But in the last few months, Califa’s Grotto had become less obscure. The statue had been altered with paint and ribbands, the white marble hair stained red, the blank marble eyes colored deep blue, scars painted on the white marble cheeks. A shocking pink ribband fluttered from the end of the white marble rifle, and the limp fox hanging in her grip was splattered with black and gold spots, jaguarlike, adorned with gold and jade-green ribbands: Birdie colors. The dog had been painted the same red hue as the statue’s hair. On the bottom of the plinth, someone had splashed white paint over the inscription CALIFA and written in red AZOTA.
The statue had become a shrine to my dear supposedly dead mamma, now called by her admirers Azota the Whip. The candles that flickered in the darkness were offerings to her, and so were the garlands of flowers hanging from the bushes surrounding the Grotto. I had never seen anyone else at the Grotto, but clearly the statue got many visitors, bearing with them many gifts, for the plinth was covered with things: a box of candies, a bottle of gin, a small silver ukulele, a clay statue of a rabbit, several gilt bells, one silver engraved spur, and tiny redheaded clothespin dolls.
I waded over to a low-hanging branch and hung up Pow’s cradleboard, then checked to make sure he was dry and sleeping—yes to both. After unpacking the equipment I needed for the Working, I hung my dispatch case next to him. A small picnic table stood, islandlike, beside the catch basin. It, too, was covered with offerings: a halfeaten chicken (now, that’s a cheap offering!), more pillar candles, a furry coat, and a pair of black boots. I pushed this stuff aside to make room for my Working and lay the equipment out.
The water in the catch basin felt warm and oily My finger, as it curved across the surface, left behind a faint pink trace: the Current. The pinkness swirled in the darkness but did not dissolve. The Current wouldn’t crest for another twenty minutes or so. Pow was still sleeping peacefully, so I clambered up onto the rim of the catch basin, grabbing at one of the stone dog’s legs and pulling myself up. I hung there for a moment, balancing on my tum, and then I pushed my feet against the side of the plinth and hauled myself up the last little way.
The plinth was narrow, but carefully I managed to inch myself into a standing position, keeping a firm grip on the statue until I was standing face-to-face with her. The marble was chilly and slightly damp. But when I closed my eyes, I could pretend for a second or two that the figure I clung to was warm, was real.
I tried to conjure up some memory of Tiny Doom. Once, I’d met her in Bilskinir’s past; then she’d been young, like me, and sour, but also fearless and loyal. But that wasn’t what I wanted to remember. Once, I had been a baby and she had held me, rocked me, and kissed me. Surely, deep in the recesses of my mind, I must remember that. But no matter how hard I tried, I did not.
And no matter how hard I tried to pretend the cold marble was warm flesh, it remained icy beneath my cheek.
Still, I clung to the statue, waiting for the Current to crest, and then, despite myself, I found my mind drifting away from the Working and toward the last person in the world I wanted to waste a thought on: Udo Landaðon, my former best friend. On the other side of the City, he was gallivanting across a stage, being adored by his fans—and by the Zu-Zu, the Warlord’s horrific granddaughter. Well, fike him. He’d made the wrong choice and someday he would realize it. Let him play at his fun, play at being a singer, play at being a courtier. I had work to do.
Below me, thick curls of coldfire fog were beginning to wisp up from the surface of the pool. Time to focus.
I swung down from the statue, filled my silver collapsible cup with icy-cold Current, and waded over to the picnic table. Pow made a hiccupy snore but stayed asleep. Spreading the map out on the table, I anchored the corners with four of the offering candles. I had stolen the map from the CGO; it was the largest map of the world I could find. On top of the map, I lay the Statement of Intent that outlined my goals for the Working. Then I took a deep, calming breath, to quell the nervous flutter in my stomach. I closed my eyes and lifted the silver cup of spring water, which glowed an unearthly pink. The cup was as cold as ice, and when I placed the rim against my lips, the metal stuck to my skin, burning.
Dare, win, or disappear.
I drank.
THREE
The Map. Interruption. Retreat.
THE CURRENT FIZZED in my mouth, bubbly as soda water, and when I pulled the cup away, it took with it the skin from my lips. But the pain was nothing compared to the buzz that was surging into my head, making my ears ring and my vision go shadowy. A huge pressure built up behind my ears. Then, just as I thought my head might explode, the pressure popped and a great glorious feeling washed over me. I felt fine. I felt marvelous. I felt strong as sulfur, tall as a thundercloud. All my fear and anger dropped away and was replaced by a firm, hard certainty.
My Banishing was loud and authoritative, hitting high notes I’d never managed before. I held the last tone a full minute, my lungs going flat and wheezy with effort, and when I was done, the Grotto was flooded with a brilliant pink light, the Aethyr shorn of all negative energy. Now the meat of the Working, the Invocation.
I stood before the statue and made my Courtesy (Supplication and Humble Request), then folded my hands into the Gesture of Respect and spoke the Invocation, being super careful to conjugate the verbs in the vocative case. The Gramatica Words began small and pebbly in my mouth but grew enormous and choking, and as they fell from my lips, the sounds became twists of light that curled and rolled around each other, braiding together into a lash that surrounded me in a glowing lariat-like circle.
I held up the Statement of Intent and set it alight with a Gramatica Command. The paper hung in the air, fluttering like a bird on fire, and then its ashes blew into the darkness. Rolling up my sleeve, I hunkered down in the glowing circle. I had found the razor in Tiny Doom’s Catorcena trunk at Bilskinir; its handle was made of polished jade, poisonous green. Now it left a thin red line across my wrist, a silver stripe of pain that felt marvelous. I flexed my fist and the line thickened, oozed, blood as black as ink in the flaring candlelight. I flexed my fist again until the blood was flowing freely, dripping down my wrist. The cut had been thin but deep.
I commanded, and flicked my hand out. Blood drops splattered on the map. Thrusting the razor into my pocket, I bent down to examine where the drops had fallen, and as I watched, the smaller flecks began to fade from red to brown, from brown to beige, and then they were gone, leaving one stain behind.
The contours of the map had changed, grown unfamiliar. I looked closer, trying to make out the topographical markings. A gust of wind blew through the Grotto and extinguished all the candles at once, flooding the glade with bright silver moonlight. The underbrush on the left side of the Grotto was rustling violently. Flynn, messing about in the woods, I hoped. He’d run off while I was banishing, trailing some scent. The swaying of the bushes was accompanied by a heavy growling, much too low and rumbly to be Snapperdog. The Grotto was filled with the rank, rich odor of rotting blood mixed with wet fur.
The City is full of wildlife: rabbits and squirrels, coyotes and badgers, skunks and opossums. I had never seen any animals during my previous visits to the Grotto, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. Whatever was making that sound in the bushes was definitely big.
The growling grew louder and the bushes cracked and snapped. My heart boomed in my chest like a drum. I jumped to my feet, took three splashy steps, and clambered up onto the rim of the catch basin, my dispatch case banging painfully into my kidneys. Just as I swung up onto the plinth, the Current giving me lift, a dark shape burst out of the underbrush. It loped across the Grotto, hoisted itself over the edge of the basin, lowered its shaggy head, and slurped up Current. Fortunately, it didn’t see me, frozen a few feet above its head. I looked down at the shaggy bulk that was not a coyote, or a badger, or a feral pig. It was a bear.
I clutched at the statue’s cold marble legs, my insides turning to goo. Not five f
eet away from the bear, Pow’s cradleboard dangled, and surely there are few things in this world more delicious to a bear than a chubby milk-fed boy Since I was off-duty, I was unarmed. I didn’t even have Pig with me; I’d left him at home, at Crackpot Hall, as it wasn’t very becoming for an army officer to carry around a pink plushy toy, even if that pink plushy toy was actually a protection egregore. Now I bitterly regretted being so concerned with appearances.
Stay asleep, stay asleep, stay asleep, Pow, stay asleep.
I clutched the statue with ice-cold hands, trying not to breathe. The bear sat on its haunches for a moment, chewing on its paw. Its head was as large as Pow and the moonlight gleamed off claws as long as my fingers. Even hunched over, it was enormous, and I was horrifically aware that my perch on the plinth was no security from those long arms. Drops of Current clung to its fur, dappling the dark brown with pink. I swallowed hard, trying not to gag or cough; the smell of wet fur and blood was overwhelming.
The bear leaned over and plunged a paw into the Current; the water churned and a fish flipped upward. The bear caught the fish with its other paw and crammed it into its enormous gaping maw. With one crunch, the carp was gone. I had a sudden awful vision of a fat baby going the same way.
Stay asleep, stay asleep, stay asleep, Pow, stay asleep.
The bear fished another carp out of the spring and shoved it down, heedless of bones. Moistly, I continued to cling to the statue, my shins burning. The bear gobbled down one more fish, then dropped back onto all fours. It splashed over to the picnic table, sniffed at the candles, then at the map, drawn, I realized sickeningly, by the smell of my blood. The bear nosed the map, then reared back on its haunches, peering studiously at it. At least this interest was keeping it from noticing the tastier snack dangling just a few feet away.
Stay asleep, stay asleep, stay asleep, Pow, stay asleep.
Abruptly, the bear ambled back over to the spring and lumbered up onto the edge of the basin. It lowered itself into the water, the same way a human might lower herself into a pool, first one leg, then the other, and then sliding all the way in. The Current surged up and over the rim. The basin wasn’t big enough for the bear to do anything except splash around, but this it did quite energetically.
I took advantage of the bear’s distraction to reach into my pocket for the handle of the straight razor. It was a paltry weapon and probably useless against a bear, but better than nothing. A gravelly Word was rolling around in my tum; if worse came to worst, I could spit that at the bear. I wasn’t sure what the Word would do, but I was willing to bet it would provide enough distraction for me to grab Pow and escape.
The bear seemed to enjoy its bath. It heaved and rolled, grunted and snorted, like a man singing in the tub. I glanced in Pow’s direction. He wasn’t making any noise, but I could see by the moonlight that his eyes had popped open.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, Pow, don’t cry.
The bear sank down into the water and submerged. A squeak came from the cradleboard. A second squeak turned into a grumble. The water in the catch basin was roiling and bubbling, but the bear did not come up for air. Pow, however, had plenty of air; he let out a howl that could probably be heard in Arivaipa Territory.
Desperately, I flung myself from the plinth, jumping across the roiling water, and landed with a bright wrench of pain. Stumbling into a run, fumbling in my other pocket for his soother, I got to Pow and shoved the soother into his mouth just as the bear began to surface. I snatched up the cradleboard and dove into the bushes. There I crouched, clutching the cradleboard in one hand, the razor in the other. The sound of Pow’s sucking seemed thunderous. How well could bears hear? Hopefully, not well at all.
The bear climbed out of the catch basin, shaking itself, spraying drops of Current. It seemed shrunken and smaller, only slightly spangled with pink. The Current was fading. The full moon had slipped beyond the edge of the trees, so the Grotto no longer glowed with silver light, but a few shafts of moonlight penetrated the foliage. As the bear, now upright and not nearly as tall as I expected, passed through the moonlight, I saw that it was no longer a bear.
It was a man.
Oh, fiking hell. A skinwalker. A wer-bear.
I had read about skinwalkers in The Eschatanomicon. Some are magicians. Some have had geases placed upon them. Some have been infected with shape-shifting by other shape-shifters. (Nini Mo herself was said to be a skinwalker who could turn herself into a coyote.) But all skinwalkers have one thing in common: under Birdie law, they are outlaws.
The Birdies also have skinwalkers; they are priests, called nahuals, who can change themselves into the totem animal of the god they are dedicated to. The nahuals are even more horrible than the Flayed Priests; in addition to their shape-shifting, they eat only human flesh and drink human blood, and only they are allowed to shape-shift. It’s strictly forbidden for anyone other than a nahual to transmogrify into an animal. The Birdies didn’t impose all their laws upon us when they became our overlords, but the law against skinwalking they insisted upon. There was no way this skinwalker could be a Birdie priest, for there is no Birdie god whose totem animal is a bear. That meant he was an outlaw.
The wer-bear shook himself and stretched, reaching his arms over his head. He had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face. But there was just enough light for me to see that his dark hair hung over his shoulders in a tangle of curls. His back was dappled in markings—tattoos of some kind, though I couldn’t make out the patterns.
I had to admit that it was a very nice rear view.
Done stretching, the wer-bear walked over to the picnic table and the remnants of my Working. He pulled on the furry coat I had pushed aside, and—fike!—picked up my map, examined it briefly, and then, after folding it up, shoved it inside his coat. Next to me, the cradleboard began to shake; Pow had spat out his soother and begun to hiccup. The sound seemed explosive. The wer-bear was pulling on his boots and he didn’t seem to hear the hiccups, but he certainly heard Flynn barking, for at the approaching sound, he lifted his head.
Snapperdog was going to lead him right to us. Now that the bear was a man, I had more confidence I could handle him with the razor, no Gramatica Curse needed. But putting up a fight meant Pow would be in danger, and that I did not dare. I hated like fike to leave that map, but I had no choice. So as quietly as I could, I crept through the brush to the trail. Once out of the trees, I slung the cradleboard over my shoulder and lumbered through the muck. I knew I was leaving a trail as obvious as the moon in the sky, but I couldn’t help that. I hoped very hard that Sieur Caballo had not already encountered the bear.
But Sieur Caballo was exactly where I had left him, head drooped in a snooze. I was frantically strapping the cradleboard to the saddle when Snapperdog burst out of the woods with a dead rabbit in his jaws. I wrestled the rabbit out of his mouth, flung him over the front of the saddle, mounted up, and then rode like fike back to the safety of the post, Pow on my back howling the whole way.
FOUR
Insomnia. Bad Dreams. Poppy.
IF BUCK HAD had her way, I’d be living in the Commanding Officer’s Quarters with her. But as a second lieutenant, I was entitled to my own quarters. With Poppy, for once, taking my side, Buck had agreed to let me live in the Unmarried Officers’ Quarters, or UOQ for short. My room there wasn’t luxurious, but after Crackpot’s moldering grandeur and the Barracks’ cells, it seemed wonderful to me. It was all mine. I didn’t have to worry about nosy denizens, or nosy fathers, or nosy mothers, or nosy sisters, or nosy roommates, or nosy proctors.
Never had I been more grateful for this privacy than when I got back to the UOQ still upset by the events at the Grotto. Upon our return to the COQ, a pot of blueberry mush had put an end to Pow’s howls; I had put him to bed and awaited Buck’s return. But once home, I couldn’t stop shaking. I had faced a lot of fearful dangers in my time—a kakodæmon, Buck in a bad mood, oblivion, Axacaya’s Quetzal guards, having to recite the Califa
Declaration of Sovereignty in front of all of Sanctuary School—but somehow none of those dangers had engendered quite the same visceral reaction that the wer-bear had.
No, it wasn’t the wer-bear himself—it was the knowledge that I had almost gotten Pow eaten. Chubby little Pow with his double chins and pea-green eyes. His tongue might hang out in a wormy fashion sometimes and his screeches could cut glass, but I did not want him to be eaten by a bear, wer or not.
Added to this fright was the awful fact that I had lost the map before I’d even had a good look at it. The Working had been a success, and yet I was still clueless, with no idea where Tiny Doom was. I didn’t dare try the Working again. The Current was already falling, and without the noise of the Pirates’ Parade revelers, anything magickal I did would stick out like a sore thumb.
There was one recourse: Somehow I had to find that wer-bear and get the map back. Fast.
Tonight I was too wrung out to come up with a plan; I’d think of something tomorrow, when I was fresh. But despite my exhaustion, it took me a long time to fall asleep. And when I did, my dreams were full of roars and slavering jaws, as the bear and I raced for Pow, but the bear got there first...
I woke up in a cold sweat. I staggered to the washstand and rinsed my mouth out, then drank most of the carafe of water. The cut on my wrist throbbed with a fiery pulse and my head pounded as though a percussion dæmon were playing a tattoo upon my skull. My watch said it was four a.m. The room felt stifling hot and my nightgown was sticking to me unpleasantly. I slid the window open a crack, letting in a rill of cool, moist air that smelled of the bay The other buildings were dark except for the Convalescent House, which had a light burning on the second floor. A solitary figure walked slowly down Officers’ Row; at first I thought it was a guard, but then I recognized the slightly limpy gait: Poppy.
Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo Page 3
