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“You haven’t answered my question. Was she an oracle?”
“I can’t possibly answer that question. I was not her confessor.”
“Who was?”
Sister Hospitality thought. “Actually, she didn’t have one. She wasn’t professed, I think.”
“Would someone here know if Yackle was an oracle?”
“The old Superior Maunt might have, but she’s gone too.”
“Holiday?”
“The Final Holiday.”
“Sheesh. Occupational hazard in this place?”
“Growing old? Yes.”
Brrr explained. A knotty little concern in the courts had prompted a senior magistrate to call for a finding. Brrr had been dispatched by order of the Stamp of the Emperor to pursue the matter in any direction. From a side pocket he produced a notarized writ of entry flecked with bits of bread crust. He flattened it with a paw. The legal penmanship crosshatched the vellum into illegibility. “This authorizes any enquiry I want to make, as it happens.”
“Are you bullying me, sir?”
“I don’t need to bully the likes of you,” he replied, tapping the paper. “This is the bully.”
“I haven’t the mind for this, nor the time,” said Sister Hospitality. “Nor am I the authority in the House; we are governed by a Council. But I can and must report to them what you say. Why don’t you tell me precisely what brings you here?”
“Highly secret and hush-hush.”
“I respect that. I’m Sister Hospitality, after all, not Sister Rumormonger. If hospitality requires confidentiality, I’m qualified.” She made a shushing gesture, tapping her forefinger against her pursed lips, then whispered, “I’m all ears.”
The Lion muttered to himself a little, weighing his options. Finally he allowed this much: He had recently spent a week in the Gillikinese city of Shiz, going through the deposit library of Shiz University. He had required to see the papers of a onetime governor of Crage Hall, long since departed into the Afterlife, rest her soul. A Madame Morrible. The frumpy little scholaresses at the desk had put up an argument, but he’d prevailed.
“And what did you find, pray tell?”
The Lion appeared to be governing a small temper, as if he thought Sister Hospitality’s curiosity unseemly. When he spoke, though, his tone was even enough. “Since you ask so nicely: Cryptic notes in what looked like the deceased headmistress’s hand identified a questionable personage known only as Yackle. An entity of some sort, but what sort? An agent of whom? If an oracle, was she a charlatan or a savant? And the way these investigations go, don’t you know, one thing has led to another. The Motherhouse of the order of Saint Glinda, in Saint Glinda’s Square in the Emerald City, had known a Mother Yackle but had sent her away for retirement. To a mission chapel, a benighted outpost in the Shale Shallows. And so, as they say in the pantomimes, ta-da!”
The white cat settled in a patch of sunlight and began to clean itself. It all but disappeared.
“I do so wish you’d come sooner,” said the maunt. “There’s a little thing called armed conflict going on locally.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“You ought not to have bothered. There’s nothing I can do for you now. Whoever Yackle was—an ancient madwoman older than sin itself—she’s passed away, and to the best of my knowledge she was never an oracle anyway.”
“Think again!” said a voice at the door.
They turned.
“I knew you’d be here sooner or later,” said Yackle, “but it took me the better part of the season to get up the stairs. Glad I’m in time.”
The Lion, not knowing precisely what he was seeing, merely gaped. Sister Hospitality sloped to the floor with the clop of a collapsing ironing board. “You seem to have killed her,” said the Lion to the newcomer, affably enough.
“All those months that I couldn’t manage to kill myself, and I slay the righteous with my first remark?” said Yackle. “There’s gratitude for you.”
The Lion cocked out a sleeved elbow. She gripped it. He guided her to a chair. Her voluminous winding sheets were unstained by ordure or blood; they were merely dusty from having been trailed through the basements. He could detect no stink of corruption. “The odor of sanctity,” said Yackle peremptorily.
“You are an oracle,” said Brrr. “You’re the one I hoped to find.”
