Page 171 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

public park she identified the towers of the Palace in the distance. “That much hasn’t changed,” she promised. “It was called the Palace of the Wizard when I had my several audiences with him, and just as I was leaving Oz last time around they were talking about renaming it the Palace of the People. But it doesn’t look any different. A Palace is a palace.”

Rain barely listened to Dorothy’s prattle. She was trying not to be daunted by the weirdness of it all. Not the buildings—what meant buildings to her, really? The statues on their plinths, the great crescents of fine houses, the iron railings and the pushcarts, the monumental stone tombs of art and commerce. Rain was more aware of the people. So many. Who could ever make a collection of so many people?

When they passed one of the market squares, it was life as Rain knew it, people squabbling for food, bargaining over prices. But the trestle tables set up under bentlebranch arbors offered small choice, and more to the point—Dorothy saw this too—the vendors and the shoppers were predominantly female. An occasional elderly bearded man in green glasses, carrying a blunderbuss; that seemed the police force and the minister and the army, the whole local patriarchy all at once. Schoolboys, to be sure, and toddler boys nearly indistinguishable from toddler girls, and genderless babies. But men the age of her father? Absent.

“We wouldn’t want to start our search for your father in Southstairs, would we?” whispered Dorothy.

“The prison? I hope not,” replied Rain. “Let’s go directly to the Emperor. If we can’t get in to see him by dint of one trick or another, you can reveal yourself as Dorothy.”

“What if that doesn’t cut the mustard with him?”

“You can warble him into submission. Or I’ll come forward and claim the Emperor as my blood relation. What is there to lose now?”

Dorothy bit her lower lip. “As I hear it told, you’ve spent your whole life on the run from this man. It seems a dicey strategy to go up to him and holler a big ole Kansas howdy.”

“Yeah, well, running in place hasn’t gotten me very far, has it. I’m tired of skulking through my life. We’re facing the music.”

“Do you think your father would help the Emperor use the Grimmerie against the Munchkinlanders?”

Rain said, “Don’t ask me a question like that. There are so many ways I don’t know who my father is.”

Dorothy was silent for a while. They made their way along a canal colonnaded with cenotaphs celebrating various Ozmas of history. A dead cow floated by, and even Tay wrinkled its nose. “The city has seen better days,” said Dorothy. “I have to add, though, I don’t know who my father was, either. Really. Lost at sea and all that. Makes you wonder what any of us knows about who we are.”

Rain hadn’t taken to Dorothy, and she didn’t think she was about to start now. But she reached out and squeezed her hand. She had learned to touch people, a little, by touching Tip, and Dorothy was a stranger here. Stranger than most.

It began to sprinkle. A smell riled up from drains that had gone too long untended—the municipal workers all having been called to the eastern front, probably. The city was hard to navigate. They ended up in a place called the Burntpork district and bought a few rolls to eat, but had to give them to Tay because they were too hard. “I’ve come this far, and I keep losing my way,” said Dorothy. “Let’s try that sloping bridge over the canal; it looks as if it carries a funicular, or maybe it’s an aqueduct. It’s heading vaguely upslope, so it has to get us to the higher ground of the city. We make another misstep and we’ll plunge into the sinkhole of Southstairs and be stuck in prison the rest of our born days.”

By midafternoon, tired, they found the forecourt of the Palace, or one of them. “Is this it, then?” asked Dorothy.

“Yes, I think we’re ready.”

The Kansan turned to the Ozian. “You know, if we’ve played this wrong—if the Emperor wasn’t the one behind the abduction of your father—we’re in for big trouble. You know that.”

“It’s a risk I’m ready to take. Are you?”

“The Munchkinlanders tried and convicted me of murder,” said Dorothy, “so if I’m a villain on that side of the border, I should be welcomed as a heroine here. How do I look?”

“Don’t forget you killed both sisters of the Emperor.”

“Yes, there is that. Perhaps I should switch my skirt around again.”

But it was too late. The door of the military offices of the forecourt opened. A bleary stooped man with only one leg wheeled himself out and examined a clipboard, and then looked at the two young women standing before him.

“Miss Rainary?” he said in a dubious voice.

“Proctor Gadfry,” said Rain.

“I take it you’ve fled Shiz like everyone else,” he said. “I can offer you no succor here. You’re looking for a certificate of matriculation? Go away. St. Prowd’s statute of limitations has expired until after the war. Or has my tyrannical sister sent you here to pester me? I have more than enough to do than see to the mess she’s made of all our hard work.”

“Proctor Gadfry,” said Rain. “You went to battle.”

“And battled till I could battle no more,” he said, flicking one wrist toward where his absent knee should be. “I’m lucky to get a sinecure here until hostilities are concluded, one way or the other. But I was expecting a coven of downscale marsh witches who want to file a protest about something that happened about twelve thousand years ago. You’re not with that group?”

“I have brought someone,” said Rain. “To see the Emperor.”

“Hah. Go away.”

“A visitor named Dorothy Gale,” said Rain. “A friend of mine.”

---