I rolled over and turned my back to Val. He was lucky I didn’t believe in violence; otherwise, I would have punched his lights out for maligning Mamma so. The comfy feeling of chores done was receding into the more familiar feeling of gloom. Why did Valefor have to remind me of all this when I had been feeling so nice?
Val’s nutmeg breath tickled my ear. “Don’t sulk, Flora Segunda. It is not becoming to your lineage. I mean no disrespect to your dear lady mamma, but you have to face facts that this is not the way things should be.”
“That’s not my mamma’s fault,” I said into the cushion. “She does the best she can.” Which isn't good enough, my brain whispered.
“No doubt she does, but that’s not helping me, and it’s not helping you, either. If we got together, we could help each other, and help your dear mamma, and even help darling Hotspur, too.”
I rolled back over and stared up at Val’s looming head. The coldfire burned purple in his eyes, like sparks of light deep in a black well. His lips were a faint shade of lavender, like very pale blueberries. He cocked his head and grinned at me, very sweet.
“What do you mean, help Mamma and Poppy?” I asked.
“You know,” he said, “I remember the night the First Flora was born. It was strange weather. First came huge rain, then loud thunder, then an earthquake. An omen, don’t you think? The First Flora was a stubborn little thing, and she was not going to come out. Such screaming and shouting and rushing to and fro, and, ah, the blood—I was never so strong, I think, as I was that night. Your mamma almost died. And you know why she didn’t?”
I shook my head. Mamma never speaks of the First Flora.
Val looked smug. “Your father wasn’t there, or I suppose he would have tried to help her, being a great one with the knife, Hotspur, always hoping to find something or someone to carve up. Your mamma was spewing blood and her eyes were growing dark. A doctor could not have helped her. But for me, for Valefor, what is a truculent baby and a dying mother? I just reached right in with one slender hand and I took a hold of that bad little girl’s feet and she popped like a cork out of a bottle. Flora knew she’d met her match in me and there was no more insolence from her, I tell you.”
“You are so full of hoo,” I said. “Anyway, so what?”
“You ask your dear lady mamma,” Val said, wounded. “And she will tell you I am saying nothing but the truth. I am the power of this House, Flora. The point is you all need me.”
“Mamma is the power of this House. You are just the Butler.”
“You decline without me. You dwindle. I told Buck, two wasn’t enough, but did she listen to me? Of course not. See—she’s already had to replace one!”
There were fewer Fyrdraacas in Califa than there had once been, but that didn’t mean that we were in decline, did it? Fyrdraacas tend to die young, in all sorts of glamorous ways. It’s not so good for the bloodline if people keep getting killed in duels (Great-aunt Arabelle), breaking their necks in cross-country horse races (Great-uncle Anacreon), drowned trying to swim across the Bay’s Gate (Great-aunt Anacreona), or bit by a rattlesnake during a bar bet (Cousin Hippolyte), and not leaving any heirs behind. Pretty soon the family tree is pretty thin.
I answered, “Says you! There’s still me and Idden. We aren’t chopped mackerel.”
“You are thin-blooded and miserable, that’s what you are.
“We aren’t.” But my protest was halfhearted. I was a replacement, wasn’t I?
“Suit yourself, then,” he said, shrugging. “Whether you believe it or not does not affect whether it is the truth. It’s not fair. I am oppressed, and nothing more than a slave to Buck’s Will.”
“You are just the Butler, a denizen—you should be subject to Mamma’s Will. It was what you were made for, to serve her, as the Head of the Fyrdraaca family,” I said meanly, for he had completely spoiled my happy mood.
Valefor glared at me. “Fyrdraacas come and go, but I alone of this House stand forever. Buck should understand that and treat me with the respect that I deserve. And anyway, it’s not just me—we are all slaves to Buck’s Will. Hotspur, Idden, you—”
“I have my own Will,” I protested.
“Then why are you studying for the Benica Barracks entry exam?” Val asked slyly.
“I’m not.” I wasn’t, but I was supposed to be. I half hoped that if I failed the exam I wouldn’t get in, although I’m sure that I would get in no matter if I passed or not. The Fyrdraaca estate may be worthless, but the Fyrdraaca name still has value.
“Why are you acting a slavey in your own home? Why do you have to get stuck dealing with Hotspur? Stuck with all the chores—the housework, the horses, the laundry?”
Each of Valefor’s questions burned, for they were questions I had asked myself so many times but had never dared voice aloud. Underneath my gloom, there was the pinprick of anger. Why did Mamma have to be so unfair? Why couldn’t she think of the rest of us for once?
He continued, “While I—whose Will it is to do those tasks—am locked away like a criminal.”
“Anyway, we are both stuck, Valefor,” I said, pulling the blanket up to my chin. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Isn’t there?” Val asked. He had perched on the settee arm, above my feet, and now he leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
“What do you mean?”
Valefor grinned at me hopefully. “I could be restored.”
EIGHT
Discussion. The Eschatanomicon.
SUDDENLY A TINY LICK of excitement was kindling against my gloominess. Could Valefor be restored? What if every day were like today, with working radiators and clean sheets? With delicious waffles and hole-free socks? The Elevator would always work, and there would be not a single dog hair anywhere. Could Valefor manage Poppy? I could live at Sanctuary and my nights would be blissfully scream-free. We would have our House back, in all its glory, and we’d be a normal family again, just like everyone else.
Then I remembered. “Mamma would never allow it.”
“Why would Mamma have to know? I’d be very silent, just a little secret between you and me. I’d help you out, and Mamma would think you so clever, and no one but us would need to know.” Val leaned in again, and again I saw the stars in his eyes. “Just think. Warm sheets, fresh waffles, no more stable duty, clean towels, you wouldn’t have to clean the bathroom anymore, which I know you hate. No more dirty dishes or ancient leftover takeaway. Wouldn’t that be heavenly?” The runnels of silver in Valefor’s dark curls glittered. He wiggled a long finger enticingly at me. “And I can handle young Hotspur. I know where he lives. He’d be no trouble at all to me.”
I closed my eyes to Val’s enticements, which were mighty enticing. Clean rooms and no chores. Fluffy towels and yummy snacks. And Poppy, handled.
Val’s voice purred in my ear, deliciously. “In a little wink, I could have all those tamales made and your dress done. Your invitations sent and your speech written. Everything would be ready, and with no trouble to you. Everything in perfect order.”
It was a delicious thought, and the more I thought about it, the more delicious it became. Oh, how blissful it would be to have order in the House and things working as they should. Valefor could do all the work, and I could get all the credit, and Mamma would never be the wiser. Maybe Val was the power of our family; after all, didn’t everything start falling apart right when he was banished?
“But could you be restored, Valefor?”
“Of course. I am here, but weakened. Of course I could be made strong again.”
“What would it take?”
“Ayah so? It would be easy, Flora, I know it would,” Valefor said eagerly. “I mean, you want to be a ranger, right? I can taste it on your Anima. It’s your heart’s desire, your True Will, so what a place to start! Even Nini Mo would not have dared to jump in so quickly, but I know you can do it.”
“I’m not an adept, though. Surely I would have to be.”
“Well, Buck’s not an
adept and she was able to banish me,” Valefor said. “Ayah, there’s skill, it’s true, but also the right Working.”
“I don’t know a Working that strong.”
“Not yet, that is. See, Flora, I am so kind and generous. I have a giftie for you, and one I think you will like real well. Look here—”
He reached up and plucked Something from Nothing, then offered that Something to me: a red book, small as a deck of cards, with a glittery soft cover trimmed in golden emboss and studded with small pearls. A gilt hasp kept the book closed, but the hasp opened easily when I tugged on it. I flipped to the title page.
The Eschatanomicon,
OR,
Rangering for Everybody!
An Invaluable Collection of Eight Hundred
Practical Receipts, Sigils, and Instructs
FOR
Rangers, Adepts, Sorcerers, Mages, Bibliomantics,
Scouts, Hierophants, Gnostics, Chaoists, Priestesses, Sibyls,
Sages, Archons, Anthropagists, Avatars, Trackers,
and People Generally,
Containing a Rational Guide to
Evocation, Invocation, Augoeides, Smithing, Epiclesis,
Camping, Divination, Equipage, Retroactive Enchantment,
Mule Packing, Geas, Adoration, Cutting for Sign,
Bibliomancy, Transubstantiation, Hitches, Vortices,
Prophecy, Libel & Dreams, etc.
by
NYANA KEEGAN OV ADMOISH
"Free the oppressed!”
Valefor said, “It’s a first edition. The later versions were expurgated, of course, which took all the fun out of them. But this one is intact, complete, and it’s terribly rare. It’s worth more than half the City, Flora. Don’t read it in the bath. And look—it’s signed.”
The frontispiece showed a sketch of Nini Mo in a coyote-skin cape, rifle in one hand, pen in the other, and there on the fly-leaf was a thick black scrawl. Her calligraphy was very hard to read; each letter looked like a spiky thistle, and some had very long tails, but her signature was unmistakable.
“What does the inscription say?” I asked.
Val squinted, then read: “‘To Little Tiny Doom and Fig. Dare, Win, or Disappear!’”
“Who is that? Little Tiny Doom? And Fig?”
“I have no idea; I don’t remember exactly where I got the book. But see, Flora—The Eschatanomicon contains everything you need to know about rangering, or magick, or both, and I’m sure it has the perfect Working to fix me fine as I ever was before.”
I stared at the book in my hand, stared at the thick slant of Nini Mo’s handwriting. This book she had held in her hand; that black lettering had come from her pen. My head knew that Nini Mo—Nyana Keegan—was a real person, that she had once lived and breathed and died, as I lived and breathed and would one day die. I knew people who had known her, seen her, and talked to her. But yet, in my heart she was as fantastic as the stories that were told about her, and thus she seemed completely unreal.
But she had held this book in her hands, as I held it now. This selfsame book. Her flesh-and-blood hands. A small blot of ink followed her signature where her pen had slipped, as mine so often does. She had touched this book before, as I touched it now. These thoughts made my heart feel fluttery.
I flipped through The Eschatanomicon's pages, which were as thin as lettuce leaves. The first few chapters were very rangery, indeed. “How to Make a Fire with Rocks.” “Fording a River with a Rope.” “Making a Mule Mind.” “The Charm of Charm.” “Sleeping in a Heavy Rain.” “Tracking Backward.” There were illustrations, too: tiny line-drawings of rangers fording rivers on rafts, rangers riding bucking horses, rangers hypnotizing rattlesnakes, rangers dancing the gavotte, and doing other rangery things.
But then, after chapter 11, the headings changed. “Retroactive Enchantments.” “Sigils to Bind.” “Sigils to Break.” “The A—Z of Banishing.” “Interior Evocations.” “Exhalative Invocations.” “Fun with Charms.” The illustrations changed, too; now they showed rangers making Invoking Gestures, rangers wrestling with dæmons, rangers tossing lightning bolts, rangers turning into coyotes.
I flipped to the index, and there found what I was looking for:
“Restoration Sigils.”
NINE
Waiting. Udo’s Hat. The Elevator Again.
I SAT ON THE EDGE of the Immaculata Piazza, leaning against one of the immense pillars that held up the main dome of Sanctuary, throwing scraps of bread to the doves. The Immaculata Piazza is protected from sun by the looming dome above, and sheltered from wind by large support pillars. It’s a pleasant place to sit and wait for someone, which was good for me, because I had been waiting over half an hour for Udo, who was massively late.
Udo was finally out of the lockdown he’d earned by punching his horrible sister Gunn-Britt in the nose in a fight over the last tortilla. That sounds pretty bad, but Gunn-Britt is a pincher, and I had no doubt she gave as good as she got. There are seven kids in the Landaðon family, and they fight over everything. Seven kids, one mother, and three fathers. It’s a terribly famous love story in Califa, and there was even a play written about it: how Udo’s mamma was wooed by identical triplets and, having no way to decide among them, married all three. Udo’s birth-father was in prison in Anahuatl City with Poppy and died there, but Udo still has two fathers left.
I’ve known Udo since we were tots. When I was too large to be easily portable on Mamma’s trips but not large enough to stay home alone with Poppy, I would stay at Case Tigger (the Landaðon family home), which was fun and friendly, even with all those kids. Case Tigger is not a Great House, and it has no Butler, but it’s homey and clean, and I love it there. But now that I have to Poppy-sit, Udo stays with me to keep me company. He would have done so this time, too, if he hadn’t gotten popped for punching Gunn-Britt.
Although Udo is not destined for the Barracks like me, his parents are just as strong-willed about his future fate as Mamma is about mine, and he’s just as annoyed at their planning as I am about Mamma’s. The Landaðons are all lawyers; Madama Landaðon is on the Warlord’s Bench, and Major Landaðon and Captain Landaðon are in the Judge Advocate General’s office. As eldest, Udo should carry on the family tradition, but he’d rather go back to the original family profession: piracy.
His grandmother Gunn-Britt Landaðon had sailed with the Warlord, back in the days when the Warlord himself was a pirate and he hadn’t yet scored his biggest prize: Califa. Now the Warlord is a warlord, not a pirate, and the Landaðons are lawyers, not pirates, and piracy in general is frowned upon, but that hasn’t stopped Udo in his ambition.
If Nini Mo is my lodestar, then Udo’s is the Dainty Pirate, whose exploits in the waters up and down the Califa coastline are notorious. The Dainty Pirate flouts the Warlord’s Authority and refuses to sail with a Letter of Marque, which means if he ever gets caught, he’ll be hanged. They call him the Dainty Pirate because his manners are exquisite, and so, too, his wardrobe. Udo thinks he’s fabulous.
I had briefed Udo on Valefor during lunch, and he had demanded to see Val for himself, so we had agreed to meet after school and go back to Crackpot together. Which would have been fine, if he’d been on time, but Udo has a problem with punctuality that many detentions have not straightened out.
While I waited, I thought about The Eschatanomicon. I had stayed up most of the night reading it front to back. It really is a terrific book, full of all sorts of useful information and written in a friendly style, as though Nini Mo were sitting down next to you, talking to you as an equal. Magick books, in my experience, tend to be arcane and complicated, full of tortuous explanations and run-on sentences, and most adepts are superfond of superbig words. But Nini Mo eschewed the fancy words and spoke plainly. I didn’t understand why the book was so rare, or why I’d never heard of it before. It was the best book on magick I’d ever read.
And after reading it, I was sure that I could restore Valefor, although a few details needed to b
e ironed out first, if only Udo would hurry up and arrive so we could go back to Crackpot and start ironing.
I was just about to give up and go to the Tuckshop for a mocha, and then let Udo arrive and wait for me, when at last there was a hollering yahoo, and here he came, resplendent in a black-and-white-striped frock coat over an emerald green kilt. Perched on his head was an emerald green hat the size of a wheel of cheese, well festooned with black and white ribbons and cruelly surmounted by an iridescent green-and-gold bird wing. Udo is the most conscientious dresser I know; half the time you need to put your sunshades on just to look at him. He is what the Califa Police Gazette would call a glass-gazing font of frivolity. If he weren’t so disgustingly handsome, he’d look ridiculous. Instead, he looked glorious.
“Nice hat, Udo,” I said. “I feel sorry for the bird that had to die so you could be stylish.”
“Well, ave to you, too, Flora,” he answered, reaching up as though to make sure the hat was still on his head, which it was, thanks to a hat pin longer than my arm. “I dug the bird out of Granny’s old clothes-closet. It’s been dead longer than we’ve been alive, and don’t you think it’s nice to make sure it didn’t die in vain?”
“What took you so long?”
“Sorry. I got caught up in Arts Logic. Here, I brought you a mocha.”
I took the cup he offered. Just what I needed, so lovely warm and chocolatey. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nayah, it’s on me,” he answered, airily.
I was shocked. Udo is notoriously cheap. Other than the money he spends on his clothes, most of which he buys secondhand or makes himself, every glory he gets goes straight into his Letter of Marque fund. (Udo has no intention of paying for his piracy with his neck.)
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) Page 6
