Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “The bleeding stars we’re letting you go alone,” says Wyn. “It could be a trap.”

  “We’ll come armed and stay out of sight,” says Dek. “Whistle if you need us.”

  I am unsure—it will annoy Jun if he discovers it—but in the end, I agree. He may have swoon-worthy cheekbones and dimples to die for, but that’s no reason to trust him.

  The address we arrive at isn’t the house I saw Jun go into the other night. It is in the same part of Dongshui, though. The place is a wreck, a burnt-out shell. Nobody lives there, that much is obvious. The fellows settle behind a wall just up the road. I go vanished into the ruined house, through its courtyards and gutted rooms. Nobody. But when I go back outside, I see him, a blurry silhouette waiting in the bright, empty road. I suppose I’m showing off, but I get close to him before stepping back into the visible world, startling him. He pulls out the stick he jabbed me with before. I might have found his wielding a stick funny if my side didn’t still hurt whenever I moved.

  “That’s unfriendly,” I say. “I thought now we’d had tea, there wouldn’t be any more of that.”

  “The note says come alone,” he says. “You are not alone.”

  “You almost speared me with that stick the other night,” I say. “That sort of thing makes a girl nervous.”

  His eyebrows go down in a scowl. No sympathy there. I shrug and whistle. Dek and Wyn emerge from behind the wall, pistols visible at their belts, and saunter over to us.

  “I only want to meet your boss,” I say. “But I think I’m allowed a bit of protection.”

  His mouth gives a mocking quirk. “That is not protection.”

  I don’t have time to reply or ask him what he means by that. Very casually, he takes something from the pouch at his waist and tosses it into the road at Wyn’s feet. I flinch, but it isn’t a wasp nest like the one he threw the first night I followed him. We all stare at it—it looks like a grayish rock—and then a bolt of white flame shoots out of it, crackling. I leap back with a cry, momentarily blinded. There is a pistol shot, and Dek shouting, “Don’t shoot him, you bleeding fool!” and then, “Oi!”

  He is quick as anything, I’ll give him that. He yanks Dek’s crutch away from him and swings it at Wyn’s head, landing such a blow that Wyn staggers and falls to one knee. Jun hits him again with the crutch and wrestles the gun away from him, then swings back toward Dek and shouts, “Drop gun!”

  Dek is collapsed in the street anyway, has only just gotten his gun out. He lets it go.

  “Stop it!” I shout.

  Jun is breathing hard, his brow shining with sweat. Dek’s crutch is in one hand and Wyn’s pistol is in the other, pointed at me.

  “Don’t move,” he says, and the flare of white fire shrinks and vanishes. The thing in the street looks like a blob of black sludge now. Wyn groans, head in his hands. Dek is all right, though, and pulls himself to standing against the wall.

  “That went well,” he says to me.

  “Shut up,” I reply.

  “Your friend shoot at me,” Jun says accusingly.

  “You set fire to the street,” I say—realizing belatedly that the flame gave off no heat. “What was that?”

  “I take you to meet boss,” he says, ignoring my question. “Not them.”

  Wyn gets slowly to his feet. He looks rather sick. Jun tenses, but when Wyn makes no move, he tosses Dek’s crutch back to him. Dek catches it awkwardly, says, “Thanks.”

  That’s when I decide that I trust him—because he didn’t hit Dek, and gave him back his crutch. Still pointing Wyn’s gun at me, he snatches Dek’s gun off the ground and tucks it into his belt.

  “Now you go,” he says to them.

  I say, “It’s all right. I’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like this,” says Dek, hitching his crutch back under his armpit.

  But since Jun has both of their guns, there is really no argument to be had. They shuffle off, glancing over their shoulders anxiously. I give a jaunty wave to reassure them, and then they are out of sight. Jun lowers the pistol, and I relax a little.

  “You know the house?” he asks.

  “So do they,” I tell him. I showed it to them on the way here, and if they try to stage a rescue, I’d rather he not be startled.

  “Go,” he says, and we do, to the house I remember from the night I followed him back.

  We pass through the outer sections of the house and through an unkempt courtyard to the inner house, which is dark and decaying. The walls have holes in them. The floor is unswept. A mouse skitters out of sight as we enter. Jun dead-bolts each door behind him. I don’t say that if Wyn and Dek turn up, locked doors won’t keep them out. He knocks on a door at the end of a cobwebbed hall and calls out in Fraynish: “Boss, I bring the girl.”

  A singsonging male voice answers: “Bring her in, then, dove!”

  This room is as poorly tended as the rest of the house, the once opulent furniture frayed and stained. At a desk by the window sits a Fraynish man in his fifties, or perhaps a little younger, but aged by debauchery. He wears a double-breasted waistcoat that, like the furniture, has seen better days, and he peers at me over a pair of crooked, gold-rimmed spectacles. The whole house, including its main occupant, gives the impression of past wealth and current decay.

  “Julia, is it?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Real name?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Count Fournier.”

  He rises and comes around his desk toward me with springing steps, holding his hand out. I am startled to notice that he is in his stocking feet and his stockings have holes in them—a big knobby toe poking out the end of one. He is tall and bowlegged, with a gut that strains the buttons of his waistcoat. His features droop downward, as if the flesh of his face simply hasn’t the energy to stay stuck up on his head any longer, and this gives him a rather sad expression. I take his sweaty hand, and he plants a kiss on my knuckles. I wonder if I am supposed to curtsy, but it seems silly in trousers.

  “Charmed,” he says. “Always a pleasure to meet someone from the homeland. May I offer you a drink?”

  “No thank you.”

  “No? Very well. Do sit down.”

  I sit on one of the sofas, sinking deep into the ancient cushions, dust pluming up around me and making me cough. It smells like mold and cat piss, though I don’t see any cats. Count Fournier sits across from me in a gigantic chaise, slinging one leg over the other. Jun stays standing by the door, pointing Dek’s pistol at me as if I might suddenly attack the count. I wish he’d put it down.

  “I’m going to tell you what I know about you first,” Count Fournier says pleasantly. “And then I’ll tell you what I think. You may tell me how much I’ve got right. Won’t that be fun?”

  “Sounds like a barrel of laughs,” I say.

  “Let us begin. You are Fraynish. It is your native tongue. You are a witch of some kind. You have not been in Yongguo long, and you speak the language only slightly. You have entered the Shou-shu Monastery secretly on multiple occasions. You are working for somebody with power and political interests rooted in Frayne. These things I know. Here is what I think. I think you are a low-class girl, probably from Spira City, judging by your accent, and, in that case, probably from the Twist. I think you have been instructed to find out what you can about the Fraynish girl in the monastery and about anybody involved with her. I think you know exactly who she is. I think you probably know a fair bit about me. I’d wager even odds that I will have to kill you shortly.”

  I decide, as he reaches the end of this little speech, that I do not like him much at all.

  “What do you think of my guesses?” he asks.

  “You’re partly right,” I reply. “But you’ve got it all wrong regarding the girl in the monastery and yourself. Also, I’m not a witch. Like I told Jun, I’m looking for the monk Ko Dan. I don’t know anything about you or the Fraynish girl.”

  “That is a convenient story,” he
says. “But not very believable.”

  I see Wyn’s face at the window for a second, waggling his eyebrows at me, and I stiffen. I hope they don’t come bursting in while Jun has the gun on me. I’d rather he not be startled with his finger on the trigger.

  “Here’s what I know about you,” I say. “You’re Fraynish nobility, but you’re broke, and you’ve been stuck out here a long time. You’re frightened because, whatever you’re up to in the monastery with this Fraynish girl, you think I’ve found you out. But we’ve got different things going on, and we might even be able to help each other, if you could trust me.”

  He waves a hand at Jun, who lowers the pistol, looking relieved. “Go on, then,” he says.

  “I work for a Fraynish lady….I can’t tell you who she is, but she is very powerful, and finding Ko Dan is important to her. I reckon you’ve got connections in the city. I thought we could make a deal. If you’ll do a bit of digging about Ko Dan and share with me whatever you find, I’ll help you however you’d like. I’m sure you could think of something useful a girl who can vanish might do for you.”

  He takes this in.

  “You really don’t know who the girl in the monastery is?”

  “Should I?”

  He grins. His teeth are yellow. “I expect your employer knows—this powerful and important lady you work for.”

  “Maybe she does, but she didn’t see fit to share it with me.”

  “What religion are you?” he asks, quite out of nowhere.

  “I was raised Baltist, in the loosest sense,” I reply.

  “What does that mean, ‘in the loosest sense’?”

  “I was raised only in the loosest sense.”

  I feel Jun watching me closely. If I had to guess, I’d say he knows just what I mean.

  “You are too young to remember the Lorian Uprising,” says Count Fournier.

  I’ll bet an exiled count was on the wrong side of that rebellion, and I think I see the way to win him over.

  “I was born the year after,” I say. “But I heard stories of it. My parents and my employers were on the side of the revolutionaries back then.”

  He leans back, clasping his hands around one knee, and looks at me a long time, as if wondering whether to believe me.

  “Have you heard of Gregor Chastain, or Esme and Gustaf Moreau?” I ask.

  He looks properly surprised for the first time. “I knew Gustaf. Everybody knew Gustaf.”

  “If you lived in Spira City, then you know that after he was hung, his wife, Esme, took over the Twist. I worked for her, growing up. Now I work for someone else, and so do Esme and Gregor. It has nothing to do with your girl in the monastery.”

  “Gregor Chastain and Esme Moreau would know who she is,” he says slyly.

  “Well, I could bring them by, if you’d like,” I say, a little too carelessly.

  “Could you, now?” he asks, real interest in his eyes. “They are in Tianshi? How remarkable!”

  “I just want to know about Ko Dan,” I say, anxious that I’ve said too much. “I’ll bring friends over, do a bit of spying for you, scare somebody you’d like scared, make you dinner, whatever you like, if you’ll tell me what you know about Ko Dan.”

  “My dear girl, I do not know anything about Ko Dan.”

  I could kick myself for naming Esme and Gregor.

  “So I’m wasting my bleeding time, am I?”

  A click from the door. I leap to my feet as Jun spins around, raising the gun.

  “Don’t shoot!” I beg him, and the door swings wide, but there is nobody there. “Stop!” I call to Dek and Wyn, who are presumably in the hall. “Don’t do anything!”

  But then Wyn comes charging in with a sheet of scrap metal in front of him. Jun hesitates, which makes me think he’s probably never fired a gun before. Dek appears in the doorway, pointing a little single-handed crossbow that used to belong to Professor Baranyi, and shoots him in the shoulder. Jun gives him a woozy look, tries to point the gun, then fumbles and drops it. He stares at the gun on the ground. “Faaa…,” he mutters, reaching for it, eyelids drooping, and then he falls, unconscious.

  I skid to my knees next to him, feeling for a pulse. I can’t breathe until I find it, steady in his wrist.

  Wyn snatches up the pistol and points it at Count Fournier, tossing aside his scrap metal. The count sighs like somebody has just broken a teacup.

  “Is Jun going to be all right?” he asks.

  “I hope so.” I shoot an evil look at Wyn and Dek. “I wasn’t looking for a rescue.”

  “We couldn’t be sure,” says Wyn. “It didn’t look entirely friendly in here.”

  He’s got a darkly purpling bruise on his temple, but otherwise he seems to have recovered pretty well from being clocked on the head earlier. He helps me lift Jun onto the smelly sofa. Jun’s head flops back, his mouth hanging open. He looks much younger this way, and I resist the urge to smooth back the strands of black hair that have fallen in his face.

  “He’ll be fine in an hour or so,” says Dek, although he sounds less sure than I’d like. He told us himself that it’s difficult to gauge the right dose with sleeping serum.

  “He’s not going to be happy with us when he wakes up,” I say.

  Wyn gives me an odd look. “Does it matter?”

  I shrug. I’d been hoping for another of Jun’s brilliant smiles, and instead it’s been all scowls and pointing pistols. Of course, it shouldn’t matter. We’re not here to make friends.

  “I suppose now you’d better answer some questions,” I say to the count.

  “I hope it’s safe to assume that you two are not with the Fraynish delegation that arrived the other day,” he says, looking Wyn and Dek over. “You don’t look it.”

  He knows well enough that a Scourge survivor is an outcast in Frayne.

  “They work with me. We don’t know anything about any delegation,” I say.

  “We’d like to know, though,” says Wyn, giving his pistol a little twirl.

  “Somebody very high up, my contacts tell me,” says Count Fournier. His voice is smooth, but I notice his fingers are trembling. “There have been delegations sent before, of course. They’ve been petitioning Gangzi and the emperor for permission to search the monastery for close to a year now.”

  “Why don’t they just send somebody over the wall if they want to look around?” I ask. “It’s hardly fortified.”

  “Because the Fraynish Crown fears Gangzi, and rightly so, but you never can be sure—they might fear the girl even more. That’s why Jun has been spending so much time there. Keeping an eye.”

  “So she’s someone important, this Fraynish girl?”

  “Yes,” chuckles the count. “She’s important. King Zey has fallen ill. Have you heard?”

  I hadn’t. We haven’t had news from Frayne since we left two months ago.

  “He is an old man, and the doctors can do nothing more for him. A distant cousin has been named heir. But there are many who would agree that the girl in the monastery has a greater claim to the throne.”

  I stare at him blankly.

  “She is King Zey’s niece,” he says. “Prince Roparzh’s daughter. Her name is Zara.”

  It takes a minute for this to sink in. I remember the old story of a baby princeling smuggled out of Frayne when Prince Roparzh, King Zey’s brother, was hung along with his wife and older children after the Lorian Uprising. I’d always assumed it was a wishful rumor. The revolutionaries had hoped to oust Zey and place his brother on the throne. Prince Roparzh was a Lorian by marriage, and certainly a more moderate man, without Zey’s passion for stamping out every last glimmer of folklorish ways.

  “Hounds,” breathes Wyn. “That’s a twist, isn’t it? What in flaming Kahge is she doing here?”

  “She has been raised, guarded, and educated in hiding, by witches and those allied with them,” says Count Fournier. “There was a great network of us across the world working to keep her safe. Have you heard of the Sidhar Co
ven?”

  “Yes,” I say. Dek and I exchange a look. Our mother was a part of it.

  “My aunt, Lady Laroche, is the head of that coven,” he says eagerly, clearly proud of the association. “She brokered the deal with Gangzi a couple of years ago. We thought no place more secret, more secure than Shou-shu, which is protected by the empire but not answerable to any outside authority. But I have heard nothing from my aunt in over a year, have received no money, and I do not know if she is still alive.” He speeds up, the floodgates open now: “This new Fraynish delegation will try to offer Gangzi something in exchange for the princess, make a deal, and if he believes his agreement with my aunt has expired, then perhaps they will succeed. If I had any connections left, I would get her out, but all my contacts have gone silent this past year. Many of the witches who organized the princess’s escape in the first place have been hunted down by now. I am running out of money. Jun is the only employee I have left. I have no means with which to return home….” He trails off. His hands are shaking badly now.

  I gesture at Wyn to lower his pistol and he does.

  “You see, you do need help,” I say. “I’ll talk to our employer. She has money and connections, no doubt about that. She might even know something about this Lady Laroche, your aunt. But I want you to ask around about Ko Dan. See if there are any rumors about where he went. If you can find something out for us, I’ll bet my employer can help you and your princess. She’s quite good at dodging the Fraynish Crown.”

  “You’re really here for Ko Dan?” he asks wonderingly.

  I nod.

  “I confess I had some idea of who you worked for, though I couldn’t be sure of her purpose.” He slips from his pocket the picture of me, Bianka, and Mrs. Och that’s plastered around the city. Of course. Blast.

  “Jun recognized you from this picture,” he says. “I don’t know who this woman is.” He points to Bianka, then slides his finger over to Mrs. Och. “But this—this is Och Farya of the Xianren.” He looks up at us, eyes glinting.

  I don’t know whether to confirm or deny it, so I say nothing. Wyn and Dek follow my lead, their expressions blank.