Page 135 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Why don’t they then? It sounds pretty basic.”

“Because the trolls under Sakkali Oafish have a deep-seated grudge against Loyal Oz dating back to a rout of Glikkuns called the Massacre at Traum, which happened north of here. They wouldn’t unite with the Emerald City if there were only one troll left alive. They’re proud like that.”

“So if that strategy won’t work, what else might?”

“Maybe the Emperor will die, and the pressure to continue this endless war will lift.”

“Isn’t the Emperor divine? He can’t die.”

“I suppose time will tell. Or one side will discover a new weapon that’s stronger than what their enemy has.”

“Like what kind of weapon?” said Rain, as innocently as she could.

“Beats me. A great big cannon that can shoot a thousand arrows all at the same time? A poison someone can sneak into the food rations of the army cooks? An important book of magic spells that contains secrets no one has managed to unlock yet?”

“None of them sounds very likely,” said Rain.

“Who knows. The word in Shiz, since you asked, is about all these things.”

“And the word in Munchkinland?”

“Some of those same ideas. Being hoped for, anyway.”

She saw a chink. “But what are the other ideas in Munchkinland, that you don’t hear in Shiz?”

Maybe because he wouldn’t answer questions about his family, he felt obliged to answer her now. “Flying dragons would be a good idea. They were used once before by the EC, but in an attack by anarchists the Emerald City lost their stable of dragons and their expertise.”

“Dragons in Munchkinland. Imagine.”

“Few have heard of such a thing. And I’m not saying there are. Just that a lot depends on the fact that there might be. One day.”

“Are you a spy? Aren’t you a bit young to be a spy!”

“We’re all spies when we’re young, aren’t we?” She didn’t think he was being evasive. She knew what he meant. She agreed with him.

“Tell me what you find out, when you find out anything of interest,” she said. “Promise me that, Tip.”

“Spies never make promises,” he said, but now he was teasing her.

I4.

He wasn’t going to stay there forever. That much was clear. Rain just didn’t understand what conditions would prompt his departure.

She lay awake at night sometimes when Tip was asleep, out of sight, his head on the floor a foot below her head. She could hear him breathing, a faint whine in his nose that never sounded when he spoke. A distilled aroma of sour raspberries on his breath, even from this short but crucial distance. She was becoming aware of the distance between human creatures at the same time she was becoming aware of their capacity to be entwined sympathetically. Perhaps, she thought, this is perhaps how it usually goes, but since she’d never been given to reflection, it seemed as if everything was breaking anew upon her at once.

Tip’s interests in current events made her listen more carefully to what the teachers said when they thought the girls were learning off rubrics of spelling or rehearsing acceptable dinner party remarks in their heads.

“Cutting the salary again, according to the magnificent Gadfry,” murmured Madame Shenshen to Madame Ginspoil one day in study hall.

“We shall be living on bread and water like the miserable armies,” replied Madame Ginspoil, helping herself to a pink marzipan pig secreted in her beaded purse. Rain thought: Armies. Miserable. Bread and water. She would tell Tip.

“It’ll be better though in the spring, which isn’t far off,” said Madame Shenshen. “Everyone says there will be a new push to bring down that General Jinjuria.”

“She seems a right smart tartlet, to hold our army at bay all this time. If she’s captured, she can be dragged here and made to tutor stupid young girls,” seethed Madame Ginspoil. “Quite the suitable punishment. She can live on bread and water for what she has cost Loyal Oz in comforts.”

“The cost of war is in human lives, you mean, surely.”

“Oh, bother, of course, that. It goes without saying. But I have chilblains, what with the reduction of coal allotments for our quarters. Chilblains, I tell you. I have refused to knit balaclavas for the troops this year. If they can’t win the stupid war after all this time, they’ll have no comfort from me. Miss Rainary, are you eavesdropping upon your elders and betters?”

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