Julia Vanishes (22 page)

I
wake with a jolt, cold to my bones and fleetingly confused before I remember where I am. Fear comes back instantly, twisting me into knots: Pia's threats, Agoston Horthy, my cover about to be blown. The pale winter sunlight is coming in between our ragged curtains, and Dek is still asleep. I imagine never going back to Mrs. Och's house. Telling Esme what happened. Going into hiding, perhaps. But then would Gregor, Esme, and all the others need to go into hiding too? I touch my throat, where she pressed her knife last night.
I will show you…how long I can make dying last.
Suppose I went to Mrs. Och, told her everything, begged for her help? But I remember the witch who disappeared, her terrible scream. No, I cannot tell Mrs. Och that I have been a spy in her house. I fleetingly imagine murdering Pia—I know where to buy poison—but that is a ridiculous idea. I am out of options, and I am out of time. Every way out of this nightmare, every way back to my old life, is closing against me. Every way but one.

I can't stomach breakfast, so I just pull my coat and boots on over my wrinkled clothes of the previous day.

“I'll come back rich by noon,” I tell Dek, who carries on sleeping, and my voice sounds odd to me, not like my own.

I am crossing Fitch Square when I see Wyn coming toward me. He looks as if he's slept as poorly as I have, and I reckon I know why.

“Hullo, Brown Eyes!” he cries out when he sees me, a little too effusive.

“Out all night?” I say.

“Figured it was safer than walking home at night, what with a serial killer on the loose,” he says. “Now I've got an awful crick in my neck from sleeping on Ren Winters's floor.”

Smooth as smooth, that's my Wyn. If there's anyone who can lie as quick and easy as I can, it's my boy here.

“Come on, let's go out for breakfast,” he carries on, slinging an arm over my shoulders. “You've got some making up to do, haven't you? You left me waiting in your room the other night. Dek had to kick me out when he came to bed!”

“Right. Sorry about that.” I shrug his arm off.

“What's wrong, Brown Eyes?” he asks, peering at me. I look at him straight on then: his beautiful face, the way his eyebrows come together comically when he frowns, the way his mouth quirks, like it's waiting to smile even when he's serious. The truth is that I've hardly thought about him since the Gethin came for me. Almost dying has a way of taking a girl's mind off her other troubles. But when I look at him now, it hurts again, the way it hurt when I watched them together, the way he touched her, the way he spoke to her. I swallow hard, trying to force down the lump in my throat.

“Julia! Say something, will you?”

So I push the words out past the lump: “Look—this thing between us—it's over, all right?”

He looks as if I've slapped him, and I know if I keep looking at him I'll start crying, so I push past him, make it most of the way across the square before he catches up to me. He spins me around to face him.

“By all the stars,” he says. “You're not ending it like that. Tell me what's wrong. You owe me that, at least.”

“Fine. Arly Winters.”

Just a flicker of…
something,
but he recovers fast. Smooth as smooth, like I said.

“It's Arly, then, is it?” he says. “Why didn't you say something?”

“I'm saying something right now. I'm saying it's over.”

“I should have told you,” he says. “Look, it's just…you know how that girl is. She said she'd pose, just like for the art class, and I could draw her, and it…well, I missed you, and you've been so busy. You forgot all about me the other night.”

“It's my fault, then, is it?”

“That's not what I'm saying. Honestly, I'm glad you know. I didn't know how to tell you, but I've been feeling rotten about it.”

The ridiculous thing is, he looks so sad that I almost want to comfort him. But I've got other things to do.

“Well then, that's both of us feeling rotten about it,” I say, and walk around him. He grabs my arm, and I shake him loose.

“Julia, wait, just come upstairs so we can talk.” He reaches for me again, and I step away, sliding a bit in the snow. “We'll light the fire. Please.”

He keeps stepping in front of me, trying to keep me from walking away.

“Hounds, Wyn, let me go!” I cry, shoving him hard in the chest, my anger swooping in late to rescue me. “If you're the kind of man who'll shag some tart behind my back, then I want none of you, and there's nothing more to talk about. You can go scurrying back to that idiot if you like, but by all the holies, don't you dare touch me or get in my way again. I've got somewhere to be.”

I leave him staring after me, let the alleys of the Twist swallow me up and lead me back to the river. I stop there under the shadow of Cyrambel and try to weep, but I've used up all my tears of late, and so I just stare down at the ice for a while. When I look up, the sky looks gray, flat, hanging low over the city, but I know better. I remember the pictures Frederick showed me; I know about the wheeling planets and dying stars out there, the empty space that goes on and on. I feel a small, mean, pathetic sort of thing, here on the bridge, pinched between the earth and the heavens. I imagine I can feel my heart, all my warm feelings, calcify and freeze. Better not to feel, not to weep. Better to be dead inside until all of this has passed. I walk the rest of the way to the Scola and Mrs. Och's house, to do the thing I have to do.

“Where have you been?” demands Mrs. Freeley when I let myself in through the scullery side door.

“I was feeling dizzy,” I say. “Needed some air.”

She puts her hands on her hips and stares me down. For a strange moment, I envy her. Because she seems unafraid, and because she seems to have found satisfactory answers to whatever questions may have once plagued her. Because she seems to know herself. Because she sleeps all day long.

“Look, nobody minded you taking a day off yesterday, after everything that happened,” she says more gently. “But now you've got to decide if you're still working here or not. You can't have room and board and a copper a week for nothing.”

“I know,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“If you want to leave, nobody's going to stop you,” she says. “Least of all me. I've had better help than yours. But I'll tell you what—there's nothing to be scared of here. The world is a terrible place, and we all know that. Mrs. Och, she's made it her business to help folks who need help, and that's all there is to it. These are good people, and a girl like you could do a lot worse than keeping house for good people.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say.

“All right, then,” she says, nodding at a pile of laundry. “I'll do lunch by myself. You help Chloe.”

For there is Chloe, smiling wanly at me. Mrs. Freeley disappears into the kitchen.

“You're back,” I say, stating the obvious.

“Florence is furious with me,” says Chloe. “But there are so few positions now, and I need the money. I'm not getting married soon like she is. I need to build up a little something for myself. They were shocked as anything to see me this morning.”

I'll bet they were. She must have walked; a cabbie wouldn't have found the place. I guess that, like me, Chloe is still considered a friend by whatever magic hides the house.

“Well, it's good to see you,” I say, meaning it. Chloe is not bad.

“I know they must be very wicked here,” she whispers to me. “Florence says the house is haunted, or they keep a monster, or some such thing. She says she saw it on the stairs, the thing that Clarisa saw. We heard fighting and gunshots.”

“I don't know what she saw,” I say. “I know there was a wolf in the house, and Frederick shot it. Do you know there have been more and more wolf sightings in the city? They're starving in the woods, it's such a brutal winter, and so they're coming into the city for food. That door in the cellar is broken….”

I trail off and wonder why I'm bothering to lie to Chloe about all this anyway. It's such a habit now, the endless lying. I'm covering tracks that aren't even mine.

“Well, whatever is the case,” says Chloe doubtfully, “we are paid well, and on time, and treated fairly. That's enough for me.”

“Me too,” I say. Because that is what it means to do a job. You may not like it, but you are paid money to do it, and so you do it. We fold the laundry together, and she talks with great excitement about the shop Florence will work in, as if it were every girl's dream come true. My stomach rumbles, but still I can't bear the thought of food.

Bianka comes in to warm some milk for Theo.

“He has a cold,” she says crossly. “He never got sick in Nim. It's the blasted northern winter, the rotten, filthy air here.”

Theo trails after her, his nose streaming snot.

“Poor thing,” I hear myself say. “I'll give him the milk, shall I? You could have a rest.”

She gives me such a look of gratitude, I almost crack right there.

“I could use a lie-down,” she says. “I didn't sleep a wink last night, and it's been such an impossible couple of days. I've had him with me nonstop. But I know he's safe with you.”

I can't speak, so I just nod. She gives my arm a friendly squeeze, then says to Theo, “You be good for Ella, won't you? You know she'll smack you if you're naughty.” She gives me a wink and sails out.

“Lala,” says Theo, looking up at me.

“There, you be a good little fellow,” I tell him, wiping his nose with my handkerchief. “I'll have your milk ready in a jiff.”

I warm the milk and sit Theo on my lap by the stove to give it to him. He nestles into me sweetly and guzzles it back, gasping for breaths in between gulps. Afterward he is drowsy and sits calmly on my lap, playing with my apron string. When Chloe takes the laundry up, I grab my coat, wrap it round us, and slip out the side door.

My heart is in my throat, and I don't know if I'm terrified they'll catch me or terrified they won't. I hold tight to Theo and run. As Pia promised, there are no soldiers on Mikall Street, and a sleek electric hackney is waiting at the corner. I climb inside, and the hackney slips away. Theo chirps excitedly and looks out the window.

“There's the river,” I tell him inanely as we cross the bridge, my heart going so fast it is making me dizzy. “That's where they drown witches like your mama and like mine. And here we are in the Plateau. You can see Capriss Temple up there, at the top of Mount Heriot. Look, aren't the streets grand in West Spira?”

“Pira,” he repeats cheerfully.

The doorman lets me by without a word. I go straight up to Pia's room with Theo in my arms. She opens the door but does not invite me in this time.

“Well done,” she says, without emotion. She hands me a heavy leather purse. The silver clinks inside it. I sling it over one shoulder and stand there, silver on one arm, Theo in the other. Then she takes Theo from me, and it's as if she's pulled my heart right out.

“Don't let them hurt him,” I choke.

“Lala,” says Theo, twisting in her arms to reach for me. “Lala!”

“Does he sing?” asks Pia dryly.

“He's saying Ella.”

“You are finished here, Julia,” she says.

“Don't forget to bleeding feed him!” I cry. “It's nearly lunchtime! And he takes a nap in the afternoons.”

I see his snotty little nose and wide eyes staring out at me for a half second more before she closes the door on me and I am alone in the hall with my silver.

T
here aren't many people out in the streets, and those I see look unreal, moving too slowly, frozen faces clouded by the white of their breath. I feel out of sync with the world, my heart rabbiting and my hands trembling while the fine folk of West Spira drift by me in a dream. The driver of an electric hackney stuck in the snow examines the ice-clad wheels helplessly, while a man in thick furs leaning out the window says, “This is just the trouble with these fancy ee-lek-tric hackneys. A good strong horse is what we need now!”

They wouldn't let me in the first shop I tried, nor the second, and I knew if I showed them my silver they'd probably call for a cop. But there are furs to be bought elsewhere. I walk to Mount Heriot, my toes and fingers numb with cold so I can't feel them at all by the time I get there. I buy myself a pair of fur-lined boots that go up to my knees, a gown of heavy blue velvet with matching gloves, and a long brown fur coat and hat, beautifully soft. Mink, the shopkeeper tells me, glancing uneasily at my trembling hands.

I am leaving the shop in my finery when a ghoulish figure comes staggering toward me across the snow, bound in rags. He moves with a jagged gait, his legs rigid, his arms hanging limp at his sides. His face is horribly disfigured, mottled with Scourge spots and scar tissue. He has no eyes, only a mess of scars, but still it seems he is looking right at me, his aim unerring, as he croaks, “Forgive me! Forgive me, love!” I back away fast, toward the shop, but he keeps coming, and then a man in a fur coat comes running and clubs him with a walking stick,
crack,
right over the head. He crumples into the snow like a boneless pile of rags and skin, and my knees buckle under me. The man helps me to my feet. The shopkeeper is at my side as well.

“Are you all right, miss?”

“Can I fetch someone to take you home?”

“I'm fine,” I say, steadying myself between them. My voice sounds far away from me. “I just need to eat something.”

In an elegant café with a view of the city, I force down as many garlic snails and fluffy pastries as I can, though I barely taste them. Then I seek out an expensive electric hackney and flag it down, even if a horse-drawn is safer in the snow. I'll live like a rich lady as long as this silver lasts—fine clothes, fine food, a plush seat in a hackney whenever I want to go somewhere. This is what I've been dreaming of for weeks now.

The thought comes to me unbidden—
He must be so frightened
—and the inside of the hackney spins, my stomach lurching. I clamp my heart shut around the thought, like a trap with a screaming animal caught inside. Pia is right—what business is it of mine? Worse things happen to small children every day in Spira City and I don't go around crying my eyes out for every tot that gets beaten or starves or freezes or falls ill and dies. Terrible things are happening all the time. I know. I have not escaped the world's frivolous cruelty either. I have a job that affords me a better life than most girls born into my circumstances in the Twist. So I do my job, like a professional. It is ugly, but it's no good dwelling on it. She left me no choice—none at all. I was nearly killed, and I've bleeding earned this silver.

I return to the flat with a great, juicy ham, a honey cake, a few bottles of expensive rum, and a silk scarf for Esme. It is a hero's welcome I get. Dek hugs me hard and says he is to vet every job I take from now on. Esme thanks me for the scarf, but she is more interested in counting out her share of my silver. For the first time in my life I resent seeing her take it. Wyn comes down and tries to take me aside, but I shrug him off, sharing out the ham and cake. Gregor and Csilla arrive, kissing my cheeks and laughing and congratulating me, and the fire is too bright, the room too hot; I can hear my voice pitched too high, my laughter false and ugly.

The first time somebody asks me how I wrapped the job up, I ignore it. The second time, I call it a state secret. I pour a glass of rum out for Gregor, and he says, “Well, just one, to celebrate Julia's return to the fold!” I see Csilla's fine, clear brow crease, her eyes on him as he downs the drink, as his large hand reaches for the bottle to pour himself another. Her fingers tremble a little as she lights a cigarette and moves over to the window.

I am not usually keen on liquor, having watched since I was a tiny thing the way it makes men into fools and slaves, but I drink it tonight, glass after glass, until the room sways around me and I can hear my awful laughter ringing in my ears. I see my reflection in the window, my hair wild and ragged, my face red, the silk gown falling off my shoulder. I laugh at Wyn scowling in his chair; I dance with Gregor; I let Csilla powder my face and paint some lurid color on my lips. The third time somebody asks me how I finished the job, I tell the truth: “A boy—they wanted a little boy in the house. So I kidnapped him and handed him over.”

The room goes very quiet then, and I throw up all over Esme's fine rug.

I wake up in my own bed at dawn, wrung out and miserable. My stomach has turned itself virtually inside out several times, ridding itself of all the rum and rich food. My hands won't stop shaking, whatever I do. I put on my new clothes, tuck my knife into the lining of my gorgeous new boot, and find a hackney to take me to the Scola.

It is dangerous to come back here, of course. Who knows what they would do to me if they found me. But I have to know what is happening. I find the house easily, so either Alazne's Blind has been lifted or I am still exempt from it. I slip through the gate as the sun rises, vanish next to the pump, and wait.

Chloe comes out for water, fills the bucket right next to me. I grab her arm and clamp a hand over her mouth, drag her into the outdoor privy while she struggles and tries to scream. But I am stronger than she is.

“Hush now,” I hiss, holding up my knife so she can see it. There is something incongruous about the ugly knife in my velvet-gloved hand. She looks at me like I am some kind of monster, her eyes glassy with horror. Well, I know how she feels.

“Why?” she sobs. “Why did you do it?”

“Never you mind,” I say. “Tell me what's happening. What are they saying?”

“They say…you and Mr. Darius ran off with Baby Theo.”

“Mr. Darius?” I gape at her in bewilderment. “What do you mean, Mr. Darius? Isn't he at the house?”

She shakes her head. “He's gone. Disappeared yesterday morning.” She seems to take me in properly then, and blurts out: “What are you wearing?”

I shove the knife closer to her face. “Tell me what's going on in there.”

She shrinks away from me, still staring at my fur coat. “Bianka…they had to give her some medicine or something to make her go to sleep. She was nearly mad, and she had a pen….Oh, I'm afraid to say it!”

“She's a witch,” I say impatiently, and Chloe's eyes widen.

“They had to take the pen by force—she was screaming; it was so terrible!” says Chloe, her shining eyes locked on me, speaking half in terror, half as if she is confiding in me. “Then they gave her a drink of something, and she's been sleeping on and off ever since. Mr. Darius's things are all gone. Mrs. Och is bedridden. She said they should have guessed about you, and Frederick wept. But that was all at first, right after. I didn't hear much after that, because they were always in private.” She starts to cry again. “That sweet boy! Will he be hurt?”

“That's not my business, nor yours.”

Pia's words in my mouth taste like iron.

“How could you do it?” she blubbers. “He's just a baby, Ella.”

“My name isn't Ella, you stupid fool,” I say, and I shove her out of the privy. I run all the way to Lirabon Avenue, certain that someone will be in pursuit. But if they come after me, they are not quick enough. I flag down a cabriolet. It's over, I tell myself. You did your job and it's over. It's too late to take it back now. But my hands are trembling still, and I don't know how to make them stop.

Liddy pours me some coffee, gives me a fresh bun. I try to eat, but I can't get it down, and the coffee roils in my empty stomach.

“I heard the Gethin is dead,” she says, watching me with those hooded eyes.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“This city crawls with watchers and knowers and rumor speakers. My friends.”

Of course.

“I gather from your fur coat that you have been paid too,” she continues. “And yet you do not have the look of someone who has reached the happy conclusion of a difficult job.”

I could tell her everything, but what would be the point? Or maybe I am too ashamed to confess what I have done for all this money. Not that I had a choice. Surely Liddy would understand that I had no choice.

“It wasn't a good job,” I say.

“Of course it wasn't.”

“What are you, Liddy?” I've danced around this question with her for years, never daring to ask quite so bluntly, but I have no such qualms anymore. “Are you a witch?”

Liddy laughs.

“No. I am something else.”

“Something else?”

“There are a great many something elses in the world; you will learn if you look carefully,” says Liddy. “Looking carefully is something that comes with practice. Seeing things that others often don't—like you, when you step behind whatever curtain hides you from ordinary eyes.”

“Mrs. Och could see me too. And the baby, Theo—Gennady's son.”

“Odd that the baby would see you. It may be
because
he is Gennady's son, and sees as the Xianren do. Or perhaps all babies see the way that animals do, their minds not yet filling in the blanks for the eye.”

“I wonder why I can do it,” I say in a small voice. I'm not entirely sure I want the answer, even if she has it. But she offers no hypothesis.

“Your trouble, my dear, is that you've been born into a time of very few choices for a girl of your talents and character and social class. Perhaps it is my fault for taking you to Esme in the first place. I thought…well, I supposed she would educate you. I supposed it would be better than the alternatives. And it seemed that it was, for a while at least. But I wonder sometimes what kind of life your mother hoped for you. Unlike the rest of us, she never learned to live without hope.”