck over to check on them. She was in his bedroom, bouncing around and talking his ear off while he tried to read. They’ve changed so much over the years, but at the same time, they haven’t changed at all.

  I thought raising them in isolation would be better. My heir doesn’t need to worry about the mundane concerns of life in the city—not when they’re going to live forever. It’s forced them to cling to each other, because they have no one else, especially now that their father is gone. I expected that.

  I just didn’t expect that it would be so hard for me. I’ve seen so much worse. I’ve done so much worse. But they’re still my children.

  My heir has to be strong. Strong enough to keep a city alive forever. Stronger than I am.

  The rest of the journal is blank. For a long moment, I just sit there, staring at it and
willing more words to appear.

  “Emanuela.”

  I startle at the voice. Across the hall, Ale is sitting up on his cot, the thin blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He’s looking at the book in my hands.

  I close it. “What?”

  “We need to get out of here,” he says.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” I say.

  “I was barely even sleeping,” he says. “I can’t stop thinking about Occhia. How long have we been gone? Two days? Three days?”

  I don’t know. Time has lost all meaning for me in this place. All I know is that somewhere across the veil and the catacombs, our people are struggling.

  But I’m so close to being able to save them.

  “We’ll be back there soon,” I say.

  His eyes are worried. He’s probably thinking about his family. Personally, I’m less concerned about them. The House of Morandi had the most water to begin with, and they’ll hoard as much as they can.

  “So you have a plan?” he says. “Can you just tell me what it is?”

  “Does it matter if you know?” I say.

  “It’s just…” he says. “I want to know if you actually have an idea for how to stop the vide, or if you’re going to”—he glances out the window behind me, at the burning cathedral—“destroy more things.”

  “And what’s wrong with destroying things in this city?” I say. “Do you feel bad for them now? The people who stole our city’s water for two years? Did they tell you they were going to use the vide to send us to a prison at the very bottom of the catacombs?”

  “Well, I don’t want that,” he says, looking unnerved. “I don’t. I just… I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t done it this way. If we had just told them we were in trouble and asked if they might help.”

  “They would have sent us to their prison at the very bottom of the catacombs,” I say, unimpressed.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  He puts down the blanket and runs a nervous hand through his hair, trying to smooth down his bedhead.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t really explain it. I just think maybe they’re just doing the best they can in a bad situation. That doesn’t make them bad people who need to be totally… ruined.”