“Forget Cousin What’s-her-name. Jack can’t stay here until he softens up. I have to get him going somehow. Do you think more zombie powder would work even if he’s already dead?”
Valefor said in alarm, “I don’t want a revenant shuffling around my grounds, Flora. Once my henhouse got infested by ghouls; they ate all my chickens before I realized what was going on and put the whammy on them. That’s how I lost Gallo de Cielo. Oh, he was a champion fighter—you should have seen his spur. Anyway, where would we move him where he won’t keep spoiling?”
“To the Casa de Hielo. No one ever goes there, and that should keep the flies and the smell down. Maybe by the time we come home, he’ll have softened up again and Udo can get him out of here.”
Valefor was, of course, outraged at my suggestion that we stow Jack in the old icehouse. He began to rave about the pristine quality of his ice, the purity of his spring water, and the absolute necessity of avoiding contamination by decaying outlaws. But he didn’t offer a better idea, so I ignored him and hauled the wheelbarrow out of the hay shed.
I don’t know how much Springheel Jack weighed in life, but the term deadweight now rang true. Even if I hadn’t been hampered by yards of poofy skirt and those squeezy tight stays, I would have had a hard time levering him up off the hay bale and into the wheelbarrow. But the worst of it was that although the dead outlaw was rigid, he was also weirdly squishy. My fingers left deep indentations in his flesh. He was sloshy, too, as though his insides were turning to mush, which I suppose they were. The whole thing was horrible; my breakfast kept threatening to splash upward, but I commanded it to stay down. Rangers don’t puke, at least not in the line of duty.
“Focus your Will,” Valefor said encouragingly. “Heave-ho. Put your back into it.”
I let off heaving and stood up, wiping sweat off my face and trying to flap the hay off my skirts. Maybe it would be better to just leave Springheel Jack until I returned from the Ball and Udo could help me. I couldn’t go to the Ball looking like a soggy mess. But I couldn’t risk leaving Springheel Jack in the stables. Poppy was sure to check the horses before he went to bed. And the smell was going to get worse long before it got better. What if it started to drift? What if the wind came up? What if the horses started to fuss again?
“If I was myself, I could just whisk him away, no problem,” Valefor chirped.
“If wishes were fishes, then beggars would never go ride,” I answered. For every vampire, said Nini Mo, there is a kind of stake. There’s always a solution, you just have to think.
I thought, and then pushed the wheelbarrow as close as I could to the hay bale. Perhaps if I just gave Jack a good push, he would topple over into the barrow. I grabbed an empty feed sack so I didn’t have to touch the squishy outlaw with my bare hands again, then pushed. He barely budged. Surely he couldn’t weigh that much? Maybe it was the boots—I pushed again, grunting and gasping.
That wasn’t going to work. I needed a rapid dose of strength and energy, and I knew of only one way to get it: a Stamina Sigil. A Stamina Sigil is rather advanced; it takes two Gramatica Words, not one—just a phrase, not an entire sentence. I’d never tried that complex a sigil. But the two Words were ones that I knew and could pronounce perfectly separately, so, surely, putting them together would be no problem. Plus, if I could fight off the Loliga’s tentacle and conjure up an Ominous Apparition, I could certainly manage a little Stamina.
“I’d hurry if I were you,” Valefor advised. “He’s not getting any lighter and you are not getting any earlier.”
I stood on one foot and laced my hands together in the Evocative Gesture. Took a deep breath and closed my eyes, envisioning the Words as little glowy glyphs inside my eyelids. The glyphs became so bright that they seemed to fill the inside of my skull with a brilliant coldfire glow.
I opened my eyes and the Words flew out of my mouth in a buzzing rush:
The Words flitted around each other, twisting and turning, and came together to form one Brightly Shining Word. It darted toward me, and reflexively I reached out to snatch it from the air. For a moment the Word buzzed so strongly inside my closed hand that I almost let it go. Then suddenly the buzzing stopped. I opened my hand, and there on my palm was a black ant the size of a glory.
“Nicely done, Flora Segunda,” Valefor said, peering down. “Though I’m surprised at the form it took. Were you thinking about bugs?”
“I don’t know.” I felt vaguely disappointed. I didn’t feel strong and energetic at all. In fact, the force of the Gramatica had left me feeling even more weak-kneed than before.
“Well, don’t waste it, anyway Come on, chop-chop. Down it goes.”
“You want me to eat it?”
The ant waved its antennae and crawled toward my thumb.
“How else is it going to get inside you? Come on, Flora, hurry up! Hotspur is hollering.”
I’d never eaten an ant before. You can buy fried grasshoppers at Woodward’s Gardens; they are delicious, but they are also dead. This ant was not. But I supposed it wasn’t really alive, either; it might look like an ant but it was really a sigil.
I popped the sigil in my mouth; for a second there was the tickly sensation of little feet scrabbling on my tongue. Before I could gag, I bit down, and an effervescent buzz filled my mouth and exploded in a heady rush. Suddenly I felt terrific. Sparkly and strong. Fabulous. As though I could single-handedly perform deeds of great daring, with one hand tied behind my back, and on my tiptoes.
Now Springheel Jack was as light as a waffle. I picked him up with one hand and dropped him into the wheelbarrow, his legs sticking up in a horribly pathetic way. I threw a drop cloth over them. With Valefor trailing behind me, I hefted the wheelbarrow as though it were filled with air, then trundled it out of the stables and down the overgrown path toward the icehouse.
The Casa de Hielo is built in the fanciful shape of a little gingerbread house, complete with gaily painted stone gumdrops on the roof, marzipan trimming, and windowpanes resembling red and green candy. When Poppy was crazy, we had used the icehouse by necessity; there’s an icebox in the kitchen, but after Poppy threatened the iceman with an ice pick, the company refused to deliver anymore. It had been a huge hassle hauling the ice to the main house—who do you think had done the hauling, and without benefit of a Stamina Sigil, too? But now that Poppy was sane, we got ice deliveries regularly, and had abandoned the Casa de Hielo again.
“Hotspur is really hollering now,” Valefor said. “You’d better hurry faster.”
I hurried faster. Inside the little building, a dashing stream bubbled up from the rock below and channeled into a deep stone trough. In the middle of the floor, a ringed hatch opened into the freezing ice cellar, dark and dank as hell’s winter. Although the day outside was not particularly warm, inside the icehouse I could see my breath. I trundled the wheelbarrow into the room and let drop the handles. My palms burned, but I still felt pretty good.
“You aren’t going to put him down in the ice cellar, are you?” Valefor said worriedly. “He’ll spoil all my beautiful clean ice.”
“It’ll be cool enough in here, I warrant. We don’t want him to freeze, just not stink like a dead fish.”
“I thought you weren’t going to do any more sigils, Flora. Not until you had more practice with Gramatica,” Valefor said, watching as I finished stowing the outlaw, and then helping me to brush the straw and grass off my skirts before I rushed back toward the House.
“’Necessity is the mother of daring,’ Nini Mo said.”
“Huh,” Valefor said, “I think you wanted to do it anyway, and just needed an excuse. I wish you wouldn’t rely so much on Nini Mo, she wasn’t quite—” As I reached the garden gate, Valefor disappeared in midsentence.
Poppy was standing at the top of the garden stairs, looking annoyed. “Where have you been? We are going to be late—and you have hay on your skirts.”
“Mouse knocked me with his head,” I lied. “I fell down. Sorry, Poppy”
“That Mouse—I hope you whacked him good. I told your mother we should get rid of him; he’s a menace.”
I followed Poppy to the Back Drive, where the barouche waited. Mamma never goes anywhere without outriders; Poppy and I alone didn’t rate a full squad, only two privates, who were standing by their horses, smoking. Poppy handed me up into the barouche and stuffed my skirts in after me. He climbed in and the driver stuffed his skirts in after him. The driver slammed the door, and then the coach rocked as he climbed up to his seat.
Off we went to the Warlord’s Birthday Ball.
Fourteen
Saeta House. Snow. Sharks.
DURING THE RIDE TO Saeta House, Poppy peppered me with instructions, reminders, pointers, and orders. He seemed to have forgotten that I had earned an A-plus in Charm class and an A-minus in Deportment. Maybe I hadn’t been out in society much, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t know how to act. Manners make the ranger, said Nini Mo.
But there was no point in protesting. Sober Poppy is not keen on contradiction, so I just nodded and mumbled ayah every little while. Despite myself, I felt nervous. Not for me—I knew I could behave—but for Poppy, who, despite his soberness, is still a bit of a loose cannon. He hadn’t been out in public in a long time, and even then he had been supervised. Now I was supposed to be supervising him, but I couldn’t watch him every minute.
You should always have a plan, said Nini Mo, even if your plan is that you need a plan. Well, right now that was my plan. But surely once I’d had a chance to reconnoiter, I’d come up with a better one.
The crush outside Saeta House was so great that we left the barouche and outriders a block away and legged it the rest of the way. You would think everyone in the City had been invited to the Birthday Ball. The Warlord is known for his generosity when it comes to hospitality. Every month he holds open house at Saeta House; anyone can show up, stand in line to shake the Warlord’s hand, and then go on to an all-you-can-eat-chile-con-carne buffet. For a puppet despot, he certainly worries about keeping his people happy.
“Don’t let go,” Poppy instructed me, holding out his hand. Though I am much too old to hold hands with my father, this seemed like a pretty wise move—if I lost Poppy in the mob, I’d never find him again. But his tight grip proved to be pointless, for we had no trouble getting through the crowd. In fact, people melted away from us as though we were emitting a noxious smell.
“It’s Hotspur; keep your head down. You never know when he’ll blow,” I heard someone say and then I realized the reason for our progress. People were afraid of Poppy. If he noticed this attention, he didn’t show any outward sign. But he didn’t let go of my hand, and his grip was crushing.
A militia guard was stationed at the bottom of marble stairs that led to Saeta’s main portico. He waved us on, and upward we trudged. Poppy cannot walk very quickly on his bad leg, and so our progress was slow. I began to notice that the air was growing cooler, and my breath was like white steam. White flakes floated down, glittering in the lamplight. I held out my hand and caught a few of the flakes wisping through the white dusk: snow.
“Axacaya,” Poppy gasped. He was leaning on me heavily “He is a show-off.”
“How can he make it snow?”
“There is no end to Axacaya’s tricks,” Poppy answered. “And he doesn’t want us to forget that, either.” He muttered something under his breath that, had he heard me muttering, would have gotten me in trouble for sure.
The receiving line was so long that it snaked out from underneath the portico, halfway down the steps. As we approached the end of the line, people began to whisper among themselves, and I knew: They were whispering about us. It’s bad enough that Poppy is Poppy and has such a reputation, but why did he have to wear the bloody Alacrán uniform? He’s retired on disability; there’s no reason for him to kit up at all. He could have worn civilians. There were other uniforms in line, but they were all black-coats, and all officers who fight with paper, not guns. Poppy was the only Skinner present, and the only officer of the line. He stood out.
“...killed and scalped five civilians at...”
“...personally executed two deserters at Gehenna...”
“...beat a horse-thief so bad he died...”
Poppy ignored the muttering. I tried to ignore it, too, but the words felt like hot cinders in my eyes, which were suddenly watering in a most unrangery way.
“...Butcher Brakespeare, that bitch—”
This got Poppy’s attention. His head swiveled toward the large man standing behind us, wearing a yellow-and-green checked velvet ditto suit and a purple plug hat. The man wilted under Poppy’s icy green gaze and dropped out of line, in such a hurry that he slipped and slid the rest of the way down.
The whispering stopped.
As we got closer to the top of the stairs, the air grew chillier, and the steps grew slick with snow and ice. By the time we reached the portico, my leg muscles burned, and thanks to those blasted stays, I was feeling a bit faint. My hem was wet and soggy My summer-weight pelisse wasn’t doing much to keep out the cold, so I was freezing, also. If Mamma had been with us, we would have swept to the front of the line, but I didn’t want to suggest we do anything that would make us stand out any more than we already were.
We finally made it through Arch of the Warlord’s Glorious Conquest and into the Courtyard of the Warlord’s Glorious Incarnations. Past the Warlord’s Reflection Pool, now shimmering with ice, and by the enormous statues along the Courtyard’s walls, each representing the Warlord at a different age. FLORIAN, YOUTHFUL AND PROUD. FLORIAN, ENSLAVED BUT UNTAMED. FLORIAN, TRIUMPHANTLY FREE. FLORIAN, THE CONQUEROR OF CALIFA. The line moved slowly enough that I had time to read all the inscriptions and study all the sculptures. They were colossal, but not very well done. Indeed, FLORIAN, DEFENDER OF THE REPUBLIC looked like he was in urgent need of a potty But the statues provided a good distraction from my growing nervousness.
The Receiving Hall was, blessedly, warmer. The walls, floor, and ceiling are glass, and behind them, swimming slowly and hungrily, is a huge great white shark—the Warlord’s totem. The effect is very creepy. The shark drifts around in the gloomy water like a famished white ghost, and even though it’s on the other side of a glass wall, it is close enough to make your skin crawl. I guess Saeta House’s denizen, Furfur, is not going to let the glass crack and the water—and shark—pour out, but still, it’s hard not to be worried. (There are stories that the Warlord feeds the shark with prisoners from the Califa City Gaol, but surely those are just stories.) The whole effect is to make you feel overawed and off balance, which is probably the idea. Anyway, because of the shark, the Receiving Hall was not icy; wiping my nose on my sleeve, I was glad of that.
First we made courtesy to Conde Rezaca, the Warlord’s Chief of Staff. Poppy’s bad leg and bad arm limited his courtesy to a sweeping flourish of his good arm and a sort of half bow, neither of which a proper courtesy made. The Conde Rezaca accepted Poppy’s effort with a courtesy of his own, Acknowledging Heroic Style, and then slapped Poppy on the back and asked him to join the poker party he had planned for later in the evening. Poppy didn’t exactly accept the invitation, but he didn’t decline, either. Sometimes, Nini Mo said, being politic also means being vague.
Then on to the Infante Electo, Second Heir to the Republic. Electo’s handshake was clammy, and even in the murky slithery light, his eyes had that empty look that comes from smoking too much hash. The Warlord is old, but he’s still handsome in an old lion sort of way. Electo didn’t look like a young lion; he looked like someone who wanted only a dark room and another reefer.
“Goddess save us from Electo,” Poppy muttered to me as we moved on. “If the Warlord’s hammer should ever fall to him, it will be the end of the Republic.”
And then we were at the Warlord, who didn’t wait for us to come abreast of him, but rather stumped forward to meet us, smiling broadly. He was resplendent in an acrid orange kilt and an eggshell blue f
rock coat that opened over a weskit embroidered with gold suns. A sharkskin cape hunched over his shoulders. His one shoe had a huge diamond-studded buckle on it and a bright red heel. His purple wig was what they call a hedgehog: short and spiky The entire outfit was a bit too colorful for my taste, but I’m sure Udo would have approved.
“Well, now, Colonel Fyrdraaca,” the Warlord said heartily “I’m right well glad to see you out and about. It has been too long.”
“Your Grace is kind,” said Poppy, making his fluttering, waving courtesy. “Please accept birthday greetings from the House of Fyrdraaca.”
“Like a fine wine, I age well, don’t you think?” The Warlord bellowed, and Poppy and I nodded our agreement. “How do you like our winter landscape? Axacaya thought it up. Bracing cold is so much more refreshing than heat. Don’t you agree?”
“I do, Your Grace,” Poppy said. “I have always preferred a chilly climate to a hot one.”
“I am glad to hear it, Rev,” the Warlord said approvingly, and I realized that their exchange had a double meaning. The Huitzil Empire is a desert land, hot and dry; Califa is usually cold and foggy. The Warlord was really asking if Poppy was loyal to Califa. Poppy had answered, of course, that he was. Now that I thought about it, I realized that the Birthday Ball’s wintery theme was probably a dig at the Birdies.
“And little Madama Fyrdraaca.” The Warlord advanced upon me, and while I tried to make the courtesy Owed to a Liege Lord, he swept me into a beery hug. “Do you prefer warm or cold?”
“Cold, of course, Your Grace,” I said, sharkskin scratching my nose. “Too much sun is bad for your skin.” For an old geezer with only one leg, the Warlord was awfully handsy; I squirmed but couldn’t seem to escape.
Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) Page 10
