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“I am not talking about vice. I’m talking about clan.”
A pride of maunts, thought Brrr, is rather a self-made thing, isn’t it? And temporary, if it could dissolve under pressure of war into the clans from which its members originated. Still, there is no law that says all decent things must be permanent. Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.
Having delivered her ultimatum, Sister Apothecaire turned, but she was moving so fast that she couldn’t stop herself. Her foot twisted on a crack between the stones of the staircase, and she tumbled nine or ten feet to the ground, and there she lay still.
“She won’t be dead,” said Ilianora, but Brrr thought her statement more hope than prognosis.
The dwarf wouldn’t wait for a report. “Leave the little old fussbody for her countrymen to tend. We’ll be off and away with the fairies, as advised.” He barked orders to the acolytes to withdraw the bars from the main gate, and then to position themselves for flight.
Four boys put themselves between the shafts of the cart, and the others went behind to push. But Ilianora said, “Mr. Boss, we can’t be sure the Munchkinlanders will arrive first. If the Emerald City Messiars beat them to it, this maunt may be in danger. Lay her on the coachman’s seat, and we’ll study her situation when we can pause for a moment to breathe. Brrr, help me.”
“Oh, my Lady Lovely, are you planning to leave us? Are you nominating a successor? Or are we abducting a goodwife for me in my ripe old age? Such a cranky one! And won’t she be surprised when she wakes up. Sure, take her along.”
Brrr and Ilianora lifted Sister Apothecaire, who was heavy for one so small, and they settled her in a supine position. Her eyes were closed but, as far as Brrr could tell, she appeared to be breathing.
“Well?” said the dwarf, scrambling onto the buckboard, “you’re coming with us, Cowardly Lion?”
“Is that an invitation or a prophecy?”
“I came to get you, didn’t I? That’s what the Clock told me to do.”
“You came and found me, true, but maybe my use to you was only as bait. To draw the Grimmerie to Yackle so she could take her leave. And where are you going anyway? Are you converted to Elphaba’s old cause, to see her rise like that before us?”
“Elphaba’s dead and gone,” said the dwarf equably enough. “We stay neutral, we keep our nosey noses clean, we take no sides, and we watch our backs. So linger here and stew about it as long as you like. Send us a postcard from whichever military prison you end up in. Whee-up, gee-up, knees-up, boys.”
Brrr was stuck with the conundrum. His job was done. He had been ordered to find out what had happened to the Grimmerie, and he had done far more than that: He had located the very book itself. Why let it escape? He might as well go with them, keep them in range. When the time was right he could choose to turn them over to the Emperor’s army. Once he felt ready to make that decision. The proper number of the dwarf’s slurs and indignities having mounted up to legitimize it.
Think of the glories that might accrue to Sir Brrr if he arrived back at the Emerald City with the Clock of the Time Dragon, and the Grimmerie safely interred within.
Think of the possibilities if he did not. He could fall in with the company of the Clock now, and perhaps—if they escaped to the West, along the banks of foul Kellswater—he could trip the brakes on the dreadful apparatus and drown the tiktok dragon and its bullying prophecies in the deadening water. Then no one could ever again use the Grimmerie to learn how to attack another soul.
“Make up your mind, and on your own head,” said the dwarf as the Clock of the Time Dragon began its slow creaky exodus into its future.
Ilianora turned to him and held out her hand. “Don’t be bashful. You would make a good companion for the company of the Clock. You know as much as anyone does, now, about where it came from and why we tend it.”
“I don’t know why you tend it,” said Brrr, but he flipped his notepad closed and pocketed it. “That’s beyond my brief to care about, Ilianora, so don’t spend your breath. Let’s get out of here.”
They passed under the portcullis. The broad stretch of the Shale Shallows lay to the west and south, wheat fields to the northwest. On the horizon they could see emerald green pennants of the advancing army, though from this distance the wind masked the sound of their snapping. Had the EC battalions paused to reconnoiter? Load their cannons? Was some general busily braying a rallying oration?
“Why did that otherworldly magician bring forth Yackle to oversee Elphaba?” Brrr asked Ilianora. “If his goal was merely to hide the Grimmerie, he didn’t need to use it to meddle in the affairs of this world. Look at the harm it’s done.”
“All my thoughts about history are sifted through my own warped fate. I have no conclusions,” she replied. “I can’t imagine why Elphaba deserved an angel to hover on her sidelines, even a paper angel, when the rest of us have to deal on our own with what prison and torture befalls us.”
“Prison and torture?”
“I’ll tell you one day. But not while you’re on the payroll of the Emerald City, no thank you. Not when the EC has supervised the extermination of my kin.”
“They’re not all dead,” said the Lion. “Liir may not be dead. And he went looking for you, all the way into Southstairs, I’m told.”
“There is that,” she said.
“We could leave the dwarf to his misadventures,” said the Lion. “We could try to find Liir.” So was he signing on to Yackle’s hopes? Was he being seduced by her wily trust in him? Or perhaps he was remembering Dorothy’s long-ago request of him, that he remain a companion to Liir. “I’m not looking for much,” he continued, shrugging. “Not for romance, believe me. You and I are well matched in our hesitations. But romance isn’t the only thing that draws two individuals together.”
They walked more quickly, almost trotting, to catch up to the Clock of the Time Dragon, but still they hung back far enough to speak privately for another moment or two. The steep walls of the Cloister of Saint Glinda fell behind them, a stone cloak they were escaping. As the armies drew within earshot of each other, the doors of this holy keep would be opened to all.
“I don’t want your company while you are in the employ of the Emerald City,” she said at last. “Not when they were behind the stationing of your Cat as a
spy. Not when they were behind the deaths of my father and my mother and all my siblings. Everyone.”
