Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  “I am done with all manner of wondering.”

  “But you are here for him?”

  Silence.

  “I’m not going to try to find him myself,” Lord Skaal assures her. “I haven’t the manpower here, and those are not my instructions. To be honest, I have wondered about you quite as often as I’ve wondered about him. I hoped we might find we had things to talk about.”

  “I am done talking to you.”

  He nods, looking almost relieved. “It’s lonely being different, don’t you find? Sometimes I think I want to talk with somebody else who is…well, also different. But the trouble with people who are different in the manner that you and I are different is that they are so often such flaming arseholes. Well, if you change your mind, you can find me at the ambassador’s house. I’ll be staying there awhile. My apologies for the door.”

  He looks in my direction as he goes out and bares his teeth at me. Even though I know he can’t see me, I flinch. I stay in the corner of the room, watching Pia, waiting to see what she will do next. She looks out the window for a few minutes, perhaps watching Lord Skaal depart on the street below, and then she says, almost gently: “Julia. Show yourself.”

  Run, I tell myself. Go home, you stupid girl. Too risky. But a dangerous mix of curiosity, fear, and longing is pulling at me, outweighing all my reason and better judgment. I step back into the world, and Pia’s face comes into focus.

  “You’ve cut your hair,” she says, looking me over. Back in the world, closer to her, I feel the broken-ice pitch of her voice grating against my eardrums.

  “It was getting in the way.”

  “You have been following Lord Skaal?”

  “Yes.” No point lying—she knows I have been.

  “Then Mrs. Och is here for the princess too. I suppose that is not surprising. What do you make of him? Keen sense of smell!” She starts to laugh. It is not a pleasant sound. “I am glad you have come, Julia, even if only because you were led here. It was not kind of you to run away after I rescued you from Si Tan. I have been thinking of how to draw you out, and none of the ideas I had were pleasant. But I need to speak to you. It is not about the boy.”

  “All right. Here I am. What is it about?”

  “I am instructed to tell you that Casimir’s offer of employment stands. Should you become disillusioned with your Mrs. Och—or should you decide you want more gold and more freedom than she can give you—well, in that case, it appears that you know where to find me.”

  “I’d have thought it was clear by now what I think of Casimir and his offer.”

  Pia grins, wolflike. “I told him you would say as much. But why, then, have you yoked yourself to Mrs. Och?”

  “If you can’t see the difference between Mrs. Och and Casimir, then we’re not alike at all,” I tell her, and instantly regret it.

  “You are deluded if you think the difference between your master and mine is such a great one,” she says. “And you are a fool to imagine that the outcome of their conflict really matters for the likes of us. I am Casimir’s creature, as you are Mrs. Och’s. We are very alike indeed.”

  “I’m not her creature.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I’m just…me.” As if that answers anything at all. And anyway, maybe I’m not.

  “I am to ask you what you want. Casimir is willing to give you whatever you ask if you will accept his contract.”

  “Safety for Theo,” I say immediately, without really thinking about what I’ll do if she agrees.

  “Except that,” she says. “But anything else. Anything you desire.”

  “No.”

  She tilts her head at me, the goggles whirring in and out again.

  “You fight so hard for this boy, sacrifice so much. But what is he to you, after all?”

  I just shake my head. There’s no explaining love to Pia.

  “And when I find him? You will weep, I assume, and then you will carry on with your life. Or will you be bent on revenge? Will you come looking for me?”

  “You won’t find him. But if you did, I’d come looking for you.”

  A vivid image of Haizea and her whirlwind rises up in my mind: her bleeding eyes, her fist clenching the storm.

  “Then we are sure to meet again,” she says. “Even once this business with the boy is ended, however it ends, Casimir will not give up on you. He longs to understand and harness this power of yours.”

  I feel a chill closing around my heart. “Casimir’s contract—it’s not a piece of paper, is it?”

  She grins, but there is no joy or even humor in her expression.

  “Can I see it?” I ask.

  She pulls off her leather glove, and I walk over to her at the window. She turns the inside of her wrist to me, and I see the silvery disk, which I know to be scalding hot, nested in folds of shiny scar flesh. My stomach curls.

  “How does it work?”

  “It is a living contract. The surest way to allow it to take hold is to insert it at the wrist—a minor operation—and allow it some days to grow toward the brain. It is less likely to kill you if introduced in this way. It can also be inserted via the ear, which is faster but much riskier—it results in death about half the time, and even if the person survives, it leaves them deaf in one ear and a little mad. Once it enters your brain, your will is bound to his, inextricably. I could not disobey him even if I wished to.”

  “That’s what you put in Cinzai’s ear,” I say, remembering the witch flailing and screaming, the thing that crawled into her ear. “That’s why Si Tan killed her.”

  “In a matter of minutes she would either have belonged to Casimir or she would have been dead,” says Pia. “In her case, the gamble was worth it, the loss nothing to him. But Casimir wants you undamaged, as much as possible.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Why would you let him do that to you?”

  Her face is so white, her lips a thin line, those goggles masking any expression I might have been able to read if she’d had eyes.

  “I was broken,” she says—her voice suddenly losing that shattering, high edge. “He said that he could piece me back together. Make me whole. Oh, there was gold too, plenty of gold. What difference did it make to me? Every servitude looked alike, and this one came with more money.”

  “Did he make you whole?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

  “If you are broken the way I was broken, there is no way to be whole again.”

  “Broken how?”

  We are standing so close together, heads bent toward each other, and she answers me as if we were friends, as if we trusted one another.

  “Casimir destroyed me bodily and put me back together, but before that…you heard Lord Skaal speak of Lady Laroche and the Sidhar Coven? I belonged to them for a time, and they broke my body and my spirit in a thousand ways, but I came to them broken, as well. When did it begin?” The goggles whir—out, in. “There was a man, a long time ago. My first memories are of being frightened of him.” Then she shrugs. “But there is always a man; there is always a dark corner and people who pretend not to see. That is a common story. It seemed at the time that I was broken already, born broken, and that my brokenness summoned him to me, thick-fingered and stinking, out of the dark. It was all so long ago, and I have no memory further back, no memory of being whole.”

  I feel sick. I hear myself saying, “I’m sorry….”

  The goggles give a sharp whir, and she snaps her chin up. “But why?”

  I don’t know how to answer that. She studies my face. I can’t imagine what she sees there.

  “My mother was part of the Sidhar Coven,” I say.

  “Yes. Did Casimir not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Before they sent Ammi, your mother, to bind him in stone and bury him in the sea, I was sent to kill him. I was the coven’s pet assassin, their little attack dog. I did not succeed, of course. He smashed me to pieces
. He shattered my bones. He put out my eyes. He did all manner of things to me, and still I did not die, I did not die. Casimir is not one for a quick kill. He likes to see what he’s dealing with. Pain and fear, in their most extreme forms, reveal so much. He saw I was a resilient sort of dog, and that I had no will of my own. How convenient, how ideal! And so he did not kill me. He repaired me, more or less. What you see”—she spreads her hands—“is the work of his mechanic. His greatest work, so he says. He had me put back together, he offered gold, and he put his contract into me. I submitted to all of this. I could not go back to the coven, for they had made it clear what the result of failure would be.”

  I want to ask, but I can’t. She answers anyway.

  “I did not know Ammi. I knew of her, of course. But she moved in higher circles than I did.”

  “But you’re not a witch,” I say.

  “No—and so I was never part of the coven. Only their dog, as I say.”

  “You didn’t have family?”

  “None that cared to be so. I was a stray dog for some time, and that is a hard life. I was glad of a leash. I didn’t mind being beaten if it meant I had a hearth to curl up on. They were cruel to me, the witches who took charge of me. Casimir destroyed me, yes, but once I submitted to him, he was a good master. Plenty of gold—not that I care so much for gold, but I enjoy a comfortable bed, a fine meal. More than gold, he gave me honesty, and he was the first to do so. Casimir does not pretend to be other than what he is, nor does he pretend I am other than what I am. There is something to be said for that. It is more than you receive from your Mrs. Och, I think.”

  My mouth is dry. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you are her dog,” she says, “but neither of you will call it what it is.”

  “I’m not her dog, and she’d be a fool to think me so,” I say.

  “You are so young—it would break my heart, if there were anything left to break. You do not understand what is happening. You think it is about a little boy. It is not about the little boy. It is about power. The world is terrible, has always been terrible, and the striving and seeking and suffering of powerless mortals is a great waste of effort. I do as I am told and that is all. Casimir never needed to put his contract in me. I would be his, regardless. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  “No! I really don’t understand what you’re on about. Why don’t you tell it to me straight?”

  “I am trying to explain.” She sounds more agitated than I have ever heard her. “If I cannot make you understand, then there will come a time, soon, when I must hurt you or kill you. I do not wish it, but I will do it.”

  “I’m leaving,” I say, backing away from her.

  “Wait! Please wait.” She puts up a hand, entreating. “Let me explain something you cannot fail to understand. The strong think that they cannot be broken. I’ve seen it a thousand times—that unfounded confidence before the fact. The truth of the matter is that everyone can be broken. Everyone. Any person who has known real pain knows this to be true. I can take you to a place, Julia, where you will no longer care what becomes of that boy, or anything, or anyone. A place where all that matters to you is that the pain should stop. There is a place even beyond that where you would worship me as the god who brings you pain or relief from pain. It is a very nasty and time-consuming business, but I have done it before, and if I must, I will do it again. I wanted to speak to you first, to tell you of my own life, my own history, because I hope it will not be necessary for you to endure what I did or become what I have become.”

  “You can’t lay a hand on me,” I say. “You know it.” But my voice quavers a little. I feel the emptiness at my back; I am ready to fall into it, to leap out of the world and away from her whirring goggles, her dead white face.

  She goes over to the nightstand by her bed. From the drawer she takes the ribbons Cinzai, Si Tan’s witch, bound me in.

  “You are not invulnerable,” she says. “I have seen you rendered helpless, tied to the world by that poor brute’s magic—and Casimir employs a far more powerful witch than her. Think on it, Julia. I would rather we find another way to bring you to Casimir’s side.”

  Panic comes in a great wave. Stupidly, blindly, I reach for the knife in my boot. She moves faster than I can think. Something strikes my chin—her foot, perhaps—and I am scrabbling on the floor, stunned. Then the sound of glass shattering, the thunk of something landing on the floor, a figure running toward me, and a bolt of white flame in the middle of the room, shooting up to the ceiling. Pia snarls, raising one arm to shield her goggles from the glare. I see him first, Jun, right next to me, aiming his pistol. Pia is moving toward us, knife in her hand now. He fires the gun, but she doesn’t stop. I grab him as her knife flashes toward him, and in my terror, I pull him straight through that invisible space—through and through and through to the other side, to the gray street, whirling with ash, and the burning air.

  The street shimmers. There is a man walking toward us. Not a man—it is the top hat that makes me think so, but he is transparent, I can see the street right through him, through the fixed grin on his skeletal face. A girl creeps up behind him, reaches deftly into his pocket, and pulls out a snake. She looks at us and winks, and I hear a horrible noise in my throat because it is me as a little girl, but with pooling black eyes and a chalk-white face. No—something shifts, and it is little Pia with goggles for eyes. My own scream startles me—not a human sound. Jun is struggling against me. My hooked hands grip his shoulders, holding him fast.

  I hear hoofbeats. Or perhaps it is just my heart beating. The street has gone whirling away from us. I am running with him, and I am so much stronger than he is here—he seems to weigh nothing—and then we are outside the little flat I grew up in, the laundry shop at street level. I’ve run home. In the doorway stands the antlered, fox-faced creature I saw before. He has a curved blade in his mottled, half-decayed human hand, a blade with a jagged, strangely glittering edge. His teeth are bared in a stiff snarl.

  “Lidari,” he says.

  “Who are you?” I cry in a not-mine voice.

  There are more of them in the street now. A crocodile head is snapping atop the rangy, rotting body of a lion, ribs showing through the torn flesh. Some apelike thing with a starved panther face is loping toward us. Another one looks human but dead, with the bright yellow eyes of some other creature rolling about in its head. They are closing in on me, holding long, narrow stalks with hooks at the end. Everything feels horribly slowed down. Fox Face’s blade comes swinging toward me. I move, but not fast enough. The blade catches me on the arm, though for the moment I feel nothing but heat where it strikes me. My legs buckle and I fall down on the street, Jun shouting something, the gun going off, cries of triumph from this mob of patched-together beasts. The blade goes up again, up into the burning sky. I am fixed on it. It comes down. I grab Jun and pull back hard, right through the street. I hear something like rushing water, the long, anguished hiss, “Lidariiii.” We are above Pia’s room, broken glass all over the floor, Pia crouched, knife in hand, listening for us. There is shouting from the hall.

  I aim for the window, trying to catch sight of the road below. We end up on the opposite rooftop, jarred back into ourselves and the world. The sun is low in the sky, and there is hardly anyone in the road. I can still see Pia through her broken window.

  A click. Jun has pressed the muzzle of his pistol to my head. He speaks through clenched teeth.

  “What. Are. You?”

  I swallow. My throat feels burnt dry from the terrible air of that place. I gulp in a breath of Tianshi’s fragrant springtime air, with its hint of warmth and honey.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage to get out.

  He slides down the other side of the roof and drops into the alley behind. I follow. He backs away from me, pistol pointed at my chest, his face closed and tight and pale.

  “You are monster,” he says, and his voice shakes.

  “I didn’t mean to,
” I say. I feel so weak, like I can barely stand up. “Jun, please. When we were there…what did I look like?”

  “Like monster!” He screams this last word at me and gives the pistol a threatening jerk, breathing hard.

  I put a finger to my lips. Pia is only one street over, may be out looking for us now.

  “Stop pointing that thing at me,” I say, trying to sound reasonable and halfway calm. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Stay away or I shoot,” he says. The gun is shaking in his hands.

  “Please lower that thing,” I beg him. “She would have killed you. I was trying to save us, and I…I didn’t mean to go there. I’m scared to death myself. I’m sorry.”

  “Go where? What is that place?”

  I say, “I don’t know,” because I can’t tell him, not when he is looking at me that way, scared out of his wits already. Saying Kahge isn’t going to calm him down. I’m terrified he’s going to put a hole in me just from nerves.

  “Please…” I don’t know what to say to him. “Look, you followed me.”

  But then I realize he couldn’t have. He must have been following Lord Skaal.

  “Stay away,” he says, backing down the alley. Then he ducks around a corner and is gone. My arm gives a dull throb, and that’s when I notice I’m standing in a puddle of my own blood. My knees give out under me.

  Later it feels like a dream: I can’t say for sure that any of it happened, nor can I think of an alternate theory for how I got home. Lying there bleeding in the road. Her boots beside me. She crouches next to me, and if I didn’t know her better, I would say her voice sounds sad.

  “This is not the day for you to die, Julia.”

  Lying in her bed as she binds my arm. Her face looms over me, taking up my whole view of the world. Those awful goggles.

  “If you could tell me where you live, I’d take you home,” she says. A brittle laugh. “Here, this will give you strength. Think of what I said and come back to me tomorrow, or I will have to find you. One more chance. I want you to choose. I want to give you that much.”