Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  “It was never about sides,” I say. “I just want to save my brother.”

  “So do I. Can we work together in that regard, at least? I could help him if I were queen.”

  “Will you meet with Duke Everard? He’s open to talking to…well, you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The throne is almost mine, and I am going to take it. I hope you will be at my side, with your brother, and not standing in my way. Not standing in his way. Frayne will be generous to men of talent, men like Dek, when I rule it. But I need power if I’m going to save him.”

  “How will you save him just by being queen?” I shout at her.

  “You can’t imagine the resources I’ll have,” she begins, but I stop listening.

  I feel the raised line in my neck with my fingers, searching for the lump of the nuyi. I can’t feel it. The line stops in the soft place at the base of my skull. It has gone inward. A horrible, sick chill snakes through my veins.

  I run back up the stairs to Mrs. Och’s reading room and yank open the desk, scattering Lady Laroche’s papers, tearing through them, looking for something, anything that might tell me what she’s doing. But there is nothing useful here. I stand there with a scream stuck in my chest, and I don’t know what to do. The weight of it all is hanging over me: the nuyi creeping toward my brain, the poison next to Dek’s heart, Luca’s life in the balance, Lady Laroche doing what with my blood? I look up, and Professor Baranyi is watching me from the doorway.

  “She did something to me,” I say. My voice sounds far-off, garbled. “She took my blood.”

  “This would all be different if Mrs. Och had lived,” he says, and I think, Well, that’s my fault—he’ll be singing that same tune forever, and it’s my fault.

  “I honestly can’t imagine Mrs. Och managing Lady Laroche,” I say.

  “Some of Mrs. Och’s contacts—witches who could have helped us—refused to join the revolution. I tried to speak on her behalf, but they had no reason to trust me, and every reason not to trust Lady Laroche. In the end, the only witches who came were those loyal to the Sidhar Coven. The ones who want witches to rule.”

  “Well, it’s all a great bleeding disaster now, isn’t it?” I say. “But I’m a bit preoccupied with staying alive and not being enslaved to Casimir at the moment. Why did she take my blood?”

  “I don’t know. I’d hoped Lady Laroche might fill Mrs. Och’s shoes. But she is not…like her.”

  Poor Professor Baranyi. Seeking to attach himself to another powerful, magical woman in the wake of Mrs. Och’s loss.

  “I was mistaken in her. I would like to talk to Frederick.” He peers at me over his spectacles. “Are you Lidari? You don’t actually know, do you?”

  I shake my head.

  He looks down. “I cannot forgive you,” he says quietly. “I can never forgive you.”

  “I didn’t ask for your forgiveness,” I say.

  I’m sweating like mad now, a cold sweat. I push by him and go back downstairs. Zara is in the scullery, whispering with Mrs. Freeley, while Gennady rolls dough for bread. They all freeze as I go by. I don’t care what they are whispering about. I go crashing out into the cool evening. I run through the city instead of vanishing, just to feel my body move, my human body, my girl’s body. I don’t want to let it go.

  Mr. Faruk is at Liddy’s again, wearing a splendid New Porian suit. They are drinking wine by candlelight and looking absurdly cheerful.

  “She took my blood,” I say, without greeting them.

  “Lady Laroche?” Mr. Faruk looks genuinely surprised, but I don’t trust anybody anymore. “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You don’t want a mad witch hanging on to your blood. You should get it back.”

  “Casimir will be here tomorrow,” I say. “I need more hermia. I need to stop the nuyi, just until tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think your plan is going to work,” says Mr. Faruk. “If the nuyi hasn’t taken you, what’s to stop him just replacing the sac of poison in your brother’s chest with a new one and starting the clock over?”

  “We don’t know if he can feel it when the nuyi attaches,” I gabble. “It’s gone inside now. He won’t know. He might not know. Give me a dose that will stall it till tomorrow.”

  Liddy and Mr. Faruk exchange a look.

  “If Casimir takes me…,” I gasp.

  “If that happens, we’ll finish you off, love,” says Liddy coolly. “Quick and painless. You can be sure.”

  She prepares the hermia. I swallow it and the room goes dim. I am lying with my cheek against the floor, staring at their feet, and I can hear their conversation carrying on above me, like echoes in a cave. I feel as if I’m lying at the bottom of a pit, where nothing and no one can reach me. Their voices might as well be the sound of the sea.

  Later—much later, it seems—I am leaning on somebody. It is Mr. Faruk. I struggle to focus my eyes. We are walking past the old, broken fountain in Fitch Square, and he is encouraging me with every step, like I’m a child.

  “Can you get up the stairs?” he asks, opening the door at the bottom of Esme’s building. Even through this fog of confusion I notice the lockpick in his hand, how swift and skilled he is, the lock giving way in an instant. When I was a girl, that was my great ambition—to be able to open locks. It wasn’t the theft that appealed to me so much as the forbidden space. Surely that is what draws all thieves and spies. If it is not desperation, then it is the refusal to be told where you can go, what you can know, how you can live. Nine years old and I ran through Spira City like the whole place was mine. I felt powerful. I thought nobody would ever be able to bar my way.

  Mr. Faruk is gone. He has left me at the foot of the stairs—a long, dark tunnel with a light at the top. Home. I crawl up the stairs, and it seems to take forever, it seems as if this is the whole of my life, crawling slowly up these dark, familiar steps toward something I hope is safe.

  * * *

  I try to count their faces, concerned and hovering, talking at me out of double mouths, everything doubled. Two Gregors on the sofa with two Csillas in his lap. Two Esmes lifting me. Two women in red silk and elaborate braids. I remember her: Dorje Tsewang, the Xanuhan spy. Two Deks at the table, slouched over a glass of something amber. Two Wyns and two Lorkas. Both Lorkas look like cross little goblins. Two Arly Winterses, for heaven’s sake. Since when is Arly Winters inner circle? I want to say. Because of a little scouting while you hung your silly banners?

  Esme’s voice rumbles over me. I remember being ill once, and she sang me to sleep—or until I pretended to sleep. She was a terrible singer and her maternal moments always unnerved me, and yet I was glad to have her at my bedside too. Sometimes it is enough to know you are protected, that someone is at your side, standing between you and the darkness out there. I stare at my booted feet propped up on a chaise. I feel as if I’m looking at Pia’s legs. A breeze comes in through the window, and I want to lap it up, I’m so hot.

  Esme’s voice is rising, and everyone is staring at me.

  “Sorry,” I say, my voice thick and strange in my throat. “What did you say?”

  “Torne has been murdered.” Esme’s voice again. “Lady Laroche blamed him for betraying the witches in West Spira. She is becoming increasingly unstable. That’s why we came back here, rather than stay at the Marrow. But I’m afraid for the princess.”

  “I will go now and make sure she is safe,” says Dorje Tsewang, rising fluidly.

  “Shall I go with you?” asks Gregor, not looking like he wants to go anywhere.

  “No,” she says. “I will be faster alone.”

  This is an odd moment for a thunderbolt revelation, but it comes all the same. I’m looking at Dorje Tsewang, still doubled, and then the two halves merge into one woman, tall and straight-backed and fearless. She’s fastening a wicked-looking
blade to her hip and pulling her coat on over it, and I keep hearing again and again the cool insouciance of her voice—I will be faster alone—I will be faster alone—I will be faster alone.

  I used to look around at the women in my world and wonder what the future held, what kind of woman I wanted to be, but I saw nothing that appealed. Now, fevered and hallucinating, I think: I want to be like her. A woman up to her neck in adventure and intrigue—not petty crime but matters of real importance, with real stakes—but beholden to nobody. The kind of woman who makes her own choices, follows her own laws, sure of her power, and walks into danger saying I will be faster alone. I don’t know if I will get a chance to be that woman. The kind of woman Pia should have been, instead of Casimir’s slave.

  Dek is bending over me. Such a sad look on his face.

  “You all right?” I mumble.

  He nods. “I’m sorry about this, Julia.”

  He slides the needle into my arm.

  * * *

  I wake up because somebody is shaking me. It’s still dark out, and it requires a tremendous effort to open my eyes. Pia’s mechanical goggles are inches from my face. I force myself to sit up and look around. I’m in my old room, my old bed.

  “Your friend came to see me,” Pia croaks. “I have been looking for you everywhere.”

  “My friend?” I ask blearily.

  “Lady Laroche.” She hands me a crumpled paper. “She wanted to send a telegram to Casimir, so he would get it when he docked in Nim. He will be here in the morning. This just arrived for her. I must deliver the message to her now. I have no choice.”

  It comes back to me: Dek with the needle. I try to leap out of the bed, but my limbs are rubbery and I go crashing to the floor. I feel the back of my neck, rip off the bandage I find there. Fresh stitches.

  “He took it out. Oh, flaming hounds, he’s taken the nuyi out.”

  Horror sweeps over me. Too late, then—too late to save him. What can I do? I try to get up. Pia is hunched on the floor, enduring whatever she is enduring. I squint at the paper she gave me, but I can’t read it in the dark. I drag myself over to the stove and light a match. By the flickering light, I read the telegram:

  REGINALD’S AT NOON STOP.

  Casimir steps out of the shop, blood on his boots.

  Huge crowds turn out for Zey’s funeral. Frightened as they are, still they turn out, most of them looking rather stunned that the man who has sat on the throne for half a century is really gone.

  “Look what I got!” says Wyn. He’s bought little Fraynish flags for Arly, Dek, and me from a roadside stall. People throughout the crowd are waving them, waiting for the carriage carrying Zey’s coffin to pass.

  “Brilliant,” says Dek. “I love seeing somebody make a killing off a clever idea.”

  He is so cheerful. I look away.

  “Stop sulking,” he says to me. “It was a bleeding inch from your brain, Julia. I had to do it.”

  Oh, Dek. This isn’t sulking. I am annihilated by despair.

  I won’t belong to Casimir. There is that. But in a week, that sac of poison inside my brother…a howling blank panic fills my head before I can really think it. I’d hoped so hard—but it was for nothing, all that hermia, everything I’ve done.

  Bells are chiming all over the city. Arly and Wyn are sharing a mug of cold tea and whispering to each other. Dek puts his arm around me.

  “Forgive me,” he says.

  There is no way to live with this terror and grief. And yet here I am, alive, with him. For now.

  “I’ve been working like mad,” he says. “It’s…invigorating, this sense of purpose. I won’t spend my last days waiting to die. I’m going to see the revolution through.” He pauses and then says very quietly, “Can we talk about Zara?”

  I make myself nod. He lowers his voice, his mouth next to my ear.

  “I know how you feel. It’s hardly comfortable to support a lie. But Zara is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. She can change things. Hounds, Julia, please speak to me!”

  I force the words out around the lump in my throat. “Will you tell Esme?”

  “No. Their generation is…well, they think they’re fighting the same old fight, for Roparzh. It’s bigger than that, but we can’t have doubts and dissent now. Please, Julia, promise you won’t ruin our chance to change the world? I’m talking about making a country that wouldn’t have drowned our mother. Call it my dying wish.”

  My gorge rises at that, and I struggle not to throw up. Deep breaths. Our mother. Surely if she were alive, even if she is Marike, she would be here for this—the fall of Zey’s Frayne and the possible rise of a new Frayne. Whoever she was, whoever she might have been before she was Ammi, as Ammi she fought for that for years. But maybe she really is at the bottom of the river.

  “Zara betrayed Lady Laroche’s friends, the witches, to Horthy,” I whisper. “They were drowned. She’s not a friend to witches.”

  “She told me. Don’t think she takes these choices lightly. We’re fighting a war, and those witches were murdering innocent people. She had to take control back from Lady Laroche, or this revolution wouldn’t be her revolution at all. It might have become a witch coup. Witchcraft is dangerous, Julia. It still has to be controlled. Lady Laroche would have witches free to use their power as they please. The world can’t function that way.”

  “What about people like me? Am I going to be free to use my power as I please, in Zara’s Frayne?”

  He kisses the top of my head. “We both know there are no people like you.”

  I lean into his embrace and listen to his heart beating. I feel as though the sheer force of my desperation ought to be able to draw the poison out of him. How can I be so helpless?

  A hush falls over the crowd as boots and hoofbeats approach on the road. Rows of finely dressed soldiers come first, then a horse-drawn carriage with the coffin carrying King Zey’s body. Arly is weeping.

  “Flaming Kahge, what is she crying for?” Dek asks, irritated.

  “She’s very softhearted,” says Wyn fondly.

  I watch the coffin pass and think of the old man raving on his bed, full of regrets. The carriage goes clattering by, followed by further rows of soldiers, and then I see Luca in a carriage at the rear, flanked by Agoston Horthy and Lord Skaal. He looks young and bewildered seated between those two men, each so terrible in his certainty and purpose.

  “I almost feel sorry for him,” mutters Wyn. “The duke, I mean.”

  “Are they planning something today?” I ask sharply. He’s very exposed in the carriage, even with Lord Skaal next to him.

  Wyn shakes his head. The crowd mobs behind the carriages, following them toward Cyrambel, where the funeral will be held.

  “I’d better go,” I say.

  I have to fix this. I will offer Casimir anything; I will be his slave, if that’s what it takes. I can’t let my brother go, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

  “It’s going to be all right, Julia,” says Dek, smiling like he believes it. “Just stay away from the palace tomorrow.”

  In the lane behind Reginald’s café in Mount Heriot, an old woman is lighting a small fire. She whispers over it, writing something on a scrap of paper, which she then feeds into the flames. Her magic leaves behind a swampy, unpleasant smell as she shuffles off.

  Lady Laroche comes half an hour later in a hackney. She is wearing mourning garb and a huge hat with a dark veil, so I cannot see her expression, just a blur of white and lipstick behind the veil. She has a piece of charcoal in her gloved fingers, and a scorched smell wafting behind her. The waitress shows her to a back room—windowless—and my heart sinks. Once the door is shut, there’s no way out for me, even vanished.

  The waitress lights the lamp and leaves her there. Lady Laroche pulls back her veil, unpins her hat, rolls the charcoal
between her fingers. She sits straight-backed and very still, but up close I can see her pulse in her neck. I want to hold my knife to that leaping vein and demand my blood back, but first I want to know what business she thinks she has with Casimir.

  He arrives exactly at noon with Pia at his side. Even vanished I feel my skin crawl. It is strange to see him in Spira City, his finery old-fashioned, his skin bloodless against his dark beard. Pia too looks stiffer and whiter than usual. She has left her gloves behind, and her delicate hands are bare. Those soft girl hands, those killer hands.

  “I asked you to come alone,” says Lady Laroche, nodding at Pia as Casimir sits opposite her. “Do you not trust me?”

  “You have tried to murder me several times. The question is ludicrous. I have come protected, and I do not only mean Pia.”

  “Of course,” she says smoothly. “And you know the greater risk is mine. I have come protected too.”

  “Why am I here, Lady Laroche?”

  “Agoston Horthy has failed you, hasn’t he? But suppose the game was upended? Suppose we both had what we wanted?”

  “How?”

  “Zara has failed me,” she says bitterly. “But still I think a regime change might serve us both. Frayne is my home, my beloved country. I want to be free here. I want all witches to be free here. Not hiding, not frightened. I want witches to learn their craft and take pride in it. I want witches to rule, as they should! And now something has fallen into my lap that makes me think you and I need not be at cross-purposes at all. I know what you seek.”

  “What do I seek?” he asks dryly.

  “The Book of Disruption.”

  All the air goes out of me. Pia is still as a statue by the door.

  “I have befriended Ammi’s daughter, Julia,” she says. “I have had access to her memories.”

  “Ah,” says Casimir. “You really do have something I want.”