Julia Defiant

by Catherine Egan

  Her fingers in my mouth, a bitter pill dissolving on my tongue. Then everything is sharp and clear. I am running, the evening air cooling around me, my heart hammering with something like joy. I could run forever. Blood rushes and pulses in my arm, the bandage soaked through in no time, but there is no pain, no feeling at all except for the speed of my limbs, almost like flying, because I barely feel my feet hitting the ground. The wind is roaring in my ears—or maybe the roaring is inside my head, I can’t tell. I vanish when I reach Nanmu, as is my habit, and something tugs at my arm, hard. Blood flows out into the air, flows straight out and away, out of the world.

  I vault over the courtyard wall, everything coming into terrible focus, the hard planes and edges of the world, Frederick’s voice banging about inside my skull: “What’s happened? Are you all right?” And I am on the ground—how did I get on the ground? I feel as if my heart is going to explode from my chest. They are all in a knot around me, and I hear Princess Zara saying, “Give her space,” Esme saying, “Her arm—she’s hurt.”

  Bianka lifts me in her arms. We are indoors, the ceiling swinging over me, the floor buckling under me. She holds me and tells me, “It’s all right, it’s going to be all right.”

  “I need to clean and stitch this now,” says Esme.

  Something wet and burning on my arm. I let out a strangled yell. It sounds like a dog barking; the world narrows down to Frederick’s anxious face peering over Bianka’s shoulder, Bianka holding me fast, and then Esme’s needle biting my arm again and again.

  Professor Baranyi holds a little vial under my nose. It burns my nostrils, burns my mind clear. Mrs. Och’s room settles around me with a jolt, my heart thudding back to sudden slowness. Mrs. Och is at her desk, hands folded before her, and I am seated opposite her.

  “Better?” asks the professor, corking the vial.

  I nod and finger the bandage on my throbbing arm. I’m relieved to see Frederick is here too. They won’t do anything to me with him here. But then I wonder why I think they might do anything to me.

  “What happened?” asks Mrs. Och.

  “May I have some water?”

  I’m only partly stalling, trying to remember what happened and what I can tell her. My mouth is dry as dust. She nods at Frederick, and he goes out.

  “I went to the Imperial Gardens, like you said,” I tell her, my mind groping back through the day.

  “Did Si Tan mention us to Lord Skaal?”

  “No,” I say. “But he threatened to invade Frayne if they tried to make off with the princess, and surely he’ll think it was them.”

  Frederick comes back in with a cup of water, which I drink gratefully. Mrs. Och waves my concern aside. “I will tell him tomorrow that it was me,” she says. “Once the princess is out of the city.”

  “They said Lady Laroche is dead,” I add, remembering how casually Lord Skaal talked of sending Si Tan her head. The leader of the Sidhar Coven. She must have known my mother.

  “Lady Laroche?” cries Professor Baranyi. “That is a blow indeed, if we hope for a revolution.”

  “Perhaps not,” says Mrs. Och. “Go on, Julia. How were you injured?”

  “The meeting didn’t go very well, and then Lord Skaal headed off into the city, so I followed him, and he went to the Hundred Lantern Hotel. He wanted to talk to Pia.”

  This is where it all gets difficult to explain, but I tell her as much of their conversation as I remember, and how he seemed able to smell me, which makes her chuckle for some reason. Not particularly funny from my perspective. Her face reveals nothing when I tell her about Pia’s offer and her threats, how she said Casimir would give me anything, and how Jun appeared, crashing through the window. If he was following Lord Skaal, watching through the window, I can only imagine his surprise at suddenly seeing me in the room with Pia. But he broke his cover to try and help me, and what must he think now? I think of his face when he screamed Monster! at me in the alley, and my stomach curls with misery. I refrain from mentioning Pia’s remarks about Mrs. Och: You are her dog, but neither of you will call it what it is.

  “Pia cut your arm?” suggests Professor Baranyi when I stop.

  “No,” I say.

  Now the hard part. I stare at my hands in my lap—my ordinary hands—and I tell them about what happened after: Kahge, the nightmare quality of it, my home and my childhood distorted and horrifying, those revolting creatures, the bright blade cutting my arm.

  I look up at her. There is no point hiding it—Frederick has already told her—so I say, “When those creatures in Kahge shout at me, I think they are calling me Lidari. Why?”

  Professor Baranyi gives her an anxious look, but she keeps her gaze trained on me, unmoving and revealing nothing.

  “Lidari was Marike’s associate,” says Mrs. Och. “I never met him, of course. Marike was the first ruler to defy the Xianren. We suffered our first true defeat at her hands. Casimir claimed to have had Lidari killed…oh, a thousand years ago or more. Why the creatures in Kahge call you Lidari, I cannot fathom.” Suddenly she laughs—an odd and humorless sound. “Are you sure of your parentage, Julia?”

  My heart goes cold and heavy at that. Well, I asked, and now I may be getting the answer I dread more than anything—the half thought that sits at the back of my mind like a grinning goblin, taunting me: You are not what you think you are.

  “What do you mean?” My voice shakes, and I hate myself for it.

  “Only that your mother, being a witch, might have sought some connection with Kahge,” says Mrs. Och. “The fact that she was able to bind Casimir—she must have had some very great magic to assist her, and you were born shortly after that. Could your birth be the result of some deal made with the half beings of Kahge?”

  She is halfway there herself, without knowing the memory or vision I had of my mother with the Ankh-nu. And how casually she suggests my deepest buried fear, that I may not be of this world, not human at all, not myself. I begin to shake. No, no, I am Julia, I have always been Julia, this is a mistake, they are all mistaken. Frederick comes to my side quickly, putting his hands on my shoulders.

  “I look like my mother,” I whisper. “I look like Dek.”

  “Oh, indeed,” says Mrs. Och, watching me very carefully. “I did not mean to upset you.” She smiles a strange, false smile. “Julia, I want you to work for me.”

  “I do work for you,” I say.

  “You work for me now because of Theo. But soon I will return to Frayne. There may be a revolution, and if there is not, there will still be the work of trying to get witches out of the country and protect those that remain. You would be a tremendous asset, and you would be well compensated. It is dangerous work, of course, but it is important, and I would be glad to have you working alongside the professor and Frederick and myself. I would also help you to untangle this mystery of your unusual gift. It would serve us all well to understand why you can go to Kahge.”

  Frederick lets go of my shoulders, as if he’s just noticed how tightly he was hanging on to me.

  For a moment I am speechless. Is it that easy? Can I join Mrs. Och’s inner circle, working to destroy Agoston Horthy and save women like my mother? Isn’t that a dream come true—to put my skills and strengths to work, not for theft and blackmail but for helping those who need it, righting the wrongs that have shaped my own life? Surely it beats mopping floors for a pittance. It seems like the answer to all my uncertainties and fears about the future. And to have her help me find out why I can vanish as I do—when surely she is the only one who can help me—should be irresistible. Still, the idea of working for Mrs. Och does not sit right with me. Pia has planted her poison in my ear.

  And Dek doesn’t want to go back.

  I lick my lips and say, “Thank you,” because what else am I to say? And what does Pia know about Mrs. Och or me?

  “Good,” says Mrs. Och. “Tonight some of our party will take the princess out of the city. They will wait two days for the rest of us to join them at
a farm a half day’s journey from here. I will meet with Si Tan in the morning and hope we can come to some agreement regarding Ko Dan. If we cannot—well, I fear we shouldn’t stay in this city much longer.”

  I look at my hands again, my dirty fingernails—or is that blood? They are trembling, and I ball them into fists to make them still.

  “Perhaps we should let Julia rest a bit,” says Frederick gently.

  “Indeed,” says Mrs. Och. “But, Julia, next time you must consult me before you do something reckless like visit Pia. I can only captain this ship through the storm if all members of my crew keep to their posts.”

  “I didn’t exactly mean to visit her.”

  “How is your arm?” she asks.

  “It hurts, but I reckon I’ll be all right. Esme knows how to patch a body up.”

  “She is quite formidable, your Esme,” says Mrs. Och. “We will speak again in the morning.”

  Frederick and I go out. He looks like he wants to say something to me, but Theo catapults into me as soon as we emerge from Mrs. Och’s room. I twist sideways, trying to protect my hurt arm, and a hush falls over the table. The main door is open to the cool evening air, cicadas screeching in the trees outside the courtyard.

  “Come,” says Esme, breaking the silence and pulling out a chair for me. “Eat something.”

  I sit down in the chair she offers, across from Princess Zara, and they all watch me carefully, their faces yellowish in the candlelight. The plates are cluttered among the dripping candles—strips of mottled beef, black mushrooms, bowls of steaming rice, stewed duck, figs, persimmons, and bamboo tips. I am too tired to be hungry, but I let Csilla fill my plate anyway.

  “I hope you weren’t injured on my account,” says the princess.

  Of course—I turned up raving and bleeding and generally behaving like a lunatic. No doubt they’d like to know why. I give them a much-altered abbreviated version of what I’ve just told Mrs. Och, leaving out Kahge and blaming my injury on Pia. Frederick, sitting down at the other end of the table and filling his own plate, doesn’t correct me or even look at me.

  “I’m grieved to hear of Lady Laroche’s passing,” says Princess Zara. “I owe her a great deal.”

  She doesn’t look particularly grieved, but I suppose it’s a lot to take in all at once.

  Theo makes a circuit of the table, crawling onto laps and eating everyone’s bamboo tips, all of us keeping a nervous eye on his every gesture lest he start drawing. Soon the conversation picks up again. Gregor, Esme, Csilla, the professor, and Princess Zara are leaving tonight, via a smugglers’ tunnel that will take them to the other side of the city wall. It is not part of the regular tunnel circuit—which is flooded anyway—and I am given to understand that the use of it has cost Mrs. Och dearly. They will wait two days at a farm we used on our way to Tianshi and then carry on to Frayne without us if we have not joined them by then. Now they are discussing an alternate route that would avoid the Kastahor Mountains—hiding on a cargo train to the southern border and then passing through the kingdom of Xanuha to the Parnese states.

  “We didn’t come that way because we understood the Xanuha warriors to be ruthless about their territory, and it is a mountainous region also,” says the professor.

  “But nothing like the Kastahor Mountains,” says the princess. “I have ties to that kingdom, I stayed with them for some months when I was younger. I’m sure the queen of Xanuha will grant us safe passage and guides. I am amazed that you survived the journey through the Kastahor Mountains.”

  “Barely,” says Esme. “I would prefer to take almost any route but that one.”

  “I would still rather brave a sea voyage,” says Csilla.

  “No,” says the princess. “Not unless we can find a very well-armed vessel. The pirates off the coast here rule the seas, and about half of them are in Casimir’s pay.”

  “How did you know to trust me?” I interrupt.

  They all go quiet and stare at me again.

  “I have a sense of such things,” says the princess, with an easy smile.

  “What kind of sense?”

  She folds her napkin, suddenly brisk, and says, “It is a small gift compared to your own. But I can sense the intentions and emotions of everyone nearby. I can tell if they mean me well or ill, if they are at ease or afraid, lying to me or telling the truth. These things are as clear to me as the color of a person’s eyes to you.”

  “Stars,” says Csilla. “That must be useful.”

  “It has kept me safe a great many times,” the princess acknowledges. “There is a wealth of goodwill and noble intent here. I am grateful to have such friends.”

  “Do you want to be queen?” I blurt. Perhaps it’s a stupid question, but she is not much older than me and has spent her entire life running around the world hiding from people who want to kill her. I wouldn’t wonder if she just wanted to go live a peaceful, quiet life somewhere, if that were possible. Be free.

  “It isn’t a matter of wanting,” she replies. “Although I have never wanted anything else. My family was executed unjustly. My father was murdered by his own brother, and that man still occupies the throne and allows his prime minister to devastate Frayne through his fanatical vendetta against magic and folklore and the traditions of our people. I believe in the Nameless One, but I believe in the spirits too, and I know magic can be a force of good as well as a force of evil. I believe I have the power and the purpose to change Frayne for the better, to lead New Poria toward a more tolerant age. I believe it is my destiny.”

  She says all of this calmly and evenly. Only upon the word murdered does an edge come to her voice. We are all quiet, and into the silence, the bells of Shou-shu chime the closing of the city gates and nightfall. The princess rises and begins to stack the dishes to take out and wash at the pump. Theo is dozing in Bianka’s lap now, full of bamboo tips. Bianka watches Princess Zara go out with the dishes, a rapt expression on her face. I wonder how many princesses share in the washing up after meals. I think I am falling under her spell myself, imagining what Frayne might be if this strange girl ruled it.

  While the others are cleaning up and packing their belongings, I go out for some air and find Gregor smoking on the steps.

  “Quite something, isn’t she?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  There is a cup full of some dark liquid beside him. An unexpected anger wells up inside me.

  “What’s this?” I ask, picking up the cup.

  “Tea,” he says.

  I give him a scathing look and sniff it. It is tea. I put it back down on the step and sit next to him. “Stars. I’m sorry, Gregor.”

  He waves my apology aside. “You’re quite within your rights to be suspicious.”

  “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t be sniffing your tea.”

  “You think I’ll fail,” he says flatly. When I don’t answer, he looks down at his trembling fingers, takes another savage draw on his smoke. “You’ve told me enough times that people don’t change.”

  “That’s true, I have.” But I have a good deal at stake in believing otherwise now. I need to believe that we can choose or change our paths, ourselves, that we are not trapped like flies in amber, held by our pointless or terrible destinies.

  I examine his face, full of a younger man’s anger. It’s the kind of righteous anger you would need, I suppose, to try and overthrow a tyrant, to believe it is possible to change a world that remains so stubbornly cruel from one dynasty to the next.

  “You’ve seen this before, I know,” he says. “You’ve seen me fail, just like you saw your old man fail. You’ve seen it a hundred times.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “It’s different this time,” he tells me, stabbing his cigarette out on the step.

  It’s true, I have seen it a hundred times. This failure of a man to change, to love the people who need him more than the drug that feeds him, is something I broke my heart on when I was still cutting teeth. I don’t know
why it’s so hard for me to say it, and I don’t know if I mean it or not, but I want to mean it, and so I say: “You’ll do all right this time, Gregor. I’m sure of it.”

  His face is like dawn breaking, the way it brightens, and I think, it hurt only a little to give him that.

  “It will be different. I will be. It’s all going to be different,” he whispers.

  “I know it will, I know it,” I say, the last part a wheeze as he crushes me in a hug. I put my uninjured arm around his big shoulders. The booze has had Gregor on a leash for so long I don’t really believe he knows how to walk the world without it, but by all the holies, I am going to let myself hope for him just a little this time.

  The goodbyes are brief and hushed. Esme has gone out and returned driving a horse cart with a hollow bottom for the princess and the others to hide inside until they get to the tunnel, after which they will go on foot.

  I hear the professor murmuring to Frederick, “You will take care of her, won’t you?” and Frederick offering reassurances. I am surprised that Frederick is staying and Professor Baranyi is going, but nobody questions Mrs. Och’s decisions. I suspect that she is not willing to let my crew carry off the princess without one of her own going along too. She might admire Esme, but she does not want to cede control to her.

  I wish them luck, half asleep on my feet by now, dread closing like a dark fist around my heart. Csilla tells me again that my hair will grow out, and Esme gets down from the cart to plant a kiss on my forehead. Gregor, Csilla, the professor, and the princess climb one by one into the false bottom of the cart and lie flat. Esme lays the planks back over them, and I am queasily reminded of a coffin being shut. I have an awful feeling that this is the last I will see of them, but I banish the thought, bury it deep. Esme gets back onto the front of the cart, gives the reins a jerk, waves at us, and they are gone into the night.

  We are still at our breakfast the following morning when Mrs. Och strides out of her room and says, “I will go to Si Tan now. Bianka, I need strength.”