Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (21 page)

At the edge of the Pool, Lord Axacaya paused.

His Command flared like a star, Words twisting and turning around themselves, forming a long sparkling fuse of coldfire. This fuse darted down and jacked into the water as neatly as a high diver, its glitter extinguished. The water again lay flat and black. Then, after a few seconds of stillness, the water began to churn, and the darkness swirled with an iridescent pearly light. The glow grew stronger, and the water began to froth and foam. A wave sloshed over the steps, wetting my feet, and I stepped back.

A huge blue eye, the size of a small wagon wheel, peered up at me.

I
GASPED AND CLUTCHED
at Lord Axacaya. I had not imagined that the Loliga was quite so enormous. Her body was easily as big as a barouche; her limbs—six short arms and two longer tentacles—stretched the length of three teams of horses. But other than her size, she looked exactly like the small squids that you see at the fish market. Those, though, lie dead and lifeless on a slab, their skin dull and gray. The Loliga’s skin was translucently white, dappled with purple shadows, and her eye glowed.

“The Loliga,” Lord Axacaya said. “An etheric egregore of the ninth order trapped into the form of a giant squid. Don’t be afraid, Flora. She won’t hurt you.”

“She tried to grab me before,” I protested.

“She will not harm you as long as I am here. She is sorry to have scared you—see how her skin flushes? That is her way of communicating. She is offering her friendship. Be sporting and offer her your friendship in return.”

Never let them see you flinch,
said Nini Mo. So I knelt down and reached out with a tentative hand. I expected the Loliga’s skin to feel slimy, but instead it was satiny smooth. Lavender streaks bloomed under my fingers, then slowly shaded to amethyst.

“She is very sorry she tried to hurt you,” Lord Axacaya said. I could feel his heat as he leaned over me, and a lock of his hair brushed my shoulder in a shivery way.

“How do you know what she is saying?”

“I spent many years looking for her and, when I found her, much time learning to communicate with her. Now we understand each other very well, the Loliga and I.”

As he spoke, a long pearly tentacle enfolded out of the water and wiggled toward me. My nerve evaporated, and I scurried behind Lord Axacaya, putting him between me and those suckers.

“She will not hurt you, Flora. I promise. Come, accept her friendship.” He tried to push me forward.

“She’s trying to grab me!” Despite Lord Axacaya’s reassurances, I had a very strong feeling that the Loliga didn’t like me. Her tentacle was flushing a blackish purple—the angry shading of a bruise.

Lord Axacaya said soothingly, “No, she’s not. Remember, I am here to protect you. I will never let anything happen to you,
pequeña.”

I was still afraid, but I relented, not wanting him to think me a baby I cringed as the tentacle touched my face, glided over my hair and shoulders. The caress was light and easy, however, and when the tentacle didn’t try to grab me, I felt slightly reassured. The brilliant blue eye was staring at me, its color deep and vivid as a clear noontime sky. Suddenly my fear was subsumed by pity. I knew what it was like to be trapped, to feel abandoned and alone. It’s a horrible feeling, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

The tentacle left me and undulated over to Lord Axacaya to gently pat his shoulder. Though the gesture made me uneasy—that tentacle was awful close to his neck, and I’d bet it could pop his head right off without much effort—he didn’t flinch.

Lord Axacaya said, “The sigils that bind her are weakening, Flora. Not enough to free her, but enough to allow her to fight against them. Her reach extends into the City’s Current, and the earthquakes that threaten the City are caused by her struggles. If she is not freed, she’ll tear the City apart, destroy us all.”

My triumph at being right that the Loliga was the cause of the City’s rumblings was blotted out by the horrific images filling my head: the City in flames, in ruins; Mamma, Poppy, Udo, the silly dogs, crushed, squashed, burned, dead.

“You can’t let her destroy the City! You have to free her! Undo the sigils or something!”

“The Loliga is trapped not by one sigil, but a series of sigils created and charged by Georgiana Segunda and then fused into one extremely strong Binding. Some of the small sigils have already unraveled. Others are fraying. But the fuse remains strong. The Loliga has slack enough to struggle, but not enough to escape.”

“But couldn’t you just undo a few more of the small sigils, enough to let the Loliga slip out? Nini Mo escaped from the Virreina of Huitzil’s dungeon by using a sharpened toothbrush and an Intersection Sigil to cut through the bars of her cell and then squeeze through.”

“Did she now?” Lord Axacaya answered. “If only it were that easy. The fuse remains strong. It would take a long time to untangle the sigils, and even longer to try to figure out the method Georgiana used to bond them together. We do not have that much time.”

“Won’t she stop struggling if she knows we are trying to help her?”

“She cannot wait. We cannot wait. The Loliga gestates—”

I broke in, astonished. “You mean she is pregnant? How can an egregore be pregnant?”

“Now is not the time, Flora, for a lecture in praterhuman reproduction habits. Let us just stipulate that the egregore was carrying a child when Georgiana trapped her—perhaps Georgiana didn’t know, or maybe she did not care. Now the egregore—the Loliga—is close to the end of her term. Soon her labor pangs will begin. Her struggles will increase, grow uncontrollable. And those struggles will destroy the City, leave her and her child trapped forever in the wreckage of the City.”

The poor Loliga! The poor little Loliga baby! I leaned down again and patted her side. “We can’t let that happen! But what can we do?”

“There is one hope. Georgiana used a Gramatica Word to fuse the sigil together. The problem is I don’t know which Word she used; she was too clever, and disguised it too well. Every Gramatica Word has an antonym, an opposite. If I knew what Word she used, I would know its opposite, and use this knowledge to reverse the fuse, release the Loliga. And for this, I need your help.”

Lord Axacaya needed
my
help? “But what can I do? I don’t know anything at all.”

“You know quite a bit, Flora. Don’t sell yourself short. And in this case, it’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

“Who do I know?”

“Paimon, the denizen of Bilskinir House. As you know, all good adepts keep close records of their magickal workings. If we can get a look at Georgiana Haðraaða’s
Diario,
I believe we’ll find the answers we seek. But her
Diario
is at Bilskinir House, under Paimon’s stewardship, and I fear that Paimon and I are not friends. I have tried to get him to allow me access to the
Diario.
But he has remained silent to my entreaties. Perhaps he thinks he is a strong enough denizen to stand firm, no matter what destruction the Loliga inflicts upon the rest of us. Or perhaps, with his family gone, he no longer cares if he is destroyed or not. I do not know. Anyway, he ignores me. But now the Goddess, may she consume us all, has sent me a solution. In the last fourteen years you are the only one Paimon has allowed entry into Bilskinir House.”

“Me and Udo,” I said, in fairness to Udo, even if he didn’t deserve such kindness.

“But it was you to whom Paimon offered friendship. He helped you before; perhaps he will again. At least he will listen to you, which is more than I could get him to do. Will you ask him for help? It is our only hope.”

The big blue eye still stared fixedly at me, still angry but also full of entreaty. The poor egregore, lured and trapped, eventually forgotten and left to rot, unable to protect the new life within her. Fighting against her bonds, growing more and more desperate. And at last, destroying us all as she tried to bring forth the new life she had created.

Didn’t Nini Mo say a ranger had a duty to free the oppressed? She wouldn’t allow the Loliga to remain enslaved, and she wouldn’t stand by and allow her City to be destroyed, along with everyone and everything she loved.

And although it probably wasn’t exactly the best time to be thinking of myself, I couldn’t help but consider my own ambitions. If I helped Lord Axacaya out now, he’d owe me one. If I impressed him with my initiative and daring, he would see I would make an extremely worthy pupil.

As though reading my mind (and maybe he was, in which case I should be more careful about my thoughts), Lord Axacaya said, “I know your ambitions, Flora. I know that you desire to be more than your family demands. In your own way, you are as trapped as the Loliga.”

“It’s not fair!” I said, looking at the Loliga lying watchful in the water. Maybe my cage wasn’t as obvious as hers, but it was a cage just the same. “It’s not fair at all!”

“You must follow your own Will. What is your Will, Flora?”

“It’s my Will to be a ranger, not a soldier! And I want to learn Gramatica!” The words popped out. “Will you teach me?”

“Learning Gramatica is not something to be undertaken lightly. It gets into your blood, into your bones, into your Anima and changes it. You have seen the changes it has wrought on me.”

“I’m not afraid. And I’m not a child. I understand the consequences. Will you teach me? Please?”

He didn’t answer, and I was afraid I had gone too far.
But if you never ask, the answer will always be no,
Nini Mo said. In the pool, the Loliga’s tentacles began to writhe, frothing the water into foam.

Then Lord Axacaya said, “I must consider the implication of such an alliance. When all this is over, we shall discuss it again. We do not have much time, Flora, a day or two only before her labor begins. We must act swiftly. Will you go to Bilskinir and ask Paimon for his help?”

“Ayah, I will,” I said, and Lord Axacaya smiled and kissed my hand.

T
HE SWIM BACK FROM
Bilskinir Baths seemed shorter, or maybe I was just more prepared. We didn’t surface at Woodward’s Gardens, but in the reflecting pool in the courtyard of Casa Mariposa, Lord Axacaya’s house. A thin pink dawn was beginning to edge the sky. I grabbed a cab and made it back to Crackpot Hall and to my room, via Valefor’s helpful hidden stairs, before full light. There, I crawled into bed and a sleep so deep and dark that I didn’t even dream.

When I woke up, a plate of waffles and a pot of coffee, not quite cold, stood on my desk. My door was no longer locked, but I didn’t think for a minute that Poppy had lifted my confinement. Still, at least now I could get to the potty, and I wasted no time in doing so. When I reached for the tooth polish, I realized that Mamma’s toothbrush was back on the brush stand.

Mamma’s boots were discarded at the threshold to her room, the pieces of her uniform were tangled on the floor, and her pistol lay on her bedside table. Her bed was strewn with snuggly dogs, who growled and shifted when I bounced up, but Mamma herself was invisible under a mound of blankets.

“Mamma! You’re back!”

The blankets wiggled and surged as I poked and prodded, and then finally, Mamma’s face emerged, “Ayah, I’m back, darling. Here, give me a kiss.” She wrestled me into a squeezy embrace, and then didn’t let me go, but settled back against the pillows. I buried my face in her neck, breathing in the familiar smell: lemon verbena, gunpowder, and ink. And today, the distant salt smell of the sea.

“Why are you back so soon? What happened?”

Mamma grimaced. “The Ambassador called me back. He’s rather annoyed someone tried to kill him. He wants me to explain why.”

“I’m sorry, Mamma.”
But you saved yourself a big waste of time,
I thought.

She squeezed me. “It’s all right, darling. Going to Fort Jones would have been a fool’s errand, anyway. Idden is long gone. I wanted to see for myself, but it would have made no difference.”

Guilt twanged at me. “I’m sure she’s all right, wherever she is, Mamma. Idden’s too mean to have anything happen to her.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Flora.” Mamma stroked my head.

“But I mean it as a compliment. Who would dare mess with Idden? She’d bite their hand off if they tried to grab her. I’m sure she’s fine, Mamma, really. Don’t worry.” Darn Idden—couldn’t she at least send Mamma a note saying she was alive?

“I hope you are right, Flora.”

Despite her sadness, Mamma seemed in a mellow mood. Or maybe she was just sleepy. Either way, perhaps this was a good time to bring up Poppy’s meltdown.
It is better,
said Nini Mo,
to let someone else give the bad news.
On the other hand, sometimes it is best to be first. “Mamma, at the Ball—”

“Your father already told me what happened, Flora.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Mamma, really. I could hardly—”

“We’ll talk about it at breakfast, Flora. I need my coffee before I consider any further troubles. I’m exhausted. Ayah so?”

“Ayah so, Mamma,” I said, kissing her forehead. She did look very tired, and a little sunburned, too. I noticed, for the first time, that thin lines of silver ran through her short blond hair. I was getting older, and Mamma was, too.