Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “Wait a bit if you’re hungry,” he says. “Ling is teaching me to make steamed dumplings.”

  “I am hungry,” I say. “But Bianka’s waiting too, and probably going mad. If it’s really him, we’ll be moving on soon, I reckon.”

  I look at Dek as I say this, but he shows no sign of having heard me, flattening the dough into perfect little circles.

  “I’ll walk you to the trolley,” says Wyn.

  “I don’t need an escort.”

  “I’m not escorting you. I want to talk.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come back when you’re done,” says Dek. “We’ll have dumplings ready!”

  I don’t know what to make of this happy, busy version of my brother. I thank Ling for the picture again, and Wyn walks me out.

  “Mail goes out from Shou-shu today,” he says. “I was going to snatch one of Gangzi’s letters if you still want it. Or should I not bother now that we’ve found Ko Dan?”

  “Might as well get one just in case. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “No. Well, that was one thing.” He clears his throat. “I’m just going to say it. I promise I’ll drop it if you tell me that you don’t feel anything for me anymore. But I think that you do, and I want you back, Brown Eyes. I want things to be like they used to be.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” I say quickly, before I can say anything else. “Everything’s changed. We’ve changed. Or I have, anyway.”

  We pass an old couple sharing a pipe outside. They look at us curiously, and I duck my head so that the brim of my hat hides my face.

  “People don’t change that much,” says Wyn. “I’ll own that I spoiled things. I was selfish and stupid. But it would be different if you’d give me another chance.”

  “You just finished telling me people don’t change. Everybody knew what was happening except me. If I wasn’t enough for you then, I don’t see why I would be now.”

  “Because I wouldn’t risk losing you again. But you should talk to more girls, Julia. The way you carry on, you’d think I was this roach among men for spending a night or two with Arly Winters.”

  “I don’t carry on,” I say, getting angry now. “You brought it up. I’d just as soon not talk about it at all. And if you must talk about it, don’t lie to me and pretend it was only a night or two. What would your girl back at the house think about you telling me this?”

  “This isn’t about Mei.”

  “Of course it is! She thinks you’re her fellow, and here you are trying to sweet-talk me back into bed with you. As far as I can tell, you want every girl you look at, especially the ones you haven’t got.”

  “Don’t be so bleeding naïve, Julia. All men are the same. Yes, if I see a pretty girl, I want her. Hounds, if I see an ugly girl, I want her. I wish you could understand how little it has to do with you, or with love. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you: If it matters to you, I can just…resist all that. Be yours. Really yours. Haven’t you been angry long enough?”

  “I’m not angry,” I say, deflated. “But things are different now.”

  “You haven’t told me you don’t feel anything for me anymore.”

  “Hounds, I’ll always feel something for you. But not the same way I used to. I’m past it, all right?”

  I hear myself saying it, and for the first time I almost think it might be true.

  “Flaming Kahge, Julia—what do you want from a fellow?” He kicks a rock down the road, frightening a pair of chickens. “I’ll own my mistake, but if you think there’s a man out there who’s any different, you’re deluding yourself!”

  I’ve heard enough.

  “Fine, maybe men like you are common as dirt. That doesn’t strike me as much to brag about. But I don’t go around figuring everybody is just like me, and d’you know why not?”

  He gives me an unhappy look.

  “Because there is nobody like me,” I tell him, and vanish, leaving him staring at the place where I was, where I’m not anymore.

  “He’s at the monastery,” I tell Mrs. Och, showing her the picture Ling drew. She takes the paper from me and examines it. “Dek’s girl saw him going up to the gate, said that everybody was talking about Ko Dan’s return, and she drew this.”

  “What now?” whispers Bianka, watching the goat knock Theo over into the mud in the courtyard.

  “I will go and see him myself,” says Mrs. Och, rising and giving me back the picture. “Julia, you will come with me to make sure nothing is amiss and that I am not followed back. Frederick! I need strength.”

  He comes when she calls him. I can see the apprehension in his eyes even though he tries to hide it. He stretches out his hands. She reaches for him, and there is an awful hunger in her gaze. I can’t watch. I turn away, leaving the room in a hurry, but I hear him gasp behind me, his knees hitting the floor.

  “How are you going to get in?” I ask.

  Mrs. Och is striding down the street, and I find myself half skipping to keep up with her, like a child whose long-legged parent won’t slow down for them, taking two steps for every one of hers.

  “I’ll knock,” she says.

  “But doesn’t that blow our cover? Then everybody knows we’re here, what we’re after.”

  “If Pia is in Tianshi, it is because Casimir already knows that we are here and what we want,” says Mrs. Och. A fair point. “I expect that the grand librarian has a good idea as well. But if it is indeed Ko Dan in the monastery, and if he agrees to help us, then we will not need to hide much longer.”

  “What if it isn’t him? What if he won’t help us? What if he can’t help us? Or what if he can’t do it without hurting Theo?”

  She gives me an impatient look. Her face is bright and alive with what she took from Frederick. I wonder, when I see her like this, if she takes only what she needs or perhaps more. How much she likes it. How much she does it just because she likes it.

  “We did not come all this way to harm Theo,” she says. “There is no point imagining a thousand possibilities before they come about. It is a drain on the mind.”

  “Fine. Say you get the text out of Theo. What will you do with it?”

  “Perhaps destroy it.”

  “Destroy it? Really?”

  “If it is possible, yes. The Book has been trying to unmake itself for centuries. The time of the Xianren is already past. Casimir is grasping at straws, but they are dangerous straws indeed, and best kept out of his reach forever. Julia, when the witch at the library searched your memories, did she uncover our purpose here? Does she know we are looking for Ko Dan?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It was all moving very fast. She knows about Theo and the Book, I think, but the memories she seemed to stop over were from a long time ago. When I was little.”

  She frowns, dissatisfied with this answer, and boards a trolley at the second tier road. The other passengers make way for her instinctively. I go along vanished, no more chances for asking questions. We ride the trolley to the northwest part of the city and walk from there to the monastery.

  “Behind me, Julia,” she murmurs. “Unseen, if you please.”

  I do as she says. She pulls the bell at the main doors of Shou-shu. A panel is pulled back, and a face appears in the gap.

  “Who are you?” the face asks in Yongwen.

  She says “Och Farya,” her Xianren name. No more hiding indeed.

  “No woman may enter here,” says the face.

  A harsh laugh. The air hums. Her cloak billows, and she casts it to the ground. Fur ripples out of the back of her neck and along her outstretched arms, her hair moving and changing to match it. Bony spikes tear out of her back through the fabric of her robe and unfold into wings.

  Her voice resonates when she speaks—making the point, presumably, that she is not exactly a woman, and not to be denied. Another face appears at the panel. The two faces deliberate, the panel is slammed, and we wait. The wings lie resting against her back like the wings of
a great swan.

  And then the doors creak open. The monks back away as she enters, with me vanished in her wake. The doors slam shut behind us.

  We are taken to the tiny, wooden Temple of Atonement behind the Treasury. There he is, kneeling before the many-armed statue of Gu’ama, West Arrekem goddess of repentance—the man from Ling’s picture. Ko Dan. My letter-writing friend Prune Face—Gangzi—kneels next to him. They look up as we come in, and although his face is slightly blurred by my vanishing, I can make out the star-shaped scar under Ko Dan’s left eye. He rises and bows to Mrs. Och. There is something loose and easy in the way he moves, as if he is more at peace inside his skin and bones than most. Gangzi rises rigidly, grimacing like his joints pain him, and gives a terse nod.

  Mrs. Och remains in her startling Och Farya form, but the two men do not seem alarmed. They all greet each other politely in Yongwen, and then the three of them sit down right on the floor together, legs folded under them, which seems to cause Gangzi some difficulty, but he angrily brushes off Ko Dan’s attempt to help him.

  At first I try to follow their conversation, but it moves too quickly, so I give up and look around the temple instead. Painted on the wall behind them, lovely Tisis, goddess of mercy and forgiveness, is offering her golden cup. Behind her, a whirlwind in her fist, Haizea, goddess of vengeance, bares her teeth. Of course she is here too—she appears in nearly every story and illustration of Tisis. It’s bewildering to me the way gods and goddesses from all over the world are welcome under the broad umbrella of the religion practiced in Yongguo, but Professor Baranyi says that they are all regarded as metaphors for the same essential truth. What that truth is, I couldn’t say.

  Ko Dan—if it is really him—is speaking at great length, low and urgent, illustrating something with his hands, and Mrs. Och is leaning forward, a greedy look in her eyes. I wonder about the purpose of this temple. Is it really possible to atone for one’s misdeeds by just kneeling in this room and…what? Does he even know what he’s atoning for? Does he know the consequences of what he did, the people who have died—people who had nothing at all to do with the Xianren or The Book of Disruption or any of this but whose lives were swept away by the storm he unleashed? The battle over that fragment of The Book of Disruption should have been between Gennady and Casimir. Instead, Bianka’s life was turned upside down, Theo’s life defined by this, my own life changed forever, and so many other lives upended or snuffed out. I’m thinking of the dead governess on the bridge in Spira City, dead by the mere accident of sharing a cabriolet with Bianka, and the other innocent victims of the Gethin. I’m thinking of the guard in Casimir’s fortress, the one whose neck Bianka snapped because he was in her way, and she could think only of saving her son, and no other life meant anything to her. Is that her fault, or Ko Dan’s, or Casimir’s? Are we all unwittingly creating chaos we can’t imagine, setting off chains of events whose brutal, bloody endings happen so far from us that we never even hear of them? Perhaps he’s just doing what he’s been told, finishing up his punishment, jumping through the final hoop before Gangzi lets him back.

  My stomach rumbles, but nobody seems to hear it, thank the Nameless. I wish I’d asked Mrs. Och how long this was likely to take. Ko Dan stops speaking. Gangzi is looking at Mrs. Och with something like anger. She puts her hands together and seems to think very hard, and then she begins to speak and I hear the witch and the child and Lan Camshe. My heart speeds up.

  When she is done, Ko Dan looks at Gangzi, who gives a single nod. Ko Dan says, in formal Yongwen, “I will try.”

  Mrs. Och walks south from the monastery. I watch the main doors awhile before running after her, vanished two steps back, the city blurred around me, my own footsteps muffled. I follow the silhouette of her cloaked figure. We pass along a street of silk shops in the Nanjin Triangle. A man smoking in a doorway tosses his cigarette aside and falls into step with me, though of course he does not see me. Mrs. Och turns toward the Imperial Gardens and walks along its outer walls, and so does he. I gather she is going to walk the whole way back to Nanmu. I’m sure now that this fellow is tailing her, so I take one of Dek’s darts from the pouch at my waist, unscrew the cap, and jab him in the arm.

  It’s effective, I’ll say that. He stumbles sideways into the wall and goes down hard. A woman drops her basket of wish papers and runs to him, old wishes scattering in the gutter at the side of the road.

  Mrs. Och keeps going, following the wall to the Dongnan Canal and crossing the bridge into Nanmu. I keep her in sight, but at a distance. When she is safely back home, I wait outside the courtyard for half an hour, vanished and thrumming with impatience, to be certain nobody else managed to follow us. Nobody comes and so I go in at last.

  Frederick is slumped in a chair, still ghastly pale and weak from what she took from him. Bianka is leaning close to Mrs. Och at the table, her expression caught somewhere between terror and hope.

  “Well?” Mrs. Och says to me when I come in.

  “There was somebody following,” I say. “I got rid of him.”

  She nods briefly.

  “So is it really him?” I ask. But I know the answer just from looking at her. Her eyes are fierce and bright, her lips parted in a near smile that is almost girlish in its excitement.

  “I believe so,” she says. “He was able to explain things about how the magic was done that have puzzled me for some time. They have…an item that I believed lost forever.” She shakes her head wonderingly, and then continues: “He believes that he can undo the binding of text to Theo without harming him. At least, he is willing to try, and Gangzi is willing to let him.”

  Theo looks up from the line of ants he is pursuing across the floor, interested because we are talking about him.

  “He’s willing to try?” says Bianka. “We need to be sure it isn’t dangerous.”

  “Such magic does not come with guarantees,” says Mrs. Och. “This is what we have come for. If you will not risk it, then it is only a matter of time before Theo is found and somebody else does the same thing without his well-being in mind.”

  Bianka stares at Mrs. Och, twisting her hands in her lap.

  “All right. Yes. All right,” she says rather mechanically.

  “Good,” says Mrs. Och. “Ready yourself and we will take him at once.”

  “Now?” Bianka whispers.

  “Delaying will only increase the danger,” answers Mrs. Och. “I want to get this done before Si Tan becomes involved.”

  Bianka looks at me, and suddenly I have to sit. I know exactly what she’s feeling. Of course this is what we came here for, but it feels too sudden and too uncertain.

  “Trust me a little further,” says Mrs. Och softly. “You cannot hide him away forever, Bianka. Here is the chance to end it.”

  I wish she’d found another way to say that. Theo is standing at Bianka’s knee now and looking back and forth between us, aware that an important conversation about him is taking place, surely aware that his mother is afraid. I want to snatch him up and refuse to let them take him. But what am I thinking? We’ve crossed the world for this moment. I swore I’d make it right, and we’ve done it, we’ve found him.

  “I’ll come too,” I say.

  Mrs. Och gives me an impatient look. “No. We will need to move quickly once this is done. I want you to take a message to Count Fournier. We will meet with him first thing tomorrow morning.”

  She hands me a sealed letter addressed to the count, and I take it, but I repeat, “I want to come with you.”

  “Do what is useful, Julia, not what your guilt demands.”

  That lands like a blow, knocking the breath out of me.

  “Bianka,” says Mrs. Och sharply, and Bianka jumps. “You must decide now.”

  “Yes, all right,” she whispers. She puts a trembling hand on Theo’s curly head.

  “Theo. Shall we take a walk, love?”

  “Wawk?” His eyes go wide. He has not been allowed out of the courtyard since we got here.
>
  Bianka nods at him, but her face is rigid as a mask, her smile desperate. “Let’s get you into some trousers, shall we? Oh blast, where are his trousers?”

  Theo begins a little jig, crowing, “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!” Heart in my throat, I go digging through our things in the bedroom until I find a pair of his trousers. Once Theo figures out we’re going to try and put him in clothes, he screams as if this is the greatest betrayal we could have enacted and puts up a tremendous fight, determined to maintain his mostly naked status. It takes both of us to wrestle his kicking legs and arching body into the little trousers. We got the fabric in Ishti, and Bianka sewed them, but already they are short on him, he is growing so quickly.

  Bianka scrabbles in Frederick’s writing box for a charcoal pencil, tucks it into her bodice, and gives me one more impossible look. I know I am mirroring all the terror and hope I see in her gaze right back at her. She puts on a large straw hat to hide her face and picks Theo up. Having completely forgotten the trouser battle within seconds of losing it, he waves to me cheerfully from her arms.

  “Bah-bah, Lala!”

  I walk them out and wave back from the gate as they round the corner to flag down a motor carriage. Turning the envelope in my hand, I half want to ignore Mrs. Och’s instructions and follow them anyway. But she’s right, of course—what good could I do, how could I help, when he has both his mother and Mrs. Och with him? Do what is useful. All right, then, I will be useful, since the Nameless knows I can’t stay still another moment. I run for the second tier road and get a trolley to Count Fournier’s house.

  Count Fournier studies the letter from Mrs. Och, puffing his cheeks out.

  “Thank the Nameless One,” he says. “This Lord Skaal you saw the other day has been granted a meeting with the grand librarian and Gangzi tomorrow! Ordinarily, Si Tan makes the Fraynish delegations wait for weeks, and Gangzi never agrees to meet with anybody. He must be seriously considering the Fraynish position. Nameless only knows what they are offering him! I won’t put a reply in writing, better not, but tell your Mrs. Och we will expect her in the morning, as early as possible.”