Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (7 page)

“My papi is His Excellency the Don Nxal Alejandro Villaviciosa Ixtlilxóchitl y Xipe Totec, Duque de Xipe Totec, Her Holiness the Vicereina of Huitzil’s ambassador to Califa. I demand that you take me to him immediately.”

Oh fiking hell, just what I needed. The Birdie Ambassador’s son. The real topper to an already glorious night.

“Where’s your bodyguard?” I asked.

“We were attacked by a man with an ax. My duenna got so scared, she ran off,” the kid said. “I did not run—I stayed to fight and struck that man with my sword and he vanished into smoke. Now I cannot find my duenna, or the way out. I demand you help me.”

“A please would go a long way to making me feel like helping you, kid.” I had no desire to have anything to do with any Birdie, even a small and dirty-faced one.

In response, the kid stuck his nose in the air. “I am a diplomat in your country. You owe me the respect of following my orders.”

“Ayah so?” I turned on my heel. I had had enough snotty attitudes tonight. He could find his own way back to his nasty skin-ripping papi. Lightning fast, he was following me, crying, “Please, madama, please! Don’t leave me.”

The kid was a snot-nosed monster, but he was persistent; I had to give him that. Sighing heavily, I halted again.

“How old are you, Conde?”

“Five,” he sniveled.

Oh, fike it all. I couldn’t leave a five-year-old kid, snotty as he might be, Birdie as he might be, sitting alone in the middle of the Zu-Zu’s Horror House. I was pretty sure most of the dangers were vapors, conjured by Furfur for the fun of it all, but what if they weren’t? Those sylphs we had escaped had looked mighty real, and the alligator had certainly
smelled
real. I dug out my hankie and wiped the Conde’s face, though he tried to squirm out of my grasp. How on earth had the Birdie Ambassador produced such a cute kid? Maybe the Conde was adopted. For his mamma’s sake, I sure hoped so.

“All right, you can come with me. But if you see the Man in Pink Bloomers, you must protect me from him with your sword, ayah?”

“Ayah, madama,” he said. “If I see the Man in Pink Bloomers, I will cut his head off and feed his eyes to the crows. I will cut out his heart and feed it to my dog!”

Nope, probably not adopted.

So on we went, the Conde sticking to me like jam, chattering about how he was going to whip his duenna for leaving him, not that it mattered, as he was too big for a duenna, anyway, and how his papi had promised him a monkey with a jeweled collar, who would carry his books to school and then sharpen his pencils (I was skeptical); and how soon his mamma would come with the Infanta, and wouldn’t she be surprised to see him so tall and brave, and not once had he eaten any spinach although his duenna had said no boy would grow big or strong without eating spinach, and see, what did she know, the old crank-face, but I was nice, maybe I could be his duenna, that would be fun, he’d ask his papi, and what did I think about spinach?

“I eat it three times a day,” I said. “Everyone should, I think.”

The Conde gave me a sour look and, blessedly, shut his yip.

We hiked up another long flight of stairs, dark and rickety, and went through a wispy black curtain into—at last!—Saeta House’s ballroom. There, the doom-and-gloom theme continued, leavened with moldering glamour. The walls were draped in black and silver cloth; more black and silver cloth muffled the chandeliers. Bare trees, their branches looking like skeletal white fingers, encircled the dance floor. A white fog drifted through the ballroom, and in the dome above, crows and bats wheeled and screeched. In the minstrel gallery, a band dressed like ghouls played wild music while the party guests danced the tarantella with much stamping of feet and flinging of arms. For a group of supposedly dead people, the guests were pretty lively.

“My papi will thank you for helping me,” the Conde said happily. A servitor bearing a tray full of champagne glasses drifted by; the kid reached out and grabbed one.

“There’s no need for thanks,” I answered, taking the glass from him. He started to protest and I cut him off. “You go find your papi, and I’ll see you later.” I did not want to get anywhere near the Birdie Ambassador. The Conde was close enough.

“I see him, there! Come! Come!” The Conde pointed through the swirl of dancers to the far side of the room where the Birdie Ambassador stood next to the last person in the world I ever wanted to see again (Udo aside): Lord Axacaya.

Every time I thought about Axacaya, I felt like a total nitwit of a fool for having been captured so easily by his sweet words and the charming curve of his lips, not to mention his butter yellow hair and his marvelously sculpted muscles, which were always so well displayed by the skimpiness of his clothes. What an utter cow-headed moron I had been to fall for such prettiness. He had been kind and sweet to me, fattening me up on lies so I would be tender to his knife, ripe for slaughter. Well, I wasn’t slaughtered. And I wanted nothing to do with him.

I wrenched out of the Conde’s grip and, ignoring his protests, headed in the opposite direction. Behind a large statue of Archangel Bob, Avatar of Death, I found a sweet spot where I had a good view of the crowd. There was no sign of the wer-bear. But he had to be here somewhere. I wasn’t leaving until I found him.

“Well, look who it is! A dog of war!” A mocking voice said behind me.

I turned around and there stood the Birthday Girl. As usual, the Zu-Zu was accompanied by her entourage, a gaggle of vapid pale-faced Boy Toys, all jockeying for the privilege of escorting her. Today that privilege had been bestowed upon a boy got up in a style that the
Warlord’s Wear Daily
had dubbed a la
cabeza de la muerte
, or Death’s Head. He stood at her right hand, languidly waving a fan made of black angel feathers.

With an awful shock, I realized that this apparition was Udo.

He looked like a freshly disinterred corpse. He wore a tattered green frock coat and a big wide-brimmed leather hat. Matted blond hair hung around his face; red powder made his eye sockets look hollow and livid; his lips were a black gash against his pallid white skin. Red sparkly boots glittered on his feet. For one horrible moment, I thought he was wearing Springheel Jack’s boots, but then I realized, thankfully, that these boots were copies. Thank the Goddess, Udo was not that dumb.

The Zu-Zu herself wore a sangyn uniform with bat-wing sleeves and a crimson red wig, the uniform of the Alacrán Regiment. Black scars were painted on her cheeks. As I realized she was dressed as Tiny Doom—my mother!—a Gramatica fury began to roil in my stomach. How dare she! How dare she dress up as Tiny Doom! She wasn’t fit to kiss Tiny Doom’s spur.

“Happy Birthday, Infantina,” I said through tight teeth.

“So sorry you missed our Pirates’ Parade show,” the Zu-Zu said. “Udo was brilliant. He set the stage on fire.”

“That must have been fun for the fire brigade,” I answered. “I am sorry I missed the show as well, but I had to work. Some of us do work, you know, Your Grace.”

The Zu-Zu’s lip curled. “What are you dressed as, Private Fyrdraaca? A dead muleskinner?”

Before I could answer with a snappy comeback, Udo said. “Now, Your Grace, not until midnight can we'reveal who we are. Until then, we must allow others their guesses.”

The Zu-Zu pouted. “It’s my party and my rule, so why should I not break it?”

Udo answered, “Because then you would lose the fun of the game, Zu.”

“Well, then, let’s guess,” the Zu-Zu said. “I look at that nasty buckskin jacket, all ragged and stained, and say dead muleskinner. Am I right?”

“No,” I answered through even tighter teeth.

“That awful plaid kilt and scruffy boots,” said a Boy Toy wrapped in a bedraggled red satin suit embroidered with dragons, the musician Nicky O, I supposed. “Must be Mag Hagbun, Queen of the Ear Chewers.”

The other Toys roared at the guess. Then they all had to have a crack, trying to outdo one another in cleverness. Of course their guesses were highly uncomplimentary and—to themselves, at least—hilarious. I stood there, trying to act nonchalant, while the Gramatica boiled in me like an inferno. I bit my lip until I felt the skin give way.

“What about you, Sieur Wraathmyr?” the Zu-Zu said, when they had all had a turn, even Udo (who had guessed I was a vampire, even though I knew full well he knew exactly who I was). The Boy Toys parted and there stood Sieur Wer-bear at the back of the pack, smoking a little ivory pipe and looking bored.

He barely glanced at me. “Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, of course.”

“I think he’s right,” Udo said, the coward. “I now recognize the outfit.”

The Zu-Zu looked disappointed. Then she smiled and said maliciously, “You have guessed right, Sieur Wraathmyr. Claim your prize!”

The wer-bear looked blank. “I cry your pardon, madama, but I do not know your customs.”

“A kiss,” one of the Boy Toys said. “Zu has proclaimed that a correct guess gets a kiss. Sometimes it is better to be wrong, eh?”

The Toys looked at me and giggled, Udo among them, and for a tiny second, I was tempted to open my mouth and let the Gramatica Curse fulminating in my mouth fly—let’s see how hard they’d be laughing then, writhing on the ground with their livers turned to mush. But as sweet as the short term would be, the long term of being caught with magick would be rather sour. So, although my teeth were starting to ache, I kept my mouth shut.

Sieur Wraathmyr looked at me as though he’d rather kiss a scorpion. I curved my tingly lips into what I hoped was a scornful
Try to impress me, puggie
, smile.

“Kiss her!” the Zu-Zu demanded, and the Toys began to chant the command. Sieur Wraathmyr didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, grabbed me in his arms, and dipped me down, off balance, turning his back to the Zu-Zu and her cronies. If I struggled, I risked falling or looking like a fool. So I tried to neither tense up nor go limp, but to remain nonchalant, as though people swept me off my feet all the time. Sieur Wraathmyr bent his head down to mine, hair falling across my face. Goddess, even though he was a snapperhead, he did smell wonderful.

“Why do you dog me?” he whispered. I couldn’t answer, at risk of letting the Word out. I tried to swallow it, but it stuck in my throat like a piece of sticky toffee.

“Leave me—” But he didn’t complete his sentence, for I felt my feet slip, and as I let out an involuntary squeak of alarm, the Word flew out of my mouth into his.

Sieur Wraathmyr jerked back as though I’d stung him. I thought he would drop me, but he recovered quickly and in another smooth movement, stood me on my feet.

The Toys were whooping, and applause splattered around us. I didn’t recognize the taste of the Word, but it was bitter, like very dark chocolate, with a little kick of spice. Surely at any moment Sieur Wraathmyr would explode into jelly or dissolve into flames, or transmogrify into a six-headed coyote. Instead, he turned back to the Zu-Zu and sketched an insolent Courtesy. Udo, I noticed joyfully, was scowling. Standing in contrast to Sieur Wraathmyr, Udo suddenly looked raw, green, just another pretty boy Sieur Wraathmyr hadn’t even noticed him.

“Very nice, Sieur Wraathmyr,” the Zu-Zu said, fluttering her fan at him. “I like your technique. Perhaps I shall have a go at guessing your costume.”

Sieur Wraathmyr said, “I cry your pardon, Your Grace, but I fear I do not have a costume. Your Grace’s invitation came to me so late that I had not time to prepare an outfit.”

“Then you must pay me a forfeit,” the Zu-Zu answered. Before she could name the forfeit—and by the way she was now looking at him, I had a feeling I knew what it would be—Denizen Furfur manifested next to her and said mournfully, “The cake is ready to be brought in, Your Grace. The Warlord wishes to see it cut so that he may retire.”

“My cake!” Grabbing Udo’s arm, the Zu-Zu rushed away, the Toys jockeying for position behind her.

I did not rush to follow them, and neither did Sieur Wraathmyr. He brushed by me without a second glance. And I thought the Zu-Zu was arrogant! Well, he could be snobby all he wanted. I wanted my map, and I’d better get it, too, before he exploded, or worse.

I followed Sieur Wraathmyr as he skirted the dance floor, trying to catch up with him but being thwarted by the dancers, now cavorting to a very loud falandio. The dance ended with a fanfare, and the dancers scattered; I weaved in and out of the throng, gaining on him. I almost had him cornered near one of the punch bowls when I heard a voice at my heels.

Ah, fike, not now.

“Ave, Flora!” Udo said, breathlessly I pretended not to hear him, and dodged around a man done up to look like a dissected cadaver. But Udo was persistent, and reached out to grab my arm.

“Shouldn’t you be with the Zu-Zu?” I turned around to face him.

“Zu is getting ready to receive her cake; she won’t miss me.” Udo looked at me expectantly, and when I didn’t say anything, he said, “I was surprised to see you here.”

“I was invited. It was my duty to come.” I scanned the crowd, but Sieur Wraathmyr had vanished. Thanks, Udo.

“Mine, too.”

“Is being the Zu-Zu’s lap dog part of this duty?”

“It is, actually,” he said, grinning. “I’ve been promoted. I’m second gentleman in the Warlord’s bedchamber now. I get to hold his mirror while he is shaving. And I have to bark whenever Zu requires it.”

“How nice for you.” If my tone was a bit nastier than I had intended, well, too fiking bad. “And her costume! How dare she!”

Udo looked a bit abashed, as well he should. “Ayah. I didn’t think you’d like that much. But you know the Zu-Zu is a huge fan of Azota. She hates the Birdies, too—”

“She grew up among the Birdies,” I said. The Zu-Zu had gone to school in Anahuatl City, as a “guest” of the Birdies, and had only been allowed to return to the City last year.

“That’s why she hates them. The Birdie Ambassador is not pleased with her outfit. She’s making a political statement.”

I had no desire to hear about the Zu-Zu’s political leanings, or anything else about her. She might be the Warlord’s fourth heir, but I was the Head of the House Haðraaða, so I trumped her, even if I couldn’t admit it yet. I made a move to squeeze by Udo, but he was immovable.