Page 165 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“The Animals are an army of prisoners, effectively.”

“Indentured mercenaries. But without pay. You said it. And when those prisoners finally panic and break loose, the bedlam will not be believed. We’re in the final days of this war, one way or another.”

“So why have you brought me here?”

“It wasn’t my idea. Mombey brought you, to read the book to us.”

“I still don’t understand. How are you involved, then?”

“You remember my original training in the Emerald City? Your mother long ago had given the Wizard of Oz a page from the Grimmerie, On the Proper Training and Handling of Dragons. I was the chief dragonmaster. I trained those dragons who attacked you years ago, the ones we later slaughtered before we fled.”

“I remember. Trism the cute dragon mesmerist.”

“When I left Loyal Oz, I carried with me the secrets of the trade. It’s hard enough to secure a dragon’s egg and raise it to life, and keep it alive—dragons don’t like Oz. Oz is too wet and full of life for them. Dragons are desert creatures. But a few years ago Cherrystone got his hands on a clutch of eggs and managed to raise them to maturity. The creatures were to be used in the attack on Haugaard’s Keep.”

“I heard about that,” said Liir, though he didn’t understand that his daughter had been partly responsible for slowing the attack. “Do you remember Brrr, the so-called Cowardly Lion? He told me what he knew about that campaign. He was in the vicinity when it happened.”

“I never met that Lion.”

“The dragons were destroyed, I understand.”

“Not all of them. One of them escaped, and it was found tending its wounds on the banks of Illswater in the south of Munchkinland. It was captured by Mombey’s people, brought north, and stabled not far from here. It yielded a clutch of eggs a short time later. They came to term.”

“With no male to fertilize them? Capable dragon.”

“There is much we don’t know about dragons.” Trism still had that I’molder-than-you tone, Liir noticed.

“So you’ve raised the baby dragons up, you traitor dragonmaster.”

“I have indeed,” he said. “And not a moment too soon. They’re ready to go. But Mombey knows this is her last chance. She can’t risk their failure. The dragons have to do the job right.”

“She’s not one for letting things slide? Just my luck.”

“She’s been smart about keeping the Munchkinlanders focused and fired up. That show trial of Dorothy happened in the nick of time, as interest was flagging and recruitment was off, what with the endless stalemate. The arrival of Dorothy and the attention paid to her trial helped Mombey corral her first battalion of Animals in a single week.”

“The conscription of Animals was promoted as defense, but really she needed to open a new front in the war. I see.”

“Yes. General Jinjuria had lured Cherrystone in Haugaard’s Keep but forgot to figure in the cost of keeping him under siege there. She can’t knock him out of Haugaard’s Keep; it’s said to be so well fortified that he has imported a barge full of dancing girls and a craps game that goes on all night. He’s running a fucking resort there on Restwater. He keeps Jinjuria guessing and occupied. And she can’t rush what’s left of her forces up to the Fallows. Something’s got to give, and soon.”

“So you’ll use the dragons to attack Haugaard’s Keep.”

“If you can help, we’ll use the dragons to attack the Emerald City.”

He had said it. Liir turned his head and looked at Trism with the other eye, to see if his first eye had missed something. “There are civilians in the Emerald City.”

“There are civilians in both armies, too. At least they were civilians before they were drafted. Look, if we can strike against the Emerald City hard enough, we might be able to pull Cherrystone and his floating vacationers out of Haugaard’s Keep; they would be recalled to defend the Emperor. Munchkinland could retake Restwater and offer a truce. How many civilians’ lives will have been saved then?”

“A lot of ifs, I suppose.”

“With your great schnoz, can you smell possibility in this plan?”

It was a shame to say that he could. So he didn’t say it. He just looked at Trism. They had both grown old enough to have learned how to ignore the needs of individual lives for the purported good of the lives of nations.

Trism knew him still; he saw what Liir was thinking; he threw himself against where Liir’s arms would be if Liir had had arms; Liir wrapped the shattered stranger in his trunk and held his best beloved tight.

II.

Perhaps they ought to have followed Temper Bailey’s advice, because the track they chose to wander along faltered and lost itself in a small but confounding wood. The leaves were beginning to change, the lavender of pearlfruit and the red of red maple and the gold of golden maple. The tarnishy tang of fox musk under the jealous snout of the jackal moon, who wanted to be down there with them—it was all a glorious adventure. But they were lost and doing no one much good.

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