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) (16 page)

I cut him off. “So, see, Valefor, it’s all part of the plan.”

“Well, it could work,” he said thoughtfully. “But you haven’t forgotten about me, Flora? You will not forget. You promised you wouldn’t.”

I said soothingly, “I will not; I promise. But I can only do so much. Val, Poppy trashed the kitchen last night.”

“I know. I heard him. Even in the Bibliotheca, I heard him. Oh, the noise. Well, I’ll soon put a stop to that—it’s first on my list.”

“Could you fix the kitchen? And make me some coffee? Please. I’ll give you more Anima.”

So we bent our heads together, and this time I noticed that I could actually see my Anima. It was wispy and thin, a washed crimson that was almost pink, but I could see it. Again came the delicious feeling of sparkly well-being, and again I felt a whole lot better about the world—as though I had drunk two entire pots of coffee.

Valefor himself looked better than he ever had before; his form looked more solid and muscular, and his eyes were like chips of amethyst. For the first time, I noticed a family resemblance: Mamma’s wide-set eyes and Idden’s rounded chin. Poppy’s bladed cheekbones and the Fyrdraaca nose, sharp as a tack. He really was quite good-looking in a matinee idol sort of way.

“You know, Flora Segunda,” Val said, considering, “I think that perhaps I should make sure you don’t forget me—and so I think that Valefor shall turn off the tap until you make good on your oath.”

“‘Turn off the tap’? What does that mean?”

“I mean, no more Valefor fixing everything nice and tidy. I mean, you are on your own until you come through, Flora.”

“But you said you’d clean up the kitchen if I gave you more Anima!” I said indignantly.

“Well, now you know how it feels to be promised something and to receive it not. Turnabout is fair play.”

“Valefor, I said I would do it, but all in good time.”

“Flora's
good time, and what time will that be? Well, Madama Fyrdraaca, you do as you please, and when you are ready, I shall be ready, too.”

“I can clean the kitchen myself, Valefor,” I said warningly. “I don’t need you.”

He was unperturbed. “Perhaps, but I think you’ve lost the taste for cleaning. And I think perhaps that you do need me. I am secure in myself. Say hello to Boy Hansgen for me.”

He wiggled a little wave in my direction and dissolved into a froth of purple. Well, he could pout all he wanted; my plan did not hinge on him, anyway, though I had hoped to get him to help Udo and me with our disguises, and maybe whip us up a nice snack before we went to tackle the Warlord.

When it came down to it, I’d warrant he needed me more than I needed him. Although, he certainly was right that I had now
completely
lost my taste for chores.

T
RICKERY AND DISGUISE
are the ranger’s favorite tools. Easier to make a clean getaway if your target doesn’t even realize it’s been rooked. Easier to be given freely than to take by force. And the trick to getting what you want, Nini Mo said, is to make sure you phrase your request correctly.

The Warlord’s favorite bar is a joint called Pete’s Clown Diner, which is located in the most ruinous part of the City: South of the Slot. South of the Slot is famous for its hard-cases and blind tigers (or, to quote the
Califa Police Gazette,
“undistinguished personages and establishments of questionable clientele”), and not an area to be caught in at night unless you are suicidal or well-armed. Happy for Udo and me, who are neither, the Warlord’s devotion to Pete’s knows no schedule, and he’s as likely to be found there at one in the afternoon as at one in the morning.

Early afternoon South of the Slot isn’t pretty, but isn’t life-threatening, either, as most of the dollies, mashers, twirlers, saltmen, and other lowlifes are still passed out in their beds or on the sidewalks. Or, rather, in the gutter, as South of the Slot has only a scattering of plank sidewalks.

We took the N horsecar, which traverses along the Slot that gives South of the Slot its name (there’s a North of the Slot, too, but it’s all banks—thieves of a more respectable kind, says the
CPG
) and got off at Placer Street. Pete’s Clown Diner is two blocks down, at Placer and Hazel, and within half a block, both Udo and I were wishing that we had worn shorter kilts and higher boots. Or better yet, ridden.

“Don’t the garbage men come down here?” Udo asked. On the sidewalk the trash was ankle-deep; we would have walked in the street but that was knee-deep in mud, a rather unsavory looking mud that reminded me, both in looks and smell, of something I did not want to be reminded of.

“I guess not. Perhaps they are afraid to.” I veered around the half-eaten chicken that lay forlorn on the sidewalk.

“Cowards. This is a disgrace.” Udo hid his nose behind a white lace hankie. Since he was dressed as a drover, in leather pantaloons and overkilt and an orange-and-blue-plaid smock, it made him look rather conspicuously suspicious.

“Put the hankie away,” I ordered.

“But the smell—”

“We are supposed to be in disguise. How many drovers do you think use white lace hankies?”

“Ones that don’t like the smell—ayah, Flora, you win, as always.” Udo replaced the hankie with a stogie; the look was more in keeping with his disguise, but the smell was only marginally better. Smoking is a horrible habit.

South of the Slot really
was
a disgrace; I agreed with Udo there. Farther down the street, a dead mule lay on its side, as green as a grape and so gassy that I’m surprised the corpse didn’t float off into the sky. The sidewalk planking soon disappeared completely, and then the trash turned out to be a good thing because the only way to get through the mud without losing your boots was to hop from broken barrel to discarded box to abandoned fruit crate. When a wagon went by, its driver cursing a blue streak and snapping a whip over the struggling team, its wheels tossed up rotting garbage and sludge.

The buildings that lined the street were little more than shacks, hovels in near danger of collapsing. Ratfaced children peered through broken doors and empty windows, and occasionally a rat itself scampered by. Sometimes followed by a cat. Mostly not. Grubby men lurked in doorways, staring at us as we walked by, but no one stopped us. Perhaps Udo’s smock had blinded them.

Pete’s Clown Diner was made obvious by the clown dangling over its front door and the coach parked in front, with the Warlord’s crest displayed in gold on its side. The dangly clown was, I realized thankfully, not a real clown, but just a dummy dressed so, and strung up. Still, it looked awfully lifelike hanging there, and the painted red smile looked more like a grimace. Garish red light flickered through the grimy window.

“Oh, Goddess bless us for what we do,” Udo mumbled beside me.

“Remember the plan?” I whispered, fiddling with my veil. It was hard to see through, making everything dark and blurry and slightly spotted, but it was necessary for my mournful disguise. What grief-stricken sister, about to lose her favorite brother to cruel fate, would show her face in public?

“I remember,” Udo said.

We clicked closed fists. “Ready.”

Palm to palm. “Steady.”

Knuckles to knuckles. “Go.”

In Nini Mo’s yellowbacks, the doors to a saloon always swing, but Pete’s had no doors, just a row of beads that clicked as we pushed through them. In the yellowbacks, saloons are always loud and smoky, full of gallant gamblers and luscious bar-girls with hearts of gold. Pete’s was dark, the air stale with smoke, and dim. No cow-band warbled on the stage, so the room was quiet, and I didn’t see any gallant gamblers or luscious bar-girls, only a waitress with a face as seamed as an old shoe. Men and women sat at scattered tables, their heads drooping into their glasses.

To one side of the room stood a bar, slick and long. Behind the bar, a giant mirror tilted, reflecting the half' empty room, and the drover and the mourning woman standing in the doorway.

“My skin...” Udo groaned, coughing. I shushed him. Now was hardly the time to worry about his complexion. “Confidence is as confidence does,” said Nini Mo, so I sailed forward to the bar and leaned on it, very cool-like.

The barkeep looked over his glasses at me. “What’ll it be, madama?”

For a second my mind was completely blank. What do you order at a bar? A drink. What kind of drink? I couldn’t think of any kind of drink, and then—

Udo said, “Beer.”

The barkeep rolled backward and clutched at his chest as though Udo had punched him. “Beer?
Beer?
Young man, you insult me. Beer! This ain’t no broom closet, no blind tiger, no gin joint. Pete’s Clown Diner is a class establishment, with classy patrons, with classy palates. We make our own ice cream and our own whip. Not to mention toffee syrup. And me, Thomas Yin Terry, known throughout Califa as a mixologist extraordinary, who can make any confection you can dream of, and yet you ask for
beer
? I am shamed.” He bent his head down, and a tiny silver tear dribbled down his cheek.

As he spoke, I read the menu written on the mirror behind him, and that’s when I realized that Pete’s was an ice-cream joint. The silver urn standing behind the bar, studded with levers, dispensed soda water, not beer. I was relieved that I was not going to have to choke down beer and pretend that I liked it. Ice cream is much better, and besides, I was hungry.

I said quickly, “I apologize for my brother, sieur. He’s a drover, and they have no class—” Here Udo’s foot stamped on mine, but I ignored the spike of pain. “I’ll have a Cheery Cherry Slurp.”

The barkeep brightened up. “Ah then, a Cheery Cherry Slurp. I’ve not had a call for that in many a day. A fine choice. And you, sieur drover?”

“A Broad Arrow Sling,” Udo said.

“Another fine choice. Be seated, and Lotte shall bring.”

We sat, at a table that was grubbier than Crackpot’s kitchen floor. Only a look from me had kept Udo from dropping his hankie on the chair before sitting down, but it was hard to blame him. Despite my tummy’s rumble, I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good idea to just
pretend
to eat the ice cream.

The Warlord sat in the back of the room, at a round table with three others, playing cards. I recognized him immediately because, of course, his picture hangs next to Mamma’s in every classroom and public building in the City. The Warlord wasn’t exactly as his portrait showed: His hair was whiter, and his jowls heavier, but still, there was no mistaking him.

Once the Warlord was a fearsome pirate, who stole himself from the slave mills of Anahuatl City and then stole himself a small empire. Now he’s pretty old and tired. I suppose final decay is unavoidable, unless you plan otherwise, which I do exactly—going out with a bang, like Nini Mo, long before my life descends into a whimper of old age.

Udo hissed: “There’s the Warlord; what says your plan?”

“It says we should wait until we get our sodas!”

“We should move in—” Udo shut up while Lotte the Shoe-Faced Woman plunked the sodas in front of us, sloshing soda water and whip, and took my money. Now that the Warlord was sitting right there, just a few feet away, engrossed in his poker game, my nerve was sticking. The ice cream looked pretty clean, and I was starving; maybe I should eat it first and then—

“Do you want to buy some flowers?” Something tugged at my sleeve: a small child with a smudgy face.

“Git, sprout,” said Udo rudely.

The child stuck her tongue out at him, and repeated to me: “Do you want to buy some flowers?”

“You haven’t got any flowers,” I said. The kid’s dress had giant holes in it, and her little bare feet were blue with cold.

The child looked at me as though I were an idiot. “They are outside. If you come, I’ll show you.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t need any flowers. But here—” I fished in my purse and found a coin. The kid snatched the coin out of my hand and said, “Pinhead!” before flitting off.

Udo mumbled, “That was smart. Now every beggar kid South of the Slot is going to be pushing on us! Don’t you know never to give out alms?”

“She didn’t have any shoes.”

“She probably did at home. I mean, who is going to give money to a beggar with shoes?”

“Maybe she really is poor, Udo.”

A choked sob came from across the table. Udo was sniffling into his soda, tears running down his face, his mascara blurring. I was momentarily confused. A second ago he didn’t care about the beggar, and now he was crying over her? Then I realized—blast Udo—he had started the plan without waiting for my signal.

“Ahhhh,” Udo said, loudly, dramatically. “It’s too much to bear, hermana. It’s just too much to bear. Our poor Tenorio, so young, so young.”

Under the table, I kicked Udo a good hard swift one in the knee, but he didn’t let up. “Give us a song, Felicia, give us a song to remember Tenorio by. Here, I shall play the tune and you shall sing—”

We rose and went over to where a rickety pianoforte stood against the wall. When Udo flipped open the cover, dust puffed up, and when he put fingers to the keys the pianoforte wheezed just like a cat. The original plan had called for me to play and him to sing, but apparently Udo was in charge now, and my plan was nothing.

“Sing, hermana, sing for Tenorio.” He banged out the first chords of “Who’ll Tell His Mother.” I had no choice but to sing, and so I opened my mouth and hoped that I remembered all the words;

“
Somebody’s darling so young and so brave
Wearing still on his sweet yet pale face
Soon to be hid in the dust of the grave
The lingering light ofhis boyhood’s grace
Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride
Who’ll tell his mother how her boy died.”

I’m not the best singer, but in this case, my wobbly notes were working for me, sounding like my voice was cracking with tears. The Warlord is notoriously susceptible to sob stories and sad songs—a susceptibility that our plan hinged upon.

The crowd, not fully appreciative, began to hoot and jeer, but Udo stubbornly played on, and I kept singing, even when someone threw a glass at my head. I ducked in time, and the glass slammed into the wall behind me, as explosive as a bomb.