Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (12 page)

He held out his hand, and I took it. As our palms touched, a little thrill went through me. But I shook off the feeling and said, businesslike, “Deal.”

A
LTHOUGH
I
HAD LEFT
my porthole open, my cabin was stifling hot. But at least there was no sign of Hardhands. I put on my nightgown and crawled into the narrow berth, Flynn settling down at my feet. The air coming in through the porthole was damp and my sheets felt sticky. Elodie’s potion had cured my tum but had done nothing for my nerves, which were now working overtime. I lay in my berth, listening to the creak of the hull, the snap of the sails, and bony Flynn, snoring on my feet. My busy brain careened from one thought to another. Pow and Poppy. The map and my Working. My last conversation with Buck. The wer-bear. The ghost of Hardhands. The eye in the mirror.

And Udo.

Mostly, I thought of Udo.

Once before, I had believed I had lost Udo, lost him to the Jack Boots, those malicious avatars of the outlaw Springheel Jack. After I saved him from the Jack Boots, I had sworn I would never underappreciate Udo again. But then he acted like a total jackass, and I was a bit of a jackass myself, and so we had parted. Let him do his Udo thing, hang with the Zu-Zu if he preferred her over me; well, that was just fine. Who needed Udo, anyway? And now he was gone, and unlike before, this time there was nothing I could do about it.

You never realize how much someone matters to you until it’s too late. So Udo was stuck-up and bossy? He was also loyal and kind. He’d saved my life, twice really, and I had given him the high hat. No one knew me better than Udo; he was my best friend, and how had I repaid him? I had been mean and slighting; I’d never taken him seriously.

I imagined Udo beaten and tortured, forced to walk the plank or keelhauled. Or what if Udo was redeemed, only to return home ruined, like Poppy? Or what if the pirates had already killed him? I didn’t care so much if the Birdies killed me, as long as Udo still lived. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and lit my lamp. I had a copy of the yellowback
Nini Mo in the Panopticon
in my trunk. I’d read it before, but it was still distracting.

Hours later, I ran out of Nini Mo and drifted into a dismal sleep, only to be woken up when a sudden roll of the ship almost tossed me out of bed. As I tried to sit up, the ship rolled even more violently and I hit the floor with a thump, Flynn landing on top of me, paws scrabbling painfully against my back. I shoved him off as the door to my cabin popped open and there stood Elodie, a little white-nightgowned ghost, holding a lantern.

“What happened? Did we hit something?” I asked groggily.

“No! Daddy is trying to outrun them!”

“Outrun who?”

“The pirates! He said to tell you to hide in case we are caught!”

Elodie disappeared. The ship was heaving and bucking, but I managed to hoist myself up on the bed, after banging my knee hard against the washstand. I peered out the porthole and saw only darkness and the spray of water, but I could tell that we were moving much faster than before. Could we outrun a pirate ship? I hoped, hoped, hoped so.

Footsteps pounded overhead, and the ship rolled so hard that Flynn and I were flung onto the floor again. My trunk slid, slamming against the door. For one sickening second, I thought the ship would roll right over and capsize. Water splashed in through my porthole. But with a screeching groan of wood, the ship righted itself. Flynn and I, and everything in the cabin not nailed down, slid again. I clambered to my feet and slammed the porthole cover closed. For the next twenty minutes or so, the ship leaped and rolled while Flynn and I huddled in our soggy berth. But eventually the ship began to slow.

We had not outrun the pirates.

I stumbled off the berth and pawed through my trunk for my gun belt. Elodie had said to hide; that sounded like an excellent idea, but if they found me, I wanted to be armed. As I was pulling my boots on, my cabin filled with a sickly white glow: the ghost of Hardhands.

“Yum, pirates,” Hardhands said jovially He was rubbing his skeletal hands together and licking his bloody lips. Flynn stared at Hardhands with wary eyes, a low growl buzzing out of his throat. “Aren’t you glad I stayed now, honey pie?”

“Quit it, Flynn! Thanks, but I can take care of myself.” The queasy feeling in my stomach told me that I hardly believed that statement myself. I went into the parlor, dragging Flynn behind me, Hardhands following. Elodie and Theo had vanished, probably into the bowels of the ship, where I hoped no pirates would ever find them. Good idea, but the only way out of the captain’s quarters led up to the deck. Footsteps thudded overhead, mingled with the clang of steel and a lot of screaming and shouting. It did not seem like a good idea to go topside, but the parlor was sadly bereft of places to hide. The furniture was too low for me to squeeze under, and there were no closets.

“Don’t worry, sweetie girl,” Hardhands said. “I won’t let them get you.”

Voices came from the stairs, loud angry voices, loud angry
pirate
voices. I ran back into my cabin, Flynn scrambling behind me, and slammed the door shut and locked it. This time, Hardhands did not follow.

I stuffed Flynn under the berth and was ready to squeeze in after him when the door rattled.
Rangers fight
, Nini Mo said, and if the pirates were going to get me, well, they could bleed a little first. The room was too small for gunfire, so I excavated my saber from my trunk. The words of Captain Bothwell, my saber instructor, raced through my head:
Strike as hard as you can—and don’t forget the bite!

The door jumped, as though someone had just slammed a giant boot against it. Flynn barked and I shushed him.

Someone sang out happily, “Come out, come out, little mouse!”

“What did you find?” another voice said. The door jumped again.

“I was here first, so it’s my spoils,” the first someone said.

“You got the last one. This one’s mine.”

The pounding stopped and was replaced by the sound of slapping. Let them fight; maybe they’d kill each other and I could escape over their dead bodies. No such luck. A muffled
oof
another smack, and then the second voice said, “I forgot. Sorry Course it’s your turn.”

The assault on my door resumed. The door vibrated on its hinges. The pirates shouted extremely nasty things. Flynn wormed out from under the bed and flung himself at the door, yipping frantically I pulled on the sash, trying to yank him back. I couldn’t swing at pirates with him in the way. At the next blow, surely the hinges would give way.

But there was no next blow. I heard, “What the fike? Don’t fike with me, Petey—” The voice choked off into a horrible gurgling sound. The other pirate began to wail like a siren. Flynn howled in sympathy The siren scream abruptly cut off, leaving Flynn’s howl to fill the silence. I clamped my hand hard over his muzzle and leaned forward, pressing my ear to the door. All I could hear was a faint slurpy sound. The lock on the door snapped up and the door began to open. I jumped back, swung my saber, felt it chop through empty air. Or, rather, through Hardhands, who stood in the doorway, licking something gooey off his long fingers.

“I told you that you needed my help, sweetling,” he said.

Behind him, the parlor was empty of pirates, but the wreckage of the room was festooned with red gooey
something
. A soggy red pile of clothes lay on the floor.

“What happened to the pirates?”

“Gone.” Hardhands giggled. He licked his fingers again. Flynn squirmed past me and eagerly nudged at one of the soggy piles. Squeezing by Hardhands, I pulled Flynn away from the gory pile.

“But they left their duds behind?” I kicked at the soggy clothes with a boot toe and then immediately wished I hadn’t.

“They didn’t need them anymore,” Hardhands said. “Want a taste? Bitter, but piquant. Very ripe.”

I shuddered. “Thanks, but no thanks.” Hardhands laughed as I dragged Flynn back to the cabin. He did not want to go; he wanted to stay and lick the blood off the walls. Too fiking bad. The immediate pirates might be taken care of, but I had no doubt there were more. I didn’t want to be wearing my nightgown when I faced them, so I quickly finished dressing. Since I was on duty, technically I was supposed to be in uniform all the time, but it seemed best not to advertise my military status, so I threw on a kilt and old jumper, and pulled the buckskin jacket over. I was buckling on my gun belt when Hardhands opened the door and announced, “Captain Ziyi has surrendered. They’ve rounded everyone up and are going through the ship’s manifesto. I daresay soon enough they will realize who is missing. And then they’ll come looking for you.”

I had studied a lot of tactics in the Barracks, but none of these tactics had covered retaking a ship from pirates. I was one person, with one gun and one saber. Nini Mo might have been able to take out that many pirates by herself (or maybe not, as her accounts of her adventures were apparently extremely exaggerated), but I sure as fike couldn’t do it. Not alone. But maybe with a little corpsey help...

“How many pirates can you eat?” I asked Hardhands.

“A lot, but not that many,” he admitted. “My appetite is not what it used to be, and pirates are a bit gamy for my taste.”

That left the Big Gun, which was not a gun at all. I could summon Pig. I had seen him take out the Quetzals and a kakodæmon. He could handle some pirates. But Paimon and Poppy had been adamant I save him for when All Else Failed. If his signature appeared in the Current, it would be an instant red flag that a Haðraaða was still around. I had used Pig before I’d known that, but Paimon had been able to cover my tracks. He might not be able to this time. All Else had not yet Failed. I should take my own chances.

Maybe the best thing to do was to surrender and hope for the best. Buck had said that the pirates were more interested in ransom than in murder, and that people wouldn’t pay for damaged relations. I hoped she was right. Just in case, I transferred all my valuables, including the wad of cash from Poppy and my toothbrush, to my dispatch case and then shoved it as far under my berth as it would go. But what to do with Snapperdog? Leave him and risk him barking up a storm and antagonizing the pirates? Or take him and still risk him antagonizing the pirates? Snapperdog made the decision for me by flinging himself into a frantic yipping dance when I tried to slide out the door without him. Surely I could persuade the pirates he was worth a fortune, too.

“Flora?” A voice drifted down the stairwell. I froze, a trill of hope ribboning through me. I would know that voice anywhere, and it wasn’t the voice of a pirate.

“Flora, are you here?” Flynn burst from my grip and dissolved into an ecstasy of barking and spraying, flinging himself at the figure tromping down the stairs. This figure was blindingly garish even in the dim swaying lamplight: banana-yellow frock coat, shiny purple boots, yellow kilt, and vivid purple weskit. An enormous yellow and purple tricorn perched upon the long rolls of yellow ringlets, as fat as sausages. A rapier swung from the black leather buckler he wore across his chest, and his cravat and cuffs were as frilly as one of Pow’s diaper covers.

Udo himself.

I
FELL UPON
U
DO
, not sure if I was beating on his chest in relief or anger, or a bit of both. His buckler cut into my chin, his lace cravat tickled my nose, his curls were slick with bear oil, and he smelled like a bagnio. But I didn’t care. He was overdressed, but he was safe and alive. Udo lifted me up, squeezing me breathless, saying, “Pigface, you don’t know how good it is to see you, Flora.”

“How did you escape?” I twisted my head away from his attempt to kiss me. “Put me down!”

“Well,” he said, and set me down, then bent to attend to Flynn’s insistent head-butting. “I didn’t exactly escape.”

“What do you mean?”

“I kinda joined them,” he said, looking rather sheepish.

“Udo!”
I shrieked, and this time there was no doubt I was beating on his chest in anger. He staggered back against my blows and his hat fell off. I hit the middle of his buckler, almost breaking my fist, and the pain only made me more furious.

“I thought you might be dead, or sold as a slave, or worse—and now you tell me that you joined the
pirates?”

He picked his hat up and brushed it off, protesting, “I would have sent you a message if I could have—but how could I ? And why are you so surprised? You know I always wanted to be a pirate!”

“I thought you’d given up that childish dream. The way you were cavorting with the Zu-Zu, I figured you’d forgotten all about it. Forgotten about everything but her.”

“Pigface, Flora! I had to make nice to her. It’s part of my job! I was undercover. Did you think I was serious?”

“You sure as hell sounded serious when you dumped me, Udo!”

“Dumped you! You dumped me! You said, since you were going to the Barracks and I was going to Saeta House, there was no point in pretending that we might have a future. You said that, not me!” As usual, Udo was twisting my words around. I hadn’t meant it the way he made it sound.

“But you agreed with me!”

“Only after you insisted! And then you sent all my letters back, so I figured what was the point? Why throw myself at someone who didn’t want me? The Zu-Zu may be stuck-up, but at least she’s honest. And she likes me the way I am; she’s not always sniping at me or trying to improve me—”

“What the fike does that mean, Udo Landaðon?” Before he could answer, another familiar voice—and this one not nearly as musical to my ears—called Udo’s name.

Like Udo, the Zu-Zu was now dressed à la piratical, though she wasn’t nearly as garish. Still, with the tricorn balanced rakishly over one eye, the flouncy black kilt, the knee-high black boots, and the spill of black lace at her throat, she looked fabulous. The smug look on her face showed that she knew it. In one hand, she carried an unsheathed rapier, and this she now flicked at me dismissively.