Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  “We’ll start off with a small dose,” she says. “You can eat the leaves directly, but it will be easier on the stomach to soak them in water first.”

  I take the cup from her and knock half of it back as fast as I can, scalding my tongue.

  “So what are the side effects, exactly?” I ask, wincing.

  “Most people would ask before drinking.”

  “Not if the alternative was to be enslaved forever to a mad, murderous immortal.”

  “Fair enough. Headaches, fever, some nausea or stomach cramping. Muscle and joint pain. Blurred vision. It can have a hallucinatory effect, though probably not at this dosage. Still, as we increase the dose you may hear things or even see things. And of course, it can affect every person differently. You are an unusual girl, and the effects may be unusual.”

  I finish the poisoned tea as quickly as I can.

  “We don’t have time to go easy on the dosage,” I say. “It’s nearly up to my shoulder.”

  A wave of dizziness hits me, and I put my head between my knees.

  “You all right?” asks Dek, alarmed.

  I breathe deeply until it passes. “I’m fine,” I say, and hope it’s true. I glance uneasily at the clock—it is nearly eight o’clock, and I want to be there when Agoston Horthy goes to see the king. “I’d better go. This plan still depends on me actually being a useful spy for Casimir.”

  “How you came to be mixed up with such people,” Liddy mutters.

  But it wasn’t an accident. Casimir sought me out for a job, knowing who I was and a little—oh, but just a little—of what I could do. Which one of us will pay more dearly for the association remains to be seen.

  We say goodbye to Liddy. I feel a little unsteady getting up but not too bad. At the door to the shop we meet a young woman with a great bruise on her temple. Her cheeks are hollow with hunger, but there is something else in her expression—a kind of fear that goes beyond deprivation. She is holding herself oddly—broken rib, maybe. Two frightened-looking children are hiding behind her skirts. One of the children has a bandaged arm. A sorry lot, in other words.

  “You looking for Liddy?” Dek asks her kindly.

  She stares at him and then at me, eyes darting back and forth, throat working with panic, as if trying to assess the danger. The kids move closer to her. Six and four, maybe—or seven and five—and underfed.

  “She’s through there,” says Dek, pointing. “We’re just leaving.”

  We step out into the street, and she pulls the kids in front of her. They go into the shop clinging to one another, the woman shuffling sideways so she doesn’t entirely turn her back on us. She slams the door behind her.

  “Friendly girl,” I say, then ask Dek: “Where are you going now?”

  “Weapons dealer.” He grins. “If these are to be my last days, at least they won’t be dull.”

  “We’re going to survive this,” I tell him, and try to believe it.

  “My sister, the endless optimist. Go find something useful for Casimir.”

  And so that is what I do.

  I enter the palace by a balcony with its doors open wide, returning to my body enough that I can feel my feet on the ground, but not so much as to be seen.

  “I told them no pork,” a man in courtly dress is saying to a woman seated before a mirror. The room is lavishly furnished, everything jeweled, gilt, covered in velvet and tassels.

  “You can’t expect them to accommodate every little thing,” the woman says, patting her hair and staring at her reflection rather challengingly, like she might set up arguing the opposite point at any moment.

  “I do not,” says the man as I slip through the room to a connecting chamber. “But I hold that the pig is too intelligent an animal to be served as dinner. I have known pigs more curious, charming, loving, and clever than many people, as a matter of fact, and we do not set about cooking our ignorant cousins, do we?”

  “Perhaps we should. Evangeline is a bore, but I bet she’d be delicious.”

  In the next room, a servant is cleaning up and the door is firmly closed. I position myself by the door and wait until she has her back to me. Then I turn the knob and slip out, pulling the door almost closed but not fully, so the click does not startle her. She will just think she forgot to pull it shut, I hope.

  In the hall, I take the palace maps Sir Victor gave me from my purse and examine them. I reckon these are the guest suites. I want to get across the palace to King Zey’s residence, a few stories down. I descend the curving, carpeted staircase. The walls are hung with long, frowning paintings of dead kings and queens, not a jolly, smiling face among them. No fun being royal, if these portraits are anything to go by.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I come to a hall at the center of which stands a statue of Zey’s great-grandfather, King Zedar. The queen’s chambers, closed up for years now since her death, are to the left, and the king’s suite is to the right. A guard stands by the door, fiddling with his cuff links. I go lean on the wall near him, and we wait together—though he doesn’t know it—until Agoston Horthy arrives. The guard bows and opens the door for the prime minister. I slip in as fast as I can behind him, trying not to brush against him before the guard shuts the door.

  We pass through the anteroom into an empty and rather untended parlor. Agoston Horthy knocks briefly on the door at the far end and goes in, pulling it shut so quickly that this time I have to leap straight out of my body and focus on the corner of the next room I’m able to glimpse through the closing door. I almost crash into the wall by King Zey’s bed, drawing back quickly, trying not to cry out. Horthy sits at the king’s bedside and shows no sign of hearing or seeing any of my blundering about at the edge of the visible world.

  King Zey is propped up in the bed against a pile of cushions. I remember seeing him once when I was a little girl. He rode through the city in a carriage pulled by towering dappled horses and waved a gloved hand out the window. I saw a white beard and a gold crown as the carriage clattered by. He looked ancient even then. Now his beard lies in a yellowing tangle on his chest, his skin the texture of a withered old leaf. I feel a little thrill. The truth is that if I were working for anyone but Casimir, this job would be a kind of dream come true—spying on the grand powers that dictate all of our lives, here in the room with the king of Frayne and his mighty, terrible prime minister. In spite of the stakes and all my fears, there is a part of me that loves this.

  “Your Majesty, you look as if you are in pain,” says Agoston Horthy.

  “Lord Horthy,” wheezes the king. “I welcome whatever pain the Nameless One bestows on me. This slow death is mine to bear. This too is His gift.”

  Agoston Horthy bows his head.

  “Today I was able to sit a while and read Scripture,” says the king. “I have been well enough to pray. I thank the Nameless One for this.”

  “The Nameless One loves you,” says Agoston Horthy flatly.

  “I am fortunate indeed,” says the king. “I would like to meet my heir. Not today. Today I am tired already.”

  “It is early morning still, Your Majesty.”

  “Tomorrow. Let me meet him tomorrow.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty.”

  “What do you think of him, my friend?”

  “I think he is young. I think he knows very little.”

  The king chuckles. “He will have you to guide him. You will serve him well, and you will serve Frayne, as you have done for many years now as my prime minister.”

  “If he chooses to keep me, so I shall, Your Majesty. It is the king’s prerogative to appoint a new prime minister if he wishes.”

  “He is not too arrogant?”

  “I think he will welcome counsel.”

  “Good.”

  “Sir Victor has suggested a girl of great piety who might make him a good wife an
d help guide him in spiritual matters,” adds Agoston Horthy.

  “Good, good, a wife is the best spiritual helpmeet. You will guide him in matters of state, and she will guide him in matters of the soul. That is good. Anything else?”

  “There are rumors that a girl posing as your niece has come to Frayne. Nothing more than rumor yet. But the rat invasion of West Spira suggests a gathering of witches, a new confidence. Perhaps they have found someone to rally behind. The rumor strikes me as plausible enough to warrant our attention. We know Och Farya was in Yongguo recently, and that a girl claiming to be Zara was living there for a time.”

  King Zey looks very agitated at this. He begins clawing at his tattered beard.

  “Is it possible? You told me Roparzh’s child was dead.”

  “We believed she was. It is possible the death was faked to throw off her pursuers. I am investigating.”

  “Suppose the girl is alive and has come to Frayne? Who will help her, now that Och Farya is dead?”

  “Lady Laroche escaped, as you know.”

  “Yes, that fiend!” wheezes the king, sitting up some more. “You must hunt her down!”

  “We will, Your Majesty, do not worry yourself. Witches have been gathering in the villages north of the city. I sent troops in the night, and they rounded up twenty-three witches. They are in Hostorak now. One of them will give up their leader, I am sure. Put your heart at ease. Concentrate on your maker, who is coming for you.”

  Something in my chest squeezes painfully. I missed what would have been crucial information for Lady Laroche while I was fetching hermia and visiting Ragg Rock yesterday. Now those witches will likely drown.

  “If you find the girl, I want to see her,” says the king.

  A long pause, and then Horthy says: “Why?”

  Zey rocks back and forth on the pillows a bit. “I would know. If she is my niece, I would recognize her.”

  “You never laid eyes on her, even as a babe, Your Majesty.”

  “I would recognize my flesh and blood!” he cries. “My brother’s daughter! Oh, my friend, there are things that weigh on my soul. Do you not think of it? My brother. His children! Do you remember little Davin, such a clever boy? He should be my heir.”

  The king begins to weep, a wild hiccupping sound, waving his hands near his face like his grief is attacking him from the outside and he can shoo it away.

  “Your Majesty, we did what had to be done. You should not torment yourself.”

  “My brother and I used to go hunting in the forest to the south!” He practically screams this. “If my mother had lived…oh, my soul, does she know what I have done? Will I have to explain myself to her in the afterlife?”

  Agoston Horthy folds his hands on his lap and waits for the wailing and sobbing to subside.

  “Bring me the girl when you find her,” rasps the king, exhausted by his outburst.

  Agoston Horthy says nothing.

  “Please!” Zey’s eyes widen; he starts trying to sit up again.

  “You should rest, Your Majesty,” says the prime minister, standing. “Do not think of the past.”

  “Yes,” mutters the king, sinking back into the pillows. “I will rest.”

  “I will bring Duke Everard tomorrow. Try not to upset him with your morbid musings.”

  “Oh,” murmurs the king, shutting his eyes, like he has been vanquished.

  Horthy pulls the blankets right up to Zey’s chin, tucking them around the king’s frail frame, and goes out. I follow him through the grand hall and out onto the palace grounds, my mind humming with all I’ve seen and heard. He walks among the fruit trees to a small temple by a pond. He goes inside, and my pulse quickens. He seems so purposeful that I expect him to be meeting somebody here, but the place is empty. He lights a candle and sets it on a table at the side of the temple, and then he kneels on the bare floor. I watch him for a while, but he doesn’t move. He’s just come here to pray, and who knows how long he will be. There is a faint buzzing from outside—distant enough that I don’t pay it any mind at first, but then it gets louder and closer, and I go out to see what it is.

  The first thing I see outside the temple is a great clamoring cloud at the far end of the royal gardens. The second thing I see is the heir to the throne, Duke Everard, standing in an azalea bush with a panicked look on his face. I reappear next to the bush, the grass softening under my satin shoes, the world coming into focus. The noisy cloud breaks into pieces.

  “Why are you standing in the azaleas, my lord?” I ask him, mainly for the pleasure of making him jump halfway out of his skin, which he does.

  “Great stars, you’re sneaky!” he cries. “I didn’t see you coming!”

  Well, no, you wouldn’t, princeling. He is dressed less formally than the other day at the opera; his boots are worn, his jacket clearly lived in. As I inhabit my body fully again, the effects of the hermia hit me—my head throbs and my stomach roils.

  “What is that?” I point at the dark cloud. The buzzing has become a roar. A group of uniformed soldiers are running across the grounds toward the temple. I tense, wanting to vanish, but of course I can’t, not right in front of the duke.

  “We’d better get out of here,” says Duke Everard. “Come this way.”

  He grabs my hand and pulls me around the row of bushes. I follow, too startled to protest. We run across the lawn to one of the servants’ entries to the palace.

  “My lord!” says the man on the stairs, flattening against the wall as we race by. “Someone told me there’s a swarm of bees outside!”

  “A great many swarms,” replies the duke. “And I think they are hornets. Stay inside and shut all the doors and windows! Spread the word!”

  He is still holding my hand, pulling me up the stairs, out into a hallway, up another set of stairs and down another hall. We burst into a grand bedroom, and Duke Everard pulls back the curtains to look out the window at the palace grounds. The black swarm of hornets, or whatever they are, is making its way right toward us. There are bells ringing in the palace and voices shouting somewhere down the hall now.

  “Sir!” I cry, and he turns toward me, a peculiar smile on his face.

  “Call me Luca,” he says.

  The swarm comes at the window and crashes into it, battering their shiny, striped bodies against the glass, the awful buzz quite deafening even with the window closed.

  “Draw the curtains,” I say, flinching away from the onslaught.

  He pulls the curtains shut.

  “Are you all right?” He looks me up and down, eyes snagging on my scar. Only then do I remember that I am not wearing a corset, my hair is crooked, and I powdered my own face very poorly this morning. “You look…well, to be honest, you look as if somebody has been pulling your hair.”

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the long mirror and wince. How stupid of me to appear before him! I’d better make a quick exit. I ignore his question and say, “What’s going on? How could there be so many…”

  “Witchcraft,” he says. “Will your uncle send you home, now it’s clear that we’re under siege?”

  “Under siege?”

  “Witches attacking us,” he says. “Or, I suppose, they are attacking me, as it coincides with my arrival in the city. People said there were hardly any witches left in Frayne thanks to Agoston Horthy, and yet look at what’s happening! One wonders why they haven’t wrought such horrors before now. Are you sure you’re all right, Ella? I can call you Ella, can’t I?”

  I touch a hand to my lopsided hair extensions and change the subject: “What were you doing in the azalea bush?”

  “Oh…” He looks sheepish, which is rather becoming on him. “I saw the prime minister, and I…well, I was having a pleasant walk and I thought I’d just…duck into the bushes. He’s invited me to pray with him a few times.”

&nbs
p; “He’s very devout,” I say, smothering an urge to laugh.

  “He is, yes. I’ve never been much good at praying, myself.”

  This admission surprises me, coming from the heir to the throne, but I just raise an eyebrow at him.

  “I’d like to be better at it,” he says, watching my reaction from under his long eyelashes. “I can’t shake the feeling that nobody is listening. I tie myself in knots over it. My mother is very spiritual, she talks about a feeling of deep communion with some greater power, but I’ve never felt it. Have you?”

  I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody so frank about such matters, other than perhaps Frederick.

  “No,” I say. “Well—perhaps sometimes. Or perhaps it’s just that there’ve been a few times I’ve hoped so hard someone was listening, it almost felt as if it might be true.”

  “I knew I could speak plainly to you,” he says, smiling. “You strike me as…honest.”

  Well, that’s a laugh.

  “I’m honored when Agoston Horthy invites me to pray with him, of course,” he continues. “It’s only that at home I have a great deal of time to roam and enjoy my solitude, and there has not been much of that lately. Everybody wants to accost me and give me advice.”

  “Hence the hiding in the azaleas,” I say, laughing in spite of myself. “And then I came along to interrupt your solitude.”

  “That’s all right. You don’t look as if you’re about to give me any advice.”

  “I feel some coming on, as a matter of fact. Here: as heir to the throne of Frayne, don’t get caught hiding in the bushes. It isn’t very royal somehow.”

  He laughs at that, a golden, full-throated laugh that catches at me somewhere just below my rib cage.