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) Read online

  Sober Poppy had turned Crackpot Hall into an Army camp. There was Reveille (Get Up), Mess Call (Get to Breakfast), Assembly (Inspection before Leaving the House), Drill Call (Do Your Homework), Guard Mount (Take the Dogs Out), Inspection (Is Your Room Clean?), Reinspection (What Did I Tell You about Dusting?), Tattoo (Time for Bed), and Retreat (Lights Out). I was surprised that Poppy didn’t actually get a bugle and stand on the stairs sounding the calls. Maybe he just hadn’t thought of that yet.

  Poppy had become a despot who skulked around the house, his face like a block of carved ice. I don’t think Poppy actually slept; he just stayed up all night polishing and dusting, scrubbing or sweeping. Crackpot was still decrepit, but now at least it was clean.

  And cooking. When Poppy was a souse, I would not have pegged him to have much interest in cooking, but now, next to cleaning, cooking was all he did. He made bread and cakes, pies and cookies. Stews and soups, gelées and galantines, roasts and chops, tortillas and tortas. The pantry was full of food, the icebox was full of food, Mamma was full of food, I was full of food, Udo was full of food, even the dogs were full of food. Only Poppy was not full of food; I never saw him eat a single thing.

  All I had wanted was order. Instead, I got tyranny.

  Mamma, of course, was exempt from Poppy’s discipline, as she outranked him, but I had no choice but to hop to. My only relief was school; never before had I been so happy to escape to Sanctuary each morning, and I loitered there in the afternoon as long as possible. But eventually I had to go home.

  The only bright side to Poppy’s behavior was that it was doing a great job of reminding me that I did not want to follow the Fyrdraaca family tradition. Fyrdraacas attend Benica Barracks Military Academy and then go into the Army. As far back as anyone can remember, this is so: Mamma went, Poppy went, my sister Idden went—even the Fyrdraaca dogs have gone. Fyrdraacas are soldiers. It’s our family rule.

  What has soldierly duty gotten this family? Mamma is Commanding General of the Army of Califa and everyone thinks she’s a great hero for saving Califa from the Birdies, as we call the Huitzils. Thanks to Mamma’s peace accord, we are a client state instead of a conquered one. BUt she’s a slave to duty; she’s hardly ever home, spends all her time pushing paperwork, handling the Warlord, bowing to the Birdie Ambassador, trying to keep the Republic together.

  Poppy was aide-de-camp to the Butcher Brakespeare, the commanding general before Mamma, and narrowly escaped being executed with her. Instead he spent three years in a Birdie prison, where he was abused and tortured. He came home a broken drunken wreck. That’s how soldierly duty worked out for him.

  My older sister, Idden, is what they call a paper-collar soldier—in other words, perfect. She graduated first in her class at Benica Barracks, she’s made captain after only six years out of the Barracks, and may well be commanding general herself one of these days. But now she’s posted to Fort Jones in Trinity Territory, where you could die of boredom and it would take the news two weeks to reach civilization. Now that Califa is a client state, the Army just sits and does nothing.

  And my other sister, the First Flora. Flora Primera wasn’t a soldier, just a six-year-old girl when she was captured with the Butcher and Poppy When the Butcher was executed and Poppy imprisoned, the Birdies took Flora Primera—and Mamma could never find out what had happened to her. Perhaps the Birdies sacrificed her to one of their bloodthirsty gods. Maybe they ate her, like they ate the Butcher Brakespeare. Maybe they fostered her to a Birdie family and now she’s forgotten all about Califa. Flora Primera wasn’t even a soldier, but she was sacrificed for Fyrdraaca soldierly duty.

  That leaves me, Flora Segunda. I have no intention of wasting my life on soldierly duty.

  I had finally gotten my nerve up to tell Mamma that I did not want to go to Benica Barracks, and that was some nerve, let me tell you, because Mamma is used to being obeyed. To my surprise, Mamma had not exploded at my impudence. Instead, she had promised that she would consider my desire and we would discuss it further.

  Except Mamma never took the time to consider or discuss. Immediately after my Catorcena she’d gone off to Arivaipa Territory on a three-month inspection; she’d only just returned and already the redboxes were piling up in the office, full of paperwork she had missed while she was gone. I had hardly had a minute alone with her since she’d gotten back. When she wasn’t at Headquarters, she was with the Warlord, and when she wasn’t with the Warlord, she was in her study, surrounded by redboxes and her aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Sabre, while various other staff officers tramped in and out, making personal conversation with Mamma impossible.

  I hadn’t yet mentioned to Mamma my specific ranger ambitions; I thought I would take things one at a time. Did Nini Mo wait for her mother’s permission before following her Will? She did not. Nini Mo’s mamma, a wer-coyotl of great power, encouraged her in all ways, but even if she hadn’t, that wouldn’t have stopped Nini Mo. She followed her own Will and let no one stand against her.

  I wiped down the table again and took a last look around the kitchen. I didn’t want to give Poppy any excuse to confine me to my room. So far, I’d been confined for not polishing my boots, for coming to breakfast with my jacket unbuttoned, for giving Poppy an insolent look when he suggested that I run up and down Fyrdraaca Hill several times for exercise, and for not standing up when he entered the kitchen. (Was he my commanding officer? No, but I’m your elder deserving of respect, he had said. Respect!) I didn’t have time to be confined tonight.

  Tonight I had plans.

  Two

  An Earthquake. A Curfew. Lying about Puppets.

  LEAVING BEHIND a spotless kitchen, I went to report to Poppy, the woefully hungry Flynnie nudging at my heels. I love Flynn, the runt of the Fyrdraaca red-dog pack, but sometimes he can be a real pest. I found Poppy darning my socks in the parlor, surrounded by Flynnie’s older and more handsome siblings, Crash, Dash, and Flash. Poppy sat on the settee stiffly, as though he were at attention in front of some invisible review. Once, he had been considered handsome, but you wouldn’t know that now. He was gaunt and bony, his cheeks sunken. For years he’d kept his hair cropped close to his skull, as a sign of mourning. He was letting it grow again, and it was now a shade of silvery red that softened the angles of his face. Poppy’s knitting needles clicked like cicadas as he stared fixedly into the fire, his eyes blank and unblinking. He was obviously thinking about something, but what—Idden? Flora Primera? The Butcher Brakespeare, whom he had loved so well? Tomorrow’s menu?

  I knew what I thought about every time I saw Poppy: the ranger badge he had given me at my Catorcena. The ranger badge with his name on it. I now wore it on a chain around my neck. I longed to ask him what his giftie meant, but I dared not presume. His face made it clear he invited no questions. It was hard for me to believe that he had ever been a ranger, truly, for surely no ranger would ever have broken as he did. No ranger would have gone mad or drowned his sorrows in bugjuice. Before Poppy retired, he was a member of the Alacrán Regiment, the most fearsome regiment in the Army of Califa, but that didn’t really signify, as the rangers had all been undercover. He could have been both an Alacrán and a ranger, and I longed to ask if that was so—and yet I dared not.

  On the coffee table, a cigarillo burned in a little nest of cigarillo butts. Instead of eating, Poppy smoked. I guess you can only give up one horrible habit at a time, but the smoke was making my lungs itch and my nose run, and it smelled foul. Even the dogs were snuffling. But I didn’t dare complain about that, either. Next to the ashtray lay a letter: I recognized Idden’s perfect handwriting. She writes to Poppy every week. The rest of us are lucky if we hear from her every six months.

  “Poppy?”

  “Ayah?” He looked away from the fire, toward me, as the needles continued to clack.

  “I’m done with the kitchen. Can I be dismissed?”

  “Are the dishes put away?”

  “Ayah, sir.”

  “The table is wip
ed?”

  “Ayah, sir.”

  “Floor swept?”

  “Ayah, sir.”

  “Stove banked?”

  “Ayah, sir.”

  “Sink trap cleaned out?”

  “Ayah, sir.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The Blue Duck.”

  “Be back by eleven. Dismissed.” He turned his stare back to the fire.

  Eleven! This was outrageous! During the school year, my curfew was at eleven. Now that I was on vacation, surely I should have a later evening. I wailed, “Poppy! It’s almost eight now. Weatherhead, the opening act, doesn’t even go on until nine. Udo and I won’t get to see the main act if I have to be back by eleven.”

  The needles continued to click. Poppy didn’t answer. I longed for the days when I could do anything I wanted. So what of a clean house and yummy chow if I had to live like a prisoner? Sometimes by the time you get it, you don’t want it anymore, said Nini Mo. Pigface, was she right!

  I tried to sound calm and adultlike. “Poppy, it’s not fair. It’s the holidays—there’s no school tomorrow—I don’t have to get up.”

  The floor wiggled under my feet. For a second, I thought, Too much cake at dinner! But then the dogs jerked up in alarm, and Flynnie let out a sharp yelp. The shaking was not just me.

  The room filled with rattling: pictures clacking against the wall, glasses jingling against each other. The floor vibrated as though somewhere a giant was energetically dancing the mazurka. I lurched toward the doorway the dogs dove under the coffee table, and Flynnie launched onto Poppy’s lap. A loud grinding rumble drowned out the rattling.

  An earthquake! And the second one of the week. The City has always been susceptible to shaking, but recently these tremors had become more frequent. I clutched the doorjamb, watching a spider-crack appear in the ceiling. Doorways are supposed to be the safest place in an earthquake, but Crackpot was so rickety that safety was probably relative. Poppy clutched Flynnie and continued to stare at the fire, whose flames were dancing as though blown by wind. Then, suddenly, the trembler stopped. It had seemed forever, but probably was only a few seconds. Other than the thin crack in the ceiling plaster, everything was all right.

  Poppy hadn’t moved from the settee. Now, as though nothing had happened, he said, “All right, Flora. It is true you are on vacation. Be home by midnight. But not a minute later, do you understand? We have an early day tomorrow. I want to go over Hardel’s Tactics before lunch.”

  “Ayah, Poppy” I sighed. If he could be nonchalant about the fact that Crackpot had just about fallen down upon us, well then, so could I.

  “Did you feel that?” Mamma demanded from the doorway. “I was almost squashed by a stack of redboxes. Everyone all right?”

  “Ayah, Buck, we are fine,” Poppy answered.

  “These earthquakes, they are beginning to be worrisome. That one last week really rattled the Baker Cliffs. We are going to lose Baker Battery if this keeps up.”

  “That would be terrible, Buck,” Poppy murmured.

  Mamma shot him a Look. “Baker Battery is one of the City’s first lines of defense, Hotspur.”

  I did not care about Baker Battery. I cared about my curfew, so I jumped in. “Mamma, it’s the first night of term break—”

  “Is it? Lucky girl to get a holiday. I wish I had a holiday” Mamma perched on the fire-fender and looked longingly at Poppy’s ashtray. She quit smoking some years ago, but I know she still misses it. (I also know she packs in the snus when she thinks no one is looking.) “I hope you have fun plans. I’ve been wrestling all evening with the seating chart for the Warlord’s Birthday Ball and I can’t think of anything that is less fun than that.”

  “I’m going to a show with Udo, but Poppy says I have to be back by midnight, and it’s already eight—”

  Mamma frowned. “I hope you are not trying to circumvent Hotspur’s authority, Flora.”

  “But it’s not fair, Mamma,” I complained.

  “Your father is in charge of household matters, Flora, and I will not second-guess him. Don’t try to jump the chain of command.”

  Chain of command—was Mamma joking? Judging from her face, she was not. In fact, she looked very grumpy Recently Mamma had been a real bear; she really did need a holiday.

  “Every minute you waste arguing, Flora, is a minute you lose from your show,” Poppy said. “If I were you, I’d quit malingering and get going.”

  “Is there any dessert left, Hotspur?” Mamma asked, and thus I knew the topic was closed.

  Age of majority hoohah, I thought sourly as I ran upstairs to change. I might be an adult but I was still a slave.

  “Did you feel that?” Valefor met me at the door of my bedroom, wringing his papery-thin hands, his wispy white hair standing on end. “My foundations were shaking. I thought my roof might go. They are getting more frequent, these shakings. I can’t take much more. I’m going to fall in.”

  “Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Poppy said I had to be back in by midnight. Can you believe it?”

  “A curfew! Oh, it’s awful to be you, Flora Segunda.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Udo and I were not in fact going to the Blue Duck as I had so blithely lied to Poppy. The Blue Duck is a fine club, a dandy club, a trendy club—if you are twelve years old and like puppets. In fact, that is exactly what was playing there tonight: Sylvestris Jaciodes’s Stilskin Puppet Show. I am far too old for puppets. Instead, Udo and I were going to the swanky cool Poodle Dog club for reasons I shall soon explain.

  I had not totally wasted the three months since my Catorcena with schoolwork, Poppy work, and chores. I had spent every spare moment studying The Eschatanomicon, or, Rangering for Everyone!, Nini Mo’s famous handbook. Valefor had found a signed first edition in the Bibliotheca and given it to me—the most useful thing he ever did for me, I think.

  The Eschata tells you everything you might ever need to know about being a ranger—magick stuff and non-magick stuff. I’d been working my way through the book carefully since my birthday, concentrating on the rangery stuff: tracking and fire-starting; how to ford a river, find your way through a maze, or follow a man down an empty street in broad daylight. I read all those chapters over and over again, memorized them, took notes, made diagrams. I practiced tying knots, and I worked on secret codes. I learned how to start a fire with a piece of glass and some tinder. I memorized the heliograph gestures and practiced dowsing for water.

  The Eschata has a short appendix on Gramatica vocabulary and I had memorized and practiced most of the Words contained therein, but they were small Words that empowered very small sigils. I could create a small coldfire light. I could banish small malicious entities. I could create a small disguising Glamour. But I couldn’t say anything important. To do truly large workings or very powerful sigils, you need not only a great Gramatica vocabulary, but you have to speak entire Gramatica sentences. Conjugate verbs. Modify nouns. Diagram sentences. Speak fluently and without hesitation or mispronunciation. Unless I learned Gramatica, I would never be a true ranger—a true magician.

  So I needed to find someone to teach me. But who? Most of the people I know are soldiers, and soldiers are forbidden to meddle in the Current (there’s no honor there, you know, achieving through Will what you could achieve through Blood). Mamma hates magick, calling it a cheat, and so as a family, we do not associate much with magicians.

  However, I am not without my own resources, and I had three options in mind. Nini Mo counseled that rangers should consider all the facts and factors before they decide upon a course of action, so I had carefully considered each of my three possibilities.

  First was Boy Hansgen, the Dainty Pirate, the only member of the Ranger Corps left. He did owe me one, for trying to rescue him from certain death, but after delivering a thank you note and giftie, he had completely vanished. Both the Alta Califa and the Califa Police Gazette had run editorials commenting on his sudden disappearance
from Califa’s waters, but they had no good explanations for his abrupt cessation of piracy The Alta Califa suggested he’d finally seen the error of his ways and reformed. The CPG guessed maybe his ships had been sunk in a storm. No matter: He was gone and I didn’t know how to find him, so that way was closed.

  Next: Lord Axacaya. He’s the greatest adept in the City, probably the greatest adept in the entire Republic. Mamma hates Lord Axacaya not only because he is an adept. She hates that he’s Huitzil by birth: born a Birdie, brought up by the Flayed Priests as a divine child, and fated to be sacrificed to the Hummingbird god, who feeds not on nectar, but blood. Lord Axacaya escaped this destiny, came to Califa as a refugee, married the Warlord’s daughter, and has been here ever since. Mamma believes Lord Axacaya is a Birdie pawn, but I’m not so sure.

  However, there were two problems with approaching Lord Axacaya. The first was exactly that: How to approach him? I didn’t dare just ride up to Casa Mariposa and ask to see him, and we don’t exactly move in the same social circles. My one hope was the Warlord’s Birthday Ball. The Ball is Califa’s biggest social event of the year; everyone who is anyone in Califa attends. Including Lord Axacaya. I had lobbied Mamma hard to let me go, too; now that I was an adult, should I not be included in all Fyrdraaca family activities? After all, Poppy was going, and there was no doubt that I could behave better than Poppy.

  But Mamma had flat-out refused me permission, saying that the Warlord’s Birthday Ball was a political and moral snake-pit and she didn’t want me exposed to such danger. Of course, I also didn’t dare tell Mamma that I had been exposed to things far more dangerous than a silly birthday ball, but my other arguments were futile. Mamma remained firm. They don’t call her the Rock of Califa for nothing.

  The second problem, frankly, was that I didn’t relish the idea of going to Lord Axacaya with my hat in my hand. I had done that once before, out of dire necessity, but asking for two favors seemed like pushing it. I do have my pride. He’d helped me before but made no suggestion he’d do it again.