Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books)

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  But anyway, I still have to be at Sanctuary on time, so I was in a tearing hurry. I’d already been late three times in the past month, which had gotten me only detention. But a fourth strike meant more than just detention. First, it meant a trip to the Holy Headmistress’s office, where Madama would sit me down and look at me sorrowfully, and tell me I must be mindful of my time because I was all that my mamma had left now that Idden had gone, and she relied on me. That would make me feel guilty, and I hate feeling guilty.

  But even worse, then Madama would write Mamma a letter. And Mamma would come home and get that letter, and she would be superannoyed. Mamma superannoyed is fearsome. She doesn’t scream or whack, but she would give me the Look that has reduced colonels to tears, and then she would remind me about duty, honor, and responsibility. I would feel worse than guilty—I would feel ashamed. Having Mamma give you the Look is about the worst thing in the world. It means you’ve failed her. And she was sure to mention, too, how sad it was that I had failed her so close to my Catorcena.

  My Catorcena was only a week off. It’s a big deal, turning fourteen, age of majority, legally an adult, wah-wah, suitable now to be received by the Warlord, wah-wah, and so it’s celebrated in big-deal style. There’s an assembly where you have to make a public speech about your family’s history and obligations and the responsibility of adulthood. There’s a reception where the Warlord greets you by name, thus acknowledging you as his loyal subject. It’s all very tedious, overwrought, and complicated—a big whoop-de-do.

  For some kids, this is the highlight of their lives, maybe the only time they get to see the Warlord in his courtly glory (you can see the Warlord propping up a bar South of the Slot any old time you care to look), the only time they have a fancy party at which no one looks anywhere but at them, the only time they get huge gifties. But I don’t care about the Warlord in his courtly or noncourtly glory, and I don’t care about huge gifties, and I don’t care about fancy parties. And I certainly don’t care about making a stupid speech about the history of my horrible, sad, decaying family.

  Most kids want to be adults; then they are in charge of themselves. But not Fyrdraacas. Mamma is always in charge of Fyrdraacas, no matter how old they are, and for me, being an adult means only that I will be old enough to go to the Barracks next semester, whether I want to or not. And I certainly do not, although I have not yet gotten up the nerve to tell Mamma so.

  So, I dreaded my birthday, and because of dreading was avoiding, and because of avoiding was nowhere near ready. My dress was still in pieces, my speech was still idle scribbles, and my invitations were still mostly uninvited. Instead of getting ready, I’d been avoiding, but now I was going to have to get cracking. Mamma was coming back in two days and if I wasn’t ready, and there was a sorrowful letter from Madama tattling my tardiness, I would be in what Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, called A World of Hurt.

  So, when I opened my eyes and realized the sun on the wall was the wrong angle to be early, I flew out of bed, flew through the bathroom, squeezed into my stays, threw on my kilt and pinafore, flew to the kitchen, and chucked the sleepy dogs out into the garden. I paused at the foot of the Stairs of Exuberance, but all was quiet in the Eyrie above. Perhaps Poppy was actually sleeping for once.

  I grabbed a stale bun for breakfast, yanked my boots and redingote on, snatched up the dispatch case I use for a book bag, gave the dogs their biscuits, herded them into the mudroom, then flew to the stables. (Guess who mucks those out?) I fed Bonzo and Mouse and was about to pound toward the back gate when I remembered I had forgotten the overdue library book that I had sworn to Arch-Librarian Naberius I would return that very day. Not just any old library book, either, but a very rare copy of Nini Mo’s autobiography from Sanctuary’s special collections. If I didn’t get it back, he wasn’t going to let me borrow volume 2, and I’d never find out how she escaped from the Flayed Riders of Huitzil. The book still lay on the settee in my bedroom, where I’d been reading it after I gave up on the stupid speech.

  So I turned and flew back to the House. And in my hurry, I decided that rather than go the long way back through the mudroom, into the Below Kitchen, up the Below Stairs, down the Upper Hall, up the Second Stairs, down the Hallway of Laborious Desire, by Mamma’s bedroom, by the potty, and finally to my room, I would take the Elevator. The long way is more certain, but it’s not called the long way because it is short.

  If Idden had kept her promise to not use the Elevator, I don’t know, though she has always been a good one for doing what she is supposed to. But I don’t believe in following orders. If Idden hadn’t followed orders, she wouldn’t be rotting away in the back end of Nowhere, getting shot at by people hiding behind bushes. If Poppy hadn’t followed orders, he wouldn’t today be locked in his Eyrie, drunk as a hatter and twice as mad.

  There’s a whole series of illustrated yellowback novels about Nini Mo called Nini Mo, Coyote Queen, and I’ve read every one more than once. The novels are a bit trashy and, of course, probably exaggerated for some effect, but not entirely untrue, for Nini Mo did have an exciting life. She was always having adventures and excitement and narrow escapes. I wouldn’t mind having adventures and excitement and narrow escapes, and you certainly don’t have those by following orders. Nini Mo didn’t follow orders.

  So I don’t, either. When Mamma is not around, I use the Elevator all the time, and never have I had the tiniest lick of trouble. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if the Elevator showed me something new, but annoyingly it only ever goes two floors up. Poppy had been gone for a week—where did he go? How did he get back? What did he see? The part of Crackpot I can reach is small, but I know the House is much bigger, because from the stable roof, you see a wide spread of gables and buttresses, which I have never been able to reach.

  What Mamma doesn’t know can’t hurt me, I thought. I was going to be late, but I didn’t dare go without that book, because Naberius is death to those who don’t bring his books back on time. I rushed back into the House, through the Below Kitchen, and up the Below Stairs.

  I had forgotten the First Rule of Rangering: Never let down your guard.

  TWO

  Lost. Many Empty Rooms. Very Dusty Towels.

  IF THE ELEVATOR HAD let me off where it was supposed to, at the Hallway of Laborious Desire, I would have been able to nip right into my bedroom, grab the book, and still make the 7:45 horsecar, and, hopefully, Archangel Bob wouldn’t even notice me creeping into morning assembly late. I am very good at creeping, although it’s quite a challenge to sneak by an eternally vigilant denizen.

  But the stupid Elevator did not let me off at the Hallway of Laborious Desire. No, the stupid Elevator had slowly and silently borne me upward, gently floating as on a summer swell, and though I banged and shouted, the Elevator did not slow or stop. Past the second floor it went, past a third floor—we’d never had a third floor before—upward and upward it went, smooth and steady, until, with a grinding whine, it stopped. The golden outer doors opened to a thick darkness.

  I had matches in my dispatch bag (among other useful things). Be prepared, says Nini Mo, but why use a trigger when there are other, more clever methods of gaining light?

  I said. The Ignite Sigil was the only Gramatica Invocation I had mastered, but I had mastered it well, and now a spurt of magickal coldfire flowered in the darkness like a sparkler and illuminated the blackness beyond the closed grille of the Elevator. The wan light showed the hollow shadows of bulky furniture, abandoned and forlorn.

  “This is not the Hallway of Laborious Desire,” I said crossly.

  The Elevator did not answer.

  Act as though you mean it, and you will, Nini Mo says. I said firmly, “I want to go to the Hallway of Laborious Desire. And I am in a hurry, so let’s be snappy.”

  No response.

  “I’m going to tell Mamma.”

  Idle words, really, because it would be my hide tacked up on the wall of Mamma’s study if she found out that I had disobeyed her. B
ut bluff is always worth a try. The threat made no impact upon the Elevator’s smug silence.

  “Well, if you are going to leave me here, at least give me more light.” Sweetness is its own sticky trap, says Nini Mo, so I added sweetly, “Please. Very pretty please, beautiful Elevator.”

  Nada. So much for good manners. I gave the golden grille a good kick, then pulled it open, stepping out onto the creaky wooden floors into a cloying darkness smelling of dust, decay, and the distant sea. The pouty Elevator snapped its grille shut behind me. I turned and grabbed, but it yanked out of my grip and vanished into the murk. Now I was stuck.

  I held my hand underneath the coldfire spark and focused all my Will upon its hazy gelid glow. A tiny pinpoint of pain tingled above my right eye, but the light winked and brightened. Now I could see hulking furniture draped in tattered dustcovers, floating whitely in the darkness like ancient ignored ghosts.

  There's no way out but through, Nini Mo said when she was lost in the Maze of Woefulness and Gloom in the yellowback novel Nini Mo vs. the Flesh-Eating Fir Trees.

  I cautiously stepped forward. Somewhere there had to be stairs down and out—I just had to find them. My feet stirred up a haze of mold and frothy dirt, which glittered in the coldfire light that I now carried before me, floating above my open palm.

  And I thought our rooms were a mess! Mamma is too busy or too gone to pay much attention to housekeeping, and though I usually manage to keep the actual filth at bay, it’s hard to keep after the dust and spiders and all those dogs. Between laundry, cooking, cleaning, and homework, I can only do so much, and so our rooms are always dreadfully untidy. Judging just by our rooms, you might think Crackpot was only lazy.

  But here it was obvious that the House was worse than lazy. Here, there were cracks in the walls, and the floor beneath my feet felt dangerously creaky, as though it might splinter and give way plunging me down, down—to where? I wandered in the darkness, through room after room, and saw nothing but decay and dirt. Piled furniture and cobwebby chandeliers. Wallpaper peeling off in long curling strips. Parquet floors so dirty that the dust was as thick as a rug.

  Sometimes there was evidence of earlier grandeur: an orangery, though the stunted orange trees were all spindly and gray, their fruit withered to dry husks that crunched under my feet. The glass ceiling above was black with dirt and let no daylight in, for want of which, I guess, the poor trees had slowly died. A long echoing room, its ceiling held aloft by tall tree-shaped pillars, most of its floor space taken up by an enormous swimming pool. The shallow end of the pool was empty, its green and blue mosaic glinting sadly in my coldfire light. There was still a bit of water in the deep end, sludgy black water smelling of yuck.

  But despite the occasional glimpses of grandeur, there was mostly just mess.

  Mess, and no stairs, no way out. Rangers never get lost. They always know where they have been, where they are going, and all the bits in between. Nini Mo navigated her way from Puento to Angeles, with both hands tied behind her back and a sack over her head, by sense of smell alone—that’s fifteen hundred miles of burning desert! It was stupid, then, that I couldn’t even find a doorway out or a staircase down. I knew Crackpot was big, but I’d never imagined it could be this big.

  A tiny idea was forming in my brain that maybe Mamma had been right about the Elevator. I remembered Poppy and his shouting and the pinched look on Mamma’s face as she waited for him to return. Only now did it occur to me that she had not gone looking for him herself—

  Wah! A ranger would never think such things. A ranger must look with utmost logic at where she is and what she is doing, not succumb to dire fantasy. Nini Mo had not panicked when the Up-Drawn Bandana Society tied her to a log and threw her into the Dellenbaugh Gorge in Nini Mo vs. the Cattle Coolers. She had coolly sawed through the ropes with a spur and used her kilt as a parachute, then climbed back up the ravine and garroted every last ruffian. She had survived because she had been coolheaded and considering. I would be so, too, if only I could get my hand to stop quivering. The coldfire light was getting dimmer, and this time my Gramatica Invocation had no strengthening effect. I remembered that First Rule of Rangering, Never let down your guard, only too well now—now that it was too late.

  The Second Rule of Rangering: Take your bearings. I had walked into a narrow closet, its walls tiered with drawers that went up over my head. I pulled one open, and a burst of dusty lavender boiled upward. Inside lay the legendary towels. Idden is pretty fastidious, and in her stories of Crackpot’s glory, she always dwelled on those wonderfully fluffy towels. Now they didn’t look so fresh and clean.

  I went to the window and rubbed away the grime with my free hand. All I could see was my smudgy reflection. How could it be dark outside? Had I been lost so long that the day had gone by and night fallen, and now I wasn’t only late for school, I had missed it entirely? I had to get out of here, and fast.

  The Third Rule of Rangering: Consider your options. I did not want to climb out of the window into darkness. Goddess knew what hungry uglies were lurking down there, just waiting for a tasty little snack to plummet into their gaping maws. I had no option but to continue on. The dribble of panic I had been trying to swallow was turning into a torrent, and the coldfire light was almost gone. Though I tried to rekindle the Invocation, it would not spark again. A lone match would not be much aid against such very dark darkness.

  So on I continued, down a short staircase, covered with well-torn carpet, and through a narrow corridor lined with empty chairs whose leather seats had rotted away. Then ahead—a thin slant of light.

  I hastened toward it, passing through a room whose emptiness was indicated by the hollow echo of my footsteps. As I got closer, I could see that the light slanted from a slightly opened door.

  But not just a regular door, regular-sized and everyday ordinary. This door was one of a pair, and these two doors were enormous, each as wide as a coach and twice as tall. They were smoothly silver, with no decoration of any kind, not even doorknobs or lock plates. The flat metal reflected the tiny spark of my coldfire light, getting dimmer by the second, and my own unflattering reflection, squat and wavery.

  It was lucky for me that that door was slightly ajar; never would I have had the strength to push that mammoth weight open. My coldfire light winked out, but the brilliant summery shimmer coming through the crack kept the darkness at bay.

  “There’s no way out but through,” I said, my voice thin and whispery. I had to suck my tum in and hold my breath, but I could just squeeze through.

  THREE

  Surprise. Denizens & Butlers. Many, Many Books.

  AFTER SO LONG IN darkness, the bright light was blinding. For a second I saw nothing, then blurring gray spots swam across my eyes. After a few seconds the spots faded, and I found myself in a library.

  And what a library! I had thought the Library Rotunda at Sanctuary was huge, but it was a tiny broom closet compared to this room, whose length seemed to go on forever, disappearing into a distant sunny haze. The width of the room was not so distantly long, but it was still plenty wide.

  Like the doors I had squeezed through, all the surfaces of the room were sleek and silvery, the floor like polished steel, the bookcases angular and slick. To my left, the wall was one long sheet of glass, through which the hot sun spilled, making the dazzle that had so blinded me at first. The opposite wall was nothing but bookshelves, marching into the haze, climbing upward until they reached the round arch of a cloudy dragon-entwined ceiling far above.

  But the books! Never had I seen so many books. Hundreds of sizes, colors, and shapes filled the bookshelves, and their brilliant bindings were the only contrast to the glittering silver monotone. More slick cases—these fronted with glass—stood freely about the room, and these contained more books, and there were still more piled on the floor in haphazard stacks. More books than I could read in a lifetime, even if I sat down in one of the stiff metal chairs that stood at intervals along the enormous windo
ws and started reading right that very second.

  I went over to the table that marched the length of the room. It was larger even than the Grand Council Table at the War Department—which means it was big—and it was covered in scattered papers, stacks of books, inky-pen wipers. Chewed pens lay haphazardly as though they had been tossed down in disgust, and there was a lovely big glass inkwell shaped like a turtle, half empty.

  The papers were covered with thick black writing in the style called Splendiferous. It’s an old script, and very flourishing, with many long sweepy bits both above and below. Back in the day, it had been the official hand for writing official documents such as laws and proclamations. Now it’s just old-fashioned and rarely used. It’s an extremely hard script to read, and I couldn’t make out any of the writing.

  “Hey, don’t touch that,” a voice hissed in my ear.

  My heart nigh to jerking right out of my chest, I snatched my hand back from the book I had been about to pick up, then turned around.

  A boy stood behind me, glaring, his arms crossed. He was tall, his gangliness wrapped in a tattered black gown with trailing torn sleeves. Grayish hair straggled around a narrow, starving face; colorless eyes peered over a pointy snuffling nose.

  “That book is older than this City and even more fragile,” he said, “so keep your dirty paw to yourself.” The boy shivered and huddled deeper into a thick black woolly shawl, which was liberally dusted with shreds of torn paper.

  “Says who?” I demanded. “Who the heck are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “This is my library,” the boy said menacingly. He widened his flat white eyes and scowled. “I should ask what you are doing here!”

  “Nayah,” I answered. “This is my House, or rather my mamma’s House, and therefore this library is hers. And so is the book.”