Firescape’s reconsidering of the move doesn’t impress Hismajesty. He is determined to follow Scrawl’s advice and bug out. I can tell she’s been chewin on his ear. Giving her best ooga-booga doom talk.
I bring up the bird beak and driftwood and Scrawl is quick to announce that it’s a portent. The Alcaldé will attempt to seize our queen by way of the Sea. Since the Regency Palace is practically on top of the Sea, that goes down like the Titanic. I note that Her M has nothing in common with driftwood, but no one hears me. The royal family is packed up and spirited away (belongings and household to follow) until such time as Firescape and the other Generals can put a stop to the threat.
Firescape, herself, is assigned to Hermajesty’s personal guard. Net result, I will be separated from her until I can pack up my workshop and all my magic crap and make the move.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I quote as we say polite goodbyes in the plaza before the Palace.
“Me too,” she admits. “I should stay and guard you and the Tree. Cinderblock could handle the Royal Family.”
“No, I understand. Hismajesty wants the best. That’s you, General Firescape.”
I smile and give her a tiny bottle of attar.
Her eyes get big. “What is it, a potion?”
I blush. “Attar of Fir. Smell it.”
She does. “It smells just like the Tree!”
I can tell she’s pleased.
“He helped me make it. It’s from his needles.”
She smiles and puts some on her neck, then tilts her head to one side. “Does it smell good on me, d’you think?”
I read this as an invitation to get close, so I do. Close enough to feel warmth coming off her skin.
“Smells great, General.”
“Jade,” she murmurs, tilting her head so she’s looking right into my eyes. “Jade Berengaria.”
“What?” I say, not daring to hope the potion is really working, and so soon.
“My real and secret names. Jade from my father; Berengaria from my mother. It means Spear Maiden. She picked it out at the Wiz. She wanted me to have a career in the Service — like her. She’s with the Border Guard, southeast.” She smiles, then gives me a kiss on the cheek. “See ya, Del.”
I hold my cheek and marvel. She has given me her real and secret names. Jade Berengaria. I roll the syllables in my head, let them fall from my tongue in a whisper. A precious jewel and a warrior maid. Perfect. Number one jade. I am boggled solemn with the significance of this: in two words, Firescape (Jade Berengaria Firescape) has given me the key to her very soul.
oOo
Late that night, an explosion rocks the neighborhood. It’s an old boatshed down on the Wharf that burns. A BIG boatshed. Lights up the waterfront for miles. When I reach the Wharf, a crowd has already gathered. I spy Creepy Lou standing there in the bright haze, scratching his head.
“You see it?” I ask.
“Just about. Looky-dooky.” He points at the pavement at his feet. In the wriggling light, the colors seem to move.
I squat. Effigy. And still wet. Hismajesty, by the painted crown, I think. And next to that, a cubist-looking Ampam struts off with-
“Lordy-lordy,” says Creepy Lou. “Voo-doo.”
“Naw. Scare tactics.”
Same style as the mural. I stand and look about the street. Kids are trying to get close enough to toast hoarded marshmallows and sausages from the knacker’s up on Mason. Other folks have brought buckets and stuff to carry away the leftover coals.
“Anybody see who did this?” I ask.
“Not much traffic along here.”
Creepy Lou unrolls his favorite blue hat and crams it over his head. Tufts of bleached yellow stick out around his ears like straw. He reminds me of the Scarecrow in the Oz books.
He grins at me. “If I only had a brain.”
I hate it when he does that. “You see anybody?”
“Shure. Thaw a bunch of kids and a clown I know from the Gee Gah. But he lives here.”
There is a big, hot whoosh as the roof of the shed falls in. The marshmallow roasters and coal collectors cheer and jostle.
“Huh,” says Lou. “Used to live here.”
I am appalled. “He wasn’t in there, was he?”
Creepy Lou shakes his head and I imagine I see a spider rappelling down his gaunt cheek.
“Naw. Look.”
I follow his scarecrow point to where a dejected looking clown wilts in the heat. I sidle over and Lou follows.
“S’cuse me,” I say. “This your place?”
The clown eyes me, realizes who and what I am and clutches my sleeve.
“Oh, please, great merlin! Please make the fire un-eat my digs!”
The Fireknighties have arrived now in a blast of sirens and air horns. The front wall collapses as they reel out, making the marshmallow crowd scatter.
I tell the clown that I regret his loss. Can’t do nothing for his old digs, but I for sure can get him new. I ask how he’d like to live in the Regency Palace for a while. Then, while he is kissing the hem of my sleeve, I ask if he saw how the fire started.
He shakes his purple frowze, tears trickling away his whiteface.
“Just got home. Just opening the door when something hits me — bonk — on the pate. It’s a fish head. Geez, I think, who’d throw fish heads at a clown? I’m pissed, see, so I head back across the pier to see who did the throwing. I get out there-“ — he points to the half-burnt planks that lead from the pavement to the big, smoking cinder — “-and I hear this popple-popple-popple! Then roar-whoosh! No more house.”
“Anybody about?”
He shrugs, his lips tremble. “Nobody that shouldn’a been.”
“You see the fish head tosser?”
“Just his butt for a flash.” He shrugs again. “Big butt, red happy-coat. Dime a billion around here.”
The clown is right. Among the residents of Embarcadero a red happy-coat is like brown eyes and black hair; everybody and his aunt Whoopee got ‘em. Hell, I got two.
“Poor dumb shit,” says Creepy Lou when I have sent the clown over to the Palace with a note for the steward. Then he grins. “Gonna make old Scrawl see reddy-red-red.”
“How so?”
“Hates clowns. Thays they give her creepy-crawlers. I thay she oughta check out the mirror.” He shivers enthusiastically. “Ooga-booga! Hates this clown most special ‘cause he dumped her ath!” He wheezes laughter. “Now he’s gonna be livin' with her!”
Lou goes off cackling while I wait for the Firebrigade to wrap things. I see Cinderblock about, playing detective. I go over to ask if she’s got anything. She does, but not much.
“Cheap fireworks from Wang’s Novelty on Du Pon Gai,” she says, holding up a wrinkled scrap of paper. Her nose is wrinkled, too. “Cheap fireworks and ethanol. Nasty combo.”
“Arson.”
“Count on it. Question is, why and who?” She squints at the major pile of charcoal. “I got my suspicions. Good thing we moved Hermajesty, huh?”
“Yeah. Looks that way.”
I am holding a hunk of crispy-fried wood, about to chuck it into my belt pouch, when suddenly, I feel like one of Creepy Lou’s spiders is crawling down my back.
“S'cuse me. I gotta talk to a clown.”
The Palace is empty without the majesties and their close, personal servants. It feels strange, creepy. The left-behind knighties are just straggling back in from the fire, their red and black jackets and spandies sooty. The smell of smoke follows them in.
I talk to the clown, whose name is Winky, but he can’t tell me anything more. Red happy-coat, he says and mumbles that somebody’s trying to kill him.
“Woulda been in there, ‘cept for that fish head. Saved my life. S’miracle.”
I’m not so sure.
Upstairs, I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong — that I am missing something. From my balcony I can see the glow of the ex-boatshed. The marshmallow people have moved in real close, stuff bobbing at the ends of their sticks. The coal collectors work around them.
I take Doug to the railing to show him the damage. He quivers and I apologize. I forget how nervous fire makes him.
He’s restless tonight and his boughs wave fitfully in the barest breeze. He leans west toward the Presidio. Of course, this is ‘cause the wind blows that way. My thoughts lean that way, too, ‘cause I worry about Firescape. This is stupid, of course, ‘cause Firescape is good at taking care of herself. Better than I am, I'm pretty sure.
I put my face to Doug’s needles to smell what is now Firescape’s scent, but the fragrance is carried away from me.
I close my eyes and beg to understand the runes I cast the night before. Nothing comes to me...except I can still see that dumb bird beak. After that, all I get is a rehash of stuff — the mural under the overhang, the one on the sidewalk. Same artist, I think — some Noe Valley smeagol with artistic flair. I see the sad, homeless clown that Scrawl hates and a firestarter in a red happy-coat.
Cheap fireworks from the Gee Gah and ethanol. And nobody sees nothing. Gotta have connections to get ethanol, or you gotta rob a stash. Or you gotta have a secret stash of your own.
There haven't been any stash robberies since God knows. The ethanol might’ve come from Potrero-Taraval, which also doesn’t make sense ‘cause our smeagols been telling us there’s no running machinery in Potrero — no cars, no buses, no lawn mowers, nada. And if you don’t have machinery what the hell do you need with ethanol?
Of course, maybe they just use it to blow things up. Which still leaves me with where the flammables came from. I just can’t picture somebody sneaking all the way from the Borderlands with a big old can of ethanol. Of course, the wall-crawlers and mural painters came in by boat. Two boats, Firescape said, one of which they left behind. Maybe they left behind more than a boat.
A thought comes to me which I throw away, not liking the smell. What if this too-close-to-home stuff isn’t Potreran do? What if somebody here is helping out? Somebody who could cadge fireworks from the Gee Gah and ethanol from a stash without getting the hairy eyeball.
I think for a split second about the old Chinese guy that I was convinced for five seconds once upon a time had tried to assassinate my liege lord. The whole idea seems pretty silly to me now. I mean, why would some old Chinese guy want to do in Hismajesty? Unless, of course, he was in the employ of Lord E Lordy.
Okay, that’s a maybe.
Another thought comes — a question. Why now? Hermajesty is at the Summer Palace by now, shivering in front of a giant fireplace, moping ‘cause the beds are so hard. First I think maybe the firestarter doesn’t know this. Then I think maybe the fire doesn’t have anything to do with Hermajesty.
Then I think maybe somebody just doesn’t like clowns.
oOo
In the morning nothing is clearer. I’d stop thinking about it except that Doug is so upset. His little boughs quiver like a cat’s whiskers. I move him to where the wreckage of the clown’s digs are not visible, but he is still twigged.
The air smells like soggy ashes. I ask if this is the problem. I inhale his perfume and close my eyes, but all I know is that I don’t see the Royal Party or Firescape. All I see is the burning boatshed.
Satisfied that Doug is merely feeling the effects of a wood-burner so close at hand, I go about my day’s business, packing a little here and there. Like Her M, I don’t really want to leave the Palace. But it’s damn lonely here, with the place so empty. The fire’s brought more knighties down to patrol the Wharf. Some of them are from the Knob and the Richmond and other areas, wearing a rainbow of colors. But most are Red Knighties and this makes me miss Firescape.
I’d even speak to Scrawl this morning, but she’s mad at me ‘cause of the clown and shakes her bony finger at me and gives me the Look-O-Doom.
“Bad times for you, Taco Face,” she says, “Bad times.”
I tell myself I’m not worried, but I cast runes anyway. First, I make certain the rotten old peach pit and tacks are where I left them on the shelf next to my can. They are. I study the rune-fall, looking for patterns. The damn bird beak is still there, so’s the piece of driftwood. Being lighter than the other stuff, they fall one way, the glass and metal and pebbles bounce away into a raggedy line along the edge of the table, like a sort of phalanx. I notice I missed a few tacks. They’re strewn amongst the pebbles and stuff; I don’t feel like picking them out, so I leave them there.
A little piece of paper lies between the beak and the wood. I pick it up and see that it’s the torn corner of the page from a book. There are page numbers on both sides: five and six. That makes eleven...or fifty-six, depending. Eleven or fifty-six what? Or is that even important?
Books. The torn corner is from a book. I decide this means I must consult the Wiz. But not now. It’s dark, late, and my head hurts. I sleep.
Sometime in the night, there is a big brouhaha. Pounding in the halls, noise in the streets. Eyes open, I see light dancing and weaving across the ceiling and walls of my room. I check all my windows and realize there is another fire somewhere on the Wharf. I dress and go out. In the street, knighties galore are headed for the piers and I hear the Firebrigade’s air horns.
The fire’s a monster — down near the Old Ferry Building, maybe it is the Old Ferry Building. That would be terrible; there are a lot of fisher families in that old place.
When I reach the Wharf road, I see it’s not the Ferry Building burning, but the two derelict hulks beached next door. Fireknighties are already pumping water onto them out of the Bay. While I watch, another troop comes along and starts spraying the Ferry Building. All I can do is stand there and mutter incantations to Tam Kung, who specializes in extinguishing fires, praying for a cold, thick fog — a helado at the very least — with no breeze.
Despite that my prayers are answered with a fog so thick it is almost wu pesado, the hulks burn for hours. Once the flames leap to the roof of the Ferry Building, making the crowds shriek and the Fireknighties scramble to pour on more water. They get it under control when the keel of the biggest boat collapses and the whole thing slides into the Bay. The water burns now, too — oily sheets of flame, little bonfires of floating junk. But the Ferry Building is safe.
When there’s nothing left onshore but embers, the coal collectors swarm in. Poor pickins — most of the coals are in the Bay. I stay till the end; till all the coal-gatherers have gone, till Cinderblock and her troops have gone over the area.
“Arson?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Hard to tell. Not much left. But...” — she looks out at the smoldering water — “...sure was a hell of a lot of fuel on those old barges — oil, gasoline. Big loss for those fishers.”
About which the fisher families are understandably pissed. I remind them that whoever did this could more easily have set fire to their old warehouses and then none of them would be here to bitch about it. I leave them grumbling and drag myself home, thanking God for the wu helado without which things might have been much different.
Back at the Palace that awful feeling comes over me again, so strong this time, I almost shake. Something is wrong. I try to reason with myself. It’s just the quiet. I’m not used to the Palace being so quiet, not any time of the day or night. There’s always somebody playing music or gaming or fighting or snooping the kitchens. There’s always something going on.
Now there’s nothing. No guardian knighties on patrol, no Squire and Squire’s many ladies. Nada.
But something is wrong, says this little voice in my head. I don’t realize how wrong until I’m in my room again with the lights on. I feel kicked in the head. The walls bleed glossy red with graffiti — one word over and over: GOTCHA. Just that: GOTCHA. Sure as hell did.
Doug is gone, pot and all.