Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  The last time I was here, on an errand for Professor Baranyi, I barely got out with my stockings still on. I swore then that I’d come back and torch the place someday. I won’t deny a little thrill at descending the familiar staircase. I could barely defend myself back then, but now—well, I’m positively looking forward to seeing the men who assaulted me.

  At the bottom of the stairs is a wide room with a few dirty tables and chairs and, at the back, a long bar. Above the bar is a balcony with a few more doors in the hall behind it. The way up there is not apparent; I think I remember a door behind the bar, but the light is bad. I recognize the woman cleaning glasses at the bar, her wrinkled bosom barely fitting into her dress, a great scar down her face—I’ve one to match it now. Time, debauchery, and violence have done such a number on her that it’s impossible to imagine what she must have looked like once. She doesn’t recognize me, of course. I look different, and was surely not very memorable, anyway—just another girl in the wrong place, an afternoon’s entertainment.

  Half a dozen men are slouching at the tables. I spot Graybeard, the one who hit me and ripped my coat getting it off me, and I feel a hot thrill of anger.

  “We’re looking for Wyn,” says Dek.

  “Are you now?” says the woman, her wide grin revealing a nearly toothless maw.

  “And who might you be?” asks a fellow at the bar with tattoos on his forearms—element symbols.

  “His friends,” says Dek.

  “Wyn!” roars the fellow, so loud that I jump in spite of myself. He grins nastily at me, and I give him a sweet smile back. Just wait, you bastard. Somebody spills a drink and curses, somebody laughs, a squabble ensues. A door off the balcony above opens and out comes Wyn—beautiful Wyn—tucking his shirt into his trousers and leaning over the banister, his face lighting up when he sees us. Behind him, out of the same door, looking tousled and happy, her hair loose around her shoulders, comes a fair-haired girl I’ve never seen. Of course.

  “Hounds, is it ever good to see the two of you!” Wyn shouts. “Hang on, I’m coming down!”

  The two of them disappear back inside, and a moment later Wyn emerges alone behind the bar. He grabs Dek in a bear hug and then pulls me into the embrace as well, so that all three of us are hugging and laughing.

  “I was afraid I’d never see you two again,” says Wyn, and pulls back to look us over. “This new look suits you,” he says to me. “We just need to get you an eye patch and a parrot. And you—you’ve…you’re…flaming hounds, what is all this?” He grabs Dek’s arm, touching the hinges at his knuckles, laughing in disbelief.

  “Long story,” says Dek, but he’s laughing too.

  A man with a ferret on his shoulder comes sauntering over, hand on the gun buckled to his belt, and says, “Introduce us to your friends, then.”

  I remember him too. He didn’t take part in the attack on me, but he didn’t stop it either.

  Wyn introduces us. Of me, he says good-humoredly, “You don’t want to mess with Julia here!” and they all laugh. I feel myself sneering.

  Someone outside our little circle says, “I know you.”

  The men go silent. Torne has come in, and even if none of the others recognize me, he does.

  “You’ve a good memory for faces,” I say. “The same can’t be said of your fellows here.”

  “Hang on,” says Wyn, confused.

  “You worked for Casimir,” says Torne.

  “I did,” I say. “And now I do again.”

  I flash the contract at my wrist, and he flinches.

  “What…?” says Wyn.

  Torne draws a gun.

  “Wait!” says Wyn.

  I vanish. Torne is spinning in circles looking for me, all the men shouting and drawing weapons now, Wyn yelling, “Calm down, it’s fine, it’s just something she can do! Julia!”

  “Julia, stop it!” cries Dek.

  I reappear next to Torne, just for a second. I twist the gun out of his hand, and I’m gone, leaving them in a total uproar that I hear only faintly through the blur of my vanishing. I don’t like to upset Dek, but otherwise I am enjoying this immensely.

  I find Graybeard, a hazy silhouette yelling obscenities, and I reappear behind him, pressing Torne’s gun under his chin. “Nobody move!”

  Torne holds up his hands for silence, and they all go still, pointing their weapons and their angry, scared faces at me. I’ll say this: if there is an upside to finding out you’re a monster, it’s terrorizing the people who once terrorized you.

  “You remember me,” I say to Torne. “But nobody else does. Even though they tried to rip my dress off less than a year ago. This one hit me in the face. Seems to me you ought to remember a girl you’ve punched. Or perhaps you do it so often that they all blur together.”

  Wyn and Dek’s expressions change, turning murderous.

  “What do you want?” asks Torne.

  “I want to have some fun,” I say. “I want to dangle this fellow from the roof beams by his ankles and throw lit matches at him for sport. I want to burn this place down.”

  “Julia,” says Dek. “What happened?”

  “These fellows had a go at me last winter,” I say.

  “Which ones?”

  “This one,” I say, giving Graybeard a little shove so he grunts. “Most of them.”

  I didn’t know Wyn had a gun on him, but he takes it out now—he’s nearly as quick a draw as Esme—so he’s got the muzzle of it right under Torne’s missing ear, and I think, Good old Wyn; I may not have been able to trust him as a lover, but I’ve always known he’d stand by me when it counted most. The others swivel to point their weapons at him. Dek sighs.

  “I persuaded Esme to work with you lot,” says Wyn scathingly. “Time to unpersuade her, I reckon.”

  “Calm down,” says Torne. “Esme agreed to work with us for a reason. If you want a revolution, we are indispensable.”

  “You’re not indispensable,” says Wyn. “And we’re not working with villains and brutes.”

  “We can discuss some form of punishment for the guilty,” says Torne, his voice level.

  I laugh and shove Graybeard away from me.

  “Punishment now?” I say. “You mean they weren’t punished? I’m shocked! Well, I like my idea with the roof beams and the matches.”

  I’ve lowered the gun, but I see movement—it’s the tattooed brick wall of a fellow who held me when Graybeard hit me last time. I let him get close and then I vanish, pulling away so far that he stumbles into nothing. Then I bring myself back, grab Graybeard again, and pull him with me right out of the world.

  Oh, this pulsing, triumphant fury. It’s a little too much fun. I pull him through and through and through, and we land hard in a Spira City that is burnt and shadowy, the air smoking.

  Kahge.

  Something like a crocodile but black and indistinct is crawling toward us down an alley. The doorways are all on fire. Graybeard screams and screams, eyes rolling wildly, and the joy goes out of me all at once, like a match going out. I’m too familiar with mortal terror to enjoy watching it. I drag him back and drop him, sweating and gibbering, on the floor of the bar.

  “Demon!” he sobs, pointing at me. “Help me—she’s a demon!”

  “Nobody move,” says Torne again, and nobody does. Wyn still has his gun pointed at Torne, but he and Dek are staring at me like they don’t know who I am. And of course—how would they know?

  “Julia,” says Wyn, very softly. “What do you want to do?”

  I look around at the men, sweaty and pale, frightened of me, and I’m glad I got to come back here and terrify them.

  “We have some catching up to do with Wyn,” I say to Torne. “We’ll talk about your men and punishments later. For now, keep them away from me.”

  He says, with no trace of a smile
, “I think they will stay away from you by themselves.”

  Wyn lowers his gun, and Dek says to Torne, “We’ve got a message from Esme, by the way. We still ought to give it to him, Julia, don’t you think?”

  I nod. He hands Torne the folded-up piece of paper. We looked at it on the way over, but it was in some kind of code, unsurprisingly. Torne takes it from him with a murmur of thanks.

  “Where can we talk?” I ask Wyn.

  He takes us upstairs to a bleak little room with a stove, where his girl has gone back to bed, her flaxen hair poured over the pillow. I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s not that I can’t handle the idea of Wyn with somebody else by now. I had to make my peace with that while we were still together. Maybe I’m just getting used to not minding so much.

  Wyn brings out a bottle of rum and three glasses, and we sit around a greasy table dotted with crumbs while he pours us each a drink.

  “Are you going to be all right here?” I ask. “I mean, after pulling a gun on Torne…have I gotten you in trouble?”

  He shakes his head. “Esme is top dog. Nobody’s going to mess with me.”

  I’m wondering if I overdid it down there, if I’ve frightened my own brother and my oldest friend. But then Wyn raises his glass and flashes his old heartbreaker grin.

  “Hounds, Julia. I always thought the vanishing was a neat trick, but you’ve become downright scary.”

  “I have,” I agree.

  “You could’ve warned me you were going to pull that,” says Dek.

  “Well, I wasn’t sure,” I say. “But I couldn’t resist.”

  “Bleeding stars, their faces…” Dek gives a snort of laughter, and we are all laughing then, so hard I’m not sure I can stop, doubled over in my chair, tears streaming down my cheeks. Monster I may be, but I adore these two, and the three of us together feels something like home.

  Telegram to Lord Casimir, Nago Island: SAFE ARRIVAL STOP OPERA TOMORROW STOP JULIA COOPERATIVE STOP

  But then sometimes I feel as if

  my body is only a disguise.

  For a moment I can’t remember where I am. Sunlight is pouring through the window, and Pia is silhouetted in front of it, having drawn back the curtains. I came to the hotel a few hours before dawn, not much wanting to sleep under the same roof as Torne’s men. Funny that rooming with Pia would seem less of a threat. Or maybe funny isn’t the right word for it.

  “The maid is filling you a bath,” she says. “You stink.”

  I’m still in my clothes—her clothes—sprawled on top of the covers of this absolutely enormous four-poster bed. I groan, which makes me feel slightly better, so I do it again, and Pia laughs.

  “Get up,” she says. “Wash. It’s already midday. Your friend is here, and you’ve got an opera to go to.”

  “My friend?” I say, sitting up. And then I remember that I asked Csilla to come.

  I peel Pia’s clothes off in the bathroom and step into the tub. The water is so hot I have to lower myself into it inch by inch. I sink up to my neck and then dunk my ratty mop of hair underneath as well. Settling back in the water, I examine the red-mud scars on my arm and my side—slices taken out of me by monsters I may have more in common with than I’d like to believe, stopped up by the mud of Ragg Rock. The nuyi has reached the inside of my elbow, a tender lump creeping under my skin. My body is changed—damaged, patched up, invaded by the otherworldly. But then sometimes I feel as if my body is only a disguise, barely real, if I can shed it so easily. I want it to be mine, though—to be real, to be me. What am I, if not the body I inhabit? If that body is something that can disappear and change, what part is me? I stretch my muscles, roll my neck, and feel, as I still sometimes do, that surely I am Julia, I am this body that feels so much. I stay in the tub, letting the warm water soothe me, until the bath starts to cool and I hear voices from the other room.

  When we were in Yongguo, I sometimes asked myself, what would Little Julia, aged ten or thereabouts and believing herself so tough and so brave, have thought if she could glimpse a few years ahead and watch her future self scaling walls and rescuing a princess halfway around the world? It amused me to think of it. And still my life keeps producing scenes that just a few months ago would have been unimaginable.

  Like this scene. I am wearing a silk dressing gown and drinking coffee on the tenth floor of a West Spira hotel room. The balcony doors are open to let in the early-summer breeze. There are trunks full of expensive dresses all over the place. Pia is stretched out on the sofa, her booted feet up on the arm of it, reading a telegram, while Csilla, corn-silk curls tumbling over her creamy shoulders, opens trunk after trunk, pulling out gowns, shoes, shawls, boxes of jewelry. “You can’t wear this, not unless we stuff the bust,” she’ll say, or, “This one will suit you well, but you’ll need a good, tight corset,” or, “Stars, it’s much too hot for velvet; let’s find something suitable to the season.”

  “I saw your friend Torne last night,” I say to Pia. “D’you remember? You told me you knew him.”

  “Yes,” says Pia. “I did.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as a nice man.”

  She looks up at me, goggles whirring. “He isn’t.”

  “The first time I saw him, he got very nervous when I mentioned your name.”

  That makes her grin.

  “Who is he?”

  “He worked for the Sidhar Coven years ago as a sort of liaison,” she says, putting the telegram down. “He’s not a man-witch, but he ran messages, took care of various nasty jobs, and linked the witches up with revolutionaries in the city. He was in charge of me, back when they considered me their attack dog. He was my keeper, you might say.”

  “So he’s afraid you might take revenge?”

  “I already have. He and I passed a day in a cellar together, not long after the Lorian Uprising. I let him live, to match the mercy he occasionally showed me, but I cut off his ear as a souvenir.”

  “Ugh!” Csilla looks up from a ruffled, cream-colored gown that I hope to heaven she doesn’t try to make me wear. “Enough about cutting off ears and horrible men. Hang on—here’s something.” She puts down the ruffled gown and holds another dress up to show us. The top and shoulders are pale lace, cut modestly. It has a satin sash right under the bust and a long, flowing skirt in navy blue.

  “Simple, elegant, but not too eye-catching,” she says. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “That is what Casimir wants,” says Pia, barely glancing at the dress. “I do not know anything about ladies’ fashions.”

  “No, I suppose you don’t,” says Csilla, regarding her curiously. “It seems a shame not to dress her up a bit more, though. Everything here is so banal, nothing interesting or new.”

  “She is a spy,” says Pia. “She’s not supposed to attract attention.”

  “But why does Casimir want her to spy on Agoston Horthy? I thought they were allies,” says Csilla.

  “Agoston Horthy is proving unreliable,” says Pia. “There is a revolution brewing, as you know. You might warn your friends it can’t end well. Horthy will take care of this would-be coup as efficiently as he took care of the Lorian Uprising. But once things settle down, Casimir wants Horthy replaced with someone he can control more easily.”

  “Really?” says Csilla, fascinated.

  “I’ve said too much,” says Pia to me. “I’ll have to kill her.”

  Csilla and I freeze.

  “Joking,” says Pia, without smiling.

  “Well, I promise not to breathe a word of it to Agoston Horthy,” says Csilla, recovering fast. “Come on, Julia, let’s try this on and see how you look.”

  “I’m going to look ridiculous,” I say. “Especially with my hair like this and the scar…”

  “I worked in the theater for years,” says Csilla. “Don’t you think I know
how to cover a scar? I’ve got hair extensions for you as well. I’m going to make you look lovely. Or simple, elegant, and not too eye-catching, in any case.”

  Indeed, over the next hour, Csilla transforms me. First she nearly kills me with the corset, and I have to beg her to loosen it, pointing out that I can’t spy if I’m fainting from lack of oxygen. She squashes me into the dress and a pair of satin shoes, painstakingly fastens the hair extensions and arranges it all into a sweeping updo, and then spends another half hour painting my face. When she is done, I do not look like myself at all. The scar on my cheek is still a visible line if you look closely, but it doesn’t jump out anymore, blending into the stiff, powdered mask of my face. I admit I’d half hoped I might look pretty at the end of all this pinching and prodding and pulling and powdering, but in fact I look stunningly ordinary—like a dull, plain girl who can afford nice dresses but has no taste.

  Dek gave me five little darts of sleeping serum in a leather purse last night, and now I tuck the purse into the top of the dress, tugging the fabric around it so it doesn’t look too lumpy.

  “What do you think?” Triumphant, Csilla spins me to face Pia.

  The goggles swivel in and out. “You look like a rich girl,” she concedes.

  “You think I’ll pass as Sir Victor’s niece?” I pull an exaggerated simper, curtsying, and Pia smiles. An odd smile, I think at first—and then I realize it is odd because it is genuine.

  “It will do,” she says.

  An electric hackney is waiting outside the hotel in the late afternoon. Csilla has already left, accepting money from Pia with the smoothness of somebody accustomed to unusual, well-paid transactions. The window drapes are closed, and the hackney is dim and stuffy. I climb in and sit myself down across from Sir Victor Penn Ostoway III.