Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  I doubt that is his real name. He looks at me expectantly.

  “I’m Ella,” I say.

  He finishes his meal, puts down the eating sticks, and stares at me, waiting.

  “Who’s the Fraynish girl you’re watching?” I ask.

  He blinks and says skeptically, “You do not know who is she?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

  He shakes his head. “No. First you talk. Who you are? What you are doing here? How you can disappear?”

  “The vanishing thing is just…something I can do. A trick. A bit of magic.” Something that would get me killed in Frayne if I was found out but that I can admit to more freely here. “I’m looking for somebody in the monastery. Since you seem to spend a good bit of time there, I hoped you could help me.”

  “Who you are looking for?”

  Well, here it is. Mrs. Och would be furious, but creeping about and speaking to nobody has gotten me exactly nowhere so far, and I don’t know if it’s just that he’s armed with nothing more than a pointy stick, but I’m betting he doesn’t work for Casimir.

  “Ko Dan. D’you know him?”

  He frowns at me. “He is not there.”

  “But you know who he is? You’ve seen him before?”

  “He is important man there. Then he go away.”

  “When did he go away?”

  “Year and half,” he says.

  Not long after putting Gennady’s piece of The Book of Disruption into Theo, then. Gennady told us that Ko Dan put the fragment into Theo soon after he was born. The magic bound it to Theo’s very essence so completely that it would live and die with him. According to Gennady, Ko Dan wanted to murder the baby immediately, thus destroying the text and putting an end to the whole business. But instead Gennady put Bianka and Theo on a train and disappeared from their lives, figuring nobody would ever find them. Only an unwed mother and her child, nobody important. As for Bianka, she didn’t know at first what Gennady had done, that her child would forever be hunted by the world’s immortals. Seems like the sort of thing you ought to tell a girl once you’ve knocked her up, if you ask me, but nobody has ever accused the Xianren of being overly considerate. If anyone has made worse choices than me in love, it’s Bianka.

  “Where is Ko Dan now?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Why you want him?”

  “I’m working for a Fraynish lady who needs his help,” I say, which is more or less true. “You don’t have any guesses where he might have run off to?”

  He shakes his head. Blast. Well, I still want to know about the girl in the monastery.

  “Now your turn,” I say. “What are you up to?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “I just told you what I’m doing.”

  He shrugs.

  “Fine. Who do you work for?”

  “I cannot tell you,” he says again.

  I give him an exasperated look, and he cracks the slightest smile, a dimple appearing in one cheek, which makes him look suddenly younger and less ferocious.

  “Maybe your boss would like to meet me. Tell him you ran into a charming, witty, semi-attractive Fraynish girl with the ability to appear and disappear right before your eyes. That might interest him, don’t you think?”

  Incorrigible, I scold myself. He shows you a dimple and you start flirting.

  He nods, pressing his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh. “I think, maybe,” he says.

  “Does your boss speak Fraynish?”

  He nods.

  “All right. Tell him I want to meet him, and see what he says. How will I find you again?”

  He gives me a wry look. “I think you know.”

  “I mean, perhaps you could leave me a message somewhere.”

  “Here.” He nods toward the old woman behind the counter. “Old Thien can keep secret.”

  “All right. I’ll check in with Old Thien soon.”

  He is drumming on the table very fast with his fingers, a restless tic. “You do not know who is the girl in Shou-shu?” he asks again, like he doesn’t believe me.

  “No,” I say. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He shakes his head. I laugh, and he cracks a small, cautious smile again, the dimple reemerging.

  “How about the Treasury?” I ask. “Do you know what they keep in there?”

  He shrugs, his eyes narrowing. “I am not thief.”

  “Neither am I,” I assure him hurriedly. At least, not anymore. Still, whatever part of me drew me to thieving in the first place can’t quite let go of that locked, guarded door.

  “You are witch,” he suggests.

  “I’m not,” I say.

  He casts his eyes down for a second and then looks up at me, touching his fingers to his own jaw, to the same spot where he hit me with his elbow. Very seriously, he says, “I am sorry I hurt you.”

  Stars, this boy. Handsome, mysterious, quick on his feet, and now sweet. I struggle not to give him a melty look.

  “No, it was…I shouldn’t have approached you like that. I’m all right.”

  He knocks back the last of his tea and rises. I get up as well and pay Old Thien.

  “Glad to meet you, Huang,” I say once we’re outside.

  “Good night, Ella,” he says.

  Impulsively, maybe because I am hoping for another glimpse of that dimple, I say, “Oh hounds, look—it’s Julia, actually.”

  This time he smiles for real—a luminous smile that changes his face completely. It’s the kind of smile you can’t help smiling back at. Two dimples, though the left one is deeper.

  “I am Jun,” he says.

  Our guide, Fan Ming, is a handsome man with a clear brow and intelligent eyes. He speaks Fraynish well, but formally and with great care, which makes him seem earnest and a little dull. When he switches to Yongwen to speak to the professor or Frederick, he is quite different, gesticulating and cracking jokes, making them laugh.

  The Imperial Library is not in the city at all, to my surprise, but housed inside the holy mountain, Tama-shan, a day’s journey north of the city on horseback through the forest. I’m relieved to find that our guide is such a pleasant, scholarly sort of fellow. It’s obvious that Si Tan saw through Gregor’s attempt to present himself as a scholar, but if we were being led off into the woods to have our throats cut, I don’t think Fan Ming is the type of person they’d send to do the job. Then again, appearances can be deceiving, as I well know.

  We leave the city through the Xuanwu Gate, under the massive carved black turtle entwined with a snake. Outside the vast walls, makeshift markets and shantytowns have been built up close to the city. Sellers shout to us to come and try their goods, men sit in rows having their beards trimmed, old women pass us stooped double under heavy loads of firewood, and the stink of meat and fish hangs in the air, the lesser cuts and day-old catches being sold to those who can’t afford the city’s finer fare. We go to the stables just beyond the raucous market to rent our horses, then mount up and set out riding north. There are a few villages farther out, but we soon pass through all of these and travel the broad path through the forest until suppertime. I have never ridden a horse before. Thankfully, women in Yongguo do not ride sidesaddle—an idiotic idea if ever there was one—but ride as men do, wearing trousers under a stiff, split robe that separates for the purpose of riding but falls to the ankles when one stands upright.

  Even so, by the time we set up camp for the night, an hour’s ride from the holy mountain itself, my tailbone feels as if it has been hammered up into my spine, and I can hardly walk. Tama-shan, rising out of the woods ahead of us, is crimson in the evening light, pointing like a finger at the sky. The spring nights are still cool, and so we build a fire, even though we’ve brought rice balls and dried fish with us and have no need to cook anything. The sky darkens, the stars come out, and we watch the mountain light up as the witches of Tama-shan lay their elaborate fires, writing out spells of safekeeping in flame.

  A
s those distant fires appear on the mountainside, the temperature drops sharply. The trees around us tremble and shake their leaves. Our fire leaps upward, spitting sparks, and the river foams and rushes, as if trying to flee whatever is happening on the mountain. A foul wind sweeps over us, through us, and is gone as quickly as it came, but it leaves us all shivering and queasy, the trees and the grass bristling strangely, the rocks and the water bright even in the darkness.

  “You feel that?” says Frederick, awed.

  “The Tama-shan witches are strong,” says Fan Ming, poking at the fire with a stick.

  It’s something I cannot get used to—that there are legitimate, important jobs for witches in this country. That one could discover in oneself such a power and find a way to use it profitably, openly, rather than hiding it.

  When our fire begins to go down, Frederick heads in among the trees with a lantern to collect more wood, and I follow him.

  “So Mrs. Och really thinks we’ll be able to find out what’s happened to Ko Dan at the library?” I ask him once we’re out of Fan Ming’s earshot.

  “It’s a fair bet,” he says cheerfully. “Almost everything is a matter of public record in Yongguo—births, deaths, marriages, changes of domicile, all that. You can trace the movement of any registered citizen through library records, and copies of all the Shou-shu records are kept there as well. We should be able to find some hint, at the very least, and hopefully the professor will be able to disguise the real purpose of our research. Tremendously helpful that you found out how long ago he left.”

  I did not mention Jun last night but said I’d overheard that Ko Dan had gone missing a year and a half ago.

  “And what will you be doing at the library?” I ask bluntly.

  He gives me a startled look and says, “Why…helping.” Then he bends over hurriedly to gather some branches. Frederick has always been an appalling liar.

  “And you’re feeling entirely better, then…after the other day when Mrs. Och took your strength?” I ask, letting him off the hook—for now.

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  We gather sticks in silence for a moment. I can tell he is trying to put some distance between us, but I follow him again.

  “I wish you didn’t let her do that to you,” I say.

  “I know,” he sighs, finally looking right at me. “I choose to do it, Julia. To help her. And honestly, I’m quite recovered.”

  “It’s horrible. She didn’t used to do it in Spira City.”

  “She had more opportunities to rest and gather her strength then. This journey has been very hard on her.”

  “Or maybe she’s developing a taste for it.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s one way that I can be useful. I can’t do what you can do, but I can give her the strength she needs when she needs it. She is a force for good, Julia. She has saved so many lives.”

  “She didn’t save my mother.”

  It sounds absurd and childish as I say it. I don’t know how to explain the revulsion I feel at this ancient immortal drinking up the energies of the young, or the uncomfortable mixture of fear, resentment, gratitude, and awe I feel for Mrs. Och. I bite my lip and wait for him to chide me, but he doesn’t. When I look up to meet his eyes, they are all compassion and concern, none of which I deserve—not from him.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m being stupid.”

  “I wish you could trust her,” he says. “She trusts you, you know. And with less reason, if I may say so.”

  I accept the rebuke. I can’t answer it, after all, even if it stings. He’s right—I don’t trust her, and he knows perfectly well that she does not really trust me either. She may be a force for good, as he says, but she is mercilessly pragmatic, and I cannot forgive her for trying to keep from me knowledge of my own mother, of my self.

  I follow him back to the camp. All evening, as we eat and talk, our fire leans in the direction of Tama-shan, ignoring the direction of the breeze and rising alarmingly high at times, the smoke streaming toward the fires on the mountain like it is being called that way. In the morning, the writing on the mountainside is black and smoldering, the spells still visible.

  Having risen at dawn, we reach the mountain before the morning dew has dried and tie our horses up at the edge of the forest. A middle-aged woman dressed in a peasant tunic sits on a stump by the cave that leads into the mountain. She is busy whittling something with a fierce-looking blade, but she looks up as Fan Ming approaches. He bows and shows her the letter of permission with Si Tan’s seal. She glances at it, not stopping her whittling, and then looks over at us. The corners of her mouth turn down, but she nods curtly toward the cave, and in we go. Fan Ming leads the way, and Esme and I take up the rear.

  Odd sort of library, if you ask me, though I’ll grant you, I’ve never been to the regular kind either. The passageway slopes sharply downward, and then the tunnel turns into steps. They spiral around and around, deep underground, and the air gets colder.

  “Suppose the punishment for trying to get into the library under false pretenses is to be buried underneath it?” I whisper to Esme, but she shushes me. Then she stops and I run into her back, which is fairly like running into a solid wall. Fan Ming is exchanging greetings with someone else. Lanterns are lit, which is blinding for a few moments and then a relief. The tunnel walls look paler than I would have expected and are entirely smooth. The roof over us is high and vaulted. I think I see bats hanging up there.

  We have reached the bottom of the stairs at last, and whoever is up ahead leads us along a straight passageway that opens into a painted cavern. The paint is so bright it looks wet in the lamplight. Demon gods glower down at us from the high ceiling; a sea dragon snaking along one wall attacks a ship manned by naked sailors; a giant octopus-like creature squats over a castle and appears to be shitting ink all over a bunch of squalling courtiers. I am gaping around at the walls when Esme nudges me. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the figure who met us at the bottom of the stairs, but now I see her, hooded and kneeling on the floor, writing in a leather-bound book. There comes the smell of salt water—startling, so far from the sea—and a grinding sound from the stone walls. A door opens where there was no door before, the painted stone shifting aside.

  Professor Baranyi holds up his lantern, peering into the darkness, and asks Fan Ming a question. Fan Ming says something about Shou-shu. Together they enter this second, smaller cavern, and they come out soon after, arms full of books bound in leather and flexible bamboo. These they set on a stone shelf at one end of the painted cavern. The professor has the sort of avid look on his face that I associate with gamblers off to the racetrack. He and Fan Ming are rather forgetting to pretend that Gregor—the supposed scholar—has anything to do with this at all.

  Frederick says something to Fan Ming in Yongwen, and I recognize the word for Kahge. Fan Ming nods in agreement.

  “If you are comfortable here,” he says to the professor and Gregor, “I will take Frederick to the old part of the library. If you need anything, Bao Wei will help you.”

  Esme scowls at the witch, still kneeling on the floor with her legs tucked under her. Traveling with Bianka, and indeed traveling through Yongguo, has led my old crew to a new perspective on witches, so feared and reviled in Frayne, but still, I can see Esme does not want Fan Ming to leave them with this witch.

  “Of course,” says the professor. “Thank you very much.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I pipe up, joining Frederick over by Fan Ming. “I could help take notes.”

  Frederick and the professor exchange a stunned look, and then Frederick stammers, “Ah, no, thank you, Miss Heriday, that won’t be necessary.”

  “I should like to,” I say firmly. “It will be very good practice for me.” Before he can protest again, I turn to Gregor. “What say you, Father?”

  Gregor stares at me in confusion for a moment and then, because he doesn’t know what to do, looks at Esme. She gives him a slight nod.

  “Mis
s Heriday should stay with us,” begins the professor, recovering from his surprise, but Gregor cuts him off.

  “Not at all, it will be an interesting experience for her to explore the library a bit. Go on, my girl.”

  I smile, triumphant. “Thank you, Father.”

  Frederick and Professor Baranyi gape at each other but there is nothing they can do. Gregor is supposed to be the authority here, and they can hardly countermand his decision regarding his own daughter.

  “Follow me, then,” says Fan Ming. I shoot Esme a grateful look and she cocks an eyebrow at me. I’m going to have to explain this to her later.

  The passageway we came along branches off into more tunnels and more painted caverns. After several turns I begin to worry I might not be able to find my way back to the others on my own. I do not at all like being this far underground. Frederick clears his throat a few times, glancing nervously at me, but I keep a brisk pace behind Fan Ming and do not look at him.

  We reach a much smaller, plainer cavern, where a large woman, presumably one of the librarian-witches Frederick told me about, dozes in the corner. Simple shelves are carved into the walls, and these shelves are filled with bundles of slender bamboo strips nearly the length of my forearm. The woman’s eyes snap open when we come in. Fan Ming bows low to her, speaking in very formal Yongwen. She nods and waves a hand toward the shelves, as if giving him permission.

  “Many of the writings on Kahge are very old and must be handled carefully,” says Fan Ming, taking out one of the bundles and untying the silk around it. The writing on the strips looks almost pictographic compared with the elegant modern Yongwen script I’ve grown used to seeing.

  “May I?” asks Frederick, taking one of the strips in his hands like he’s receiving a great treasure. I look at the paintings on the walls and my heart gives a jolt. At eye level there is a black-skinned woman clothed in gold holding a small bowl with two spouts; something white swirls out of the spouts. Next to her, a great many shadowy, white-eyed warriors, shining blades held aloft, are descending a hill topped by fire. The Gethin. I quiver a little inside. Encountering one of them was bad enough. I can barely imagine an army of them. No wonder the Eshriki Empire ruled half the world for so long.