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) (14 page)

“Have you ever seen him?” I asked. “Axacaya, I mean.”

“Ayah.”

“Does he really have an eye in the middle of his tongue?”

Lieutenant Sabre looked startled. “Gracious me, where did you read that, madama?”

“The
Califa Police Gazette.”

“You should elevate your reading habits. The
CPG
is hardly the proper reading material for a young lady of good breeding—”

“Does he?”

“No,” Lieutenant Sabre said, “but his eyes are black as pitch.”

“Lots of people have black eyes.”

“Not like this. I mean, his eyes are
all
black, even to the whites. He has trafficked so long in darkness that it has suffused his body, and now it stains the windows to his soul, reflecting his inner impurity.”

I’d never heard of an adept whose eyes had turned to black, but then Lord Axacaya is a son of the Butterfly Goddess and he knows many dark and bloody arts.

It suddenly occurred to me that, though Lieutenant Sabre was being a surprisingly useful informant, I was missing out on an even more valuable opportunity to eavesdrop. Plus, maybe even get a glimpse of the boo-spooky Lord Axacaya myself.

“Excuse me, I have to go to the loo—I’ll be right back.” Before Lieutenant Sabre could comment, I bolted.

In the foyer, the Table Captain stood behind his stand, flipping through his reservation book nervously. The guards that normally stand outside the Club’s front door were now standing inside, and they were holding their rifles at Port Arms, which is two positions away from Shoulder Arms, which is one position away from firing.

Earlier, the sliding doors to the Saloon had been open, though the Saloon itself had been empty and dark. Now those doors were closed, and two figures stood like sentries before them. They were heavily veiled, as formless as darkness, though their robes were a bright verdant green and fringed with brilliant feathers. The guards stared at these figures, and these figures—well, because of their veils, you could not see where they were looking.

“How are you, Madama Fyrdraaca Segunda?” the Table Captain said nervously “Ready for your Catorcena? We certainly are.” His eyes kept shifting from me to the veiled figures, then back again.

Normally, of course, people have their Catorcena parties at home, but in our case, that was out of the question, and so my party would be here at the Officers’ Club. Ever since my sixth birthday, when Poppy ruined my party by standing on the roof of the garden shed and screaming at the goddess to strike him with lightning, I’ve had all my parties at the O Club.

“I am ready,” I said, in a bright oh-I-am-just-a-harmless-silly-girl voice.

One of the figures swiveled in my direction, and somehow, just somehow, I knew it was looking at me. Suddenly I did not feel silly at all; I felt like someone was trying to rummage around in my head, picking through my thoughts, examining my teeth, poking my muscles, fiddling fingers in my brain. It was a horrible tickly feeling and made my insides feel all squirmy. I shook my head, but the feeling did not go away.

The veiling over the figure’s head, I saw now, was sheer, but probably transparent enough to see through. The figure reached up a hand, long and graceful, bangled around the wrists with bracelets of jade and gold, and lifted the veil.

Two great eagle eyes stared at me, wide and unblinking, golden as an egg yolk. Above the eyes, iridescent feathers tufted upward into a quiff, and below, curved a sharp black beak.

A Quetzal! A Huitzil sacred guard. Never had I seen one, except as crude drawings in
Nini Mo vs. the Eagle Guards.
They say that Quetzals are born to women who lie with eagles, and they hatch out of huge green eggs, squirming babies with shrieking eagle heads. They say that the Quetzals tear out the hearts of sacrificial slaves, then eat them while they still beat. They say the Quetzals have no human feelings of mercy and love, only bloodlust and the killing instinct.

This Quetzal nerved my blood to shivering, with its unblinking golden eyes, the elegant narrow hand, the human form now evident beneath the robes. Valefor isn’t human, but he seems human, he looks human, he acts human, and it’s easy to forget that he’s not. But this thing, despite its human attributes, had nothing in its eyes but a glittering hunger—the hunger of a predator. The Quetzal was unnatural, inhuman, and yet repellently beautiful, its sleek feathers shading from yellow amber into a deep yellow-red, the lethal beak as shiny black as wet ink. And those eyes, as round as two full moons, pitiless but also compelling.

I stood there, stock-still, caught in that gaze, unable to tear myself away. As mesmerized as a mouse who stands helplessly as death swoops down. Then the Quetzal let drop its veil and turned its great head away, dismissing me.

I turned and fled back to the safety of the dining room.

M
AMMA CAME BACK
a few minutes later, looking grim, and she did not eat her chocolate cake. Neither did I; for the first time in my life, chocolate cake held no charms for me. Dinner was officially over. Mamma and Lieutenant Sabre went back to Building Fifty-six, and Flynnie and I were sent home in Mamma’s barouche. Finally, I was alone, which was good because I could pretend normal no longer.

Back in the City, I got the driver, Sergeant Ziniea, to drop me at Hayes and Ash, near Case Tigger. It wasn’t terribly late, only around nine o’clock, but already the light in Udo’s room was out. The Landaðons are fiends on curfew, which is the one great negative whenever I stay with them.

Udo’s room is on the second floor, facing the alley, but there’s a handy dandy tree right outside his window. I have made the climb a zillion times, both up and down. I carefully opened the back-garden gate and stuffed Flynnie through, with stern instructions not to bark, and then swung myself upward. Udo’s window was open; the Landaóons are fiends for fresh air, too.

The streetlight across the road was angled just right to throw a few shadows on the floor of Udo’s room, and it showed the dim outline of a dresser and three beds. Poor Udo shares his bedroom with two younger brothers, but Gernot wets the bed and Gesilher kicks, so they all have their own beds.

“Udo,” I hissed. I banged my shin against the dresser and stifled a curse.

The biggest bed groaned. Kicking off my boots, I climbed over the trundle bed where Gesilher lay wadded under a mound of blankets. Udo’s bed is shaped like a sleigh and draped with curtains that hang from the ceiling. He always closes the curtains, as he bemoans his privacy. I brushed them aside. “Udo!”

Udo grunted and moved, half awake. “Go away, Ges—”

I poked him. “It’s me.”

“Flora?” he mumbled. Waking up Udo is like waking the dead. Actually, waking the dead is probably easier.

“Ayah, it’s me—wake up.” I poked again, then resorted to pinching. Udo jerked and rolled and then sat up, muffling curses. “Move over.” I crawled under the curtains and into the bed, and Udo drowsily made room for me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Mamma caught the Dainty Pirate!”

That news immediately snapped Udo alert. “What?!”

“Keep your voice down or you’ll wake the kids!”

“Buck got the Dainty Pirate? When? Where—”

“Is the house on fire?” Gesilher said from the darkness beyond Udo’s bed. He’s a worrier, always expecting to be poisoned, or burned, or smothered.

“Go back to sleep, kid,” Udo said, unkindly. “The house is not on fire.”

“Ayah.” Gesilher was quiet again.

I said, “I just came from the Presidio—Mamma is back from Angeles, and she’s captured the Dainty Pirate. He’s been held in secret, and he’s going to be hung tomorrow—” Here Udo groaned, but I continued, “He’s Boy Hansgen! The Dainty Pirate is Boy Hansgen, Nini Mo’s henchman—he’s been incognito all this time!”

Udo gurgled at my news and bounced on the bed. “Boy Hansgen! You’ve got to be joking me! Why was Boy Hansgen disguising himself as the Dainty Pirate?”

“I don’t know—but, Udo, they are going to hang him tomorrow night!”

“What about his trial? Doesn’t he get a trial?”

“There isn’t a trial, Udo. Mamma’s already signed the warrant. She wants to make sure he’s dead before anyone gets wind of it.”

Udo protested, “She can’t sentence him without a trial—”

“She’s done so, Udo, to keep him out of the hands of the Birdies. She’s keeping the peace—do you know what the public might do if the news gets out that the Dainty Pirate is Boy Hansgen? They could rally around him; it could cause riots—”

“You act as though you are defending Buck, that you think she is right, and you say that you are going to be a ranger—”

“I am not defending Mamma, Udo, I’m explaining the politics to you.”

“I don’t care about politics. I care about the Dainty Pirate being hung. What are we going to do—”

The door from the hall cracked open, slanting light into the room. I burrowed down into the blankets, and Udo groaned and made the fakest snore I’d ever heard. I lay as quiet as a tiny crab and tried to hold my breath. For what seemed like the longest time, the light shone in silence. Udo snored again, and then the door closed.

I burrowed upward. “You gotta keep it down, Udo! And I gotta get home; I don’t want Mamma to make it there first.”

Udo bent his head toward mine, so that our foreheads were almost touching, and whispered, “What are we going to do?”

“What
can
we do?”

“We have to rescue him...”

Rescue him! Was Udo
insane?
“We can’t rescue him—”

“Are you kidding, Flora? You are always going on about Nini Mo and what she would do. Do you think she’d let her own henchman go to the gallows? Put up or shut up, Flora!”

Udo was right about that, that’s for sure. Rangers are loyal to each other and stick hard to the rule
Leave no one behind.
When Nini Mo’s accountant was killed in a raid, she dragged his body fifty-five miles on muleback to return him to his family for proper burial. She would never stand aside and let her sidekick be executed.

“...those guns in the gun room,” Udo was saying, “and I have the pistol I got for my birthday last year; that’s enough firepower to storm the guardhouse—”

I was only half listening to him. Why couldn’t we rescue Boy Hansgen? All the way to Case Tigger, the knowledge that the last ranger would be executed tomorrow and I could do nothing about it had wormed and wiggled in my stomach like a bad egg sandwie. But Nini Mo says that what makes rangers stand apart from other people is that other people
don't
and rangers
do.
They act. Here was my chance to act like a ranger.

“No.” I interrupted Udo’s grandiose plan, which now involved two horse-drawn batteries and a squad of pikemen. “Nini Mo says you should only beard the bear in his den if you are coated in honey.”

“Wouldn’t that make the bear all the more likely to eat you?”

“She meant you should have the advantage before you face the enemy on his own turf. We don’t have the advantage. We will need to be subtle, and we certainly don’t want to get caught.” I had decided to act, and with that decision, my tum felt much better.

A desolate howl rose from outside the window.

“What the heck was that?” Udo asked.

“Snapperhead Flynn—he thinks he’s been abandoned—I have to get going—”

“We could wear masks—or Glamours!
The Eschata
was full of Glamours—Glamours that Confuse, Glamours that Befuddle, Glamours that Disguise.”

“Ummm...,” I said, considering. Udo was on to something.
The Eschata
did have an entire section devoted to Glamours, which only made sense, as rangers often require disguises, and the proper Glamour can disguise not only your face, but your whole body, too. “Lieutenant Sabre told Mamma that the Dainty Pirate would be transported to the Zoo Battery guardhouse tomorrow night, and thence to the gallows—”

“That’s perfect!” said Udo, bouncing the bed again. “The road to Zoo Battery goes out along the Pacifica Playa, and that’s beyond the City’s border and there’s nothing out there—no spectators, no witnesses. We could hijack the guard and steal the Dainty Pirate away!”

“He’ll be pretty well-guarded, Udo. I don’t think just the two of us, even in Glamours, could take an entire squad, maybe two. But if we had a release order...”

The order itself would be easy. I have a copious supply of official letterhead, which I have been nicking from offices for years, because you never know when official letterhead will come in handy. Udo’s handwriting is as good as any clerk’s, and I know all the official lingo. An Army special order is always achingly polite, full of
presents compliments, commends to your obedience, your humble servant.
I could very easily construct a special order demanding that the Dainty Pirate be handed to our custody.

“Can you forge Buck’s signature?” Udo asked. Another howl raised up in sorrow—a good reminder that I needed to get home before Mamma did.

I said, “It’s hard. I might be able to do something that would pass a casual glance, though probably not close scrutiny. But it’s not the signature—it’s the seal. We could never fake that.”

“Pigface Psychopomp. Can you kip her seal, then, while she’s sleeping or something?”

“I could, but I don’t know that it would be wise, anyway. I mean, the guard is sure to think something is fishy—why would Mamma condemn a man to death and then suddenly turn around and release him? They are sure to question. We need a release order from someone no one would dare question, someone whose word would be law unchallenged. Who ranks Mamma?”

“Lord Axacaya?” Udo asked.

I thought of the grim-visaged birds and Lord Axacaya’s demand, and a tiny thrill of revulsion rolled up my spine. “No. Who else?”

“The Warlord?”

I grinned in the darkness, and thought Nini Mo would approve mightily of my plan. “Ayah. The Warlord.”

I
CAUGHT THE HORSECAR
at Octavia. It was late enough that Flynn and I were the only riders, and the driver looked half asleep. Luckily, his horse knew the way. I sat at the very back, Flynn curled up on the seat behind me, and thought about our rescue plan. At the time of discussion, it had seemed the proper thing to do, but now it seemed like an awful chance. And yet, what kind of a ranger would I be if I did nothing to prevent Boy Hansgen from going to his death?