Julia Vanishes (9 page)

“Wyn! Could she really?” At once, I forget my jealousy and fear. Of course he wasn't with Arly, not like that. They were with Ren as well, and a spot in an art class could change everything for him.

“I don't know. You know how she talks. But I'm wondering if I'd want to do it, anyway.”

“Well, why wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be an amazing opportunity?”

“I'm not sure,” he says. “That's the thing. Real artists get apprenticeships at studios or find a mentor, right? These sorts of classes are really just a way for less successful artists to make some money. Rich boys who can draw a bit paying for some technical training that won't really get them anywhere, you know?”

“It might be a place to start, though,” I suggest.

“Lorka did it all on his own,” he says, not looking at me. He goes and sits down on the edge of the bed. I follow and sit next to him.

There are a few things Wyn only talks about in the dark, when we can't see each other's faces. One of them is the seven years he spent in an orphanage just outside the city. The other is his dream of being an artist—a real artist, like his hero, Emil Lorka. This is the first time he has spoken of it to me by daylight.

“That's true,” I say carefully. “But there might be a hundred other Lorkas that nobody has ever heard of because they thought they were too good for art classes.”

He laughs, and I'm relieved. “Well, I didn't tell her no, but it got me thinking. I've been trying for over a year to get an apprenticeship at Lorka's studio, but when I tried to buy a spot after that last museum job, his assistant told me outright that they weren't taking a known thief. He's probably never even mentioned me to Lorka. I thought if I just went to his studio and showed him some of my drawings…well, it might not do any good, but if he liked them, maybe…who knows….” He trails off, not daring to say out loud his dearest hope, and my heart gives a painful squeeze of sympathy.

Lorka is one of the only famous artists in Frayne to have risen to prominence without sponsorship from the Crown. He paints the city as it is, not as the well-to-do see it: the widows, orphans, and Scourge survivors, the derelict buildings, the painted whores and opium addicts, the starving dogs, along with ruthless, excruciating self-portraits slashed upon the canvas like an assault of paint. He built his own studio in the Scola a few years back and takes on one or two students a year. Wyn sees his own world in Lorka's work, and a good deal of himself in Lorka, no doubt. I know he hopes that Lorka might see some of his youthful self in Wyn, a boy with no connections and a gift for capturing real life. But where Lorka's work is all pain, mauled out with heavy paint and blazing color, Wyn's light charcoal sketches are alive with joy and a wicked humor that no amount of hardship has been able to drive out of him. I may not know a thing about art, but I'd take Wyn's drawings of barefoot kids playing jacks over Lorka's miserable, hunched widows any day. That said, a mentorship with Lorka would mean a real career as an artist, and as far as I'm concerned, it's far preferable to a class that involves drawing pictures of naked Arly Winters. I don't think Lorka does nudes.

“Can you do that?” I ask. “Just…go to his studio?”

“Well, I'd have to hang around and wait for him to come in or out,” he says. “Is that a terrible idea? I know it's bad form to accost an artist in the street, but if anyone can understand how hard it is to get a break without money or connections, it'll be Lorka.”

“It's worth a try,” I say. “What's the worst that can happen?”

He forces a laugh. “I suppose my dignity isn't worth much.”

“Bah, who needs dignity,” I say, kissing him playfully.

He kisses me back, and there is nothing playful about his kiss.

“I have to go,” I whisper, but his arms wrap around me and everything else falls away from me fast. When Wyn draws the Twist, he makes all the ugliness, filth, and poverty beautiful somehow—this is his gift, his magic: to transform with love. And he works this magic on me as well, so that when he touches me, my horrible dress and uncombed hair are nothing, nothing at all to the beauty he draws forth. I am not the same Julia—motherless, broke, badly dressed, a crook. In his arms, for a short while at least, I am perfect.

I
n a windowless room far from anywhere, a man lies dreaming. A yellow serum works through his veins. The room is lit with amber lights. His only companion is a squat, hunchbacked woman with sad eyes and fair hair fading to gray. She watches him, a syringe in her hand.

Some hours later, the woman steps out onto a balcony. Below, ridged gray waves come rolling in from the horizon. The sky is stormy. A man watches the sea, his back to her. He is wearing a silk robe that catches the wind, and his feet are bare. His hands are clasped behind his back, fingers rich with rings.

She clears her throat, but he does not turn around. You would have to know her well to read correctly the tightness around her mouth or the single furrow in her brow. Perhaps nobody knows her that well.

“My lord.”

“You haven't found it,” he says. “What use are you to me, Shey, if you cannot find what I seek?”

“It is not there to be found,” she says. “He has no shadow.”

“That is impossible,” he says.

“What he has done with it and how, I cannot yet tell,” she says. “Even in his dreams, his secrets are hiding. But I can find them out.”

“His shadow,” says the man, his voice rising.

“He has no shadow,” the hunchback he called Shey repeats levelly. “Forget his shadow. It has become something else.”

“How? What?”

“I don't know. But I think I know who has it.”

He turns to face her.

“A woman,” she says. “A beautiful woman from Nim. The mother of his son.”

“Gennady has a son?”

She raises an eyebrow. “I imagine he has many. But he is hiding this woman deep inside him. She is his secret.”

“Then get me her name.”

“Yes, my lord.”

I
lie in the dark and listen to the awful shrieking of Florence's cot as she tosses and turns, until I can't bear it any longer.

“Would you lie still?” I say crossly.

“Sorry,” she mutters, and there is a minute of blessed silence.

Today we had to beat out all the bedding, and I am beyond exhausted. I think I may strangle Florence if she makes another peep.

But peep she does.

“Why have you been to so many Cleansings?” she asks me.

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm trying to sleep.”

“But I mean, being from Jepta. Did you come into the city specially? Wasn't that very costly?”

Ah. She has me there. I'd forgotten my cover that afternoon, a stupid mistake.

“I came in to sell my mother's wares,” I say. “Jepta wool is well known in Spira City, and she makes beautiful dyed shawls and other garments. We'd always come to the city if there was a festival, or something like a Cleansing that would draw a great crowd.”

Florence seems satisfied enough by that, but thinking so quickly of an explanation has pulled me further from the sleep I'm longing for, which is annoying.

“I wonder how long it takes to drown,” she says thoughtfully.

“A minute or so at most, I expect,” I say. I don't like to say how often I've wondered this myself. Liddy told me it doesn't take long, and that those who have almost drowned describe a moment of peace when they ceased to struggle, unconsciousness coming painlessly. I think Liddy would not lie, but perhaps it is different for witches. Perhaps it takes longer; perhaps they suffer more.

“They didn't look the way I expected,” Florence adds.

“Who, the witches?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Witches look like everybody else,” I say, thinking that sometimes she seems much younger than eighteen, much younger than me. “That's why it's hard to find them.”

“That seems wrong,” says Florence. “They
aren't
like everybody else. They have evil magic in them. They shouldn't look like ordinary people.”

I want to say snidely that I'll pass that suggestion along to the Nameless One, but it would be blasphemous and I don't know how she'd take it.

“Do you think they know that they're witches when they're born?” asks Chloe. Her voice is rough, as if she'd been asleep. We probably woke her, though I'm amazed she was able to fall asleep in the first place with Florence rolling around on the screaming cot.

“I don't imagine so,” I say.

“So how do they find out?” asks Chloe.

“They must know they are evil as soon as they can know anything,” says Florence with conviction. “They worship the Dark Ones, by all the holies!”

“But witch babies don't worship the Dark Ones, not when they're newborn,” says Chloe logically. “Does anyone who decides to worship the Dark Ones
become
a witch? Or do witches naturally decide to worship the Dark Ones and that's when they find out they're witches? Scripture says that we are all born pure.”

“That's
people,
not witches,” scoffs Florence, and I think of the young girls I've seen, terrified and screaming on the barge,
I didn't mean it; I didn't mean to,
before being tossed into the river. “A witch is born a witch, you ninny. They have no souls!”

“They looked like people,” says Chloe softly.

“But they were witches,” says Florence.

I roll over onto my side, the bed howling beneath me, trying to shut them out. I think about Wyn, his eyes up close, his lashes nearly touching mine when he says
Look at me—look at me.

“What if they don't want to be witches?”

This from Chloe, followed by an angry snort from Florence. I pull the covers over my ears.

My reading lessons with Frederick have built a certain flexibility into the day. There is now a set time when I am accounted for and Florence does not expect me. It is not long, half an hour at most, but that is long enough.

“I can't do it today,” I tell him. “There's far too much to do.”

He looks crestfallen.

“Tomorrow, I promise,” I tell him.

“Well, never mind,” he says. “If you're busy.”

“Yes. Well, it will give you time for your own work too,” I say.

“Yes,” he says sadly. Funny how he looks forward to our lessons. I think it would be impossibly dull trying to teach some poor illiterate to read. Then again, I am an astonishingly quick student. Frederick has declared me extremely intelligent, and said it was proof that class has nothing to do with intelligence. Or beauty, he added, and then blushed. It's very convenient, his coming to fancy me. It's not terribly surprising, though, given that he's twenty-one and the only females he ever sees are Mrs. Och, Florence, Chloe, and me.

I leave him in the library and wait in the hall, vanished, until he leaves with the books he'd readied for our session. Then I dart to the third-floor landing just to make sure I can still hear the sloshing and humming of Mrs. Och taking her bath, which she always does after breakfast. I scrubbed it out yesterday, climbing right inside to do so, and wondered what it would be like to sit in warm water up to your neck. She should be another quarter of an hour, I am guessing. The grandfather clock ticks at me scoldingly, but I stick my tongue out at it and hurry back down to the second floor.

The door to Mrs. Och's reading room is unlocked. I slip in and close it behind me. It is an ordinary sort of room, and quite bare compared to the professor's study, with a writing desk by the window, a comfortable chair to sit in, and a number of books on the shelves, no more than that. I search her desk first. It is locked, but the lock is a weak one and I get it open quickly. Her account book reveals little upon first glance, besides the fact that she is very rich, which I knew already. She has her own shorthand or code, and I cannot make out the purchases, only the amounts. Looking more closely at the dates, however, I can see that she spends large quantities in bursts, including cabling money abroad. This week she put out a princely sum and cabled money to Zurt. Lucky Jahara Sandor, I assume. Besides the account book, she has a notebook full of addresses all over New Poria and beyond, some attractive stationery still tied in a ribbon, and a bundle of maps. The map of Frayne is marked up with lines and circles and stars, none of which mean anything to me, and there are other maps too, of unfamiliar cities and countries. If all this is related to the smuggling of witches, then she runs quite the operation.

Tucked into the account book are some folded newspaper clippings. I flatten them out on the desk and look at them. They are murder reports. The governess on the bridge by Cyrambel, the cabriolet driver in Limory Cemetery, and a new one, dated yesterday:
KILLER STRIKES AGAIN! RED BEAR INNKEEPER FOUND DEAD IN FORRESTAL.
The messenger boy who gave me the letter from Bianka said he worked for Morris at the Red Bear in Forrestal. I tuck the clippings back into the account book, feeling slightly sick, remembering how the professor had seemed to think the murderer had something to do with Mrs. Och.
He is looking for someone,
she'd said. And here is Bianka Betine, newly arrived in Spira City, just like the killer. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but I think not.

At the back of the account book, there is a loose sheaf of paper—an unfinished letter, it appears. I draw it out and scan it quickly.

Casimir,

What have you done? What can you be thinking? I do not wish to believe it of you, but I can think of no other explanation for the Gethin. You do not answer my letters anymore; the green lake has dried up; my tree is gone. If you are behind this, I fear you have gone mad, or worse.

I hear someone at the door and startle; I hadn't heard footsteps in the hall. Panicked, I put everything back in the drawer and pull back quickly—much too quickly, overshooting that familiar pocket of invisible space. The room fades. Where am I; where am I? For one terrible, dizzying moment, I can see the room from every direction as Mrs. Och comes through the door. Then I find myself again, my own two feet, but I am standing over by the window now. I am trembling violently—I have a feeling, now, about the awful nothingness that lies behind me when I vanish.

Mrs. Och looks right at me, and my blood freezes.

“What are you doing here, Ella?”

For once, I am completely at a loss for words. I stare at her. She should
not
be able to see me. She raises an eyebrow.

Pull yourself together, Julia, I tell myself harshly.

“Florence said you wanted to see me,” I blurt, easing myself back into the visible room, so she comes clearer. It's a bad lie, a very bad lie. Too easy to disprove.

“Did she?” says Mrs. Och, frowning and raising a hand to her temple, as if she has a headache.

I nod miserably. I don't like getting caught. I also can't understand
how
I got caught, let alone how I ended up crossing the room without actually, well,
crossing the room.

“I gave her no such instruction,” she says, reaching for the bell at the door that she uses to call the housemaids.

“Don't do that, ma'am,” I say hurriedly. “I think I've been a fool. I think she was playing a joke on me.”

“Odd sort of joke,” says Mrs. Och. I cannot read her voice or face at all. It makes me nervous.

“She said I should go wait for you and shut the door,” I say. “She's trying to get me in trouble, I suppose. She won't admit to it, ma'am; I know she won't. She doesn't like me. I do my best here, but she doesn't like me.”

“And why is that?” asks Mrs. Och, looking suddenly very old and tired. She makes her way to her desk. I am gambling wildly that she has enough on her mind, what with smuggling witches and whatever else she's up to, and won't want to bother with a dispute between housemaids.

“I don't know, ma'am,” I say, adopting an irritating sort of drone just shy of a whine. “I'm not quite fitting in, I reckon. I know some of these city girls look down on those of us from the villages. But it doesn't matter; I'm sure it was just a little joke. I'd rather pretend it never happened. If that's all right with you, ma'am.”

She waves a hand dismissively, and I am out of the room like a shot, heart pounding.
What just happened?
I run down the stairs and nearly trip right over Mr. Darius's writhing form on the ground.

“Sir!” I shout.

He rolls onto his back. His face is a terrifying white-gray, exactly like a marble statue that has been exposed to a good deal of weather. There is a grayish foam coating his lips. He bares his teeth at me.

“They are killing me,” he hisses.

My mind darts immediately to the rifolta I fetched for Professor Baranyi from the alchemist's shop in the Edge.

“What? Who?” I fall on my knees next to him, feel his forehead. He is cold, very cold.

“Pretenders and murderers!” he raves. “We can help you, they say; we can make it right. Then they feed me poison and what do they care? I can't go on this way!”

“I'll get help,” I say, starting to rise, but he grabs my wrist, pulls me close to him, so I can smell his acrid breath. His eyes are wild, rolling, and the grip on my wrist is shockingly strong for a man who cannot stand up.

“Help me,” he whispers. “I have to get home. My
daughter.
This place is unnatural.”

“You are very cold, sir,” I say, frightened now. “Come into the scullery, by the stove. I'll warm you up.”

I manage to help him to his feet, and he leans heavily on me, lurching on trembling limbs. I sit him down in the scullery and stoke the oven with coal so it blazes hotter.

“I hear them in the night; I hear everything in the night,” he mutters. “It is not natural. Misery. They deal in misery, girl. You should flee. Where is your father?”