Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  “A long tail?” I manage to say.

  “Fear has a powerful effect on the memory. You should hear some of the descriptions of me floating around.”

  He spins me out and pulls me back in, dragging his thumb under my glove so it presses on the hot silvery disk left behind by the nuyi.

  “I thought so,” he hisses between his teeth.

  I can disappear anytime. I keep telling myself that. Surely he isn’t going to kill me in front of everybody. Still, my cover is blown, so that’s that. I feel a pang of sadness at the thought of never seeing Luca again.

  “Why are you taking poison?” asks Lord Skaal.

  “What?”

  “I smell hermia on your breath. Hermia was used against the nuyi.”

  He slides one hand up my neck and presses on the nuyi. He is bending over me so close it must look as if he’s going to kiss me, spinning me so fast I think I’m going to be sick. I really am a spectacle tonight, hazily aware of the scandalized looks we’re attracting.

  “You are employed by Casimir,” he says. “But his hold on you is not finalized yet, and you do not want it to be. Fascinating. You are spying on Horthy, I assume. What does Casimir think he’ll uncover? And if you do not want to belong to Casimir, might you entertain an offer from the other side? Agoston Horthy does not require one’s entire will. He pays well, and you can walk away whenever you want. You would be free.”

  “I’ll think about it when I hear an offer from Horthy himself,” I say.

  “Shall I arrange a meeting?”

  “If he wants one.”

  I’m just stalling, and a little bit curious. What kind of offer would Agoston Horthy make to a girl like me? What might I say to him, face to face? You signed my mother’s death sentence. And then? I still have the poison Lady Laroche gave me, meant for him.

  “Of course, if you’re rescuing revolutionaries of the kind that disappeared today, I suppose you already have a second employer. Unless Casimir is supporting the revolution? One can never be sure, with him.” His breath in my ear is hot and damp. “Have you heard that Dafne Besnik has been stricken with Scourge?”

  “Dafne?” I cry, in spite of myself.

  “Such an indiscriminate, vicious attack. It’s a horrible disease. Have you known anybody touched by Scourge?”

  “I grew up in the Twist,” I say. “A good quarter of the people I knew as a child were killed by it. It affected poor neighborhoods most of all, remember.”

  “And I suppose this is different and therefore just,” he sneers. “But Dafne is innocent.”

  I think of Lady Laroche saying, You might as well talk to me of unicorns.

  “What a puzzle, what a puzzle,” he murmurs. “You smell like a girl, just a girl. But a girl who can vanish, working for Casimir, taking poison to protect her will from him, and working for revolutionaries as well, but not a witch—I can smell a witch easily. Perhaps you are like me. Some strange mix.”

  “I don’t know what I am,” I tell him honestly.

  “Ah,” he says. “That is hard.”

  There is something almost like empathy in his one yellow eye, which throws me off balance. Not that I need my balance. He is holding me fast, and my toes are barely skimming the floor.

  “We received some interesting intelligence today,” he continues. “We have been searching in vain for a group of witches hiding out near West Spira. Suddenly the address comes to us by messenger! A house by the university. An old couple lives there with their servants, but they were all under a spell, and do you know what we found in the cellar?”

  My heart drops. Oh, Zara—did you really betray them to Agoston Horthy?

  “I don’t know,” I say, my mouth dry.

  “I think you do,” he murmurs. “We flooded the cellar. I imagine that will put an end to the trouble in West Spira. We’ve found witches in the forests to the south, the mountains to the east, and the villages to the north. I’m sure there are more, but not enough of them anymore, not organized enough, and the witches in West Spira were at the heart of this magic-making.”

  “What a triumph for you,” I choke out.

  “Agoston Horthy was pleased. I wish I could thank our mysterious source.” He feels my rabbiting pulse with a brush of his fingertips and continues: “Your uncle is an interesting man. He’s very effective, though it turns out he has fingers in some other pies as well. Something will have to be done about those fingers, and those pies.”

  I try to look around for Sir Victor, but I can’t see him.

  “Are you fond of him?” asks Lord Skaal.

  “He’s a good man,” I say, though I can’t really be sure that’s true. Perhaps Lady Laroche is right about the choices he’s made. I’ve been spared the gruesome details of what he’s done to save his daughter.

  Lord Skaal sighs. “I hadn’t expected you to actually be a naïve young girl. A man cannot serve Agoston Horthy for years without committing terrible acts. But, in the end, it’s an eat-or-be-eaten world, isn’t it? Sometimes I think I should rather go and join the wolves, but they have their own conflicts, and there are pleasures in being human that I cannot quite bring myself to give up. All of it is just so interesting. You, working for Casimir and perhaps also for Lady Laroche—do you think you can serve either one for long without committing atrocities yourself? Perhaps you’ve already had a hand in deeds you shudder to think back on.”

  Theo, Theo, Theo.

  “I see I’ve hit the mark there. I don’t think you’re a good bet for Agoston Horthy after all. You wouldn’t be reliable, and there’s no way to keep an eye on you.”

  He lets go of me suddenly, and I see the knife in his hand.

  “Can you die like an ordinary girl?” he asks. “Do you know? Have you ever wondered?”

  “Lord Skaal!” shouts a man in uniform, racing through the crowd. “Lord Skaal! You are needed!”

  The knife flashes toward me, and I vanish, back and back, out over the dancing crowd. Shouts of alarm go up from those who were watching us—a good many. Lord Skaal is left alone on the dance floor, the knife disappearing back into his sleeve. He turns toward the uniformed man, who has stopped in his tracks. From my vanished vantage point I search for Sir Victor, but I can’t find him. There is Luca at his mother’s side, though—one hand gone to his heart and all the color drained from his face, staring at Lord Skaal and the place where I was. Lord Skaal leaves the ballroom at a brisk pace, as if nothing has happened, the man in uniform whispering in his ear as they go.

  * * *

  Sir Victor’s chambers are empty. So is his office.

  I leave a note in Luca’s room, using some paper and a quill I find at his desk among his rough drafts of poems, mostly crossed-out lines and lists of rhymes.

  I’m sorry, I write, and then I don’t know what else to say, so I just leave it on his pillow, unsigned.

  “Julia! You frightened me!”

  Zara lowers the pistol. Hounds, she must sleep with one hand on it, she had it pointed at me so fast when I climbed through her window.

  “I need to talk to you,” I say.

  She pulls her hair out of her face, fixing me with her clear gaze. “In the middle of the night?”

  “Right now.”

  She gets out of bed and takes a robe from a hook on the wall, wrapping it around her. She slips her feet into a pair of fur slippers. She has pretty, tiny feet—the only princess-like thing about her.

  “Let’s go down and fix some coffee,” she says.

  She boils water in the scullery, sets about grinding the coffee beans, and I think of how I once marveled at a princess doing such things, dishes and laundry, simple labor. But of course, she’s not a princess. She’s just a peasant girl from the coast. She was probably raised carrying water and firewood and taking care of the hens.

  “How did your pa
rents die?” I ask, as the smell of freshly ground coffee fills the scullery.

  She turns and studies me.

  “Oh,” she says. “You’re very angry.”

  “If you can really see my intentions, you know I’m not going to hurt you. But I want the truth.”

  “Scourge,” she says.

  “Haven’t you wondered if it was really an accident?”

  Her expression shifts subtly. For the briefest of moments, a startling rage surfaces and is submerged again. She, who can read people so easily, knows all too well how to mask her own feelings. I can’t tell if I was meant to see that flash of anger or not. I have the feeling she knows how to play people better than I will ever be able to keep up with.

  “I had doubts, sometimes,” she says. “Some witches were afraid of me, of what I might see or know; I saw and knew only that. But everyone who knows what I can do is a little afraid of what I might sense. Including you.”

  “Tonight somebody told me that your family was offed by witches. And now you see they can manufacture Scourge.”

  “Not manufacture,” she says faintly, steadying herself on the counter. I narrow my eyes at her. How much is a performance? “But they can direct it, it would appear. Like weather, like water, they do not create it, but…” She trails off, busies herself with preparing two cups of coffee.

  “What are you doing?” I half shout. “Why did you betray the witches to Agoston Horthy?”

  “Hush,” she snaps, suddenly fierce. “You will get me killed.”

  “But it was you. Why?”

  “They were dangerous and uncontrollable. Witches who murder must still pay by drowning! They were harming and killing the very citizens I am meant to rule over!”

  “Meant to rule over? You’re just some girl from Ibhara!”

  I swear her eyes flicker to the big knives hanging on the wall—but then she composes herself.

  “Are you going to tell the others?”

  “Of course I am!”

  “Dek?”

  “Yes.”

  “Julia, hear me out. Look at this country. Look at what Agoston Horthy and King Zey have done to this country!”

  “Duke Everard might be different,” I say.

  “He won’t be different. He is just a stupid boy, and ruthless, clever men will make use of him as king. You know what I can do. I have spent my life preparing for this. Do you really believe, deep in your heart, in the blood right of rulers? I can make a new Frayne. I have known witches more than half my life now. I know that they do not deserve to die, every one of them, simply for being what they are. I know they do not choose it. I know that unnatural powers can be used for good. I know that Frayne can be great and just. Why do I have the power I do, if not to make the world better? This is my chance and I shall take it and you will not stop me. If you try, you will be my enemy, and you would be surprised at the allies I have. If you tell Lady Laroche about the witches in West Spira, she will kill me, you know that. And then what will happen to Frayne?”

  I am breathless at this verbal assault, the threats and pleas strung together at such speed and with such intensity.

  “You can’t just…pretend to be queen! What will happen to Duke Everard?”

  “Exile, if he accepts it. Execution, if not. I am not playing games, Julia. I am talking about the greater good, for Frayne and for the world. I want you on my side.”

  “Does anybody else know you’re not the real Zara?”

  “Only a few witches.”

  “Lady Laroche?”

  She nods.

  “Esme thinks she’s fighting for Roparzh’s daughter.”

  Anxiety flickers across her face. She’s got no revolution without Esme, and she knows it.

  “We can make a better world. Don’t take that away from the people of Frayne because of some misguided notion about bloodlines.”

  “It’s not the bloodlines,” I say. “It’s not that.”

  I don’t know what it is. The lying and the manipulation. The murder. I need to think. I need to talk to Dek.

  “Let me tell Dek,” she says. “Please.”

  “You’d better tell him quick, then.”

  “I will go to him before daybreak. Make me one promise? Talk to him before you do anything else and before you go to Esme. Listen to him, if you won’t listen to me.”

  I feel a deep, cold flash of anger. “Are you so sure he’ll see things your way?”

  “Dek is very intelligent.”

  “He’s my brother.” I don’t know what I’m trying to say. He’s mine. He’s on my side. “You’d better tell him everything,” I add.

  She puts a finger to her lips.

  The side door opens and in comes Lady Laroche. Her face is terribly white, her eyes blazing with a strange light.

  “Well,” she says, a bit breathlessly, looking from me to Zara and back again. “What are you two scheming about in the middle of the night?”

  “Dafne Besnik has Scourge,” I snarl at her.

  “The bloody Besniks,” she says. “I’ve always hated them. But don’t worry, if you are worried—she’ll get the antidote. Nobody that rich is going to die of Scourge.”

  “She knows,” says Zara. “About me.”

  “Ah,” says Lady Laroche. “How?”

  “Sir Victor,” I say.

  Lady Laroche picks up one of the cups of coffee we’ve left sitting out, ignored, drinks half of it, and puts it back down on the counter with a clatter, so that the remaining coffee sloshes over the side.

  “Torne betrayed me,” she says in a distant voice, staring at the knives on the wall.

  I remember Zara noting that Torne knew the address of the witches in West Spira, and I have a horrible feeling she intended Lady Laroche to blame him.

  “My friends…some of the most powerful witches in New Poria and beyond…they came to Frayne because I asked them to come.” Lady Laroche’s eyes are flitting about in an alarming way, not resting on either of us, on anything. “Now they are dead. Drowned in a cellar. Nobody knew their hiding place besides me and Torne.”

  “Torne?” says Zara. “That is a surprise. He has always been loyal.”

  I want to get out of here, away from these awful people, but I can’t move.

  Lady Laroche stares at the counter, and then looks at Zara. “Perhaps he formed other alliances.”

  But she cannot read Zara’s mind the way Zara can read hers.

  “I am sorry,” Zara says. “Whatever our differences, I would not have wished them dead.”

  She sounds so sincere, I almost believe her myself. It’s terrifying what a good liar she is. I could tell Lady Laroche right now that it was Zara who betrayed her, but I don’t. Not because I want to protect Zara, but I don’t want to be responsible for her death either. And I resent that Zara must know this, surely knows all my feelings as I stand here next to her.

  “Well, never mind. Guess where I’ve been?” says Lady Laroche, suddenly smiling. Hounds, she’s mad. “I’ve just burned Hostorak to the ground.”

  “Burned?” says Zara faintly. “Hostorak cannot be burned. It is stone.”

  Lady Laroche laughs, as if Zara is being witty. My knees go weak.

  “Things are coming to a head,” she says. “Julia, I’m so glad you’re here. I need to speak to you about your brother and the nuyi. We are almost out of time. Will you come upstairs?”

  We leave Zara chewing her lip in the scullery. Lady Laroche lights the lamp in Mrs. Och’s reading room, humming to herself.

  “Did you really burn Hostorak?” I ask, remembering how Lord Skaal was called with such urgency from the party at the palace.

  “Yes. You must approve of that, at least.”

  I sit opposite her, Mrs. Och’s desk between us, staring at her too-pale face, her eyes sparki
ng with some awful energy. She takes a pen out of the desk—the pen with feathers at the end—and begins writing something rapidly on a piece of paper, talking at the same time. I tense, ready to vanish, but I don’t smell any magic.

  “You know, Zara—the real Zara—was not a very bright girl,” she says. “It was disappointing. By the time she was seven, it was obvious to all of us that she was stupid and temperamental and would make a terrible queen. I can’t pretend I was so very sorry when she took ill and died. Hereditary rule just makes for inbreeding and all kinds of unqualified people wielding unmitigated power. Not that I am for the idea of a republic either of the sort they used to have in Gyesa. People are too stupid, by and large, to choose good rulers. Look at the world’s most successful empires. The Eshriki Phars, or the Yongguo Empire. Empires either ruled by witches or in cooperation with them. Does our power not set us apart?”

  “I’m not a witch, remember,” I say coldly.

  “You are special, Julia. That is what I am talking about. And Zara is special too. We chose her from thousands of girls of the right age because of her talent, her intelligence, her particular gift. The kind of country she will rule—Ammi would have thrived in such a country; she gave her life trying to bring it to fruition. This girl is our best chance at changing everything. She is young. If she lives a long life and rules well, she will leave behind her a country that is completely different, better than this one.”

  She is still jotting notes and talking at the same time. Something shifts, and I blink. “What?”

  “Everything might be different,” she says. My arm stings, and I have this odd feeling of time having skipped ahead.