Page 14 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

He offered a bottle of wine. “Not from Mockbeggar cellars, so I apologize if it doesn’t suit. It’s Highmeadow blanc, a good year. I don’t travel without it. I hope you approve.”

“My butler is a bit stout to be climbing through windows. So this is something of an evening picnic, I’m afraid. Will you do the honors? There’s a cork-pull just here.”

The candles were guttering madly for the first ten minutes. Glinda took care to sip sparingly. “While I understand the intent toward courtesy in your recent notes to me, General, I can’t bring myself to accept an invitation to dine in my own home. My study of etiquette provides no precedent. So I thought I should be cordial and explain this to you in person.”

“Damned awkward I’m sure, but you’re being a brick, as I knew you would be.”

“The meal will grow cold, so please, shall we sit??

?? She waited for him to pull out her chair. From over his shoulder she could see the campfires of soldiers beyond the ha-ha. The distant sound of singing, more rowdy than tuneful. “How will you keep all these men occupied and out of trouble, General? You’ve clearly settled in for a while, and no matter what construction you’re overseeing in the barns, you can’t be employing more than a smattering of this large number.”

“I trust they’re being no bother. You let me know if they are.”

“I’ll let them know if they are.” She leaned forward, taking care not to seem coquettish, which, she recognized, seemed to be her default position. “Allow me to remove the covers, will you? Since it’s just the two of us?” She lifted the lids off the plated dinner of garmot, braised stalks of celery, and mashed spinach forced to look like a green rose. Oh, Chef could make magic out of whatever lingered in the larder. “I hope this meets with your approval, General.”

“Please; as we’re dining, I should be happy if you called me by my first name. Traper.”

She shook her head as if she were being pestered by mosquitoes. “You make it all very confusing. Traper. A most irregular season! I am detained in my own home, I am forbidden anything but emergency staff, I am asked to house a garrison or a committee or a division or whatever you call this lot—”

“We are roughly three hundred men, which in this instance means a command made up of three brigades. One of our brigades is a cavalry unit, and the other two are foot soldiers. Messiars, as we call them.”

“And Menaciers are officers in training. I know the nomenclature. I did govern the Home Guard once, as you recall. But if what you are overseeing is a command, what makes you a General instead of a Commander?”

“Long years of service, for one. I am allowed to direct as many commands as the Emperor in the Emerald City sees fit to supply me.”

“Then you’re waiting on more commands. I see. Traper. Please, eat; it’ll go cold. There’s slightly more breeze at this height than I’d anticipated.”

He tucked in. “You didn’t ask me here to discuss military strategy, and anyway, it would be boorish of me to bring my work to the dinner table. Tell me about yourself.”

“Oh, General—”

“Traper.”

“Yes. Traper. You know a woman loves nothing more than to talk about herself. But you have incarcerated me here and Lady Glinda is bored to migraines with Lady Glinda. Unable to get around as she did, or to invite old friends to spend weekends hunting or playing plunge-ball or Three-Hand Snuckett. No, I asked you here to learn about you. So I insist. I’ve given you your supper, and you must sing for it. Tell me about your long years in the service, as you put it, even if you must keep as confidential your present aims and designs.”

Obediently the General ventured into a loose and nonspecific accounting of various assignments through the years. However, he underestimated the degree to which Glinda had paid attention while she was Throne Minister. She had read everything she could get her hands on, and various details had stuck because of references to old friends and cronies. She knew Cherrystone was from Mistlemoor, a small Gillikinese hamlet a few hours north of the Shiz Gate at the Emerald City. She knew the Wizard had sent Cherrystone out to Kiamo Ko when her old friend, Elphaba, had taken up residence there, and that Cherrystone had had something to do with the death or disappearance of Fiyero’s wife, Sarima, and their children, Irji and Nor. She knew he had had a hand in some nasty business in Quadling Country, where he’d been stationed for nearly a decade, and when things went hot there he was recalled to the Emerald City. A desk job for a few years, under the Emperor. But called into field service again. His final triumph? Before retirement with a pension? She wondered. And all the time she kept smiling like a barkeep, unassuming and unflappable.

“You have a family,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. His fork poked back and forth as if checking for poison darts hidden in the fish. “A wife and three daughters. Now mostly grown; indeed, a granddaughter at home too, who I rarely see.”

“I can’t imagine. It must be dreadful for you.”

“I’m sure it would be.” He smiled under his lowered brow. “I mean, the noise of a gabbling child and four women under one roof.”

“You don’t fool me. You miss them dreadfully. What are their names?”

“I choose not to talk about them. It helps me not miss them as much.”

“Is that breeze causing the candle to spit wax on your plate? Thoughtless of me.” She leaned back in her chair. “Miss Murth?”

Murth was sitting in an upright chair just inside the window, her hands folded in her lap. “Yes, Lady Glinda.”

“I know you aren’t spry enough to clamber out the window ledge with an oil lamp in a glass chimney. One that won’t gutter so in this updraft. Would you call the broomgirl to do it? She is agile enough, unlike the rest of us.”

“I’m happy to oblige, Lady Glinda,” said Cherrystone. “Allow me.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it. Miss Murth?”

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