Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  He jerks his chin at the hotel. “You look at this place like there is ghost inside.”

  I shake my head, start to turn away.

  “Julia,” he says, and I stop. There’s something new in his expression, two parts mischief and one part uncertainty. “I can tell you what is here at Hundred Lantern Hotel.”

  “What?”

  “Best red bean soup in Tianshi. Maybe in all Yongguo. Maybe in the world.”

  He arches an eyebrow invitingly, tilting his head toward the door. I can’t help smiling, but I shake my head.

  “I can’t go in there.”

  He nods and says, “Come with me.”

  I don’t ask where. He takes me across the Zhuque Road and through a maze of narrow streets to a small eatery with a single lantern hanging outside. I follow him down the steps into a candlelit cavern, where a girl of maybe twelve is serving drinks and filling pipes for old men. She sees Jun and waves, then points to a curtain at the back of the room. We sit down at a little booth behind the curtain. The girl brings us tea, and Jun signs at her with his fingers. She nods and disappears again, letting the curtain fall shut.

  “What was that?”

  “She is not hearing,” he says. “She use signs. You know it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Can be useful if you are hearing or not,” he says. “Maybe I will teach you one day.”

  I hope I’m not going to be in Tianshi much longer, but it gives me a warm feeling, the way he says this—as if he’s taking it for granted that we are on the same side, that we will continue to know and help each other. And what is this? Why did he bring me here? I pull my hair out of my face, trying to comb through the tangles with my fingers. I would have washed my face and brushed my hair, at least, if I’d known I was going to end up in a candlelit booth with him.

  He leans toward me across the table. “How you disappear?” he asks me.

  “I just…do.”

  “Show me?”

  Stars. He says it so sweetly.

  “All right,” I say. “There are…I mean, I can disappear just a little, or a lot. If I were to try and disappear just a little right now, it wouldn’t work, because you’re already looking at me. But I can go back farther. I won’t move, so when I do it, grab my hand, all right?”

  He nods, and I vanish. Two steps back. His eyes widen, and he reaches across the table for my hand. Everything pulls into focus as I’m yanked back into the world by the contact. I laugh at the stunned look on his face, and he gives his head a little shake. He’s still holding my hand.

  “If you disappear and I touch you, I can see you again. But before, you disappear while I am holding you.”

  “If I’m just vanished partway, a bump or something kind of…knocks me back,” I say. “It’s hard to explain it, but it’s as if there are layers of vanishing.” I don’t know why I tell him this—it’s dangerous territory—but I add: “I can even take you with me, if I try.”

  “Take me where?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I hold his hand tightly, and I pull us back carefully, pull him with me. Two steps. The little room blurs around us, but he—he stays in focus.

  “Nobody can see me now?” he whispers. His face is like a light in the faded nowhere, our own invisible cocoon just beyond the edges of the world.

  “That’s right,” I say. My heart speeds up, and I let go of his hand. The room sharpens around us again. The girl from before pulls back the curtain and puts a plate of steaming pork buns in front of us. Jun thanks her with his fingers, and she lets the curtain fall shut again.

  “You are afraid of somebody at Hundred Lantern Hotel,” he says, splitting open one of the buns so steam pours out. It smells delicious, and my mouth starts watering immediately. I grab the other bun. “Is it same person who put up pictures of you and your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “This person is dangerous to you?”

  “Very,” I say.

  “Why this person is looking for you?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  He nods, accepting this.

  “This place is safe. Nobody will tell they see you.”

  We demolish our pork buns at the same lightning speed. He licks a finger to pick up the crumbs off the plate. I’m tempted to do the same but decide to make some effort at appearing ladylike.

  “What about you?” I ask. “Where did you learn…well, the sorts of things you can do?”

  He grins at me, the dimples reemerging. Blast ladylike—I lick a finger and help him finish the crumbs. From the pouch at his waist he takes out a grayish rock like the one that shot out a bolt of flame when he threw it at the ground. I recoil, and he laughs.

  “Count Fournier buy me this,” he says. “Touch.”

  I touch the rock with my fingertips, but it is not a rock at all. It is spongy and warm.

  “It is just trick,” he says. “The fire does not burn. But looks very hot and bright. If I throw it down, it can scare someone, give me a chance.”

  “It did scare us,” I say. “I saw you leaving the monastery one night. You had a jar of wasps or something.”

  He grins at me again. Oh, I am utterly slain by this smiling, laughing, candlelit version of Jun.

  “I learn that back home,” he says. “Get nest at night when wasps are sleeping, trap in a jar, and you have like a bomb you can throw if someone is chasing you.”

  “So how long have you worked for Count Fournier?”

  “Two years. Before that, I am acrobat in children’s circus.”

  “An acrobat!” I’m impressed. “So did you run away with the circus as a kid?”

  “Yes,” he says. No more than that.

  “What about your family?”

  “They are not good,” he says. His expression does not change, but I know how to recognize practiced nonchalance.

  “Not good?”

  “Not good.” He says it firmly, and I let it go. “I love the circus. When I am getting bigger, I start training for the trapeze. I do dancing on horseback. It is so much fun.” There is a longing in his face that twists my stomach into knots. “But the circus leader like young boys too much and I cannot stay with them. When I am thirteen, we come to Tianshi. This is great city with many chance, so I leave the circus. I do many kind of job here, but after one year Count Fournier hires me. He is best boss, so I stay with him. Good pay, safe place to live. He is not happy man, but he is good man.”

  We look at each other by the guttering candlelight.

  “I was seven when my ma died,” I offer. “She was a witch. They drowned her.”

  “I am sorry,” he says. “You have father, or brothers?”

  “A brother,” I say. “You met him. The one with the crutch.”

  “He shoot me with sleep drug.”

  “I know. He was trying to help me.”

  “Maybe I forgive him, for you,” he says slyly. And then changes the subject: “I love Tianshi. It is great city. Greatest in the world. You think so?”

  “It’s amazing,” I say. “In Frayne, if you’re born rich, you stay that way, and same if you’re born broke. Here, talent really counts for something.”

  Jun snorts. “Not so different here,” he says dismissively.

  “But the Imperial Examinations,” I say. “I mean, a peasant can take them!”

  “How can a peasant learn to read to take this exam?” he says. “And what is on this exam? Maybe I am great painter or great poet, but how can I know when I have no paints, no paper, no time? This exam is for people with money and people with time. If you can do rich person’s thing, you can live in the Imperial Gardens. But they do not invite farmer who can make crops grow in a dry year, or goatherd who can deliver calf safely and keep his herd alive through winter, or fisherman who can catch most fish. Maybe if you take away the meat and rice and fish of the rich, they will think those talents are also important. But the men and women who feed this city are poor. I have great talent too, and I am more
clever than many men who read poems all day, but I will never have my place in the Imperial Gardens either.”

  He says all this without rancor, but it stirs me.

  “I reckon you’re right,” I say. “The deck is stacked no matter where you go.”

  “What does it mean?” he asks, and I try to explain the expression stacked deck to him.

  “You play cards?” he asks me, eyes gleaming with mischief again.

  “I’m all right,” I say.

  “I show you some trick next time,” he says. I want to ask, Next time what? but I’m afraid to spoil the moment. He is drumming rapidly on the table with his fingers again. I think I’ve never known someone who can be, at different moments, so restless and so still.

  “What about Spira City?” he asks.

  And so I tell him about home, all the things I miss. His eyes are black and shining, the angles of his face all the more dramatic in the flickering candlelight. I want to tell him I know what it’s like trying to find a life large enough to fit who you are and what you can do. I want to ask him if he feels a pang whenever he sees children with their parents, children who are safe and loved. But instead I cast around for stories and descriptions that will make him laugh, and whenever he does, my heart belly flops all over the place. He tells me about the circus and traveling around Yongguo, and I try to imagine him as a slim young boy dancing on the back of a horse. The girl brings more tea, and we talk about our lives as they used to be—so much safer than talking about the here and now—until the candle burns down to a nub and goes out.

  “Hey!” cries Frederick.

  Cackling with glee, Theo tries to make off with his notebook, filled with the transcriptions of the bamboo strips from the Imperial Library, but Frederick gets it back and puts it on the table. “You mustn’t touch these, Theo.”

  “Stoy!” Theo shouts.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” I offer, looking sadly at my failed attempt at scallion pancakes, burnt to the pan.

  “Feyda stoy,” says Theo. “Buk!”

  “I got him a book of fairy tales,” explains Frederick. “They’re in Yongwen, but I translate as I go. He likes the illustrations.”

  “Feyda umma buk!” insists Theo, trying to snatch the notebook again.

  “We had better be careful of that,” says Mrs. Och, watching him.

  “Careful of what?” I ask.

  “Theo learning language,” she says. “No matter how it is bound, The Book of Disruption is a part of him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that his learning language might be dangerous. Oh, probably not so long as he cannot read or write. But even so, we should keep a close eye now that he is beginning to speak. Words have power, and his might have more than most.”

  That is an unsettling thought. I look at Frederick, who is stacking his notebooks and papers out of Theo’s reach.

  “Yes, yes,” he’s saying. “I’ll read you a story.”

  “So nothing useful yet?” I ask him, gesturing at his notes.

  “Nothing we don’t know already,” he says. “Although here is something interesting. Kahge might be described as an echo or reflection of the natural world, but it is not a perfect reflection. There are many reasons for this, one being that the elements in Kahge are not in balance. Because it is made of magic, fire is dominant. That might explain why what you see is like a reflection of the world on fire, or burning, or burnt. I am going to need a different dictionary to translate the pictographs on the rubbing—it is the oldest form of Yongwen I’ve seen. But there is a bookseller in the Beimu Triangle who has been very helpful. I’ll go and see him today. Yes, Theo, all right!”

  Theo has found the book of fairy tales and is waving it urgently at Frederick. Then he runs outside, and Frederick follows. I don’t want to sit at the table with Mrs. Och, and so I take my burnt scallion pancakes out onto the steps, where Bianka is sitting in the thin morning sunlight, carving a toy for Theo out of a block of wood.

  She is carving much too fast. She is very jumpy about Lord Skaal being in the city, and I reckon carving is not the best activity for her at the moment, but I daren’t say so. As soon as I sit down next to her, she says, “I don’t care what Mrs. Och says. He’s here for Theo.”

  “I think she’s right that he’s here for the princess,” I say. “Casimir might know that we’re here, but Agoston Horthy doesn’t.”

  It is early, and the clouds in the east are gold-rimmed as the sun comes up. Frederick and Theo have settled on an empty crate by the pump, and Frederick is reading to him. Theo is riveted by the brilliantly colored illustrations that fill up most of the page, pointing out this and that. I doubt he’ll be asking me for stories anymore.

  “No,” says Bianka. “I remember him. He was the first to come for Theo. We need to get out of Tianshi.”

  The knife in her hand is going still faster.

  “Not yet,” I say. “Count Fournier has put the word out. We need to sit tight. We’ll know something about Ko Dan soon.”

  “I can’t just sit in this courtyard and wait for them to appear and try to take Theo!” she cries. “Oh blast.” She has whittled the wood away to nothing, her lap full of shavings. “I said I’d make him a toy. He has nothing to play with, and he torments the chickens.”

  “Mo! Mo!” cries Theo when Frederick reaches the end of the story. Frederick laughs and turns the page.

  “You were wrong, you know,” I tell Bianka, pointing at them. “When you said I was the only one besides you who loved Theo.”

  She looks at the two of them bent over the book together, almost cheek to cheek, Theo’s chubby little hand fondling Frederick’s beard, and her face softens.

  “You’re right,” she says. “They adore each other.”

  I am about to reassure her again that Lord Skaal is surely here for the princess when a tree pipit flies over the wall and nearly crashes into my face. I give a yell, trying to fend it off. It drops a piece of paper in my lap and lands on the step next to me, cocking its head at me. I unroll the paper quickly. Dek’s handwriting: We’ve found him.

  The trolleys on the first tier road are always crowded in the morning, but I vanish and step onto the outer ledge, holding on to the window rail. I’ve seen people try to ride this way for free, though usually the driver spots them and shoos them off. The voices of merchants sing out from their shops and stalls along the side of the road, delicious smells waft up from the food stalls, and the peaked rooftops shimmer in the morning haze. I get off the trolley in Dongshui and buy sticky red rice wrapped in bamboo leaves so I can eat as I walk. I keep my hat down and my head low, hoping the seller doesn’t look at me too closely and recognize the foreign girl whose picture is plastered on the walls of the city with a promised reward. Then I head in among the narrow dirt streets where the ramshackle houses practically lean up against each other, old men sitting outside playing Zhengfu and smoking while scrawny chickens run loose, shedding their feathers.

  When I get to Dek’s house, Mei and Ling are there again. Dek and Ling are at the table, flour-dusted to the elbows, making dumpling wrappings. Wyn and Mei are playing cards, and they both look bored out of their minds.

  “These two seem to have moved in,” I say.

  “Julia!” Dek grins at me. His hair is braided Tianshi-style. “You got our message?”

  “I hope by all the holies you mean you’ve found Ko Dan, or Bianka’s going to have a fit and probably turn you into a toad.”

  “Ling told us. He was readmitted to the monastery at dawn. Apparently, word got out and there was quite a crowd gathered outside to watch him knock on the door and request entry, so for all that we’ve been pretending we’ve got the pulse of the city, we’re obviously out of the loop. The girls went with their uncle and saw him themselves.”

  “You saw him go in?” I ask Ling in Fraynish. Dek translates, looking vaguely annoyed with me.

  Ling nods, wiping her hands off and fetching me a rolled-up piece of paper. I
unroll it and look at the drawing of a solemn, round-faced man with a star-shaped scar under his eye.

  “Who drew this?”

  “Ling did,” says Wyn. “She’s not bad, is she? Good technique.”

  “Can I…um…ownership?” I ask her in fumbling Yongwen.

  Mei smirks a little at my bad Yongwen. Ling just shrugs, as if she doesn’t care one way or the other, but when I fold it up to slip it into my pocket, her brow creases in an expression of surprise and hurt, and I wonder if it’s some kind of insult to fold it. I’ve nowhere to put it rolled up, though.

  “Where were you last night?” I ask Dek. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “We went to the theater!” he says enthusiastically. “It costs almost nothing for standing room. All the rich people pay for balcony seats above and watch through their little binoculars, but we were right in front of the stage with the rabble. I’ve never seen anything like it—it was this kind of dance with masks. Ling was explaining it to me. Every movement means something; every mask has significance. Each animal is symbolic. What did we decide? Ling is a lynx, I’m a cormorant….”

  “Panda,” says Ling in Fraynish, pointing at Wyn, and I snort.

  “What would I be?” I ask.

  “Hmm, what do you think?” Dek asks Ling in Yongwen. He looks so happy. I can’t remember seeing him look so happy. I should be glad to see it, but it makes my heart sink—that this place and this girl should be what makes him happy. That there is no hope of freedom or love for him back home, the home I long for.

  Ling studies me and then says, with the faintest smile: “Wolf.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her, not sure if I ought to be offended.

  “Wolf?” says Dek, taken aback.

  “Wolf,” says Ling firmly.

  “Are you going to the monastery now?” Wyn asks me, tired of the conversation and probably annoyed at having been declared a panda bear.

  “No. Mrs. Och told me to report back to her after I’d spoken to you,” I say. “I’ve got to report to her before I take a piss, apparently.”

  Dek laughs.