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) (34 page)

Tears burned my eyes like acid, even as I bit my lip and tried not to blink, tried to hold them back.

“What else? Forgery, theft, and falsehood. Deception, shirking, and treason. You certainly have missed no vice, have you, madama? You have been nothing but thorough in your depravity. Why should I reward such behavior? Why should I help you?”

“Paimon said that Valefor’s disintegration affected all the Houses, that it could pull the Current off balance,” I said, very small.

“Bilskinir, perhaps, and the other Great Houses, old and decadent, but your foolishness cannot affect me. My House was built by my Will and is strong enough to withstand your games. So why, then, should I help you?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.
Don't reward failure,
said Nini Mo. Everything he said was true, and if true, surely I deserved everything I got. I bowed my head, feeling the tears dribble and feeling myself shiver and shrink. How could I have been so stupid? Why should I be saved?

He continued, “Your story fits well with what I have thought for years. The Fyrdraacas, as a family, have always lacked verve. Your entire bloodline is sour; there’s no hope for it anymore. Any spark that your family might have once boasted of has long since guttered out. No wonder it dwindles and dies out. Look to your mother, buried in her work, a slave to her enemies, ignoring her child, allowing her to run wild, no discipline, no guidance, no respect.”

“Hey—” My protest was a squeak.

He said scornfully, “And then there is Hotspur, reckless and indifferent to the safety of others, now boiling in his own misery. When faced with adversity, he broke, his Will as thin as a thread but not half as strong. Incurably romantic with his falsely placed love toward the greatest criminal Califa has ever known—”

“Mamma is not a criminal!” I yelped, unable to keep silent any longer.

“Not General Fyrdraaca, you little fool. Butcher Brakespeare. Cyrenacia Sidonia Brakespeare ov Haðraaða. General Haðraaða Segunda. Didn’t you know that he was her lover? All Califa knew and not you? Did he not snap after her death? Descend into madness because he could not live without her? Even the loss of his own child was nothing compared to the loss of his mistress.”

“That’s not true!” Even as I protested, doubt wormed at me. Like a flash came the memory of that empty slab in the Cloakroom of the Abyss—the whip twined with a braid of brilliant red hair. Poppy’s hair, I realized. I thought he had clipped his hair short in mourning for the First Flora, but had he? Did he wear the black mourning band for her, or for someone else?

Lord Axacaya continued on: “Look at you now—you are no better than your father. The slightest bit of pressure and you snap like a twig. You cry and you wring your hands, and you disappear. And you thought to be a ranger.
Dare, win, or disappear!
You have made your choice, Flora Fyrdraaca, to disappear!”

These words stung me like poisoned darts. Was I no better than Poppy? I had scorned him because he gave up. He gave in.
A ranger,
Nini Mo said,
will never wittingly dance with death.

Dare, win, or disappear.

A red spark flared in my darkness. Anger at myself for giving in. Anger at myself for sitting helplessly while Lord Axacaya slandered my family. That spark was hot, and against the dampness of my despair, it felt good. It felt great. It felt
reat.

“No, you are wrong!” I cried. “I will not go. I will not disappear. And you are wrong about Mamma—wrong about Poppy!”

“Am I?”

Ah, that sharky grin, how I’d like to smack it off his face. With each second my anger grew, and so, too, my determination to prove Lord Axacaya wrong—wrong about me, wrong about the Fyrdraacas.

“Mamma and Poppy were loyal to Califa; they fought for her honor. What did you do? You betrayed the country that took you in, and you sold out Poppy, and you would have sold out Mamma, too, if you could have! You work for Califa’s enemies—it is you who are the traitor!”

Lord Axacaya’s eyes blazed like cold fire. “You talk treason, to speak to me that way, girl. And yet, I know you are not responsible for yourself. You are a foolish child. And it is the parent who must take the blame for the foolish child. I can send my Quetzals to Crackpot and arrest Colonel Fyrdraaca. Is he not responsible for you in your mother’s absence? I can have him killed, and no one shall resist my authority. He’ll be dead by morning.”

“You will not touch Poppy!” I cried. “I will not allow it!”

“How will you stop me, madama? Are you not diminishing and fading? Are you not weak-willed?” Lord Axacaya said scornfully. “Should I be afraid of you?”

“You pernicious pinheaded mincing malicho TRAITOR! I will see you in the Abyss before I allow you to bring the Fyrdraaca family down!” I screamed. Every drop of blood had turned to fire, and this fire was eating through my flesh, eating through my skin. My throat translated my anger into a shriek of rage that hung on the air like greasy smoke.

I
was furious.
And it felt good. It felt wonderful. It felt
fabulous.
Scalding heat flowed up my toes, into my legs, burned through my stomach, and into my mouth. Thick guttural Gramatica Words sparked and snapped in the swirling air, which now smelled thickly of my ire. Anger consumed me like a fire consumes wood, and there was no room for us both inside me.

I opened my red mouth and let out an almighty screech of fury, a screech that tore my throat and burned my ears, and seemed to last forever, a horrible sound that rent the air in front of me. My scream rose higher and higher, the noise translating from Wordlessness into the Oatmeal Word, magnified a hundred thousand times from whence I had last spoken it.

The gash became a magickal Vortex, a roiling daisy wheel of fuliginous darkness that rolled forward to envelop Lord Axacaya.

T
HE
V
ORTEX WHISTLED
as it blurred and gave off a spiky blue and green coldfire light, like gashes of lightning, acrid and hot. Then, with a sound so loud I could not hear it, but could only feel the tremendous buzz of its vibration, the Vortex flared into a blinding burst of coldfire and was gone.

My skull rang with a noise that made my spine vibrate, my ears buzz. My vision dissolved into sparkly whiteness. It felt as though
I
was turning into oatmeal, melting into a puddle of starchy goo—a horrible sensation, quivering and shivery, that seemed to be getting stronger and stronger. And then suddenly the world snapped back into focus again. The awful sensation of oatmealness vanished. Now I felt heavy, not with the weight of desolation and despair, but with actual weight, the feeling of flesh and bone. I held up one hand to the light; it was plump and white, and I could not see through it. I pressed my other hand against my chest, and felt the slight bump of my heartbeat. I felt alive.

I felt
real.

Lord Axacaya stood where the Vortex had been. He stepped toward me, his now obsidian eyes blazing. He brought his hands together in a thunderous clap that seemed to shift the ground beneath me, and I scrambled backward, skittering away from him.

What had I done? I had thrown the Oatmeal Word at Lord Axacaya, and he had stood through it, and now he was going to smite me. A tiny voice said,
At least you don’t go willingly.
But that tiny voice was an awful little consolation—all my troubles for nothing. I only hoped it would not hurt too much. At least he was not setting those Quetzals on me—

Then Lord Axacaya clapped again and again, and he spoke in a voice not furious but friendly: “Welcome back to the Waking World, Flora.” He smiled, a genuine smile that wiped all disdain and arrogance from his face, which now looked much older. Thin lines radiated from his eyes and lips, and his butter-colored hair was threaded with shimmering silver. And his eyes were so very black now, yet there seemed to be shimmering movements within their depths. Lieutenant Sabre had been right after all.

“What happened?” I croaked, bewildered. I was solid again, but how was I real?

“You are yourself again. You have regained your Will.”

“How?” Each word felt like a razor blade, and my lips were sore, too.

“You asserted yourself. You stood up for your Will. Come sit down, and we shall have more chocolate. You look like you need it.” He gestured toward the stools. Daylight now stippled the floor, filtering down from the
latillas
above, and hung in the still air like little clouds of sunlight. The luminarias were doused.

“By getting mad? By using the Oatmeal Word?” I sat down heavily on the jaguar.

“Oatmeal Word?” He sounded puzzled.

“What I said. That Gramatica Word.” This time, I was relieved to see, the cup Lord Axacaya handed me was made of carved jade, shaped like a flower. But the chocolate tasted as rich and sweet as it had Elsewhere, and it smoothed away the pain in my mouth and throat. My tummy rumbled, but now my hunger was just plain old hunger, not ravenousness.

“Ah, you mean the Gramatica Adverbial form of
Convulsion?
No—that was just a symptom of your rage. You spoke it well, though; I was hard-pressed to withstand it. No, the solution to your problem, Flora, was Focus and Will. Nothing is stronger than your Will. Not even your little friend Valefor. He tried to pander your Will to his, but he could only do so because you let him. No one can take you from yourself, Flora, unless you allow them to.
But you needed to be jolted to that realization, and so I provided you with a spur. I am sorry to have sounded so harsh, but you were pretty far gone. I wasn’t sure that you could come back.”

“Am I still linked to Valefor?”

“You will always be linked to Valefor. He is a Fyrdraaca, too, and the bond between you cannot be broken. But I would advise not allowing him to siphon your Will in the future. He is hungry—he cannot control himself. But he should not be encouraged, and as you have learned, it takes a great deal of strength to keep a hungry denizen at bay. Best not to take chances.”

“But will he keep fading away?”

“As long as Fyrdraaca House stands, he will remain.”

I sat there, trying to wrap my jellied mind around what Lord Axacaya had said. It was my Will that brought me back, and that Will had been activated by my anger. That much I understood. But why had he helped me? He was Mamma’s enemy, wasn’t he? I had worked against him, as far as the Dainty Pirate went, and he knew it—didn’t that make me his enemy, as well?

I said, “I don’t understand, Your Grace. You said you would not help me. You said I was irresponsible and foolish.”

“So you were,” he answered. “But courageous all the same. It was foolish to go against your mother and try to assist denizen Valefor. But it was a brave thing, and it was the right thing, to try to free Valefor from his bondage. He may be a servitor, but he is a sentient being. Should he not have the right to his own Will?”

“You said my family was a failure, but the failure is all mine. Please don’t blame Mamma and Poppy for my actions. I will take my punishment if I must, but don’t hold them responsible. What I have done is not their fault.”

“I hold you responsible for your actions; you and no other,” Lord Axacaya said. “What I said before about the Fyrdraaca family—I stand by those statements. I am no friend of your mother’s, nor is she a friend of mine. But there is a saying: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We share a mutual antipathy toward our Huitzil overlords; I have no more cause to like them than she.”

“But,” I said, bewildered, “I thought you were allies with them. You act like you are their friend; you do their bidding.”

“Can I not smile and lie while I smile?” Lord Axacaya said. “Sometimes, Flora, you must grit your teeth and bear it until such time comes when you can bite.”

“If you are against the Birdies, then why did you want the Dainty Pirate? Why did you have him killed? Mamma had no choice—she had to uphold the Peace Accord or risk herself—but you? He was their bane. He made no secret of working against them!” I burst out. Even as I did so, I thought,
Oh Flora, you should probably
keep your mouth shut and stay ahead while you can,
but my mouth would just not stay shut—I had to know. “Why did you have him killed, then?”

“Did I have him killed?” Lord Axacaya asked with a smile.

“I saw it! I saw your eagles rip him apart! Udo was there—he saw it, too!”

“Did you? Things—and people—are not always as they seem. If you have learned nothing from your studies of Nini Mo, you should know that. Was she
ever
what she seemed? It is not enough to
see
something; you must know what it is that you have seen.”

Now I was annoyed, and exasperated. Why couldn’t he just say what he meant instead of having to be all mysterious and boo-spooky? Is there something about adepts that they just cannot speak plainly, that they have been too muddled by power and mystery?

Lord Axacaya laughed. “Well, then, I will say—unmysteriously and un-boo-spooky—Boy Hansgen is not dead.”