Julia Vanishes (20 page)

They question the witch for an hour in the parlor. She broke the rhug's bond with the house, and the eerie creatures have wandered off. She confesses everything, sobbing loudly, and I can easily make out her answers from my place at the keyhole. She'd been three weeks in Hostorak, she says, and was released unexpectedly this very night on the condition that she perform this task. The man who spoke to her had an eye patch and one yellow eye, she says, and I remember the man Bianka described, the one who came and asked her about Theo, took hair and blood samples from him. She says she was outside the window hoping to catch one of the lingering, confused rhug and sell it.

After some hushed consultation, they take her up to Mrs. Och, and I follow, staying vanished in the hall when the two men go back down to the parlor. I can hear Mrs. Och—“You knew this was my house and yet you used your magic against me”—and the witch sobbing and begging forgiveness.

She does not get it. “No!” I hear her gasping, then shouting: “No! No! No!” There follows a horrible scream that ends suddenly, smoke pouring out from under the door with an awful stench. I clamp a hand over my mouth and stumble back downstairs, where the professor is saying to Frederick, “She cannot afford to be merciful; you
know
this,” while Frederick weeps into his hands. Neither Mrs. Och nor the witch emerges from the reading room. Frederick and the professor remain in the parlor, talking in low voices. I am too nauseous and exhausted to stay huddled outside the door trying to catch snatches of their conversation. I go upstairs to the empty attic room and lie down, fully clothed, on the screeching cot. When I wake it is midmorning and the little owl-cat, Strig, is curled up against me, purring.

T
he room is full of yellow smoke. Or perhaps it is his mind that is full of the smoke. His thoughts move slowly through it. He cannot see; he cannot move. He can think, very slowly: Move. Fight. But they are just words he is thinking, as removed from reality as dreams are. You may dream that you are walking down the street at sundown watching the bats swoop overhead, but you are only lying on your bed, still as the dead.

She is writing on his skin with fire. The silver she sometimes uses is nothing. He could fight the silver if not for the things she writes on his skin. Things that still him, freeze him, rob him of himself. She does it swiftly, her manner detached and professional, as if she were a doctor performing some minor surgery.

“Almost done,” she may say, comfortingly.

Then the yellow smoke clears, and she is finished. He can see the ceiling, and a chair lying on the ground. He thinks he knocked it over; he thinks he tried to fight, before the smoke.

“He wants to see you,” she says. “Shall I call him? Tell him you're ready?”

The sheets are pulled halfway off the bed. There has been a struggle in this room. He is lying on the floor and his tongue is too big for his mouth. The smoke is gone, but the place she has written on him, on his shoulder, is burning.

“Can you get up?” she asks.

Then she sighs and leaves the room.

Minutes, hours, days, there is hardly a difference anymore. And then a pair of boots by his head, the swirling edge of a cape. He forces his eyes up to where Casimir's head looms near the ceiling, frowning down at him.

“It looks as if you tried to give Shey some trouble this morning,” Casimir says.

He tests his tongue, to see if he can speak. “Ffff…” is all he manages.

“You never told me that you'd had a son recently,” says Casimir. “You have been far too clever. The witch is very pretty too. But you ought to steer clear of falling in love with witches. It never ends well.”

To tear this room apart, to tear down these walls, to unleash this rage upon Casimir—but he is defeated, utterly, utterly. He had not known he could be so undone. That there existed this place between life and death. That such despair was even possible.

Casimir bends down to examine Shey's writing on his shoulder.

“My, my,” he murmurs. “I sometimes wonder if I oughtn't to be a little afraid of her myself! Well, it will wear off, and you'll feel more yourself soon enough.”

It does wear off. And when he can move again, he lifts himself painfully from the floor. He rights the chair. He makes the bed. He weeps.

N
obody tries to pretend for my sake that we are living in an ordinary house anymore. Small scrolls of paper with unfamiliar script on them are pasted by all the doors and windows, and smoking pockets of herbs and who knows what dangle from the ceilings in unexpected places. The house stinks of magic.

Mrs. Freeley treats me to a rare, wry smile when I appear in the scullery late morning. “Had a nice lie-in?”

But she says it without malice. She herself seems unperturbed. I don't ask her what she knows, what she has come to accept, living here. I don't know what to do besides continue to work. I help with the lunch preparations, then serve the baked fowl with scalloped potatoes and asparagus spears, pouring apple wine for everybody. Mrs. Och remains in her room, her blood all over the upstairs hallway, the singed smell of whatever she did to the witch still lingering in the air. Frederick's face is bruised, and his head is bandaged. Theo is sleepy in Bianka's lap, and nobody speaks much. Both the professor and Frederick have pistols strapped to their chests. Sir Victor eats with them and does not ask questions, so either he knows better than to ask or they have already told him what happened. A letter comes for Sir Victor—everybody jumping at the sound of the mail carriage in the street—and he goes out soon after in his hat and coat, mumbling some excuse. It is the first time I have seen him leave the house since I came here, which would have interested me greatly just yesterday, but I have too much else on my mind to wonder much at the wolf man's movements.

The parlor is still closed up, and so I go in to light the fire. When I open the curtains I see an electric hackney pulling up at the gate. Two figures in long, fur-collared coats are climbing out.

“Frederick!” I call, running back to the dining room. “A hackney.”

“I will meet them at the door,” says Mrs. Och, descending the stairs. She is upright and dressed, her hair pinned back, as if she hadn't been run through with a sword the night before. I gape at her.

“Go on to the scullery, Ella,” she says to me sharply. I bob my head and duck past them, but I hear her say to Frederick, “I want Bianka and Theo in the cellar tunnel. Give her a pen and paper. Then come to my reading room with the professor.”

Cellar tunnel?
This house still has more secrets than those I have uncovered. I slip out of the scullery and dart up the stairs, making straight for Mrs. Och's reading room. It's no good vanishing here—Mrs. Och would see me—but I can hide like an ordinary snoop. I look around the room wildly, for it doesn't offer much in the way of hiding places. I hear voices below. I remove some large reference books from a cabinet under the bookcase and put them behind the curtains. Then I race back to the cabinet. For a horrible moment I think I will not be able to fit. I can hear them in the hall and I am terrified they will come in to find me stuck halfway out of the cabinet, but I manage to cram myself inside it and slide the door shut as they enter, leaving myself a crack to peer through.

I hear the creak of Mrs. Och's chair as she sits down in it. I can see the professor's and Frederick's trousers and shoes by the door and two other sets of legs in front of them—a tall man's and a short man's. I ease the cabinet door open a crack farther.

“I intended to ask the Gethin's master why he sent his creature to my home,” says Mrs. Och. “But now you are standing before me, I wonder how you commanded the Gethin at all.”

“I inherited him, shall we say,” says a deep male voice—a voice I know. “He is dead?”

“Dead,” replies Mrs. Och. “Perhaps I should have guessed it was you when I heard you took care of the victims' families. Still, I wonder at your selective guilt. There are others in Spira City who are destitute because of you, who have died because of you, if less directly.”

“I do what I can to protect the innocent. Sometimes evil can only be fought with evil.”

I am trying to place the voice—its resonance, its country vowels. It is so familiar. Squashed as I am inside the cabinet, I vanish and slide the door farther open, slowly, carefully. I see Mrs. Och's ankles, the edge of her desk. I pull it wider, craning my neck, and almost let out a cry of surprise. There in the middle of Mrs. Och's reading room, wearing the same shabby coat he wore at the Cleansing, stands Agoston Horthy. A man with a sweep of gray hair and one yellow eye towers behind the prime minister. He wears a patch over the other eye. Frederick and the professor are at the door, both of them armed, but the conversation takes place entirely between Agoston Horthy and Mrs. Och.

“I have puzzled over you for a long time, Mrs. Och. You have done a great deal to help the innocent, the destitute, and the powerless, and I have admired you for it. And you have done a great deal to help the evil and the vengeful, the criminals and the unbelievers, and I have loathed you for it.”

“We have different methods of categorization.”

“I imagine we do. But I have a country to take care of, and you have only your own interests. I have left you alone for twenty years. Suppose that now I surrounded your house with soldiers, filled it with investigators. What would I find?”

“Very little, because you wouldn't know how to look.”

“Your brother Casimir warned me long ago that making you my enemy would be a waste of resources.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You are harboring a witch and her son. I want you to hand them over.”

“Why send the Gethin instead of merely asking me?”

“I am asking you now.”

“Well, since we are playing ‘suppose'—suppose that a woman with a baby came to me asking for help because someone was hunting her. Suppose we established it was the Gethin hunting her. Still, we did not know who sent the Gethin, and we did not know why. Suppose we put the woman and her boy on a train to Sinter, or perhaps on a boat to Ingle. Suppose I can give you an address, if you can persuade me that your cause is just.”

“The witch concerns me less than the child. You know who the boy's father is?”

“Yes.”

“My man here sees very well with only one eye, and he keeps that eye trained on certain things within my borders. Unpredictable things. Things like you. Your brother Gennady was in Frayne not long ago.”

“I had heard.”

“He was posing as a clown, doing subversive performances in the south. Then he disappeared, but our eyes and ears are everywhere, and though we could not find him, we found the witch and her little boy. What do you know about the child?”

“I know nothing, except that he is my nephew.”

“My man here obtained some samples. We had them tested. Every cell in that child's body is coded with
something.
Something powerful. Something magical. He is a vessel for something, and this is no mere witchcraft. I thought perhaps
you
could tell me what it is.”

“I know nothing of this. I have not seen my brother in years and learned of his son only very recently.”

“It is essential that he be examined and the witch questioned.”

“If they have left Frayne, why does it concern you?”

“Because we do not know what he is. That makes me uncomfortable.”

“Give me a few days to think it over. Then I can give you an address in Sinter. Or Ingle.”

“Suppose my man has a look around your house right now?”

“I do not recommend it. The house has teeth today. You understand, surely—after an intruder, one must take precautions.”

“Suppose we do not find the witch in Sinter, or Ingle?”

“It's true, she might move on quickly. How am I to know?”

“Suppose I give you until tomorrow, and if I do not have the witch and her son by sundown, I march the Fraynish army to your doorstep?”

“Are you so sure that you will still have an army at your command tomorrow?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I am interested in you. Does Casimir know that you command the Gethin and that you are looking for this witch?”

“I do not report to Casimir.”

“Oh no? I rather thought you did.”

“You are mistaken. We have an understanding. Our understanding extends to you, as a matter of fact. It is out of respect for him, as well as for your good works, that I have tolerated you within my borders. And out of respect for him, I am doing you the courtesy of this visit, an attempt to resolve this matter peacefully.”

“I'm sure he would be delighted to hear how much you respect him, and while I am touched by your visit, I feel that your borders have nothing to do with me.”

“You believe you are above our laws, but you are like the great sea lizards. Your time is done.”

“I wonder if you have expressed this view to my brother.”

“He knows who I am, just as I know who he is. For now, we have our understanding.”

“Your alliances are not what one might expect from a man who abhors magic.”

“Desperate times lead to strange bedfellows, Mrs. Och.”

The man with the yellow eye laughs at that—a rather nice laugh, as if he is genuinely amused.

“You have until tomorrow,” says Agoston Horthy. “I will be back at sundown, and it will go better for you if you have found your witch and her son by then.”

Mrs. Och rises, and her voice is terrible, like when she spoke to the Gethin in the hall. “It will go better for
me
? You command the Fraynish army, you rule while the king prays, but you are still a little man with a little life and you know nothing, nothing at all, and you can do nothing to me. Frederick, show our guests out. If they do not go gently, you are very welcome to shoot them.”

“Sundown tomorrow,” repeats Agoston Horthy, unperturbed.

I watch three pairs of feet filing out into the hallway. Professor Baranyi shuts the door, and he and Mrs. Och are silent for a moment.

“Well,” says Mrs. Och at last. “Horthy has gone rogue. How interesting.”

“What will we do?”

“If we can get them north, Livia will keep them safe at the farm for a time. I will need you to send a telegram. You heard what he said about the boy? A vessel.”

“Yes. What could he mean? I'm sure Bianka doesn't know—she's quite desperate to solve the matter herself.”

She cries out, making me jump: “He wouldn't! He couldn't, surely.”

“Wouldn't couldn't what, my dear Mrs. Och?” asks the professor. “And to
whom
are you referring?”

“Gennady,” she says.

“Ah,” he says.

“It's impossible,” she says. “And yet, there is only one thing that Casimir wants.”

He waits.

“We must find Gennady,” she says. “How can he have disappeared so completely from the face of the earth?”

A soft knock, and Frederick comes back in.

“We're going to be hung, aren't we?” he says.

“Oh dear, I hope not,” says the professor, as if he'd never thought of that.

“Agoston
Horthy
!” says Frederick. “I've just been pointing a
gun
at Agoston Horthy!”

“It is a twist I was not expecting. Casimir will
not
be pleased when he finds out,” says Mrs. Och. Then she asks, “What do you make of the maid, by the way?”

“What—Ettie?” asks Professor Baranyi.

“Ella,” Frederick corrects him.

“Yes.”

“Remarkable, isn't she?” the professor says. “Showed nerves of steel last night. She must have very good aim or very good luck—she hit the Gethin straight through the heart with that bullet. Bright too—or so Frederick says.”

“You know her best, Frederick,” says Mrs. Och. “If we explain a few things, will it frighten her off? It will be difficult, in the days to come, to maintain any façade of normality, and she might be useful.”

I don't like the sound of that. I am up to my neck in usefulness already.

“I think she would take it very well,” says Frederick simply. He makes no mention of my mother, and I'm rather touched at his treating it as a confidence.

“Still, there is something about her that strikes me as odd,” says Mrs. Och.

“In what sense?” asks the professor.

“She has secrets,” says Mrs. Och, and my blood runs cold. “That is nothing terrible in itself. Many people have secrets. It may be time to find out more about her, however.”

I think of the witch screaming for mercy last night—no trace of her left in the morning but a terrible smell. Mrs. Och is not known for her forgiving nature, said Liddy. I need to get well away before she finds out that I am not who I claim to be.

“I'll vouchsafe that she's trustworthy,” says Frederick stoutly, which gives me a little pang.

“That may be,” says Mrs. Och. “Her references were thorough, but, Frederick, perhaps you can visit the family tomorrow morning, just to be sure. For now, we have work to do.”

“What about Pia, Casimir's creature?” asks Professor Baranyi. “What will we do if
she
returns?”

“Alazne's Blind,” says Mrs. Och.

“Really?” The professor sounds as if she's just proposed dining on the moon. “Is it…
can
you?”

“Not alone—but with Bianka, yes. If she can transmogrify, she ought to be strong enough to manage it. I doubt it will last us more than twenty-four hours, but that will be enough. The house will be quite impossible to find.”

“My! Well!”

They leave the room, still talking. Professor Baranyi goes out straightaway, presumably to send a telegram to this Livia Mrs. Och mentioned. I make a halfhearted start on the dishes in the scullery, while Bianka and Mrs. Och shut themselves up in her reading room, Frederick entertains Baby Theo in the library, and Mrs. Freeley snores loudly in her room off the kitchen.

My mind is racing, and the house is quiet, so I abandon the dishes and go upstairs to let myself into Professor Baranyi's study. Strig comes bounding in after me with a cheerful
“yowww!”
and I scratch his feathery little ears. I have no lockpick with me, but a hairpin does fine for the locked cabinet of books. I sit myself down on the floor behind a divan, disappearing, and begin to flip through
Legends of the Xianren I.