Julia Vanishes (7 page)

The next time I smelled that same smell was when Dek had the Scourge. I remember her bent over his bed, her childish scrawl on the sheets of paper scattered across the floor, the inkpot nearly empty. She was whispering something over and over again while she wrote, and the smell of burnt cardamom was so heavy in the air I could hardly breathe. She sent me for more ink. I had no money, and she told me to steal some, so I did. Then she sent me away, to the aunt in the country.

When I came back, Dek was half-blind and crippled, but he was still Dek, and still alive. My mother too was changed. Whatever she'd done to save his life, it had taken something from her, and she did not recover. She was thin and faded and quiet, a shadow of her former self. I suppose I knew the truth by then, but I didn't allow it to the front of my thoughts. Witches were evil, and my mother was not evil.

But my mother
was
a witch. A few months later, Agoston Horthy offered a reward of ten silver freyns to anyone turning over a witch. This was an outlandish sum for most in our neighborhood, and there were Cleansings every week for a time. I don't know who turned her in. The soldiers came in the night, filling our flat, hauling her out of bed. One of them knocked out my tooth when I tried to stop them. I lay in Dek's arms, swallowing mouthfuls of my own blood, and watched them hold the flame to her arm. She stood motionless, casting only one unreadable look at us when they dragged her away down the stairs.

Our father sobbed, and did nothing, and disappeared from our lives the next day. We never saw him again. I suppose he only hung around for her and not for us, which ought not to have come as a surprise, but you never really expect a parent to abandon you, no matter how useless a parent he might be.

The next time I saw her was on a barge like the one today, still in her nightgown, before a shouting, hateful crowd. She didn't tremble or fight. She searched the crowd, maybe for Dek and me, but did not see us. They threw her overboard and the river closed over her and my screams were lost in the rising chorus of cheers.

Chloe throws up on the low path as soon as we get off the little boat. Afterward, she stays crouched there, weeping.

“You ought not to be upset,” Florence tells her harshly. “The will of the Nameless One was done! They were evil things, and we've rid the earth of them! It's no good pitying them.”

“I don't,” sobs Chloe. “I don't!”

Florence herself is white as a sheet, not quite as hard as she'd like to think herself.

“It shakes you up, the first time,” I say.

Florence looks rather relieved at this.

“Do you hear that?” she says to Chloe. “It's quite normal to be upset. Do pull yourself together.”

“Perhaps we ought to get some more hot buns,” I say wistfully, but none of us has any money and I can hardly pick a pocket right in front of them.

“Have you seen many Cleansings?” asks Florence.

“I go to all of them,” I answer without thinking.

She looks impressed and asks me something, but I don't hear her. I feel as if somebody has run me straight through the heart with a bayonet. For there on the street above, I've just seen Wyn. Just for a moment, a flash—laughing Wyn with a bottle of something in his hand and a black-haired girl on his arm. I recognize her too: Arly Winters, the herbalist's lazy daughter. She is supposed to be learning that profession, but instead she poses for art classes with no clothes on. She has dimples and an enviable figure.

“Come on,” I say, pulling Chloe up by the arm. I hurry up the stairs, and the two of them follow, calling after me to wait. Out in the street, I can't see him. I push through the crowd, looking about wildly, heart thumping, but it's no good. I tell myself I imagined it. I've lost Chloe and Florence, so I steal another bun. Still, I can't slow the painful
thump thump thump
ing in my chest. Wyn and Arly? No. No.
Thump. Thump.

I should get back to the house and see who Mrs. Och has visiting, why she wanted us out of the way. As the crowd thins, I hear a policeman saying to a gentleman in a dark suit, “…should have been nine of them.”

“You can't mean one of them escaped from Hostorak?” says the man. I slow my step, edging closer.

“Not from Hostorak. On the way to the river! They switched her off somehow. Some ordinary girl all in chains, declaring her innocence. One guard realized he didn't recognize her, held a match to her and burn she did. They're still holding her, trying to figure out what happened. But they're one witch down for now.”

“Unbelievable!” says the man in the suit.

“It was something unnatural, all right,” says the cop. “No way it could have happened, else. They're under guard from the prison to the boat, watched every second.”

“Speaks to the importance of drowning every last forsaken one of them, doesn't it?” says the man. “They get organized again and there's no telling what they'll do! We'd all end up their slaves, by the holies!”

“Terrifying things, aren't they,” mutters the cop.

I walk the rest of the way back to Mikall Street. The streets are quiet now, most people still milling about by the river. From the front, Mrs. Och's house looks rather forbidding, gray stone and a black iron gate, windows like cold, reflecting eyes, door shut to me. I slip through the gate and over to the side door, next to the outdoor privy, letting myself into the scullery. The house is still and silent, the scullery cold. I expect to find visitors in the parlor, but it's empty. Climbing the stairs, I hear voices coming from Mrs. Och's reading room.

The door is closed. I go and put my eye to the keyhole, but I can't see much besides Professor Baranyi's trousered legs.

“…a letter for my friend in Tulles,” Mrs. Och is saying. “From there, she can make arrangements to get you across the border.”

A muffled voice protesting.

“They do speak Fraynish in Sinter,” says Professor Baranyi, his voice clearest, as he is closest to the door. “It's colder than Frayne, but the capital, Zurt, is a lovely city, and you will be safer there—that is the most important thing.”

Again the muffled voice, upset. Mrs. Och replies this time, but I only catch snatches. Something about contacts, and help. Then somebody inside is coming to the door. I spring back against the wall, vanishing myself as quickly as I can. Frederick comes out, a middle-aged woman in a gray shawl on his arm, her eyes red-rimmed.

“It will be all right, Mrs. Sandor,” he tells her quietly as they pass me. “They seem strange and brusque, I know, but they have done this before, and they are good people. You'll be taken care of.”

Professor Baranyi follows, closing the door behind him. Mrs. Och remains in her reading room, and so I go downstairs and make myself something to eat in the scullery. Frederick goes out and returns some time later in an electric hackney. The woman, dressed quite finely now and holding a ruffled carrying case like a wealthy lady off on holiday, is bundled into the hackney, and it glides quickly and soundlessly away.

Mrs. Sandor.
Jahara
Sandor—Hostorak 15c.

If Mrs. Och is smuggling witches out of the country, I'll need some proof of it beyond what I've just overheard. I remember the lists of names and places in Professor Baranyi's study. I will have something impressive to put down in my next report, but the thought gives me no pleasure. I beg off my evening duties, claiming a headache, and go to bed early, but I can't sleep. I lie on my cot and stare at the peeling paint on the ceiling, imagining my mother whisked away to safety in Zurt. We might have joined her there. I push the thought away and instead wonder, why Zurt? Are the laws different in Sinter? I'd thought witchcraft to be punishable by death across the whole of New Poria, an alliance of nations formed after the Magic Wars. I will have to ask Esme about it.

I am still awake when Florence and Chloe come to bed, Florence muttering about how some people like to take it easy. I lie awake half the night, thinking of the witches who drowned today and Jahara Sandor's setting off in the hackney, saved from that fate, it would seem, by Mrs. Och. Over and over, I think of the way Frederick held Mrs. Sandor's arm in the hallway, the kindness in his voice when he spoke to her—like she was just a woman, and not loathsome, not evil, not at all to be feared.

T
he innkeeper looks over the account book, reading the same page twice without taking it in, before he sighs and closes it. He is thinking about the woman who left today with her baby. He'd fetched Jensen, his regular driver, to take her, though she would not say where she was going. He would ask Jensen later. “I need someone I can trust,” she'd said. Now the sun has gone down, but he is still thinking of her with an odd sadness he can't place. Perhaps he'd gone a bit sweet on her. She was very pretty. No ring on her finger, despite her having the little boy.

The front door blows open with a bang, and the wind comes howling in, sending his papers flying. He gathers the pages and finds among them a folded piece of notepaper. It has her scent on it. For a moment he dares hope it might be a message to him, something saying where to find her. He unfolds it, his heart beating a little faster. Another great gust of wind comes, and he hurries to the door to shut it. But in the doorway, he stops. The street is quiet, the moon rising above the rooftops, almost full. It is a clear night, bearing winter's chill. He is cold in his shirt, and yet something compels him to step out into the quiet street. His inn is brightly lit and inviting, with its great fire blazing in the hearth, he notes with satisfaction from outdoors. Almost empty now, though. Not many travelers this time of year.

He walks to the end of the street, shivering, and turns the corner. Not so far to walk to the river, see if there's any ice yet. He should fetch his coat. He should go indoors and finish the accounting. He walks down the street, whistling a little, then stops.

There is someone under the streetlamp. Something.

“What the…”

A blade in a black-furred hand. Soft black feet, like great cat paws, walking toward him. But walking upright, like a man.

“Nameless One, protect me,” he whispers, unable to move, even as the thing draws close, towering over him, even as it grasps the back of his neck and raises the blade to his forehead. The piece of notepaper flutters from his hand to the ground:

Forget me

W
hen I get to the library with coffee for Frederick, wondering if it is more painful to sit there and pretend to read poorly or to clean the inside of the grandfather clock on the landing, he is wearing his coat and putting a piece of paper into the pocket.

“Oh,” I say, feigning disappointment. “Are we not reading today?”

He looks up as if I've startled him, but he always looks that way.

“I'm so sorry, Ella—I've got to run an errand for the professor,” he says. The way he says it, a little grudgingly, I smell an opportunity.

“Let me do it,” I say. “Heaven knows you have more than enough to do as it is.”

He grins. “That's kind, Ella. But really, I must go. It's a ways from here.”

“All the more reason you ought to let
me
go,” I press. “I thought you were trying to finish that history of Old Poria this week?”

I know all of Frederick's private pet projects now. He is passionate about history and language study and longs for more time to read. If he could give up sleeping and eating, he would.

He hesitates, and I push on.

“I'm feeling so cooped up today, you'd be doing me a favor! I'll run the errand for you, and you just hole up in your room and get some work of your own done. You deserve the break, Frederick; you're much too busy.”

He shakes his head. “Really, you can't, Ella. It's…I've got to go to East Spira. It's not a nice area.”

“I know the Edge,” I say boldly. “My family is in Jepta now, but we lived in Spira City for years before moving out there.”

“Did you?” he looks astounded. “I took you for a country girl.”

Well, the more fool you, then.

“I suppose I am, at heart,” I say, laughing. “But I know Spira well enough, and I know my way around the Edge. Nobody will bother me. I'll be in and out as quick as you please. You're the one who'd look out of place there.”

“You hardly fit in there either!” he protested. “A pretty, fresh-faced girl like you!”

And then he blushes. I hold my hand out for the paper. “Go on, we'll be doing each other a favor. Tell me what the errand is.”

He relents. Poor Frederick, such an easy target, always.

“There's a parcel for the professor at an alchemist's shop,” he says. “This is the address—can you read it?”

I frown at the paper. “I know the number,” I say. “What's this? Fi-ling-ton…”

“Fillington Street, the Adder's Switch,” he rushes in, like he always does. “Just tell them you're there for the professor and they'll give it to you. Oh heavens, I'm not sure— Is it safe for a girl?”

“It's broad daylight!” I laugh at him. “You don't think there are girls in the Edge?”

After a bit more of my teasing and persuading, he gives me the scrap of paper and money for a hackney. I tell Florence I'm running an errand for Frederick and her eyes nearly drop out of her head, but what can she say? On Lirabon Avenue I flag down a hackney pulled by a miserable-looking gray horse. Freed from the day's drudgery, neither pretending to read poorly nor cleaning a clock, I hum all the way out to the Edge.

The Edge squats in a little dip between sprawling Limory Cemetery and the Twist. Most of the streets are so narrow that a hackney can't even fit down them. Unlike the Twist, with its hustle and bustle and smells, the Edge always feels deserted. You see faces at windows sometimes, but they disappear fast when you look at them. People in the streets keep their heads down. Nobody smiles or stops to chat. Nobody shouts rude comments from windows. It is quiet, and damp, and full of rats.

At the alchemist's shop, a pale young man with black hair and blisters around his nostrils opens the door and stares at me.

“I'm here for Professor Baranyi,” I say. When he just keeps looking at me blankly, I add, “I'm supposed to pick something up for him.”

“Hold on,” he says, and slams the door on me.

I stand shivering, holding my coat around me. A light snow begins to fall, the first snow of the winter. I look up into it as the sparse white flakes quickly become a flurry. Some movement to my left startles me, and I flatten against the wall, ready to disappear.

It is a boy, no more than nine or ten. His coat is poorly patched and his boots have holes in them. He has a scruff of gingery uncombed hair and freckles across his nose. He's been in a fight recently, earning him a cut lip and a black eye.

“You work for that lady in the Scola?” he asks.

“Who's asking?”

“I got a message for her. I tried to go to the house yesterday, but the police told me to get back across the river.”

“I'm not surprised,” I say, looking him over. “You've got the Edge written all over you. Was it a cop gave you that busted lip?”

He shrugs.

“Who is the message from?”

He frowns suddenly, as if confused. “I dunno, someone at the inn—I don't remember, but it was for the lady in the Scola. I heard she sends her people out here for things.”

Are the professor's orders a subject of gossip in the Edge? Perhaps the alchemist's boy has a big mouth, and I wonder if I should tell Frederick this. But then, who am I trying to protect them from? It's rather a silly idea, if you think about it, since I'm as likely to be their undoing as anyone.

“Well, give me the message,” I say. “I'll take it to my mistress.”

The boy hands me a sealed envelope and waits for a tip. I give him a penny and ask him, “Who do you work for?”

“I run messages for Morris at the Red Bear in Forrestal, him and his customers,” he says, and then scampers off when I give him another penny.

I tuck the letter into my coat and bang on the door again. It swings open right away and the boy with the blistered nostrils peers out, giving me a baleful look.

“Well?” I say.

He hands me a brown parcel and slams the door again. Just the sort of exuberant fellow you so often encounter out here.

The snow is coming down hard now, but I've got another stop to make.

On the slope between the Edge and the Twist, there is a shoe shop. A picture of a boot hangs outside it, and inside, you can be fitted for a pair of custom-made shoes or boots at a very reasonable price. The workshop is clean and smells of leather. Repairs can be done on the spot. In a small room at the back of the shop, a kettle is always hot on the stove. Fresh coffee is either ready to be drunk or in the process of being made. Warm, soft rolls come out of the little oven.

The shop is quiet, but I can smell the coffee and the bread. I make for the door at the back and tap lightly with my knuckles.

“Come in.”

It is an extraordinary voice, neither male nor female but somewhere in between, and it is attached to an extraordinary person. I first heard that voice some months after my mother was drowned. I was stealing apples in the market when it rumbled behind me: “You have an interesting talent, my girl.” I spun around and looked up into a face that had almost folded right in on itself, a swarthy mass of wrinkles and creases, fringed by a mane of wild silver hair. Nobody should have been able to
see
me. But Liddy could.

“I've been talking to people,” she'd gone on. (I have been given to understand that Liddy is a woman, though I might not have guessed it myself.) “I've some employment in mind for you and your brother.”

She had seemed to know all about us. I got used to that, eventually—how Liddy seemed to know everything and everyone. My curiosity about her has become almost a game between us, but she never really tells me anything, and I do not know why
she
can see me when I vanish, while others can't. I have asked her, of course, but she only says that perhaps she is better at looking than most people.

She came to Spira City, so she says, the year after the Lorian Uprising, though she does not say where she came from. The very day she spied me thieving in the market, she brought us to Esme, and Esme opened her home to us, maybe just because Liddy said it was a good idea. Later, Esme told me, “I've known Liddy as long as you've been alive, and if she says a thing is so, it's likely to be so.” If she is the subject of gossip hereabouts, it is gossip without malice, for she has done many a good turn for those down on their luck.

“I thought I might see you today,” says Liddy when I come in, brushing snow off my sleeves. She is resting in her rocking chair, still wearing her leather apron and smelling of shoe polish. “Isn't that odd? Sometimes I feel as if we are acting in cycles, or patterns. We think we are free to choose whatever course we wish, but a certain pattern holds us, keeps us to our set course, and we do not vary it. It brings us around to the same places, again and again, to the same feelings, over and over. Here you are, and I, expecting you for some reason I do not know. Could be a coincidence. I don't want to give up on the idea of free will—what would I make of my life, if I didn't believe in my own choices?”

It's hard to know what Liddy is talking about sometimes.

“Hello,” I say.

Liddy chuckles, a deep growl of a sound.

“You are hungry, I expect. Help yourself.”

I devour a couple of the fresh rolls and pour myself a cup of coffee. Liddy has the best coffee in Spira City, though she is secretive about her source.

“Do you mind if I use your kettle?” I ask. “I need to open a letter.”

“Ah,” says Liddy. “Your new job.”

“Yes. Have you heard of Mrs. Och, in the Scola?”

“Philanthropic, eccentric,” says Liddy vaguely. “Old.”

I steam the envelope open and take out the letter.

“Have you pen and paper? I should copy this down.”

Liddy fetches me an old-fashioned quill pen, a pot of ink, paper, and a blotter. I sit myself at the table and set about diligently copying down the letter the messenger boy gave me.

Dear Mrs. Och,

You do not know me, but I know of you from your brother Gennady. I am mother to his son, and he once told me that if ever I needed help, I could ask you for assistance. He said you would not judge me and I hope that he is right. My son and I are in terrible danger. I have arrived in Spira City but I dare not stay in one place for long. Today I go to Madam Loretta's in East Spira. You may send me a reply there. When I move on, I will be sure to return for any messages. Pray you, help me.

Bianka Betine