Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (19 page)

“Don’t touch him!” I grabbed the soup ladle and ran toward them, swinging wildly With a bellow, Madama Valdosta managed to wrench away from Flynn and half hobbled, half ran from the room, shrieking like a teakettle. Flynn followed, nipping at her heels. I ran over to Octohands, who lay motionless where he had fallen. When I picked him up, a tentacle slowly unwound itself and attached to my wrist.
Uh, she tasted terrible. But i got her good. She won’t get far
.

I thought she was just going to drop dead when you bit her. What if she wakes up Sieur Wraathmyr with all that screaming?

He’s good and enchanted. He’s not going to
—

The high-pitched keening in the hallway was replaced by a high-pitched screaming. Flynn barreled back into the dining room, tail between his legs. Still holding Octohands, I rushed to the doorway to see Madama Valdosta cowering before the enormous shaggy figure looming at the end of the hallway.

Oh dear. Tactical error
. Octohands sounded almost amused.

Sieur Wraathmyr reared up, his head brushing the ceiling, and roared. Madama Valdosta wasn’t able to dodge the swipe of that enormous paw; she went flying. As she tried to get up, her feet scrabbling for traction, Sieur Wraathmyr dropped to all fours and charged after her. But Octohands’s poisonous bite was beginning to affect her; her movements were wobbly and unsteady and her screams had diminished to a low squeaking.

I turned and ran, Flynn pushing against my legs, both of us tearing through the dining room and into the kitchen. There was no back door—fike, we were trapped. Horrible noises came from the hallway. Frantic for a hiding place, we ran back to the dining room and dove into the closet. Flynn wormed his way onto my lap and Octohands wound around my neck, uncharacteristically silent of snappy comments. I was sitting on something lumpy; I reached behind and found my gun belt. My revolver was only a .32 caliber, which wouldn’t do much against an angry bear, but it felt reassuring and heavy in my hand.

We huddled behind the rotting clothes, listening to howling, screaming, moaning, groaning, roaring, ripping. I closed my eyes and buried my face in Flynn’s neck. I had no doubt that once Sieur Wraathmyr was through with Madama Valdosta, he’d smell me, and crunchy Flynn, and chewy Octohands, and we’d be next on his menu. I had tried to save Sieur Wraathmyr, and for my trouble, I was going to get eaten.

I hope you are not too spoony to shoot him, Almost Daughter
.

I doubt that this caliber will do much other than make him mad
.

I once killed a buffalo with a
.
22
. Aim for his eye
.

Shut up
.

After a while, the screaming stopped. All was quiet. But I didn’t move. It was nice and dark in the closet. The rotting smell, now that I was used to it, wasn’t so very bad. I strained my ears, but I could hear only my own labored breathing, Flynn’s occasional snort. Octohands was stroking my neck with one tentacle. The sensation was both annoying and soothing.

Are we going to sit here forever?
Octohands asked finally.

Ayah
. Suddenly I was very tired. If I hadn’t given in to a stupid bout of conscience, Flynn and I would have been miles away by now, with map in hand. Instead, here I was about to be eaten by the very snapperhead I had just tried to save.
Oh, the irony
, Nini Mo said,
don’t it just make your ?

A crack of light shone in the shadows. Flynn growled and I put my hand on his head.

“Nini? Are you all right?”

My eyes adjusted to the light, and standing before me was not a bear, but a man. Sieur Wraathmyr’s face was a mask of blood; he was dripping red from head to toe.

“Nini?” Even his teeth were red.

I pointed my revolver at him. “If you take another step toward me, I’ll shoot you.”

W
HEN HE SAW
that I was all right, Sieur Wraathmyr turned and walked away. I came out of the closet. The hallway walls were sprayed with blood, and more blood trailed toward the front door, but there was no sign of Madama Valdosta. I have to admit that I didn’t look too hard for her.

Or what was left of her.

During his explorations, Octohands had found Madama Valdosta’s stash room. Now he directed me there. The room was stuffed full of booty. Trunks, portmanteaus, valises, carpetbags. One cabinet held a jumble of silver: spurs, pitchers, plates. Clothes were sorted into baskets: jackets, socks, shoes. There were a
lot
of shoes. A small strongbox was stuffed with Califa divas, Birdie quetzals, Porkopolis hocks, and other currencies I didn’t even recognize.

We should help ourselves
. Octohands was riding on my shoulder, like a squishy parrot.
I think we deserve it
.

I shuddered at the thought of taking anything from the Valdosta Lodge. Surely the booty must be cursed.

You are too dainty. Someday you will be out of tosh and think back to all you left behind and be sorry you did not heed me
.

“That day, that sorrow,” I answered. I found my dispatch case and Sieur Wraathmyr’s satchel and left everything else.

I did not check out the cellar, where Octohands said he had seen the bodies. Instead, I followed Sieur Wraathmyr’s bloody footprints back down the hall and out the front door. Of course the rain had been an enchantment; outside, it was overcast but perfectly dry Sieur Wraathmyr was standing in the stream, washing the blood off. I laid his gear on the bank and then retreated to the other side of the bridge to wait.

Octohands’s weight on my neck was giving me a bit of a headache; after an intense argument, he agreed to ride inside my dispatch case. Apparently magickal octopuses do not need constant access to water. This was good, because I did not relish carrying the chamber pot all the way to Cambria.

Sieur Wraathmyr eventually joined me, hair wet, face as forbidding as the façade of the Califa Reformatory Neither of us said anything as we climbed out of the valley Since Sieur Wraathmyr’s legs were much longer than mine, he soon outpaced me. That was fine with me; I’d rather have him where I could see him. I had buckled my gun belt on over my buckskin jacket, just in case.

But Sieur Wraathmyr didn’t even acknowledge I was puffing along behind him. He marched on, shoulders hunched. From the back, with that fuzzy coat, he looked distressingly bearlike, though his human body, for all its bulk, was much smaller than his bear form. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I had a strong feeling his thoughts were not good ones. I
knew
that my thoughts were bad. I had been an utter fool, taken in by a cheap enchantment. I couldn’t think of my behavior the night before without squirming. Enchantment or not, what a moron I had been. Never let down your guard; wasn’t that the first rule of rangering? I had spilled all my secrets to a man who wouldn’t even look at me now. Had I learned nothing from Axacaya?

Well, now that I had my map, I didn’t need Sieur Wraathmyr anymore. Once we were in Cambria, good riddance to him. I was dying to peek at the map, but I didn’t want to do so with him nearby He’d seen and heard enough about me already. It could wait until I got to Cambria and privacy.

Ahead, a tree had fallen across the path, blocking our way Sieur Wraathmyr halted, waiting for me to catch up. When I did, he offered me his hand.

“I don’t need any help,” I said, giving Snapperdog a boost over.

Sieur Wraathmyr made no move to climb over the tree. I waited for him to go on, but instead he said, “It’s the oldest trick in the book, the honey pot. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

“I fell for it, too.”

“Ayah, so,” he answered bitterly “But that I am equally foolish hardly excuses either of us. I am well traveled. I should have known better.” There was a streak of dry blood on his left temple. I resisted the urge to reach up and wipe it away.

“Madama Valdosta was an enchanter,” I said. “How were we supposed to know that?”

Sieur Wraathmyr gave me a look that clearly expressed his thoughts, and scornful thoughts they were indeed:
You might be silly enough to be caught by an enchanter, but I should be above all that
.

Well, you weren’t, now, were you, puggie?
I thought, but I said, “Well, excuse me for saving your bacon. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be back there right now on Madama Valdosta’s butcher block.”

“If it hadn’t been for you, madama, I wouldn’t have been in that situation at all.”

“How do you figure that?”

Flynn, on the other side of the tree, gave a
Hurry it up
yap.

“If you hadn’t been such a slow walker, and so feeble you couldn’t keep up, I would not have had to stop for the night to begin with. I would long since be in Cambria by now.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’ve turned out to be such a difficult traveling companion,” I said sarcastically. “But you were the one so in a hurry to get to Cambria that you wanted to take the shortcut.”

“And I am in a hurry now and not in the mood for chitchat,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had started it. I started to retort as much, but he had turned away. He easily leaped over the tree, the snapperhead, and continued down the track. I launched myself at the tree trunk and managed to scramble over, getting wet and muddy in the process, but achieving the other side on my own.

W
E HAD LEFT
Valdosta Lodge just after dawn; we arrived at our destination midafternoon, footsore, damp, and hungry. Or at least Flynn and I were. Sieur Wraathmyr seemed impervious to the stresses of travel. Cambria was a conglomeration of scruffy buildings, well scoured by salt and fog, huddled around a rickety dock. A large black rock loomed in the middle of the bay; beyond it lay a fringe of breakers and the calm blue line of the open sea.

At the edge of town, Sieur Wraathmyr stopped abruptly “I am sorry But I cannot honor our agreement regarding the map. Still, you have my word that your secret will be safe with me. I hope you will extend the same courtesy to me.”

“I thought we had a deal.” I worked a tone of outrage into my voice. I was going to enjoy watching him squirm.

He had put his hands in his pockets; now he jiggled nervously “I have lost the map, along with several other valuable papers. Madama Valdosta must have found them when she searched my things. I looked throughout her establishment before we left, but I did not find the papers anywhere.”

I wasn’t enjoying the squirming as much as I had thought I would. He looked so miserable. I said, “I found the map.”

Relief washed over his face. “Thank the Goddess. Where did you find it? Were there other documents with it?”

I did not want him to know that I had rolled him while he was helpless. Before, it had seemed to serve him right. Now I felt rather ashamed. “I found it in Valdosta’s trophy room,” I lied. “I didn’t see any other papers with it.” That, at least, was true.

Sieur Wraathmyr exhaled heavily “About last night—”

I did not want to talk about last night. “We were enchanted by Valdosta,” I said quickly “People do weird things when they are enchanted, imagine all sorts of things. I don’t know what you think happened last night, but I promise you none of it was real. Your habits are your own, sieur, and I feel no need to describe them to anyone else. I think the best thing is for us to pretend we never met, ayah?”

I had no idea what I would do if he didn’t agree. This man knew everything about me. It wasn’t much of a consolation that I knew everything about him. I could keep my mouth shut. Could he?

He regarded me, and I put my hand on my pistol, just in case. Then he nodded and said stiffly, “I am glad you got your map back. Good luck to you. Goodbye.”

Have a nice life
, I thought.
And you’re welcome for saving your skin, Sieur Arrogance
. As I watched him walk away, I should have felt relieved. Oddly, I did not.

Downtown Cambria consisted of one narrow sloping corduroy street terminating at a narrow dock, which continued into the expansive Cambria Bay. The upper part of the street was lined with small houses; the middle part with small businesses. Sieur Wraathmyr and his long legs had already disappeared.

My tum was flapping against my spine; Goddess knows what Valdosta’s delicious chow had really been. At the Cambria Café, Flynn and I devoured an enormous breakfast and then went on to the Cambria Hotel, where I again checked in as Nyana Romney, just in case.

The room was small, but it had a real bed with clean sheets. I filled the washbasin with water and dumped Octohands in it; he refused the sandwie I offered him, moaning about a terrible headache, so I left him alone. Leaving Flynn to guard the room, I went down the hall to the bathroom and scrubbed the noisome feeling of the Valdosta Lodge off. Alas, I could not do anything about the rankness of my clothes, but maybe later I could run out and buy some drawers and a new shirt.

I was fed; I was clean; I was private.

It was time to look at the map.

Back in the room, Flynn lay sprawled and snoring on the floor. Octohands’s sandwie had disappeared and he eddied peacefully in the washbasin. I climbed up on the bed and settled back on the pillows. My hands were shaking slightly as I opened the oilcloth packet Sieur Wraathmyr had enclosed the map in; how nice of him to keep it so safe. When I pulled the map out, another paper fell onto the bed. I picked it up, a small vellum envelope, heavy and smooth, closed with a familiar red blot of wax, Buck’s official seal. And on the front, in Buck’s familiar scrawl:

To Our Beloved Frends the King and Queen of the Kulani Islands

I stared at the envelope, bewildered. How had he gotten a dispatch with Buck’s writing on it? Then I remembered the lingering smell of apple pipeweed in her office the night of Pirates’ Parade. The apple pipeweed that clung to Sieur Wraathmyr’s hair, his furry jacket, his clothes. His desire not to get taken by pirates. His rush to get to Cambria. The important papers he thought he’d lost at Valdosta Lodge.