Page 31 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“I’m no longer permitted outside the house, Mum,” he told her. “I’m not likely to hear more.”

She moved on, worried for the local Munchkins. Cherrystone was too smart to display these lummoxy floating wooden castles without being prepared to deal with any attack on them. Still, Glinda was infected with a sense of excitement as she descended the great stairs. She admired the well-made thing, whatever it was: a slipcover, a compliment, a man-o’-war.

She ignored the muddy boots lined up on the floor, just plowed through the banquet hall and the kitchens as if she’d been used to taking charge there for years. “Zackers. Hat off in the presence of a lady,” she barked at him, who whirled around from where he was rooting through a bin of biscuits. Feeling a warm breeze from an open door, she continued on through a larder and a maze of pantries, and found an exit into an herb garden. How useful, now that she knew what herbs were for. But she had no time to pause and take notes.

From the ground the four ships were even larger than they’d looked from her windows. Bowl-bellied wooden narwhals. Men with their shirts off were swarming up ladders on all sides, caulking and scraping and wielding brushes to apply some sort of gleaming oil. It made the fresh wood glow like skin.

She located Cherrystone near a commissaire or clerk who was taking notes. She bearded the General. “Traper, you are to be congratulated. This is an installation of most magnificent hue and heft. I can’t think where you got all the lumber.”

“There’s a mill or two in the Pine Barrens. You pay enough, you can find the help you need.”

“Pay with cash, or with threat of violence?” But she smiled as she said it, and he grinned back, replying, “Oh, the coin of the realm appears to be good cheer, as I understand it. We imported white oak for the ribbing, but the local fir stock is suitable for cladding and masts. Amazing how generous the locals are, if you put it to them persuasively enough.”

“I don’t know sail-lacing, so this is deepest arcana to me. However, Restwater being Oz’s largest lake, I believe I’d have noticed vessels of such magnificent profile if they’d ever sailed by me before. They don’t look like riverboats, yet the masts are lower than I would imagine useful to help propel such a capacious hold.”

“Oh, it’s a manly art, is shipbuilding,” said the General. “I can’t pretend to follow a word of it. I have a hard time lacing my own boots.”

Glinda caught herself from making a remark about not lacing her own stays. “We all know the EC wants to divert the lake for its private use, in the capital and in the mill towns and factory hamlets springing up between the Emerald City and Shiz. And so I realize these ships are intended to attack Haugaard’s Keep. But I can’t understand why you’d take four weeks and some to build them, giving the local farmers a chance to plan their resistance and fortify the lake, when you could’ve marched your army along through the villages and circled Restwater six times over by now.”

“Straight through a gauntlet of pint-size guerrillas? No, thanks. But too terribly dry, this business of strategy,” he said, as if in agreement. “I’d love to chat more. Shall we dine again? I can wax hysterical about the cost of labor in wartime, and you can catch me up on your successes in the field of cuisine.”

“Are you inviting me to a reception upon the virgin decks of your commanding vessel?”

He blushed. She hadn’t known she could make him blush. “I’m afraid it’ll be some time before the accoutrements are fitted, the paint applied and dried, and so on. It’s why I had the ships brought out into the sunlight, so this work could proceed apace.”

“But the daily thunderstorms?”

“Spittle and eyewash. Won’t slow us down.”

She almost asked permission to take a promenade around the boats, but remembering herself, she started out at a pace. He caught up with her and took her by the arm, but gently, as a husband might, and escorted her about the graveled yard. She commented, “I trust you’ll be putting my barn fronts back together. One bad storm and the places would collapse like houses of cards.”

He didn’t answer, just pointed out admirable bits of carving on the figureheads. “You have some very talented, very bored soldiers,” she said. “Surely that’s not a portrait of me?”

“No, it’s meant to be Ozma.”

“Dreadfully royalist of you. Positively seditious. I’d expect it to be the Emperor.”

“Some of the men are simple. But if you want to get good work out of them, you have to allow them their prejudices.”

“Tell that to the Munchkins.” But she was trying to be slick as boiled sweeties. “What will you call these fine dames of the lake?”

“We’ll slap their names upon them when they’re waterworthy.”

“I can’t wait that long. I might die in my sleep tonight, of impatience.”

“Oh, don’t do that, Glinda.”

He had used her name without the honorific. She smiled a little less winningly, more inscrutably, reeling him in. “No, do tell. Traper.”

“Can’t you guess what the Emperor’s four lake ambassadors would be called?”

She blinked at him, grateful she’d taken time to darken her lashes.

He said, “The Vinkus, Gillikin, and Quadling Country.”

“I see,” she said. “And the lead vessel … the Emerald City.”

“Oh, no,” he replied. “Munchkinland. In anticipation of the reannexation, whenever we achieve that happy marriage, and make Oz whole again.”

---