Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  “We’ve all got secrets,” I say.

  “I’m dying to know yours.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand, turns it slowly in his and studies my palm. For a wild moment, I think he’s doing palmistry, which is illegal and has been since I was born. His fingers are hot on my wrist. Just an inch farther up, under my sleeve, one of my secrets—that silvery disk where the nuyi entered—is very visible indeed. I start to pull my hand away, but he holds on to it and looks up at me, suddenly intense.

  “I’ve spent this whole evening bored out of my mind, having that beautiful, dull girl thrown at me, and talking to people I have nothing in common with.”

  “We have nothing in common,” I say.

  “Maybe we do. I don’t know anything about you. But you’re from the countryside, like me.”

  “I think that is the extent of what we share,” I say. Not even that, in fact.

  “I’ve met lots of country girls. And now I’ve met lots of city girls. But I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  I pull my hand free, and the stew comes to save me. I’m thinking I ought to get out of here, but it’s hard to walk away from the bright, warming beam of his gaze, into the shadows, back to that hotel to eat more poison. Besides, I’m hungry.

  “I suppose you’ve met plenty of men like me, though,” he says.

  “Are you fishing for compliments?” I ask, laughing. “You know that’s unlikely.”

  “Is it?”

  “You are the first duke I’ve known.”

  “That means nothing. It’s a title.”

  “You don’t think titles mean anything? Odd position for the future king to take.”

  “I’m not talking about family or position. If I were, I’d say I had a great deal in common with the people I met tonight. We are all nobility, but I’m talking about who we are in a more profound way. Am I being foolish or romantic if I say that you are wonderfully mysterious?”

  I make a face and keep shoveling back the stew, though I rather like that image of myself.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you appeared in the azalea bush the other day, and then disappeared from behind my curtain. You are a puzzle I’m stuck on.”

  “You are a rogue,” I say.

  “You made me feel ashamed of treating your reputation so lightly, but I don’t think you care one whit about your reputation or you wouldn’t be running around the Twist at midnight!”

  “I told you why,” I protest.

  “I don’t believe you. If you won’t tell me what you’re up to, I can find out everything I want, anyway. I’m going to be king soon.”

  Hounds, I don’t need Luca digging into my nonexistent personal history.

  “I don’t like to be threatened,” I shoot back. “I’ve told you my business in the Twist, and I would not have chosen to show myself to you at all except that I feared for your life.”

  “I’m not threatening you!” He looks confused.

  “You are lording your position over me, telling me you will dig into my private affairs with the power of the throne! How do you think that makes me feel? I will tell you: powerless and afraid. It is not a nice way to feel, and it does not endear you to me one bit. I helped you tonight, and you are repaying my kindness with bullying. You think that because you are going to be king you can have me if you like, but you can’t. I am not yours to have or to know.”

  “Ella, I’m sorry!” he cries, appalled. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I was joking.”

  “You weren’t,” I say, although I’m less angry with him than I’m pretending, and more angry with myself for being such a sap for his charms.

  “Can you blame a fellow for being curious? I feel so out of place with the people here, but it’s different with you. I keep thinking—or hoping—that you and I might be alike in some way.”

  “You ride and dance and write poetry,” I say. “I dislike all of those things. You are jolly, and I am not. You are about to be king, and I am nobody. I can’t think of anything we share.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you like?”

  “I like this stew,” I say, finishing it.

  He grins. “You have a healthy appetite—that’s something we share! Don’t you worry about your dress size?”

  I give him an evil look. “You’re not going to cut such a fine figure in a few years either, Your Almost-Majesty.”

  He throws back his head and laughs at that. “We should dance, then, while we’re still young and can make some small claim to beauty.”

  “You can claim it more than I can,” I say. “And I told you—I can’t dance.”

  “I believe you just paid me a compliment!” His jaw drops in mock astonishment. “Surely you know how to dance a reel! Come—we are from the countryside, are we not? How can we claim our true, wild homes if we cannot dance a reel?”

  And of course, I do know how to dance a reel, at least. The music has been getting louder, and a great many drunken louts are making their clumsy hash of the reel. My foot is tapping to the music, and the wine and the stew are warm in my belly. The hermia has worn off, and while that means I ought to take more, I am giddy with relief at being free of the ache and burn of it. He reaches for my hand, a pleading, helpless look on his face that I expect got him terribly spoiled as a boy. I put my hand in his, and he gives a yelp of happiness that makes me laugh in spite of myself. He pulls me to my feet and into the crowd.

  His arm goes around me, his hot hand tight on my waist, and I’m facing straight into that great barrel chest of his. If I tilt my head up to look at him, our lips are inches apart. I reckon he thinks he’s going to bed me. The worst of it is how much I want the same thing. I am behaving like an utter fool for the heir to the Fraynish throne, but it’s hard to remind myself of what he is when those long-lashed amber eyes are blinking down at me and I’m pressed right up against the gorgeous length of him.

  So we dance. I can’t help laughing at the expression of mock despair on his face as he passes me off to the next red-faced reveler. I go spinning down the line. I’m still laughing when I find myself staring right into my brother’s face, his mechanical right arm around my waist, the glass eye blank and his other eye wide with shock.

  “Dek?” I whisper, and then I’m whirling back along the line toward Luca. Luca catches me and spins me around, holding me closer than would be considered appropriate at a royal soirée, but anything goes in the Twist. I crane my neck, trying to see Dek again. He twirls by us, staring, and I gasp audibly because Zara is in his arms, white-faced and gaping at us as well.

  “Do you know that fellow?” asks Luca.

  I shake my head, forcing a smile. He dances me back into the line and sends me spinning down it a second time. I bump against Zara as we pass each other. She’s wearing a ruffled peasant-girl dress and her lips are painted red.

  Dek catches me and turns me around, hissing in my ear, “Is that the bleeding heir to the throne you’ve come here with?”

  Zara is in Luca’s arms, smiling up at him prettily, and he is looking at me over her head. I don’t have time to answer Dek, and no idea what I’d say, anyway. Back down the line I go to Luca, around and around and around.

  “He’s still staring at you,” says Luca.

  What the bleeding stars are they doing here? In spite of my shock, Luca’s arm tight around my waist and his face bent right over mine make me feel wild and wide-awake again. I see Dek and Zara slipping out the door, hand in hand. Dek looks back at me once and then they are gone. The dance is breaking up, more and more people rushing the door, and then I hear the roaring behind the music. The players stop, the fiddle trailing off last. A howl outside, not human or animal.

  Everything hot and reckless and alive in me goes cold as ice. I break out of Luca’s arms, pushing through the press of bodies and out into the street.
The wind is blowing hats from heads, papers and baskets and bonnets whirling through the night. I can’t see Dek or Zara anywhere.

  For a moment, looking at the westward sky, I think it is Kahge come to earth. My heart contracts—Theo, he’s found Theo—but somebody near me says in an awed voice, “It’s a twister!”

  It is hard to make it out in the dark, but the speaker is right. Somewhere over West Spira, a whirling column of wind is descending, a screaming cyclone. It touches down, and there is a distant tearing sound as it moves through the city. People are running as if they’ve got somewhere safer to go.

  Magic fills my nostrils, a disturbing mix of smells—spice and salt, singed feathers and honey and wet stone. The cyclone cuts through West Spira and then rises again, breaking apart into black streaks. The wind that blasts over us makes me reel backward. Somebody crashes into me. I let myself get swept up in the running crowd. I run and then I vanish. The wind is gone almost as quickly as it came, and there are cries of “witchery!” everywhere. Hanging over the scene, I still can’t find Dek, but I see Luca racing along the street looking for me, calling frantically: “Ella! Ella!”

  * * *

  The cyclone cut a path half a mile long through West Spira in a matter of seconds. The streets are full of rubble and broken tiles, half-destroyed houses and ruined gardens, trees torn up by the roots. The storm did not quite reach the palace, stopping short of the streets surrounding it. Ambulances and police cabriolets are all over the place surrounding the wreckage, and I can hear screaming and weeping from every direction.

  I don’t want to talk to Pia. My mind is too full of other things. I remember that Sir Victor told me I have a room of my own at the palace, so I check the maps he gave me and find my way there. It’s something, isn’t it, for a girl from the Twist, daughter of a witch, Esme’s little thief, to be able to choose between a fine West Spira hotel room and guest quarters at the royal palace? Well, such is Casimir’s reach. For a half second, as I return to myself on the balcony and step quietly onto the soft carpet, I imagine this being my life. Even if the nuyi took me, I reason, would it be so bad? Dek rich and protected. Me spying on royal families around the world, living in luxury, as fearless and terrifying as Pia. My name sending shudders through my enemies. Always gold, always a fine meal and a comfortable bed, baths up to my neck, and nobody to tell me what to do or how to be. Nobody but the evil thing that owns me. I shake off the fantasy. It’s only that I’m so tired of being afraid.

  There is somebody in the bed, asleep. I stand frozen with shock—have I got the wrong room? But no, she’s not asleep. She turns over and sits up, golden tresses falling loose about her shoulders, and even in the dark I can see the look of triumph on her face.

  “Aha,” says Dafne Besnik. “There you are.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Waiting for you,” she says. “Did you just come in from the balcony?”

  I ignore that impossible question and find myself babbling: “The daughter of our old cook has taken ill—she lives in the city—I’ve been sitting up with her. I’m exhausted. But Sir Victor will be so cross if he knows I’ve been out at night.”

  “Of course he will. Did you see the storm? It was coming right at us and then vanished. It’s witches attacking the city because they’re afraid of Duke Everard—a young, strong ruler about to take control of the country. That’s what everyone is saying.”

  “Are they?”

  She looks at me contemplatively, head tilted to one side, and says: “I knew you couldn’t be as dull as you’ve been pretending to be.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anybody.” She gets up and steps closer to me. “Once, I snuck out to a masked ball with my friends—not a respectable ball! My parents never knew I’d left the house. We drank liquor and danced and smoked something…I don’t know what, it gave me a terrible headache.” She licks her lips nervously. “Wherever you’ve been, I won’t be shocked.”

  I doubt that, but an astonished laugh escapes me all the same.

  “How did you get up on the balcony?” she asks again.

  I throw something out to distract her from the balcony: “I was at a music hall in the Scola. With a man.”

  That does the trick.

  “Who?” she gasps.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “My uncle would say he is below my station.”

  Her eyes widen. “Are you in love with him?”

  “Desperately,” I deadpan. I go to the vanity and rummage through the jars of powder and ointments, just to give myself something to do. Sir Victor meant it when he said the room would look as if a girl lived here.

  Dafne stands right next to me, staring at my reflection and her own in the mirror. “Do you let him kiss you?” she whispers.

  “Yes,” I whisper back.

  “What is it like?”

  I think of Luca, his mouth against my ear. How the first time I met him, I felt the heat of his mouth even through my glove.

  “Heavenly,” I say. “A bit dizzy-making.”

  “Is he handsome?”

  “Too handsome for his own good.”

  She half-swoons back onto the bed with a whoop of happiness.

  “Now we shall really be friends!” she cries. “Oh, I’m glad you’re not just some dull girl stuck with me for the season! Things will be so much better now that I know I can be myself with you. You must tell me more about this man!”

  I try to put her off, but she is so insistent that I start making things up about my imaginary beau, turning him into a rebellious young painter who doesn’t want to take over his father’s rubber import business. I get rather dramatic, thinking of the sorts of books I used to read aloud to Wyn. I’d read the overwrought lovemaking scenes again and again and we’d hoot with laughter and then make our own kind of love. I miss it, in spite of everything that’s happened since.

  I invent a first meeting, stolen kisses, my parents forbidding the relationship and sending me away to the palace to visit my uncle. But my lover followed me to the city, I tell her, and we’ve been continuing our secret trysts by night.

  Dafne is practically falling off the bed in excitement.

  “I’ve got to meet him!” she cries wildly.

  Bleeding hounds! I hadn’t expected that.

  “We’ve got to be very careful. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to see him again.”

  “I’ll help you in any way I can,” she whispers. “And you can help me too!”

  “What do you need help with?”

  “Oh, nothing yet. I’ve never had an affair of the heart. Not a real one. The boys I see are all very boring.”

  “What about Duke Everard?” I say, my voice too light.

  “Oh, he’s very handsome, and more interesting than the other boys my parents have considered for me. I’m relieved he’s not horrible or ugly. It’ll be such a lark to be queen!”

  “Will it?”

  “Of course it will! I wonder what it will be like to kiss him. And do other things. He must know how, mustn’t he?” For a moment, a look of panic comes into her eyes, and then it’s gone. “I’ll throw the most fantastic parties! Nobody will be able to tell me what to do or how to behave. Not even my parents. Not when I’m queen of Frayne!”

  “It might be somewhat burdensome too,” I say. “Ruling over such a troubled country.”

  “Oh, I’ll fix ever so many problems,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. “I’m sure I’ll be very well loved. In the daytimes I’ll visit hospitals and give money to the poor and so on, and then throw fabulous parties at night.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” I say, feeling suddenly, absurdly, rather sorry for her.

  “I don’t think he’s
actually so very religious, the duke—do you?”

  “Are you, really?”

  “Oh yes! Only I don’t believe the Nameless One really cares about the sort of morality people like my parents go on about. I’ve felt it, you know, at temple—the true power of the Nameless One. This vast, encompassing goodness and goodwill. It’s so beautiful, so pure, not like…well, not like anything in this world. I do not believe such an awesome power would be as petty and shallow and nitpicky as my parents are! Scripture was all written by men, after all. I believe the Nameless One wants goodness and love in the world, and truth, and beauty. Oh, I pass the time imagining what my life is going to be like when I’m queen. I’m going to make up for the miserable life I’ve had so far!”

  “Has it been miserable?”

  I doubt this girl has seen much of misery, but then what do I know?

  “Yes,” she says savagely. “Nobody tells the truth about anything.”

  “Well, what would the world be like if everyone told the truth?”

  “The world will never be that way. But I intend to be free of all the pretense that makes up my life now.”

  “You are not what anyone imagines, that’s certain,” I say, trying not to laugh at the fact that this is the girl Casimir and Agoston Horthy are trying to push at the heir in the hopes that she will control him. But of course, it’s not Rainism they care about specifically, but someone who will support the persecution of witches. I can’t imagine either Luca or Dafne knowing or caring enough to stand in Agoston Horthy’s way.

  “Had you fooled, didn’t I?” Her eyes gleam.

  “You did. But now I must sleep!”

  “I suppose real kissing is very tiring?”

  “Very,” I assure her.