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) (29 page)

P
AIMON
!” U
DO GURGLED
. We clutched each other like a couple of shavetails, which didn’t help a darn thing, but somehow Udo’s grip was reassuring. If I would be eaten, at least I would not be eaten alone.

The door handle rattled. “Madama? Sieur Landaðon?”

“The wardrobe,” Udo suggested in a strangled whisper.

Somehow we managed to stumble across the room to the wardrobe without making a huge amount of noise. Lucky for us it was so big. Despite its being stuffed full of clothing, we were both able to squeeze inside and pull the door shut behind us. We crawled as far back as we could, pulling the clothing over us, hoping for cover.

“I get points for being right,” Udo hissed. “Next time maybe you’ll listen to me—”

“Shush.”

As the door creaked open, we froze, barely breathing in the lavender-scented mustiness. I surely hoped that Paimon could not see well in the dark, but I knew of course that he could. We huddled in agony, listening to the heavy tread enter the room.

“It is time for dinner,” Paimon rumbled. Then, puzzled, “Madama? Sieur Landaðon?”

In my mind’s eye, I could imagine it quite clearly: Paimon looking down in surprise at the messy bed, then lumbering about the room, lamp held high, examining each shadow for our cowering selves. He’d look under the bed, which of course would be innocent of us. He’d peer on top of the hard wooden canopy, for which he, naturally, would not need a ladder. He’d peek behind the billowing curtains; nope, we weren’t there, either. We weren’t crouched behind the fire screen; neither were we huddled inside the large clothespress at the foot of the bed, nor dangling by our sweaty hands from the windowsill. That left only one place where we could be, and I could picture that, too, with disturbing vividness: the wardrobe door flung wide, ruffling clothes, awful hungry roar, claws that catch, jaws that bite.

I crabbed through the clothing, pushing at the heavy folds in a panic, my wheeling arms colliding with something solid yet crunchy-Udo’s nose, I was later to discover. Fighting the heavy fabric felt disturbingly like drowning, and what little air I could squeeze into my lungs was stale and flat. Then I ran into something woodenly hard: the back of the wardrobe. There was no place else to go. We were trapped.

“Madama?” Clothing rustled and moved on a current of cold fresh air. “Sieur, what are you—”

Like before, the Gramatica Word popped into my brain and out of my mouth. It tasted like violets, and it whirled and gave off tiny purple sparks like fireflies. The bottom of the wardrobe fell away, and we were falling.

I landed with a hard thump, although something soft cushioned my fall. This softness was, of course, Udo, who swore at my weight and pushed me off him. I lay on my back, panting heavily. Above, a ceiling came into focus, painted with a riotous battle scene: screaming horses, spraying blood, clouds of smoke, and hacking swords.

“Pithfathe Psythopomp,” Udo said, somewhat muffled. “I dink you broke by dose.”

I sat up. There was just enough light to see that Udo’s poor nose was a little spigot of blood, but it otherwise didn’t seem too damaged. I shook out my slightly sticky hankie and tipped Udo’s head back. After a few seconds of pressure (me) and grumbling (him), the bleeding subsided and we were able to take stock of our surroundings.

The gray light showed us to be in a wide room, bereft of furniture or other décor. One long wall of windows from floor to ceiling looked out over a pale silvery sea. Waves crashed out of the darkness, hammering on the windows as though they wanted to be let in.

The opposite wall was one long mirror, reflecting both the pearly water and the rumpled forms of Udo and me. A huge fireplace—big enough to roast an entire regiment—filled the southern wall; the northern wall sank down into an orchestra pit.

"I think this must be the Ballroom of the Battle for the City of Califa,” Udo said, "which is good, because it’s not too far from the Saloon of Embarrassment of Riches. Though how we got here, I don’t know. Where did you learn that Word, Flora?”

"It just popped into my head. Come on—we gotta keep moving. We have to get that Verb, and then get Bonzo and Flynn and get out of here.”

"So now she listens and believes. Will we leave my hat behind? I loved that hat.”

"Your hat is a casualty of war, Udo. We all have to make sacrifices, and that hat is yours.”

"You are a hard woman, Flora Fyrdraaca,” Udo said, and he grinned a little bravado grin to show me that he didn’t really care about the hat, he was just trying to sound cool. "Come on. That door should lead to the Hallway of Indefinable Munificence, and then it’s just a short way to the Riches place.”

A door was cleverly recessed into one of the panels of mirror at the far end of the room. It gave easily under my hand and swung open to reveal an ornate hallway, plastered with clustering vines and drooping tree branches, now dusty and dull. The coast was clear; there was no sign of any hungry denizen.

Pausing midway down the hallway, Udo asked nervously, “Do you hear footsteps?”

I did hear footsteps, and not just that, but my neck was prickling again, as it had before. Somehow I knew that little prickle was Paimon, hot on our trail.

“Come on!”

We ran. Ahead of us the hallway ended in an arch and plunged down a tunnel-like flight of stairs. The risers were made of white marble swirled through with pale green streaks, and so, too, were the walls, which curved up to meet a low ceiling. Down down down we galloped, ten stairs, twenty stairs, fifty, a hundred. Down down, deeper into the green twilight that was emanating from the marble itself, a cold watery light like coldfire. The smell of the sea and the distant surge of water.

Nini Mo says that most courage comes from being too tired and hungry to be afraid anymore. If exhaustion and hunger were the hallmarks of courage, then I was the bravest person that ever lived. Yet, I didn’t feel brave. I only felt sick and lost and like I had been hung out to dry in a rainstorm. Only Udo’s painful grip was keeping me moving, that and the prickling on my neck that was growing more prickly by the minute. I put a hand out to touch the wall; it felt as warm as flesh, and it was vibrating slightly with the heaviness of Paimon’s footsteps.

“I hope there’s an elevator to take us back up,” Udo said. “Going down ain’t bad, but I don’t relish climbing back.”

“If Paimon catches us, I suppose he’ll carry us back up,” I said breathlessly. “I hope there’s another way out.”

“There’s no way out but through,” Udo said helpfully. “Hurry up, Flora, you are dragging.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I puffed. Behind us the footsteps had grown louder and more rapid. Ahead of us, the stairs finally ended at an arched iron gate, its lintel twined with undulating luminescent letters that spelled out:

The Cloakroom of the Abyss

A
NOTHER ROTUNDA,
whose diameter was much smaller than the Hall of Expectant Expectations and yet whose height seemed even more lofty. The sea smell was stronger here, thickly mingling with the pungent smell of Opanopex incense, wax, and a musty meaty odor I did not recognize. Through the still hush, I fancied I could hear the low sweeping sounds of the surf.

The center of the room was occupied by a small wooden boat beached upon a tall plinth draped in stiff red satin that obscured the boat’s interior. A flickering lantern hung off the stern, and its bow took the form of a sinuous woman, her curved form and outstretched arms rising out of the wood, weed-green hair slick against her white sides. In the calm light, her eyes flickered with life and her red lips looked fresh and wet. She was, I realized, twin to the carved mermaid in the Bedchamber of Downward Dreaming.

The prickling on my neck was gone. “We lost him.”

“How can you tell?” Udo asked.

“I just
know.
I don’t know how but I do. I can feel him somehow when he is near, and I don’t feel him now.”

“Well, that’s good, because I don’t see any obvious way out other than the way we came, and if that way were blocked, we’d be pegged for sure.”

“It’s clear—he’s gone—but I have to sit a minute, Udo, before I can go up those stairs again. I’m starving, too.” I sat down on the bottom step and rested my head on my knees. My tummy was burning and gurgling, and my head felt as dizzy as a dust devil.

“I’m surprised that you can think of food when you are so close to being chow yourself.”

“Leave it alone, Udo.”

“Flora, come and look at this.”

I looked up to see that Udo had paused in front of one of the alcoves. “I can’t.”

“Flora—I’m serious. Come on.”

I slogged myself to my feet. The alcove contained a bier, and sleeping on the bier was a sallow young girl holding a wizened baby, so shrunken its face looked like a skull. An inscription on the arch of the alcove said:
SER' ENTHA FRYDONIA HAðRAAðA & FRYDONIE HAðRAAðA.

“Why would you sleep down here?” I asked.

“She’s not asleep, I think,” Udo answered. “She’s dead. The Cloakroom of the Abyss is the Haðraaða family crypt.”

Oh ugh and disgusting and yucky-yuck, but Udo was right. Each of the alcoves was occupied by someone who was sleeping a sleep from whence they would never awake. An old woman in a frothy blue dress, holding a perfect round orange in her hands:
GEORGIANA HA
ð
RAA
ð
A
i. A saucy little pug dog lying on a blue velvet pillow, its pink tongue poking from a slightly open black muzzle:
HER GLORY’S FANCIFUL SHADOW.
A man in full armor, his face hidden by a pig-snouted helmet, a sharp sword balanced on the length of his body:
ALBANY BANASTRE BILSKINIR OV HAðRAAðA.

The bodies looked so alive, so perfectly asleep. It was hard to believe that our whispers would not wake them up. But they made me shiver. No matter how lifelike they appeared, it didn’t change the fact that these pristine figures, so painted and curled and gussied up, were dead. They were cheats, facsimiles, and somehow it seemed indecent to allow them to lie there so exposed.

“I hope my hair looks that good when I have been dead three hundred years,” Udo remarked, looking at an elegant old man in a flowery kimono and stiff elaborate upswept curls.
EOS SABRE,
according to the inscription.

The next alcove had no body, only an ivory-handled hunting whip, its slender snaky hunting lash twined around a copper-red braid, lying like a substitute effigy on the sangyn marble slab. The arch above had no inscription.

“I’ll bet that one was for the Butcher Brakespeare—General Haðraaða Segunda. It’s ’cause she didn’t have any kids that Paimon got left all alone, I suppose,” Udo said. “Wasn’t her nickname Azote, and doesn’t that mean ‘whip’? I suppose there was nothing left of her to bury after the Huitzils ate her.” He turned back toward the boat in the center of the room. “And that leaves ... who do you think, behind those curtains?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, Udo,” I said. “I’m ready. Let’s get going. I am so tired now, I just want it over with. Fading, or restoration, I don’t care, I just want to be done.”

“Come on, Flora. This may be our only time ever to be here. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“No, Udo. I’m not. I’m just hungry and tired. We still don’t have that Verb yet. Come on.”

“You are no fun,” Udo said, and then craftily: “Or are you scared?”

“Udo.” I moaned. “We don’t have time for this.”

“I think Flora is scared. Flora is scared!” Udo sang gleefully. “I dare you to climb up there and look.”

“I don’t have to take your stupid dare, Udo, or play your stupid games. Come on, if you are so hot on it, then I dare
you
to look.”

“You can’t block a dare with a dare, Flora. Come on, I triple-dog dare you!”

There’s no block for a triple-dog dare, and no backing out, either. And no point in further hesitation. When you must strike, strike hard, Nini Mo said, and strike them to the Abyss. I walked over to the boat—which, closer up, I realized was actually a fancy catafalque, not a boat at all—then climbed up the little flight of stairs and pulled aside the long billowing drape.

A prone figure lay under the slick shroud of a flag, not Califa’s national flag, but a banner of sangyn silk that had no ensign. With one tentative hand, I gingerly picked up the edge of the fabric, drew it back, revealing a white face, a wide chest, and two folded hands.

I didn’t need an inscription to know who this was. His portrait hangs in every civic office and schoolroom in the City, and though now that famous face was white and still, it was unmistakable. A tiny little shiver ran up my spine and into my tummy, which began to quiver.

Banastre Haðraaða, the Warlord’s Fist.

“Hardhands,” Udo breathed, now leaning behind me. “Look at him. He’s a real stunner.”

Hardhands was beautiful, it was true, but it was an icy-cold beauty, glassy, and I don’t think that was just because he was dead. His hair, pulled back into a long braid tucked under his dark red officer’s sash, was as white as snow. His taut lips were the palest pink, and his eyelashes lay like black feathers against his paper-pale skin. Long white hands with sangyn-colored nails were folded on his chest, as though they had once clutched something—a sword, perhaps, or maybe a pistol—but now they lay empty, slightly cupped. He wore the sangyn-red Skinner uniform, its long sleeves trailing off the edge of the plinth, spilling to the floor like blood, but his cheeks were not marred by the Skinner scars.