Page 130 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“The Arjiki family who had lived there had long ago been slaughtered by the Wizard’s forces, I came to understand. The place—Kirami something, Kirami Ko, I think—was crawling with flying monkeys who did their best to put on a full cream tea. I’m afraid monkeys are shambolic by nature. We were taken all over the shabby place. It was built as a waterworks, you know.”

“Miss Rainary’s surname is Ko,” said Miss Igilvy. “Pass the gravy bo

at?”

“I never knew that,” said Miss Igilvy’s father to her mother. “A water-works. I never.”

“Of course you did, you old phony. You sat in the front row at each and every presentation I gave.”

“I was napping with my eyes open. Why a waterworks, so high in the mountain? Was the building put up on a river suitable for a waterwheel of some sort?”

“No, nothing of the sort. Don’t you remember? I had bright illuminatums, surely you recall! I had painted them myself, on vellum from Plutney & Blood’s.”

“When the house lights go low I tend to go low too.”

“I was led to believe that a giant reservoir, a lake of sorts, might lurk underneath the mountain, deep down, and that the castle of Kirami Ko was originally intended as the housing for a great artesianal device. A screw of some sort that would sink down oh for yonks, and pull up water in the way screws can manage to do.”

“That’s the hugest helping of nonsense I ever heard,” said Mope affably. “The Vinkus River that cascades from the heights carries all the water the Kells could possibly provide. And every drop debouches into Restwater. The notion of drilling for more water when Restwater just sits there—the Wizard or whatever Ozma initiated that plan couldn’t be so idiotic.”

“Well, don’t rely on my memory,” said Mother Igilvy. “But perhaps it wasn’t the Wizard’s plan after all. Maybe the Arjiki tribe thought it all up so as to be self-sufficient from the Emerald City, just like those truncated Munchkinlanders.”

“Is there any more gravy at that end?” asked Miss Igilvy.

“I never understood how the Wicked Witch of the West was killed by a bucket of water, as the legend has it,” said Mope.

“Oh, I’ve worked that out,” said Mother Igilvy. “I have concluded the bucket must have been filled to the brim with several gallons of Kellswater. It’s a drearily lifeless and poisonous liquor, you know. Everyone says so.”

“But what would she be doing with a bucket of Kellswater at the ready?” asked Mope.

“Dear husband, you eat any more popovers and gravy and you’ll rip a stitch. My good sir, the Witch obviously had stashed away a dousing of Kellswater as a prophylactic against an attacker. But it was used against her by that Doromeo.”

“Dorothy,” said Miss Igilvy firmly.

“Did you hear she has come back, and has been put on trial in Munchkinland? Condemned to death,” said Mope.

“The Munchkinlanders are a cruel, cruel people,” said Mother Igilvy with satisfaction. “They deserve the pummeling we’re giving them.”

“Perhaps not quite the pummeling we advertise,” said Mope in a quieter voice. “Miss Plumbago, what do you hear from your grandfather, that distinguished General Cherrystone?”

Rain swiveled her head; she couldn’t help it. Miss Plumbago was General Cherrystone’s granddaughter? How—how enwreathed life could manage to be. But just then Proctor Clapp got up to address the diners, and Father Igilvy fell asleep before the popovers and gravy were even removed from the table.

Rain knew they had been talking about Kiamo Ko, about her own grandmother, Elphaba Thropp. It made her feel dizzy. Hiding in plain sight. As soon as Proctor Clapp had finished, Rain excused herself, though no one noticed, and headed back to her room across the yard. The stables were filled with horses of the visitors, and out in the back street the ostlers and chauffeurs were having a smoke around a brazier and rubbing their hands to keep warm. She liked the sound of that commotion, she liked the smell of the horses. And the rising heat of their bodies warmed the annex right up to her room. She changed her clothes and took Tay in her arms and lay back on her bed, knowing she would not sleep easily tonight. Not with pictures in her head of some murdered Dorothy, some murdered grandmother, some castle she had never seen with a cellar shaped like a shaft and a giant screw plunging down, down, down, into the heart of the earth. And then she heard a noise as of someone coming through her wardrobe. It did not sound like a ghost, so she got up to see what it was.

I2.

In the pearl-blue gloom of midnight she couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy. But Tay was usually skittish and aggressive around boys, she’d noticed, and now it seemed only calm and alert, not hostile. “Miss bon Schirm?” ventured Rain, naming one of the taller girls. “Did your parents fail to come on Visitation Day too?”

But it wasn’t Miss bon Schirm.

“You scared me half to death. Come out of there.”

A boy emerged. Three, four inches taller than Rain, though his hair was raked every which way, and maybe if it were properly combed he’d be closer to her height. The face was wary, urgent, perhaps clever—it was hard to tell in this light, and besides, Rain didn’t trust her estimations of people’s characters. Yet. She wondered, in fact, if she ever would. Perhaps now was a good time to start. Was he about to strike her?

But there was Tay, attentive, curious, but hardly rearing to attack. A pretty good barometer.

“What were you doing in there?”

He held out the large shiny shell she had carried with her from nearly as far back as she could remember. “What is this?”

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