Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) by Ysabeau S. Wilce Read Free Book Online

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.
    “Azota! Azota! Azota!”
    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 pinpricked 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