Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “Her relationship with the Sidhar Coven has been…uneven,” he says. “But overall she has been a friend to witches. Nobody told me…I assumed when I saw this that she had come for the princess. I couldn’t be sure of her intentions—if she is working with or against the coven this time.”

  “Neither,” I say. “She’s here for Ko Dan.”

  “Well.” He licks his lips. “That is a surprise. I remember Ko Dan, you know. When we were in talks with Gangzi about the princess, Ko Dan was always there too. He was Gangzi’s right-hand man—his shadow, some of them used to call him. I will see what I can find out.”

  I look at Jun laid out on the sofa, his mouth soft.

  “We’re all right, then?” I ask. “There’s been a bit of knocking each other about, but I think we ought to have a go at being friends.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he says. A different tune, now that the gun has changed hands, but never mind. I don’t have to like him to believe what he’s told me so far.

  “I’m sorry about your boy here,” says Dek, nodding at Jun. “We were worried about Julia.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” I say. “I can always disappear if things get bad, like you said before.”

  “I know,” he says. “It’s more than a bit ridiculous, me limping in to rescue you. But I do worry anyway. I can’t help it. It’s my vocation, I think—worrying about you.”

  The count watches us with interest, his spectacles sliding down his sweaty nose. “Jun told me how you disappear and reappear at will,” he says.

  “It comes in handy,” I say shortly. “We’ll be in touch soon.”

  “Won’t you have a drink before you go?” he asks.

  “No time,” I say, ignoring the disappointed looks I get from Wyn and Dek. They’ve noticed the whiskey on the side table, of course. “Come on, fellows.”

  We all shake hands, very chummy now, and leave Count Fournier filling up a glass alone.

  Csilla greets us at the door of the elegant house in Xihuo and takes us through to a grand, open-air room overlooking the inner courtyard, with its flowering bushes and its small pond choked with water lilies. Professor Baranyi is next to a wan-looking Mrs. Och on the settee. Esme and Gregor are standing. We arranged the meeting by tree pipit, and everyone is here but Bianka and Theo—who are not to leave the house in Nanmu—and Frederick.

  “Where’s Frederick?” I ask, looking around for him.

  “He did not want to leave Bianka and Theo unattended,” says Professor Baranyi.

  I refrain from rolling my eyes at the idea that Frederick might be any kind of protection for Bianka, and I say: “Well, we’ve got news. Good and bad.”

  “Start with the bad,” says Gregor, sitting back with a glass of shijiu. “As is traditional.”

  “Pia is in Tianshi,” I say. “And she knows we’re here too.”

  “You saw her?” asks Mrs. Och sharply.

  “Yes. She doesn’t know where we’re living, but she’s here and she’s looking for us. That’s the bad news.”

  “You’re all right, though?” asks Esme. She’s looking at Wyn, his bruised, swollen face.

  “That happened later,” I say. “We’re all right.”

  “You’re all right,” says Wyn, but he says it good-naturedly.

  “The good news?” asks the professor faintly.

  “We’ve found out who that girl in the monastery is. At least, I think we have.” I pause for effect, but nobody says anything. “Well, according to my source, her name is Zara, and she’s King Zey’s niece. The rumors about a royal baby smuggled out of Frayne after the Lorian Uprising were true, seems like. She’s here, and the Fraynish government already knows about it. There’s a delegation trying to get permission to get into Shou-shu or have the princess turned out.”

  A short, stunned silence, and then they are all bursting with questions. I try to explain about Count Fournier and Jun. I can feel Mrs. Och’s eyes on me, and I know she’s probably furious that I’ve been doing all this behind her back, but I don’t care. I feel quite important, bringing such monumental news. Esme and Gregor keep exchanging this wondering, peculiar look, like they’ve just remembered something about each other that’s been buried a long time.

  “I’d heard rumors about the princess in Yongguo,” says Mrs. Och at last, her chilly voice breaking in and silencing the others. “I did not know for certain they were true. Certainly, a baby girl was born to Zey’s brother just before the uprising. We all knew what was coming, and I helped arrange for her to be taken out of Frayne. But I lost track of her years ago. I heard she died of a fever somewhere in Ishti more than a decade back, but then talk about her surfaced again in the Far East. If it is true, it is good news indeed.”

  “And King Zey is dying,” repeats Esme. She looks at Gregor again—a helpless, resigned look this time. He is clutching the bottle of shijiu to his chest like a child clings to a favorite toy. “Who is left?” she says.

  “There are many in Frayne who did not join the Lorian Uprising but who have no love of Agoston Horthy,” he says fiercely. “Even among the aristocracy, there are those who would support a viable alternative to Zey and his ilk. And Princess Zara—if it is her—has a greater claim than some far-off cousin they’ve dug up.”

  “Does it really make such a difference?” asks Wyn. “This king or that queen, I mean.”

  Gregor pounds the table with his fist. “She is a Lorian princess!” he cries. “First of all, she has a right to the throne. Besides that, it would mean a sea change in Frayne, the change we fought for. Freedom of religion and thought! Imagine that! A Frayne that doesn’t spend all its resources hunting down and drowning witches? That doesn’t trample over its old traditions? Somebody who would flick off that murderous dog Agoston Horthy!”

  “All right, all right,” Csilla murmurs, patting his arm soothingly, but he is not soothed in the slightest.

  “How can you say it makes no difference?” he cries, pointing at Wyn, who puts his hands up in mock surrender.

  “This count thinks she’s in danger, though,” I break in. “He’d heard of Gustaf, by the way.”

  “Everybody who knew of the uprising knew Gustaf,” says Esme calmly. She never speaks of her dead husband, or the child she lost to Scourge around the same time.

  We are all quiet for a moment. Then Gregor stands up. He is flushed and trembling, but not from drink or lack of drink. There is something in his expression I don’t recognize, have never seen. Like he might weep—and not in a drunken, maudlin way, but tears of real, sober, great emotion. He goes to the edge of the veranda and pours the whole bottle of shijiu out onto the ground. Then he comes back in and fetches three more bottles from the pantry and takes them and pours them out as well. Csilla begins to cry; she goes to him, and he folds her in his arms. They stand there weeping and clinging to each other, him rocking her in his embrace.

  It’s an affecting scene, I’ll say that. I look at Esme, and her expression is odd, uncertain. Gregor has given up the drink before, many times. He always means it, and he always goes back to it in a matter of days. Csilla is the only one, besides Gregor, who ever believes it will last.

  “And Ko Dan?” asks Mrs. Och, ignoring the dramatic scene. “Any word?”

  I shake my head.

  “This count Julia found has got connections,” says Dek. He can tell I’m on dangerous ground with Mrs. Och. “I bet he’ll turn something up for us.”

  She nods. “Very well. You will pursue the matter with your new friends.”

  “What about the princess?” asks Esme.

  Mrs. Och folds her hands in her lap. “The princess,” she repeats, and then, unexpectedly, she smiles. “Why, we will take her back to Frayne and give her the throne.”

  When at last our group breaks up, I try to slip out quickly with Dek and Wyn, but Esme calls me back: “Julia. I need to speak with you.”

  “Come for dinner after,” says Dek to me, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.


  I nod and follow Esme reluctantly to the bamboo bench in the outer courtyard. We sit, and she says nothing, waiting. She used to do that when I’d done something bad as a kid, like breaking a window or stealing something I wasn’t supposed to steal. She’d sit me down and look at me with that flinty gaze of hers, waiting for me to confess. I cracked every time, and I crack now. I tell her the truth. Just not all of it.

  “Mrs. Och has got Frederick researching my…the vanishing thing. She wants to know why I can do it, but she’s going about it behind my back. And I want to know too.”

  “Did he find anything?”

  “Maybe. He’s got to translate it all.”

  “I don’t like it. This witch targeting you in the library too. Why you?”

  “If Si Tan saw those pictures…I was the only one from the pictures that was there at the library.”

  “Julia.” She puts her big hand on mine, and I stare at her scarred knuckles. Her gentleness is always vaguely surprising. I’ve seen those fists in action. “You are entitled to your secrets. But if you are in trouble, you must tell me. I have money. We can go home anytime. We don’t owe Mrs. Och a thing.”

  “And the princess?” I say.

  “I want to see it through. But I reckon we could manage it without Mrs. Och.”

  “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of her.”

  “No, I don’t. But if you’re in danger, I’ll do what needs doing. I can get you clear of all this.”

  “All right.”

  “Promise me you’ll tell me if you need help.”

  “I’d better go,” I say. She lets go of my hand.

  I grew up with Esme’s power and certainty at my back. The sorts of things that happened all too often to girls in the Twist never happened to me; no man would have dared to lay a finger on me. First I was Ammi’s daughter, and then Esme’s ward, and I felt safe and strong as a result. But we’re beyond all that now. For all that her fists are like anvils and she’s the fastest draw in the Twist and clever in ways you’d never suspect, in spite of all the folks who owe her favors and the money she’s got stashed away—not even Esme can protect me from Casimir, or Mrs. Och, or the truth.

  When I get to the little house in Dongshui, Mei and Ling are already there. I force a smile, biting back my annoyance. There is so much I want to talk over with Dek and Wyn, but we can hardly get into it in front of the girls, even if they don’t speak Fraynish. Mei is ladling a sweet-smelling soup into bowls, and Ling is bent over a book, messy hair hanging in front of her face, while Dek strokes the back of her neck absentmindedly.

  “Julia! Look, the girls have spent the day catching turtles and they’ve made a soup!” Wyn says this with false enthusiasm, fetching another bowl for me, and then pulls a horrified face behind Mei’s back. Without turning around, she elbows him in the gut and he yelps. She says something in her dour voice, and Dek laughs.

  “I’m not going to ask for the translation,” says Wyn, sitting down.

  Dek supplies it cheerfully anyway—“Barbarian”—as Mei puts the pot back on the stove.

  “Quite a day,” says Dek, raising his eyebrows at me meaningfully. I suppose that’s as close as we’re going to get to talking it over. But I’m starving, so I pull a chair up to the table and dig in with the others. I don’t know what turtles are supposed to taste like, but the soup is hot and hearty, which is all I really need from a soup. I knock it back.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” Wyn says in mock horror. Mei says something approving, and Dek laughs again. Maybe I’m the opposite of a barbarian.

  I look at my brother—relaxed, laughing, happy, one arm slung over Ling’s shoulders—and an uncomfortable memory of our journey over the Kastahor Mountains comes back to me.

  We took that route because Mrs. Och and Professor Baranyi feared those mountains less than trying to cross Xanuha, a mountainous country between Ishti and Yongguo. Xanuha is ruled by fierce warriors who overthrew a witch-led regime a hundred years ago, and they have defended themselves for centuries against the vast empire hulking on their northern border. They are apparently not welcoming to strangers, and even less so to magical strangers. But there was no beast that could carry us across the Kastahor Mountains, and Dek could not walk it. Bianka, being by far the strongest among us, had to carry him, like a child, on her back while the rest of us took turns carrying Theo. She never complained of the burden—she kept us all alive on that journey, conjuring the fire that kept us from freezing each night—but for Dek it was humiliating. I remember his face in the icy wind, tight and pale, thin-lipped. It was the hardest leg of the journey for all of us, and I was so preoccupied with my own suffering that I had little left over to think of him.

  We set our camp one day at the base of a glacier that shone blue in the sunlight, and while we ate our meager supper, we watched half a mountain collapse, a day’s journey or more away from us. The roar of it was deafening, the shape of the landscape changed, and we were still and somber because we were witnessing the ease with which this place could bury us. My awe at the beauty of the mountains had worn off quickly. Every inch of me hurt, and I was hungry all the time, worn down to a nub of the girl I’d started out as—that girl bent on atonement, with courage to spare for making right her wrongs.

  “I hate this place,” I said to Dek.

  He rubbed his leg grimly and said nothing.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked him.

  “It always hurts,” he grunted, the first words he’d spoken in days. “I’m used to hurting.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Lucky you.”

  I don’t know why I said it. I wish I could take it back. I said: “I don’t feel lucky. I wish someone would carry me.”

  The white-lipped glare he gave me! I sobbed like an idiot, tears freezing on my face as soon as they fell, and he said nothing, returning to his silence.

  But he changed when we reached Yongguo at last, as we crossed the grasslands and then the desert, stopping in settlements and cities where he was no more unusual than the rest of us. His money was accepted in the markets, nobody recoiled at his touch. I watched something open up in him, and somebody like my brother as he used to be reemerge. Somebody who laughs easily, somebody strong and self-assured.

  I caught a moment alone with him when we were camping a few miles from the city walls and blurted without preamble: “I’m sorry about what I said.” I didn’t say two weeks ago, in the mountains. I didn’t need to. He tucked my hair behind my ear and said, “You never need to say sorry to me.”

  Watching him now, I think I understand properly how terrible Spira City has been for him these past ten years. It didn’t occur to either of us that there might be some other place he could go where things would be different, where he could go about freely, where a girl might look at him the way Ling looks at him. At least, it never occurred to me, and if it ever crossed his mind, he said nothing.

  But Ling is not looking at him now. She is slurping her soup, eyes fixed on her book.

  “The girl studies nonstop,” says Wyn, noticing me looking at her.

  Mei says something tart about hope and their family, and Dek translates: “She says all their hopes of a better life lie with Ling.”

  Ling slams the book shut at that, her face empty of expression. She takes a pair of peculiarly shaped dice from her pocket and tosses them onto the table, looking at me and saying something that sounds awfully like a challenge.

  “Look at these!” exclaims Wyn, picking one up and rolling it. They are twelve-sided, white as bone, with black characters carved into each side.

  Mei grunts disapprovingly as Ling takes a different book out of the pocket of her tunic and waves it at us—a fat little book that fits in her palm, with red binding and soft, worn pages. It looks well loved, all right.

  “If we’re going to play dice, we ought to drink,” says Wyn. He brings a bottle of shijiu from the larder and pours us each a cup. Ling drinks hers down very quickly and exp
lains the game to Dek. Best I can understand, it is some kind of fortune-telling game. She scoops up both dice with her bandaged hand and rolls them over to me.

  “What happened to your hand?” I ask her. Whatever the damage, it’s almost better, by the way she moves it. Dek gives me an irritated look, so I try again in Yongwen. “Your hand,” I say, and then just tack “what?” onto the end of my nonsentence, which makes Dek roll his eyes. Ling pours herself another cup of shijiu and says curtly, “Broken.”

  The way she says it—bitter, guarded—makes me think of Casimir snapping my wrist, my fingers. I shake off the memory and the wave of nausea that accompanies it. Mei says something warningly to Ling about not drinking so much. Ling gives her a defiant look and knocks back her second cup.

  “Stars, the girl can drink!” says Wyn, refilling her cup. Mei glares at him.

  Ling wipes her mouth with her sleeve and leans across the table toward me, asking me a question.

  “What is my…what?” I ask, catching only half of it.

  “Your destiny,” says Dek, raising an eyebrow.

  “How would I know?”

  She slows her Yongwen down for me, like she’s speaking to a young, rather stupid child, so that I can understand her without Dek’s translation: “What is your birthday?”

  I can’t remember the Yongwen names of the months, so I fumble out, “One month…later.” I think that’s what I say, anyway.

  “How old will you be?”

  At least I know numbers in Yongwen. “Seventeen.”

  She flips through the book furiously.

  “The dominant constellation on the date of your birth, along with the dominant constellation right now, and the characters you roll combine to tell you your destiny today,” Dek explains. “It’s called The Book of Ten Thousand Rooms. It’s actually a book of philosophy, but it’s more commonly used for fortune-telling.”

  “Your destiny today?” says Wyn. “Does destiny change day to day? Not much of a destiny, then, is it?”

  “Your destiny can change—indeed, it does change—depending on the choices you make,” says Dek. “But in a larger sense, you keep heading in the same direction via different routes. No matter what, though, we’re all trapped in the House of Ten Thousand Rooms.”