Julia Vanishes (26 page)

“It's more than enough,” I say. “And I'm grateful. I…I did spy on you and don't deserve your help.”

“I don't have many chances to help people,” he says. “So I am grateful too.”

“Why don't you come with me? I know where Theo is. We can get out of here; I know it. If you're cured, then maybe Mrs. Och can still help you with your daughter.”

“It's too late. I've struck my bargain, and I need to get back to my room. They have to think you got out on your own.”

“Why too late?”

He shows me the inside of his wrist. Purpled, scarred flesh surrounds a disk of shining metal. I touch it with my finger and withdraw sharply. To my horror, it is as hot as a pan on the stove.

“What in bleeding Kahge is that thing?” I ask.

“My contract,” he says. “You should hurry.”

It takes me longer than I'd hoped to find my way back to the door we entered the castle by. I find the metal prong between the two stones in the wall and give it a tug. The wooden door in the outer walls begins to lift, hauled up by great rolling chains. Tucking the gun into the sash of my dress, I run for the wall and then along it so as to be unseen from the shore, and search among the rocks for a good-sized boulder. Once I find one, I roll it toward the door, straining and sweating. The door is beginning to lower again already. I huddle by the wall, waiting as the door comes down, then wedge the rock under it, stalling its descent. I vanish and crawl under the gap. The two guards by the boat have their pistols out of their holsters, while a third is coming toward the door to investigate.

I move down the hill toward him, slowly, carefully, staying behind the curtain of the visible, until we are barely a foot from each other, and then I spray him with the capsicum gas. He drops screaming, and the other two panic, running in my direction, though they cannot see me. I stay still, since that is easier, and get both of them as soon as they are close enough, holding my dress up over my face, but even so, the proximity of the gas makes me gag, my eyes tearing. I wait for the gas to clear a bit before disarming them. Then I run for the boat and clamber aboard, leaving the three men blind and howling near the wall. Down the cabin steps, I pull up the rug and open the trapdoor.

The first thing I see is the barrel of a rifle. Then, four faces staring up at me. The gun in Dek's hand lowers. They are huddled around a book with pictures of sails in it, a single lamp lighting the grim little cellar. They look damp and battered. I can hear water still sloshing on the floor below them. Frederick has a strip of wet cloth around his head, and Dek's jaw is swollen, disfiguring his face even more. The storm was not any easier to weather down here, I gather.

“Theo,” says Bianka in a strangled voice.

“He's alive,” I say. I don't know if it's the truth, but I know she needs to hear it.

“Did you see him?”

“No, but I saw where they're keeping him,” I say. “You fellows get the boat ready to sail again, and quick. I need Bianka with me now. We'll have this thing done in a jiff.”

Bianka has a piece of chalk. I did not know, would have been terrified had I known, but I am glad to see it now. She holds it like a weapon as Frederick and I tie up the guards and drag them down the slope and around the side of the boat, so they are hidden from view.

“We should toss them in the sea,” says Bianka harshly.

“They're just doing their job,” I say. “They aren't your enemies.”

“Those of you
just doing jobs
that involve taking and keeping my son from me are very much my enemies,” she says acidly.

I don't answer that. I lead her up the slope toward the castle.

“How do we get in?” she asks. My boulder has shifted under the weight of the door, which has fallen several inches farther. There are but a few inches left open, not enough space for us to crawl under.

“Hounds of Kahge,” I curse, scanning the wall. It is too high and too smooth for me to scale.

“You go first,” says Bianka. She squats by the great door, gripping the bottom edge. My mouth falls open as it begins to budge and rise.

“Hurry,” she grunts.

“Wait there,” I say. “I can get it open for you once I'm through.”

I get down on my belly and squeeze under the door as she struggles to lift it, hoping desperately that her strength doesn't give way when I am halfway through. The bottom of the door scrapes against my back. I wriggle beneath it into the castle grounds, run up the hill to the side door, and pull the lever. The chains start to roll and the door lifts with a groan. Bianka comes through it like vengeance personified.

“Take me to him,” she says.

I'm afraid of what she'll do if we get lost. The castle is a bewildering maze, but my mind is sharper for having eaten a bit, and I find my way back to the suits of armor where I first saw the hunchbacked witch. From there it is easy to find my way to the top of the castle.

“Wait,” I murmur as we near the top of the last staircase. I vanish and peer into the hall. Four guards still. The lack of commotion in the castle and their easy posture reassures me that no one has discovered my escape or noticed the activity out by our boat yet.

“Four guards,” I tell Bianka softly, returning to the stairs where she is waiting for me. “I can pick the locks, but there's magic on the door too. No matter what, we need to take care of the guards first.”

She bends and writes something on the step with her chalk. I wonder if the guards will notice the smell of rotten flowers. Even in the dim light, I can see the sweat standing out on her brow. The walls seem to shimmer a little.

“Are you all right?” I ask. “Do you need to sit for a moment?”

She looks at me as if she's going to tear my head from my shoulders, and I quake.

She steps out into the hall, and I follow.

The guards are, all four of them, sound asleep, slumped around the door.

“Very nice,” I say. “Bloodless. Will it last long?”

“I've no idea,” says Bianka.

I set straight to work on the locks. They are sophisticated, but Dek's pick is a match for them. Bianka is writing on the floor with her chalk again, breathing heavily. When I have all three locks open, I look and see that she is just writing
open open open open open open,
over and over again, all over the floor, along the walls.

“Is that going to work?” I ask, doubtful.

“I…don't…know,” she grinds out. “I don't know how it works…any better than you do. I've not had much…practice.” Sweat drips from her brow onto the ground and the chalk words.

I can do no more to help, so I sit there on the floor by the enchanted door and watch her sweating, trembling, writing. The words are all over the walls, stretching farther back down the hall, her breath coming ragged now, blood trickling from her nose.
Open open open open open.
I think of my mother, the wild, falling sheaves of paper as she hunched over Dek's sickbed, staving off death. Bianka will write this word until she breaks, and I do not know when that might be. But the door's magic breaks first. There is a sound like ice cracking. The door swings open, and before I can move, Bianka hurtles through it. She freezes, then gives a sick little laugh. I scramble to my feet and follow her.

It is a round room with windows and a bed and a chair and table. Slumped against the wall is a large shirtless man with fair hair. He opens his eyes—they are blue as the sky—and stares at us. He has silver bands on his wrists and on his ankles and black writing all over his body, though it's no kind of writing that I recognize. There are scars on his torso, some old, some fresh and red.

“Where is Theo?” I cry. All my hopes that he is still alive dashed now, I run to the center of the room and look around wildly, then sink to my knees, weak with a despair whose power amazes me, undoes me.

The man says, “Bianka. Are you real? Not a dream?”

His voice rolls across the room. The kind of voice you want to hear singing, it carries such a sweet resonance. He rises slowly, a huge man, and passes me to walk to Bianka, his arms outstretched. His bare back is deeply gouged with crisscrossed crimson scars, as if something has been cut out between his shoulder blades.

“Gennady,” says Bianka, stepping out of reach of his arms. Her voice is terrible. Like his name is a curse.

E
ven if she had not spoken his name, I would have been able to guess that this is Gennady: Zor Gen, Bianka's lover, Mrs. Och's brother, Theo's father. I can see now that the writing on his body is not ink but made of thin black scars, as if the strange script has been burned into him. On his side, a darkly fresh piece of writing still smokes slightly. He moves, not easily, and yet with a kind of lithe power. With his startling bulk and his great golden mane, he looks like a wounded lion.

“It's you,” says Gennady. He reaches for her again, and again she steps away. His hands fall to his sides. “You are not a dream.”

“No,” says Bianka. Her voice shivers with some emotion I can't name. “Not a dream.”

“My son is here,” says Gennady. “They have him.”

“You didn't think I'd come for you, did you?” says Bianka. “Where is he?”

“I don't know.” His voice goes a pitch lower than I've ever heard a voice go—like the growl of a great cat. Bianka stands before him, shaking. I don't want to see what it looks like when a witch and some kind of wounded immortal fall apart completely. I get up off the floor.

“Let's not all start blubbing,” I say, hoping I sound less like blubbing than I feel. “We'll find him.” I hold out to Gennady the gun Sir Victor gave me. “Can you shoot straight?”

He takes it. It looks like a toy in his huge hand. “Who are you?” he asks me.

“A wicked, treacherous wretch, and also, for the moment, a friend,” Bianka answers for me.

“That, and I've got an idea of where to start looking,” I say, drawing my knife out of my boot. I am more comfortable with the knife than a pistol.

We step over the sleeping guards, Bianka's chalk
openopenopenopenopen
all over the floor, and her
go to sleep
scrawled on the steps. Bianka's eyes are fixed on Gennady's mutilated back, but she does not ask him about that. I lead them in the direction of the room I was held in. If the bread in my lunch was still steaming when it got to me, it had not traveled far through these chilly corridors. I figure whoever makes the food here must have some idea of where it goes.

We walk several minutes in silence, and then I hear him murmur, like a distant thunder roll: “Bianka. Look at me.”

Bianka spins around and strikes him so hard that he falls to the ground and lies sprawled there, staring up at her with those dazzling too-blue eyes.

“You didn't tell me. You didn't warn me.” She bites out the words, her voice ragged with rage. “You put my son in danger and then you disappeared. Can it be undone, what you did to him?”

He rises slowly, towering over her, but she is straight as a pike and does not tremble before his terrible gaze. Still, the chalk is crumbling to dust between her fingers and her thumb. I know I should stop them but I can't move, can't look away.

“I never asked if it could be undone. You don't know Casimir. If he wanted my shadow, he would stop at nothing to get it from me, and the witch in his employ has power beyond what any witch should have. Ko Dan—the man who did it, a monk from Yongguo—told me that my shadow could not be fully separated from me, that it
refused
to leave me. The only way to create distance between the shadow and myself would be if some part of me, linked to my own life and essence, carried it apart from my body. A child, in other words. I rented the house in Sirillia and pretended it was ours so that they would not know who you were, where you lived. Ko Dan bound the text to Theo while you slept, bound it to his life, to live and die with him. He wanted to kill the baby immediately, thus destroying the fragment, but I wanted Theo to have a life first. He was still my son, after all. I hid your essence with magic and left you behind so they would never trace you to me. Even once they had me, I thought I could hold out against Shey, but I couldn't. She reached so far into me, took me apart, took what she wanted. I gave you up. I told her everything.”

“You told this someone everything, but you told me
nothing.
You made use of me. You made use of Theo, like he was a thing and not your son.”

She raises her fist again, but this time he catches it in his gigantic hand and pulls her close to him.

“I chose you because I knew you could protect him. I knew you would be strong enough. I knew you would love him.”

She makes a funny sound in the back of her throat. “Not because you loved
me
?” she says.

“My dear.” The ferocity goes out of him, and he looks only sad. “That was…a secondary consideration.”

I hear the sharp intake of her breath—and something else. I find my voice and step between them: “Stop.
Listen.
”

Through the awful silence of the castle, something like music. I beckon them on, following the sound, and after a momentary hesitation, they obey. No more words pass between them. As we draw close, it becomes more obviously a woman's voice singing. I gesture at them to stay in the hall as I make my way toward the sound.

Down a few steps, there is a large empty kitchen. A fire burns in the hearth. The singing comes from the room behind: the scullery. There I find a girl with dirty blond hair, hanging laundry and singing a foreign song in a pretty but strained voice. I edge around behind her, then grab her by the hair and put my knife to her throat. Her singing gasps to a halt, her body tensing. Good. She is of the freeze rather than the fight variety.

“Not a sound or I'll cut your neck right open,” I hiss. She trembles against me, rigid with fear. I think again of Pia—
I was just like you
—but I don't falter. “Where is the little boy? If you do not tell me, even if you
cannot
tell me because you do not know, I will cut your throat. For your sake, I hope you do know.”

She whispers it: “I can show you.”

She takes a lantern from the wall and lights it with shaking hands. I keep my knife to her back, forcing her back up the steps.

“No wild-goose chase, no taking us to Casimir or the guards,” I warn her. “I can kill you faster than anyone can help you, remember that.”

“They can kill me too,” she whispers.

“They won't know a thing,” I say. “Once we've found the boy, you can run and hide. Or come back here and finish hanging the laundry. Whatever you like.”

Her wide eyes take in Gennady and Bianka in the hall. She takes us down, deep into the castle. I think we must be below the ground, for there are no more windows. We come to a large room with a cold hearth and nothing but a couple of rotting tapestries on the walls and a great oak table off to one side. The girl points at the rug on the floor.

“Down there,” she whispers.

“Pull back the rug,” I say, and Bianka does so. There. A bolted trapdoor. She tears it open and makes a noise like a sob. I take the lantern from the girl, all of us crowding around the empty square in the stone floor.

There are no stairs, just a long drop down to a sparse room, though “room” might be too generous a word for it. A curly-haired little boy lies sleeping in a bed down there. Whether it is the sudden light, the sound Bianka makes, or a draft from the open trapdoor, he wakes, staring up at us with his dark eyes.

“Is that him?” whispers Gennady.

“Mama!” cries Theo, scrambling out from under his covers and reaching pitifully. “Mama!”

“How do we get down?” Bianka asks. It is too far to jump.

“There must be a rope,” I say. “Or some mechanism, some hidden stairs.”

“Or another way in,” says Gennady, looking around the room we are in.

“Stay where you are, my sweet boy,” Bianka calls down to Theo. “Mama is coming for you.”

I shove the girl toward the far corner. “You stay there. Don't try to run or I'll cut you to ribbons. Not a sound, not a sigh, do you understand?”

She nods wordlessly at me, stumbles to the corner. I put the lantern down by the trapdoor, tuck my knife back into my boot, and begin tearing the tapestries from the wall, knotting them together to make a rope. Bianka calls reassurances down to Theo.

“Bring me that table,” I say to Gennady, pointing at the oak table in the corner. “Pull it over by the trapdoor.”

He starts to drag it. He is a powerful man, but it screeches slowly on the stone floor. Bianka rises to help him. Theo begins to scream the moment she is out of sight.

“I'm here!” she calls to him. “I'm coming!”

Gennady lets go the table when they are halfway across the room, straightening. Bianka drags it to the trapdoor on her own, shouting at him, “What's the matter with you?”

“Someone is here,” he says.

My heart plunges into my gut. There in the doorway is Pia.

“I am surprised at you, Julia,” she says. “I did not believe you were so sentimental. Casimir's offer was a generous one.”

I feel Bianka's eyes on me.

“You made the choice easy,” I say. “I won't be like you.”

There is real anger in her expression for the first time.

“Are you so noble that you prefer death?”

“Death isn't my plan either,” I say. A gunshot, and at the same moment Pia darts up the wall in that mind-boggling way she has of defying gravity. Another shot as she flies to the floor, rolls, and kicks the pistol from Gennady's hand.

Gennady takes a swing at her with one of his gigantic fists, but he is much too slow for her. She runs up the wall to the ceiling and leaps down at him, her boots striking his knees so they buckle beneath him. Bianka and I both scramble for the pistol, but Pia gets there first, kicks it aside, and hurls Bianka into me so we both go sprawling to the floor. Gennady is struggling to his feet, but she kicks him in the face, knocking him back, then takes hold of one of his legs and twists it so it cracks. He lets out a bellow. Bianka is on her feet faster than I am, still gasping for breath. Pia aims a kick at her head but Bianka dodges it, catching her by the foot and throwing her halfway across the room. Pia rolls elegantly to her feet, her knife flashing in her hand now. Bianka places herself between Pia and the trapdoor. Between Pia and me.

“Hurry,” she says to me.

I tie the tapestry rope to the table leg with shaking hands. Once it is as secure as I can make it, I throw the rope down into the little room. Bianka and Pia are on the floor now. For a moment Bianka has Pia pinned. She is the stronger of the two, but Pia's agility and speed outdo her easily. With a twist she is out from under Bianka, dealing her a lethal-looking kick to the head. Gennady is dragging himself toward them. I can't watch. I pray the rotten tapestries will hold, and I swing down into the room, where Theo stands screaming blue murder on his little bed.

“Hold on to me,” I tell him. “We'll go get your mama.”

Poor Theo doesn't seem to remember it was me who took him away, or at least he doesn't understand that this is all my fault. He stops screaming.

“Lala!” he says, his little voice hoarse and trembling.

“That's right, it's Ella,” I say, and pick him up. He is wearing the same clothes I last saw him in, fouled, reeking of shit and piss. He is filthy and rumpled and thinner than a few days ago, his eyes red-rimmed and his nose crusted with snot. I think it will crush my heart, the way he looks at me, the way he wraps his arms around my neck.

“Hold on tight,” I say, and he does. I begin to haul us up the rope, arm over arm. I am barely a quarter of the way before I feel as if my arms will give out. I am sweating, and I can feel his little arms sliding against my damp neck.

“Don't let go,” I grind out, to him or to myself, I'm not sure. I keep going. My hands burn. My arms burn. But there is the trapdoor, and with reserves of strength I'd been sure halfway up I didn't have, I pull us through it.

Gennady lies in a great golden heap, both his legs broken. Bianka has fared somewhat better and is still standing, but bleeding heavily from her side. As we emerge she lands a blow to the side of Pia's head that sends Pia staggering. I think it must be the first blow she has struck, for Pia begins to weave, retreat, dodge, trying to gather herself again. Bianka is too slowed to hit her again but does not stop trying to corner her, swinging her fists, unafraid of the knife.

“Mama!” Theo cries, trying to run to her. I grab him and put him under the table.

“Hush, hush,” I whisper. “Your mama is very busy. You're all right now. Just sit tight and don't move, do you hear me?”

He stares at me, wide-eyed. I pull out my knife and vanish, counting on the blur of movement in the room to help hide me. I make straight for the grappling form that is Pia and Bianka. Bianka shoves Pia against the wall, and Pia kicks out, sending her reeling backward, stumbling to the ground. I come at Pia from the side and shove my knife deep into her belly.

It goes in so easily, through the leather, through her body. Right up to the hilt. She doubles over it. Dizzy with the horror and strangeness of putting a knife into someone's flesh, I pull the blade out and bring the hilt smashing down on her goggles as hard as I can. The lenses shatter, and she screams. I turn tail and run. Pia makes chase, her own knife still in her hand. She is following the sound of me, or for all I know the smell of me, blind or nearly blind with the goggles smashed. I leap right over the opening of the trapdoor, holding my breath and praying I've jumped far enough to make it over. I hit the ground on the other side and relief floods me. Pia staggers straight into it and falls with a terrible cry. Quick as I can, I pull up the tapestries, and as I do so I hear a sickening thud as she hits the ground. I don't want to look, but I can't help it. She lies there, a tangle of black, my nightmare reflection at the bottom of a pit. I think she must be dead until I hear her voice.

“Don't leave me here, Julia.”

I slam the trapdoor closed and shut the bolt.

Baby Theo is in Bianka's arms, weeping and babbling into her neck. She clutches him close, rocking back and forth, bleeding all over him. I go to Gennady, broken and grimacing on the floor.