Nebula Awards Showcase 2010 (45 page)

“Thank you, sieur, but please . . .” I grinned sweetly at him and turned the flutter up to hurricane level.

The Bruiser hesitated. I almost had him; I could feel it. He was going to let me through. Then, just as he was about, I was sure, to give in to my sweet flattery, there was a roaring cheer, and the club plunged into darkness. Red and white sparks arced into the air, and a drum pounded like thunder. In the spitting, sparking light, I saw that the Bruiser was gone, and the stage-access door firmly closed.

Pigface Psychopomp, I had been so close!

Well, there was still the outside backstage door. Firemonkey had to leave the club somehow, at some time, right? And maybe I would have better luck with the Bruiser stationed there, or maybe the door was left unguarded and was merely locked. Without an audience, I was confident that I could pop the lock pretty quickly. Lock-picking is an elementary skill I mastered when I was just a tot.

I pushed through the crowd, which was now bouncing up and down to the heartbeat rhythm of Weatherhead’s music. The drone was so loud, it made my ears ring, vibrated my legs, and made the back of my throat hum and buzz. Spicy black fog rolled down off the stage, parting long enough to give a quick glance at a yellow mackintosh spastically jerking across the stage. Something wet and spongy hit my head, bounced off my shoulder; my hand came away wet and red, smelling of liver. Weatherhead were throwing organ meat.

I had just washed my hair that morning; time to take cover. And I had to potty. Better get that done before I started on lock-picking. I kicked my way down the stairs toward the pisser, looking out hopefully for Udo, but not seeing him anywhere.

The pisser was full of jostling girls trying to adjust cleavage and maquillage in front of a cracked wall mirror. After the darkness of the club, the bright gaslights made my eyes water. In the mirror, my reflection was raccoon-eyed with smudged black eyeliner. My hair looked like I had been hit by a bolt of lightning; it stuck straight out from my head in a frizzy red halo. I wetted my hands and tried to smooth it back down, though I knew that would only make the frizz worse.

A wolfgirl exited a stall and I nipped in before the door slammed shut behind her. The walls of the stall were scrawled with graffiti, and what wasn’t illegible was obscene enough that I wished it
were
illegible. The floor was slick—I hoped it was water, but maybe it wasn’t. Greenish water gurgled in the toilet, which was missing its seat. Even before Poppy started cleaning, the potty at Crackpot had never been half this bad. Our outside bog, which we have to resort to if the inside pipes get plugged, is dark and spidery and the seat has splinters, but it is never this horrible. But I really had to go.
Don’t stand on ceremony when you gotta squat,
said Nini Mo.

I tucked my kilts up as high as I could and was glad that I had remembered my hankie; of course there was no potty paper. I was about to cautiously squat, when there was a loud gurgle behind me and a splash of cold wetness on my hinder. I jerked up and around. The water in the toilet was bubbling, and these bubbles were popping into an awful smell. I buried my nose in the crook of my arm, trying to drown out the stench with the smell of lavender laundry soap.

“Hey!” The stall door behind me thumped. “I gotta go! Hurry up!”

Nasty water began to rise up and over the toilet’s rim, and I danced back. Something was starting to slither up out of the water. This something was shaped like a long wiggly parsnip: a pallid white tentacle. Long and pointy, its tip was covered with suckers, just like the little squiddies that Mamma loves so much, marinated in soy sauce and grilled. Only this tentacle was much, much bigger. Bigger around than my arm, in fact, with suckers as large as tea cakes.

“I GOTTA GO!” The door banged again. The tentacle wiggled in the air, bending this way and that, as though it was searching for something. I stood like a rock, motionless, hoping that the tentacle wouldn’t notice me. I couldn’t open the stall door without moving toward the tentacle, and this seemed like a very bad idea. It paused for a second; I held my breath. The tip pulsated bright red, and the rest of it blushed a deep pink; and then, with a lashlike motion, the tentacle snapped toward me.

I jerked back, banging against the stall door—not far enough. The tentacle had grabbed a wad of my kilt. I twisted and turned, trying to get free without ripping my kilt too badly, but the tentacle had a hard grip.

I grabbed my kilt hem and yanked. The fabric tore and I was free. I pressed against the door and tried to flatten myself down as though I were a piece of paper. The tentacle jabbed in my direction, but it seemed to be at the end of its reach, and I was now out of range. Out of range, but trapped.

Carry the important stuff on you,
Nini Mo said, and there are few things more important than fire. I fumbled in the inside pocket of my redingote and found the trigger case I had
borrowed
from Poppy (who didn’t need his smoking encouraged with easy access to matches). The tentacle was straining and stretching; it knew I was just out of reach, and was trying to close the gap. With fumbly fingers I managed to open the silver case, withdraw a match, and strike it against the wall. The triggers were supposed to strike anywhere. The match head sputtered and did not light.

“Pigface!” I swore, and shook out another trigger. My hands were shaking in a most unrangery way. I didn’t look in the direction of the tentacle, but I knew by the sloshing sound that it was still there. I flicked the second match head with my finger; the trigger snapped and blossomed into a happy orange flame, small but hot.

I flicked this match onto the tentacle, which writhed and withdrew, but then shot forward like a striking rattlesnake and grabbed my waist, almost yanking me off my feet. I dug my heels in and grabbed onto the purse-ledge, but the metal shelf was slick and my hands slid right off it. The tentacle squeezed tightly; my lungs sucked together and for a moment the world went spotty black. Only the steel bones of my stays were keeping me from being snapped in two; putrid water sloshed over my toes. My knife was in my boot; I couldn’t reach it.

Then I remembered the fan hanging at my waist, tucked into one of Mamma’s old sabre slings. Paimon had given it to me as a part of my Catorcena outfit, and though it looked fragile and delicate, the tips of its ribs were razor sharp. Now I fumbled for it, wincing at the slimy slick warmth of the tentacle—luckily the fan case itself was hidden in the folds of my kilt. Gasping for breath, I managed to hook a finger into the ring at the end of the fan and pull hard. The fan flew up in the air, and I caught it, ripped it open with a flick of my wrist, and slashed it downward.

The razor barbs of the fan sliced the tentacle like it was butter. Spurting slime, the tentacle let go of my waist, wiggling and writhing. I slashed again. The tentacle slithered back toward the potty, and I pursued it, hacking at it. With a giant slurp it sucked back into the water and was gone.

The stall tilted up—I fell against the door heavily, banging hard against the purse-ledge. Plaster showered down, and outside the stall door, people began to squeal. The trembler stopped abruptly. I yanked the door and stumbled out, running into a pissy-looking dollymop.

“Took enough time! Pigface, what the hell were you doing in there? Contemplating infinity?” She started to push by me. “I almost peed my drawers.”

“You’d better be careful,” I said breathlessly. “Something grabbed me.”

“What?” The girl paused.

“Something crawled out of the toilet and tried to grab me.”

The girl peered into the stall, then said scornfully, “There’s nothing in there, snapperhead. You’ve had too much jake.”

I peered around her, and indeed there was no tentacle, no bubbly water, no slime. The toilet stood serenely in the middle of the stall. The floor wasn’t even wet. The trigger case lay where I had dropped it, and I leaned over to scoop it up.

Had I imagined the whole thing? I held up the fan; glowing green slime dripped off the barbs.

I had not.

I
staggered out of the pisser into a roar that practically propelled me backward. Most of this roar was music: the high-pitched, whiny grind of a hurdy-gurdy; the dull, headachy throb of a bass propelled by staccato drumming. But some of it was shouting, a persistent chant I couldn’t understand. I recognized the tune, though: “Nonny O!,” the Horses of Instruction’s most popular song.

The tentacle had really unnerved me, and my desire to get far, far away from that toilet was really strong. All I wanted now was to go home.
Rangers don’t retreat,
said Nini Mo,
but they know when to regroup
. The Horses of Instruction might just be starting, but I was done.

I fought my way through the noise, which was like trying to stand against a high wind, elbowing through the crowd, trying to find Udo, so together we could make our escape. The hall was dark, lit only by intermittent flashes, and when these split the gloom like bolts of lightning, I saw a hazy, gyrating mass of people, thickly packed. The figures were indistinct, shadowy, and none of them seemed to be Udo. Where had he gone, the snapperhead, just when I needed him most? I slid between a woman in a heavy leather jacket, well festooned with chains, and a bald man coated in silvery paint, and found myself at the stage.

Above my head, the stage lights flickered with a garish blue glow, illuminating Firemonkey, blackish-green hair straggling out from under a soggy tricorn, pumping at the handle of a hurdy-gurdy as though he were possessed. To his left, a cadaver flogged an upright bass; on his right, the duster twanged on a banjo that hung down around black leather knees. This close to the band, the noise made my ears ring and my stomach heave; Firemonkey must have invoked the biggest amplification dæmon ever to get such loudness. Forget Udo, I had to get out of the Poodle Dog before I puked. He’d have to make it home on his own. But before I could turn around and try to push my way to open air, the music stopped. The audience continued to chant. Suddenly I understood what they were shouting.

The Butcher Brakespeare’s nickname.

Firemonkey raised up his hand and, when the crowd quieted, cried, “She died so that we might live!”

At first I thought he meant the Goddess Califa, but when the crowd resumed its chanting, I realized he was referring to the Butcher. Firemonkey raised his hand again, and again waited a few seconds for the chanting to die down.

“But despite her sacrifice, we live like slaves! Should Florian not die so that we may live free? So that Azota shall not have sacrificed in vain?”

The crowd howled its agreement.

The queasy feeling in my stomach suddenly had nothing whatsoever to do with the music and everything to do with the fact that Firemonkey was preaching treason. I remembered the militia outside; nothing riles them faster than someone stirring up a crowd to sedition. I had no desire to end the night in the City Gaol; I would miss my curfew for sure, then. My urge to get out of the Poodle Dog became overwhelming. But despite my kicking and prodding, I was stuck. The people around me were staring raptly upward, immobile.

“Cierra Califa!”
Firemonkey cried, and threw his arms wide. A huge curl of coldfire roiled out of his greatcoat. The coldfire flowed upward, twisting and turning until it formed an insignia that glowed in the darkness like a rope of fire: the sinuous twist of an azota, a riding whip, the source of the Butcher’s nickname.

“Azota and Cierra Califa!”
Firemonkey roared, and the crowd roared back while the band launched into “Califa Strong and Mighty.” The crowd began to gyrate and bounce again in time to the music, their chanting frenzied. But then abruptly the overhead lights flipped on, and the coldfire insignia was suddenly invisible in the bright glare. The roars of excitement were pin-pricked with screams.

“In the name of the Warlord, you are all under arrest!” someone shouted from the back of the hall. The crowd erupted into screaming and pushing.
The best place to be in a stampede,
said Nini Mo,
is not in a stampede
. But I was still stuck, pressed hard up against the stage. The crush was suffocating; I could barely breathe, and what air I was able to gasp was tainted with smoke and perfume. If I went down, I’d be trampled underfoot in no time, and there’d be nothing left of Flora but goo on the soles of a lot of supertrendy shoes.

Then an iron grip grabbed my shoulders and hauled me up over the edge of the stage. I stumbled upright, wheezing. The Horses of Instruction’s banjo player had me by the arm and was now dragging me across the stage. Firemonkey and the cadaver had disappeared; the chubby drummer was still drumming, his head flinging back and forth like a pendulum, heedless of the pandemonium. The banjo player and I ran into the wings, past the amplification dæmon still caught in his protection circle. He snapped his crocodile-long jaws at us as we passed, but the charged circle held and his gnashing teeth snapped empty air.

Backstage was a melee of frantic roadies and screaming groupies. The banjo player was taller than me and used that height and bulk to clear a path. Shoving people out of our way, we ran down a corridor, and then flung ourselves through a doorway. I fell against a row of costumes, coughing and wheezing, my lungs burning. A bright girdle of pain now encircled my waist where the tentacle had squeezed me. I coughed until it felt as though my lungs had been torn into fragments, but when I was done, despite the pain, I felt better. At least I could breathe again. The banjo player had slammed the door shut behind us and now leaned against it, regarding me.

“You all right?”

“Ayah. Thanks for grabbing me.”

“My pleasure, Tinks.”

The banjo player pulled off the wide-brimmed hat. And there was my sister Idden, grinning at me, looking exactly the same as the last time I had seen her. Except that now she was as bald as an egg.