Page 169 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Indeed you did,” Mombey said, and there was a sound of something not quite a whip, not quite a mousetrap, but something iron and deadly. Liir heard no more from the Owl after that.

When the yard had cleared, and the maids put away their brushes, and Liir had come to accept that no one would scratch his rump again today in the way that gave him joy, he turned to look at Trism, who had remained.

“Tip?” said Liir.

“Her factotum,” said Trism.

“Her son, it must be.”

“No one knows. He was lost and he is back. This means she will move immediately into action. The dragons are ready. The only hold against our striking earlier was whether she might inadvertently be putting him in danger, not knowing his whereabouts. If the boy is back, and secured, any remaining prohibition against an attack has been lifted. You’ll be propositioned tonight. Mark my words.”

“Propositioned. Hmmm.”

“They’ll ask you to confirm that the spells I’m trying to cast through the arcane language of that solitary page of the Grimmerie are accurate. They’ll ask you to examine the book and refresh the spells, refine and intensify them, with any other charm that you can find. It’s why you’ve been brought here. Only your mother showed any real skill with that book; everyone else has fumbled and failed with it. Even Mombey is dubious about reading it. She will promise you something real, and she’ll keep her promise, if you help her bring down your uncle.”

“That boy knew my daughter,” said Liir.

“You must put that sort of thought aside. Perhaps you can survive long enough to be a help to your daughter again.”

“I have been no help to her at all. Ever.”

“Get ready for what they will ask. They’ll ask only once.”

“Will you love me whatever I say?”

“No. I don’t promise that. I may have made my own choices, for my own reasons, but I won’t love you unless you make your own choices, for your own reasons. That’s the bargain of love.”

A man and an Elephant, talking about love, and neither of them shamed. What a world I’ve come up through, said Liir to himself. Oh, what a world, what a world.

Trism knew about which he spoke. By the light of the jackal moon Mombey came into the garden behind Colwen Grounds, where Liir had been allowed to graze. She presented herself as a woman of gravity, with a furrowed brow and silvering hair, and she walked with a cane, but she hadn’t gone so far as to concede to a wrinkled neck. Trism walked four feet behind her, his head down, his eyes cloaked, his hands clasped, trying to be as remote as possible in the presence of an Elephant who still loved him.

“We will launch our attack by dawn,” La Mombey said. “Will you help?”

“I can tell by my sight, my smell, and my hearing that my family is not here. Beyond that, I don’t know where they are,” Liir replied. “Naturally, I can’t help you target anyplace they might be, and they might be anywhere.”

“What if I told you we know where they are? Both of them?” said La Mombey. “Your wife and your daughter? And they would be spared? What if I gave you proof? Would you help us then?”

“It doesn’t matter that your proof could be false.” He stood firm on his big Elephant feet. “You’ve also targeted places that harbor any child who is not mine, and I find no difference between them and a child who is mine.”

“With your proboscis, you can’t

smell the difference between your own kin and someone foreign?” she said, laughing.

“With my proboscis,” he said, “I can smell that there is no difference. I will not help you.”

He didn’t have to bother to say that he believed the skill to read the Grimmerie, just as the tendency to be born with green skin, might skip a generation, the way corrupted thumbs skipped in the northern Quadlings, or obesity in certain fruit flies. It didn’t matter. He turned from Trism, who was wringing his hands; he turned from Mombey, who was drunk with elation. “Ready the fleet,” she said to her dragonmaster. To Liir, she said, “You have sealed your own doom by your refusal to assist in this campaign. Count your final moments.”

“Trism, no,” said Liir.

“Mercy on your soul,” said Trism to Liir.

“Mercy on yours,” replied the Elephant, without malice, only heartache.

I3.

With the advice of the Ozmists, Rain and her companions managed to avoid Shiz entirely. Unwittingly, they also sidestepped the cohort of jumbo shadowish spider-thugs Mombey had sent across the border to apprehend them. The travelers approached the capital, just another clutch of private citizens set roaming by wartime hysteria. Rain hadn’t known what to expect of the EC. From a distance, it looked seven, nine, nineteen times more immense than the university city of Shiz.

Dorothy proposed that they make their way into the Emerald City via the great squared archways known as Westgate. So the companions stopped to take stock on the graveled slopes outside the city walls, where travelers arriving from the West were required to unroll their Vinkus carpets, lay out their satchels for inspection, and present papers of introduction if they had serious government business. Rain was daunted.

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