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) (38 page)

Udo made one last little bounce and stopped. I slid off, and collapsed onto the soft grass. Flynn threw himself down beside me, panting. Pig flew toward me, and I caught him before he could hit me in the face. Udo continued to bounce gently nearby. He didn’t look winded, but Pigface, his hair was a mess. Anyway, he was safe. Flynn was safe. I was safe.

“Well, Pig,” I said, trying to sound ranger cool. “I guess we’re home.”

He did not answer.

T
HE SKY ABOVE
Bilskinir was faded, the shade of denim, and strange gray clouds, spidery and torn, blew across its wide expanse. Drops of rain spit on me as I trudged across the Great Lawn, whose grass needed cutting. The sheep huddled under an oak tree at the far end of the Lawn, bleating miserably, and a cutting wind was blowing. The flowers alongside the approach to the massive front door drooped listlessly, their colors washed out. A slight air of abandonment hung over everything.

But I knew Paimon was still around. If he’d been gone, I would know that, too. And I knew why his attention was elsewhere. Lord Axacaya was trying to get in, and Paimon was keeping him out.

After I had fallen off Udo, I had lain in the grass for a long time, staring up at the slate-gray sky, thinking of many things, none of them happy or good. It would say more of me if I admitted that I was finally rousted by concern for Udo, or Flynn, or Idden and Poppy, but alas, it was my squeezy bladder that forced me to get up. That, and the rough tongue that was slurping over my face, and returned each time I pushed it away: Flynnie.

Now Flynn trotted ahead, looking pleased, his tail waving like a fringy red flag. Udo had vanished; I’d go find him, but the bathroom had to come first.

As I mounted the wide stairs leading to Bilskinir’s front door, a small twinge of excitement sparked through my larger feeling of despair. Could this gorgeous House really be all mine? The bronze doorknob was the size of my head and shaped like a crab. I opened the Madama Twanky Tooth Polish tin and shook the key to Bilskinir out. When I slid the ring on my finger it fit perfectly.

“The Ostium,” I said, touching the doorknob.

The door opened and Flynn darted inside. Outside, the sky was now the shade of a damson plum, and an eddy of chill air blew inside, ruffling the tapestries. The door slammed, and Flynn jumped in surprise. From the Ostium I could get to any room in Bilskinir, but I only needed one room: a bathroom.

“A potty please,” I said, again putting the Key to the lock.

The potty continued the oceanic theme; the bathtub was shaped like a giant seashell, the sink was a smaller shell, and the deep blue walls were covered in gleaming gold designs: fish, seals, otters, whales—and a giant Loliga. The potty seat was warm and the towels on the towel rack were fluffy and smelled of lemon. Flynn jumped into the tub and nuzzled the dolphin-shaped faucet, so I turned the tap until water trickled out and he began to drink noisily.

I couldn’t help but contrast this glorious bathroom with Crackpot’s poor little dank loo. Without Valefor at full power, our loo is shabby The porcelain in the tub is scratched; the water pipes gurgle alarmingly, spewing icy water one minute and boiling water the next. The mirror above the sink is streaked with green, the silver flaking away, and no amount of scrubbing can get the mold off the ceiling. All my life Idden has regaled me with tales of the cleanliness of Crackpot Hall’s towels, back before Valefor had been banished. The luscious softness of them, the fluffy absorbency. Without Valefor, the threadbare towels were dingy, not much better than paint rags.

Now I had a seemingly endless supply of wonderfully clean, soft towels, each as large as a garrison flag. Not just soft and clean, but warm, too. And hot water that gushed from the gold dolphin’s mouth into a tub shaped like an open oyster shell, water that frothed up into lavender-scented bubbles. And potty paper as soft as cotton, and a potty seat that warmed my hinder, and a flush chain that didn’t tangle, and plumbing that didn’t roar like the pipe was about to explode. Yet I would have traded it all for Crackpot’s raggy bath towels, Crackpot’s broken potty seat, and Crackpot’s tepid water.

A ranger plays the hand she is dealt, not the hand she wishes she were dealt
, said Nini Mo. The fish mirror showed a girl with messy red hair, and Bilskinir blue eyes. She didn’t look like the Head of the House Haðraaða. She didn’t look like much at all. But she was going to have to do, because she was all there was.

The room outside the potty glowed in the lamplight like a giant red gumdrop. I recognized it immediately: the Bedchamber of Downward Dreaming, a crimson chamber that continued the oceanic motif. On the walls silver fish, eels, and squid swam through a crimson red ocean, and the bed was shaped like a giant open clamshell. The bedroom of the Head of the House Haðraaða. The room Paimon had locked Udo and me into on our first visit to Bilskinir. Now I realized he had been trying to tell me something—but, darn it, why hadn’t he been more clear? It could have saved us all a ton of hassle.

The delicious smell of coffee filled the room. The polychrome mermaid draped over the chimneypiece seemed to watch me with amused eyes as I reached for the pot sitting on the small stove next to the fireplace. But when I tried to pour, instead of liquid, a ruffly shape rolled out, flipped, and became the merman Alfonzo. He yanked on the bottom of his double-breasted tunic, straightening it, and made a deep Courtesy:
Welcome Home.

“Ave, madama!”

“Where is Paimon?”

“Keeping Axacaya out—we are under siege, you know. Axacaya trying to get in, but he got no chance,
ladrón!
We are the strongest house in the City, even now. He’ll have to try harder! Paimon says he’ll see you soon, but in the meantime, I am to say that there is a letter for you in the Closet by the fireplace. I must go help in the defense!
Hasta la vista!”

With a flap of his frondlike tail, Alfonzo vanished. I saw the thin outline of a door on the red wallpaper next to the fireplace. The door was papered over and had no doorknob, so it was almost invisible. But as I approached, it swung open to reveal a room filled with drawers and cupboards, from the distant ceiling to the floor. I pulled on a drawer; inside were several dozen pairs of neatly rolled socks. Another drawer held neatly folded undershirts. The first cupboard I opened contained an array of uniform jackets: regular Army black sackcoat, Skinner sangyn frock, a dark green old-timey Army peacoat.

In the middle of the room sat a large trunk with an elaborate red-leather cover, torn in some places and held down with brass rivets. I crouched in front of it; the brass plaque over the lock-plate had CSRB carved on it.

Tiny Doom’s Catorcena trunk. The hasp lock was open. Inside, on top of a layer of buckskin, was a folded and sealed paper upon which was written spiky faded blue letters.

To Nyana Haðraaða ov Fyrdraaca

I rocked back on my heels and sat on the cold marble floor, holding the letter in my hand—which, I noted from a calm point somewhere away from my body, was shaking like a leaf. This calm point outside of myself saw clearly the muzzy, messy girl, staring at a piece of paper as though it were a snake about to bite her. Mesmerized, waiting for the strike, unable to pull away.

Nyana Haðraaða ov Fyrdraaca.

Nyana.
My real name was Nyana? Not a second Flora after all, but named for the greatest ranger ever. Nyana. A tiny shaft of consolation rang through me. Not a replacement for, but in honor of.

I broke the seal and unfolded the paper:

Dear Nyana,

That is what I’m calling you, after Nini Mo, though obviously Buck is going to change your name to keep you hidden.

Does this not burn? I’ve been through a lot of horrible things recently—prison, trial, etc.—but I have to say that of all the burning horrible things, this is by far the burning horriblest. Once, I got hit in the side with a fifty-caliber bullet, which Taylor, my lieutenant at the time, had to fish out with a chopstick he sterilized with his own piss. That hurt. It really, really hurt, and when it was all over, all I got as a prize was a mushy piece of metal and an infection that almost killed me. But that didn’t hurt half as much as getting you from inside to outside; toward the end, I would have been glad if someone had shot me with a fifty-caliber bullet just to take my mind off the pain. But no one did, and eventually you decided to join the rest of the world, feet first, and I got my prize, the best prize in the whole wide world. That’s not what burns. What burns is that I can’t keep you, my darling baby.

Also burning: that the only time we ever had together, neither of us knew, and so spent frivolously trying to steal crap and put Hardhands’s nose out of joint when we could have been having quality mother-daughter time. Oh, and thanks for leaving me in the lurch like that, with ghoulish Grandmamma nipping at my heels. She got a toe or two, but obviously I got all of her in the end. I was pretty pissed at you, but now I know that while I was skylarking, you were on urgent business, and so I forgive you. But don’t do it again.

(Also, thank you for the lie about Hardhands’s expiration via rat bite. For many years it was a great consolation to me.)

I can’t keep you, darling baby girl. They will catch me, and they’ll kill me, but they won’t catch you, not if I let you go. And so I’m letting you go, to Buck, who will love you like her own child, who will protect you and care for you and someday tell you about me. And hopefully you won’t hate me for abandoning you or hate Buck for lying to you. And don’t blame your father at all. He knows nothing of this; it seemed best to keep him blissfully ignorant and thus blameless should anything go wrong. I write this now as though Hotspur survives prison, as though he makes it home to Crackpot. I have to believe that he will. Losing him would be as bad as losing you. I can go to my death content if I can go believing that both of you still live.

So that’s my problem. Now on to yours. Yes, I know all about your problem, and if you are reading this, I’m figuring that you must still be looking for a solution. How did I figure it out? Well, it took a lot of doing and scrying, and reading entrails, but one thing Nini taught me is that if you really want to find something out and keep looking and asking, eventually you’ll look in the right place and ask the right question. And end up with an answer. So now I shall pass the answer on to you.

But, baby doll, don’t be mad—I’m going to have to be elliptical and obtuse with my advice. You are cursing me now, I can tell, but “better to be cautious than caught,” Nini says. On the small chance that Axacaya, that bastard, overpowers Paimon, or overpowers you (believe me, once you get to know him, Axacaya’s charm is rather thin), and
he
is reading this instead of you, well, I’m not going to make it any easier for him. (And if you are reading this, Axacaya, I’ve got a special surprise planned for you, don’t you worry.) Anyway, remember the Key to Bilskinir? And remember where I said I got it? Well, if you look
there,
I think you shall find the solution to your problem. I hope you have a good memory. Mine has never been too sharp, but Hotspur never forgets anything, so with luck, you take after him, not me.

I sure hope you do remember, as the safety of the City relies upon it. That’s all I can do. The rest is up to you, Nyana. Fyrdraacas are known for their courage, Haðraaðas for their cunning, and Brakespeares for their stubbornness. All three together is a potent combination. During our little escapade together, I remember thinking you were bratty and arrogant, but also that you had sand and spirit and were extremely good in a pinch. And being good in a pinch is the best kind of person to be. Being bratty and arrogant isn’t so bad, either. Sometimes that is what it takes.

By now I expect you’ve heard some pretty awful things about me. I have a feeling that my reputation, which has never been that good, won’t improve after I’m dead. Well, I’ve done a lot of things that are neither glamorous nor generous and I’m not going to apologize for them. But I will say that I thought long and hard before I did them, and I truly believed there was no other way. If that is evil, then I’m guilty as the Birdies charged, and deserve whatever I’m going to get. But I hope that you’ll understand and not think too badly of me.

That’s all the time I have. It would be impossible to let you go if I didn’t know you were going to a better mother than I could have ever been. And it consoles me, too, that the misery is all mine: having never known me as your mother, you’ll never miss me. But I’ll miss you, darling baby doll, until the moment I die.

Dare, win, or disappear.

Cyrenacia Sidonia
Brakespeare ov Haðraaða

Post Script 1: Paimon will send you Pig; trust them both.

Post Script 2: Tell Hotspur I love him.

Post Script 3: Tell Buck thank you.

Post Script 4: Tell Axacaya that I’m coming for him.

T
HREE TIMES
I reread that letter, and the papers grew more and more damp with each reading due to my sweaty hands and a few errant tears I refused to allow to develop into full bawling.

I had left Tiny Doom in the lurch, but she had not left me. She had done everything in her power to keep me safe. She had died so I might live. And she had named me after Nini Mo, who would surely not just sit there, sniveling, when the fate of Califa hung in the balance. I snorted up my tears and read the letter once more, this time focusing on the part about my “problem.” The other stuff would have to wait.

Of course I remembered her telling me she had stolen the Key from Hardhands. But I did not remember where she told me she had stolen it
from.