Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  I take a step back toward the door. “I’ve got to go.”

  “May I ask you for a favor, Julia? A simple one?”

  “Depends what it is.”

  “I want you to follow Idir. He went to his room to change a while ago, which usually means he is going out. He’s meeting someone in the city—someone he takes care to wash and dress for—but I don’t know who, and I should like to know. He’ll be on his way out soon.”

  “All right,” I say, more out of curiosity than because I care to help her. I remember him going through her desk yesterday and wonder if I should tell her. I’d prefer to know what he’s up to before I make that decision, though. “Why? Do you think he’s spying for Agoston Horthy?”

  “I doubt that very much,” she says. “But stranger things have happened.”

  She picks up the pen again as I close the door on her.

  Downstairs, I hear Zara and an unfamiliar male voice. They appear to be heading straight for me. I step into the scullery to avoid meeting them in the hall and find Gennady standing next to Mrs. Freeley, his massive hands a powdery white.

  “There you are,” says Mrs. Freeley, looking over her shoulder before I can vanish. “I’m teaching your friend here to make a cobbler.”

  “We’re not friends,” Gennady rumbles, and I realize with some relief that it’s flour all over his hands.

  “Never mind that,” she says. “You know what he told me? That he’s useless! That’s the trouble with these immortals. Can’t see the trees for the forest. He needs to learn to make a cobbler.”

  “She’s mad,” sighs Gennady. “I have lived thousands of years without learning to cook.”

  “That’s exactly your problem,” she says. “Care to lend a hand, Julia? Is that your real name?”

  “It is,” I say. “Who’s visiting Zara this time?”

  “A man,” she says. “None of your beeswax. They blindfold ’em, drive ’em around in endless circles, switch ’em from one hackney to another and so on, till the fellas can’t guess where they are. Still, he’ll know he’s been in a fine house in the city, which narrows it down a little.”

  “Doesn’t narrow it down much,” I say. “But perhaps they ought to meet elsewhere.”

  “Safest here,” she says. “If it goes wrong.”

  “Has it gone wrong?”

  “Oh, indeed. Dragged a fellow out this morning after stripping him of his memories.”

  “Stripping him of his memories?”

  “Something of that kind. They know what they’re doing. No no no, not like that or you’ll just have a mush!”

  Gennady looks crestfallen. “Is it ruined?”

  “Nothing we can’t fix. Come now, pay attention.”

  Zara is wishing the stranger goodbye. I hear Csilla say sweetly, “I will see you home, Sir Winderlay.”

  “May I take the blindfold off?” says a plummy male voice. “Rather uncomfortable.”

  “If you don’t mind, not yet,” says Zara. “It is safer for all of us if you don’t know where we are. But we will be in touch.”

  Csilla and the man go out, and I hear Zara on the stairs. Once the foyer is empty, I wait there, vanished, until Mr. Faruk comes down in one of his elegant suits and ruffled cravats, takes his coat and hat, and goes out the front door.

  Mr. Faruk walks north through the Scola and crosses the river into the Twist. Then he veers straight downhill toward the Edge. I figure he must be going to the Marrow, but instead he stops at Liddy’s door and knocks. Reeling with surprise, I go in after him.

  “Are you there?” he calls.

  Liddy’s voice comes from the back room. “Come in!”

  He goes in, and so do I, two steps back from the world so that she will not see me. Liddy is in her chair in the back room—a whitish blur from my perspective.

  He settles into the chair I usually sit in. “You’ve heard the latest?”

  “Scourge,” says Liddy. “Stars, but she’s reckless.” Then she sighs in my direction and says, “I thought we were friends, Julia. This is not friendly.”

  Mr. Faruk looks around the room, perplexed. Blast Liddy. Even Mrs. Och couldn’t see me when I pulled back this far, but Liddy—somehow Liddy can. I reappear, and Mr. Faruk gives a startled laugh.

  “Lady Laroche told you to follow me?” he asks, apparently rather pleased by the idea.

  “I just wondered where you were off to so suddenly,” I say. I don’t know enough to sell out Lady Laroche just yet. I look accusingly at Liddy. “Why could you see me?”

  “Nobody can come into my shop without my knowing it, visible or not,” says Liddy. “I knew somebody was here, and since I couldn’t see anybody, I assumed it was you. I don’t know anybody else who can be invisible, after all. My, you look very glamorous. A little grass-stained.”

  Mr. Faruk is chuckling and shaking his head like this is all tremendously funny. It’s the most cheerful I’ve ever seen him.

  I fold my arms across my chest. “How do the two of you know each other?”

  “I have many friends,” says Liddy. “We’re meeting with another friend today, and the matter has no bearing on Lady Laroche, the revolution, or you. It is, simply put, none of your business. But, Julia—I would rather not have Lady Laroche breathing down my neck. I support her cause in the loosest sense, and apart from that, I want nothing to do with her. If we are friends, please do not mention me to her.”

  I nod. I don’t yet know what Lady Laroche is to me, but I’ve years of reasons to trust and be loyal to Liddy, no matter how many secrets she keeps from me.

  “I was going to come by, anyway,” I say. “I need…you know.”

  “Oh yes, you’re taking hermia,” says Mr. Faruk. “I must say, I agree with Liddy. It is too dangerous.”

  “Look, this thing is nearly at my neck,” I say crossly, taking the packet out of my riding jacket pocket and tossing it on the table. “That means it’s a day or so from my brain, which means I’m a day or so from belonging to Casimir unless I eat this poison. So I’m eating poison.”

  Liddy puts on a kettle and bows over my little packet, chopping up a couple of leaves and soaking them in hot water. I swallow them quickly. They burn going down. A sharp sliver of pain runs up the side of my head.

  “Come back tomorrow and we’ll increase the dosage,” says Liddy. “You should rest. But not here, if you don’t mind. Our friend is coming soon, and I should like some privacy.”

  Embarrassed now, I apologize and make my way for the door. The sun is going down. In the doorway, I meet the young woman Dek and I saw yesterday, her two children still in tow.

  “You again?” I say.

  She goes past me into the shop, eyes averted. The children cling to her skirts and gape at me. I wink at the little boy, who looks away quickly. I’m curious, but I suppose Liddy is right to say that some things are none of my business. Dark is falling and I’ve got a possibly inhuman prime minister to follow.

  Two hours after sundown, Agoston Horthy is still in his room, praying. I am in a chair in the corner, vanished. I found dust coating the pillow and the coverlet of his bed in the next room. He does not sleep. I file that away to tell Pia and finger the vial of poison in my pocket. There are a carafe of water and a glass at his desk. It would be as simple as pouring the contents of the vial into his drink. I keep telling myself to do it, reminding myself of what he has done—and then I remember Ko Dan’s horrible death, choking on poison, and I can’t.

  I huddle in the chair, a viselike pressure wrapped around my skull, my gut cramping. The hermia is crueler this time, but I feel it less when I’m vanished. At last the prime minister stands up, unlocks his desk, and takes out the closed frame he was looking at the other day. He opens it and gazes at the photograph, his lips moving like he’s still praying. I move closer, hoping to get a peek, but he sn
aps it shut and puts it back in the desk, locking the drawer.

  I’m curious about the picture, but right now I don’t want to lose him, so I stay close when he opens the door, casting myself farther out of my body and into the hallway as he leaves. I follow him down the stairs to the servants’ quarters, through another door, and down another set of stairs.

  Every door down here is locked, and Agoston Horthy has a key to each on a chain in his coat pocket. We are under the parliament now. The walls are stone, dark and cold. He takes a lantern from the wall, lighting it and striding down this hall that feels more like a tunnel. I hear something…it sounds like an animal screaming. We go down yet another set of stairs, and the screaming gets louder. Suddenly I don’t want to know where he goes at night, but I suppose this is it, I’m finally going to find out the secret of the great and terrible Agoston Horthy, prime minister of Frayne, bane of witches.

  We round a corner. The screaming is very close now. Two armed guards at the end of the hall bow when Agoston Horthy approaches. One of them takes the lantern from him, and the other unlocks the door with the screaming behind it.

  The screaming becomes a howl. A small figure comes hurtling out of the door as soon as it opens and crashes straight into Horthy, who grapples with it. The guards help him to pin the thing against the wall. At first I think the prime minister is trying to strangle it, but then I realize he is embracing it; the howling becomes a pathetic sort of whine.

  The whining creature is shaped and dressed like a child, but when I catch a glimpse of its head, I recoil. The head is bloated and pale, nearly hairless, with swollen features and eyes like gray stones. Hands and fingers emerge from the sleeves of its jacket like whitish balloons, and the clothes, for all that they are very fine, appear to have been tugged on over a body that is not the right shape for them. Not a child, then. Agoston Horthy holds the creature by the arm, helping it to lurch past me down the hall. The two guards follow, eyes on the ground.

  They take a turn I had not seen, and we follow a long tunnel that, as far as I can tell, is taking us in the direction of the river, away from the parliament building. We climb a long, narrow set of stairs. Agoston Horthy knocks once on a door at the top, and it opens. We step out into a dark room, and he opens the door at the side onto the moonlit river. We emerge from a jetty cabin that has been familiar to me all my life. I’d always presumed it to hold boating equipment of some kind. A cabriolet is waiting on the upper path. The driver jumps down and swings the door open.

  Horthy, the ill-figured creature, and the two guards enter the cabriolet. I step onto the back panel and hang on as the cab crosses the bridge, passing through the Scola and Forrestal and out of the city, into the thick woods to the south. It bumps along a path through the woods, eventually coming to stop at a clearing with a creek running to one side. The creature lurches out of the cabriolet first, turning its horrible face up to the moonlight, and it goes loping about, moaning softly. Horthy gets out after it. The two guards set lanterns around the clearing.

  Horthy and the creature build a tower of pinecones, then throw rocks at it to knock it over. They eat a picnic by the water and cast lines in to fish with. The thing tries to climb a tree, and Horthy, sweating and grunting, tries to help it. The guards crouch by the cabriolet, sharing a pipe with the driver.

  I watch the scene with bafflement, fingering the poison in my pocket. I can’t help but wonder if they are performing experiments on this poor creature. Yet Horthy treats it with a disconcerting tenderness, and this outing appears to be designed for its pleasure. The moon is high, and I am getting restless. It must be approaching midnight. When I hear a crack farther in among the trees, I go to investigate, vanishing from one spot to the next.

  A shadow is moving fast through the woods, away from the clearing. A woman, I reckon as I get closer. I’m judging by size, for she wears a cloak with a hood and she is moving very quickly. She comes to a shelter made of branches. Another woman is lighting a small fire just outside it. The first woman approaches, dumping a handful of dirt over the fire to extinguish it and putting a finger to her lips. They go into the shelter, and I go right up to the entrance, peering in, though I can barely see in the dark. She is writing in the earth with a stick. The smell of rotten fruit rolls out of the entrance. The other woman opens a little cage, and a bird shoots out of it, swooping off low through the trees. Then the two of them nestle together in the shelter. I wait there for a while, but nothing happens, so I return to the clearing, where Agoston Horthy and his monster are now sharing tea and cake.

  “Did you eat that entire crate of oranges?” I ask, staring at the empty crate and the peelings all over the carpet.

  Pia’s goggles whir at me. She is still sprawled across the sofa. I wonder if she was actually asleep. It is almost dawn, and I am bone-tired. I’m hungry too, but the hermia I just swallowed is roiling my stomach, and I’m not sure eating is a good idea.

  “Julia,” she says, her voice a creak. I think she was asleep. “I am late with my report to Casimir. He will be worried.”

  “Well, Horthy was out all night. I don’t think he sleeps. There’s dust on his bed.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “The woods south of Forrestal. He’s got some kind of monster locked underneath the parliament. It’s the size of a big dog but it walks on two legs, or kind of lurches along, and it makes disgusting noises. He treats it like a pet. He took it to the woods and they…I don’t know, they played games and had cake. He just took it back and locked it in its room. It was making the most dreadful fuss, like a child refusing to go to bed.”

  I shudder. I’m making light of it, but in fact the sounds the creature made were utterly pitiful, and I swear there were tears on the prime minister’s cheeks as he walked away from that locked door and the wrenching wails behind it. I don’t tell Pia about the witches in the woods.

  “The prime minister has shown himself quite willing to make use of magical creatures—the Gethin, and Lord Skaal. Find out what this thing is and how it serves him.” She sits up, spilling orange peels off her lap. “Sir Victor sent a message and a map. There will be a meeting at six o’clock tomorrow evening, and he wants you there—it is a war council. He will need to focus on playing his part. You might notice things he does not.”

  “All right.”

  “You need to fit in more spying for Casimir, Julia, between fomenting revolution and whatever else you’re up to.”

  I don’t answer that. I can’t tell what she thinks, where she stands. What does it mean, that she’s betting on me? Does she really mean it? To change the subject, I touch the base of my neck and say: “It’s still moving.”

  “Take more hermia,” she says sharply.

  “I just did. I hope the little beast is feeling it worse than I am.”

  My hand is resting on the back of the sofa, and she puts her own hand next to it. Hers is much paler, with slender fingers—surprisingly smooth and unmarked given all the weapons handling she does, but I suppose she’s usually wearing gloves. No broken knuckles. Casimir left her hands intact. The silver disk in her wrist is just like mine, but there is no mark left where the nuyi passed. With her other hand, she touches the back of her head, above her neck.

  “Mine is deep inside here somewhere,” she says. “What was that girl’s name…in Tianshi?”

  “Ling.”

  “She really pulled it out?”

  She has already made me describe this to her several times. Ling worked for Casimir because he threatened her sister and promised great rewards. Why not? In her place, knowing as little as she knew about the players, I would have done the same. I did do the same, once. But I think she really loved Dek, and before the nuyi reached her brain, she pulled it out. I shudder, remembering the silvery thread, slick with blood, the scuttling creature at the end of it, her ashen face.

  “Do you think she survived?�
�� asks Pia.

  “I’ve no idea,” I say. “If she went straight to a doctor, maybe.”

  “Mine is too deep. I cannot pull it out. But I wonder if others have died to escape it. There are things I cannot do, ways in which I cannot go against Casimir’s will. But does that include taking my own life? Could I, for example, cut my own throat against Casimir’s wishes?”

  I stare at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “It has occurred to me that if Casimir should wish me to do something I do not want to do, there may be another choice. Perhaps.”

  “You’re getting very rebellious,” I say queasily.

  “It is good to consider all one’s options.”

  I don’t know why I care about Pia, of all people, but I say, “Don’t.”

  The goggles swivel.

  I clear my throat. “Just…do your job, and I’ll do mine. We’ll make it through this.”

  “We?” she says.

  “Go back to sleep. I’m going out for a bit.”

  She doesn’t ask me where I’m going.

  I sit with Frederick outside the little hut on the hill, slicing up an apple I brought with me for Ragg Rock’s rabbit, George. The rabbit is practically quivering with joy. Theo and Ragg Rock are throwing stones over the edge of the hill into the shifting abyss that is Kahge.

  “We went to Vassali earlier today…if it was today,” Frederick is saying quietly. “The Silver Moya there found me a book at the library that references the nuyi. It seems that they are able to absorb the intelligence of the creature they attach themselves to, as well as exerting control. They favor large predators and humans in particular. There was a famous case, just before the rise of the Sirillian Empire, of a Rosshan king renowned for his brutality. It turned out that the king and all his top generals and lords had the nuyi in their brains. It is the only recorded instance of a whole country being ostensibly controlled by the nuyi. A Xianren-led rebellion overthrew the king, and the queen of the nest was hunted down and captured. Rosshan scientists kept and studied some of the nuyi, according to the book. If Ragg Rock will allow it, I’d like to visit the library in Serpetszo, the capital of Rossha. There will surely be records of the event and whatever discoveries the Rosshan scientists made. I might turn up some way of combating the nuyi, besides poison.”