Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (21 page)

This was not a pleasant vision.

My dispatch case was squirming and heaving.

“Do you have a bathroom?” I asked Toby hurriedly, clutching the case to my chest, hoping no one would notice its squirms. He pointed toward the back. The bathroom was tiny and dark, but it was clean. I pushed Flynn in ahead of me and shut and locked the door. A plan was beginning to come together in my head, but I was going to need Octohands’s help.

As soon as I unlatched the dispatch case, a tentacle whipped out and fastened on my wrist.
You can’t let them take him, girlie!

I thought you thought he was bad news
.

Ayah, I did, but that was before I saw him in action. He’s magnificent! Wonderful! As your almost father, I say that I heartily approve. What a shot to the bloodline he’ll give! We’ve never had a skinwalker, except for Great Uncle Peter, but he was just a wer-flamingo, pretty but totally useless in a fight. Think of the little Hadraada bear cubs! You couldn’t have made a better choice!

I realized what he was saying and almost choked.
No! It’s nothing like that at all! Oh Pigface, no! Goddess, are you insane?

Don’t be coy with me, madama, I can read your every thought, remember. Protest all you want, but I know the truth
—

We’ll discuss this later
, I answered hastily
Now, this is what we are going to do...

Y
OU AGAIN
!” the sheriff said when I arrived back at the jail a little while later. She and the deputy were sitting comfortably in front of the stove, drinking hot toddies. “Did you think of what you wanted to say? Keep that dog away from my spittoon!”

“Sit, Flynn,” I ordered, and Flynn obediently sat. “I would like to see the prisoner, please.” As I spoke, I glanced around. The door to the first cell stood open; the drunk was gone. A large ring of keys lay in a pile on the sheriff’s desk, next to a half-eaten sandwie. Very sloppy, but good for me.

“That so? Well, he’s being held in-communi-cado,” the sheriff said with a sneer.

“But he’s right there, looking at us. Ave!”

“Ave,” Sieur Wraathmyr said, somewhat warily. He had been lying on the cot. Now he got up and stood against the bars. He still looked mighty pissed, though whether it was at his circumstances or my arrival, I couldn’t tell.

“How can he be incommunicado if he’s standing right there?” I asked.

“If you can’t talk to him, he’s incommunicado,” the sheriff said triumphantly.

“But I can talk to him. I brought you a cinnamon roll, honey.” I walked toward the cell, bag in hand. As I passed the sheriff’s desk, I dropped my dispatch case. When I leaned over to pick it up, Octohands slithered out and undulated under the desk, out of sight. “I know you love cinnamon rolls!”

Sieur Wraathmyr looked bewildered, but he said, “Thank you!”

“Hey, now, one minute. You can’t just waltz in here and give my prisoner a cinnamon roll,” the sheriff protested. “Who are you?”

“I’m his lawyer. Did you feed him?”

“Well, no, but—”

I handed Sieur Wraathmyr the cinnamon roll through the bars. “Under Califa law, you have to feed a prisoner. You can’t just lock him in a cell and throw away the keys. A prisoner has rights, you know. You can’t let him starve.”

“He’s only been my prisoner for two hours. And dinner won’t be here until six—”

“I don’t see any water, either. Did she give you any water?” I asked Sieur Wraathmyr.

“Not a drop,” he answered. Out the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of red movement: Octohands had made it up to the surface of the desk and was now creeping across it.

I said quickly, to keep the sheriff’s and deputy’s attention, “Under Califa Penal Code, Section 15, Paragraph 12, water, or a comparable liquid, must be made available to all prisoners at all times and may only be withheld by a judge’s order. Do you have a judge’s order to withhold water from this prisoner?”

“Well, no, but—” Now I had the sheriff good and flustered. I pressed my advantage by complaining about the lack of a window in Sieur Wraathmyr’s cell, the fact that he had been given no blanket, and that he had a black eye. All those court-martial reports I had copied were coming in handy I knew more about the law than the sheriff did.

While I blabbered and the sheriff blinked in confusion, Octohands grabbed the keys with one tentacle and the sandwie in another, then disappeared back under the desk. Under my barrage of complaints, the sheriff completely wilted. Finally I pulled out my trump card. “And how do you know this man is indeed Sieur Wraathmyr?”

“I recognized his picture. Here, see—” The sheriff flourished the
WANTED
poster at me. I made a great show of looking at it and then looking at Sieur Wraathmyr—back and forth, back and forth. Then I looked at the deputy. Octohands was scuttling across the floor behind the deputy’s boot, but the deputy was staring at me in too much slack-jawed befuddlement to notice.

"Seems to me that your poster looks more like this man here.” With a sneer of disdain, I let the poster waft to the floor. The sheriff picked it up and looked at it again—then looked at Sieur Wraathmyr and back at the deputy

"Me? I’m not full of cupidity!” the deputy protested. "You know that, Cletie. I’m married to your mother!”

I said quickly, "You can’t prove this man is T. N. Wraathmyr.”
Or at least I hope you can’t
, I thought. "And I am here to tell you that this man is not T. N. Wraathmyr.”

"He did say he weren’t this Sieur Wraathmyr,” the deputy said. "I mean, I ain’t him either, but he said he weren’t, too.”

"But if he isn’t this Wraathmyr, who is he?” the sheriff asked.

"I told you,” Sieur Wraathmyr rattled the bars in indignation. We all turned toward him. There was no sign now of Octohands or the keys. "My name is Oddvar Huenca! I’ve never heard of this T. N. Wraathmyr fellow!”

"Who is Oddvar Huenca?” the deputy asked.

"He’s my fiancé!” I said triumphantly. "He thought he could run off and leave me, after making all sorts of promises, but I tracked him down. I’ll bet he thought he escaped me, pretending to be this Wraathmyr, so as to be arrested, thinking he can hide behind bars—” The sheriff and the deputy were staring at me, mesmerized. Octohands slithered into the cell, and Sieur Wraathmyr bent down and grabbed the keys from him.

“I thought you said you was his lawyer,” the sheriff said in bewilderment.

“I am, and his fiancée, too! And I’m gonna sue him for breach of promise!”

Sieur Wraathmyr said to the sheriff, “I swear that lady is crazy—I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

“You just try that, Oddvar! You think you can get away from me, but you cannot. You made a promise and you are going to keep it, if I have to have you locked up to do it! Sheriff, I demand that you release this man so that he may honor his obligations to me!”

“I am T N. Wraathmyr!” Sieur Wraathmyr said frantically. “And I’ll take my medicine—”

“You’ll take
my
medicine and like it, too!” I turned to the sheriff. “Under the Califa Penal Code, Section 56, Paragraph 91, if you can’t show due cause for detaining a prisoner, then you must release him. I demand to know what charges you are holding him under.”

“If he is this Wraathmyr fella—” the sheriff began.

“I am! I am!”

I turned on Sieur Wraathmyr in a fury “I swear, Oddvar, I’m going to boot you into the middle of next week. How could you do this to me? After all I’ve done for you? Saved you from the gutter and lent you a hundred divas—”

“Now, wait one fiking minute,” the sheriff protested. “You can’t be his girl and his lawyer. That’s a conflict of interest.”

I turned on her. “How dare you slander me in such a way? I’ll sue you for harassing my good name! If you don’t want to make matters worse for yourself, I suggest you retract that accusation. And since you have no proof that this man is T. N. Wraathmyr, I demand that you release him to me.”

“I swear I’m T. N. Wraathmyr,” Sieur Wraathmyr said desperately. “I swear I am. Don’t give me over to this crazy lady”

“Can you prove it?” the sheriff asked.

“Well, no, but you have my word.”

“You’d take his word over mine?” I demanded. “A criminal over a solid citizen! You can keep him, then! I don’t care if he rots in that cell forever!”

The sheriff took a large handkerchief out of her pocket and mopped up the sheen of sweat that had sprung out on her temples. “You know what? I don’t care if you are T. N. Wraathmyr, or are not T. N. Wraathmyr, or are even the dæmon Choronzon himself. You can sit in that jail and rot, and you, madama, can sit with him. You are under arrest, and the fiking dog, too—”

She advanced upon me, but Sieur Wraathmyr swung the cell door open and charged through, hitting her like a sack of bricks. Down she went. The deputy stood gaping, and was still gaping when I picked up the truncheon from the sheriff’s desk and bashed him on the head with it. He went down, too. Flynn, who’d sprawled out by the stove during our conversation, sprang to his feet and barked in triumph.

We dragged the two lawdogs into the cell, laid each out on a bunk, and locked them in, dropping the cell key into the spittoon, where it would take a long time for any potential rescuers to find it. And then we skedaddled, as fast we could skedaddle, pausing only long enough for me to scoop up Octohands and settle him on my shoulder and for Sieur Wraathmyr to reclaim his satchel. Out the back door, into the driving rain, past the privy, down the alley, and the fike out of Cambria.

We didn’t pause until we were well out of town. Then we took shelter under a large pine tree. The rain was tapering off into a soggy mist, which, hopefully, would also foil any pursuit. Poor Flynn was soaked to the skin, and I wasn’t that far off. Sieur Wraathmyr’s fur coat looked damp, but inside it, he looked disgustingly dry.

“Where did that octopus come from?” Sieur Wraathmyr asked.

“It’s a long story” I found a dry part of my kilt and tried to dry Snapperdog off. He was starting to shiver.

“I owe you thanks,” Sieur Wraathmyr said, and then blew it by adding, “though I did not actually need your help.”

I stared at him incredulously “Are you fiking kidding me?”

Almost Daughter, don’t be an imbecile! Tamp it down! You’ll piss him off and lose him. He’s too good to let go
—

Shut up! Shut up or I’ll turn you into fish bait!

Sieur Wraathmyr said loftily, “I could have busted out on my own later tonight, once the sheriff went home. I would have shifted, and then the cell would not have been able to hold me.”

“Ayah, and ended up with a lynch mob on your tail! Well, I didn’t bail you out for your own good, let me tell you. I know what’s at stake here. Here’s your dispatch. It was mixed in with my map. I know you are an express agent. If I were you, I’d quit standing there gaping like a broken window and get hot on your job. It’s rather urgent.”

I thrust the dispatch at him, and he took it, saying, “You read the dispatch?”

“It’s in my mother’s handwriting.”

“It is a diplomatic communication!”

“Oh, ayah, well, sorry. Look, you don’t have time to stand around and discuss this. The fate of Califa depends on its safe delivery and you are a wanted man. I’d get moving if I were you. Good luck! Come on, Flynn!”

I turned and marched away, out of the shelter and into the driving rain, hardly able to see for the tears—of anger, I swear—that had sprung to my eyes.
A good deed never goes unpunished
, Nini Mo said. I should have let Sieur Arrogance stay in his cozy little jail and take care of his own snobby self. Why had I even bothered? For Califa I had bothered. For him, no. He was free, and he had his dispatch back and I hoped I never saw him again. Octohands roared at me to go back, to beg Sieur Wraathmyr’s pardon. I pried him off my shoulder and stuffed him back into the dispatch case, vowing to find a way to banish him once and for all.

“Where are you going?” Sieur Wraathmyr loomed over me.

“What the fike do you care? To jump off the nearest cliff! Leave me alone!”

“That’s a stupid thing to do.”

“No, a stupid thing is trying to help some arrogant snapperhead who doesn’t need your help, and a stupider thing is falling for a stupid enchantment that makes you spill your guts to that stupid snapperhead, and to think you actually like him, and to think he likes you, too, and then kissing him, and then the enchantment wears off and he won’t look you in the eye. How’s that for stupidity? Leave me alone!”

Now the rain, not my tears, was blinding me. A Gramatica Curse boiled up out of my tum and I swallowed chokingly, but it was like trying to swallow lava, thick and burning, filling my mouth with viscous fire. I stumbled and almost fell, felt Sieur Wraathmyr’s steadying hand on my arm, heard him say, “Spit, for Goddess’ sake!”

A hankie appeared in front of my face. I spat out a horrible wad of black slime that left my mouth tasting like dog poo. I looked up to see Sieur Wraathmyr tossing the hankie over the cliff and into the water below. He pulled me into the sheltering lee of another tree, then shrugged off his jacket and pulled his checked shirt over his head. I dolefully noticed that his chest was just as muscularly grand as I remembered. Sieur Wraathmyr dried Flynn off with his shirttail, and then slipped the shirt over Flynn’s head. Wrapping the sleeves around Flynn’s tummy, he then tied them tightly, making a kind of shirt-coat. “That should help him a bit. It’s wool, so it’ll keep him warm even when it’s wet.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He shrugged his jacket on. “So last night wasn’t part of the enchantment? You really did tell me all that, and I told you as well?”

“Ayah,” I said bitterly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was a snapperhead. You’ve saved my hide twice and I’ve not been very thankful for it.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“Come with me.”

Now I looked at him. There was no sign of arrogance, only concern. “Why?”

“Because everyone will be looking for you and me both. It’s best if we stick together and get as far away from Cambria as we can. I’m headed to Barbacoa. We’ll be safe there.”