Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  Karla stands up very quickly. I follow her down the hall and the stairs.

  “We’re almost at the kitchen,” she whispers. “You can’t just walk in there. Are you going to be…ah, invisible?”

  “All right,” I say, and pull myself out of the world, two steps back so that everything is blurred. Her pale face goes even paler. She hurries down to the large, bustling kitchen.

  “There’s his lordship’s breakfast, there!” a woman barks at Karla, pointing. Karla hurriedly arranges the eggs, sausages, and limp slices of tomato to look a little more attractive on the tray.

  I’ve always been good at staying behind the membrane of the visible and then coming just close enough to the edge of things to snatch something out of the world. I got plenty of practice thieving after Ma died. But to properly take hold of an object, I need to come dangerously close to stepping right back into the visible world. I know I’ve unsettled market sellers and the like, who believed they saw a flash of something, for a moment—but fortunately, people tend to put their faith in their second look. I wait for a moment when nobody’s looking my way, and then I grab a bottle and give it a sniff. Vinegar. Perfect.

  Once we’re back in the hall, I reappear and put a finger to my lips. Karla jumps, the contents of the tray rattling, but she doesn’t drop anything. I lift the lid of the teapot and pour in a generous amount of vinegar.

  “What are you doing?” she hisses at me.

  “I want to see it for myself.”

  “But suppose he does taste it? Can’t call that a mistake! It’ll be my head!”

  “It’ll be all right,” I say, hoping that’s true. And then, because she’s still waffling, I add: “You can’t change sides now.”

  She glares at me and carries on up the stairs. I follow, vanishing again. She goes back in the direction of Sir Victor’s offices but takes a different turn, goes up one more flight of stairs, and knocks on a heavy door. A voice thrums within, and she opens the door, balancing the tray on one hand.

  There, with his back to us, sitting at a desk and writing with a quill pen, is the prime minister—Agoston Horthy. He does not turn around or pause in his writing, only says, “Leave the tray by me, Karla.”

  His voice is deep and resonant, but his frame is small, almost frail. It is hard to believe such a big voice comes from such a small man. Karla, trembling visibly, places the tray next to him and pours out a cup of tea. The pot clatters as she puts it back down on the tray, but the prime minister does not seem to notice her upset.

  “You may go,” he says. She retreats, then stops with a little gasp. I follow her eyes. There is a rat slinking along the far wall—a fat, sleek thing, its nasty nose twitching. Agoston Horthy reaches for the teacup. Karla is frozen, staring at the rat, then staring at him. I have a horrible feeling she’s going to faint or confess everything. He takes a long drink of the tea and puts the cup back on the saucer. I have to hold in the childish urge to laugh at him drinking heavily vinegared tea. She is right: he does not seem to taste it at all. Karla sways a little, and the rat dives at Agoston Horthy’s ankle.

  Karla screams.

  Agoston Horthy turns to glare at her. “What on earth is the matter?”

  She is standing with both hands clamped over her mouth, speechless. He looks down at his ankle, where the rat has driven its teeth into his trousers and surely—surely?—his flesh as well. He gives his leg a shake, but the rat is hanging on ferociously.

  “Sir!” wails Karla.

  He reaches for a letter opener on his desk and in one swift motion drives it into the back of the rat’s neck. The rat goes limp, falling away from his foot; blood pours over his sock and shoe. The rat has bitten him deeply.

  “Dispose of this thing,” he says to Karla, pulling the letter opener out of its neck and kicking the dead animal toward her.

  She dissolves into tears. He stares at her rather the way he looked at the rat a moment before, and says, “Never mind. Be on your way.”

  “Sir, you’re bleeding,” she blubbers. “Shall I fetch the doctor?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing.” He waves an impatient hand at her. She looks around—for me! Stop it, you stupid girl!—then goes stumbling out.

  The prime minister examines the wound on his ankle with a look of profound irritation. He takes off his cravat and wraps the ankle firmly. Then he turns back to his work and continues to write, pausing for the odd bite of breakfast or sip of vinegar tea. If he doesn’t get that bite looked at, he’s going to die of an infection, I think, and that will speed up the revolution somewhat.

  Still, it is difficult to watch a man fail to tend to a wound properly. I remind myself that this is the man who ordered my mother’s death and the deaths of hundreds of witches across Frayne, the man who has seen to it that so many of my neighbors were jailed or hanged under his draconian laws. Let him die of a rat bite, then.

  I pass a very dull morning watching him write, the cravat on his ankle darkening with blood, until Karla comes back for the breakfast tray, her face white and wobbly as rice pudding. She looks at the dead rat and the bloody cravat and says, “Sir, I will call the doctor.”

  “Never mind,” he mutters at her, not bothering to look up, and she goes out, but soon after there comes a tap at the door, and a weary-looking fellow with a black leather bag comes in.

  “Flaming hounds, it’s nothing!” Agoston Horthy exclaims.

  “So you always say,” sighs the doctor.

  The prime minister puts down his quill and submits, letting the doctor examine the wound and clean it. He doesn’t wince as the alcohol touches the wound, and that is no surprise, I suppose, since he did not even notice the rat clamped on to his ankle in the first place. The doctor sews up the wound with neat little stitches, not bothering to offer any form of anesthetic. I’ve been stitched up a few times myself, so I know what it’s like, and I stare at Agoston Horthy, who is apparently lost in thought, as if he can’t feel the needle at all.

  “You should rest the foot today,” says the doctor. “I hope you do not have many appointments.”

  “Today, only paperwork,” says Horthy, thumping the stack on his desk. “Tomorrow morning I will go and see the king.”

  “I hope His Majesty is well.”

  “His Majesty is near death.”

  “One must never give up hope.”

  Agoston Horthy does not look impressed by this sentiment. The doctor bandages his ankle, bundles the dead rat up in the ruined cravat, bows to the prime minister, and goes out. Horthy sits back in his chair and stares at nothing for a moment. Then he unlocks a little drawer in the top of his desk, takes out a flat, round object that opens up—I think it is a picture frame—and gazes at it for a long time. I creep closer to look over his shoulder. From my blurred vantage point I can only make out a sepia-toned photograph of a woman and something else before he snaps it shut, slips it into his pocket, and goes back to his work.

  The nuyi is burning its way up my arm, and it seems to me there’s not much point hanging about here, staring at his back while he writes, but with the curtains and door closed there is no way out of the room. I can’t vanish myself somewhere else if I can’t see it. I’m trapped until a jittery Karla comes back with lunch for him. I reckon I’ve got something fairly juicy to report already, so I slip out the door after her without reappearing. I wander the parliament halls until I find my way out onto a narrow balcony.

  This is a much farther drop than from Wyn’s window at the Marrow, but I step up onto the parapet, returning fully to my body because I want to feel and see it clearly. I look down—the straight drop to the street below, where a hackney is trundling by, small boats plying the river Syne. I balance there a moment, arms stretched wide, my heart quickening.

  Then I step out into the air and vanish.

  Gennady is on the veranda overlooking Mrs. Och’s garde
n, staring at the lump of bare earth where her cherry tree used to be. Grass does not grow in that spot. I reappear next to him.

  “Vanishing Julia,” he says in that bone-shuddering baritone—apparently unsurprised by my appearing out of thin air.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I am thinking about my life,” he says. “I am thinking of all the things I used to care about and wondering why I cared, and I am tallying my failures and regrets and resolving not to care about them either. I do not want to stay in this house, but I do not know where I should go, and I like the food. Mrs. Freeley is a fine cook, a fine person. In fact, I think she is the only person whose company I can stand in the entire world.”

  Is this what happens when immortals go mad?

  “She’s a peach,” I say.

  He scowls at me. “What do you want? Have you come to see Lady Laroche?”

  “No. I came to see you.”

  “If you are not going to tell me where my son is, I do not want to speak to you.”

  “I don’t care what you want,” I snap, and then I rein in my temper. I remind myself that he has been tortured and unmade by Casimir and Shey. That he has suffered. That he did not mean for any of this to turn out the way it has. “I came to ask you about hermia.”

  “Ah,” he says. “Your contract. It won’t work, though. The quantity required to kill the nuyi would kill you as well.”

  “I don’t want to kill it,” I say. “It’s true, then? That’s what you used to destroy the nests?”

  “We used many methods,” he says. “But yes—hermia was the most effective.”

  So Pia was telling the truth. What to make of that?

  “Julia!” Princess Zara steps out onto the veranda in a dressing gown, her frizzy hair uncombed. “I’m glad to see you!”

  “Are you?” I ask. “I suppose nobody can say that sort of thing to you unless they really mean it. Where’s everybody else?”

  “Professor Baranyi has taken your brother to the university to photograph the inside of his chest, and Esme is with them. Gregor and Csilla have gone to the coast to meet with a rebellious count who might give us money. I do not know where Lady Laroche and Idir have gone. They are terribly secretive, those two. Witches are gathering somewhere in the city, but I don’t know where. I should like to know very much, though.”

  I stare at her. “Well, I’ve no idea,” I say.

  “Walk in the garden with me, won’t you?” She slips her arm through mine, entirely unselfconscious about the fact that she looks as if she just rolled out of bed. In spite of how young and plain she is, there is no denying that she has about her an extraordinary self-possession that can only be called queenly. We walk down to the pond, where dragonflies flit across the surface of the water and a turtle pokes its head out to glare at us.

  “Do you trust me, Julia?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. There’s no point lying to her, after all.

  “I hope I will have a chance to prove myself to you,” she says. “I want to ask you a favor, and I’m hoping you will keep it quiet. I mean that I do not want Lady Laroche to know.”

  Ah.

  “You don’t trust her?” I ask. “Is that because you know what she’s thinking?”

  “I can’t read minds. I can only sense emotion and intent. She wants me on the throne, I know that much. But no, I do not trust her. She loves conflict too much. There is something in her that leans toward chaos. She wants to lead the revolution, and this rat business…I don’t like her methods.”

  I nod. I’m not wild about her methods either, even if the West Spira nambies deserve a bit of rat trouble.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she says. She is speaking slowly, carefully, with frequent pauses; I realize uncomfortably that she’s gauging my reaction as she goes. “But I want to maintain a little distance from her. I would like you to carry a message for me—invisibly, so that nobody can follow you. Esme knows my plans, but I would rather nobody else did as yet.”

  “A message for whom?”

  She lowers her voice. “There is an inn called the Pear Tree, between the Twist and the Plateau. Do you know it?”

  “Yes. Bit of a dump.”

  “Take this letter there and ask for Dorje Tsewang. Deliver it only into her hands and ask her to destroy it when she has read it.”

  I take the letter she hands me, and then she smiles, like something has amused her.

  “It’s written in Xanuhan,” she says. “I tell you only so you don’t waste time opening it.”

  “And you say you can’t read minds,” I mutter.

  “I wouldn’t need my gift to guess at that thought,” she replies.

  There are soldiers all over Spira City today, and the Twist is unusually quiet. I have to do a good bit of yelling in the dingy front room of the Pear Tree before an unshaven fellow comes shambling out, doing up his trousers.

  “What?” he shouts at me.

  “I need to see Dorje Tsewang,” I say.

  “The furrin lady?” He squints. “What you need to see her for?”

  I put one of Pia’s coins on the desk. He grabs it and spits on the floor. “She’s having tea up on the roof.”

  The rooftop terrace offers a bleak view of Hostorak on one side and the spiky rooftops of the Twist on the other. The only person up there is a dark-complexioned woman of maybe forty, sitting very straight and reading a book. Her black hair is braided in elaborate loops all over her head. She is wearing a belted crimson tunic over silk trousers and high boots, silk gloves on her hands. She’s certainly not trying to blend in.

  “Are you Dorje Tsewang?” I ask. As if she might be somebody else.

  She puts down her book and looks at me with no expression on her face.

  I hand her the envelope Zara gave me. She removes her gloves to take it, and I get a start—her hands are covered in tattoos, old ones, faded. It’s writing, but not in any language I recognize. She tears the envelope open with one long fingernail, scans the letter quickly, then reaches into a fold of her tunic and comes out with a match, which she scrapes against the stone balustrade. The match flares, and she sets the letter alight, holding it by the corner as the flames sweep along the edges and the paper curls inward. She closes her other hand over the shrinking fire, extinguishing it, and then opens her fist, blowing away the ashes. I watch, enthralled.

  “D’you want to send a message back?”

  She shakes her head.

  “There are soldiers everywhere right now,” I say. “You’d better be careful. They drown witches here.”

  When she speaks, it is in flawless, upper-class Fraynish: “Don’t worry about me, my dear. My papers are in order, and I am not a witch.”

  “But the fire…”

  “I do not fear fire, though I can burn. In Xanuha we conquered our witch overlords, you know. Witches seeking power are like a fire seeking fuel. It is a difficult thing to conquer a raging fire that has spread over vast distances, but a small flame can be squashed quickly and painlessly. It is a useful skill—the finding and squashing of small fires.”

  Startled by her fluency, I ask: “Do you live in Frayne, then?”

  “I am visiting,” she says, picking up her book again. “Thank you for the message.”

  I take it I am dismissed. I’ll have to ask Esme what dealings the princess has with a Fraynish-speaking Xanuhan expatriate and why Zara doesn’t want Lady Laroche to know about it. There is something about this woman—I can’t say what it is, only I wish I could sit down and talk to her, find out all about her. But I’ve no reason to stay—indeed, I’ve got other, urgent things to do—and she clearly doesn’t want me here, anyway.

  “Be careful,” I say again.

  She cocks her head at me curiously but doesn’t reply.

  On a steep hi
ll descending from the Twist into the Edge, there is a shop with a picture of a boot hanging above the door. I knock and enter. The shop itself, with its attractively displayed shoes and boots, its smell of leather and grease, is empty. But a deep voice calls out, “Come in,” from the back, so I go through the door into Liddy’s room.

  A liver-spotted hand flies to her chest when she sees me. For a moment she just stares, and then her face relaxes, her mouth creasing into a smile.

  “Hullo, Liddy,” I say, helping myself to coffee from the pot on the cast iron stove. “I’m back.”

  My old friend looks me over, head to toe, and I wonder what she makes of what she sees. “So you are,” she says.

  There are fresh rolls cooling on the rack by the stove, and I grab one. I’ve had no lunch, and I’m ravenous. There is no bread in the world as soft and light and always fresh as the bread Liddy makes.

  “You won’t believe all that’s happened,” I say, sitting across from her. I can’t help grinning at her like an idiot around my mouthful of bread. It is good to see Liddy again. She caught me thieving in the market when I was seven years old, after our mother was drowned, and she took Dek and me to Esme. In a sense, I owe her everything.

  She studies my face, her smile closing up slowly like a purse. “You are changed, Julia.”

  “Knife fight with monsters,” I say, drawing the scar on my cheek with my finger and trying to sound cavalier.

  “I don’t mean the scar. I mean you are changed.”

  And I suppose that’s true. We’re getting right down to it, then—no small talk. That’s always been the way with Liddy.

  “You told me once that the world was full of something elses if I learned to look for them,” I say. “Well, I’ve been halfway across the world and back since last I saw you, and I’ve seen more than my share of something elses. Actually, it turns out that I am one.”

  Her eyes narrow to pebble-black slits.

  “What do you know about Agoston Horthy?” I ask, grabbing a second roll.