Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  She laughs in disbelief. “How did I end up with such an absurdly principled bunch of allies? I suppose I should be grateful not to be working with rogues and wretches, but all this hesitation is impeding our progress. How is your brother, Julia?”

  “He’s holding up.”

  “You’ve met the heir, Duke Everard?”

  Suddenly I’m afraid I’m going to blush. “Yes,” I say, adding quickly, “He’s very young.”

  “Everyone is young compared to Zey,” she says. She opens her desk and takes out a mirrored glass sphere that fits in the palm of her hand. “Do you know what this is, Julia?”

  I shake my head.

  “It is a besilik mirror—for searching the mind. Particularly useful for unearthing old memories. Shall we see how far back you can go in yours? See if you can find Lidari?”

  My heart clenches with fear. “How does it work?”

  “I will write the magic to start it off, and the mirror will take you back through your memories. It is disorienting, I’ve heard, but you will control the journey—how far back you go, where you pause to look deeper. You should try to go back beyond your birth to see if there is anything there.”

  “Will you be able to see the memories too?” I ask, thinking about Theo hidden in Ragg Rock. I don’t want her to see that.

  “Only the person under the spell can see what the mirror reveals,” she says. “But I hope you will share what you see with me, Julia. I only want to help you.”

  I don’t much like the idea, but if there is something inside me, I have to know.

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  Lady Laroche unscrews the cap of her inkpot and lays sheets of thick paper across the desk. She places the mirrored sphere at the center of the desk.

  “Relax, Julia. Look into the mirror and lay your hands palms upward on the desk.”

  I do so, and she puts pen to paper. The hot scent of her magic fills the room.

  The mirror shows the room and ourselves wrapped around it, misshapen—and then the room changes. The walls are undulating, birds are calling overhead, the carpet shifting and darkening. Clouds race along the ceiling, and it isn’t the ceiling anymore but open sky. We are on a desolate moor. The desk is floating across the moor like a ship, Lady Laroche still frowning at the paper before her. The wind blows around us, but I hold still, my hands on the desk. Lady Laroche places a hand on my wrist and writes something on my palm. The ink runs in little spiderwebby lines up my arm, shooting under my dress, and then I can feel it, like thin threads going through me. I try to pull away, but she is holding me fast, apparently unaware of how we are flying through the air. The threads of ink reach my neck, climb up my face, they are diving into my nose mouth ears eyes, and then my mind is a cloud of winding ink-threads, wrapping themselves in knots—maybe there are words, maybe somebody is shouting something, maybe the sky is going ink-black now and the moor falling into shadow and I am falling and the wind is roaring in my ears and I am falling into nothingness I am falling I am falling.

  Images from my own life flash by and are gone. I race back in time, beyond anything I remember, and while in some way I am choosing this, it feels wild and uncontrolled, the visions moving faster and faster. I see Ragg Rock—a broken, burning city—ships at sea and the clash of swords—a bed with a woman sleeping in it—the sun rising out the window over a bloody field where corpses rot—a feast and music—a child laughing—running down a crowded alley—an old man begging—a bear in a cage roaring—a woman by the sea, stop.

  The unbelievable blue of the West Arrekem sea lies before us. The sand is fine and white. Behind us the jungle rises up out of the coastline. Her secret house is hidden among the trees, guards blending into the jungle. She stands at the edge of the water, the foam lapping over her feet. She is beautiful. She is always beautiful. She dresses simply here, lets her hair loose in a black cloud around her head instead of oiled and twisted into elaborate braids.

  “I’m going to stop being Phar,” she says.

  I say nothing. She has said this kind of thing before. I let her continue.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But this current heir will do very well. I’ve had enough of ruling the world.”

  She looks over her shoulder and smiles a little at that, because we both know she’s joking. She will never be tired of ruling the world.

  “You’ll do as you like,” I say. “You always do.”

  “You’ll watch over our son, won’t you?” she says. “He still listens to you.”

  “He does not listen to me,” I say. “He is like you. He’ll do as he pleases too.”

  She keeps her face turned away, as she always does when we speak of the boy. Not really a boy anymore.

  “He thinks me a monster. He will not see me.”

  I say nothing to that. There is no mending what has broken between them. They are both too much what they are.

  “I only want you to know…I mean to try out some different sorts of lives, but in giving up the influence that comes with being Phar, it may not always be so easy for me to protect you.”

  “I’ve never asked you to protect me.”

  “You could come with me, if you like.”

  “Where will you go?”

  I would go anywhere with her, for her, if she wanted me to. But I can’t follow her for all eternity. “If you like” is not enough. There is enough world for the both of us, except sometimes she shines so brightly the rest of the world pales in comparison. It’s not true. I’ve gotten spoiled, and this body is the best yet, tireless, strong and full of desire, which only makes me love her more. Perhaps I should take an old man’s body next time, give myself some peace.

  “Where won’t I go?” she says. “I want to go everywhere. I want to be everything.”

  “And you’re sure your empire will hold without you?”

  “It will hold.”

  “Nothing lasts forever.”

  She looks at me—I cannot tell if it is anger in her face, or something else. I should know by now, but this is a new face for a new life.

  “We’ll see,” she says.

  * * *

  I lurch forward, not sure what I’m searching for. Deserts, oceans, spired cities and muddy villages, fields of wheat, shadowed temples, bitter fruit, an empty fireplace in a cold room, my hands making bread. When I see him, I stop, panic rising in my throat.

  Casimir, power coiled in his every movement, so vital it nearly hurts to look at him. His blood-sworn twelve are with him, ash-white warriors in golden armor, with wild, flowing white hair. The story goes that they were soldiers near death who swallowed enchanted stones he stole from a dragon. When one of them falls, he cuts the stone out of him to put in another man. We are on the edge of a cliff, gulls swooping, the waves crashing against rocks far below. He has cornered me, and there is nowhere left for me to run.

  “She’ll find out,” I say. I am surprised at my own fear. Just a body, after all. No Ankh-nu to save me this time, though.

  “That’s why we’re here,” he says.

  He draws his sword. I am unarmed, but I have the potion she gave me. The potion that would release me. I take a step back, toward the cliff.

  “I can give you a sword,” he says. “If you would prefer to die fighting.”

  As if some hero’s code means anything to me. Being immortal, he could never understand. All this is only because I loved her and I wanted to live. I only ever wanted to live. I fear death as much as any man. Maybe more so. I’ve known the centuries of half-life and I do not want to go back there, except that from there I might find some chink to slip through, some way back into the world, a body to hold my life again. There is no way back from death. I feel the edge of the cliff at my heels. I take out the vial and tip it into my mouth.

  He shrieks, pouncing toward me, but I feel it already, the p
ulling apart. I let the body I’ve worn and loved for twenty-eight years fall—down, down, to break on the rocks, to be washed away by the sea, to fall to bone and ash, or for him to find and behead, sending the head to Marike. My sorrow is wide as the sky as I break away from it, the world whirling away from me like water pulled fast down a drain, gone, gone—until I am only part of what I was, crouched again on those black rocks, shadow cities burning below me.

  My first thought is that I have lost her forever.

  * * *

  A jolt, and I’m fighting for air at Mrs. Och’s desk. Lady Laroche is pressing my hand to a large green blotter, and ink is pouring out from under my fingernails, seeping out of my hand onto the blotter.

  “There, take a breath, you’re all right,” she says, panting. I manage a huge gasp. The blotter has turned black with ink. The last of it slips out from under my nails, leaving me limp, wrung out.

  “Perhaps a bit of brandy,” she says, beads of sweat standing out on her forehead. “Or tea?”

  “Water,” I croak. She goes out and returns with a glass of water for me. My mouth feels scorched, and I pour the water down my throat as Lady Laroche tidies up the desk. Papers are all across the room, as if a great wind scattered them. The mirror is still on the desk, rocking a little as if we’ve just settled.

  “What did you see?” she asks eagerly.

  “I think it was Lidari talking to Marike before she gave up being Phar. And then Casimir…killing Lidari.”

  “How did you choose where to stop?”

  “I’m not sure. It was hard to control it. They were just moments that seemed important. I recognized Casimir.”

  She lights a cigarette, staring at me hard. “What else?”

  “That’s it. That’s what I saw. Does it mean Lidari is inside me?”

  I want to peel him out, be only myself.

  “It seems that his memories are, at the very least,” she says. “It does not necessarily follow that his essence is. I’m sorry I could not hold the spell longer—I haven’t done it before and it is surprisingly strenuous. But perhaps we can try again sometime.”

  Not a chance, I think but don’t say.

  Then she chuckles a little and says, “Oh, Ammi! Such mischief! Why didn’t she tell me?”

  A crow appears at the window and taps on the glass with its beak. I’m surprised to realize it’s dark out—I’ve been here much longer than I thought, and I’m desperately hungry. I lost all sense of time inside the spell, but it must have taken hours.

  Lady Laroche runs to the window and throws it open. The crow has a piece of paper in its beak, drops it into her hand. When she looks at the paper, her face breaks into an expression of pure exultation.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She laughs—a rather mad laugh. “The best of all possible news!” she cries, snatching her hat from the stand in the corner and pulling on a pair of gloves. “Do stay for dinner, Julia. Mrs. Freeley will make you something nice.”

  It is unusual for middle-aged ladies to run—I can’t think when I last saw it—but in spite of her limp Lady Laroche runs out the door, leaving me at her desk. A moment later, Mr. Faruk comes in, dressed like an ordinary Fraynish merchant.

  “I don’t suppose she told you where she’s off to,” he says, without saying hello.

  “No.” I’m quite shaky when I get up, though I can’t be sure if that’s from the spell, from hunger, or from the hermia I took this morning. I need to take some more.

  He goes around to the front of Lady Laroche’s desk, opening it and taking out her papers, looking through them as if I weren’t there. That rather shocks me, and I’m not sure if I ought to say anything, but I decide it’s not my business. Surely she would have locked the drawer if she wanted to keep her papers secret.

  “Well, I’m off,” I say awkwardly.

  He offers a distant smile and goes back to his snooping.

  I can hear the others in the dining room—the rumble of Gennady’s voice, the music of Zara’s. I try to slip out quietly but am startled at the door by a voice from the front parlor: “Julia.”

  I freeze. Professor Baranyi comes out into the hall. He has lost weight, his full cheeks gone pouchy, his eyes sad behind his spectacles.

  “Princess Zara said you were here,” he says flatly.

  “I had no choice,” I tell him. “About Mrs. Och.”

  I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, and I don’t know if it’s true, though it seemed so at the time. I killed her—or nearly—in such a storm of rage and grief and fear that I can barely think about it or wonder how else it might have gone. He didn’t see what I saw. The way she tossed Bianka into the water like a rag doll. The way she swung her blade at Theo. My only thought was to stop her—completely.

  “She was a great lady, and she made her choices with a wisdom and a perspective earned over millennia. You took from us the greatest ally this revolution could have.”

  “She hurt Frederick too. I’ve seen him. He asked me to tell you…he wants to work on a book with you after…when all this is over. He said that the things you talked about are, um, sustaining him.”

  I’m babbling. Professor Baranyi frowns, as if he isn’t sure whether to believe me or not.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Barely. But he’s safe for now, and so is Theo.”

  “They are here in Spira City?”

  “No.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “Whatever you think of me, you know I’d never harm him or Theo.”

  “You did harm Theo, once. I don’t know anything about you for certain.”

  I want to get away from him and the unhappy look he’s giving me.

  “About Mrs. Och…I wish I could change things, but it happened so fast and she was going for Theo with a knife.” I stumble over my words.

  He shakes his head sadly. “She was never your enemy, Julia. You were mistaken.”

  There’s nothing much I can say to that, so I just say good night.

  Telegram to Lord Casimir, Nago Island: KING ZEY NEAR DEATH STOP HORTHY CAPTURED WITCHES NORTH OF CITY STOP DOES NOT KNOW WHEREABOUTS OF LAROCHE STOP SKAAL RETURNED TO SPIRA CITY STOP LAROCHE BEHIND HORNET ATTACK STOP JULIA COOPERATIVE STOP

  We go down another set of stairs, and the screaming gets much louder. Suddenly I don’t want to know where he goes at night.

  The riding gown Csilla picks out for me is the nicest of the dresses I’ve worn so far. It is a rich burgundy that suits me well, and I look—perhaps for the first time in my life—genuinely pretty. Except that it’s not really me, with the fake hair coiled on top of my head and a hat pinned on top of that, a tight waist courtesy of the corset squeezing the breath out of me, my face pale with powder, my lips and eyes and cheekbones changed by Csilla’s artful lining and shading. I look rather blank and not myself, but still pretty. More or less.

  Csilla is tugging at my gown, adjusting it in places. I asked her to come, knowing I wouldn’t be able to dress myself properly for the riding party. My guts are churning from the single leaf of hermia I ate this morning. I’ll go back later today and ask Liddy to up the dosage, but I can barely ride at the best of times and didn’t want to overdo it. It does seem to be working—the nuyi has not climbed right up into my neck. But it is an inch farther up my shoulder than it was last night. It’s still moving. I don’t have time to slow it down just a little. I need to stop it.

  I’ve been filling Csilla in on some of my discoveries as we stand before the mirror.

  “If Agoston Horthy can’t taste anything and he doesn’t feel pain,” says Csilla, “do you think he’s really human?”

  “As far as I know, he is a man,” says Pia. She is sprawled across the sofa, her boots up on the cushions, eating oranges from a crate of them and leaving the peels all over the carpet. “But he
must be more than that, or have powerful friends, because he commanded the Gethin somehow, and they can be commanded only by magic. It would be very funny if Agoston Horthy turned out to be a man-witch, but I think Casimir would have known.”

  “He told Mrs. Och he inherited the Gethin,” I say, thinking with a shudder of the sad-eyed creature I shot and beheaded in Mrs. Och’s hallway. Liddy told me it was the last of its tribe—one of the half-beings from Kahge that Marike somehow brought into the world and gave physical form, creating for herself a monstrous and nearly invincible army.

  Csilla yanks at the back of my dress again, and I wince.

  “Inherited from whom, I wonder,” says Pia, peeling the fifth orange in a row with her knife—a swift swirl and the peel is on the floor. “It is surprising how little there is to be found out about him. He comes from a wealthy landowning family. His younger brother drowned, his mother went mad and was shut away or perhaps died, and he was raised after that by his father—by all accounts a stern and pious man. Horthy is said to have admired his father very much, but the man died some years ago of natural causes.”

  “His brother drowned?” I say. “Was he a witch?”

  “There is no evidence to suggest it,” says Pia. “The official account is that they were playing by the river, and he slipped, struck his head on a rock, and was carried off by the current. Who knows the truth of it? Horthy’s hatred of witches is genuine; he is driven by fanaticism, not greed. He does not revel in the trappings of power, nor does he particularly seem to relish power itself. He does not hoard riches or seek out the company of women or men; he has neither married nor taken a lover. But he is human, to the best of our knowledge.”

  “The maid who serves him breakfast says he goes out of the city at night and comes back with mud all over his boots.”

  “I doubt Agoston Horthy is going on pleasant countryside rambles. Find out where he goes.”