Julia Vanishes (18 page)

“The first time I fell in love, I was about your age,” she says, giving me a shrewd look. “But then I found out he had another girl. That old story.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I cut him loose,” she says. “I thought I was done with love after that. But two years ago, I fell in love again. It was beautiful for a while, but he disappeared after Theo was born. Now I think I really am done with love.” She laughs, as if this is funny. “I said that to Mrs. Och, you know. I told her this man had broken my heart and I was done with love. She told me, ‘You are never done with love.' How old do you suppose she is?”

“I've no idea,” I say, thinking about what Liddy told me. Older than she looks. Old as the hills, quite literally.

“Do you think it's true? That you and I will love again? It's hard to imagine anyone as perfect and beautiful as the one I lost.”

I don't even want to imagine somebody other than Wyn.

“I suppose it must be true,” I say, my voice brittle. “We'll go on to be married, perhaps, and forget them.”

Bianka shakes her head, smiling. “We won't forget them,” she says, and hands me another bun. “I like a girl who keeps her appetite no matter what. Food is a great comfort. Honey cakes won't break your heart, will they?”

She winks, and I manage half a smile. We might have been friends, I think. Then I stop myself thinking it.

Solly comes at noon in his uniform, with his story about needing me as a witness, and takes me to the hotel. Pia is dressed entirely in brown tweeds, including a fitted cap, today. Even without those disturbing goggles, she would be the strangest-looking person I have ever met.

“The Gethin came after me,” I tell her.

If she is surprised, she doesn't show it. She seems almost cheerful. “But you got away,” she says. “That is lucky. And unusual.”

“He's looking for Bianka, isn't he?” I say. “And I'm, what…a way of finding her? He chews on my brain a bit and knows what I know, is that the idea?”

Pia settles back in a chair, crossing one long, trousered leg over the other and grinning up at me like I am terribly amusing. “Something like that. Who told you all this?”

I don't want to give Liddy away, but I say, “I have a friend. She knows a lot about…well, folklore and whatnot. Everything.”

“Everything!” says Pia. “What a useful friend to have. Does she happen to know who sent the Gethin, this friend of yours?”

“No,” I say. “I thought you could tell me that.”

“No. I wish I could.”

I lower myself shakily onto the sofa and struggle to keep my voice even. “Well, I nearly got my head sliced open last night, and I'm in a very poor mood as a result,” I say. “I'm doing my job as best I can. You might have warned me.”

“I did not think of it—that he might seek you out. Did he catch your essence from the messenger boy's memory?”

“I don't know. I don't know how it bleeding works.”

“It is interesting. Something keeps him from Bianka,” says Pia conversationally. “Some spell, I suppose. The Gethin can sense a person's essence, but he cannot seem to sense hers. And so he finds only those who have seen her, been close to her. He follows one to the next; he hunts them down and takes their memories in the hope that they will know where she is hiding, but she keeps moving, and so his search continues. But now he has found you.” Her goggles whir, in and out. “Do you have a report for me?” she asks.

Partly this makes me want to spit with fury, but I pull myself together. After all, I need to be worth saving, if I am going to ask it of her. I recite my list of Bianka's belongings (not much); I tell her that Mr. Darius is actually Sir Victor Penn Ostoway III and give her the letters from Agoston Horthy; I tell her about the rhug spiders and the silver bullets I collected from Torne for Professor Baranyi; I tell her all I saw and heard in Professor Baranyi's study, the owl turned cat, and so on. She listens impassively, interested in Agoston Horthy's letters but otherwise showing no reaction, even when I tell her about Torne sending his regards.

“Do you know him?” I ask.

“From another lifetime,” she says.

“Why are all these people after Bianka, anyway?” I venture. “I mean, us, and the Gethin.”

“She has something,” says Pia.

“You're sure about that? Because I told you, besides her clothes, a few trinkets, and romance novels, she doesn't have anything.”

Pia tilts her head to one side and looks at me for a bit before saying, “She has a small boy. He wasn't on your list.”

And just like that, I feel my whole body turn to lead. “Theo? What
about
Theo?”

Pia shrugs. “I don't know. Nor does the Gethin, I'll wager, for that creature too is a slave, like me, like you. We do as our masters bid us. You are to bring me the child.”

I can barely get the word out.
“Why?”

“Ah, curiosity,” says Pia. “You are young. I have reached a point where I know more than I wish to and am incurious. In fact, I long for ignorance. Perhaps you will feel the same one day. The grander purpose is this: My employer now believes that there is something inside the boy that he wants. We must bring him the child so he can get it out.”

“Inside him? What does that mean?”

“I do not know. Nor do I want to.”

“Why didn't you tell me…before?” It sounds so pathetic. “I mean, I was going through her underthings.”

“I received a telegram about it only this morning,” says Pia crisply. “We did not know what we were looking for, not exactly, not until now. A shadow, my master said, but it might look like anything. Now our source says it is the boy, and because we do not leave a trail of bodies like the Gethin, we can achieve our own ends quickly, without drawing any attention.”

“How does your source know it's Theo?”

Pia spreads her hands, palms up, in the Lorian gesture of accepting the mysteries of the Nameless One. Very funny. Unless she's actually Lorian, but that seems unlikely.

“What about the Gethin?” I ask desperately. “He'll be sniffing me out again tonight, won't he?”

Pia nods slowly. “I wish we knew who sent him. But I do not want him stalking us once we have the boy. We had better take care of the Gethin first.”

Well, I won't deny I am very glad to hear it. For the moment I put aside that chilling
once we have the boy.
“How?”

“I will have to kill him,” says Pia.

“Can you do that?” I ask, startled and relieved.

“I do not see another way around it. If I let him kill you, your memories will lead him straight to the house and Bianka.”

“No need to be so sentimental about it,” I say sarcastically, and am surprised when Pia cracks a tiny smile.

“You are still important,” she says. “Don't be afraid.”

“So you'll just go out and kill him?” I ask. “How will you find him?”

“You will find him,” she says. “Or, more accurately, he will find you.”

A
nd so, for a second night I find myself out in the freezing cold after midnight, this time with Pia at my side. She is wearing a long coat made of coarse grayish fur. It is not like the fashionable fur coats ladies in West Spira wear. Not like the coats Wyn and Arly stole.

“What is your coat made of?” I ask. My voice sounds too loud in the silent street.

“Wolf skin,” says Pia.

Not, as I said, a fashionable choice. I shiver and stomp my feet.

“You feel nothing?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Should we walk? Just to keep warm? It might help if I'm moving. Last time I was moving.”

“As you wish,” she says. “It will make no difference. As soon as you feel the pull, follow it.”

We are waiting for the Gethin to find me, but we have been waiting for almost an hour already at Molinda Bridge, looking over the frozen Syne.

“My mother is down there,” I hear myself say, nodding toward the river. Pia frightens and repulses me, but to whom else could I so freely admit what my mother was? Easy to say to somebody who deals with much worse, probably
is
much worse.

“A witch?” she says, and I nod. “How old were you?”

“Seven,” I say.

“Very young,” she says, and I say, “In a way.”

“What of your own power? Where does it come from?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm no witch, if that's what you mean.”

“I understand,” says Pia. “Like you, I have certain abilities. Our power sets us apart. You'll feel that more, as you get older.” She adds, almost reluctantly: “I too have lost people I cared for to the river Syne.”

The moon is out tonight, brighter than the night before. Pia looks ghostly white, her tweed cap pulled down over her ears and leaving her face a pale oval between fur and cap, goggles adjusting and readjusting. Looking at her, I feel a mix of revulsion and something else, perhaps recognition of whatever we share. I sense that her hardness, like mine, is hard-earned.

“How will you kill it?” I ask. “Just with that knife?”

She nods. “Silver,” she says. “To kill the Gethin, you must pierce the heart with silver and then cut off the head. Safest then to keep the head and body separate and burn them both.”

“What happens if you don't do all that?”

She grins at me in the moonlight. “You may find the Gethin coming for you again,” she says.

“Aren't you worried about Bianka coming after you?” I ask her.

“Why would I be?”

“I don't know. Mrs. Och says she's strong for a witch. Suppose she spells you dead, like Sybil the Bloody killed all those people?”

“Bianka does not know me,” says Pia. “And Sybil the Bloody was an invention of Agoston Horthy's. No witch alive has such power. Or perhaps only one.”

“What do you mean, an invention?” I say, stunned. “He made her up?”

“Yes,” says Pia. “And a very successful story it was too.”

I mull that over a bit, and then, since we are chatting so amiably, I am bold and ask her, “Is it true that the man you work for, Casimir, is one of the Xianren?”

She turns her head toward me sharply. So I guess Liddy knew what she was talking about. We are almost into the Plateau now.

“Who told you that?” she asks. “Your friend who knows everything?”

“Yes,” I say. “There are three of them, aren't there? Casimir, Gennady, and Mrs. Och.”

“Giants,” says Pia. “And we, their pawns.”

“I'm not a pawn,” I say. “I work for pay.”

“We are all paid for what we do, in some way or another,” says Pia. “And in our own ways, we all pay for it too. That changes nothing.”

“Well, who's trying to change anything?” I say.

“Not I,” says Pia. “Still nothing?”

I shake my head. And so the night passes slowly. I grow so cold that it hurts to move. Pia removes her long wolf-skin coat and wraps it around me casually. It radiates warmth. She is taller than I am, and the coat drags in the snow after me. I want to protest that she will surely freeze, but I am too grateful for the fur to offer it back. We wander the Plateau, Mount Heriot rising up above us, avoiding the miserable, freezing clusters of soldiers. Pia moves easily, apparently impervious to the bitter winter night. Then she stops and sniffs.

“Blood,” she says. “Fresh.”

Nameless One help me, I am wandering the city at night with some bizarre woman-thing that can smell fresh blood.
And
counting her my friend and protector. Gregor's fault, indeed. What has become of my life? I follow Pia at a trot, for she has quickened her pace and I want to stay close. Down an alley, next to a closed warehouse, we find the body. The snow around him is dark with blood. Before I turn away I see that the top of his head is missing.

“Look at him,” says Pia harshly. “Do you know him?”

When I do not look, she catches me by the shoulder. She pulls my chin around and forces me to face the man, who stares up at me, eyes wide and still, big buck teeth in his long jaw. My stomach churns, and I taste iron.

“Do you know him?” she repeats, giving me a shake.

“Yes,” I gasp, and she releases me. I stagger against the warehouse wall, turning away again and trying to blot out the image of his face. “The hackney driver,” I say. “His name is Jensen. He brought Bianka to the house.”

“Then the Gethin knows where Bianka is,” says Pia.

I nod, swallowing hard and trying to still my heart and my stomach. Pia glances at the moon descending behind Mount Heriot.

“We have an hour till daybreak,” she says. “Run.”

We run through the dark, icy streets, back toward the river. I have always been a good runner, but I am slowed by the cold, and nauseous with horror at what I have seen. Pia, long-legged, is much faster than I. Trying to keep her in sight, terrified of being left behind, I stumble twice and then fall flat. I cry out, not a word exactly, though if I could make words I would say something undignified and pathetic like
Don't leave me out here alone.
Pia turns back for me and hauls me to my feet. I wheeze, “I can't.” She does not pause but tosses me over her shoulder like a sack of grain. I gasp with pain as I jounce against her, the ground flashing by below. Despite the ice and the snow and the dark, her booted feet never slip but keep pounding the ground, propelling us through the city, across the bridge and into the Scola.

She slows at Lirabon Avenue, letting me slide to the ground. My ribs and belly are bruised and sore. I stagger but manage not to fall.

“Someone is working magic,” she says.

I smell sulfur. We round the corner to Mikall Street cautiously. Across from Mrs. Och's house, a figure in a heavy fur is huddled on the ground, perhaps writing, but it is difficult to say. A hat obscures his or her face.

“Not this way,” says Pia, pulling me back around the corner.

“Who was that?” I ask, but she doesn't answer. We take an alleyway that leads along the back wall of the garden. Pia climbs up the wall and disappears over it like a spider. It is incredible to see. I try to climb the wall, but it is high and sheer and I cannot. I sense something and turn. There, down the alleyway, is the Gethin, watching me.

I scream. In an instant Pia is back over the wall, clamping a hand over my mouth.

“Hush,” she says. “He does not care about you anymore.”

She drags me up the wall with her, heaves me over, and I fall into the snow in Mrs. Och's back garden. Pia climbs partway down and stops, just hanging from the wall like gravity means nothing to her.

“I cannot touch the ground here,” she says, and then I see them, the rhug shining in the snow, scampering toward the wall, toward us—many, many more of them than I brought back from the Edge the other day. They move around me like I am not there.

“They won't harm you—you belong here,” she says. “But someone is trying to break their connection to this place. Go and warn Mrs. Och. Quick. If the Gethin gets past me, they will need to be ready. They must not let him take the boy.”

She draws her long knife, placing it neatly between her teeth, and disappears back over the wall before I can thank her or wish her luck. I make my way as fast as I can across the snowy garden, my boots sinking deep into the unpacked snow. I let myself into the scullery through the side door, run straight to the back parlor, and throw open the door. Bianka is curled against Theo, both of them buried in blankets. She sits bolt upright when the door opens.

“There's something,” I say, lost for words. “Something outside. A monster.”

Bianka gives me a look of blank horror, then scoops Theo up in her arms and tears past me out of the room, straight up the stairs to the bedrooms. She bangs on Professor Baranyi's door, and then on Mrs. Och's.

“It's here!” she cries. “It's come for me!”

Everybody comes stumbling out into the hallway in their nightclothes.

“What do you mean?” says Mrs. Och.

“Ella says there is a monster outside,” says Bianka, her face rigid.

Mrs. Och looks at me. “Why are you dressed?” she asks, very reasonably.

“I heard something,” I say. “I went to see, and—” I don't need to finish my lie. There is a sound like ice splintering. The smell of sulfur fills the house. Professor Baranyi looks wildly at Mrs. Och.

“The house is unprotected now,” she says coolly. “You have the bullets?”

“Yes, yes,” he says, and I remember the box I got from Torne. “Frederick, quickly, the gun, the bullets.”

Frederick runs down the stairs toward the study as the front door crashes open. We all stand in the hallway, just waiting.

“Shouldn't she hide?” I say of Bianka, but nobody seems to hear me.

“Get me a pen,” says Bianka.

“A pen, Frederick!” Professor Baranyi shouts down the stairs. Then he says, “Nameless One save us,” and backs away from the stairs. I hear the attic door open and Florence's footsteps descending, her voice: “What is happening?” Followed by a blood-curdling scream.

The Gethin appears at the end of the hall, blade shimmering in his hand. Those eyes. That strange, kind face. The face of death, in my mind now, perhaps for always. I wonder what has become of Pia then.

“This is my house, and you are not welcome here,” says Mrs. Och in a deeper and more resonant voice than her usual voice. I have curled myself against the wall, disappeared without really thinking, and she steps past me so she is between the Gethin and the rest of us. She is transformed. Great gray wings are folded on her back, fur marked black and gold along her arms. There is a crest of feathers on her head too, but I cannot see her face. She holds a golden hand up, and the Gethin raises his blade and swings it toward her. She leaps back, then says again, “You are not welcome here,” and steps toward him.

“Bleeding hurry, Freddie,” mutters the professor. Bianka is backed up against Mrs. Och's bedroom door, clutching Theo tightly. He has woken up and is staring at the scene before him with bewildered brown eyes. The Gethin gives a snarl. Mrs. Och sways slightly; a wind rises in the hall. Quick as lightning, the Gethin raises his blade and slashes at her. She staggers, buckles, the wind dying. I see blood and close my eyes. Bianka screams. I feel the Gethin brush past me, and I don't know what compels me but I stick a leg out to trip him.

Well, it would have worked on a soldier or a bully in the Twist. Instead, I have the Gethin's soft hand on my throat again. His eyes search my face almost tenderly for a moment; then he drops me, gasping for breath, on the floor.

A gunshot, deafening. The Gethin spinning around. Mrs. Och rising from the ground, her face terrible, half human and half cat, her wings filling the hall. Frederick beside her, holding a gun in shaking hands, his face white. The Gethin moving toward them. Bianka calling again for a pen, Baby Theo crying now, Florence still screaming on the stairs. A second shot, and the ring of metal as the Gethin deflects the bullet with his blade. He sends Frederick crashing to the ground with a blow from his black-furred hand. He drives his blade into Mrs. Och, who crumples. The Gethin whirls around and springs down the hall toward Bianka. Professor Baranyi steps before him and is swatted easily aside. A dark shape whisks past me—the Gethin tumbles. I see Pia, teeth bared, blade aloft, standing over him. One arm hangs oddly and she has blood on her face, but she seems not much the worse for it. The Gethin swings his own blade from the ground, and Pia runs halfway up the wall before leaping onto him again. He throws her off, and she rolls elegantly, back on her feet in an instant. They face each other, blades ready. Pia lets out an animal hiss and pounces once more.