“Oh, don’t flush her, Bruja. You know you never wear anything but those ratty old buckskins.” Oset laughed.
I said stiffly, “I cry your pardon. I’ll have it laundered and returned to you as soon as possible.”
“No fear, Captain. I don’t get much call to wear my best shirt. Yer welcome to it.”
The yipping from the parade ground increased, and we turned. A steer had busted out of the herd and was making a run in the direction of the mess tent, two cowboys tearing after it. Sieur Taylor’s horse stood at the porch railing; he grabbed the reins, vaulted into the saddle, and tore after them, unspooling his lasso as he went. Captain Oset leaned over the railing, yelling encouragement.
“Come into my office, Captain, away from the noise,” Major Rucker said.
Sally leading the way, I followed Major Rucker inside. The clerk was sleeping at his desk, head pillowed on his arms. Major Rucker didn’t chivvy him, just went on by as though he hadn’t even noticed.
“Close the door behind you and take a seat.” Major Rucker sat behind his desk. He took a sip from the coffee mug on his blotter but didn’t offer me anything, which I took to be a bad sign. I sat down in the chair across from his desk. Buck has a chair in that exact position; it’s widely known as the hot seat.
Sally nudged my knee, and I rubbed her ears. She wasn’t as cute as Flynn, but she did have pretty blue eyes. Oh, Flynn. My heart twanged again, and I blinked hard.
“I’m a wee bit confused,” Major Rucker said. “I got a message this morning from Lieutenant Sabre, General Fyrdraaca’s Adjutant General. He’s arrived at the stage stop and now waits there for an escort. He said General Fyrdraaca sent him to take care of the chupacabra. And we both know what that really means.”
Lieutenant Sabre was the envoy? Sick leave, my hinder. While Buck had given out that he was home languishing in his bed, he must have been on his way to Arivaipa. Once again I had been totally out of the loop. I couldn’t muster up any bitterness over my exclusion, though. The only loop I deserved now was one that would hang me.
Major Rucker continued. “I admit that I am at a bit of a loss as to what to believe. His letter sounded genuine, but I saw your orders. They were quite obviously genuine. I’m riding out to meet him. You’d better come with me so we can straighten this out.”
Know when to cash in your chips, Nini Mo said. It was time.
“My orders are a forgery, sir,” I said. “I’m sorry Lieutenant Sabre is the real envoy.”
Major Rucker’s face registered outsize astonishment. “A forgery? You are not the envoy?”
“I’m not.”
“What’s all this about, then? Why are you pretending to be the envoy?”
“I wasn’t, sir. I was pretending to be the chupacabra hunter. I didn’t realize at first it was a code.”
“Why were you pretending to be the chupacabra hunter, Lieutenant Fyrdraaca?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t say”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both,” I said miserably Major Rucker had been so kind to me and I had lied to him, and although I wanted to defend myself, I could not. And I didn’t dare tell the truth, anyway. Tiny Doom’s secret was not mine to share.
“Do you think this is some kind of a game? A lark? Do you understand what is at stake here?”
Oh, I understood all right. “I do, sir. I’m sorry sir.”
Major Rucker took another swig from his mug. “You understand that I will have to place you under arrest, pending an investigation, with the mind of preferring charges against you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said even more miserably The thought of my actions coming out into the open in a court-martial made me feel sick. But no one knew the reasons for my actions but me (and Tiny Doom) and if I refused to speak, they could not force me.
He said, “In the course of your deception, you’ve become privy to information that is absolutely vital to the security of Califa. Do I have your word that you will keep this strictly to yourself? I guess I don’t have to tell you what would happen if the information were to get out.”
“I swear, Major.”
“I must meet Lieutenant Sabre and then accompany him to the parley with the Dithee. I have no time to discuss this further, but we will take it back up again when I return. During my absence, Captain Oset will take command. Do I have your word that you will confine yourself to your quarters until my return? I can order you to the guardhouse, but that would hardly be suitable to your rank.”
”You have my word.”
For a moment, I thought Major Rucker might say something else, but he dismissed me with no further comment. Outside, the rodeo was over and the cowboys were gone.
Back I went to the UOQ’s velvety-cold parlor, feeling mighty cast down. I deserved to be court-martialed; I deserved to be cashiered. Maybe that would stop me from heading down the same primrose path Tiny Doom had taken. I couldn’t bear the thought of just sitting there, waiting for Major Rucker to return, waiting for Espejo to find me, with nothing to do but consider my many failings. I reached for the Tum-O bottle, took a long swig, and collapsed onto my cot into a hazy warm darkness, where there was no failure, no blame, just fractured visions...
I SAT STIFFLY across from Cutaway, darkness endlessly sliding by the windows. She was wearing silvery sunshades; she took them off, and I saw Buck’s face, eyes black and empty Trust me, Flora, she said.
Flynn nudged my knee and I scratched his silky ears, rubbed his soft pink belly, his fur growing rough beneath my hands until it was as dry and coarse as hay, his body a sun-shriveled husk, eyes like dry marbles, lips pulled back over his teeth in a soundless snarl.
A blond man leaned over me and said, I miss you so much, come back, but before I could answer, Tharyn stood behind me, his hands on my waist, and said in a growly bear voice, She doesn’t miss you at all.
The visions went on and on, round and round, dark dreamy fragments, voices calling in distant rooms, the roar of the sea, a dog barking, and then Oset said, Come on, Nini, boots and saddles. It took me a while to realize that I was not dreaming the words. Come on, wake up! I opened my eyes, groggily. I had taken too much Madama Twanky’s; it had made me sluggish and slow. In the flickering lamplight, I saw Oset sitting on her cot, pulling her boots on.
“What’s going on?” I yawned. I had a splitting headache and my mouth felt gritty “What time is it?”
“Message from Hooker’s farm that they had a black cat nosing around their stables last night. I’m taking the patrol out to check up.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Of course. We have no time to waste.”
She didn’t mention I was breaking arrest, and so I didn’t, either. I hurried, throwing my boots on, shrugging on my buckskin jacket. Water from the washbasin splashed some of the grog away On the way out the door, I grabbed Oset’s shotgun.
The moon had long since risen. It was almost full and its light made the night seem as bright as day. A small patrol had formed up in front of the corral, just four privates and Corporal Tzinga. The rest of the post was still and quiet. As we rode past the hog ranch, a mule and rider fell in with us. The rider’s face was in shadow but her smell was already familiar.
“Nice night for a ride,” La Bruja said cheerfully.
“We do not need company,” Oset said stiffly She held up her hand and the patrol jostled to a halt. “We are on official business.”
“So am I, darlin’. Pow asked me to keep an eye on that cat myself. Not that he thinks yer no good, of course, Captain, but who can’t use some help sometime?”
“We do not need your help,” Oset answered.
“It’s a free territory. You don’ want me to ride wit’ ya, alrighty then. But I guess I’ll ride, anyway.” La Bruja turned her mule’s head around and headed toward the back of the patrol.
Ignoring her, Captain Oset rode on. Corporal Tzinga gave the order to follow when it became apparent Oset was not going to. I looked over my shoulder a
nd saw La Bruja now closing our file. Fiking great. Espejo would smell her a mile off and be warned. He must have tracked Tiny Doom back across the Line and to the post. Fike. Why hadn’t she covered her tracks better?
Hooker’s farm was a few miles south of Fort Sandy. It was nothing much, an old adobe building surrounded by pumpkin fields. Sieur and Madama Hooker waited in front of the house, a knot of sullen kids huddled behind them. Sieur Hooker told us that early that night, they had been woken by the sound of their horse screaming. He and his wife had grabbed their rifles and run out to investigate; they’d seen the black cat clinging to the back of the shrieking horse and had fired at it and missed. The jaguar had run off into the night.
The horse lay, fly-covered, in the corral, its back a mass of raw meat, its throat torn out. In the lamplight, the blood shone luridly red. The horse was the family’s only means of transporting their pumpkins to market; without it, they were ruined. Sieur Hooker told us this matter-of-factly, but his eyes were hard. The kids glared at us, and the smallest one hissed, as though this was somehow our fault.
“Did you see which way it went?” Oset asked.
“Toward Bexar Canyon,” Hooker said. “That’s where I’d go if I were a cat; there’s plenty of shelter, and trees, and water in the spring.”
“We will kill it,” Oset promised.
“Won’t do us any good now,” Madama Hooker said. “But good luck to you, anyway”
“You put in a claim with the Army, Stevie,” La Bruja said. She’d dismounted to inspect the remains of the horse, handing the reins of her mule to one of the troopers. Now she reclaimed the reins and stood by her mule’s head, wobbling slightly. She was drunk.
“Can I do that?” Hooker asked.
“Sure enough. If the Army was doing its job, yer horse wouldn’t be lying there chewed like a piece of shoe leather. Put in a claim; I’ll wager they’ll pay.”
It look La Bruja two attempts to get back on her mule, and she only succeeded when Private Munds jumped off his own mount and gave her a leg up. She smelled so strongly of bug juice that I was surprised she could even stay in her saddle.
We rode on. Every once in a while, Captain Oset would hold up her hand in a halt-and-dismount, looking for a sign, and then, once she was sure we were on the right track, we’d ride on. The pale moonlight washed the desert out, softened it. To the north, the sky flashed pink and purple with distant lightning.
All my regrets and recriminations had vanished into one goal: tracking Espejo down. Night might be his time, but let’s see how he handled a double-barreled shotgun blast of Abacination Sigils. I was primed. Every shadow, every movement of the night, could be Espejo. I was itching for the chance to blow him away.
At the next waterhole, we found a welter of paw prints in the mud. About a mile further down the track, we found the scattered remains of a small animal. Clearly we were on the right track. La Bruja contributed nothing to the scout; she just sat on her mule, head nodding, and, every once in a while, took a pull from the canteen she’d hung on her pommel. Major Rucker’s confidence in her was clearly misplaced.
At the edge of Bexar Canyon, Captain Oset called a halt. The moon was setting, and without it, it would be too dark to track; anyway, the canyon was narrow and jumbled with rocks, the perfect place for a cat—particularly one who was really a man—to plan an ambush. We were close. We had to be close. Come daylight, it was just a matter of finding Espejo’s hidey-hole and flushing him out.
We made camp just inside the warren of rocks, where they could afford us some shelter if the storm made it to us. After we picketed the mules and fed them, I carried my saddle and bags to where Captain Oset had set up her gear. A private had dug a small fire pit and now began to heat coffee in a tin boiler. It smelled delicious.
“Go away” Captain Oset said to the private, appearing out of the darkness. He handed her a tin cup of coffee and, after saluting, went back to the trooper’s camp, several yards away and hidden from ours by a large boulder.
“I am starving,” Oset said. She dug a tin plate out of her saddlebag and withdrew an object wrapped in a gunnysack, which turned out to be a hunk of blackish meat. “Do you wish some?”
“No, thanks.” I shuddered at the thought of eating meat that had been stuck in Oset’s saddlebag for who knows how long.
She threw a chunk of meat onto the tin plate and shoved the plate into the fire. Normally Oset is chatty, but tonight she was quiet. That suited me just fine; I wasn’t in the mood for talk. I chewed on a hard cracker and listened to the distant drum of thunder. The cracker tasted like sawdust. The steak was starting to sizzle, smelling deliciously of fat and char and meat, and it made my mouth water.
Oset put her gauntlet back on and pulled the tin plate out of the fire. When she cut into the steak, it oozed red. I swear I had never smelled anything so good before.
“Are you sure you do not want a taste?” She held a piece out to me, impaled on the end of her knife.
I couldn’t resist.
It was, in fact, the best I had ever eaten, succulent and fatty seasoned with a tang of wood ash and salt. She divided the rest of the steak in half and pushed the hot plate over to me. I chewed, enjoying the delicious fattiness of the meat, watching as she did the same.
And then I remembered the jibing on the front porch, La Bruja’s comment about the canned carrots.
I put the plate down. The meat had left a nasty coating inside my mouth. A gulp of bitter coffee did not wash the taste away.
“I thought you did not eat meat, Bea,” I said, glancing over to where Oset’s shotgun leaned against my saddle.
Oset looked up from her plate, and for a second, her face was blank. Then she laughed. “Who does not eat meat? How silly.”
Oset speared a large piece with her knife and shoved it into her mouth. Her cheeks were shining with grease. Her hands were pretty grubby, almost black around the nails and knuckles. And her left cuff was stiff with something that had dried black. I took another gulp of coffee. A vision had risen unbidden to my mind, a vision of the Birdie Ambassador’s hands. The first time I had seen him, his hands had been blackish, not with dirt, but because the stolen skin he wore had been starting to decay.
Espejo was not a Flayed Priest.
But maybe he knew their mysteries.
My coffee cup was empty. Oset was still hacking at her meat. I said, “Bea, I know I still owe you that money from the poker game. As soon as I get back to the City I’ll send you a check.”
“Oh, it’s no worry.” Oset shoved more meat into her mouth. “I know you are good for it.”
“Thanks.” I put the coffee cup down and folded my hands in my lap to hide their shaking. We had never played poker and I did not owe her any money. Another rumble of thunder rolled over us, louder this time. The storm was growing closer. Oset looked up from her plate, staring behind me, toward the mountains, and for a tiny second, her muddy brown eyes flashed jade green.
And I knew.
I knew.
THIRTY-FIVE
Tum-O. Storm. Munds.
I SAT LIKE A STONE and watched Espejo tear at his meat. What kind of meat was it? Alas, I knew exactly what kind of meat Espejo ate. Burning acid began to fill my mouth, and I said thickly, “Excuse me—”
I grabbed the shotgun as I ran. I made it out of the circle of firelight before I puked, and puked, and puked, until my stomach muscles ached and my mouth felt scalded. I leaned against a boulder, the shotgun tucked into my shoulder, and wiped my mouth on my sleeve, then stuffed my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming.
Oset. Poor Oset. I should have told her—should have warned her—should never have left her in the dark, a sitting duck to Espejo. But it had never occurred to me that she was in danger. Espejo must have grabbed her back at the post, grabbed her and then—I felt sick. Her death was my fault. That was a cold, horrible realization, followed by another one: Here I was, out in the desert, with Espejo, at his mercy. All my brave thoughts about takin
g him down had died in the face of reality. Who had I been fooling? I was no match for him. He was a born killer and I was just some stupid snapperhead. I was only still alive because he hadn’t yet decided to kill me.
It was taking all my nerve not to scarper into the night. But I could hear murmuring coming from the troopers’ camp. If I ran, I’d leave them to Espejo, and he might just kill them all. Also, with Oset dead, the command had devolved to me. The troopers were now my responsibility I couldn’t abandon them.
I’d loaded the shotgun back at Sandy during mount-up. Now, seeking reassurance that I was still in the game, I broke it open and saw with soul-sucking horror that the barrels were empty The gun was unloaded. I slapped my pockets for the extra shells and found they were gone as well. How the fike had Espejo managed that? As far as I recalled, the shotgun had never been out of my sight, had been tucked into the holster on Evil Murdoch’s saddle since we’d left. Then I remembered the potty break at Hooker’s farm. I’d left the shotgun in the holster while I visited the privy. The other shells must have fallen out while I was squatting.
Oh, pigface, mother of creation. I was dead, dead, dead. Tiny Doom was dead; this was it. We were done, punto final, over, finished, capped—
Calm down. Calm down. Panicking won’t solve a thing. Buck had once beaten a jaguar to death with a shovel. I had absolutely no faith in my ability to do the same with the now-useless gun. I bit down on my fist until I tasted blood, and then thought calmly, I have what Nini Mo said is the greatest strategic advantage of all: the element of surprise. I knew who he was, but he didn’t know I knew.
I also had one giant Gramatica Curse up my sleeve, the Gramatica Curse to end all Gramatica Curses: the Oatmeal Word. That’s not its real name, of course. It’s actually the Adverbial form of the Gramatica Word Convulse. I call it the Oatmeal Word because the convulsions that it causes turn its target’s internal organs into sludge—oatmeal-like sludge. I’ve spoken it twice: on one of Firemonkey’s men when he interfered with my rescue of the Dainty Pirate, and on Lord Axacaya. Its effect on poor Herbert was catastrophic. Lord Axacaya managed to withstand it, but barely.
Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo Page 29