Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “Theo, my darling,” Bianka sobs, reaching for him. He lets go of me and dives into her arms. She pulls him close, covering his curly head with kisses; he buries his face in her neck. I leave them there, a horrible pit forming in my stomach, and go back into the main house.

  “Ah, Julia,” says Mrs. Och, smiling at me. A tree pipit is perched on her shoulder, and she is holding a rolled-up slip of paper. “We need to find you a dress.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. Gregor has been granted an appointment with the grand librarian.”

  Later that afternoon I am at the elegant courtyard house in the Xihuo Triangle with Csilla’s knee in my back while she pulls my corset on so tight I can hardly breathe. It’s an item I rarely bothered with in Spira City and have not worn at all these past two months, traveling and dressing like a boy. I straighten my shoulders and grimace.

  “Nice to see a waist on you again,” says Csilla, pleased with her work.

  “I don’t know. I always wanted a brother,” says Dek, who has come by with a sleek, nickel-plated pistol for Esme from a weapons dealer in Dongshui.

  Esme laughs at my expression. Easy for her, dressed as a manservant. I’d begged to simply go along vanished, but Mrs. Och preferred to have a role for me just in case, reasoning that I could always vanish if need be but could not spring into existence if I started out vanished.

  “I was getting used to breathing freely,” I grumble. “I think I might stick to men’s clothes from now on. Take a leaf out of Esme’s book.”

  “Oh, please no,” says Csilla. She yanks my hair back so hard I yell and fastens it deftly on top of my head.

  “A brother I could call Jules. We’d be a fearsome pair,” continues Dek, carefully oiling the barrel of the pistol.

  Csilla pinches my chin between her thumb and forefinger and frowns at my face, as if it isn’t up to snuff. “Honestly, Julia, you’re not bad-looking if you’d just put in a little effort.”

  “Well, we aren’t aiming for beauty today,” says Esme. “Plain as plain will do just fine. Julia ought not to attract too much attention.”

  No fear of that with Csilla nearby. She has been a great boon to the single New Porian dress shop in Tianshi. Today she is wearing a low-cut gown made of watered silk, with a ruffle of lace along the bust, her hair a fountain of white-gold curls. She is utterly contemptuous of the fashion in Tianshi. The women look like they are wearing drapes, she says. I thought so too when we first arrived, watching the ladies in their wide, stiff robes trotting around on dainty silk shoes. But the funny thing is that if you spend some time in a place, you start to see all its strangeness as natural, and I can imagine now how absurd and immodest Csilla’s dress might appear to the dignified drape-women of Tianshi.

  Csilla dresses me in a plainer gown than her own, a dark blue piece that buttons to my chin, the idea being to make me look as young, and therefore as harmless, as possible. It is still the most elegant dress I’ve ever worn, and I do not like it. I am meant to be Ella Heriday, Lord and Lady Heriday’s daughter, an educated girl and my father’s secretary. I look like a miserable governess. I try to take a deep breath, and think that the appearance of a trim waist is hardly worth this feeling of having my lungs locked up.

  “I suppose if you’ve been off buying weapons, you haven’t found out who collects the mail from the monastery yet,” I say to Dek.

  “I have, actually,” says Dek. “Or Wyn has, I should say. A government employee brings the mail and takes it out twice a week, and there’s a basket of letters bearing Gangzi’s seal every time. Anything in particular you want?”

  “I’d just like to know what he’s writing about. Can you get me one?”

  “I reckon we can buy one off the mail carrier,” he says. “Mrs. Och gave us loads of money for bribes.”

  Gregor wanders in with a bottle, more than half empty, of the amber-colored persimmon wine shijiu in his hand, and Csilla spins me to face him.

  “What do you think of your new daughter?” she asks. He looks me up and down, unimpressed.

  “Don’t know why you’re taking so much trouble with her clothes. Nobody’s going to look twice at her anyway.”

  I suppose I can’t fault him for saying what I was just thinking myself.

  “Put that bottle down,” says Esme. “You can’t turn up drunk.”

  She is the only one who can say it. Esme and Gregor have a long history, dating back to the so-called Lorian Uprising, in Frayne, the year before I was born. Esme’s husband, Gustaf Moreau, was Gregor’s best friend and a leader of the uprising. Gustaf was captured and hung, along with countless others, the uprising was crushed, and somehow the grief and failure has kept them bonded all these years after. Gregor’s expression darkens, but he doesn’t argue with her. He puts the shijiu on the lacquered side table, throws himself down on the settee, and then looks at the bottle.

  “No point going in sober,” he says. “I’m supposed to be a Fraynish aristocrat, remember? I grew up with the Fraynish aristocracy. They’re drunk all the time.”

  “Maybe in your family,” says Esme. “But you’re supposed to be a scholarly nobleman, not the drunk, idle variety.”

  I try to catch Dek’s eye, but he has gone back to polishing Esme’s gun, studiously avoiding looking at me.

  “Rotten stuff anyway, shijiu,” says Gregor, still gazing at the bottle with a terrible longing. “Flaming Kahge, but I miss whiskey. What I’d do for a nice bottle of whiskey. Or rum. Give me rum. Anything but this fruity shijiu stuff. Barely taste it.”

  “Then stop bleeding drinking it,” says Esme.

  Csilla powders my face, her dark eyes bottomless and blank.

  “Gregor’s right, nobody’s going to look at me,” I say, but she keeps at me like I’m a painting she’s working on.

  Professor Baranyi comes in, and immediately the mood changes, becoming not exactly hostile, but guarded. When he sees me, the professor looks faintly surprised, as if he’d forgotten I’d be joining them. I wonder if he finds it as uncomfortable lodging with my gang as I do lodging with his. Probably slightly less so, since none of mine have any reason to want to murder him in his sleep; still, I reckon we’d both love to switch.

  “Ah! Hello, Julia. Nice to see you,” he says.

  I doubt it is particularly nice to see me, but I say hello back politely.

  “Is Mrs. Och well?”

  “Much as usual,” I reply.

  “Well!” He looks around nervously, his eyes darting between Gregor and the near-empty bottle of shijiu a few times. “Are we ready?”

  “Ready as we’ll ever be!” declares Gregor, rising with a flourish but spoiling it by staggering a little and then giggling.

  Even drunk, Gregor cuts a dashing figure. He is tall and broad and graying at the temples, and while his drink-ravaged face could not be called handsome anymore, he has a kind of charisma about him that can at times affect even those of us who know him and his weaknesses all too well. He makes a fine Fraynish aristocrat. Whether he can pose convincingly as a scholar is another question altogether, and I have my doubts, even though the professor has been coaching him for weeks.

  Csilla slips her arm through his to steady him.

  “You look marvelous,” he tells her, and she softens against him.

  When I was little, I thought Csilla impossibly glamorous, and she and Gregor struck me as very romantic in their moony-eyed devotion to one another—particularly compared to the endless quarreling I remember between my own parents. As I got older and lost some of my illusions, I came to see that drink has always been Gregor’s one true love, and that Csilla’s glamour is like lacquer painted over a brokenness I can barely fathom. Still, even knowing that they are bound above all by their shared disappointment—with life and with Gregor himself—when I see them gazing at each other this way, I envy them a little. I miss being in love and thinking it such a fine and unassailable thing.

  The Imperial Gardens are guarded by elite warriors called the
Ru. Their lightweight, flexible armor covers all but their eyes. They stand with feet planted apart, eyes fixed straight ahead, gleaming weapons strapped to their chests and backs, double-pointed spears in their gloved fists. Wyn and I tried to make fun of them when we first arrived in Tianshi, but the truth is, there is something terrifying about them.

  At the great Huanglong Gate, Gregor presents our invitation from the grand librarian to the Ru, and we pass under the twisting, gold-plated dragon that stretches over the top of the gate, its wide crimson mouth pointing down as if to gobble us up. The Imperial Gardens are reputed to be one of the wonders of the world, and indeed, stepping inside those grounds is like entering an enchanted fairyland. There are tiered waterfalls, ponds flashing with red-gold carp, walkways made of pale jade and lined with flowering trees, and brightly feathered birds that watch us from the branches above with an unsettling intelligence.

  The Imperial Residences sit on a huge pedestal at the center of the gardens. Arranged around this pedestal, among the lakes and wooded paths and flower gardens, are the homes, studios, laboratories, and so on, of those citizens clever and talented enough to have earned a place here. The buildings are all white, which has a rather blinding effect, while the Imperial Residences are painted bright red, with gold-plated tiles on the sweeping rooftops.

  A small troop of the Ru leads us up the steps to the Imperial Residences and an open-air pavilion overlooking the gardens. A tall, powerfully built man in an elegant silk robe, his long beard shot through with gray, is peering through a magnifying glass at a scroll spread across the table in front of him. He is holding what appears to be a needle. He looks up as we approach, then puts aside his instruments and, to all of our surprise, greets us in fluent Fraynish.

  “Welcome to the Heavenly City, Lord Heriday,” he says in a gravelly but pleasant voice. “I am Si Tan, the grand librarian of Yongguo.”

  Frederick explained to me that the grand librarian, officially head of the Imperial Library, functions almost as the prime minister does in Frayne—he is second only to the emperor. In fact, though, Yongguo’s emperor is quite a young man, and it is said that the grand librarian and the empress dowager are the true powers behind the throne. Si Tan certainly looks like a man who is confident of his authority. He shakes Gregor’s hand and raises Csilla’s to his lips. She drops a deep curtsy.

  “I thank you, I thank you!” booms Gregor. He claps Professor Baranyi on the shoulder, and the professor stumbles a bit. “I brought my translator, but it seems we have no need of him!”

  I feel a flutter of anxiety at that. We’d all assumed that the professor would be the main communicator and Gregor merely a mouthpiece, a face. If the grand librarian speaks Fraynish, Gregor will have to bluff rather more effectively than we’d expected.

  Si Tan looks at each of us in turn as Gregor introduces us. I do my best to appear unmemorable—the dull, bookish daughter—but still his eyes rest on me, drink me in. I feel as if I’m being memorized and explored. He is an intimidating size, and in spite of his scholarly beard, fine robe, and impeccable manners, there is something of a brute about him, I think. The way he moves like a giant cat, the way he flexes his large, powerful hands, the hardness around his eyes.

  “Lovely place you’ve got here,” says Gregor. He glances at the scroll on the table. “Doing a bit of writing, are you?”

  “Come, I will show you,” says Si Tan, waving him over. “I think miniaturism is not a popular art form in Frayne.”

  “Minia-whatsit?” says Gregor, bending over the long scroll. “Flaming Kahge, what’s all this?”

  I crane around him to look. The scroll is covered with beautiful rows of calligraphy, but there is a bright band of color all along its edges. Si Tan hands Gregor the magnifying glass. He peers through it and exclaims, “Hounds, how by the stars d’you do that?”

  “A visiting artist from Piram introduced the form to Yongguo. We invited many artists from Piram to the city after that, to teach miniaturism.” He offers the magnifying glass to each of us in turn. The colorful border is, in fact, a long and complicated illustration. There are boats on rivers, peasants crossing bridges, soldiers on horseback—all of it so tiny that to the naked eye it can hardly be made out at all, and yet I see with the magnifying glass that the soldiers are frowning, that the woman with the bucket of water on her head has a dreamy expression on her face.

  “I am only an amateur, of course. It takes years to master the technique,” says Si Tan.

  “I should think so,” blusters Gregor. “What’s the bleeding point?”

  If this is his impression of a scholar, I think he needs more practice.

  “The point of art?” asks Si Tan, smiling faintly.

  “It is tremendously clever,” says Csilla quickly. “You’re quite right that it hasn’t reached Frayne. I have never seen anything like it.”

  “This is the story of a hero we call Muhan, who vanquished giants invading Yongguo from the north,” says Si Tan.

  “Giants?” says Csilla. She is holding Gregor’s arm very tightly, like she’s trying to restrain him. “Is it a true story?”

  “A legend,” he says. “But there is a kind of truth in such old stories, though your Fraynish king may not agree.”

  I can feel Professor Baranyi’s agitation coming off him in waves. He is like a cabriolet driver watching his vehicle roll down a hill without him to steer it.

  “Very interesting,” says Gregor, more subdued now. Perhaps Csilla has been pinching him.

  “May I offer refreshment?” asks Si Tan, putting aside the scroll.

  Gregor brightens immediately. “Splendid! Thank you, yes! It’s thirsty weather, isn’t it?”

  The afternoon passes slowly, in awkward politeness and sipping tea, which has Gregor very glum and disappointed. I am glad now that I did not come vanished, as there is a tray of delicate wafers that melt to a sweet powder on the tongue. I help myself to as many as I can while the others make idle chat. Esme has to nudge me to get me to stop reaching for more, which seems unfair, since the tray is still half full and nobody else is eating any. I notice Si Tan looking over at Esme a number of times, trying to catch her eye, with the air of a boxer sussing out his opponent. He doesn’t believe she’s a servant, I think anxiously. This is a man who recognizes authority when he sees it, no matter how it’s dressed.

  Finally, wanting a drink very badly by now, Gregor runs out of patience and interrupts the conversation about architecture that Csilla is managing quite well to say, “Well now, my dear man, we are here to see if we might visit your famous library.”

  “Ah yes,” says Si Tan, his eyes alert, the polite expression on his face shifting subtly. “You are interested in Shou-shu. Tell me.”

  “Well, yes, that’s just it. The hierarchy is what I’m writing on. How monks rise in the ranks, how they keep their authority separate from the empire, that sort of thing.”

  Si Tan folds his big hands together in a gesture that to me seems full of menace, although I can’t say why. “Most scholars want to know about the bells,” he says. “Or the longevity of the monks.”

  “The organization of the place is my real interest,” says Gregor. “Not the magic. I want to know how it functions on a, er, human level.”

  “Then why Shou-shu in particular?” asks Si Tan.

  “Why? Because it is the most important sect, residing within the most powerful city in the world,” says Gregor. He is not doing so badly, I think, even if it all sounds memorized. I am watching the professor out of the corner of my eye, but he is managing to keep his expression neutral. “They govern themselves, keep their numbers small, and have managed it for thousands of years without revolts, dissent, or trouble with the empire. Fascinating.”

  “You are interested in leadership?” Si Tan asks. “In Gangzi, head of the Shou-shu Council? Succession, perhaps?”

  “Yes, yes,” says Gregor enthusiastically. “How the leaders are chosen. How they wield their authority. What the rules are. Tha
t sort of thing.”

  “Your past work is largely on New Porian monks, I understand,” says Si Tan. “They are subject to the state’s authority, are they not?”

  “Yes,” says Gregor. “Very different system. We don’t call them monks in Frayne, but holies. They run the temples, but they answer to the Crown, yes.”

  “And it is the same in other New Porian countries?”

  “Similar. They all answer to the heads of state, yes, all the holies.”

  “New Poria proclaims the ultimate authority of the Nameless One, and yet does not place its holies on equal footing with its kings and queens,” remarks Si Tan.

  “No, indeed, very true, bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?” says Gregor, beginning to get nervous a good few minutes after the rest of us have started to sweat.

  “You wrote a book on these…holies, you call them? The hierarchies within the Fraynish temples. Tell me about your findings.”

  Gregor blusters through some of what the professor has coached him on. Si Tan asks him one sharply pointed question after another, and with each answer Gregor seems to be floundering more. He does not sound like a man discussing his life’s work. He sounds like a man terribly anxious to not say the wrong thing and being as vague as possible. I think I can feel us collectively beginning to panic. Since Esme isn’t looking at me, I snatch three more wafers and stuff them into my mouth. I don’t know what the penalty is for coming to the grand librarian under false pretenses. Si Tan grows more and more stern and specific. He asks for names. He asks for dates. Twice he corrects Gregor, showing us that he knows more than we’d reckoned about what the professor had hoped would be an obscure topic.

  “The Holy Findis, two hundred years ago, wrote a dictum on the relationship between the king and the temple that was condemned, but he was not executed for treason after the trial. What was his defense?”