Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo (6 page)

Maybe he was already gone from the City, taking my map with him.

That was too depressing to contemplate. He
was
in the City and I
would
find him. Flynn’s not much of a tracker, but maybe I could borrow Sergeant Carheña’s beagle, take her back to the Grotto, and see what she could sniff out. She’s won Best Scent Hound in Califa three years in a row. It was worth a try.

But first I had to give the Zu-Zu honor that she didn’t deserve. As I stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the palace’s portico, trying to gather the enthusiasm to trudge upward, a gaggle of green-faced ghouls wafted by me, followed by the Man in Pink Bloomers arm-in-arm with a person in a furry cat suit crusted with fake blood. The Zu-Zu’s birthday party was a fancy-dress affair, with guests requested (ordered) to come as someone or something dead. (The Zu-Zu is very into doom and gloom.) My carriage had already rumbled away, and another vehicle now took its place: a huge black coach with the arms of the Huitzil Empire on its side, drawn by four heavy black horses and escorted by two more.

As the coach’s outriders dismounted, I stepped back into the shadow of one of the shark statues that framed the base of the steps. The outriders wore Birdie Army uniforms: dark green kilts and capes made of blue and gold feathers, gleaming iridescently in the torch light, their faces covered with leather masks. Another figure was climbing down from the guard’s seat on the back of the coach: a Quetzal, half eagle, half human, all horrible creepiness. I shrank back further. Last year I’d accidentally killed a Quetzal; I didn’t know if the others would hold a grudge against me, and I didn’t really didn’t want to find out.

While one officer held the horses, the other flipped down the coach’s steps and opened the door. Out stepped the Birdie Ambassador. The torch light flickering off the smoothness of his mask made the jade features seem briefly animated: lips curling, eyes blinking.

The Birdie Ambassador is a Flayed Priest; having long ago given up his own skin to his Hummingbird god, he now wears the skins of the poor snapperheads he forces to make the same sacrifice. Unlike the Ambassador, these poor people don’t survive their stripping. Tonight, no sign of a borrowed skin was visible; he was swathed
cap-á pied
in a cloak made of black feathers, the cape furled so tightly around his body that he looked cocooned.

The Ambassador went up the stairs with small delicate steps, the Quetzal following close behind. Even after the Ambassador disappeared through the portico, I stayed in the shadows and contemplated scarpering. Surely the Zu-Zu wouldn’t care if I showed or not. But if someone else noticed I was missing and that got back to Buck, I’d really be in deep. A demerit, maybe even charges. Best go, make an appearance, be tiny and insignificant and then leave. No one said I had to stay long, just that I had to show up.

At the top of the stairs, the portico was draped with funeral wreaths, white lilies woven with black ribbands. A smoldering burner of funeral incense sent up clouds of stenchy smoke. I followed a line of red luminaries away from Saeta House’s main entrance and down a narrow covered walkway. I seemed to be the last to arrive; there was no one behind me. The walkway wandered through a garden filled with skeletal trees and dead rosebushes. Cackling shadows wheeled overhead, blotting out the cloudy sky The air smelled like overblown roses and rotting meat. Ahead, a small marble building gleamed in the moonlight. The heavy iron door to the crypt was ajar.

Sighing heavily, I squeezed inside and found myself in a dark, narrow room lined with shelves full of marble jars: not a crypt, a columbarium. At the far end, light flickered. Sighing even more heavily, I followed the light down a flight of worn stone stairs, terminating at a small dock jutting over a rushing stream. Furfur, Saeta House’s denizen, stood morosely on the dock, holding up an ignis light. A small boat was tied to the dock, bobbing in the swift black water.

“Do you wish to pay homage to enter the realm of the dead?” he shouted over the roar of the water.

Not really
, I thought, but I answered, “I do, sieur.” I flung my hell-diva at him. He caught the coin and said dolefully, “Then embark.”

I looked at that tiny boat floating on water as slick and black as oil and suddenly wished I had scarpered. If Furfur hadn’t been watching, I might have turned and gone back—but that would be silly After kakodæmons, ghouls, and all the other horrible things that had tried to kill or eat me before, what the fike was a little boat ride?

There’s no way out but through
, Nini Mo said. Resigned to the fact that I was going to get wet, I took Furfur’s damp hand and stepped down into the boat.

“Where will it take me?” I asked. The boat jumped and jiggled, and I sat down quickly before I fell into the drink.

“To your death, of course,” Furfur said dramatically, and then paused. A latecomer was careening down the steps. He—a man, I thought, although it was hard to tell in the dim light—jumped into the boat, sending it heaving. I grabbed at the side of the boat to keep from being thrown out. The boat rocketed forward and the man sat down heavily, almost squashing me.

“Sorry,” he grunted.

Within seconds we were enveloped in absolute darkness. Wind blew hard against my face; I let go of my death grip on the boat long enough to mash my hat down on my head so it wouldn’t fly away The darkness around echoed with screams and shrieks, mixing with the roar of rushing air. We were not the only ones on Zu-Zu’s little joy ride.

The boat bounced like a wild mustang, turning dizzily, whirling my tum into a nauseous spin. My grip started to slide, and as I began to slip to the bottom of the boat, an iron hand fastened on me. I fell against my companion, and his arm snaked around my shoulders, holding me in place. He smelled of wet dog and sweetish pipeweed, oddly familiar. His arm felt reassuringly strong.

The boat picked up speed and swept along a series of sharp curves, flinging us against each other. He was big and squashy and every time he fell into me, I could hardly breathe. My organs sloshed inside my chest, my brain pinged in my skull, my vision glittered with white stars. The boat did a complete turnaround—my hat flew off—and then we were hurtling backward so quickly, I could barely suck any air into my lungs.

The boat revolved again and the darkness began to lighten. The water took on a sickly glow and wispy figures rose from its surface, sinuous boneless women with writhing hair: sylphs. They reached for us with talonlike fingers, their mouths gaping to reveal razor-sharp teeth, long tentacle-like tongues. The boat had slowed and now I could get air to scream. As a tentacle-tongue snapped toward me, I let out a yelp, the sound tearing at my throat, and then realized in horror that I had just screamed a Gramatica Command. The Command hit the sylphs and exploded. They howled and danced as they caught fire. We shot through the flames with a roar. Beneath my head, I felt my companion’s chest rumble with laughter.

The boat picked up speed and left the burning sylphs behind, but we weren’t out of it yet. Directly ahead, a shape loomed out of the water, large and slimy. Enormous jaws hinged open, revealing a dull red cavern, a writhing black eellike tongue, glittering pointy teeth as big as plowshares. The boat was hurtling directly into the gaping maw of Choronzon, Dæmon of Dispersion.

I shrieked again, and my companion bellowed, his chest heaving beneath me. He pushed my face away from the horrible sight, and like a coward, I shut my eyes, burying my head in the rough wet fur of his jacket. A blast of hot air scalded the back of my neck, and I cringed, already feeling the sharp shear of teeth on my tender flesh. A deluge of water hit me, and the shock of the cold drove me, for a second, into darkness.

Then I realized the roaring was gone, replaced with the rapid thump of a heartbeat. My cheek was pressed against warm, bare flesh, and the boat was barely moving. I jerked away, sitting up, and my companion relinquished his grip on me, yanking his jacket closed. Of course, Choronzon had been an illusion; we had rocketed right through the apparition and come out its other side, uneaten but soaked. Very funny, ha, ha, ha.

Now the boat drifted placidly through a small tunnel. Above us, a ribbed stone roof; around us, walls glowing green with mold. It wasn’t nearly as dark now, so when I turned to look at my companion, I could see him clearly.

And although I had never seen his face, I recognized him instantly.

“You are that bear!” I blurted, then cursed myself for being such an openmouthed fool.

“Bear? What bear?” he said sharply. He had a faint accent I couldn’t quite place.

“You know what I mean.”

“I assure you, madama, I do not,” he countered.

“I saw you in Califa’s Grotto.”

He shook his head, water drops flying. “I don’t think so.”

“Yes, I did. And you took my map!’

“What map?”

He looked so sincerely bewildered that for a moment I wavered. Maybe I was wrong—maybe I was crazy—but then, as he turned toward the roaring sound just ahead, a deep red light flared in the lenses of his eyes and I knew I was not.

“You know what map I mean,” I said, pitching my voice over the roaring, which had been getting louder as our boat drifted on. The walls of the cavern had narrowed; the ceiling was now so low that the wer-bear had to bend his head. He ignored me, looking straight ahead, his brow furrowed.

“Hey!”

He answered my call for attention by whipping around and catching me up in a bear hug. I flailed, but he had my arms pinned.

“Let me go!” I wheezed.

“Hold on!” he shouted in my ear. The roar became deafening. I couldn’t move, but I could see over his shoulder. Ahead of us, the water churned and foamed into the torrent of a waterfall.

“Hold on!” the wer-bear repeated. He braced his legs against the bottom of the boat. At that moment, Choronzon himself could not have pried me out of his arms.

B
UT LIKE THE EARLIER
apparition of Choronzon, the waterfall was an illusion. We jetted through the foam and slid down an incline that had just enough drop to generate another giant splash. The wer-bear got soaked but I was relatively dry, for his bulk had shielded me from the worst of the surge. We ended up in the bottom of the boat, where we lay, breathless and tangled. The hilt of my pistol was pressing painfully into my kidney, but he felt warm and solid and oddly comforting. And he smelled so good, of apple tobacco and the faint furry smell of dog. These days Udo smells like a bagnio. The fur jacket began to quiver and shake, and I realized he was laughing again.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded, feeling a bit foolish for the tightness of my grip.

“That we did not drown,” the wer-bear said. “And that we almost pissed our drawers!”

“I didn’t almost piss my drawers!” I said hotly, trying to untangle my legs from his. He raised himself back up onto the seat, still smiling. The spray had sprung his hair into fat coils so dense it was hard to tell where they stopped and his jacket began. He wasn’t handsome, but he had beautiful eyes, slate gray with a bluish tinge to the iris. They reminded me of the glacier water that runs down from Mount Astar, cool and tingly and they were all the more vivid in contrast to the darkness of his skin.

“Didn’t you?” he countered, still smiling.

“No!”

“Liar!”

“Fike you!” My curse sparked pink with Current. The wer-bear’s laughter turned sour, and he glared at me, eyes icy With a hard jolt, the boat came to an abrupt stop against a set of stairs. The wer-bear jumped up and out, his sudden exit almost ditching me into the water.

I followed, determined not to let him get away, but his long legs quickly outpaced me. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, puffing heavily, he was long gone.

Still, I hurried after him, through a mazelike series of rooms, each one with a lovely special surprise. In a blood-splattered morgue, I ran a gauntlet of chittering cadavers, trailing sheets and entrails. In a dusty ossuary, I was menaced by a clacking gaggle of skeletons wielding their own bones like swords. I waded through a swampy garden lit by foxfire, where a reanimated alligator snapped its jaws at me until I kicked it in the nose. And on and on and on. The Zu-Zu’s Horror House was never-ending.

By the distant shrieks I heard as I made my way through the maze, I could tell others were finding the horror house happily scary I wasn’t impressed, just irritated. If the Zu-Zu had ever faced a real danger in her life, then maybe she wouldn’t be so hot on facing imaginary ones now.

Finally, after descending a flight of slimy stone stairs, I came to a dungeon. Next to an iron maiden, a small child sat on a bloodstained block, crying piteously. Another one of the Zu-Zu’s ghastly little gags, probably. Figuring he’d go at me with an ax or something if I got too close, I gave him a wide berth as I crossed the room. But as I was ducking under a gibbet, the kid gave an anguished cry.

“I want to go home!”

“You me and both, kid,” I said, realizing that he was another guest. And he was as fed up as I was.

“Take me home!” the kid demanded. He stood up, hands on hips. Now that he had my attention, the piteousness had dissolved into cockiness. And he certainly wasn’t lacking in flash. He wore a dark purple coat, with puffed and slashed sleeves, puffy purple trunk hose, bright gold stockings, red-toed bootees, and a high-brimmed, buckled hat topped off with a quiff of golden plumes. A small sword hung from the golden buckler slung across his small chest. His face, however, was dirty and streaky with tears and one of his stockings was falling down.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Don Baltasar Villaviciosa Ixtlilxóchitl Viana y Xipe Totec, Conde de Xolo,” the boy said imperiously. He doffed his hat and bent one knee in a Courtesy: To Those Lower Than Me. “But tonight I am the Dainty Pirate!”

Are you now, puggie?
I thought. The Dainty Pirate wasn’t dead, but of course this kid had no way of knowing that. Then his name sank in.

“Did you say your name was Xipe Totec? Like the Birdie, I mean, like the Huitzil Ambassador?”