Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  I’ve gotten good at this, and it is exhilarating. There is Mrs. Och’s house. They’ve left the back door open, as I asked. I focus on that door. Everything comes into sharp relief. I even manage not to stagger, reappearing in the back parlor, but Wyn stumbles onto his hands and knees.

  Esme is crouching at his side, and I am gone already, back over the city, back over the Plateau and Deadman’s Square, which has erupted into chaos. The soldiers have their guns out, and the crowd is mobbing closer. I don’t see Garny right away, but Lorka is on the ground, a soldier pinning him. If I appear in the middle of this, I’m afraid I might get shot.

  I go in anyway, fast. I grab Lorka and vanish. I can hear shots and shouts, but it’s as if it’s happening in another world. This time I bring us down on Anopine Bridge, because I’ve somehow got ahold of the soldier who was pinning him as well. I reappear and hit the stunned soldier in the face with my elbow. He reels, dropping his gun, and I am gone again with Lorka.

  Wyn is still on his knees in Mrs. Och’s back parlor. I drop Lorka in front of him.

  “Garny…,” says Torne. I hadn’t even noticed he was there.

  Esme is saying something, but Garny will be dead if I linger. I don’t much want to rescue the man who assaulted me—but nor do I want more blood on my hands, and surely that’s what it is, if I choose not to save him.

  So I go back.

  Two soldiers are dragging him to the hackney. He is limp in their arms. I slip two sleeping-serum darts out of the purse tucked in my bodice. A dart in either hand, I jab the two soldiers holding him, each in the back. They fall—more shouts—Garny falling between them, but I drop the darts and catch him, barely reappearing at all, and we vanish. Something sears my side as I disappear. I hear the sound oddly after I feel it. The crack of a gun.

  When I return to Mrs. Och’s parlor, the pain comes sharp and hot. I’ve been shot. I am too stunned for a moment to think. I stand there, and the only thought in my head is that if I am standing, it can’t be that bad. I don’t want to look.

  Esme sees the blood soaking my dress and tears the seam open to look at the wound.

  “Just a graze,” she says, and I’m too relieved even to mind having my dress ripped open in front of everybody. “Disinfect it and put some dressing on it.”

  I think she’s talking to me at first, and I’m rather annoyed at being ordered to disinfect and dress my own wound, but then Mr. Faruk says, “Of course. Come with me, Julia.”

  I let Mr. Faruk take my arm. I’m weak-kneed, dizzy, and I don’t know if that’s the bullet grazing me, the hermia-wracked night, or just the whooshing back and forth, in and out of my body, over the city. But I did it. All three of them are here in the parlor, though Garny might be dead already, sprawled openmouthed on the settee while Torne checks for a pulse. His temple is bleeding badly.

  “You really are extraordinary,” says Mr. Faruk as we go up the stairs. I can’t help grinning at that. Then I notice he’s wearing a dress. It’s a colorful silk gown of the sort rich ladies wear in the northern Arrekem kingdoms. I’m startled enough that I blurt out: “What are you wearing?”

  He raises an eyebrow at me and says coolly, “I wear whatever I like.”

  I’m hardly going to argue with that. We go all the way up to the little attic room where I used to sleep when I was posing as a housemaid here. Strig is sleeping on the bed in a beam of sunlight. He opens one eye as we come in and hoots like an owl. Then he jumps off the bed and looks around, startled by his own owl noise.

  “Who sleeps here now?” I ask.

  “I do,” says Mr. Faruk. “I like to be high up. Sit on the bed, please.”

  I obey, still feeling light-headed. He undoes the top of my dress and pulls it right off very matter-of-factly. I think I ought to protest, but honestly I’m just too tired, and he is entirely clinical about it, cleaning the wound as expertly as Esme would have done. I squeeze my eyes shut while he washes it and bandages it neatly.

  “Your clothes are covered in blood,” he says. “Here, wear this.”

  He takes another Arrekem dress from a trunk by the wall and turns his back to let me change. The dress is big on me, but not ridiculously so. There is only a small mirror on the wall, showing my face and shoulders, so I can’t see how it looks.

  “Do you think Garny is dead?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says, sounding supremely indifferent.

  I’d like to bask in my success, that thrilling rescue, but I can feel the creep and push and crawl in my neck. I touch the bulge of the nuyi.

  “It’s getting close,” he says with a nod.

  “I need to take more hermia.”

  “You can rest here, if you like,” he says.

  I daren’t take as much as last night, but I roll a couple of leaves together and pop them into my mouth. This time the poison hits me like lightning along my spine, and I remember nothing more.

  It is evening, judging by the sky. Mr. Faruk is reading a book by what remains of the light from the window. I am lying on the bed. My tongue feels fat in my mouth when I ask him what happened.

  “You had a seizure,” he says mildly. “You are taking too much hermia.”

  I sit up, my side twingeing where the bullet grazed me.

  “What time is it?”

  “Suppertime.”

  “Everyone’s all right?”

  “I do not know whom you mean by everyone,” he says. “Garny will probably survive. He took a bad blow to the head. Your Esme has a remarkable level of skill for somebody not formally trained in medicine.”

  “She’s had a lot of opportunities to practice.”

  I stand up, my knees wobbling. The Arrekem dress falls loosely around me.

  “It is too big,” says Mr. Faruk, smiling at me. “But still, you look very nice. A little like her. Just a little.”

  “Ammi,” I say. Not a question.

  He nods.

  “Seems everybody knew her. How well did you know her?”

  “Well enough to like her and to mourn her passing,” says Mr. Faruk. “She was brave. Everybody will tell you that—how brave she was. But it wasn’t for her courage that I liked her. She had a great heart. You know that, of course. She did not parcel out her love. She gave it whole and unharnessed. She loved her friends. She loved her husband. She loved her children. She loved the world. She fought and gave her life because she loved the world. It was love more than courage that drove her. I think perhaps you are the same way.”

  A knock on the door, and Wyn comes bursting in.

  “Brown Eyes,” he says, catching me up in his arms. I wince a little because my side hurts, but all in all, his arms are still a good place to be. “I thought I was going to die. Flaming Kahge, I’m not ready to die. I never knew I was such a coward!”

  “You’re not a coward,” I say, half-reluctantly pulling out of his embrace. “I don’t want to die either.”

  Something changes in his face as he looks me over. “What are you wearing?”

  “It’s…Mr. Faruk’s,” I say. “My things were ruined.”

  Wyn stares at Mr. Faruk’s dress now.

  “I’ll give the two of you a minute, shall I?” says Mr. Faruk, and he goes down the narrow stairs.

  “Incredible, Brown Eyes. That’s the second time you’ve saved my life, isn’t it?”

  “Arly said you got caught because you picked a fight with Garny,” I say.

  Wyn’s mouth turns down. “Don’t know why Torne sent him! I’ve told Esme what he did. She fixed him up anyway, since you’d gone to the trouble of saving him, but when he recovers, he’s out on his ear, or maybe she’ll decide to bust him into pieces after patching him up.”

  “I don’t want anybody knocked around. I’ve had enough of it to last a lifetime.”

  “Well, he’s got no place in t
he revolution,” says Wyn. “If he’s clever, he’ll run for it as soon as he can. And before he’s well enough for any of us to feel he can take the beating he deserves. Why don’t you come down? We’re having dinner. Everybody has a million questions for you. Lorka wants to thank you in person.”

  “Is Dek here?”

  He shakes his head. “Haven’t seen him.”

  I’m not in the mood for a crowd right now, and I have to give Pia a report, real or not. I pull open the attic window.

  “I wish you’d stop jumping out of windows,” says Wyn. “It gives me the creeps.”

  I grin at him over my shoulder. Then I haul myself out of the window, drop, and vanish.

  I find Pia kneeling in front of the window and making a high keening noise.

  “Are you praying?” I ask in amazement. She buckles forward on the carpet, and I run to her side. “What’s wrong?”

  Her mouth is twisted in a horrible grimace. She lies there clinging to herself, knuckles white, fingers clenched on the leather of her jacket, neck straining. Then her goggles swivel, focusing on me.

  “Julia,” she says, as if she’s only just seen me. “Casimir is coming.”

  “What, here?”

  “To Spira City,” she says.

  Terror chokes me first, but with it comes a tiny spark of desperate hope.

  “With his mechanic? Can we get him to operate on Dek?”

  “I don’t know,” she rasps. “Go to this party at the palace. Come back with something I can tell him. Something true. It will be better if he does not arrive angry or disappointed by you.”

  I’d forgotten the party. And blast it all, if Casimir is coming and if there’s even the slightest chance he might take the poison out of Dek, I had better be a good little spy just a bit longer. Maybe I can convince him the nuyi has me—if I let it get a little deeper, just a little deeper. Maybe we can convince him that Dek could be of use. Maybe there’s still hope. Hard to find it and hold on to it through my horror at the idea of seeing him again.

  “I’ll call the maid to help you get ready,” mutters Pia. She winces as she drags herself to her feet.

  “Is the nuyi hurting you? Because I asked you to make a false report?”

  “Because my will is pulling hard at his,” she says. “It is painful, and also pointless, because it cannot pull loose. And yet I cannot stop it.”

  She rings the bell for the maid, and I take a moss-green dress with flowers embroidered along the bodice out of the wardrobe.

  The maid looks terrified as she ties my stays, not commenting on my gasp of pain, the dressed bullet wound, the red-mud scars. She paints and powders a smooth, blank face over my angry, scarred one until I just look like a girl from a good family going to a party.

  Pia gives me a ghastly grin.

  “Go,” she says. “Dance. Report back soon.”

  Sir Victor finds me immediately in the palace ballroom.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Busy.”

  “Helping your princess?” he says coldly, and then he sighs. “If something happens to me, will you help Elisha? Get her out?”

  “Why should anything happen to you? Seems like you’re making everybody happy.”

  “It won’t last,” he says, and slips a piece of paper into my glove. “Here is a map to her chambers. Just in case. Please.”

  He looks tired and old.

  “All right,” I say. “How was your visit to Ibhara?”

  “Illuminating. Your princess is a fraud, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that she is not Roparzh’s daughter. We suspected as much. The real Zara died of a fever in Ishti more than ten years ago. Lord Skaal had already obtained sworn depositions from the Ishtan lord she was living with, his family, and the doctor who tended her when she was ill. Witches tried to heal her and failed, then took her body and burned it after she died. That story has been about for a long time, of course. But now I have confirmed that, after Roparzh’s daughter died, the Sidhar Coven found a replacement in Ibhara.”

  “Replacement?” I echo, my bewilderment turning into a slow-dawning horror.

  “Yes. She is Fraynish, at least. She is a year older than Zara was. A peasant girl. They chose her for her abilities. She is apparently brilliant—an intellectual prodigy—but beyond that, I’m told this girl can sense a person’s true feelings, their intent. Such a gift! The witches interviewed her, and shortly afterward her whole family was struck down with Scourge. Witchcraft, the villagers now believe. The witches took her in. They educated her and trained her and brought her up to be queen, but she has no blood claim to the throne at all. She is an impostor. There is no true heir but Luca.”

  I am cold with shock, unable to even find the right question. Sir Victor’s manner changes abruptly, and he bows at Luca, who is approaching with his mother.

  “Miss Ella!” cries Luca, too loud and jolly. “Dance with me!”

  He pulls me into the crowd.

  “Agoston Horthy is insisting we go about our lives as normal, in spite of everything that’s happening,” he says, holding me closer than he should. “But it’s a bit difficult, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  He laughs harshly. “You’re not frightened. You’ve got something else on your mind. Your cook’s daughter, no doubt. Sick with worry?”

  “Yes, I’m worried.”

  “I can’t believe I fell for that,” he says, his voice almost a growl. “You look nothing like you did the other night, nor even like you did the first time I met you, or when we went riding. You’re always in disguise, but I’m not sure which Ella is the disguise. Perhaps all of them!”

  “You ought to have other things on your mind besides what I look like.”

  “I really ought to! I visited old Zey again today. He’s making no sense. He looks terrible. What an end for a king. But that fading away is the best-case scenario for all of us. What a thing, to be human! I don’t know how to rule a country. I just want to write poems and go riding and find a nice girl.”

  “A nice girl?” I say. “Why are you chasing me, then?”

  “Very well. A fascinating girl,” he says. “Maybe I want a girl with secrets—but I want a girl who tells them to me. I want a girl who can fall off a horse and act like it’s nothing, who can hide behind a curtain and disappear, who wanders the city in the middle of the night and tells tremendous lies and eats like a man and dances like a clumsy child. I really don’t know—can you imagine what I see in you?”

  “Not a bit,” I say, dizzy. “Are you spinning me this much on purpose?”

  “There’s a trick to not getting dizzy,” he says. “I’d like to kiss you.”

  “That’s not the trick, is it?”

  “No. Just me wishing out loud. Can we talk somewhere private? I promise I’m not trying to ruin your reputation.”

  “I can’t sneak off in private with you.”

  “But you can go to the Twist at midnight! You didn’t think anything of coming to my room last week.”

  “Stop turning me about so much. You’re holding on too tight. People are staring at us.”

  “People are staring at me all the time,” he says savagely. “They are staring at you because I’m dancing with you.”

  “Not only that. Because you’re hanging on to me like we’re lovers, you have this terrible expression on your face, you’re dancing like a maniac, and I can’t dance at all. We’re making a scene.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m the one with the fragile reputation, if you remember.”

  “I don’t think you care.”

  “My uncle might.”

  “Please let me kiss you.”

  “Not here.”

  “But somewhere?”

 
“Stop it.”

  I pull free of him and stumble over to Sir Victor. Luca follows but is waylaid by someone, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or not. I feel flushed and giddy, and then his mother is leaning over me.

  “Leave him alone,” she says quietly.

  I give her a startled look. She smiles over my head at Sir Victor, moving the topic on smoothly to the music: “We do not have such talented musicians playing for us on Corf, to be sure.”

  Having broken free of whoever accosted him, Luca joins us.

  “Another dance, Ella?” His expression is caught between defiance and pleading. “I think we’re getting better.”

  I bite back a tart reply, and then my heart plunges. Behind the duchess, Lord Skaal is heading straight toward us. I can’t vanish in front of everybody—not without blowing my cover entirely and putting Sir Victor in danger—although I suppose that is what is going to happen, anyway, once Lord Skaal gets a sniff of me.

  “Sir Victor,” says Lord Skaal, smiling toothily. “Is this your niece? Somebody told me she was dancing with our Duke Everard.”

  Blast him, blast him for drawing attention to me. I hadn’t known Lord Skaal was here or I’d never have let Luca make such a spectacle of me. I wouldn’t have come at all.

  “Yes, this is my niece,” says Sir Victor. “Ella, may I introduce Lord Skaal.”

  I offer my gloved hand, my knees shaking, and Lord Skaal bends over it. His nostrils flare. His yellow eye flicks up to meet mine.

  “Ah,” he says softly. “May I have this dance?”

  Without waiting for my reply, he yanks me with him into the sea of dancing bodies.

  “What an unexpected pleasure,” says Lord Skaal, and all I can see is wolf in his long jaw, his gray sweep of hair, the yellow eye, the yellow teeth.

  He is better at leading me in a dance than Luca. I don’t know the steps, but I skip my feet along as fast as I can, and he practically lifts me off the floor with every turn.

  “Earlier today, three traitors sentenced to hang were rescued by magic from Deadman’s Square,” he says conversationally. “There were glimpses of a person—in a dress and bonnet, no less!—who disappeared and reappeared. A soldier holding on to one of these vermin described a sense of losing his body, being pulled right out of it, seeing the city far below, and then being left suddenly in a different part of the city seconds later. Witchcraft is everywhere right now and people are frightened. Some who witnessed the rescue described glimpses of a creature, half girl, half demon. A long tail, coils of dark hair escaping from the bonnet, a scarred face.”