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) (2 page)

Because soldiers cannot practice magick, of course. Adepts have one foot in the Waking World and one foot Elsewhere, and that’s hardly conducive to military discipline. Adepts are loyal to their Art first, the Warlord second—if at all. There’s no honor in magick, and a soldier, says Mamma, is nothing without honor. A soldier caught meddling in the Current would be shot.

I can’t be a soldier and a ranger, too. But I don’t dare tell Mamma that I will not go to the Barracks. Mamma never raises her voice or threatens, but her disapproval
hurts,
and she expects so much to be obeyed that everyone obeys her. Every Fyrdraaca for generations has gone to the Barracks, even the dogs. For my whole life, Mamma has spoken of duty and how important it is to be true to your family honor and to your country.

Even if this means being untrue to yourself.

A
S
C
OMMANDING
G
ENERAL
of the Army of Califa, Mamma is in charge of just about everything, so she is not much home—she’s always off on an inspection, or maneuvers, or at a grand council somewhere, or just working late. Thus, Crackpot’s crumbling is no particular bother to her. Idden, too, is nicely out of it, even if her current post, Fort Jones, is the back end of Nowhere. At least she can count on having someone else do her laundry and cook her supper.

Mostly just Poppy and I are stuck home alone, which really works out to just me alone, because Poppy only comes out of his Eyrie when the booze and cigarillos run out. Then he’s just a thin shadow in a worn cadet shawl and bloodstained frock coat creeping out the back door, off to buy more booze, so he hardly counts at all. Thus, it is me who reaps all the inconvenience.

When Mamma
is
home, she gets up at oh-dark-thirty and makes me get up with her, so that we can have family time at breakfast. This, of course, is not really family time, since Poppy isn’t there, and Idden isn’t there, and the First Flora isn’t there. On these occasions, it’s just Mamma and me, half a family, having half-a-family time. And since that’s all we are ever going to have, that’s what we have to learn to like.

It makes Mamma happy to pretend we are a happy family, so I sit and suffer through warmed-over takeaway and café au lait, and she asks me about school, and I ask her about work, and this morning time makes up for the fact that she stays at the War Department every night until ten and I usually eat supper alone.

But when Mamma is off on one of her trips, I sleep until the very last minute and rush off to Sanctuary School without my breakfast, but with an extra half hour of snore.

Now, the Butler may be banished, but that doesn’t mean that the House is entirely dead. Occasionally it groans and thrashes a bit, like a sleeping person whose body moves though her mind drifts far away. But it never moves like you would want it to, like before, when the potty would be next to your bedroom in the middle of the night, but tucked Elsewhere otherwise. Sometimes the long way is the short way and the short way is the long way, and occasionally there is no way at all.

This does not happen too often, because Mamma is strict that it should not. Before, the Butler kept Crackpot in order, but now it’s Mamma’s Will alone that keeps the House in line. She likes to be in control of things and usually is. But when Mamma is gone, her grip slips a bit, and then so does the way downstairs, or to the back door, or maybe even to the potty. The House moves not in a good and useful way, but in a horribly inconveniently annoying way. Sometimes you have to be careful.

Like the Elevator. Our rooms are spread along three floors, and it’s a bit of a hike to get from the kitchen in the basement up to my second-floor bedroom. The Elevator would be much quicker, but we aren’t supposed to use it without Mamma. Once, when I was just a tot, Poppy tried to take the Elevator back to his Eyrie. Mamma warned him not to, but he was drunk, and he roared that he would see her in hell before he’d take another order from her, General Fyrdraaca,
sir
! When he staggered onto the Elevator, the iron grille slammed just like an eyelid snapping shut in fear, with Poppy still cursing blue as the cage moved upward.

The Elevator came back empty a few minutes later, and for a full week, we could hear distant howling and shouting drifting around us, but always out of our reach. Poppy finally staggered out of the Door of Delectable Desires, disheveled and pale, and, without a word, started the long climb up the Stairs of Exuberance to his Eyrie, from which he did not stir for the next six months.

After that, Mamma made Idden and me swear not to use the Elevator without her. With her, the Elevator goes where it should: It wouldn’t dare do anything else. But she doesn’t trust it with the rest of us, and so I have to climb up and down a zillion stairs, which is a chore, particularly when you are loaded down with laundry.

And that’s where everything started—with the Elevator.

Mamma was gone on an inspection of Angeles Barracks, and I woke up on the sharp edge of running extremely late. I had been up until nearly three trying to write my stupid Catorcena speech—a total waste of time, for the speech is supposed to celebrate your family and future, and what about my family and future is there to celebrate? But I had stayed up half the night trying, and here was the result: I had overslept.

Tardiness is not encouraged at Sanctuary School. Most of the kids sleep there, and that I do not is a benefit Mamma arranged due to the need for someone to keep an eye on Poppy during her frequent absences. Of course, I’d rather sleep at Sanctuary, for Poppy is not someone you want to get stuck keeping an eye on. When he is good, there’s nothing to see, for he keeps to the Eyrie and is silent. When he is bad, he screams like a banshee and crashes furniture. But there are the dogs to consider, as well. If Poppy were left alone to feed them, they’d starve.

But anyway, I still have to be at Sanctuary on time, so I was in a tearing hurry. I’d already been late three times in the past month, which had gotten me only detention. But a fourth strike meant more than just detention. First, it meant a trip to the Holy Headmistress’s office, where Madama would sit me down and look at me sorrowfully, and tell me I must be mindful of my time because I was all that my mamma had left now that Idden had gone, and she
relied
on me. That would make me feel guilty, and I hate feeling guilty.

But even worse, then Madama would write Mamma a letter. And Mamma would come home and get that letter, and she would be superannoyed. Mamma superannoyed is fearsome. She doesn’t scream or whack, but she would give me the Look that has reduced colonels to tears, and then she would remind me about duty, honor, and responsibility. I would feel worse than guilty—I would feel ashamed. Having Mamma give you the Look is about the worst thing in the world. It means you’ve failed her. And she was sure to mention, too, how sad it was that I had failed her so close to my Catorcena.

My Catorcena was only a week off. It’s a big deal, turning fourteen, age of majority, legally an adult, wah-wah, suitable now to be received by the Warlord, wah-wah, and so it’s celebrated in big-deal style. There’s an assembly where you have to make a public speech about your family’s history and obligations and the responsibility of adulthood. There’s a reception where the Warlord greets you by name, thus acknowledging you as his loyal subject. It’s all very tedious, overwrought, and complicated—a big whoop-de-do.

For some kids, this is the highlight of their lives, maybe the only time they get to see the Warlord in his courtly glory (you can see the Warlord propping up a bar South of the Slot any old time you care to look), the only time they have a fancy party at which no one looks anywhere but at them, the only time they get huge gifties. But I don’t care about the Warlord in his courtly or noncourtly glory, and I don’t care about huge gifties, and I don’t care about fancy parties. And I certainly don’t care about making a stupid speech about the history of my horrible, sad, decaying family.

Most kids want to be adults; then they are in charge of themselves. But not Fyrdraacas. Mamma is always in charge of Fyrdraacas, no matter how old they are, and for me, being an adult means only that I will be old enough to go to the Barracks next semester, whether I want to or not. And I certainly do not, although I have not yet gotten up the nerve to tell Mamma so.

So, I dreaded my birthday, and because of dreading was avoiding, and because of avoiding was nowhere near ready. My dress was still in pieces, my speech was still idle scribbles, and my invitations were still mostly uninvited. Instead of getting ready, I’d been avoiding, but now I was going to have to get cracking. Mamma was coming back in two days and if I wasn’t ready, and there was a sorrowful letter from Madama tattling my tardiness, I would be in what Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, called A World of Hurt.

So, when I opened my eyes and realized the sun on the wall was the wrong angle to be
early,
I flew out of bed, flew through the bathroom, squeezed into my stays, threw on my kilt and pinafore, flew to the kitchen, and chucked the sleepy dogs out into the garden. I paused at the foot of the Stairs of Exuberance, but all was quiet in the Eyrie above. Perhaps Poppy was actually sleeping for once.

I grabbed a stale bun for breakfast, yanked my boots and redingote on, snatched up the dispatch case I use for a book bag, gave the dogs their biscuits, herded them into the mudroom, then flew to the stables. (Guess who mucks those out?) I fed Bonzo and Mouse and was about to pound toward the back gate when I remembered I had forgotten the overdue library book that I had sworn to Arch-Librarian Naberius I would return that very day. Not just any old library book, either, but a very rare copy of Nini Mo’s autobiography from Sanctuary’s special collections. If I didn’t get it back, he wasn’t going to let me borrow volume 2, and I’d never find out how she escaped from the Flayed Riders of Huitzil. The book still lay on the settee in my bedroom, where I’d been reading it after I gave up on the stupid speech.

So I turned and flew back to the House. And in my hurry, I decided that rather than go the long way back through the mudroom, into the Below Kitchen, up the Below Stairs, down the Upper Hall, up the Second Stairs, down the Hallway of Laborious Desire, by Mamma’s bedroom, by the potty, and finally to my room, I would take the Elevator. The long way is more certain, but it’s not called the long way because it is short.

If Idden had kept her promise to not use the Elevator, I don’t know, though she has always been a good one for doing what she is supposed to. But I don’t believe in following orders. If Idden hadn’t followed orders, she wouldn’t be rotting away in the back end of Nowhere, getting shot at by people hiding behind bushes. If Poppy hadn’t followed orders, he wouldn’t today be locked in his Eyrie, drunk as a hatter and twice as mad.

There’s a whole series of illustrated yellowback novels about Nini Mo called Nini Mo, Coyote Queen, and I’ve read every one more than once. The novels are a bit trashy and, of course, probably exaggerated for some effect, but not entirely untrue, for Nini Mo did have an exciting life. She was always having adventures and excitement and narrow escapes. I wouldn’t mind having adventures and excitement and narrow escapes, and you certainly don’t have those by following orders. Nini Mo didn’t follow orders.

So I don’t, either. When Mamma is not around, I use the Elevator all the time, and never have I had the tiniest lick of trouble. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if the Elevator showed me something new, but annoyingly it only ever goes two floors up. Poppy had been gone for a week—where did he go? How did he get back? What did he see? The part of Crackpot I can reach is small, but I know the House is much bigger, because from the stable roof, you see a wide spread of gables and buttresses, which I have never been able to reach.

What Mamma doesn’t know can’t hurt me, I thought. I was going to be late, but I didn’t dare go without that book, because Naberius is death to those who don’t bring his books back on time. I rushed back into the House, through the Below Kitchen, and up the Below Stairs.

I had forgotten the First Rule of Rangering:
Never let down your guard.

I
F THE
E
LEVATOR HAD
let me off where it was supposed to, at the Hallway of Laborious Desire, I would have been able to nip right into my bedroom, grab the book, and still make the 7:45 horsecar, and, hopefully, Archangel Bob wouldn’t even notice me creeping into morning assembly late. I am very good at creeping, although it’s quite a challenge to sneak by an eternally vigilant denizen.

But the stupid Elevator did not let me off at the Hallway of Laborious Desire. No, the stupid Elevator had slowly and silently borne me upward, gently floating as on a summer swell, and though I banged and shouted, the Elevator did not slow or stop. Past the second floor it went, past a third floor—we’d never had a third floor before—upward and upward it went, smooth and steady, until, with a grinding whine, it stopped. The golden outer doors opened to a thick darkness.

I had matches in my dispatch bag (among other useful things).
Be prepared,
says Nini Mo, but why use a trigger when there are other, more clever methods of gaining light?

I said. The Ignite Sigil was the only Gramatica Invocation I had mastered, but I had mastered it well, and now a spurt of magickal coldfire flowered in the darkness like a sparkler and illuminated the blackness beyond the closed grille of the Elevator. The wan light showed the hollow shadows of bulky furniture, abandoned and forlorn.