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) (46 page)

My entire life—my family, my name, even my birthday—is a lie.

I used to be so sure of myself. I used to know who I was: the youngest child of General Juliet “Buck” Fyrdraaca and her crazy husband, Hotspur. I used to have a home: Crackpot Hall, old and moldering and with a banished Butler, but a home nonetheless.

I used to have dreams: I’d be a ranger, like Nini Mo, stealthy and secret. I’d speak Gramatica, the Language of magick. I’d cross from the Waking World to Elsewhere as easily as crossing the street. I’d be clever, cunning, and shrewd, true to my own Will.

I used to have sand and grit, hope and a future. And now I have nothing. Now I have to skulk around in the shadows, trying to be small and unobtrusive, so our Birdie overlords won’t notice me, won’t discover who I really am.

I can’t even use my real name. You named me Nyana, after the great ranger Nini Mo, but Buck changed my name to Flora, after her daughter who was lost to the Birdies when she was small and perfect. As far as everyone is concerned, I am just Flora Segunda, a pale shadow of the original.

Unless the Birdies catch me. Then I’ll be Nyana Brakespeare ov Haðraaða. (As far as they are concerned, my Fyrdraaca half doesn’t count.) Then the Birdies will take me to Anahautl City. They’ll march me to the top of one of their black obsidian pyramids and rip out my heart with a slick black obsidian knife. Then they’ll eat my heart and feed my Anima to Tezca-whatsit, the Lord of the Smoked Mirror. That will be
punto final
for me, the absolute end. I’ll be done before I even got started.

Needless to say, I’m not so keen on that.

So, to avoid exactly that, I’ve spent the last eight months being anonymous. I’ve pretended to be a good little Fyrdraaca and have done everything a good little Fyrdraaca is expected to do. Like a good little Fyrdraaca, I went to Benica Barracks Military Academy There, I was a good little cadet. I shined my shoes and dug latrines, calculated trajectories and marched eight miles with a fully loaded pack and an empty canteen. When, thanks to the Infanta Sylvanna, I was detached from the Barracks and sent to work in Buck’s office as her junior aide-de-camp, I went with a smile, happy to settle in to a prison of paperwork. Now I spend all day copying reports and going to meetings and reviews and inspections and briefings, and baby-sitting Pow. If the Birdies don’t get me, this will be the rest of my life.

And I can’t spend the rest of my life this way. I just can’t. Can’t spend the rest of my life hiding, afraid and alone. Ignored and overlooked. Trapped in a lie. I’d almost rather the Birdies catch me and put me out of my misery.

No, that’s not true. I want to live. As my true self.

Also,
Mamma
dear, I’d like to point out, it’s not just me that you left in the lurch, but the entire Republic of Califa. Thanks to you, the war was lost. Thanks to you, the Birdies own us now. We are their lap dogs. The Infanta Sylvanna has lived with the Birdies most of her life. Basically, she
is
a Birdie. The Warlord is old and on his last legs. Once the Infanta is in charge, Califa will become a Birdie State. There’ll be no chance for me to be free, and no chance for anyone else, either.

If Nini Mo were alive today she would not stand by idly as Califa is sucked ever deeper into lap-doggery as we bow our heads ever lower to the Birdie yoke.
Free the oppressed!
Is that not the Ranger Motto? Nini Mo would never live as a slave, subject to another. She would be working tirelessly to overthrow Califa’s Birdie overlords; she would do everything she could to undermine them.

Well, I can’t start a revolution, Tiny Doom, but you could.

I know you weren’t very popular when you were alive—hence the Butcher nickname—but now that everyone thinks you are dead, they love you. Azota, they call you now, the Whip, and they mean it as a compliment. They scrawl
cierra azota!
on public buildings and sing heroic ballads about you—“Lo’ She Wields Her Mighty Goad” is particularly popular right now—and wear shocking-pink ribbands in your honor. They make offerings to you and name their children after you. Somehow, I don’t know exactly how or why, you have become a symbol of freedom.

But if you came back, you’d be more than a symbol; you’d be a leader. The people would flock to you, would rise up and kick the Birdies square in the teeth, right out of Califa. Califa would be free. I would be free. You owe us this freedom. It’s your fault the war was lost to begin with. It’s time for you to come back and make amends.

So where the fike are you?

The Waking World is a vast place. There are many places to hide: The Kulani Islands, Bexar, Espada, Ketchikan, Varanger, Porkopolis. How do you track someone whose tracks are fifteen years old? Who left those tracks a thousand miles away? Who hundreds of people saw die—
thought
they saw die. Who is able to hide from the denizen of her own house?

Not even Nini Mo could cut that sign.

Oh, I know that wherever you are, you think you are well hidden. No one has found you so far, so no one ever will.

We’ll see about that.

How does one cut sign if there isn’t any sign to cut? I’ve been puzzling over this for a long time. Then, on my dinner break a couple of days ago, I noticed one of the other clerks reading
Nini Mo, Coyote Queen vs. the Crab King of Krake Island
. In case you don’t remember, it’s the one where Nini Mo and the Macaroni Kid are trapped in the belly of the Crab King, and Nini Mo charges a drop of her own blood into an Erucate Sigil, which she then uses to blast them both out to freedom. Suddenly the answer was obvious.

I may not be a ranger and I may not be an adept, but I have an edge no one else can claim. I have a connection to you, the strongest connection two people can have.

Blood.

Blood calls to blood
, Nini Mo said. It’s the one bond that can never be erased. You can hide from the Birdies, Poppy; the Warlord, anyone. But you can’t hide from me.

All I need is a simple Locative Sigil and a few drops of blood, my blood, which is your blood, too. Blood, and the Will to do the Working. Of course, I have to be super careful not to do anything that might reveal me to the Birdies. Magick being number one on that list. But here’s the clever part. Tomorrow night is Pirates’ Parade, amateur magick night, when the Current is full of snapperheads playing at conjuring, sigils, and fortunetelling. The perfect camouflage. With all the other magickal hijinks going on, no one is going to notice me.

I know a Blood Working won’t be easy. I may be in hiding, and my magickal studies may have been cut short, but I’m not some tyro. I stood up to Lord Axacaya, the City’s greatest adept, when he tried to kill me. I’ve been to the very threshold of the Abyss and back. I helped birth a baby etheric egregore of the ninth order. I’ve parlayed with Springheel Jack and fought a Quetzal. I may not be a real ranger, but I’ve pulled off the Ultimate Ranger Dare. I am confident I can manage it. I have to. It may be my only chance.

I am going to track you down and make you come back to Califa. Not because I’m desperate for maternal affection or looking for some melodramatic reunion. But for Califa’s sake. For my sake, too, but mostly for Califa.

S
O THIS, THEN
, is my Statement of Intent, the what, how, and why of the Working.

What: Calling upon the Sanguinary Link between One Member of a Family to Another, and by Following this Link thus Determining Her Whereabouts.

How: A map, a razor, the Current, the adept’s own Will.

Why: Because it is my Will.

This is a paltry Statement, I know, but it’s all I have time to write. It’s already almost two in the morning and I still have to polish my buttons, shine my shoes, wash my gloves, and finish packing my gear before I can go to bed, and I have to be at the office by seven.

And, of course, I’m never actually going to show this to Tiny Doom. I’ll burn it during the Working, and anyway, it’s just a way to screw up my nerve. I know she doesn’t care about me. If she did, she would have come back long ago. Well, she doesn’t have to care. She just has to come back. I’m sure of that. The only thing I’m not sure of is how I will get to her once I locate her. But I’ll worry about that later. I have to find her first.

And I will.

ONE

Paperwork. Pow. Duty.

W
HEN
I
GOT TO
the Commanding General’s Office at seven thirty-five, my desk was already piled high with papers. Either Buck had been working late or Lieutenant Sabre had been in early. Both, probably. I made coffee, and, as the other clerks trickled in, began to sort. At eight thirty, Poppy rushed in, hung Pow’s cradleboard on the coat rack, and rushed out, saying he’d be back by lunchtime. I’d just finished stamping the incoming mail and begun to log it in the Correspondence Received Register when Pow woke up and began to howl. Even Private Hargrave’s bunny imitation, normally a baby side-splitter, failed to distract him; you can’t tell a five-month-old baby to wait for his chow. So I hefted the cradleboard over my shoulder and went in search of Buck.

I found her down at the cavalry stables, worrying over Sadie, who still hadn’t foaled. While Buck sat on a hay bale and fed Pow, continuing her conversation with Dr. Mars, I ran over to the post bakery and got two dozen donuts and three cups of coffee. I returned to the stables and found that Buck and Pow had already gone.

So back to the office I went, balancing the coffee and donuts carefully so I wouldn’t get anything messy on my uniform. The rain, which had been pouring down for the past week, was finally letting up a bit, but everything was soggy The parade ground was too wet for drills and the roads were ankle-deep in mud. At Building 56, a sign had been hung by the main door reminding everyone to scrape their boots before coming inside, but the front porch and hallway were streaked with mud. A sorry-looking private with a wet mop was trying to keep the mess down, without much success.

Buck took a coffee and donut and put a finger to her lips: Pow was asleep again, so I was dismissed back to my correspondence. I finished logging and had begun on my endorsements when Buck realized she was late for a meeting with the Warlord and had left the Command Baton at the O Club.

I rushed to the Club, found the Baton in one of the lavs, and raced back to the CGO. There I discovered that Sergeant Carheña had gone to the quartermaster storehouse to get more paper and pen nibs, leaving Private Hargrave in charge, and Private Hargrave, who is what’s commonly known in the Army as a coffee cooler, had disappeared into the sinks with the
Califa Police Gazette
. Flynn and Pow were alone in the office—Buck had left without the Baton—and while Pow was still sleeping peacefully in his pen, Flynn had eaten an entire box of donuts, fourteen in all.

So, back to Dr. Mars, with a puking dog slung over one shoulder and a sleeping baby slung over the other. Dr. Mars dosed Flynn with calomel and pronounced he’d live. Back again to the CGO, Flynn sluggish but no longer foaming, Pow awake and chirping happily I stuffed Pow into his pen with a toy to chew on, and had no sooner sat down at my desk when Lieutenant Sabre popped out of his office and asked why I was taking so long with the mail.

I bit back a snappy reply They are not big on snappy replies in the Army. While Lieutenant Sabre lectured me on time management, I glanced at the wall clock. Surely it was almost lunchtime.

It was only nine-thirty

With the Infanta Sylvanna’s arrival only three weeks away, the CGO was frenzied. The Infanta was traveling from the Huitzil Empire via a small flotilla of ships, which had to be protected from pirates, sea monsters, icebergs, typhoons, kelp forests, and goddess knows what else. Once she arrived in the City, she had to be protected from terrorists, overzealous admirers, assassins, and goddess knows who else. All this protection took a lot of organizing, which took a lot of paperwork, which took a lot of staff officers, which is why I’d been detached from the Barracks and sent to be Buck’s slave.

From the fire into the flood
, as Nini Mo said.

The duties of an ADC are tedious enough to make you weep. It’s all meetings and reviews and inspections and briefings and endless errands. Buck may be my mother (sort of), but she treats me like any other member of her staff, for the most part, which means she works me like a servitor.

The one exception to the most part is Pow, or, to give him his full name, Powhatan Reverdy Florian Poligniac Fyrdraaca ov Fyrdraaca, a name that weighs more than he does (currently, fifteen pounds five ounces). If I had been an ordinary aide, Buck would never dare stick me with baby-watching. After all, Lieutenant Sabre isn’t expected to change Pow’s diapie or burp him or give him tummy time. When I pointed this out to Buck once, she gave me a sorrowful look and said that Pow was
my
brother, not Lieutenant Sabre’s, and that Lieutenant Sabre actually had, on occasion, changed Pow’s diapie and burped him without complaint, and how sad it was that I balked at helping her when she asked so little of me, really (ayah, right).

Buck is a genius when it comes to putting the screw in. That’s what makes her a great general; people are compelled to follow her orders not just because she’ll court-martial them if they don’t, but because they will feel so terrible if they disobey her. I felt like the world’s worst person for complaining even while I knew that she was gaming me, because Pow is only my half-brother. But Buck doesn’t know I know that. She doesn’t know I have discovered she’s been lying to me all my life.

Lieutenant Sabre finished his lecture and returned to his office, taking the mail with him, and I went back to work. The morning crept by like mud until just before lunch, when Buck, long since returned from her meeting, came out of her office with Pow in his cradleboard slung over her shoulder and went off to an inspection, Lieutenant Sabre in tow.

As soon as they were out the door, everyone but me gave up any pretense of work and started to chatter about costumes and pirates and candy The enlisteds didn’t dare shirk off around Lieutenant Sabre—as the old Army saying goes, he’s so regulation, he pisses at attention—but I was only a second lieutenant (provisional), so they weren’t particularly worried about me. All they cared about was that tonight was Pirates’ Parade, the holiday that commemorates the time long ago when pirates tried to plunder the City but were kicked back by resourceful citizens. Once a year, kids celebrate this event by dressing up as pirates and going door-to-door, demanding a candy tribute. Later, pirate effigies are burned in the old City Center zocolo. Since no one remembers the exact day the pirates came, the holiday now falls on the night of the year when the Current is at its highest. Hence, it’s also magickal amateur night, which I intended to take full advantage of.