Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (76 page)

To Call the Lost Forward

I.

Avaric, Margreave of Tenmeadows, was waiting in front of the Bureau of National History to meet La Mombey’s conveyance. The Emperor had given him the dirty job of emcee at the armistice negotiations.

At first he wore the sneer of a playground monitor. Wel, the place was a shambles. No one had taken a broom to the city yet. The piazza was littered with fragments of marble Ozmas. The sound of trumpeteen and brass-flummery, though shril, inadequately masked the muttering of the mingy crowd.

It’s a loser’s job to broker the conference, thought Brrr, who peered from behind a toppled column. How surprising that they didn’t offer it to me.

The Lion was looking out for signs of Lir, on Rain’s behalf as wel as his own, but the Lion wasn’t eager to be recognized by Avaric. Later, Brrr would hold his tongue when people said of the Margreave that through the truce negotiations he had comported himself with a deference to the Eminence of Munchkinland that seemed little short of concupiscent. Such is the shame of the lawyer. Avaric, they whispered, had never managed to be that fawning even before His very Sacredness, the divine Emperor of Oz.

Which comment, true or not, attached itself to Avaric for the rest of his life and made public dining at the Oak Parlor in the Florinthwaite Club a bloody pain in the arse.

La Mombey alighted in uncinched bel-curves of pure white linen dropping from the shoulder. The mob of spider-things clustered about her with the devotion of bloodhounds until she clicked her fingers, and then they roled themselves up into bobbins and an assistant swept them into a casket. Once they were gone everyone breathed a bit more easily.

The Lion watched carefuly. He’d always possessed a decent eye for detail. He saw how Hiri Furkenstael might have treated the pomp of the occasion. How a student of the School of Bertius might have handled La Mombey’s bib, freely suggesting its pale mink tippets and its appliquéd off-white lozenges inscribed with sigils like letters in a foreign script.

He was memorizing the moment so he could tel his companions about it. How the pale beautiful woman appeared as a smudgy blankness, almost, among the colored leaves of those ornamental shrubs and trees that hadn’t been blasted by shrapnel. Something about her so—so lambent and concealed at once. Floating amid the blur of dissolving Ozmists, or was that sentiment clouding his eye? How to put it?

But so often, before words can rise to the mind to imply the ineffable, the ineffable has effed off. From his place near the ruined Hal of Approval, the Cowardly Lion watched the impossible happen: Loyal Oz faling to the upstart Free State of Munchkinland. Words would fail him, later on.

La Mombey paused so Avaric could approach her. In rounded public tones she summoned the Emperor of Oz to join her for a discussion of the terms of peace. Then her voice dropped, and Brrr couldn’t hear what else was said. After she retreated to her sledge, Avaric stood nodding and bobbing til it slid away. He turned almost at once to where Brrr was hunched behind broken stone. Apparently not hidden wel enough, then.

“Sir Brrr, Namory of Oz,” caled Avaric. Naturaly, thought Brrr, the only time my title is used in public is after the throne that conferred it has colapsed. Figures. “I see you there. I need your advice.” Brrr prowled up to the man who, once upon a time, had arranged the Lion’s plea bargain and brought him into service of the Emperor’s secret agencies hunting for the Grimmerie.

Avaric spoke as if they’d just falen in step somewhere in Oz Deer Park or along the Shiz Road. “A propitious time to return to the capital. Now that the army of Animals can lay down its—teeth. But I see you didn’t personaly drag in the sledge of La Mombey.”

“I’ve done enough menial toil in my day. That foursome of Tsebras managed an elegant enough job of it without me. Oh, are you implying I’ve arrived as part of a conquering army?
Me
? How drol. As if I was ever on the winning side. Realy, you flatter me.”

Brrr was glad the crowd had melted away with La Mombey’s departure. No one was close by to hear Avaric reply, “You were assigned to discover the whereabouts of the Grimmerie and you never returned. It’s not for me to prosecute you, but I’l remind you that you jumped probation as set by the magistrates of the Law Courts—”

“One might wonder if those resolutions have been nulified. Given that there’s about to be a new administration in Oz. Anyway, the Law Courts are in recess just now. I passed what was left of them on my way here.”

“Exactly so,” said Avaric. “Leaving other matters aside, I need your help. I can tel by your bedraggled state that you’ve been out and about on the streets of the city. Tel me what you know. What building left standing might be large and dignified enough to house the teams that wil work out the conditions for a ceasefire? The Palace is intact, or most of it is, but it might seem ungracious to invite La Mombey in for tea only to have the central dome colapse upon her.”

The Lion thought for a moment. “Wel. The People’s Academy of Art and Mechanics is closed for business. That’s out. The Lord Chuffrey Exposition Hal, which had such beautiful light, now has beautiful shadows. But I think the Lady’s Mystique, that smal theater on the edge of Goldhaven, is stil standing. And what luck—I’l bet the afternoon matinee has been canceled.”

“Too smal, and too—theatrical. The Emperor wil need room to be at some distance from La Mombey. Space around His Sacredness.” The Lion eventualy suggested the Aestheticum, a circular brick coliseum of sorts, long ago roofed over for trade shows. A place where antiques vendors displayed their wares—fine art, and the more colectable of historic furniture. He had once cut something of a figure among the great and the good who ran the Aestheticum, back when he had fancied himself a connoisseur. In exchange for any lingering obligation to the Throne Minister of Oz, current or future, to the extent that the Margreave could plead his case, the Lion agreed to make arrangements. “Deal?” asked Avaric.

“Deal,” said Brrr. “Though I suppose it would be overmuch to request an elevation of my title?”

“To Brrr bon Coward, Lord Level of Cowardly Custard and Environs?” Avaric hadn’t lost his capacity to sneer. Brrr realized he’d gone too far.

“Wel, tel me this then, because everyone’s asking,” he countered, as much to change the subject as to hear the reply. “Shel Thropp has shown little love for the people he ruled al these years, the people he’s driven into war and ruined. Why is he yielding to Mombey’s aerial attack? It can’t be concern for massive civilian death or the destruction of the Emerald City. Can he realy have begun to fear for his own life? Isn’t he immortal?”

“He’s the sort of immortal who wil live eternaly after his corruptible human sleeve—his shel, as it were—succumbs.” Avaric could talk political theology as smoothly as if he were discussing the point spread in a wager over the goosebal playoffs. “I suppose you know that his real name, the name given him by his unionist minister father, is Sheltergod?”

“And my real name is Birthdaysuit—” the Lion began, but Avaric cut him off.

“The name reflects a sentiment that some spark of the Unnamed God burns within us al. His Sacredness may have determined that he received the lion’s share—”

“Wel, he sure got mine, because I harbor no god within me. It sounds like worms. One would need castor oil, or dipping.”

“—but in the panic of La Mombey’s attack, and in sure and certain fear of an insurrection by his own folowers, he has been caled to yield.”

“Who caled him? Who gets to place that cal?”

“Now you’re being snarky. He caled himself, of course. Are we done?”

The Lion walked away. He didn’t mind sashaying this time. So God talks to himself. Just like the rest of us do.

Al the vendors had taken off during the first of the attacks and by now were either dead on the road amidst shreds of their favorite paintings or were lingering in some summer home waiting to hear news from the capital. The Aestheticum was boarded up. After some pounding and a couple of roars the Lion managed to raise attention at the loading dock. The thrice-bolted door was opened by that clubfooted society hostess from Shiz, Piarsody Scalop, with whom, however inanely, the Lion had once been paired in the press.

“I haven’t got room for another postage stamp,” said Piarsody, but when she recognized the Lion, she added, “especialy from you,” and tried to close the door. Her clubfoot got in the way somehow, and Brrr barreled past.

“I’m not negotiating art, either purchase or sale,” he growled.

“You’re the only one in the city who’s not.”

He saw what she meant. The Aestheticum was jammed to the ceilings of the mezzanine with furniture, bibelots, treasured artworks, bolts of better tapestry, carpets. “It’s a madhouse warehouse,” said Piarsody. “People know high-end decoratives wil come back, and they stash their valuables here until the first colector sniffs that the war is truly over and moves in for the firesale bargain. But we’re stuffed to the gils. I can’t move, I can’t do inventory, I can’t even see wel enough to be able to tel what is good and what is better used to build a fire to cook my lunch.”

“I don’t care if you burn it al and have a realy big lunch,” said the Lion. “I want the center of the hal cleared out by noon tomorrow.”

“You’ve lost your mind. I always knew you would,” said Miss Scalop. “A bit too high-strung. Back in Shiz they whispered that to me when you were in the Gents’. They wil say it here, too.”

“I’l help you. I can get others to help. We’l shift everything to the motherhouse of Saint Glinda across the square, assuming it’s stil standing. The war with Munchkinland is over, Miss Scalop, and the little buggers won.”

“Don’t they always?” said Piarsody Scalop.

Al afternoon they sorted out antiquities. The better paintings could be hung over the railing of the mezzanine to grace the event. Some of the furniture could be packed drawer against door along the outside wals, under the balconies, slotted so thickly in place as to make a six-foot wooden henge. The rest of the stuff had to go.

Brrr roared himself into the cloisters across the square and commandeered them. The motherhouse had long been under the thumb of the Emperor, unlike the cenobitic mauntery in the Shale Shalows, and the women scurried to oblige, driven nearly mad with delight at having a part to play. The mauntery afforded plenty of space along the arcades to stash a museum’s worth of antique fussiness in home decor.

When the job was almost done, Brrr happened to back into an oak chest standing on its end. The lock sprung open and the lid popped, spiling the contents on the tiles of the mauntery floor. Included were no fewer than seven sets of jeweled shoes modeled after the famous set that Lady Glinda had given to Dorothy Gale once upon a time. The Lion threw al the shoes into the wel in the center of the cloister garden. Any splash they had, they’d made a long time ago.

2.

For his work helping Avaric bon Tenmeadows to set up the council for peace, Sir Brrr, Lord Low Plenipotentiary of Traum, Gilikin, was invited to sit in attendance.

“I’ve come up in the world,” he told the meagres under the bridge. “I’m stil smal fry, but I could probably sneak a few of you in if you want to get a peek at history.”

“Busy. Sorry,” said Rain, in her new iron-hard voice.

“We have to do something useful,” explained Candle to the Lion. “With Lir’s death—we have no choice. It’s that or die.” The Goose, under the obligations of family loyalty, bobbed his head in agreement.

He had never liked either Candle or Rain, but was now something of a retainer in their broken circle.

“As for me, I wouldn’t come within a mile of Mombey,” said Dorothy. “It was her court that convicted me of murder, remember. And even if I wanted to brandish that stupid testimonial of my character, it’s probably nul and void under the new regime. By the way, Brrr, you risk being imprisoned for aiding and abetting a psychopathic criminal in her notorious escape from justice.” She batted her eyelashes.

But the Lion had lost too much, and gained too much, to be prey to the same worries that had bewitched him most of his life. Nor gone first, and now Lir. What else could they do to him? Realy?

It was left to Avaric to plead the terms of the truce with His Sacredness who, rumor had it, was keeping comfortable in a bare cel in the prison of Southstairs. Living on water and celery, and approaching the mercy of a deeper aestheticism.

Avaric had to work to get the Emperor’s attention. Either poor Shel’s mind had snapped or he’d ventured further toward divinity than he may have intended. “It’s a bit of a nonstarter, some conversations,” Avaric said to Brrr. “But we’l get there. Those creepy Ozmists are lifting little by little—even the dead can’t be bothered to haunt you forever, it appears that they have other things to do—and the dragons are camped on the Plains of Kistingame outside of the Emerald City to the north. Mombey can cal them in again to move matters along if the Emperor proves unwiling to focus. On some level he knows this. He and his ministers are doing what they can to set matters right.”

“What are the preconditions of surrender?” asked Brrr.

“That’s confidential,” said Avaric, but when the Lion pinned him down and threatened to rip off his arms with a novel dental technique, Avaric changed his mind about confidentiality.

“No, no,” said Brrr. “I’m not interested in what the
Emperor
is giving up. I know what he’s giving up, and what was never realy his to yield, either. What I want to know is what demands he is making of Mombey.”

“The niceties of military surrender are new to me, but it’s my understanding His Sacredness is not in a position to make demands.”

“Of course he is. He can refuse to yield unless Mombey offers something. And if
you
refuse to yield—”

“I take your point,” said Avaric. “I think I may need that elbow in the future? Thank you. Is there something special that you’d like His Sacredness to request of La Mombey?”

“There is indeed,” said Brrr. “I should like her to bring the corpse of Lir Thropp to the Emerald City so his family can bury him.”