Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “What was that?” I shout.

  “A warning from Si Tan,” she says.

  “What kind of warning? What did it say?”

  “We are out of time.”

  We stare at each other for a beat, and then I swing around and go back inside, grabbing my bag and stuffing a coil of rope into it. Bianka is writing magic next to Jun, who appears to be sleeping peacefully now, his bloody shoulder neatly bandaged.

  “He lost quite a lot of blood,” says Frederick.

  “It’s fine,” Bianka says through gritted teeth. The tip of her pen breaks. “Blast. Get me another, will you?”

  Mrs. Och comes in behind me. I can feel her watching me. I turn around, hoisting the bag over my shoulder.

  “I’m going to get him right now,” I say, heading for the door.

  “Julia,” says Mrs. Och—a low, threatening hum.

  “Wait for me here,” I tell her without turning around. “I’ll be back with Ko Dan.”

  I vanish and make my way through the city, where the birds fill the sky, diving at houses. I find the same blank scrolls of paper in the streets, in the gutters, and each one, after I’ve looked at it, dissolves into air, and none of them show me anything. I break into a run.

  I’m thinking of those little hooks the beasts in Kahge had, made to pull something out of me, whatever I had that they wanted; I’m thinking of Casimir offering me anything I desired if I’d bind myself to him, let him harness my power; of Si Tan asking Mrs. Och to give me to him, like I was a head of cattle, and Mrs. Och answering, She is mine. Pia’s voice: You are her dog.

  But I am no one’s dog, and whatever lies within me, whether Lidari or something else lurks inside Julia’s skin and bones, there will be no harnessing of this power by anyone else, and no hooks will draw me out. Those who would make use of me, who want to take possession of me, they’ve known all along what I am only just beginning to understand: I am stronger than they are. Whatever its source, this power is terrible, unstoppable—and mine.

  I find Si Tan in the cocoon-like room hung with silk, bent over a map of Yongguo with the empress dowager, both of them smoking fragrant black cigarettes and murmuring to each other. The dowager sees me first as I appear before them. She reaches into her robe for her pistol, and Si Tan leaps to his feet, his face registering shock, and puts out a hand to stop me.

  I grab him by the neck. I need less than a moment—less time than it takes for him to throw me off, less time than it takes for the dowager to aim her pistol. I dig my hand into the flesh of his neck and pull.

  We cross that boundary of nothingness, the world and our selves receding, and we land in the black husk of the city I grew up in. I pull in a breath of burnt air. My hands like claws, my arms darkly scaled. This is what I am, then—this monster. This too.

  Si Tan’s eyes are wild, the whites visible all around the quivering irises. I drag him toward the boiling river, and he stumbles along with me. For all his physical power in the world, here I am stronger than him—much stronger.

  Those patchwork beasts come almost immediately, with their hooks and tubes and rusted weapons.

  “Do you know what this place is?” I ask.

  “Some illusion,” gasps Si Tan.

  “No,” I say. “This is Kahge. I’m going to leave you here and let these creatures eat you unless you help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Is Ko Dan alive?”

  “Yes,” he cries.

  “Then take me to him.”

  His face contorts, fury and fear together. “Och Farya has sent you to threaten me.”

  “Not her,” I say. “Forget her. Look at me. I could leave you here to die and I’d feel nothing. Next the empress dowager. The emperor himself. His heir. I can pull you all out of the world one by one, end the imperial line as quick as you please. You can’t see me, and you can’t stop me, and now you know how quick and easy I can do it. Take me to Ko Dan.”

  “It will not matter,” he gasps. “Ko Dan cannot help you.”

  And now those awful monsters are upon us. But I am ready for this. I am ready for a fight I can win. I let go of Si Tan, who cries out, reaching for me, and I leap for the fox-faced creature, the one Ragg Rock called Solanze. His sword is about the length of my forearm, bright and curved, the jagged edge glinting and winking at me. I get hold of that arm before he can swing the sword.

  We struggle soundlessly for a moment, my face right next to his snarling muzzle. Something close to joy is rising in my chest—but it isn’t joy, it is too bitter for that, too swollen with fury. Trying to wrest the sword from him, I break his arm right off and stagger backward, stunned. A stinking smoke pours from the bloodless shoulder socket. I pry the sword from the dead hand and drop the arm, my stomach heaving with disgust. Their bodies just costumes indeed. Something catches against my back, stinging—those little hooks. I whirl in a circle, cutting the tubes and pulling out the hooks, and then I swing Solanze’s sword at the creatures.

  They recoil and flee now that I have the sword, ignoring Si Tan as he huddles on the ground and shouts something at me. But I can’t hear him over the roar in the air, the buzz of my own blood, the cries of these shadow-monsters. Solanze grabs me from behind with his one arm, pulling me toward him. I break free of him easily and spin to face him. He has got one of those hooks now. It catches me on the cheek, right below my eye, and scrapes a gash down to my lip as I pull away from it. I swing the sword; he raises his arm as if to defend himself with it, and I cut his remaining hand clean off. More foul gray smoke. He goes down on one knee, scrabbling for the hand, screaming words I don’t understand, except for Lidari.

  For a moment, I see myself reflected in a window, standing over Solanze, sword aloft. My hair is moving around my head in smoky tendrils, my eyes are black pools, and there is a crimson line down the side of my face, which is both my face and yet not.

  “Take me back!” Si Tan is slowly scrambling toward me, like he’s moving underwater, his face a mask of terror. With the hand not holding Solanze’s sword, I drag him to the river’s edge and then let go of him, pointing at the boiling river with my clawed finger.

  “Take me to Ko Dan. If you don’t, I’ll bring you back and drop you in there. Then I’ll go see if the emperor can be more helpful.”

  “I’ll take you,” he gasps. “It won’t help. You will see.”

  I haven’t really got the stomach for any of this. I’ll take what I can get. We go back. I am this monster, and then I am nothing, and then I am Julia.

  Si Tan leads me through the dark to his own house, where he met with Mrs. Och. I have a firm grip on his arm, and I keep us both vanished two steps back, so it is like walking through a hazy tunnel together, the world a blur on either side. I am ready to pull him back to Kahge at the slightest sound or unexpected movement. My cheek is burning, and I have Solanze’s sword in my hand.

  In the central courtyard, next to a flowering hibiscus bush, is a neatly swept stairway with a door at the bottom.

  “Here,” he murmurs, and opens the door.

  The room is mostly bare. There is a bed, a table, two chairs, a basin, an electric lamp. And there is a young man sitting in one of the chairs, his hands loose in his lap. He looks up at us, his expression bleak. He has a star-shaped scar under his eye. Suddenly I am wild with hope.

  “Ko Dan,” I breathe. “Just…here? In your house?”

  “Yes,” says Si Tan.

  Ko Dan looks me over. “Who is this?” he asks in Yongwen, his voice a low rasp.

  “I need you to come with me.” I give Si Tan’s arm a shake. “Blast. Does he speak Fraynish?”

  Ko Dan frowns. “Who is this?” he asks Si Tan again.

  Si Tan speaks to him in Yongwen. I hear Och Farya and Zor Gen. The way he talks, and the despairing look on Ko Dan’s face, make me think Ko Dan is afraid of him.

  Then Si Tan says to me: “You may find Och Farya has changed her mind when you return.”

  “The birds,” I
say. “That was you. But the papers were blank.”

  “A message for her,” he replies. “For her eyes only. The city gates are locked. There is no way out of Tianshi for her or for the boy. I have offered her an alliance. For all that she scoffs, she cannot deny the might of our empire. And I have told her the truth: there is no way to remove the text from the child. The Ankh-nu is missing, and Ko Dan remembers nothing. The only way to keep the Book from Casimir is to destroy the vessel—the boy.”

  “What do you mean, remembers nothing?”

  “He did not put the fragment of The Book of Disruption into Gennady’s son.”

  My heart is plunging and plunging. Here, my moment of triumph, when I’ve found Ko Dan at last. I hear Si Tan’s words, but I can’t make sense of what he is telling me.

  “Then who did it? Gennady said…he said it was Ko Dan.”

  Si Tan lets a bitter little laugh out.

  “Do you really not know?” he asks. “I thought perhaps you did. That you might be in league with her.”

  “With who?” I am going to throttle him in a moment. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Your mother,” he says. “Marike.”

  Ko Dan watches with vague interest as my knees turn to water. I have to balance myself against the wall. Something comes alive in Si Tan’s face, and I see the danger in it.

  “Sit in that chair,” I tell him, pointing with the sword. Solanze’s sword does not look so impressive here—the jagged edge rough, not glittering anymore, just a damaged, rather rusty old weapon. “I can still take you to Kahge and leave you there.”

  He sits. My cheek is throbbing. I touch my hand to it, and my fingers come away wet and red with blood.

  “What,” I say very carefully. I can’t find words. “Tell me. Explain.”

  “I have been trying to piece it together myself,” says Si Tan. “I have spent my life searching for the Ankh-nu. Two years ago, Ko Dan received a letter from a witch claiming to have it. She was offering it to us—for the monastery to keep safe. I sent Ko Dan to meet this witch—with an armed escort, of course. The escort was murdered and Ko Dan disappeared for weeks. When he returned, he claimed that he had been kidnapped and taken many miles away to a mountain cave, where a masked witch came and performed some magic on him, using the Ankh-nu. Afterward, he remained for weeks in the cave. Armed witches gave him food and water and kept him there. But—and here is where it gets really interesting—his body was not his body anymore. There was no mirror for him to see his own face, but his body was older, different, and entirely unfamiliar, until the masked witch returned with the Ankh-nu and gave him back his own body. Then he was set loose and found his way back to Tianshi. I had Cinzai search his memory to try to find the truth, and it was as he told us. More than this—his body has been touched by another essence. The traces are still upon him.”

  My mind is reeling. I can’t untangle this on my own.

  “What about my mother?”

  “Cinzai found the Ankh-nu in one of your memories,” says Si Tan coolly. “She relayed it all to us. Your mother used it. But only Marike can use the Ankh-nu. Only Marike and Lidari, in all of human history, have been able to borrow the body of another by means of the Ankh-nu.”

  “So you mean…” But I stop. I can’t put it together.

  “Marike borrowed Ko Dan’s body. If alive, of course, she would have feared the possibility of Casimir assembling The Book of Disruption. But she would have known too that Gennady would never deal directly with her. She had made enemies of all the Xianren. He would not have trusted her. So she used Ko Dan’s body as a disguise to approach Gennady. Young as he is, Ko Dan is well known and respected, even by the Xianren. Marike put the text in the little boy, presumably intending to destroy him and thus the text, but she failed in that. And then she returned Ko Dan to his own body once she was finished with it. The question is only how willing he was. I have not been able to discern that from his memories—whether he was her prisoner or her accomplice. We are trying to separate out the traces her essence left upon his body. It is a difficult magic, and it has taken its toll on him, as you can see. But I believe that if we can isolate those traces, we may be able to use them to find Marike and the Ankh-nu as well.” A rather mad laugh, and then he pauses, the avid look in his eyes sharpening, focusing in on me. “But perhaps there is an easier way. Perhaps you know where she is.”

  “Why would I know? Why would you think my mother is Marike just because she had the Ankh-nu? My mother drowned years ago.”

  “Who but Marike could use the Ankh-nu? Who but Marike could defeat Casimir, even temporarily? Who but Marike would dare to try? Who but Marike would want to bring Lidari back to the world? She is still alive, playing her games, borrowing bodies. The question is—who are you?”

  Those creatures hissing “Lidari,” Mrs. Och searching my face for something—someone—else. No. No. No.

  “I’m not…” I say, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I need somebody to help me figure this out. If it’s true…but I can’t think it yet.

  Si Tan rises, and his eyes are dangerous. I push myself off the wall and stand unsteadily. The sword feels so heavy suddenly.

  “Sit in that chair or we go back to Kahge,” I tell him. He sits. I take out my rope.

  “You will not get out of the city,” he says.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I say. “You aren’t going to stop me. You can’t stop me.”

  Ko Dan just watches, expressionless, while I bind Si Tan to the chair. I gather he hasn’t been treated particularly well. Si Tan curses at me coarsely, dropping his accent, and I realize that he does not come from the upper classes at all, that his accent and manners have been carefully learned.

  I stand up, and Ko Dan stiffens, fearful.

  “He is mine,” hisses Si Tan, but I ignore him.

  “You’re coming with me,” I say to Ko Dan, who stares at me uncomprehendingly. I grab his arm and pull him out of the world.

  I am getting the hang of carrying another person with me between the world and its shadow. When we hang bodiless over the streets, I focus on the farthest point I can, taking us there at the speed of my own gaze, then return to the world for a split second before pulling back out, throwing my perspective wide again and finding the next point, and the next. In this way, we reach the courtyard of the house in Nanmu within minutes.

  The first gray glimmers of dawn are lightening the sky. Frederick is in the courtyard arguing with Ling in rapid Yongwen, and she is crying. Wyn is standing helplessly by.

  “What’s going on?” I ask sharply, reappearing. “What is she doing here?”

  They all stop and stare at me, then at Ko Dan, who has pulled free of me and backed against the courtyard wall. He looks down at his own body, and at his hands, flexing them—I suppose not an unnatural reaction for a man who had his body stolen from him once before.

  “What happened to you?” cries Wyn. “Your face…”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Is this…?” Frederick takes a step toward Ko Dan and says something to him in Yongwen that Ko Dan appears to find reassuring. He nods, relaxing a little. Ling is still sobbing.

  “Where is Dek?” I shout.

  “He’s all right. He and Ling were at a play, and Pia found them,” says Frederick quickly. “They got away, and he told Ling this address, sent her here in a motor carriage. He’s gone to fetch Mei and bring her back here too. Ling is worried about her, and I was just saying Mrs. Och won’t allow it, but—”

  Ling bursts out, shouting something at Wyn, jabbing her finger in his face. He looks sheepish. “My sister!” she finishes in Fraynish.

  “I’m sorry!” says Wyn. And then, to me, he says: “I was sleeping at home after you left, and the pipit came with a message from Mrs. Och, telling Dek and me to go to the farm to meet up with the others. I didn’t want to leave without you, and I didn’t know where Dek was, so I came here. I had no idea the girls were in any danger or I would never
have left Mei alone.”

  “I took Mei home!” I say to Ling. “She’s fine!”

  Ling puts her face in her hands, and her shoulders shake as Frederick translates this for her.

  “I think we should all just stay here and wait for Dek,” says Wyn. “What happened to your face, Brown Eyes? Where’d you get that sword?”

  “Fighting monsters,” I say. “Come on, let’s introduce Ko Dan to Mrs. Och.”

  Frederick speaks to him in Yongwen again, and Ko Dan goes to him, giving me a wide berth like I’m a mad dog. Ling takes her hands away from her face and looks at me, her face blotchy from crying.

  “Come inside, then,” I say. “It can’t matter. We won’t be here much longer.”

  So we all go in together. Mrs. Och and Bianka are poring over a map of Yongguo. Bianka is holding Theo tight. The sash he sleeps with is wrapped around his waist, tying him to her.

  “Here is Ko Dan,” I announce, but the moment feels hollow because I know it’s no use.

  Bianka leaps to her feet. Mrs. Och rises more slowly, looking from my bleeding face to Ko Dan.

  “Dare I ask you how you have done this?” she says.

  “Probably better not.”

  Mrs. Och speaks to Ko Dan in Yongwen, and he bows and answers.

  “Can he do it?” Bianka cries. “Without harming Theo?”

  “Teo,” says Theo, trying to squirm free of her, but she squeezes him closer.

  Mrs. Och holds up a hand, giving Bianka a stern glare. Then her eyes fall on Ling.

  “Who is this?” she asks, acid-voiced.

  “Dek’s girl,” I say.

  “Pia came across them, and Dek sent her here,” says Wyn. “He’s gone to get her sister too.”

  Mrs. Och waves this aside and turns back to Ko Dan. Frederick manages to persuade him to sit down.

  “We ought to see to that gash on your cheek,” says Bianka to me. “It looks very nasty.”

  I put down Solanze’s ugly sword, and we sit around the hearth while Mrs. Och batters Ko Dan with questions, her voice rising sharply. Ling glances at them in horror a few times, and I can only imagine what she’s hearing. I can’t follow the rapid conversation around the table, so I just sit and let Bianka wash my cheek, Theo still bound to her, tugging at the sash but cowed by the tension in the room.