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)

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

Poppy replied, "Oh, I haven’t forgotten any of that, no fear. But if Buck finds out about his trespass and what he tried to do to Flora, she might do something rash.”

  Poppy worried about someone doing something rash—what a joke.

  "And that would ruin everything,” he continued. "Never fear, I’ll take care of Axacaya, but let’s let him cool down a bit, think he’s out of the woods. They take the blow harder when they don’t see it coming.” And then Poppy turned the conversation toward something else, and that was it. Subject closed. I thought of many things I wanted to say, but Poppy’s matter-of-fact tone when he said he would take care of Axacaya had been chilling, and it didn’t invite further comment.

  After breakfast, on Poppy’s orders, I cleaned my room, folded a whole bunch of threadbare towels, helped Poppy carry the groceries in, and gave the dogs baths. All of this put me in an extremely bad mood. What was the point? I’d saved the City, come back from the dead, found out I was the Head of the House Haðraaða and I was still doing chores? Still hopping to Poppy’s tune? Still the same old Flora? Flora Segunda?

  Since I had woken up from the fever, I had felt full of nothing. Now I was full of horrible thoughts—of running away to Bilskinir House, where no one could push me around. But as furious as I was, the thought of going to Bilskinir made my insides curl; I just couldn’t face that yet. I could run away to some other place where no one had ever heard of the Haðraaðas or the Fyrdraacas. Idden had scarpered, why couldn’t I? But where could I go alone? How would I live? What would I do?

  I remembered what Nini Mo had said: Success is all that counts. By that measure I had been successful: I had saved the City, saved the Loliga, saved Udo. But despite all these successes, I felt like a failure. Nini Mo’s stories were all lies. I had failed in my attempt to find a Gramatica teacher. And I had been completely fooled by Axacaya. I was a gullible, idiotic fool.

  Still in this awful mood, thinking these awful thoughts, I finally joined Poppy in the parlor for our lesson. Valefor was in the kitchen, happily polishing silver, and the dogs were in the back garden, chasing ducks. The parlor table was covered with books; clearly this was going to be a long lesson.

  “Howdy, Pig,” Poppy said, when I sat down and put Pig on the chair next to me.

  Pig didn’t answer, just looked at Poppy expressionlessly.

  “You aren’t trying to tell me something, are you, Flora?” Poppy asked.

  "What do you mean?”

  "Bringing Pig to the party is like sitting down to play poker and putting your gun on the table. It sends a message.”

  "I just like his company.” And I did. Even though he had shown no sign of life since Bilskinir, he made me feel safe.

  "Pig’s always been good in a pinch. Azota had a lot of Will. Her sigils stick.”

  At the mention of Tiny Doom’s other nickname, a tiny needle ran through my heart. Poppy had never mentioned her to me before. When he had still been drunk and crazy, it didn’t take much to set him off into catastrophic wailing. Was he going to erupt into a huge sorrowful meltdown?

  He didn’t. He just said, quite calmly, "I started to suspect it when you came to me on the day of your Catorcena and told me off. You sounded exactly like she did when she was calling me on my crap. Which she did quite often, me so often being full of crap. I knew I was right when Pig arrived. There is only one Pig. There was only one reason Paimon would send him to you.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just stared at Poppy. He was sharpening a pencil, the long strokes of the knife curling up shreds of wood, not looking at me.

  "You are probably pissed at your mother for not telling you. I was rather pissed myself. I still am, but actually I suppose I can’t blame Buck for feeling as though I was not a steady bet to keep a secret. I see her point—the fewer people who know, the better.”

  “Why? Why does it have to be a secret?” My voice sounded cracked and high.

  “The Birdies believe in doing things thoroughly, Flora. It’s not enough to condemn a prisoner and put her to death. If her crime is great enough, it pollutes her entire line, sours it. They didn’t just sentence Azota to death; they sentenced her entire family. Which would have included you, if they’d known about you.”

  “But won’t they know now?” I squeaked. “Won’t Axacaya tell them?”

  “Oh, I wager that he’ll keep this to himself for a while, while he tries to figure out how to use it to his advantage. He may be a Birdie himself and under their protection, but that don’t mean he’s happy about it. He chafes. He’d like to be free of them as much as we would—only for entirely different reasons. I don’t think he’s going to blab.”

  “But what about his Quetzal guards? Aren’t they loyal to the Birdies?” I felt a pang at the thought of Axila Aguila. She’d been trying to kill me, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

  “They’d blab, for sure, if any of them were alive to do so.” Poppy smiled wolfishly and I didn’t want to know any more. "Don’t fret, Flora. The Birdies aren’t going to get you. I’m not going to let them. Your mother—Buck—is not going to let them.”

  "But why didn’t Mamma tell me?”

  "I guess she thought she was protecting you.”

  "But I have the right to know. I should know. She should have told me.”

  "Ayah, that’s true. And now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

  "I don’t know.” I wanted to confront Mamma, but I was afraid. Afraid of what she would say when she realized that I had been gulled by Axacaya, that I had given him ammunition against our family, that I had meddled in the Current. Afraid that she would drop the pretense of being my mother, and then what? What if she had lied about loving me, too? Soon there would a new Fyrdraaca. A real Fyrdraaca. Once Mamma had that baby, would she need me anymore?

  "Well, you think about it, and let me know. And that brings me to something else, Flora...”

  Uh-oh—here it came, finally Where Poppy lectured me about being a fool, and to forget about magick, forget about Gramatica, forget about being a ranger. Where Poppy got all grown-up and paternal and commanding-officer on me.

  "The Current is dangerous and unpredictable. You can’t muck around in it; it’ll drag you in and drown you. And you are leaving tracks—traces—that any good magician will see. You have got to lie low, not send up signal flares letting everyone know where you are and what you are doing. Keep it cool, Flora, or Califa knows what’ll come sniffing around. Ayah?”

  Poppy telling me to be more discreet! I said angrily “What do you know about magick, anyway, Poppy? Are you a ranger or not? What about that badge you gave me?”

  “I’m a ranger in a manner of speaking. I wasn’t trained as a ranger, but toward the end, they needed all the help they could get. Delicacy ain’t my line, but I do know a few tricks. They recruited me, and I did what I could. So I guess you could call me a provisional ranger.”

  “Does Mamma know?”

  Another wolfish grin. “No.”

  And then I could no longer contain that which had been most weighing on my mind, which seemed to have swelled in my brain until there was no room for anything else. “Don’t you love Mamma, Poppy?”

  “Of course I do, Flora.”

  “Then what about her?” I couldn’t say her name. It seemed stupid to keep calling her Tiny Doom, and Azota didn’t seem right, either, but I couldn’t call her Mamma.

  “You can love two people at the same time in different ways, Flora. Buck and I were affianced in childhood, for our families’ sake. We did our duty and we married and loved each other. But Azota—” He broke off and looked down at the pencil he was twirling, round and round and round. "That was different. It didn’t make any difference between Buck and me. Your mother—Buck—understood. And you must not listen to the lies the Birdies spread about Azota; she wasn’t the monster they made her out to be. She was ... difficult ... but she wasn’t a monster.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he just stared at the twirl
ing pencil. There was much I still wanted to say: How could he not know about me? How did Tiny Doom smuggle me out? Where was I really born? How much magick did he know? How did he find out that Axacaya was after me? But the questions were stuck in my throat. We sat in silence for a few minutes, and he just kept twirling that pencil until I wanted to grab it out of his hand and stick it in his eye.

  Finally, Poppy put the pencil down and said brightly, "Well, then, did you read chapter eight of Captain Kotz’s Customs of the Service for Non-Commissioned Officers as I requested?”

  "No.”

  "Well, I suppose it don’t really matter. I never liked Kotz; he was the most stuck-up pumpion I’ve ever met. He preferred charges against me once for whistling too loudly on the front porch of Building Fifty-six. What a whey-faced prune. So, good-bye, Kotz.” Poppy picked up the book and tossed it away; it landed on the sofa next to Flynn, who half jumped out of his skin.

  “How about chapter nine of Hardel’s Tactics?”

  “No.”

  “Massey’s Gunner’s Handbook?”

  “No.”

  “Chapter one of The Morphology of Littoral Languages and Their Cognates?”

  “No.” I’d never even heard of that book. What the fike was a littoral language?

  “Well, it would have been amazing if you had, Flora. Valefor!”

  “Ayah?” Valefor’s disembodied voice answered querulously. “What do you want? You interrupted my spoon count and I shall have to start all over again now.”

  “Valefor,” Poppy said quietly. “Would you please bring me Thornton’s Morphology and Xing’s Didactic Grammar?”

  “They are proscribed, in my Special Collection—”

  “Valefor.”

  With a thump, two fat books materialized on the table. “Anything else?” Valefor’s still-disembodied voice asked, in a much nicer tone this time.

  “No, thanks. Don’t forget to polish the pickle forks.”

  “Ha!”

  Poppy cleared the table, then pushed the top book toward me. It was as thick as two redboxes stacked on each other, and the elaborately tooled leather cover was locked with a gold hasp. A faint galvanic burr was coming from the book, low and steady, like the purr of a cat.

  “I’m not fluent,” Poppy was saying, “but I know enough to get you started. If you are going to muck about, you’d better know what you are doing. Be able to cover your tracks. If you are not with us, Flora, you are against us. I hope you will be with us.”

  I looked up at him, startled, remembering Nini Mo saying the exact same thing. Poppy smiled faintly and nodded toward the book. I undid the hasp and heaved the book open to the title page, which at first appeared to be blank. Then tiny, sparkling glyphs began to scroll across the page.

  Gramatica.

  After

  LATER, POPPY WENT out to take care of the horses, and I headed toward my bedroom, to take a nap, my head spinning, my tongue still buzzing from my first lesson in Gramatica. I resolved to thump Valefor as soon as I saw him again; I’d scoured the Bibliotheca for books on Gramatica and found not a one. Clearly he had held out on me.

  I met Udo on the stairs, leading a charge of barking excited dogs. He handed me a cake box—“from Arden’s Cake-o-Rama, your favorite, chocolate chile with caramel frosting”—and escorted me to the kitchen. As I cut the cake, Udo got straight to the point. He wanted Springheel Jack’s boots, which we had left at Bilskinir House. He wanted me to go back with him and get them.

  Go back to Bilskinir! The delicious cake dried up in my mouth. I knew that someday I would have to go back to Bilskinir. But not today Not tomorrow. Not for a long time.

  “I can’t, Udo.”

  “I want those boots, Flora. I went through a lot to get them, and they are mine. I remember everything that happened while I was Springheel Jack, though I sure wish I didn’t, and I want something for all that pain. I earned them. I want that bounty. I need those boots.” Udo was so upset that he didn’t seem to notice or care that his pompadour was wilting. “I already went to Bilskinir alone, but Paimon wouldn’t let me in. He didn’t even answer the door. He’ll let you in. And you have to face the fact that it’s your House sometime, Flora.”

  “Can we talk about something else, Udo?” My throat was starting to close up in panic.

  “You do what you want, Flora. Ignore it, but I promise it won’t go away. And I won’t go away, either. I want those boots. You owe them to me after everything I’ve done for you. I’m just asking you this one small thing. Go with me to get the boots and then I don’t care if you never go back to Bilskinir ever again. You owe me, Flora.”

  This I could not argue with. I owed him my life. He had stayed in Bilskinir Baths, as they crumbled around him, to make sure I returned to the Waking World. He had carried me from the ruins and gotten me safely home. Without Udo, I’d still be dead. Really dead. Dead forever. The least I could do was give him a pair of boots in return. True, I had promised Springheel Jack that I would find him a new avatar, but I owed Udo first. And promises made under duress aren’t binding anyway, right? Right.

  WHEN WE REACHED Bilskinir House, it was shrouded in fog. We rode toward the base of the cliff, me on Sieur Caballo, Pig sitting before me, and Udo on Bonzo. As we approached the rocky foundation, the fog lifted briefly Directly ahead, the Gateway of Munificence shimmered into existence. I now knew that this, not the little wooden gate at the top of the causeway, was Bilskinir’s main entrance. The Gateway only manifests to the Head of the House Haðraaða; it is activated by the scratchy Key I wore around my finger. Or so Udo had informed me, having gotten this information from the entry on Bilskinir House in The City in Shadow and Shade guidebook. Now that I was not running (jumping) for my life, I had leisure to examine the Gateway as we approached it. Like the rest of Bilskinir, it was gigantically elegant: two enormous silver doors, polished to a blazing shine. The doors slid open at our approach, and before I lost my nerve, I spurred Sieur Caballo forward.

  Briefly, we passed through darkness, and then almost immediately into warm sunshine. Down the Tunnel of Trees we jogged, onto the carpetlike grass of Bilskinir’s Great Lawn. The sheep bleated a greeting and the dog pack flowed toward us, yodeling joyfully, Flynn dashing ahead to join them. The sky overhead looked like pale blue enamel, and the grass once again grew lush and thick, neatly cropped. The House gleamed sapphire-blue, its minarets, towers, buttresses, and gables glittering in the sunlight, which also made the windows look like hundreds of sparkling eyes watching us. Paimon’s blue bulk, a tall figure standing on Bilskinir’s wide front porch, was visible even at our distance.

  I had thought I had already been about as afraid as I could ever be, before: when I had faced Axacaya and begged for my life; when I had told Mamma I would not go to the Barracks; when I had thought I might be trapped in the oubliette forever; when I had drowned in the Cold Plunge; when I had activated the Translocation Sigil. Those had been real fears, about real dangers. There was no danger here. And yet my fear lodged in my throat like a stone, making me shake.

  Udo dismounted first and gave me his hand to help me down. I was glad, so glad, for Udo. He knew it, too, for he squeezed my hand tightly as we walked up the steps, and gave me a reassuring smile. Sieur Caballo followed Bonzo toward the stables.

  At our approach, Paimon made the courtesy As a Servant to His Mistress, Respectfully but Without Servility. I returned the gesture As a Pupil to Her Teacher, with Honor and Respect and by the glint of his tusks, I think Paimon was pleased with my choice. He and Udo exchanged the courtesies To One Who Is Owed Great Thanks. Paimon nodded at Pig, who did not nod back.

  "Come meet the rest of the family,” Paimon said when all this flourishing, bowing, gesturing, and waving was done.

  "The rest of the family?” I said. "I thought I was all that was left.”

  "Oh, no, madama, they are all here. Come. You shall see.”

  As Udo and I followed Paimon into the Hall of Expectant Expectations, Udo poked me in
the side and hissed, "Don’t forget the boots!”

  The Hall of Expectant Expectations was not empty as I had seen it before, but full of a buzzing throng of people, who fell into silence as they saw us. Suddenly I felt woefully underdressed. The waiting throng was fantastically arrayed in formal court-dress, their gorgeously bright outfits accented with glittering jewelry. And me in my old kilt and Tiny Doom’s worn buckskin jacket. At least I had put on lip rouge and my hair was clean.

  "The Head of the House Haðraaða,” Paimon said grandly, bowing so low that his mustachios brushed the floor.

  The crowd surged at me like a tidal wave. People were coming at me left and right, back and front. I was kissed, hugged, patted, squeezed, and twirled. Paimon couldn’t keep up with the introductions; he was shooting names at me, rapid-fire, and they were flying right over my head. But one thing was clear: They were all Haðraaðas, literally hundreds of Haðraaðas, one after another. Where had they all come from? How had I not seen them before? And how could I be the last Haðraaða with all these Haðraaðas swarming me? Just as I was starting to feel light-headed from all the squeezing, the whirlwind parted. A familiar figure sailed forward. An imperious white head topped an imperious sangyn uniform—a Haðraaða I knew for an absolute fact was dead.

  Hardhands.

  “We’ve met, Paimon.” Hardhands cut off Paimon’s introduction. “Welcome to Bilskinir, almost-daughter.” He ignored Pig, which was fine because Pig ignored him, as well.

  “But you are dead!” I blurted, which probably wasn’t the most polite thing to say, but I was feeling pretty overwhelmed. Next to me, Udo was uncharacteristically silent. I guess he was overwhelmed, too.

  “Of course I am, girlie, or you shan’t be here, in charge,” Hardhands said scornfully. He might be dead, but he was still pretty stuck-up.

  “What are you doing here if you are dead?” Udo asked, recovering.

  “Ain’t this my House?” Hardhands replied. “Why should I leave it just because I’m dead? I like it here.”