“To your death, of course,” Furfur said dramatically, and then paused. A latecomer was careening down the steps. He—a man, I thought, although it was hard to tell in the dim light—jumped into the boat, sending it heaving. I grabbed at the side of the boat to keep from being thrown out. The boat rocketed forward and the man sat down heavily, almost squashing me.
“Sorry,” he grunted.
Within seconds we were enveloped in absolute darkness. Wind blew hard against my face; I let go of my death grip on the boat long enough to mash my hat down on my head so it wouldn’t fly away The darkness around echoed with screams and shrieks, mixing with the roar of rushing air. We were not the only ones on Zu-Zu’s little joy ride.
The boat bounced like a wild mustang, turning dizzily, whirling my tum into a nauseous spin. My grip started to slide, and as I began to slip to the bottom of the boat, an iron hand fastened on me. I fell against my companion, and his arm snaked around my shoulders, holding me in place. He smelled of wet dog and sweetish pipeweed, oddly familiar. His arm felt reassuringly strong.
The boat picked up speed and swept along a series of sharp curves, flinging us against each other. He was big and squashy and every time he fell into me, I could hardly breathe. My organs sloshed inside my chest, my brain pinged in my skull, my vision glittered with white stars. The boat did a complete turnaround—my hat flew off—and then we were hurtling backward so quickly, I could barely suck any air into my lungs.
The boat revolved again and the darkness began to lighten. The water took on a sickly glow and wispy figures rose from its surface, sinuous boneless women with writhing hair: sylphs. They reached for us with talonlike fingers, their mouths gaping to reveal razor-sharp teeth, long tentacle-like tongues. The boat had slowed and now I could get air to scream. As a tentacle-tongue snapped toward me, I let out a yelp, the sound tearing at my throat, and then realized in horror that I had just screamed a Gramatica Command. The Command hit the sylphs and exploded. They howled and danced as they caught fire. We shot through the flames with a roar. Beneath my head, I felt my companion’s chest rumble with laughter.
The boat picked up speed and left the burning sylphs behind, but we weren’t out of it yet. Directly ahead, a shape loomed out of the water, large and slimy. Enormous jaws hinged open, revealing a dull red cavern, a writhing black eellike tongue, glittering pointy teeth as big as plowshares. The boat was hurtling directly into the gaping maw of Choronzon, Dæmon of Dispersion.
I shrieked again, and my companion bellowed, his chest heaving beneath me. He pushed my face away from the horrible sight, and like a coward, I shut my eyes, burying my head in the rough wet fur of his jacket. A blast of hot air scalded the back of my neck, and I cringed, already feeling the sharp shear of teeth on my tender flesh. A deluge of water hit me, and the shock of the cold drove me, for a second, into darkness.
Then I realized the roaring was gone, replaced with the rapid thump of a heartbeat. My cheek was pressed against warm, bare flesh, and the boat was barely moving. I jerked away, sitting up, and my companion relinquished his grip on me, yanking his jacket closed. Of course, Choronzon had been an illusion; we had rocketed right through the apparition and come out its other side, uneaten but soaked. Very funny, ha, ha, ha.
Now the boat drifted placidly through a small tunnel. Above us, a ribbed stone roof; around us, walls glowing green with mold. It wasn’t nearly as dark now, so when I turned to look at my companion, I could see him clearly.
And although I had never seen his face, I recognized him instantly.
“You are that bear!” I blurted, then cursed myself for being such an openmouthed fool.
“Bear? What bear?” he said sharply. He had a faint accent I couldn’t quite place.
“You know what I mean.”
“I assure you, madama, I do not,” he countered.
“I saw you in Califa’s Grotto.”
He shook his head, water drops flying. “I don’t think so.”
“Yes, I did. And you took my map!’
“What map?”
He looked so sincerely bewildered that for a moment I wavered. Maybe I was wrong—maybe I was crazy—but then, as he turned toward the roaring sound just ahead, a deep red light flared in the lenses of his eyes and I knew I was not.
“You know what map I mean,” I said, pitching my voice over the roaring, which had been getting louder as our boat drifted on. The walls of the cavern had narrowed; the ceiling was now so low that the wer-bear had to bend his head. He ignored me, looking straight ahead, his brow furrowed.
“Hey!”
He answered my call for attention by whipping around and catching me up in a bear hug. I flailed, but he had my arms pinned.
“Let me go!” I wheezed.
“Hold on!” he shouted in my ear. The roar became deafening. I couldn’t move, but I could see over his shoulder. Ahead of us, the water churned and foamed into the torrent of a waterfall.
“Hold on!” the wer-bear repeated. He braced his legs against the bottom of the boat. At that moment, Choronzon himself could not have pried me out of his arms.
SIX
Lost. Found. Cake.
BUT LIKE THE EARLIER apparition of Choronzon, the waterfall was an illusion. We jetted through the foam and slid down an incline that had just enough drop to generate another giant splash. The wer-bear got soaked but I was relatively dry, for his bulk had shielded me from the worst of the surge. We ended up in the bottom of the boat, where we lay, breathless and tangled. The hilt of my pistol was pressing painfully into my kidney, but he felt warm and solid and oddly comforting. And he smelled so good, of apple tobacco and the faint furry smell of dog. These days Udo smells like a bagnio. The fur jacket began to quiver and shake, and I realized he was laughing again.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded, feeling a bit foolish for the tightness of my grip.
“That we did not drown,” the wer-bear said. “And that we almost pissed our drawers!”
“I didn’t almost piss my drawers!” I said hotly, trying to untangle my legs from his. He raised himself back up onto the seat, still smiling. The spray had sprung his hair into fat coils so dense it was hard to tell where they stopped and his jacket began. He wasn’t handsome, but he had beautiful eyes, slate gray with a bluish tinge to the iris. They reminded me of the glacier water that runs down from Mount Astar, cool and tingly and they were all the more vivid in contrast to the darkness of his skin.
“Didn’t you?” he countered, still smiling.
“No!”
“Liar!”
“Fike you!” My curse sparked pink with Current. The wer-bear’s laughter turned sour, and he glared at me, eyes icy With a hard jolt, the boat came to an abrupt stop against a set of stairs. The wer-bear jumped up and out, his sudden exit almost ditching me into the water.
I followed, determined not to let him get away, but his long legs quickly outpaced me. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, puffing heavily, he was long gone.
Still, I hurried after him, through a mazelike series of rooms, each one with a lovely special surprise. In a blood-splattered morgue, I ran a gauntlet of chittering cadavers, trailing sheets and entrails. In a dusty ossuary, I was menaced by a clacking gaggle of skeletons wielding their own bones like swords. I waded through a swampy garden lit by foxfire, where a reanimated alligator snapped its jaws at me until I kicked it in the nose. And on and on and on. The Zu-Zu’s Horror House was never-ending.
By the distant shrieks I heard as I made my way through the maze, I could tell others were finding the horror house happily scary I wasn’t impressed, just irritated. If the Zu-Zu had ever faced a real danger in her life, then maybe she wouldn’t be so hot on facing imaginary ones now.
Finally, after descending a flight of slimy stone stairs, I came to a dungeon. Next to an iron maiden, a small child sat on a bloodstained block, crying piteously. Another one of the Zu-Zu’s ghastly little gags, probably. Figuring he’d go at me with an ax or something
if I got too close, I gave him a wide berth as I crossed the room. But as I was ducking under a gibbet, the kid gave an anguished cry.
“I want to go home!”
“You me and both, kid,” I said, realizing that he was another guest. And he was as fed up as I was.
“Take me home!” the kid demanded. He stood up, hands on hips. Now that he had my attention, the piteousness had dissolved into cockiness. And he certainly wasn’t lacking in flash. He wore a dark purple coat, with puffed and slashed sleeves, puffy purple trunk hose, bright gold stockings, red-toed bootees, and a high-brimmed, buckled hat topped off with a quiff of golden plumes. A small sword hung from the golden buckler slung across his small chest. His face, however, was dirty and streaky with tears and one of his stockings was falling down.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Don Baltasar Villaviciosa Ixtlilxóchitl Viana y Xipe Totec, Conde de Xolo,” the boy said imperiously. He doffed his hat and bent one knee in a Courtesy: To Those Lower Than Me. “But tonight I am the Dainty Pirate!”
Are you now, puggie? I thought. The Dainty Pirate wasn’t dead, but of course this kid had no way of knowing that. Then his name sank in.
“Did you say your name was Xipe Totec? Like the Birdie, I mean, like the Huitzil Ambassador?”
“My papi is His Excellency the Don Nxal Alejandro Villaviciosa Ixtlilxóchitl y Xipe Totec, Duque de Xipe Totec, Her Holiness the Vicereina of Huitzil’s ambassador to Califa. I demand that you take me to him immediately.”
Oh fiking hell, just what I needed. The Birdie Ambassador’s son. The real topper to an already glorious night.
“Where’s your bodyguard?” I asked.
“We were attacked by a man with an ax. My duenna got so scared, she ran off,” the kid said. “I did not run—I stayed to fight and struck that man with my sword and he vanished into smoke. Now I cannot find my duenna, or the way out. I demand you help me.”
“A please would go a long way to making me feel like helping you, kid.” I had no desire to have anything to do with any Birdie, even a small and dirty-faced one.
In response, the kid stuck his nose in the air. “I am a diplomat in your country. You owe me the respect of following my orders.”
“Ayah so?” I turned on my heel. I had had enough snotty attitudes tonight. He could find his own way back to his nasty skin-ripping papi. Lightning fast, he was following me, crying, “Please, madama, please! Don’t leave me.”
The kid was a snot-nosed monster, but he was persistent; I had to give him that. Sighing heavily, I halted again.
“How old are you, Conde?”
“Five,” he sniveled.
Oh, fike it all. I couldn’t leave a five-year-old kid, snotty as he might be, Birdie as he might be, sitting alone in the middle of the Zu-Zu’s Horror House. I was pretty sure most of the dangers were vapors, conjured by Furfur for the fun of it all, but what if they weren’t? Those sylphs we had escaped had looked mighty real, and the alligator had certainly smelled real. I dug out my hankie and wiped the Conde’s face, though he tried to squirm out of my grasp. How on earth had the Birdie Ambassador produced such a cute kid? Maybe the Conde was adopted. For his mamma’s sake, I sure hoped so.
“All right, you can come with me. But if you see the Man in Pink Bloomers, you must protect me from him with your sword, ayah?”
“Ayah, madama,” he said. “If I see the Man in Pink Bloomers, I will cut his head off and feed his eyes to the crows. I will cut out his heart and feed it to my dog!”
Nope, probably not adopted.
So on we went, the Conde sticking to me like jam, chattering about how he was going to whip his duenna for leaving him, not that it mattered, as he was too big for a duenna, anyway, and how his papi had promised him a monkey with a jeweled collar, who would carry his books to school and then sharpen his pencils (I was skeptical); and how soon his mamma would come with the Infanta, and wouldn’t she be surprised to see him so tall and brave, and not once had he eaten any spinach although his duenna had said no boy would grow big or strong without eating spinach, and see, what did she know, the old crank-face, but I was nice, maybe I could be his duenna, that would be fun, he’d ask his papi, and what did I think about spinach?
“I eat it three times a day,” I said. “Everyone should, I think.”
The Conde gave me a sour look and, blessedly, shut his yip.
We hiked up another long flight of stairs, dark and rickety, and went through a wispy black curtain into—at last!—Saeta House’s ballroom. There, the doom-and-gloom theme continued, leavened with moldering glamour. The walls were draped in black and silver cloth; more black and silver cloth muffled the chandeliers. Bare trees, their branches looking like skeletal white fingers, encircled the dance floor. A white fog drifted through the ballroom, and in the dome above, crows and bats wheeled and screeched. In the minstrel gallery, a band dressed like ghouls played wild music while the party guests danced the tarantella with much stamping of feet and flinging of arms. For a group of supposedly dead people, the guests were pretty lively.
“My papi will thank you for helping me,” the Conde said happily. A servitor bearing a tray full of champagne glasses drifted by; the kid reached out and grabbed one.
“There’s no need for thanks,” I answered, taking the glass from him. He started to protest and I cut him off. “You go find your papi, and I’ll see you later.” I did not want to get anywhere near the Birdie Ambassador. The Conde was close enough.
“I see him, there! Come! Come!” The Conde pointed through the swirl of dancers to the far side of the room where the Birdie Ambassador stood next to the last person in the world I ever wanted to see again (Udo aside): Lord Axacaya.
Every time I thought about Axacaya, I felt like a total nitwit of a fool for having been captured so easily by his sweet words and the charming curve of his lips, not to mention his butter yellow hair and his marvelously sculpted muscles, which were always so well displayed by the skimpiness of his clothes. What an utter cow-headed moron I had been to fall for such prettiness. He had been kind and sweet to me, fattening me up on lies so I would be tender to his knife, ripe for slaughter. Well, I wasn’t slaughtered. And I wanted nothing to do with him.
I wrenched out of the Conde’s grip and, ignoring his protests, headed in the opposite direction. Behind a large statue of Archangel Bob, Avatar of Death, I found a sweet spot where I had a good view of the crowd. There was no sign of the wer-bear. But he had to be here somewhere. I wasn’t leaving until I found him.
“Well, look who it is! A dog of war!” A mocking voice said behind me.
I turned around and there stood the Birthday Girl. As usual, the Zu-Zu was accompanied by her entourage, a gaggle of vapid pale-faced Boy Toys, all jockeying for the privilege of escorting her. Today that privilege had been bestowed upon a boy got up in a style that the Warlord’s Wear Daily had dubbed a la cabeza de la muerte, or Death’s Head. He stood at her right hand, languidly waving a fan made of black angel feathers.
With an awful shock, I realized that this apparition was Udo.
He looked like a freshly disinterred corpse. He wore a tattered green frock coat and a big wide-brimmed leather hat. Matted blond hair hung around his face; red powder made his eye sockets look hollow and livid; his lips were a black gash against his pallid white skin. Red sparkly boots glittered on his feet. For one horrible moment, I thought he was wearing Springheel Jack’s boots, but then I realized, thankfully, that these boots were copies. Thank the Goddess, Udo was not that dumb.
The Zu-Zu herself wore a sangyn uniform with bat-wing sleeves and a crimson red wig, the uniform of the Alacrán Regiment. Black scars were painted on her cheeks. As I realized she was dressed as Tiny Doom—my mother!—a Gramatica fury began to roil in my stomach. How dare she! How dare she dress up as Tiny Doom! She wasn’t fit to kiss Tiny Doom’s spur.
“Happy Birthday, Infantina,” I said through tight teeth.
“So sorry you missed our Pirate
s’ Parade show,” the Zu-Zu said. “Udo was brilliant. He set the stage on fire.”
“That must have been fun for the fire brigade,” I answered. “I am sorry I missed the show as well, but I had to work. Some of us do work, you know, Your Grace.”
The Zu-Zu’s lip curled. “What are you dressed as, Private Fyrdraaca? A dead muleskinner?”
Before I could answer with a snappy comeback, Udo said. “Now, Your Grace, not until midnight can we'reveal who we are. Until then, we must allow others their guesses.”
The Zu-Zu pouted. “It’s my party and my rule, so why should I not break it?”
Udo answered, “Because then you would lose the fun of the game, Zu.”
“Well, then, let’s guess,” the Zu-Zu said. “I look at that nasty buckskin jacket, all ragged and stained, and say dead muleskinner. Am I right?”
“No,” I answered through even tighter teeth.
“That awful plaid kilt and scruffy boots,” said a Boy Toy wrapped in a bedraggled red satin suit embroidered with dragons, the musician Nicky O, I supposed. “Must be Mag Hagbun, Queen of the Ear Chewers.”
The other Toys roared at the guess. Then they all had to have a crack, trying to outdo one another in cleverness. Of course their guesses were highly uncomplimentary and—to themselves, at least—hilarious. I stood there, trying to act nonchalant, while the Gramatica boiled in me like an inferno. I bit my lip until I felt the skin give way.
“What about you, Sieur Wraathmyr?” the Zu-Zu said, when they had all had a turn, even Udo (who had guessed I was a vampire, even though I knew full well he knew exactly who I was). The Boy Toys parted and there stood Sieur Wer-bear at the back of the pack, smoking a little ivory pipe and looking bored.
He barely glanced at me. “Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, of course.”
“I think he’s right,” Udo said, the coward. “I now recognize the outfit.”
The Zu-Zu looked disappointed. Then she smiled and said maliciously, “You have guessed right, Sieur Wraathmyr. Claim your prize!”
Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo Page 5