Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (3 page)

“Sink trap cleaned out?”

“Ayah, sir.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Blue Duck.”

“Be back by eleven. Dismissed.” He turned his stare back to the fire.

Eleven! This was outrageous! During the school year, my curfew was at eleven. Now that I was on vacation, surely I should have a later evening. I wailed, “Poppy! It’s almost eight now. Weatherhead, the opening act, doesn’t even go on until nine. Udo and I won’t get to see the main act if I have to be back by eleven.”

The needles continued to click. Poppy didn’t answer. I longed for the days when I could do anything I wanted. So what of a clean house and yummy chow if I had to live like a prisoner?
Sometimes by the time you get it, you don’t want it anymore,
said Nini Mo. Pigface, was she right!

I tried to sound calm and adultlike. “Poppy, it’s not fair. It’s the holidays—there’s no school tomorrow—I don’t have to get up.”

The floor wiggled under my feet. For a second, I thought,
Too much cake at dinner!
But then the dogs jerked up in alarm, and Flynnie let out a sharp yelp. The shaking was not just me.

The room filled with rattling: pictures clacking against the wall, glasses jingling against each other. The floor vibrated as though somewhere a giant was energetically dancing the mazurka. I lurched toward the doorway the dogs dove under the coffee table, and Flynnie launched onto Poppy’s lap. A loud grinding rumble drowned out the rattling.

An earthquake! And the second one of the week. The City has always been susceptible to shaking, but recently these tremors had become more frequent. I clutched the doorjamb, watching a spider-crack appear in the ceiling. Doorways are supposed to be the safest place in an earthquake, but Crackpot was so rickety that safety was probably relative. Poppy clutched Flynnie and continued to stare at the fire, whose flames were dancing as though blown by wind. Then, suddenly, the trembler stopped. It had seemed forever, but probably was only a few seconds. Other than the thin crack in the ceiling plaster, everything was all right.

Poppy hadn’t moved from the settee. Now, as though nothing had happened, he said, “All right, Flora. It is true you are on vacation. Be home by midnight. But not a minute later, do you understand? We have an early day tomorrow. I want to go over
Hardel’s Tactics
before lunch.”

“Ayah, Poppy” I sighed. If he could be nonchalant about the fact that Crackpot had just about fallen down upon us, well then, so could I.

“Did you feel that?” Mamma demanded from the doorway. “I was almost squashed by a stack of redboxes. Everyone all right?”

“Ayah, Buck, we are fine,” Poppy answered.

“These earthquakes, they are beginning to be worrisome. That one last week really rattled the Baker Cliffs. We are going to lose Baker Battery if this keeps up.”

“That would be terrible, Buck,” Poppy murmured.

Mamma shot him a Look. “Baker Battery is one of the City’s first lines of defense, Hotspur.”

I did not care about Baker Battery. I cared about my curfew, so I jumped in. “Mamma, it’s the first night of term break—”

“Is it? Lucky girl to get a holiday. I wish I had a holiday” Mamma perched on the fire-fender and looked longingly at Poppy’s ashtray. She quit smoking some years ago, but I know she still misses it. (I also know she packs in the snus when she thinks no one is looking.) “I hope you have fun plans. I’ve been wrestling all evening with the seating chart for the Warlord’s Birthday Ball and I can’t think of anything that is less fun than that.”

“I’m going to a show with Udo, but Poppy says I have to be back by midnight, and it’s already eight—”

Mamma frowned. “I hope you are not trying to circumvent Hotspur’s authority, Flora.”

“But it’s not fair, Mamma,” I complained.

“Your father is in charge of household matters, Flora, and I will not second-guess him. Don’t try to jump the chain of command.”

Chain of command
—was Mamma joking? Judging from her face, she was not. In fact, she looked very grumpy Recently Mamma had been a real bear; she really did need a holiday.

“Every minute you waste arguing, Flora, is a minute you lose from your show,” Poppy said. “If I were you, I’d quit malingering and get going.”

“Is there any dessert left, Hotspur?” Mamma asked, and thus I knew the topic was closed.

Age of majority hoohah,
I thought sourly as I ran upstairs to change. I might be an adult but I was still a slave.

“Did you feel that?” Valefor met me at the door of my bedroom, wringing his papery-thin hands, his wispy white hair standing on end. “My foundations were shaking. I thought my roof might go. They are getting more frequent, these shakings. I can’t take much more. I’m going to fall in.”

“Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Poppy said I had to be back in by midnight. Can you believe it?”

“A curfew! Oh, it’s awful to be you, Flora Segunda.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Udo and I were not in fact going to the Blue Duck as I had so blithely lied to Poppy. The Blue Duck is a fine club, a dandy club, a trendy club—if you are twelve years old and like puppets. In fact, that is exactly what was playing there tonight: Sylvestris Jaciodes’s Stilskin Puppet Show. I am far too old for puppets. Instead, Udo and I were going to the swanky cool Poodle Dog club for reasons I shall soon explain.

I had not totally wasted the three months since my Catorcena with schoolwork, Poppy work, and chores. I had spent every spare moment studying
The Eschatanomicon, or, Rangering for Everyone!,
Nini Mo’s famous handbook. Valefor had found a signed first edition in the Bibliotheca and given it to me—the most useful thing he ever did for me, I think.

The Eschata
tells you everything you might ever need to know about being a ranger—magick stuff and non-magick stuff. I’d been working my way through the book carefully since my birthday, concentrating on the rangery stuff: tracking and fire-starting; how to ford a river, find your way through a maze, or follow a man down an empty street in broad daylight. I read all those chapters over and over again, memorized them, took notes, made diagrams. I practiced tying knots, and I worked on secret codes. I learned how to start a fire with a piece of glass and some tinder. I memorized the heliograph gestures and practiced dowsing for water.

The Eschata
has a short appendix on Gramatica vocabulary and I had memorized and practiced most of the Words contained therein, but they were small Words that empowered very small sigils. I could create a small coldfire light. I could banish small malicious entities. I could create a small disguising Glamour. But I couldn’t say anything important. To do truly large workings or very powerful sigils, you need not only a great Gramatica vocabulary, but you have to speak entire Gramatica sentences. Conjugate verbs. Modify nouns. Diagram sentences. Speak fluently and without hesitation or mispronunciation. Unless I learned Gramatica, I would never be a true ranger—a true magician.

So I needed to find someone to teach me. But who? Most of the people I know are soldiers, and soldiers are forbidden to meddle in the Current (there’s no honor there, you know, achieving through Will what you could achieve through Blood). Mamma hates magick, calling it a cheat, and so as a family, we do not associate much with magicians.

However, I am not without my own resources, and I had three options in mind. Nini Mo counseled that rangers should consider all the facts and factors before they decide upon a course of action, so I had carefully considered each of my three possibilities.

First was Boy Hansgen, the Dainty Pirate, the only member of the Ranger Corps left. He did owe me one, for trying to rescue him from certain death, but after delivering a thank you note and giftie, he had completely vanished. Both the
Alta Califa
and the
Califa Police Gazette
had run editorials commenting on his sudden disappearance from Califa’s waters, but they had no good explanations for his abrupt cessation of piracy The
Alta Califa
suggested he’d finally seen the error of his ways and reformed. The
CPG
guessed maybe his ships had been sunk in a storm. No matter: He was gone and I didn’t know how to find him, so that way was closed.

Next: Lord Axacaya. He’s the greatest adept in the City, probably the greatest adept in the entire Republic. Mamma hates Lord Axacaya not only because he is an adept. She hates that he’s Huitzil by birth: born a Birdie, brought up by the Flayed Priests as a divine child, and fated to be sacrificed to the Hummingbird god, who feeds not on nectar, but blood. Lord Axacaya escaped this destiny, came to Califa as a refugee, married the Warlord’s daughter, and has been here ever since. Mamma believes Lord Axacaya is a Birdie pawn, but I’m not so sure.

However, there were two problems with approaching Lord Axacaya. The first was exactly that: How to approach him? I didn’t dare just ride up to Casa Mariposa and ask to see him, and we don’t exactly move in the same social circles. My one hope was the Warlord’s Birthday Ball. The Ball is Califa’s biggest social event of the year; everyone who is anyone in Califa attends. Including Lord Axacaya. I had lobbied Mamma hard to let me go, too; now that I was an adult, should I not be included in all Fyrdraaca family activities? After all, Poppy was going, and there was no doubt that I could behave better than Poppy.

But Mamma had flat-out refused me permission, saying that the Warlord’s Birthday Ball was a political and moral snake-pit and she didn’t want me exposed to such danger. Of course, I also didn’t dare tell Mamma that I had been exposed to things far more dangerous than a silly birthday ball, but my other arguments were futile. Mamma remained firm. They don’t call her the Rock of Califa for nothing.

The second problem, frankly, was that I didn’t relish the idea of going to Lord Axacaya with my hat in my hand. I had done that once before, out of dire necessity, but asking for two favors seemed like pushing it. I do have my pride. He’d helped me before but made no suggestion he’d do it again.

So my quest to learn Gramatica hinged on Firemonkey, the leader of the Eschatological Immenation, Califa’s rebel faction, which is devoted to the expulsion of Birdie influence from Califa. No one really takes the EI seriously; they paint slogans and distribute seditious pamphlets, the extent of their revolutionary tactics. But Firemonkey is also a magician; this I discovered when I first ran into him, when he and I both tried to rescue the Dainty Pirate from being executed by Lord Axacaya. We had both failed—or so I thought until I found out that the Dainty Pirate had been working for Lord Axacaya all along as a double agent, and that the murder was only a ruse.

Nothing is worth more than information,
said Nini Mo, and I hoped that Firemonkey would be interested to learn about Lord Axacaya’s ruse, interested enough to trade education for it. I had no interest in Firemonkey’s revolutionary politics, which I would have to make clear to him. It’s not that I think Califa is fine under Huitzil rule; of course I would like Califa to be a free republic again. The EI, however, wanted to get rid of not just Huitzil law, but Califa law, too. They believe everyone should be free to do whatever they want—the Law of Will, they call it. A recipe for disaster, I call it. There has to be some law or people would just throw their trash in the street, and take advantage of old grannies.
People will do,
said Nini Mo,
exactly what they think they can get away with.

Firemonkey, wonky politics aside, was my best bet because he, unlike the Dainty Pirate and Lord Axacaya, was approachable. Firemonkey’s cover for being a revolutionary was as the lead singer for the band the Horses of Instruction. Who just happened to be playing at the Poodle Dog tonight.

The ranger who helps herself is helped by the best,
said Nini Mo.

M
AMMA HAD TO RETURN
to the Presidio for an evening inspection, so she dropped me off at Case Tigger on her way. This ride lessened my lateness a bit and saved me the horsecar fare. At Case Tigger I ran the gauntlet of parents (one mamma, two daddies), siblings (six—all absolute horrors), and various pets before finding Udo in the loo, primping.

Udo is sickeningly good-looking: his jaw perfectly square, his hair perfectly gold, and his eyes perfectly blue. He is also sickeningly vain and spends much of his time trying to improve upon perfection. I pried him away from his mirror, where he was taking forever to decide between red lip rouge or blue, and if his hair looked better on the top of his head in the shape of a rolled doughnut, or braided into five plaits and dangling free. After I told him that the red lip rouge made his face look too thin and the doughnut hairstyle made his face look fat, he quickly decided on braids and blue and we were able to make our exit.

We caught the N horsecar just as it was pulling up, and managed to get the last two seats. Udo fished a silver case out of his greatcoat and lit up a foul clove cigarillo.

“Don’t you think you have enough nasty habits, Udo?” I waved my hand ineffectually through the blue smoke. “You’ll ruin your lungs.”

“Ha,” he said. “Ayah, but I can blow a smoke ring.”

“That’ll be some consolation when you die of black lung,” I said. “We’ll put that on your memorial stone: Ayah, but he could blow a smoke ring.”

“You are an old crab, Flora.” Udo added insult to injury with a nip from his flask—another bad habit I did not intend to acquire. “And you get precious little fun out of life.”

“I’d get even less if Poppy had his way. I have to be back by midnight,” I said morosely. “Can you believe it? On the first night of vacation.”

Udo hooted. “Midnight! That’s outrageous. The Horses of Instruction won’t even have gone on by then, probably. You’re going to miss the show.”

“We’re
going to miss the show.”

“I don’t have a curfew.”

“If you plan on coming back to Crackpot with me, then you’re on the same curfew I am.”

"The whole point of going home with you, Flora, is, that way, the Daddies don’t know what time I get home. If you’ve got a curfew, then that defeats the whole purpose.”