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) (9 page)

“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.)

“To what do I owe this honor?”

“Well, I missed you, Flora.”

I had missed him, too, but I hate soppiness, so I said, all business-brisk: “So you should have.”

Udo rolled his eyes and sat down on the bench next to me. “I can’t stay out late tonight. Mam and the Daddies are going to the opera, and somehow I got stuck with squirt-wrangling. And I got six pages of cyclotomy to do for turn-in tomorrow. You’ll be so lucky when you have Valefor doing your homework, Flora. Gunn-Britt was doing all my math, but she just raised her prices out of spite over the nose thing, and now I can’t afford her. Do you think Valefor would do my homework, too? I guess you could just order him to—”

“I don’t have a lot of time, either. I have to meet Mamma at the Presidio for dinner. She’s finally back from Angeles.”

“You are so lucky, Flora, that Buck is gone all the time. I wish
los padres
would go and take all those nasty kiddies with them. How bliss it would be to have no one to look after but blissful me.”

“And Poppy, and the horses, and the dogs, and the chores—”

“The Warlord freed all the slaves but you, Flora.”

“Don’t I know it. Come on. We’re burning daylight.”

C
RACKPOT WAS AS
I had left it some hours earlier, with no sign of either Poppy or Valefor. A few stray smashing sounds drifted down from the Eyrie, but we pretended not to notice. Let Mamma deal with Poppy when she got home later; let him be
her
job, not mine. Or better yet, let him be Valefor’s job.

The Elevator was waiting, grille ajar. I jumped in so quickly that it rocked back and forth slightly, squeaking at my weight. Udo followed and pulled the grille shut behind him.

“Take us to the Bibliotheca,” I demanded, but the Elevator did not move. “Come on, chop-chop. Take me to Valefor in the Bibliotheca.”

The Elevator remained stubbornly stationary, even when I stamped my foot.

“Maybe you should press a button?” Udo suggested. “I never did before, but maybe so.”

Together we peered at the buttons, which were less than helpful, listing:

T
HE
P
OOL
B
OUDOIR
T
HE
H
AMMOCK
L
OUNGEE
T
HE
C
ELLAR OF
S
WEETNESS AND
L
IGHT
T
HEL’S
R
APTUROUS
S
UNROOM
L
IBROS

“This House is bigger than I thought,” Udo said, and before I could stop him, he reached out and punched the
LIBROS
button.

The Elevator jolted a bit, dropping a few inches. I grabbed at Udo, and Udo grabbed at me, and we both fell against the wall.

“Udo! Who knows where we’ll end up now!” I found my footing and stood up.

“It said
books
and a library has books, don’t it?”

The Elevator recovered and began to slide downward. “I thought you said the Bibliotheca was up,” Udo said. “It was, blast it all.” I pushed all the buttons, some of them twice, but the Elevator just kept dropping, slowly picking up speed as it went. “But maybe this book place is entirely different.”

“Hit the
STOP
button,” Udo said helpfully.

“There is no
STOP
button.” I pressed all the other buttons again, and then, for good measure, thumped on the panel.

“That red one—” Udo leaned in front of me. “There—”

“That doesn’t say anything about stopping—don’t—Udo—”

He pressed the button. The Elevator stopped abruptly, sending Udo careening into me and down to the floor, where his elbow crushed my liver painfully.

“Get off me—” I pushed him off and stood up, holding my hand against my side.

“See—I told you!” Udo looked pleased with himself.

“Ayah so, but now we are stuck between floors.”

With a horrible groan that set my teeth to grinding, the Elevator bounced once, upward. Udo staggered against me again, almost pushing me off balance. The light went out. The Elevator shrieked like a baby.

And then it dropped like a stone.

Downward we plummeted, in pitch darkness. The roar of rushing air filled my ears to near bursting, or maybe that was just the pressure of our fall. Dimly, behind the rush, I could hear howling—maybe it was Udo, or maybe it was me. It was so dark that I couldn’t tell if my mouth was open or not. I was pressed into the floor, feeling the Elevator shudder and leap beneath my hands and knees, my head swimming with nausea. I closed my eyes tightly against the darkness, and so dark was it that even the sparks of light you normally see when you squinch your eyes up were extinguished.

After a while, maybe it was forever even, it seemed like we were not moving at all, that we were suspended in a black void, and it was the Void itself that was moving, rushing by us in a howl. Perhaps this is what the Abyss is like, I thought, the impenetrable blackness, the scream of air; perhaps it was not the air screaming, but—The Elevator hit hard and bounced upward, and so did I, catching my tongue painfully between my teeth. Something knobbed into my side, bright and hard. I jerked away and whacked my noggin into a stony object, which complained, “Owwww, that was my chin.”

I opened my eyes. Gray light hazed in through the Elevator’s open door. Udo sat on his heels, rubbing his chin with one hand and patting his hat with the other. The foot-long hat pin had kept it on his head, but now it was quite cockeyed. My head felt as though a hundred million goldfish were flapping their fins inside my skull. I tried to stand, but my knees wobbled me back down again. The grille stood open, so I did the easy thing and crawled out of the Elevator, into the huge expanse of the Bibliotheca.

T
HE FLOOR BOBBED
and jumped with imaginary motion, and the mocha in my tum was threatening to abandon ship. Every time I raised my head, the Bibliotheca swirled into a blur of steel gray, and closing my eyes was worse: Then the darkness itself whirled and lurched. If I stared directly at one fixed point, my head started to slow down, but the second I moved my eyes, everything began to spin again.

Udo moaned, “Are you okay, Flora?”

I tried to look back to the Elevator without actually turning my head to look back at the Elevator, and I realized that Udo had crawled up next to me. I risked a glance and saw that his face was almost as green as his hat.

“I’m going to urp,” Udo complained.

“Don’t do it on me—”

“Floooooooooora!”

“Valefor?” I risked another turn of the head and saw that the Bibliotheca was shrouded in gloom. Today the light filtering through the windows was weak and gray, and rain skimmed the outside of the glass. It hadn’t been raining earlier.

“Floooooooooooora!”

“Valefor—where are you?”

This time the only response was a wracking cough. I pushed up off the floor and stood, staggering over to the nearest table, to grab for balance. The floor tipped up and then down again, and for a moment my mocha was poised to spew. But then I got enough balance back to stand straighter and to see Valefor wavering, as thin and pale gray as newsprint. He looked terrible, much worse even than when I had first seen him. His hair stuck out like thistledown and his eyes gleamed wetly white.

“I am receding again, Flora,” he moaned, and held his hands out to me. The floor swayed, but I lurched over to him, my own hands outstretched, and breathed so deeply that my chest grew tight with exertion. A cold misty feeling flowed over me, and Val’s cold tenuous grip fastened upon me.

Val’s lips were so faint that I could barely feel them press against mine. I breathed deeply out until my lungs felt sucked and empty, then inhaled again until they felt like balloons. It wasn’t until my second exhalation that he began to solidify. First he felt wiry and thin like sinew, then tough and hard like bone, and then, finally, like solid flesh, warm beneath the grip of my hands.

I let go and pressed my hand on my chest, trying to hold my bouncy heart in, and gasped deeply. My insides felt as though my blood had been replaced with swirly giddy light, rushing golden through my veins. The dizziness was gone.

Valefor said happily, “Well, I feel much better! That was some good stuff, Flora. You are so full of lovely nice stuff: anger, guilt, sorrow. Yum!” He smacked his lavender lips and did a little dance.

“What was that with the Elevator, Valefor? It almost dropped us straight into the Abyss.”

“That Elevator may go many places, Flora Segunda, but the Abyss is not one of them. I am sorry about the Elevator, but really you must take your complaints to darling Buck, for she is the one who has unstabilized me—Hey! Nice hat!”

This last was directed not at me, who was not wearing a hat, but at Udo, who was still sitting by the Elevator, looking slightly green. At the compliment, he grinned weakly and staggered to his feet, then made the courtesy that signifies Graciously Submitting before an Equal, which involved a bow so low that I was surprised his nose didn’t touch the ground. Udo, like his hero the Dainty Pirate, is a fine one for manners.

“Thank you, sieur denizen.”

“I love the bird wing, so beautifully cruel, and your kilt, what a divine shade of green. I do adore green, the color of jade and jaguar blood.” To me: “He could teach you a few things about dressing, Flora Segunda. He’s got style and flash.”

Now Udo was grinning and I could practically hear the sound of his head inflating. “You do me a great honor with your compliments, sieur.”

“Your manners are very nice, too,” Valefor answered. “Much better than Flora’s, here, who has forgotten to introduce us.”

“You have not given me a chance, Val, for heaven’s sake. Udo Moxley Landaðon ov Sorrel, Valefor, denizen—

“Valefor Fyrdraaca ov Fyrdraaca,” Valefor interrupted, returning Udo’s courtesy with Deference to an Equal, an even deeper bow. “I have the right to the name as much as you do, Flora Segunda, maybe more. I am very pleased to meet someone with such exquisite taste, Sieur Landaðon, and glad to see that Flora has some friends with style. Surprised, but well-pleased. Tell me, sieur—where are hems these days? Are they ankle or knee—I am so out of touch, and Flora is useless.”

“Knee for day, and calf for night,” said Udo, “unless you are super-ultra-formal, when they—”

I interrupted. “Do you want to discuss fashion, Valefor, or your restoration? We don’t have time to do both. Udo has to get to babysitting, and Mamma is coming home tonight.”

“Restoration, then fashion,” Valefor pronounced. “I shall have an entire new wardrobe, then, of shimmering samite! How bliss to get out of this rag!”

So we sat down in front of the fireplace to discuss. Valefor ignited a warming coldfire glow on the hearth and produced a lovely little snack with tiny sandwies, double bergamot tea, and lime meltaways.

“So, according to
The Eschata,
to create a servitor—,” I said. I had read the chapter on denizens in
The Eschatanomicon
three times, but sometimes it is good to think out loud.

“I’m a denizen!” Val protested.

“A denizen is a kind of servitor, Valefor. You know that. A servitor is a magickal entity created for a general purpose. A denizen is a servitor attached to a particular place. A domicilic denizen is attached to a House.”

Val said snobbily, “Still, a denizen is better than a plain old servitor—”

“That’s true. A denizen can act completely independently as long as its actions are in accordance with the parameters laid down by the adept—”

“Who was?” Udo asked.

I was annoyed at being interrupted. “Who was what?”

“Who created you, Valefor? Was it Buck?”

Valefor answered, quite loftily, “Of course it wasn’t Buck. She is only fifty-two years old. I out-age her by far. I was created by Azucar Fyrdraaca—”

“Which in Val's case,”
I said loudly, to get them back on track, “the parameters laid down by the adept were to take care of the House of Fyrdraaca. And these parameters were laid into the fetish that is Valefor’s center. This fetish is the source of all Valefor’s power, and now he’s been disconnected from it, and that’s why he is reduced and weakened.”

“What’s a fetish?” asked Udo. “Are you going to share those lime meltaways, Flora?”

I passed him the platter. “Every servitor has a physical item that binds it and links it to the physical world—” “So it’s kinda the physical representation of Val?” Udo interrupted.

“Ayah.”

“Then shouldn’t Valefor’s fetish be Crackpot Hall?” “No, the House is too big. No adept could charge something as large as an entire house. No one has that powerful a Will—”

“Azucar Fyrdraaca—,” began Valefor, but Udo cut him off.

“So what’s your fetish, Valefor?”

Valefor looked a bit embarrassed and mumbled something unintelligible.

I said, “What? I can’t hear you.”

“I have forgotten,” Val admitted sheepishly.

Udo snorted. “You have forgotten? How can you forget something like that? That’s pretty lame, Valefor. It’s like forgetting your own name.”

Valefor said plaintively, “I am insignificant and reduced, and I have been drained. There is so much about myself that I no longer know; why do you think it is taking me so long to write my memoirs? Buck has cut me off from much of myself, and, of course, my fetish, for with it, I should be whole and in command.”

“So what do we do if we don’t know what your fetish is?” Udo asked. “We can’t reconnect you to it if we don’t know what it is.”