Jun brings me a cup of tea.
“An exciting time,” he says, all dimples and shining eyes, but glad as I am to see him, I can barely smile back. My stomach is in knots.
“By the way, I’ve had some news about your monk,” says Count Fournier, lighting a match and setting fire to Mrs. Och’s letter. He drops the flaming, curling paper in an ashy bowl on the table apparently set there for the purpose of receiving burnt correspondence. “Very reliable source. This fellow has contacts all over the city, high and low. He claims Ko Dan has been imprisoned in Tianshi ever since his disappearance, on Si Tan’s order. But not in an ordinary prison, he says. Somewhere secret in the Imperial Gardens.”
I stare at him, not quite taking this in at first. Then I say, “No, he’s back at the monastery. He got back yesterday.”
Count Fournier shakes his head. “I heard there was some rumor to that effect, but no, this fellow is never wrong. I would believe him above any rumor in the streets.”
“No,” I say again, putting down my tea. “I saw him, at Shou-shu.”
Count Fournier frowns and says, “How odd,” and suddenly I go cold all over. I fumble in my pockets and find the picture Ling drew. I unfold it, my hands shaking as I do so, and shove it across the desk toward him.
The count peers at it through his spectacles and laughs. “But that’s not him,” he says.
“But the scar…” Panic rises hot and bitter in my throat.
He snorts. “Not hard to fake a scar. Well, look, it may just be a bad likeness. This looks nothing like him.”
“It’s a very good likeness of the man I saw,” I say between my teeth.
“Then the man you saw was not Ko Dan,” says the count. “Please stop looking at me like you’re about to cut my throat, poppet. I am not trying to make you angry. I am telling you that this picture does not look like Ko Dan and that, according to my best informant, Ko Dan is in some kind of secret prison.”
“Then why…” But I know why, of course. He says it anyway.
“Somebody has gone to a good deal of trouble to deceive you, my dear,” he says, waving the paper at me. “This fellow is a fake, an impostor.”
“They’ve taken Theo,” I whisper.
“Who is Theo?” asks the count, annoyed.
Jun touches my elbow, his face full of concern. I am shaking all over, am back in the moment when I handed Theo over to Pia and my whole world collapsed. The thing I can never undo, the thing I am meant to make right, and Theo, dear little Theo, never again, I promised, never again would I let anybody harm him, and now…
“I have to go,” I say. “Please—”
Jun nods. “I go with you.”
Jun keeps pace easily with my panicked sprint. In the Xishui Triangle, he pulls me down an alley and into a derelict hut, the roof half caved in, chicken dung everywhere. He moves a rusted pot from the hearth and then lifts the grate. There is a ladder leading down.
“This way,” he says.
I start down the ladder, and he follows, pulling the grate back over the tunnel. My heart is crashing against my ribs like it’s trying to break out, my mind just a roar of TheoTheoTheoTheo. I see him frightened and alone, I see him cut open, I see him screaming, I see him dead and blank-eyed, and I hear myself sobbing loudly as I go slipping and scrambling down the narrow ladder. “More quiet!” Jun hisses down at me, but I can’t control myself.
A voice from below calls up a question in Yongwen, startling me so badly I nearly fall, and Jun answers. There is the smell of lamp oil, and a light blazes up. A scrawny kid, maybe ten, hands the lantern to Jun when he reaches the bottom of the ladder. Jun presses a coin into his hand, says something or other about his mother, but I’m not paying attention.
“Come on,” I urge him.
He starts down the tunnel at a swift jog and I follow. Little Theo, so excited to set out this afternoon, holding on to Bianka, his face bright and happy. Oh, Bianka. They won’t get him from Bianka, she won’t let them, she’ll find a way, TheoTheoTheoTheo.
The tunnel forks a few times, and I stay right behind Jun. A couple of times I hear voices as we pass lit chambers dug out of the ground. In one of them, I glimpse a cluster of armed men dismembering something that I hope is not a body, but I think it is. We pass by fast.
“This is smugglers’ route,” says Jun over his shoulder, though I haven’t asked. “Tunnels all under city. Tell me what you need.”
“We need to save a little boy, get him out of the monastery, get them all out of there. My friends…” I break off, my voice shaking so much I don’t know if I can make myself understood. Jun doesn’t ask any more questions. We reach another ladder, and he snuffs out the lantern, leaving it there on the ground. He goes up the ladder, a fast-moving shadow, and I follow with sweaty palms and shaking knees. I’ll save him, I think. I don’t know how, but I’ll save him.
Light pours down as Jun pushes aside the flagstone and slithers out. There is nobody on the path, but I hear chanting from the Hall of Abnegation.
“Where?” he asks me.
I head for the Temple of Atonement, the last place I saw Ko Dan—though if he is not Ko Dan, then who is he? Inevitably, we round a corner and run smack into a monk. I’ve got my knife out and pointed at his throat before he can open his mouth. Jun circles around behind him.
“Ask him if Gangzi has visitors,” I say, not trusting my own Yongwen. Jun asks.
“The Main Hall,” the monk tells us, wide-eyed.
“What are we going to do with him?” I ask Jun, pointing at the monk with my knife.
Jun looks at me like I’m deranged, and I don’t know what I’m asking anyway. What are we supposed to do with him?
“Shouldn’t we tie him up?” I suggest, rather ashamed of myself.
He shakes his head. “Only hurry,” he says. “In, out. Come.”
I am so grateful to have him with me. I slide my knife back into the fabric bands of my boot, and we leave the monk standing stunned in the path. The long alley to the Main Hall is walled on either side—easy for me to sneak up on, perhaps, but not for Jun. Two of the Ru are outside, armed with crossbows. I vanish. Jun is on top of the low wall in a flash, running along it. He throws a pale stone that goes rolling down the middle of the path toward the guards. They are aiming their weapons when there is a bang, and a burst of white smoke envelops them. An arrow wings its way by me, down the path. I run straight into the smoke, straight past the shouting guards, crashing through the door, tripping and tumbling to the wood floor.
There is Mrs. Och, but not as Mrs. Och—she is Och Farya, winged and terrible. Bianka is clutching Theo to her chest, stepping back, startled by the sudden noise. The false Ko Dan and Gangzi are with them, Ko Dan reaching for Theo.
They all freeze and look at me sprawled on the temple floor. One of the Ru from outside comes in after me and then falls forward, a wire twisting his ankles, thank you very much, Jun. I yell at Bianka, “He’s not Ko Dan!”
I run for her as the second guard from outside charges into the hall. I can see Theo’s mouth open in a wail, but I can’t hear it over the roaring in my head, and everybody is in motion at once except Bianka. Her eyes are fixed on me, and I can see everything in her eyes in that moment. I know I am asking her to make an impossible decision in a split second, and she does.
She hands me Theo, and I vanish. An arrow strikes the wall right next to us. Ko Dan lunges for Bianka, and she hurls him across the hall, where he hits the wall and slumps to the ground.
Mrs. Och opens her mouth and lets out a roar that shakes the walls and knocks Gangzi off his feet. The guard that fired at me regains his footing quickly, aims his crossbow, and shoots her in the chest. She staggers and goes down on one knee, yanking the bloody arrow out. Bianka has the charcoal pencil she took from Frederick’s writing box in her hand; she is writing something on the floor. Gangzi points at her and shouts a command as the smell of rotten flowers sweeps through the hall. The guard Jun tripped with wire shoots at her,
but the arrow goes wide. He drops the bow and clutches his eyes.
Theo is crying into my neck, but there is so much noise and shouting now that I am not afraid of anybody hearing him, and I am ready to pull him all the way to Kahge if any more arrows start flying. The two guards, Ko Dan, and Gangzi are all grabbing at their eyes, and Gangzi is shouting something about magic. I see what Bianka has scribbled on the floor in charcoal: blind.
She drops the pencil, staggering a little. Her nose is bleeding, and Jun is next to her. I am weak with relief to see him unharmed.
“I am friend of Julia,” he says. “Follow me!”
The two of them help Mrs. Och toward the door. There are three more of the Ru on the path ahead, running for the hall.
“Blast!” gasps Bianka. “I can’t…”
Mrs. Och pulls herself upright, one hand clutched to her bleeding chest, and speaks in that awful, summoning voice. She raises a furred fist and pulls it down. A torrent of rain follows. We are soaked to the skin in seconds, the Ru briefly stunned, and then lightning blasts them. We run straight past the bodies, one of them scrabbling at the ground, the other two still.
Jun takes Mrs. Och and Bianka at a run to the flagstone by the swallow coop. Bianka is screaming, “Julia!” and Theo is thrashing in my arms, howling, “Mama, Mama!” I step back into the visible world full of people trying to kill us, everything so sharp and clear, the smell of blood and smoke and rain filling my nostrils. Theo practically leaps from me into Bianka’s arms, and she pulls him close to her.
“Hurry!” says Jun. “Down ladder!”
Bianka goes first, with Theo in her arms, and Mrs. Och follows, looking up at me only once to say, “Get the impostor and bring him to me.”
I’ve no idea how I’m going to manage that.
“I’ll catch up,” I say to Jun. “Thank you.”
I want to say more, but it’s all I can manage. He nods, and then he is gone too, the flagstone sliding into place over him. I stand still a moment to catch my breath. The storm has gone as quickly as it came, the sky clear and bright. I feel something sharp and stinging on my arm and look down to see a little red dart sticking into me. A sick feeling sweeps over me. Two of the black-clad Ru are striding toward me. One of them has a pistol-like contraption at his side. They blur into multitudes and then blackness spreads fast over everything, like ink spilled over a page.
When I return to myself, I am lying in a comfortable bed like a convalescent. Sitting at my bedside is the witch from the Imperial Library, with her stitched-over eyes and her tattooed skin. She is bent over a little writing table, a sheet of rice paper and a pot of ink before her, and she is licking ink from the brush pensively, her tongue and lips quite black from it. She doesn’t notice that I am awake. I keep very still and quiet, trying to figure out how I came to be here. It comes back to me slowly, the haze lifting bit by bit: the battle in the monastery, the dart in my arm. But they got away—Theo is all right. I remember that with a great rush of relief. Now I just have to get out of here, wherever here is.
The witch is so busy sucking on her brush that I figure I’ll just vanish and walk out, but when I try to pull back, I find I can’t. It’s like being paralyzed, except that I can move my limbs, if only slightly. It is some deeper part of me that is fully immobilized—the part of me that pulls out of the world. That is when I notice the ribbons looped around my ankles, wrists, and waist—spools of red ribbon with untidy Yongwen script all over them. I must have made a small sound of dismay, for suddenly the witch’s head shoots up and she points her awful face toward me.
She croons something at me in her scratchy voice and rings a little bell on the table. Then she goes springing over to the door and opens it. I lie helpless on the bed, looking around at the small, bare room with old-fashioned weapons displayed on the walls—double-edged axes, a scimitar, an ornate musket, a set of gleaming throwing knives. Hardly the most cheerful decor.
The witch returns to my bedside, and the oddest apparition comes rolling into the room. It is the old woman I saw the grand librarian whispering to after our first meeting with him. She is clothed in shapeless, beautiful silks and seated on a wheeled sort of platform, a pile of cushions supporting her bulk. Si Tan, the grand librarian, is pushing this contraption.
“A pleasure to see you again,” he says congenially to me, in Fraynish. “How do you feel? Any headache or nausea?”
I nod. Bit of both.
“You look well, though. The young are so resilient.” He adds something in Yongwen to the old woman, and she answers in her deep rasp.
“The empress dowager asks me to welcome you to the Imperial Residences,” he says, bowing.
At least now I know where I am and who I’m dealing with. Again, I find Si Tan’s impeccable manners, his elegant clothing and long beard, somehow out of keeping with his physique, which suggests such brute power, the intensity and focus of a predator.
“You make it sound like I’m a guest,” I say, struggling to sit up in spite of the ribbons looped carelessly over me.
Si Tan’s smile is an awful baring of yellowed teeth. “So you are. But this is a city with laws, and the laws must be upheld. You have come here under an assumed identity, not declaring your true intentions or your abilities. Witches must be registered and licensed in Tianshi.”
“I’m not a witch,” I say.
The tattooed witch is hovering near Si Tan now, a quivering, hopeful look about her that I don’t understand.
“That is a good place to start,” says Si Tan. “Why don’t you tell us who you are, and what?”
“My name is Julia,” I say. I’ll die before I tell him where Theo is, but he’s welcome to my name. “I reckon your witch here has told you a bit about me already. She attacked me in the Imperial Library.”
“Attacked? I am sorry. She can be difficult, this one, and what information she brought me about you was rather a jumble.” He gives her a hard look, and she begins to weep, falling down before him and clutching the hem of his robe. The empress dowager looks disgusted and says something to Si Tan. He nods and speaks to the witch. I might be misunderstanding, but it sounds as if he is offering her a treat. She brightens, kissing his hand with her inky lips. He produces a little pipe from a pocket in his robe. She scurries to the corner with it, lighting it with a snap of her fingers. I recognize the sweet smell.
“Opium?”
“She is an interesting case,” says Si Tan. “Her name is Cinzai. Her parents brought her to the Imperial Gardens when she was just four years old. They were farmers from the central provinces, very poor, and they had this girl, their seventh child, stronger than an ox and taking naps in the burning hearth. They were glad to be rid of her. She is an idiot, in fact, and it was a terrible task teaching her to read and write at all, but she is one of only a handful of witches in all the world who can write magic with symbols drawn in the air. Now, it is a difficult calculation that needs to be made with one so powerful. It is perhaps safer simply to drown her, and there were many on the Imperial Council in favor of that. They considered her too terrible a beast to master. If you are going to keep a witch such as this, you need a strong leash. Opium is a strong leash.”
“That’s revolting,” I say.
“More humane than drowning, don’t you think? Or perhaps not. What would you do with an insanely powerful woman with the intellect and impulses of a child?” He waits, as if he is seriously interested in my answer. When I say nothing, he continues placatingly: “I have the good of the empire to consider, you see, but I am open to suggestions. Now I want to talk about your business in Yongguo. I dangled Ko Dan in front of your friends and out came Och Farya of the Xianren! The little boy she brought to the monastery is the receptacle for Zor Gen’s fragment of The Book of Disruption. Is that right?”
“He’s not a receptacle,” I say.
Si Tan’s smile this time is genuine—almost warm. “Pardon me. It was a poor choice of words. But the text is inside him, and Och Farya wants it r
emoved. What does she intend to do with it?”
“I’ve no idea. Keep it away from her brother, for starters.”
“That does seem prudent. I have met Lan Camshe, or Casimir, as he goes by now.”
“So have I.”
“What did you think of him?”
“He’s a lunatic,” I say.
“I agree with you. Not a man I should like to see with more power. Frayne is a well-placed pawn in a world that is changing, and the Xianren have been competing for control of it. We have kept them out of Yongguo’s politics, but now they have brought their business to my doorstep and I cannot ignore it. We have rules about magic here. Och Farya should have come to me from the beginning.”
“If you let me go, I’ll tell her so,” I say.
Si Tan gives a perfunctory smile, as if at a bad joke. The witch lets her pipe fall to the ground and slumps back against the wall in a happy daze. The empress dowager says something to Si Tan, and I hear the Yongwen word for Kahge. Something in his gaze sharpens, and my stomach turns over.
“At the library, Och Farya’s friend the professor was interested in Ko Dan, but another young man in your group transcribed a number of the philosopher-witch treatises on Kahge, on Marike, and on the Gethin. Why?”
“He’s writing a book,” I lie, not very convincingly.
Si Tan stares at me like he can rout the truth from me with his eyes. Then he says, “Have you heard of Ragg Rock?”
I shake my head slowly. But, in fact, I have heard of it. I rack my brain trying to remember where.
“I understand you asked a question about Lidari.”
“A friend of Marike’s, wasn’t he?” I say, trying to sound merely curious. Fear is running cold through my veins now.
He seems to be thinking about my answer. He strokes his beard, watching me. The empress dowager mutters something to him, and he nods.
“Your mother was a member of the Sidhar Coven in Frayne,” he says. “She was drowned, yes?”
Julia Defiant Page 16
