Julia Vanishes (4 page)

“Hallo, everyone!” says Csilla, pulling off her white gloves. “Gracious, Julia, I've got to give you something for those circles under your eyes. Don't housemaids sleep?”

“Not this one,” I grumble, stretching my legs out self-consciously.

“Poor thing,” says Csilla, settling into a chair and taking out a silver cigarette case. “We'll take you to the cabaret when the job is done; won't that be fun? You can borrow one of my dresses.”

I laugh. I'd never fit into her clothes, which require all bust and no waist.

“Everything went smoothly, I take it?” says Esme. “No angry Inglese aristocrats chasing you across the channel?”

“See for yourself how smoothly it went,” says Gregor, tossing her a thick packet of Inglese bills. “Csilla charmed them senseless, of course, and I was a drunker lout than you've ever seen.”

“Really?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “Hard to imagine.”

Dek shoots me a warning look.

Gregor was, once upon a time, the wayward son of an aristocrat executed for treason. Following his expulsion from high society way back in his unimaginable youth, he became a revolutionary, and when that didn't work out, a thief, a con, and a hopeless drunk. He still has those upper-crust manners, though, that way of walking into a room like the whole bleeding place belongs to him, and when he flashes a smile at you, there's a glimmer of his former charm, buried under years of booze and despair. Esme's husband was his best friend, and she's kept him on in spite of everything. Csilla, for her part, was a well-known actress before she married Gregor and gave up the stage for good. What Csilla sees in Gregor is one of life's great mysteries. She is ten years younger than him at least, and a true northern beauty, all porcelain and gold except for her eyes, which are dark and deep enough to drown in. She has no family that I know of.

“We'll take our cut to the track tomorrow,” says Gregor, ignoring my dig. “Belle Sofe is a sure thing, make us a fortune!” He winks at Csilla, and she smiles back moonily. The two of them are fanatics for horse racing, in spite of the fact that they never win anything. “Now, what have you got for me, Julia, my dear? I've an appointment with the client this afternoon.”

While Esme rules the criminal underworld, Gregor is our point of contact with Spira City's elite. They don't invite him to their parties, but they all know who he is, and a well-paid case of blackmail or spying often comes our way through him.

“I could come with you,” I suggest. “I've got the whole day off.”

Gregor shakes his head. “When the client wants to see you, I'll let you know.”

“Fine. Makes no difference to me,” I say, but I can't deny I'm disappointed. I am dying to find out more about this mysterious client.

I have been sent to Mrs. Och's house with a rather vague set of questions: Who is in the house? What are they doing? What do they talk about? What are they reading? Where do they go? Every week I give Gregor a report and he takes it to my employer. It's a far cry from the usual sort of thing—digging up material for blackmail, following misbehaving spouses, locating hidden safes—but my mysterious employer gave us six silver freyns at the start of the job, and offers
twenty
upon completion, whatever completion might mean in this case.

The six silver freyns are spent already. A thief who worked for Esme was arrested just last week, and half the money went to bribing officials so that he'll do prison time instead of being hung. The other half went to his family. Esme might be rich if she didn't take such good care of her people and their families. Then again, if crooks weren't so loyal to her, she might be in prison herself. I negotiated hard with Esme and will get a quarter of the final payment for myself. More than enough for a few fashionable gowns and weeks of dining out at fine restaurants with Wyn. Perhaps we'll go mingle with the lords and ladies at the opera.

I hand Gregor the report I've just written out on Esme's good paper. I don't dare keep pen and paper at Mrs. Och's house; a housemaid with a pen might well be taken for a witch, and though I could prove my innocence quickly enough, there's no need to arouse suspicion.

“I got into the professor's study last night,” I tell him. “I found a name written down that could be important. Jahara Sandor at Hostorak Prison. Fifteen-c might be a cell number.”

“Hostorak!” exclaims Dek. “These aren't just some rich nambies, then, are they?”

Gregor skates his eyes across my awkward handwriting and takes a swig from his hip flask.

“Then there's the houseguest in the cellar,” I continue. “I have this horrible feeling he's doing experiments on animals. They shot something in the hall the other night, maybe with sleeping serum, but I didn't see what.”

“Yes, I mentioned the houseguest to the client last week. Mr. Darius, isn't it? You're to find out who he is and exactly what he's doing there.”

“Hold up, Gregor. I thought she was just snooping on a rich old lady, but this sounds like something else,” says Dek. “How dangerous is this job?”

“Julia won't get caught,” says Gregor unhelpfully.

“Of course I won't,” I say, not admitting how close I had come. “So when am I done? If I find out what Mr. Darius is doing in the cellar? Or what interest they have in a prisoner at Hostorak?”

Gregor shrugs.

“Look at these blisters!” I show him my hands. “I've been scrubbing a blasted privy! Peeled so many vegetables I never want to look at a carrot again! Have you ever scaled a fish? Your hands stink for days afterward!”

“At least now you know you're luckier than half the girls in Spira City,” says Csilla, pointing her unlit cigarette at me. I slump back in my chair.

The talk drifts to gossip about Marianne Deneuve, an actress Csilla used to know, now wanted as a witch.

“She's disappeared without a trace!” says Gregor while Csilla shakes her head and says, “I can't believe it; I just
can't
believe it.”

“You never had a hint of it, then?” asks Esme.

“Not at all!” says Csilla. “She was kind to me back then, when I was the new face. She taught me a thing or two.”

I am barely paying attention. It's almost noon, and I can't wait any longer. I slip out, skip up the stairs to the room at the very top, and bang on the door. When there's no answer, I shove my bent hairpin into the lock and wrestle with it clumsily, noisily, until it gives.

It's a sad little room, not unlike the attic room I'm staying in at Mrs. Och's, but this one I love. The tiny window looks out over the square and the spiky rooftops of the Twist, but the curtains are shut now. A few embers still glow in the grate, so it must have been a late night. There is a pistol on the table, next to a half-finished charcoal sketch of Fitch Square. He's captured the broken fountain, the mad pigeon lady with birds all over her. Wyn has a way of drawing ugly things and making them seem beautiful.

He is sprawled across the bed, half-covered by his blanket. His long brown back is exposed, and one leg with black hair on it too. His face is turned away from me. The sight of his back and leg undoes me, my joints suddenly loose and weak. I cross the room, heart leaping against my rib cage, blood singing and rushing.

“Wyn,” I whisper, and he stirs. I run my hand down his spine, and he rolls over slowly. Dark hair on his chest, long thick lashes, stormy green eyes, and, oh, those lips, parting in a sleepy smile.

“Hullo, Brown Eyes,” he says. “How did you get in here?”

I hold up the hairpin.

“Nowhere is safe from Spira City's fearsome thieves,” he intones.

“Lock up your handsome young men!” I mimic, sitting down on the edge of his bed and bending to kiss him.

“I thought we just established that locks are useless against these fearsome thieves,” he says, and kisses me back, but lightly.

“You call that a kiss?” I protest. “I've been slaving day and night for a week now—I think I deserve better than that!”

He laughs, starting to get up. “Hounds, Brown Eyes, I haven't even eaten breakfast yet.”

I push him back down and say, with mock severity, “Breakfast can wait.”

W
ithout knowing why, the cabbie leaves the still-busy nighttime streets of the Scola and crosses Ganmorel Bridge, heading into the Edge, where Spira City's destitute and desperate make their way. He passes the cheap brothels and opium dens, and the cab climbs the hill toward Limory Cemetery.

Something follows on swift, dark legs, unknown to him but pushing him on.

He parks the motor cab and gets out, pulling his coat around him, confused. Winter is in the air already, and the street is deserted. He walks uncertainly through the cemetery gates, then stops, turns, and looks around.

“Hullo?” he says. His breath puffs out in a great white plume.

He hears something move in the shadow of his motor cab, or sees it perhaps, but then there is nothing, silence.

“Flaming Kahge,” he mutters. He reaches into his pocket for a pipe and then changes his mind. Turns to head deeper into the cemetery, then stops again. His mind is a fog. Why has he come here?

The air gets colder, and now he hears, clear as anything, something breathing nearby.

“Who's there?” he calls. Fear surges in and clears his mind.
Get out of here. Dangerous.
He heads back toward his motor cab at a trot, but there is something at the gate, barring his way.

The moon is behind the clouds, and he doesn't see the thing clearly. It stands upright, but the face is not a human face, the body too tall and lithe to be a human body. He lets out a strangled yell, turns, and runs.

There is a sound like a growl, and he finds himself facedown in the gravel. He thinks of his wife, at home waiting for him, their child about to be born any day now, his fear dissolving into another horror, for how will they survive without him? A hand jerks his head up by the hair. A wetness at his forehead, a spreading blackness. He thinks of struggle, but fleetingly, as if from a great distance—already this sudden, brutal ending has become part of somebody else's story.

M
y stomach growls, but I ignore it, as it's only ten o'clock in the morning. I grit my teeth and beat the great parlor rugs so the dust flies. It is a crisp, fine day, likely the last fine weather before winter comes to claim the city. From the terrace, I can see Florence and Chloe hanging laundry to dry down by the pond, where turtles have crept out to sun themselves. Soon the scullery will have to do on laundry days, but today it is pleasant out, the sky a piercing, cloudless blue, blackbirds shrieking in the trees, which shed their bright, dying leaves all over the lawn.

Mrs. Och's large, walled back garden would be very picturesque if not for the great mound of earth marring the lawn between the terrace and the pond. Mal, the groundsman, told me that until a few months ago a towering old cherry tree stood there. Had to be hundreds of years old, he said, and then one summer day it was gone, leaving behind the ruptured lawn, as if someone had come along and simply plucked a forty-foot tree out of the ground and walked off with it. He shook his head a great deal and scratched his ear as he told me this, and I agreed with him that it was quite the strangest thing I'd ever heard of. Sometimes Mrs. Och goes out with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl, kneels next to the spot, and sifts the earth through her hands. That made it into my first report but elicited no hint of interest from the client, whoever he is.

Though it's only midmorning, we have served all the household members their breakfast and coffee; lit the fires and taken water up to the bath for Mrs. Och (the only one who uses the giant tub, as far as I can tell—I'm dying to try it myself); scrubbed down the scullery; prepared the makings of lunch for Mrs. Freeley, the cook; emptied Mrs. Och's bathwater (which I have noticed is always remarkably clean and smells like apple blossoms after she bathes); polished the silver; brushed the curtains; and soaked, washed, rinsed, blued, and wrung out the laundry. My arms are stiff and sore, and I am desperate for a cup of coffee and a cream pastry.

“Fine day,” says a voice behind me, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I turn and give a little curtsy, pausing from my attack on the parlor rugs.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Sorry to interrupt. Will you light this for me?” Mr. Darius gestures with his pipe. “I've injured my arm.”

Indeed, the hand not holding the pipe is thoroughly bandaged and he is holding his arm gingerly, as if it hurts him.

“Of course, sir,” I say. “Let me have a match.”

He gives me a matchbox and bends at the waist with the pipe in his mouth so I can reach to light it. As I do, I glance up into his face. He is looking right at me with those slate-gray eyes of his. I hastily drop my gaze, focusing on the pipe.

“There you are, sir,” I say.

“Thank you.” He straightens up and puffs on the pipe. He is a handsome man, between forty and fifty years old, well built and well bred. The sort of man whose pockets I might pick if I passed him on the street. I've no idea what his relationship to Mrs. Och is or why he is staying in her cellar. For a moment I think he's going to stay to talk with me, but then he makes to leave and so I venture to ask, “What happened to your arm, sir?”

His face registers immediate disapproval. I should not have asked a personal question. I smile, all innocence, but he doesn't soften.

“An accident,” he says gruffly.

“Is it very painful?” I ask. “Can I get you anything?”

He shakes his head and walks away from me. I watch him stride across the lawn, blowing smoke all over the clean laundry. Florence and Chloe bob awkwardly as he passes them. I wonder if they have heard the noises from the cellar. It was bad again last night, but neither of them has mentioned it.

I give the rugs a couple more bangs, then haul them off the terrace railing and drag them back into the parlor in a great hurry. Mrs. Och will be in her reading room now or lying down, Professor Baranyi and Frederick at work as usual. Mrs. Freeley is in the kitchen. I fetch a mop and a pail of water from the scullery and head for the cellar stairs.

I don't know how long Mr. Darius will walk in the garden, but this is a rare chance and I dare not waste it.

The hall at the bottom of the cellar stairs is unlit, but that doesn't deter me. I hurry on, sloshing water from my bucket, and find myself in a cavernous wine cellar. I touch one of the bottles and my finger comes away thick with dust. I turn back and take the corridor to the right.

I'm just wondering if I should have brought my knife when I am dazzled by light as someone comes around the corner and runs right into me. I yell, fumbling with the bucket, and the lower half of my dress gets soaked with soapy water.

“Hounds!” comes a curse. I recognize the voice before the lantern swings out of the way, and I can see Frederick standing there, his feet wet and the shattered pieces of a wooden chair under his arm. Immediately my fear leaves me. Frederick is only a few years older than I am and he is, I think, a kind person, unlikely to tell Mrs. Och that I have been where I should not be. Chloe tells me that he was a very promising student at the university but left to work for the professor. His parents were devastated, she said. He has fair hair and skin, a rather untended beard, and he always looks vaguely surprised—perhaps an effect of his round spectacles. Of course, at the moment, he is genuinely surprised.

“Sorry, sir!” I say.

“Haven't they told you that you don't need to clean down here?” he asks.

“They did, sir,” I say. “But I saw Mr. Darius was outside and thought it would be nice to surprise him with a clean room for once. It must get filthy. There are so many rooms here we hardly tend to.”

Frederick laughs uncomfortably. “Best not to surprise anybody, Miss…it's Ella, isn't it?”

Three weeks I've been here, and nobody remembers my bleeding name. Fake name, but still.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Well, in all seriousness, nobody in this house is keen on surprises,” he tells me. “Even if that surprise is an unexpected mopped floor.”

“I see, sir,” I say.

His eyes crinkle a bit at the edges.

“You don't need to call me sir,” he says. “I'm just an employee here too.”

That's nonsense, of course. He eats with Mrs. Och and the others, and we serve him his breakfast and his coffee every morning. He is not on the level of a housemaid, but I say, “All right,” because I get sick of the yes-sir-no-sir business anyway. I smile at him, to soften it.

“What happened to the chair?” I ask him.

“Broken,” he says.

“I can see
that,
” I say, and he laughs.

“It was no good anymore,” he says. “We'll use it for firewood. Come on, shall we go up?”

I have no choice but to go up the stairs ahead of him.

Florence is at the top, her nostrils flaring wildly. Her hair has come loose a bit from under her cap, and her hands are on her hips. Florence is all sharp angles and edges, her eyes a bit too wide, her mouth a bit too small. She and Chloe are cousins and look very alike, except Chloe's features are more proportional and so she is quite pretty, whereas Florence always looks a bit crazed.

She bobs her head at Frederick, who says, “Hello, Florence,” and gives me an apologetic look over his shoulder as he heads past us. He knows I'm in for it.

“You aren't supposed to go down there,” she says.

“I thought I could clean Mr. Darius's room while he was outside,” I say. “Doesn't it get filthy?”

“I wouldn't know,” she says. “I don't go where I'm told not to.”

“I thought— Well, it was my mistake,” I say humbly. This doesn't mollify her much. I think Florence has an ear for insincerity. She gives me a sour look and says, “Go be scullery maid, then. Mrs. Freeley needs one of us.”

Florence is only a couple of years older than I am, but since my predecessor left, she is now the senior housemaid and takes her role very seriously. Reluctantly, wearily, having seen nothing of the cellar except that it is unlit and needs dusting, I go to the scullery, followed by Florence's suspicious gaze. Mrs. Freeley is waiting there, a hulking ham of a woman, all red meat with watery little eyes and some gray hair on top.

“Oh, you,” she says with a sigh. She is the only one to have really noted my inexperience; I know nothing about kitchen work. “We're making custard pie. Does that frighten you, girl?”

“ 'Tis the custard pie that ought to be afraid, ma'am,” I reply. “Pie mamas tell their little pie babies tales of Terrible Ella to scare 'em into behaving, you know.”

Making Mrs. Freeley laugh is something
I
take seriously, as I think it is the only reason she tolerates me at all. Her hammy body shakes as she laughs; then she points to the counter and says cheerfully, “Roll the dough, my girl, and no more of your lip.”

At lunch, one housemaid stands at attention in the high-ceilinged dining room while Mrs. Och, Professor Baranyi, Mr. Darius, and Frederick eat. I am always struck by how this particular aspect of servitude mirrors my own gift. You are there, but you are invisible, at least until somebody needs a cup filled or a plate cleared away.

Mrs. Och comes in on Professor Baranyi's arm, the two of them deep in conversation. Due to his time in prison and his reputation as a heretic, the professor is the subject of awed disapproval and gossip among the housemaids. However, his association with Mrs. Och lends him a sheen of respectability, for Mrs. Och is rich enough to be respectable no matter how eccentric she might be or whom she might choose to associate with. Chloe tells me that the professor works for Mrs. Och and has lived in her house for more than a decade now, but nobody seems to know exactly what the nature of his work is. “Something to do with translation,” Florence said vaguely. “Restoring old books,” said Mal, the groundskeeper. “None of your beeswax, little miss,” said Mrs. Freeley. The professor is wielding a newspaper emphatically as they talk.

“It is disturbing, to be sure, but I do not think it has anything to do with
me,
” Mrs. Och is saying.

“But why else should he be
here,
in Spira City?” protests the professor, waving the newspaper.

“First Nim,” says Mrs. Och in a low voice. “He is looking for someone.”

“No, it cannot be a coincidence, first the tree and now this—” But she shushes him, angling her head at Mr. Darius, and he helps her into her chair.

I eye the newspaper as the professor sits down. It is folded over and I cannot see the front page, so I step forward and say, “Shall I take this away for you, sir?”

Florence would be horrified, and Mrs. Och looks rather surprised as I lay my hands on the paper.

“You can leave it there,” says Professor Baranyi, unbothered.

But I've flattened the page out enough to see the headline:
Cabdriver Murdered in Limory Cemetery.
Farther down the page I see, in smaller print, mention of Marianne Deneuve, Csilla's old friend from the theater. I've no time to read more, but if a dead cabbie is bigger news than a glamorous actress revealed as a witch, I reckon his killer is the same one who left the governess without the top of her head on the bridge. The one who traveled from Nim. I shudder a little inwardly. Why should Professor Baranyi think it might have anything to do with Mrs. Och?

She is watching me closely. I step back, murmuring an apology.

“Can you read, Ella?” she asks, addressing me directly. Frederick and Mr. Darius had been chatting idly about something else, but they stop and look up at me also, surprised.

“No, ma'am,” I say.

She stares at me a moment longer. Mrs. Och is, I suppose, a fairly ordinary-looking woman. She is of an average height and build, wears her white hair tied back demurely, and dresses in an elegant but not showy style. I cannot guess her age. My impression is that she is frail and unwell, for she spends a good deal of the day lying in bed. Frederick and the professor always seem terribly concerned about her health. Today, though, there is a vigor and clarity about her that is almost unsettling.