Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (17 page)

She hadn’t known there was a cupboard under the west staircase. It reeked of rising damp. Mouse droppings dotted the unpainted floor. Puggles was swathed in a crude overshirt and his knees were exposed. He didn’t move to cover them when he saw her. He did see her—she was sure of that, by the tracking of his eyes—but he couldn’t move his hands. Or he no longer cared about whether he was exposing his knees to his superior.

“Oh, Puggles,” she whispered. She sat right on his bed and took his fingers in hers. Clammy and lifeless, but not cold. “Can you tel me anything about what happened? Can you talk?” He blinked. The skin at his lower eyelids pouched, shadowy grey.

“I know you were behaving in proper service. I shal see you are tended to as you deserve, to the best of my ability. I want you to know that.” She swalowed. “Po. Po Understar. Do you understand?” There was no way of knowing if he did. She sat there, stroking the top of his hand, and then left him. Her escort returned her to her room. At least she was alone for a moment, for Murth and Rain were stil enjoying the herb garden. She should have gone to join them, but ten minutes of solitude was bliss itself.

She took up the Grimmerie and hoped, with the success of her little exercise in ice generation, that it might relent and alow her access to other pages, other spels, but as usual it kept its own counsel. She wanted to throw it out the window, but knew better.

After lunch, when Glinda was having a little lie-down with the shades drawn, Rain flapping a palmetto fan to keep the flies away and provide some breeze, a knock came at the door. One of the Menaciers handed Miss Murth a letter from Cherrystone to Lady Glinda. “I’l look at it later, Murth,” said Glinda, and she drifted off into a troubled rest. For a moment, or ten, she was back in Shiz, darting up some aley of flowering quinces, racing Elphaba to the fountain at the back of the quad. Elphaba was glowing with the effort—glowing emerald!—and Glinda, in her dream, was almost absent to herself, caught up in admiring her friend. It happened so seldom, vacating the prison of one’s limited apprehensions. Even dreams seemed ego-heavy, she thought as she was waking. But oh, to see Elphaba, even in dreams, is both reward and punishment, for it reminds me of my loss.

“Where’s Murth? I mean Miss Murth?” she asked Rain.

“Dunno.”

Thunder came up—real thunder, not dragon cry—and the long delayed cloudburst pummeled the house. Rain leaped to help Glinda slam the windows closed. She hoped someone downstairs would remember to shutter the windows to protect the parquetry, but with Murth caled away and Puggles incapacitated, the floor would probably be drenched and need refitting in the fal. Damn damn damn.

They played cards. The rain continued.

As long as Miss Murth was taking her time, they checked the Grimmerie. Again Rain could open it while Glinda could not, but as usual they could turn to no other page than the one that the Grimmerie seemed inclined to let them see.

By teatime Glinda suffered the throes of a snit gunning to become a rage. “I am expected to do everything around here?” she said to Rain.

“I’m a parrot,” said Rain from the top of the wardrobe. “Tweetle twee.”

When the felow arrived with afternoon tea, Glinda accosted him. “Where is Miss Murth? Find her and tel her to stop galivanting. She can’t be outside; she’s not alowed. Furthermore, it’s bucketing barrels out there.” She paused. Perhaps Miss Murth was tending to Puggles. Was there a tenderness between them?

No. Impossible. Not Murth. She wasn’t capable of that fine a feeling, and she wouldn’t inspire it in anyone else, either.

“Is Miss Murth with Puggles?” she snapped.

“I’m just doing your tea, Mum,” he said.

“Are you al imbecilic? Is that a requirement of enlisted men? It’s
Lady Glinda
!” She was losing it, big time. “Get me Murth!” At sundown, when the rain had finaly passed over and the heat returned as if the drenching had never happened, Zackers appeared. He had his cap twisted in his hands as if he was paying a social cal.

“What is it, Zackers?”

“You asked about Murth, Mum, and the General doesn’t understand.”

“What are you chattering about?”

“The note that the General sent you just after lunch, Mum.”

“There was a note,” said Rain helpfuly, leaping from wardrobe to the bed like a demented bandit monkey. The bedclothes flew up. “Isn’t it stil over there, under the what-chit?” A paper folded beneath the decanter of sherry. Glinda hurried to look.

Lady Glinda,

I regret the further inconvenience. In pursuance of your request to be allowed to name what member in your service might be released due to mounting pressures upon the household, I would like your recommendation. I would suggest the girl, as she must be of less service to you than your lady-in-waiting. I could use her somehow.

Cordially,

General Traper L. Cherrystone,

Hx. Red., Advanced

“This makes no sense to me. I did not receive it. I was napping.”

Zackers looked distinctly uncomfortable. “The General acted upon your suggestion.”

“I made no suggestion. I was napping, I tel you.”

He handed her a folded page of her own stationery.

General:

Under the circumstances, I shall release Miss Murth.

Lady Glinda of Mockbeggar Hall

Arduenna of the Uplands,

Dame Chuffrey,

Throne Minister Emerita,

Honorary Chair of Charities,

Patron of Saint Glinda’s in the Shale Shallows, etc., etc.

Murth had brought Glinda’s signature to too fine a facsimile.

2I.

She went to shove past Zackers as she had done past Cherrystone, but he blocked her way. “En’t alowed, Mum,” he said. “Quarantine.”

“Quarantine? What are you on about?”

“That’s what I’m told. You’re confined to your room. Meals wil be supplied.”

“What’s been done with Miss Murth?”

“I’ve got my orders.” Suddenly his pimples seemed a disguise; he was a man holding on to the scabby shield of youth to use it to his advantage. “You’d be wise to return to your room, Lady Glinda.” She fixed as spirited and venomous a look upon him as she could, but even within a moment she softened it. “Zackers. I don’t want to make trouble for you. Send for your commanding officer and we’l sort this out.”

“The General has given orders not to be disturbed.”

So she went into the room and closed the door. Rain had been jumping on the bed, and sat down
flump
with her legs outstretched. “Where’s Miss Murth gone off to?”

“Never you mind about that.” She went to the window and threw up the sash. Was there any way to escape? Her own windowsil extended to join a sort of stone rim or lintel, some three inches wide, that ran around the building, connecting al the windows on this level. She could not hope to get a purchase on a ledge that narrow.

She looked down. A nine-foot drop onto the flat roof of the balroom below. Even if one could leap or lower one’s self down under cover of darkness, the balroom was twenty-two feet high, she knew—

she’d had the room redone last year. The balroom stretched out in its own wing, and its windows on three sides opened onto terraces, so fevered dancers could cool themselves by taking the evening air. This meant there were no useful trees growing up near the building, no climbing cypress or espaliered ivy to serve as an escape route.

“I were a bird, I could just wing the air down,” said Rain, as if reading her thoughts.

“You won’t move an inch from my side unless I say so. Not one inch. Do you hear me?”

Rain fel asleep almost at once. Perhaps, thought Glinda somewhat guiltily, perhaps she never slept in anyone’s encircling arms before. They spent the night holding each other.

By morning it was clear that evacuation orders had been given. Breakfast was nothing but tea and slightly stale bread. If they sat very stil at the open window, they could hear the sound of the ships being roled to the launching point. How could they have been kitted out so quickly? Glinda supposed that, under a firm enough manager, three hundred men with time on their hands could achieve quite a lot.

At noon on this day of lancing summer light, Glinda began to hear the sound of the dragons. Their cry was at once serrated and tuneful. Glissandi of violoncelo interrupted by the yowls of cats in heat. Now that Glinda was realy and truly imprisoned, her aggressors clearly felt no more need for secrecy. The dragon trainers led the fearsome creatures around the east edge of the house, below the balroom. A military parade of sorts. Six of them. Perhaps one each to haul the four warships, and an extra dragon at the front and another to the rear, as sentries.

Fearsome? She thought she might never dream of anything else again. Each one of the foul creatures was ridden by a soldier in leather chaps. Each soldier, equipped with a whip and dirk, looked terrified.

Each leaned forward, wrapped obscenely around the neck of his mount, whispering to it. Dragonmasters. She had heard tel of such.

But the creatures themselves. Rain had told only the glamour part of it. Yes, there were scales that burned in the sun, imbrications of bronze and bruise-purple gold. But a lizardy dankness obtained as wel, the stench of the bog. Their skuls were shaped less like horses than like some strange elongated insect. And eyes! She remembered the glowing eyes of the Clock of the Time Dragon. Like genuine eyes, those had gleamed with life, but these actual dragon eyes looked polished, blank, black, deadly. They reflected al, they gave nothing away. “Pul back, lest one of them see you,” said Glinda, but Rain behaved as if she were at the parade of a traveling zoo. Glinda had to hold Rain’s hands to keep her from clapping.

“Let’s try the book one more time, shal we?” she said when the dragons had passed. Before they could pul it out, Zackers opened the door without knocking and Cherrystone strode in.

“I’m taking my leave,” he told her. “Zackers wil stay behind to see to your needs. I apologize for the inconveniences, but you can see why we couldn’t alow you the run of your house and the service of your aides.”

“Why do you not kil me, and save yourself the trouble of abusing my staff?” she said, putting Rain behind her and holding her in place with clamped hands. Nonetheless, she felt Rain peering around her hip.

“Depending on how the matter unfolds, you may yet come in use. Not to me—to your country. Your liberated staff wil have spread the word that you are detained against your wishes. Al of western Munchkinland knows that you are locked up here. Should we decide to sue for peace, you are advantageously placed as a loyal Ozian with strong affections for Munchkinland. A former Throne Minister with personal ties to the rebel province. Munchkinlanders would accept you as an emissary of the Emperor. We have arranged it for you to be ready to serve.”

“What have you done with Murth?”

He inched forward. In the heat of the impending battle was he going to kiss her at last? But he had in mind something more of a sneer. “Why should you care?” he said. “You don’t even know her first name.” She sputtered and thought of slapping him, but that would be too drawing-room farce. He said, “I want to take the girl with me.”

“I think the phrase is, over my dead body. And since you intend to keep me alive, you may as wel go off on your capers. Your days of being a tutor are through, anyway; you’ve got your army to manage.

Though I suppose now they’ve become a navy.”

“I’l take up the matter when I have completed the mission of the hour. Good afternoon, Lady Glinda.”

“May you freeze in hel.”

He gave the briefest of bows, not so much from the waist as from the chin, and turned to leave.

And the Grimmerie proved as recalcitrant as ever.

They watched the first of the ships rol into view on the water. Glinda had to admit there was something terrific about the sight. The ships were painted red and gold, from this distance looking like wooden cousins of the dragons. Their sails puffed out; the wind was strong and apparently from the right quarter. Behind the stubby masts Glinda and Rain tracked the movement of those stubby masts against the hils, which helped them mark the acceleration of two, then three ships. The fourth would be coming along.

From this distance the dragons resembled immense overheated ducks.

There would be no stopping a fleet with six dragons. Haugaard’s Keep was lost. But Rain didn’t need to be lost. There was stil time.

“Quick,” said Glinda. “How is your head for heights?”

“I’m gooder than a bird in any tree, Mum.”

It was too late to insist on
Auntie
or anything like that. “Can you balance yourself here without faling?”

Rain looked out the window at the three-inch ledge. “If there’s no big wind to scrape me down.”

“Blessings on you. There, that’s a prayer, best I can do. I’l give you a leg up.” She helped Rain out the lower sash. Thank Ozma the windows were tal; Rain could almost stand up straight before she’d scrambled out. She fit her naked feet (stil dirty, Glinda saw) this way and that, a dancer’s pose, until she was erect and balanced.

“Anyone’s walking in the rose garden’l see up my frock.”

“Never mind about that. Do you think you can safely inch beyond the edge of this window? Not far—only a bit at a time to see how it feels.”

“Oh, I’m a spider on a wal. It’s easy florins, this one.”

“Now listen to me, Rain. I want you to inch—if you feel you can—until you’re about halfway between this window and the next one. No farther. Have you anything on which to cling?”

“My fingernails.”

“That’l have to do.”

“What does I do when I gets there?”

“Just wait for further instructions. I am going to scream a little bit, but I don’t want you to be startled. I am only acting.”

“Acting?”

“Like the puppets in that play. I’m not realy screaming. It’s like—it’s like singing.”

“I didn’t know you sung, Mum. Songs, like?”

“Oh, I have lots of little talents. Cooking is the least of them.”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Don’t be snarky. Are you ready? You won’t be startled and lose your grip?”

“Spiders don’t fal off the wal when they hear a singer.”