Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (10 page)

She whispered, “I promised her I would never let anything happen to you and I will keep that promise. Trust me.” My throat choked as a thousand thoughts raced through my head, but before I could blurt any of them, my hat fell off and Buck released me.

Poppy swept me up into another hug, murmuring, “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll be fine. Trust your mother. And here’s a stash, just in case.” I took the fat roll of divas and slipped it in my pocket. The whistle blew again. I kissed Tiny Man on his chubby pink cheeks one last time, and would have kissed Flynn, too, but Snapperdog had disappeared and there was no time to look for him. The first mate was hollering at me; at the prow of the ship they were already cranking up the anchor. Poppy shoved my hat at me and I ran up the gangplank, just as the sailors started to cast aside the lines.

The deck of
El Pato
was crowded with crates and boxes. I squeezed through them, the schooner’s movement already making me unsteady, and leaned against the railing. We were twenty feet from the dock and moving away quickly Buck had taken Pow from Poppy and was holding him up, pointing at me and waving. They looked like the perfect little family. They would do just fine without me. And if I never returned, well, they still had Pow. They could start over.

Trust me
, Buck had said. How could I trust her when she had never trusted me?

And Udo, oh Udo.

The figures on the dock were very small now, dwindling. I turned away, lurching through the crates of lettuce and asparagus piled high on the deck.

I’d never been on a schooner like
El Pato de Oro
. The ferry to Benica Barracks is large and lumbering, wallowing along at a steady clip to the
thump, thump, thump
of its paddle wheel and the distant hum of the coal servitors deep within its bowels.
El Pato de Oro
was a three-masted ship, and she glided lightly through the water. Over my head, sailors scampered from line to line, calling to each other. They seemed completely at home among the rigging, balancing like birds on the lines. After a brief glance, I looked away, feeling queasy at the heights.

From a sailor’s point of view, I guess, it was a good day to be underway The wind was billowing the sails. A thin veil of fog was winding through the Oro Gate and the sky above the City was gray and overcast, but streaks of blue shone above Mt. Tam and beyond Goat Island and the Tiburon peninsula. When the schooner passed Black Point and I knew that the Embarcadero would be out of sight, I went back to the port side. This might be the last time I’d ever see my home. The City looked like a child’s diorama of tiny houses spread out over a series of small hills. The spire on Saeta House gleamed like a small gold needle, and on Crackpot Hill, I could just make out the top of Poppy’s Eyrie tower poking up above the trees.

I leaned on the railing and watched the red roofs and white walls of Fort Black Rock slide by then the curving green line of Cow Hollow Cove, the laundry lines flapping like banners in the wind; the Presidio, with the green swell of the Parade Ground, its summit surmounted by the pink adobe sprawl of the O club. Next, the batteries perched along the Scott Cliffs, and at the base of the cliff, the looming red brick hulk of Fort Hawkins, guarding the Gate.

And beyond the Gate, the open sea.

I couldn’t enjoy the scenery This might be the last time I saw the City And Udo—Udo might already be dead. Or sold, or taken far away. Even if somehow I returned to Califa, I might never see him again. Ayah, recently he’d been acting like a snapperhead, but maybe I’d been acting a bit like a snapperhead, too. He had tried to apologize, and caught up in my own self-righteous anger, I had ignored it.

And now it was too late. Too late for the both of us.

Fort Hawkins’s gun ports were open, ominous black cannons protruding from each little window, but the muzzles on the Fort’s upper deck were pointed slightly up, signifying they were not on highest alert. A small figure was perched on an enormous siege howitzer nicknamed the Warlord’s Hammer, the biggest of the guns. (The Redlegs called it something a little less respectable.) The muzzle stuck out from the walls of the Fort over open water, but that didn’t appear to fret the figure sitting on it. It waved a tiny black hat at me.

I was waving back when I heard an all too familiar frantic yipping. I dashed toward the barking, or at least wobbled my way toward it, for we were nearing the Gate, where the water is very rough by design. Behind a stack of crates, I found Flynnie being hoisted by his collar and shaken by none other than my maddeningly elusive wer-bear quarry, Sieur Wraathmyr.

“Hey—let him go!” I shouted. Sieur Wraathmyr dropped Flynn, who skittered over to me. “What the fike are you doing?”

A scowl darkened Sieur Wraathmyr’s face. “Are you following me?”

“Of course I’m not! What you are doing to my dog?” Flynn pressed against my legs, and I bent down to soothe him.

“He was menacing the chickens.” Sieur Wraathmyr pointed to the coop, where the chickens were fluttering and squawking. In a cage next to the coop, a pig peered quizzically at us.

“Flynn’s afraid of chickens! If anyone was being menaced, it was him!”

“I have never heard of a dog that is afraid of chickens,” Sieur Wraathmyr said scornfully.

As I started to defend Flynn, the ship heaved, sending me careening into the chicken coop and upsetting the chickens even more. The ship jerked again, this time flinging me toward Sieur Wraathmyr, but I managed to catch myself before I hurtled into him, and landed against the pig cage instead. The pig oinked in annoyance.

“You’ll end up overboard if you don’t hold on,” Sieur Wraathmyr said. “You should go below. And tie up your dog, or you will lose him for sure.” With that prediction, Sieur Wraathmyr turned and disappeared into the maze of crates.

I unwound my sash and tied it to Flynn’s collar as a makeshift lead.

“Flynn, you moron,” I said. “Now they are going to get you, too.” But I was glad to see him. Whatever fate awaited me, I would not face it alone.

And suddenly I felt a dart of hope. I had thought that leaving the City meant I had lost any chance at getting the map back. But now the Goddess had given me a second chance, and I intended to make the most of it. That map wouldn’t save me from the Birdies, but at least I’d go to my grave knowing where Tiny Doom was, that my Working had been successful.
Take what you can get
, said Nini Mo.

The water was now churning as the two currents, bay and ocean, met in a violent froth. We were entering the Oro Gate. The Warlord had once sailed through the Gate to conquer the City and was determined that no one would ever repeat his feat. Even on a calm day, entering and exiting the Gate is dangerous. The rush of the water trying to enter the Bay meets with the rush of water trying to exit, creating waves and riptides and dangerous currents. Many a ship had been wrecked on one of the hidden rocks or tossed up against the cliffs.

But just in case nature is not a strong enough barrier, at the Warlord’s bidding, Axacaya has used his magick to churn the water into a deadly maelstrom. Only a ship carrying a Charm of Passage authorized by Axacaya can safely navigate these watery defenses. We were in for a bumpy ride, but I knew we’d make it through all right.

As the ship bounced, my stomach bounced with it. I should have taken a preventive dose of Madama Twanky’s Salty Dog Sea Leg Tonick before I had boarded. The Tonick was in my trunk below. Hauling Flynn behind me, I staggered down the narrow stairs into the captain’s parlor. Since the schooner wasn’t set up for passengers, it didn’t have any real staterooms, but the captain had kindly moved his children into his own cabin and given me theirs. The children were playing cards at the parlor table, unconcerned with the swaying and jolting of the room, or the swinging parlor lamp throwing wild shafts of light on the polished wooden walls.

Down here, without the fresh air and the salt spray the motion seemed much worse and my head began to spin. Holding on to various bits of furniture, I wobbled my way to my cabin door, Flynn scrabbling behind me. I thought I’d better dose him with Madama Twanky’s, too. His tum is very delicate and there are few things more annoying than a retching dog.

“Don’t worry, the water will be calmer when we have passed through the Gate,” the girl called to me as I threw my cabin door open. On the sideboard, the glasses and bottles tinkled alarmingly. “Axacaya keeps the Gate rough so no one can get in that he doesn’t like.”

“Lord Axacaya,” the boy corrected. “Show some respect, Elodie.”

“He’s a Birdie, Theo,” Elodie said. “I don’t have to respect him. Hey, your dog is puking.”

Alas, so Flynnie was, and when I saw him, then I couldn’t help but do it myself. Leaving Flynn to Elodie’s ministrations, I staggered to the washbasin in my room. Then, adios sourdough pancakes, adios. The boat bounced and heaved; I retched and spat—and cursed Axacaya, the cause of my suffering. After a long while, my tum was empty and the ship’s violent heaving began to ebb, until finally the only motion was a slightly rocking glide. I let go of the washbasin and straightened up. My head was still feeling a little spinny, but my stomach was starting to calm down.

At least it was until I turned around to open a porthole, and saw that there was a corpse lying in my berth.

N
OT A CORPSE
, I realized after that first panicky moment. The ghost of Hardhands, my long-dead stepfather, lounging on my narrow bed and licking something red off his long white fingers. Now that my nose was not full of the smell of puke, I realized my cabin was filled with another, more noxious smell: a mixture of roses, funeral incense, and decay.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

Hardhands laughed and crossed his legs, which were muscular, bare, and streaked with mud. I had first met Hardhands—or at least his Anima—at Bilskinir House, when Udo and I had gone to reclaim Springheel Jack’s boots. Then, he had been breathtakingly glorious. Now, he looked a wreck. He wore what appeared to be the filthy remnants of a sangyn Alacrán Regiment uniform, the kilt tattered and bloodstained, weskit torn and stained, shirt white no longer. The cravat around his neck looked more like a bandage, and his hair hung in dirty straggles around his face, which was also streaked with dirt and blood.

He looked, in other words, like a corpse that had just been carried off a battlefield. But his eyes were clear blue glints of wintery sky.

“We took a poll, we Haðraaðas, and clearly you could not be sent into the jaguar’s den alone, unaided, with no bodyguard, despite the fact that your dear second-mamma seemed to think you should be.”

“How did you know I was going to Birdieland?” I interrupted him.

“I have very good hearing. One of us must go as a representative of all of us; you are the last hope of our family thus, all our eggs are in your basket. I being the most recent Haðraaða dead—barring one, of course—and thus strongest, was deemed to be your comrade-in-arms. So here I am, to nurture and shelter you, to give you succor and aid, and to make sure you don’t do anything catastrophically stupid that will doom us all.”

Oh fikety-fike-fike. The last thing I needed was a drippy ghost hanging around me, offering me obnoxious advice.

“Does Paimon know you have left Bilskinir?”

“Of course, my dove,” he said, but I didn’t believe that for a minute.

“Go home. I don’t need your help.”

“No, but you need a weapon, and I am that weapon: your sword and your shield. Have I not already long been watching over you? Not that you noticed, of course, which is very lax of you.”

Now I recalled that flash of red on the UOQ porch the night of Pirates’ Parade, the heavy stench of roses. Hardhands must have used the Current’s high tide to escape Paimon and Bilskinir.

“Nor do I need your supervision,” I said firmly. “You can go back home to where you belong. I can summon Pig if I need to. He’s all the protection I need.”

“Pig! You’d pick Pig over me?” the ghost said scornfully. He picked at his teeth with a long black fingernail, and at that gesture, I couldn’t stifle the tickle of revulsion that ran up my spine.

“He’s cleaner. He’s a Protection egregore. You are just a ghost.” Pigface, the smell was awful! If I didn’t get rid of him soon, I was going to puke again.

“Just a ghost? I am the Anima of Califa’s greatest heroes, a military genius, and an excellent musician, not to mention handsome as hell.”

Not anymore
, I thought. “Well, maybe all that once, but you are dead now. I don’t need you. You can either go back to Bilskinir on your own, or I will banish you back there. Your choice.”

The ghost grimaced at me. “You have no respect for your elders, Nyana Haðraaða.”
I respect those who have earned my respect ’’
I answered, quoting Nini Mo.

“I doubt you can banish me, girl. I was an adept when your mother was still in her mother’s womb. I know such tricks as you can hardly even imagine. And,” the ghost said cunningly, “you must quit playing in the Current or you’ll doom us all. Remember?”

Alas, I remembered. Before I could issue another threat (that is, before I could think of a threat that did not involve magick), the door to my berth began to creep open. Hardhands vanished, leaving behind muddy sheets and a moldy smell. A curly head poked inside. “I cleaned up the doggie puke. I gave him some medicine and now he’s better. Do you have any candy?”

“No.” I flung myself over the muddy bed and opened the porthole, gulping in large lovely breaths of moist air. I’d have to brush my teeth to get the taste of puke and the smell of death out of my mouth.

“It stinks in here,” Elodie said, “and there is dirt in your bed. Why is there dirt in your bed?”

“I spilled my flowers. Do you think I can get fresh sheets?”

“I don’t see any flowers.” Elodie squeezed her way into the cabin and poked at my dispatch case.

“I threw them out the window.”

“Oh. Poor drowned flowers. I like chocolate best, but I would take swizzlers. I deserve something for cleaning up the dog puke.”