Free Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo by Ysabeau S. Wilce Page A

hopes of reclaiming my family heritage would be
punto
final
. I’d be trapped in duty and paperwork, forever powerless.
    If my mood was foul, Buck’s was even fouler. Pow was on a poo strike and hadn’t produced all week. His grunting and wailing was keeping them both up, and so she was even less inclined to put up with budget overruns, missing returns, and squabbles over who was supposed to be in charge of painting over the anti-Birdie slogans that kept appearing on the wall of the Birdie Ambassador’s house. No one had seen or heard of the Dainty Pirate in over a year, but other pirates, equally ruthless and far less mannered, had taken his place, and their antics up and down the coast were giving her fits.
    Without Lieutenant Sabre to protect us, everyone in the office was feeling Buck’s teeth. She sent Private Hargrave to the stockade for spending too much time in the loo; she complained about Sergeant Carheña’s handwriting; she had a huge blowout with the quartermaster about how much money he had spent on flowers for the Infanta’s welcome-home parade. She even banished the dogs, Flynn included, for barking at a courier and waking Pow from his nap. The other clerks and I hunkered down at our desks and hoped to stay away from her bite, and we were not always successful.
    Then, on Friday afternoon, while I was at my desk working on yet another giant pile of paperwork with my forebrain and worrying about the wer-bear with my back brain, Buck called me into her office. Obeying her summons, I found her bent over her settee, changing Pow’s diaper.
    “Reporting as requested, sir,” I said. She handed me the soggy diaper and I threw it in the pail.
    “Have a seat, Flora, I need to talk to you.”
    For a moment I could hardly breathe. All the things that Buck could want to talk to me about ran through my head—the list was long and quite punitive.
    Buck sat down in her nursing chair, settling Pow in for a feed. Trying to act innocent and casual, although my insides were quivering, I plunked down on the settee.
    “I was at Saeta House just now, where I saw the Birdie Ambassador.”
    “Hmmmm?” I tried to sound noncommittal.
    “Did you meet his son, the Conde, at the Infantina’s birthday party?”
    “Well, ayah, yes.”
    She said, exasperated, “And you didn’t think to mention this to me?”
    “I didn’t think it was that important, really The kid was lost in the Zu-Zu’s haunted house. I just helped him get un-lost. That’s all. It was nothing.”
    Buck sighed. “Well, it was something. It was something to the Duque. Apparently he was so taken with your kindness toward his son that now he’s asking you to do him a favor.”
    “A favor?” I asked in horror. Surely the Conde hadn’t stuck to his desire to have me as his nanny. Pow was bad enough, but to be duenna to a Birdie? And the Birdie Ambassador’s son to boot?
No good deed goes unpunished
, Nini Mo said. I should have left that kid to wander the haunted house until he turned twenty-five or the reanimated alligators ate him, whichever came first.
    “The Duquesa de Xipe Totec, the Ambassador’s wife, was traveling to Califa with the Infanta. She took sick in Cuilihuacan and had to stay behind when the Infanta’s convoy moved on. Now she’s better, but she needs to be escorted from Cuilihuacan to rejoin the convoy The Ambassador asked a favor of me. Well, he couched it as a favor, but it wasn’t really It was an order. They say things so sweetly, the damn Birdies, as though you have a choice, but you never do. So you’ll have to go to Cuilihuacan and escort her back.”
    It took a moment for Buck’s words to sink in, and when they did, they sank all the way to the bottom of my boots, along with my heart and all my courage.
    Cuilihuacan!
    Cuilihuacan is in the Huitzil Empire. Buck was sending me into Birdieland. My body went stiff with panic. The Birdie Ambassador knew who I really was. He had to. Someone had betrayed me and now the