Page 133 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Iskinaary,” she said, before she could stop herself.

“What’s that?”

“The Quadling word for goose.” There, another lie. She was getting good at it.

The bells in one of the nearby towers rang the half. “I better pretend to be organizing my clothes or I’ll catch it, but good,” she said. She was reluctant to leave the airy world above Shiz, the spires and slopes and ravines topping the city’s close-built architecture. But she risked being tossed out of St. Prowd’s altogether if she was discovered this deep in the breaking of rules.

He descended after she did, replacing the hatch. Her room suddenly felt musty. Small. Inappropriate for entertaining a visitor. He seemed too close, now that they had touched shoulders. “Get me down my dresses, will you, I have to press one of them and look more presentable for afternoon classes.”

He handed her a gravely ugly frock, the color of mushy peas, a single broad ribbon sewn down the left thigh panel its only decoration. She had never thought about clothes and their decoration before. She had never thought about thinking about it, either. She was under a spell of multiple reflections and it felt too much for her. “Isn’t there anything nicer?” she snapped, as if she were a Pertha Hills dame in a high street establishment, and he the clerk.

“I don’t care about clothes,” he said, which was something of a relief. “How about this green one?”

“With the pucker in the bib? That one? It’ll do. Hand it here.”

She grabbed her change of clothes. She didn’t have time to do much but flatten out the skirts with her hand and twist the ties so they lay straight. She tried to think of what to say to him to make sure he stayed. She pulled the wrinkled garment she had slept in over her head. She’d already tossed it to the floor when she heard him gasp. She turned to him, questioningly, in nothing but her smalls and the red heart locket. He said, “Please—I’ll wait in the hall if you

like.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t find a word for it, and finally blurted, “Courtesy, I guess.” By then she’d already slipped the replacement over her head and was wriggling her arms into its scratchy sleeves. “Never mind,” he said when she emerged looking at him in total bewilderment.

“Are you going to tell me who you are, and why you’re here?”

“You can call me Tip. I suppose. I’m guessing you haven’t reported me to the governors of this establishment?”

“I haven’t said anything to any of the girls or the teachers, if that’s what you mean. But why shouldn’t I?”

“I’m keeping out of sight, if I can.”

“Well, I hope no one saw your stupid head popping out of St. Prowd’s roof just now.”

“No one but cinder pigeons, I bet.”

“Look. I only have a few more moments, and then I’m away again until dinnertime. I’ll try to bring you back some real food if I can manage. But you have to tell me—”

“Actually I don’t have to tell you anything. And I don’t need your food. Though I’m glad you are nice enough not to have ratted on me. I’ll be gone by the time you get back, and I won’t steal anything, I promise, not even that shiny shell you have. Cor, but that’s a bit of wonderful.”

“Don’t go. You’re not well.”

“What are you, an infant doctor?”

“I have a cousin who is an apothecaire and I picked up a few things. You’re liable to frostbite in this weather, or the racking congestibles.”

“That sounds serious.” He was mocking her.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Really. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow, but not today. You owe me that much. I risked getting discovered as a thief last night to find you food and drink.”

“Plenty powerful lemon barley you provided, too. All right. I’ll stay till you get back, but I’m not promising much beyond that.” He picked up the book that Scarly had been struggling through. “The Were-pig of Dirstan Straw,” he read. “Oh, that’s where you got the were-pig from.”

“Of course. You get everything from books.”

13.

His name was Tip; she knew that much, and knowing his name saw her through the rest of the endless day. She managed to brush past Scarly in the buttery and whisper for an extra few rolls to sneak to her room, which was forbidden under pain of expulsion. The maid contrived to deposit a tea towel with rolls and even a beet-and-ham pasty into Rain’s lap. Scarly’s faintly raised eyebrow made Rain feel cheap somehow. Still, she couldn’t risk giving Tip’s presence away to the maid. In the interest of keeping her position secure, Scarly might feel more beholden to her employers than Rain felt to her teachers.

After dinner and prayers she returned to find that Tip had spent the afternoon taking apart a small iron stove he’d found in some boys’ dormitory below. Piece by piece he had hauled it upstairs and reassembled it. “It kept me warm, all those steps,” he said. “And there’s a handsome little stash of coal in the cellar beyond the stable doors, too, so you can be set for a while.” For the venting of smoke he’d jerry-rigged a snake of cylindrical tin piping up through the hatch, which was now open three inches. The cold air flooding in defeated the effect of the warming fire. But the atmosphere was improved, anyway. He was proud of his work.

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