“Good! Wonderful!” September cried. “Insult away!” She felt very silly all of the sudden. Her cheeks burned. All their subterfuge and careful creeping and they could just have told everyone she was the Queen and had their pick of Mumkeep’s plunder! Now she had a tattoo and might possibly be married when all she had to say was I’m the Queen, give me what I want.
That’s all right, my girl. Don’t fret. Power is a coat that’s always too small. It takes time to wear it in, to feel like it’s really yours, to fill up the pockets with your own lint and house keys and slips of right and wrong with cat’s fur hanging off them. And for people with hearts as quick and raw and hungry as September’s, that coat will never fit quite right.
“If you’ll excuse me,” said the Blue Wind, tapping a wrist with no watch on it. “I’m rather busy with a rabid cloudicorn just now, so if we could speed things along, that’d be swell, thanks. Another heist or two and I’ll have the Heart in my hands.”
“You’re lying,” September said hopefully. Could they be so far off track? No, no, there was something important here. There had to be. The Blue Wind winked at her and shrugged. I might be. I might be Queen already.
Cutty Soames stomped his foot twice, and then again, as doing anything only twice always left him feeling unfinished. “Name the weapons, you half-boiled robin’s egg! By lime and vinegar, I’ve met doldrums quicker than you.”
The Blue Wind stroked the ends of her azure hair and thought. She took her time, but only because she knew it galled everyone something fierce. She’d chosen before Cutty called her an egg. Just after the octopus called the Coblynow’s beloved robber’s paradise, Port Pelerine, by the perfectly delicious name of Snotropolis.
“Very well!” The Blue Wind raised her sapphire-ringed hands inside her porthole. “Hold on to your parasols! I choose … Insults! That way at least I’ll get a giggle out of it. And the cloudicorn may overhear and start feeling bad about herself. Without their bottomless cauldrons of scalding self-esteem, cloudicorns have no power.”
September grimaced in her mask. “Can’t it ever be anything I’m good at?” She knew it wasn’t Queenly to complain, but she didn’t feel particularly royal just then. But then, what would that be? Sailing a raft with a dress? Singing? Competitive automotive tinkering? Infuriating the upper class wherever she found them?
“Nope!” the Blue Wind said cheerfully. “Where would be the fun in that? Come on, September, you can’t always be so nice all the time! Get ill-tempered for me! Show me irascible! Or are you just a fluffy little dandelion seed waiting to be huffed and puffed into nothing by a drunken field mouse? See? It’s easy!”
The Night Wagon came about, turning the broad, bony breast of its sea horse body to September, who suddenly wished she hadn’t gotten out of Fizzwilliam’s nice, safe, very metal tub. The Pieces of Eight bolted back into their glass jars like a flock of fiery rare birds who had just sighted a man who works for the city zoo. Sepia and Brother Tinpan shrunk down into the coral opera house. The cuttlefish went dark, snuffing out all the lovely lights under her skin.
Cutty Soames got a good gust of breath up under his lungs. He boomed out: “Go pick lice off your mother’s backside, you lazy, saucepan-headed ape! You couldn’t rule a side of steamed carrots, you unbearable, unremarkable, unmagical sack of giggling baby toys!”
September recoiled as though he’d shot her in the chest with his flintlock. Part of her, the part that had been the Spinster, thought he could have done better than lazy, but the rest was quite good stuff. But the part of her that had always been September felt herself right back in school, staring at Martha May, a girl with red hair who’d just slapped her for no reason but that she could and no one would punish her. Hearing all the whispers of Martha May’s friends rising up like a nasty cold tide, filthy with words like freak, crazy, nitwit, and weirdo. She’d run home and got down on her hands and knees, trying to scrub those words out of her mind. But it never worked. She could always still see them, no matter how hard she scoured. She couldn’t think of anything to say to Martha May that day, even though it would have felt so good to lash out with something unspeakably clever and devastating. She’d reached for words to use like armor, but found nothing there. She was right. I am a freak. I am unremarkable. Everything that’s happened to me has only happened because of other, more interesting, stronger, more wonderful people. I’m nobody.