I had no idea what he meant by that last comment. “Can you do it, Poppy?”
Poppy closed his eyes and ran his finger over the spindly letters. He made a few wiggly lines with the dry pen, incising an imprint upon the paper. After dipping the pen, he turned the edge of the nib so that the lines were thick going up and thin going down. He made a few little twirls, then drew a little pig with floppy ears and dancing slippers. He pushed his scribble paper away, lay a new sheet down, and dipped his pen freshly.
Then, swiftly, he began to write. The ink slid across the paper, as smooth as skates on ice, without hesitation, without pause. He raised his pen, pressed blotting paper down, and grinned. “There! I am charmed!”
I flipped the citation around, and we stared at the two signatures, side by side. They were perfectly alike, right down to the monogram that came after the name: Florian Abenfarax de la Carcarza, ADLC.
“You are a genius, Hotspur,” Udo said.
Poppy grinned, and this grin rounded his bladelike cheeks and crinkled his eyes. For a moment he looked almost handsome. Then the smile drifted from his face, and he was the same sad Poppy again.
He dropped the pen and said, “But you know, I think I have forgotten how to sign my own name.”
TWENTY-TWO
Strange Faces. A Blue Light. Teeth.
NINI MO’S YELLOWBACKS always play up the excitement and adventure—they never mention the anxiety and alarm that comes before the excitement and adventure. The hour you spend riding toward your target, while your neck gets colder and your bottom goes numb. The knot of nervousness in your tum, which only gets knottier and more nervous as the place where you can still turn back gets farther and farther behind.
We left Crackpot just at dusk, slightly behind schedule but not by much. Broad-brimmed hats hid our faces, and underneath our concealing cloaks, we both wore stolen uniforms. Udo’s was kipped from one of his fathers, and it fit him perfectly. Mine was borrowed from Idden’s closet; it was the fatigue uniform she’d worn the summer she’d spent as Mamma’s ADC, her third year at the Barracks. It was tight across the shoulders and long in the kilt, but otherwise would do.
Zoo Battery guards the southern end of the Pacifica Playa, far out at the end of Sandy Road in what are called the Outside Lands because they lie beyond the City’s limits. No horsecar went out that far at night, and even if it had, we certainly couldn’t take it without compromising our disguises. So we rode, me on Bonzo, and Udo on Mouse.
It’s a longish ride, through Portal Pass, which marks the City’s official limits, and across the Great Sand Bank, which stands between the Pass and the ocean’s edge, and so I had plenty of time to think anxious thoughts. Nini Mo says that the time for thinking is before you make the decision, and once you’ve decided, it’s time to act. That’s easier said than done. Particularly when not everything has gone according to plan.
I looked at Udo, or, rather, at his back, since he was riding ahead of me. Mouse is a tail-biter, and it’s always better to keep her teeth out of temptation’s way. From the back, he looked like pretty much the same Udo. But when he turned to say something to me, he had the face of a stranger.
After Udo’s close call with recognition at Pete’s Clown Diner, we had agreed that stronger disguises were required, and for that we needed Glamours. This turned out to be easier decided than actually done. A Glamour should be easy baby ranger stuff, not too hard, and not too complicated. And the first Glamour, though tongue-burning and headache-making, had turned out just dandy.
Udo’s own parents would not recognize him. I knew he was Udo and yet could hardly believe it. Now he looked ruggedly efficient; his chest was broad, his shoulders even broader, and his chin as squarely carved as a bar of soap. His face, perched above a bull neck, was leathery and wise, and his black eyes had a humorous squint to them. The biggest shock was the hair. Udo’s fondness for his own blond locks has kept them long and flowing, but now his hair was so short that the scalp beneath was as tanned as his face.
In fact, Udo looked a little too much like Sergeant Shanksworthy, the hero of the long-running yellowback series Sergeant Shanksworthy of the Steelheart Brigade. Though I wasn’t a particular fan of Sergeant Shanksworthy, I guess the back of my brain had somehow decided that he was the perfect specimen of military manliness, and thus the Masking Glamour had so resolved.
“What are you goggling about?” asked Udo in a rumbling baritone that was as unlike his own boyish treble as the lion’s roar is to the cat’s meow.
“It’s hard to get used to.”
He pulled Mouse back so we were abreast, and the horses twisted their heads to snuffle at each other. “I know. It feels strange, too, as though my skin is too small. How do I look with a mustache?” He tugged one of the waxed spikes that stuck out at least two inches on either side of that stranger’s mouth.
“I don’t know what you look like with a mustache, but that face looks fine. Would that I looked so wonderfully different,” I said, somewhat bitterly.
I was disguised not by a Masking Glamour, but by ten pounds of makeup that Udo had applied to my face with a trowel. This because the second Masking Glamour had failed utterly.
Magick is hard, I know that, and it takes long hours of practice to get things right. I thought I had been sticking to the easy stuff, the fail-safe stuff, but maybe I had just been lucky before. But what a time to fail! The Glamour had flickered briefly and then guttered, and all the Invoking, Evoking, and just plain Hysterical Entreaties to the Current had not gotten it to rekindle. I had tried other Glamours as well—a Concealment Glamour, a Dazzle-ment Glamour—but they only resulted in a pounding headache and the upchucking of my snack. Now, in addition to anxious, I felt rather dizzy and weak. I’d never realized magick involved so much urping.
“I swear I wouldn’t recognize you in a hundred years, Flora. I swear that even Buck would not recognize you. You’ll be fine,” Udo said soothingly. “You’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right, Udo. Get that horse over, she’s squashing my leg. Do you remember the plan? You won’t jump the gun like you did last time, will you?”
Udo edged Mouse sideways.
“I remember the plan perfectly, no fear, Flora. Don’t worry. But remember, I will do all the talking. It will look odd if you keep piping up, when I outrank you.”
The plan, of course, had been that I would lead and Udo would follow. But now he had the mature, authoritative face, and I, though disguised, did not look old enough to be an officer, even a shavetail lieutenant. There was no way around Udo’s having to take the lead, and my insides quivered at the thought.
“I’ll be quiet as long as you don’t say anything foolish, Udo. Do not deviate from the plan even a tiny little bit, I’m warning you.”
“Never fear—oh, and it’s Captain Gaisford to you, Corporal. I think we should get into character now. That’s the secret to great acting—you get inside the skin of your part and never leave.”
“Udo—”
“Captain Gaisford, Corporal, and don’t forget it, or I shall write you up for insubordination. Ride on, we are burning daylight.” He spurred Mouse into a trot. Sometimes the only way to win with Udo is to ignore him, so I merely urged Bonzo on and fell in after Mouse.
After a while, the smell of wood smoke began to seep through the fog, and then the shadow of a squat building suddenly reared from the gloom: the Bella Union Saloon, as notorious a deadfall bar as you would never want to see. The Bella Union sits right across the Califa city line, where the Sandy Road turns southward toward Zoo Battery, near the Presidio’s back gate, and this central location has made it a favorite hangout joint for drunken off-duty soldiers. Mamma has declared it out of bounds to the military and twice sent patrols to burn it down. Twice it has sprung up anew, a blot upon the landscape that not even fire will erase. The Califa Police Gazette is always reporting dire doings at the Bella Union: ear-chewing, bar fights, tar-and-feathering.
A high-riding covered wa
gon stood in front of the Bella, THE HORSES OF INSTRUCTION inscribed upon the canvas in luminescent paint. Grunts carried musical equipment inside as a tall man stood by, watching and smoking, a hurdy-gurdy slung over his back. The Hurdy-Gurdy Man was clearly going for a deathly, gothick look: greenish black hair straggling out from under a moldering tricorn, sagging pink trunk hose. As I rode by, he looked up, his livid face wreathed in cigarette smoke, and flashed gold teeth at me, touching a salute to the front point of his hat.
The Bella Union behind us, darkness followed the fog’s slow advance. My feet felt like blocks of ice, and my hands hardly gripped the reins. I wasn’t sure if this feebleness was from the weather or all the Invoking I had done. Either way, I felt weak and tired.
Somewhere high above the fog, the moon must have risen, because the air was strangely light. I pulled up the collar of my sack coat; the wool rubbed the back of my neck, but moisture was dripping from my hat brim and I’d rather be raw than wet. Everything is always so much colder with a damp neck.
“Hey, Corporal—” Udo’s blur made a vague gesture, and I turned around to follow his point. Just fog, thick and wet, but then, suddenly, there was a bright blue pulse of light, like a tiny fragment of sky cracking through the gray.
We reined in and watched as the light pulsed again. The horses shimmied, as though they could hear something we could not, and then distantly, we did hear something, a low rumbling that was as much vibration as noise. The horses shimmied again, squeezing together, and I kicked my foot out so Mouse wouldn’t crush my leg.
“Cannon fire?” I guessed.
“Your ignorance astounds, Corporal Ashbury, but then what can you expect from a mere bouncer?” Udo answered. Bouncer is the Army nickname for cavalry, yet my hat brass proclaimed I was a webfoot, or infantryman. I started to correct him, but he cut me off. “Cannon fire does not spark blue. And besides which, that’s north, and there ain’t no guns to our north.”
“Cannon fire can too spark blue if—”
Udo looked annoyed. “Your insubordination is grotesque. I do not know what the Army is coming to these days, with impertinence so common and respect so rarely valued. In my day, no mere corporal would ever dare contradict a ranking officer.”
I almost answered Udo with something short and not so sweet. But I bit my tongue, because there was some truth to what he had said about staying in the skin of your disguise. Didn’t Nini Mo once say that the best way to impersonate a rustler was to be a rustler?
“I beg your humble pardon, Captain Gaisford, sir. I did not mean to contradict you. Please enlighten me. If then, there are no guns to the north, what does lie in that direction that could create such a singular sight?” I asked.
“You are overdoing it, Corporal. Not so heavy on the sop, please. And the answer is Bilskinir House.”
Bilskinir House, indeed. Another blue note pulsed, and this time the ground really did tremble underfoot for a moment. A shiver ran across the back of my neck.
“I guess the papers were right.” Udo continued. “Maybe Paimon is awake after all. What do you think he’s doing in there?”
“Making dinner, I wager. As long as I am not on the menu, then I bid him good eating. Come on.”
“I give the orders, Corporal Ashbury,” Udo said curtly. “Ride on.”
So we rode on, leaving the blue bursts of light behind us. The cold was biting, and my hinder was going numb—surely we were almost there? What seemed like an eternity later, but was probably only about fifteen minutes, Zoo Battery loomed so suddenly out of the fog that Udo almost ran Mouse right into it. The wooden gates towered over us, at least twenty feet high and wide enough for four riders to enter abreast. Zoo Battery defends the southern end of the Playa and she houses sixty-five guns, so her red brick walls are high and thick. The gates were painted to look like teeth, giving the doors the appearance of a grinning, hungry mouth.
Udo dismounted, then advanced to bang heavily on the barred doors. His blows were tiny little puffs of sound, hardly louder than the distant crashing surf, but he had barely lifted his fist up from the third one when a cavity appeared in one of the lower teeth and an eye looked out.
“Who comes here?” the eye demanded.
“Friend, with the countersign.” Udo sounded cool as lemonade.
“Answer, friend, with the countersign.”
Here it was: No turning back. While Mamma had been attending to Poppy after his fit last night, I had spent a few minutes in the parlor, snooping through her correspondence book for passwords. I hoped that the Sign List I had copied hadn’t been updated; I hoped that the passwords had not been changed. Here was the first test.
“Vilipend,” said Udo, sounding rather bored.
The cavity closed.
Udo hitched his hat back on his head and scratched his nose. He tucked his reins under his arm, so as to adjust his sabre belt. He scratched behind Mouse’s ear. The seconds clicked by. I thought I might scream. This was taking far too long; the guard should have recognized the countersign immediately, then opened the doors. They must have changed the password. My mind’s eye saw through the Toothy Doors into the sally port beyond, where the guard was now assembled, rifles at the ready, to charge forward and blast the intruders: us.
“I will protest to Colonel Yangze,” Udo said to me. “It’s outrageous that we should be left lingering in the cold like this.” Just as he raised his fist to hammer on the door again, before I could suggest we scarper, a crack appeared along the edge of one of the teeth. The crack widened and spread upward and down, and then became a door, which opened.
TWENTY-THREE
Inside. Orders. Swagger Stick.
NINI MO SAID THAT caution makes you careful, but panic is a poison that will kill you. I had plenty of the first and no intention of indulging in the second. My heart was thumping so loudly in my chest that I thought it might pop right out, which would probably be good, because it would save me the pain of being shot.
“It’s about time,” said Udo. “This is outrageous! How dare you keep us waiting! I’ll have you on charges for this.”
A face appeared around the edge of the door, be-speckled and abashed.
“I am so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. It’s just that we had mislaid the key, and then Danbury was asleep, and he’s the only one who can pull the chain up to open the door. He was a pugilist before the Army, and he’s ever so strong—oh, I’m sorry. Advance and Be Recognized.”
“This command is a disgrace.” Udo swept forward as though he actually were a stuck-up staff officer. He left Mouse’s reins dangling, and I dismounted and grabbed them.
Udo said, “Lieutenant, I am on urgent business and I have no time to waste. Come, come, Corporal Ashbury you are dawdling again.” This last, over his shoulder to me.
It is true that Nini Mo said that acting as though you have every right is one of the tricks to getting away with a disguise, but it seemed to me that Udo was not acting as much as overacting. Nonetheless, I hauled after him, towing Bonzo and Mouse behind me.
The portcullis door slammed shut behind Bonzo’s tail with a rather alarming clang.
There’s no way out but through.
Two guards with rifles stood behind the lieutenant, but their muzzles pointed down. In the fluttering lamplight, the lieutenant looked flustered and rumpled. His blouse was buttoned crooked and his hair was mussed. “I do beg your pardon for any perceived laxity, Captain, but also I must beg your pardon that you have not been recognized yet.”
“Take my horse, and Corporal Ashbury’s, too. I am Captain Seneca Gaisford, Judge Advocate General’s Of' fice. Escort me immediately to the Commanding Officer; I have a special order from the Warlord. Will you have me stand here all night?”
“No, of course not, sir. Lieutenant Wills Samson at your service. Do come in, please do.” The lieutenant scraped and bowed and ordered one of the guards to hold the horses. I released the reins reluctantly. It had occurred to me that the horses were in as much danger as
Udo and I, and I wished we had left them picketed outside.
We followed Lieutenant Samson through the dank, dark sally port, then into the parade yard beyond. Udo was haranguing the lieutenant for taking so long to let us in, and the lieutenant was parroting apologies. I myself would have told Udo to jump off a log, but that’s the thing about the Army; when someone outranks you and gives you some, you have to take it. The parade yard was lit only by a few dim lamps, but I didn’t need much light to see the ominous shadow of the gallows in the middle of the yard. The open casemates rising above the parade yard looked like black empty eyes.
Lieutenant Samson led us along the covered walkway and into the guardroom. After the outside chill, the guardroom felt warm and cheerful. Happy red and orange firelight spilled from the huge barracks stove. Although the holding cell was empty, two guards sat on a bench against the opposite wall, drinking from tin cups. The door to the Commanding Officer’s ready room was closed.
The lieutenant offered us chairs. “Do please sit down, Captain. Might I get you some coffee? A little nip of something warmer? It’s a long journey from the City; you must be almost frozen. What a night to be out in, what a night. Hendricks, get the Captain and his aide some coffee.”
Coffee sounded wonderful, and I did feel almost frozen, but we couldn’t linger. Udo said dismissively, “Never mind the coffee. As I said, we are in a hurry I have important matters to attend to.” He pulled our forged document from his dispatch case. “Take me to the Commanding Officer. I have a special order signed by the Warlord for the transfer of one of your prisoners to my custody You will get him ready for transport. The Warlord wishes to speak to him immediately.”
The lieutenant rubbed his hands together pleadingly. “Oh dear, oh dear. This is quite strange, oh dear.”
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) Page 15