A Lion Among Men Part 16

But there were a few steps to endure first, the joke of applying for an appeal in the Emerald City, the punishment of having to wait for a hearing until the meanest magistrate was free of social obligations. The usual foul skirmishes.

By dint of the judgment against him his a.s.sets were frozen pending appropriation. (Someone had to pay for his incarceration in Southstairs, and better the accused than the state.) He wasn't a lamb thrown to the lions-he knew that-he was a Lion thrown to the lethal but dominant Lambs of the Unnamed G.o.d.

Then, if you could call it that, a stroke of luck at last. Someone serving as a Friend of the Court had recognized him in chambers; it was the Margreave of Tenmeadows, a Gillikinese n.o.ble named Avaric. For his own amus.e.m.e.nt if nothing else, Avaric worked in Secret Affairs, an arm of the Palace defense team. Before Brrr's final appeal review could be canceled due to insufficient cause, and before he could be led off to prison, Avaric arranged a meeting between the criminal and the sentencing judge, a professional scold named Miss Eldersdotter. At the Court's discretion the Margreave was allowed to attend.

"You are a Namory, as I understand it," said Miss Eldersdotter. Her shiny jaw bristled with so many ugly hairs she could have knitted herself a chin wipe out of them.

"Sir Brrr, Low Plenipotentiary of Traum," he replied.

"The first Animal so honored," interjected Lord Avaric.

"All the more reason to set an example," snapped Miss Eldersdotter. "You should be ashamed of yourself, Brrr." Her refusal to use the honorific was nothing less than a taunt. He governed his temper.

"I am mightily ashamed of what has happened," he said coolly.

"And well you might be." Her eye was trained on doc.u.ments. He expected if he kept replying she would keep answering his a.s.sertions so as to have the last word. I remain deeply ashamed, Your Honor. As it should be, Brrr. And as it is, Your Honor. I would expect it to be so, Brrr. I remain deeply ashamed, Your Honor. As it should be, Brrr. And as it is, Your Honor. I would expect it to be so, Brrr. And on. And on. And on. And on.

Then she looked up and said, "Not the Cowardly Lion of the incident out West? That little contretemps with the dainty Dorothy? You do get around."

"The same, Your Honor, though I don't include the sobriquet on my letterhead."

Lord Avaric snorted. Even Miss Eldersdotter had to twitch a smile into submission.

"So you had doings with the Wicked Witch of the West and her witch-boy."

"Doings would be putting a mighty fine gloss upon it. I accompanied Dorothy to the West and spent the evening in question mostly locked in a kitchen storeroom."

"You know the lad called Liir. Her son, some say."

"He won't be a lad anymore if he is still alive. I knew him for a few weeks, and that was the end of it."

"Have you an opinion as to whether he really was her son? Did he ever show signs of any particular talent at spells?"

"He showed little initiative in the time I knew him, and no promise of any sort."

"Still," she said noncommittally. "Still. And even so."

"We may have an opportunity here," said the Margreave.

"I begin to see what you are on about, Lord Avaric. Would you like to present your proposal to the Court? Since we are about to be off-record, Miss Saucerly, you may break for an early tea."

Miss Saucerly fled. Miss Eldersdotter took off her magistrate's wig to reveal a flattened little steel-blond hairdo, spare and dispirited. She fluffed her hair with Miss Saucerly's pencil as Lord Avaric spoke.

Brrr looked out the window, his future in the hands of others. He listened, but not too closely at first, afraid to become hopeful about whatever Lord Avaric was proposing. Miss Eldersdotter asked a few questions and made a few notes. At one point she dispatched a pigeon to the Palace, requesting information from someone, and the pigeon returned twenty minutes later, the reply scribbled on the back of the same scroll.

Thus was the plot hatched to transpose Brrr's punishment from incarceration in the highest security prison in Oz to a civic alternative: government service. By virtue of his experience with the Wicked Witch of the West and her putative son, Liir, Brrr would be engaged to do some research for the Courts and for Secret Affairs.

He would find out what happened to Liir after he was last seen some eight years ago, suspected of having holed up for sanctuary in this very mauntery of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows. He would poke around for this and that among the Witch's effects. Interview a few witnesses.

To what end? Brrr insisted on following the point. Not because he would take it into account-just-because. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but he was a big Cat and had a higher tolerance for curiosity than some.

"Lord Avaric will explain. Case retired." Miss Eldersdotter closed the file and rubbed her temples. "Before you take up your new a.s.signment, Brrr, I wonder if you could illuminate me about that aspect of your career involving the a.s.sessment of antique prints. I inherited a set of moldy old things from my widowed aunt in Tenniken, and I suspect they are worth a pretty bundle."

All kinds of possibilities emerged. He held his tongue until his thoughts settled in his mind. Then he said evenly, "I am afraid the market has changed so much since I was professionally involved, Your Honor, that I would no longer be qualified to offer a judgment."

"Well," she said, "so few of us are." And she all but leaned back in her chair and kicked up her heels, laughing at her own little self-coronation.

Suppose Miss Eldersdotter's widowed aunt had been the mother of Jemmsy the foot soldier. That would make the magistrate and Jemmsy first cousins. But if she were so related, Brrr didn't want to know. Poetic justice could be just that ironic, but why allow it to trounce upon his frailest feelings?

Once the plea bargain had been struck and approved and signed in triplicate, and the copies filed and their receipts stamped in triplicate and themselves filed, he was free to leave his cell. In a brougham, Lord Avaric arrived to collect Brrr at the door of Saint Satalin's Nook for Petty Criminals. The Margreave proposed luncheon at a respectable establishment, but Brrr said he had no appet.i.te. This was only partly a lie, as he certainly had no appet.i.te to be seen dining in public.

So Avaric took Brrr on a walk along the Ozma Embankment, where they couldn't be overheard by pedestrians. Avaric had a little device called an air pistol that, when fired, made a sudden bang, and the nearby avian population involuntarily launched themselves into a frenzy. The swans on the ca.n.a.l hammered the water with their powerful wings, thwacking the lilies, splashing themselves airborne. No small winged spies remained near enough to overhear Avaric's revelations.

"You're right to ask about your obligations to the Court," he confided to Brrr. "Secrecy is all very good, but an agent can best do his job if he knows the parameters."

Brrr pulled the collar up around his ruff. He was furious, but he was free. The Ozma Embankment was in spring bloom. b.u.t.terflies, untroubled by the salute of the gun, pasted themselves on the limbs of miniature ornamental quoxwoods. Bees reprised their hymns to the G.o.ddess nectar. A street sweeper in leg irons sang, too, some pagan paean to Lurlina. The roses were a week from cresting. His eyes watered at the notion of how swiftly this could have been swept away. The beauty. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

"I don't know why you took my part," he said to Lord Avaric.

"Don't be craven," said the Margreave. "It wasn't high sentiment, believe me. As I hear it told, you were once labeled a Witch's familiar, back when she was public enemy number one. And-how talented you are, really-you've also been tarred as a collaborationist, taking the part of the Wizard against your own nativist Animal population. Both the left and the right have called you seditious. You're despised by all. That's a good profile in our line of work. If you've had some actual practice in betrayal, you're better able to carry off the scheme again."

Brrr did not reply. He had never considered himself either a defender of the Witch or a collaborationist with the Wizard; that had been an interpretation of the press and general public feeling. As if guessing his thoughts, Avaric continued, "Don't mind me. A traitor can skew his moral compunctions around any new endeavor and make it seem the correct and even laudable course of action. That's also part of the makeup of a spy: the ability to convince himself of the rightness of his aims."

Brrr found the courage to say, "Sir, I am no spy."

"Well, that's just fine," said Avaric, unflappable. "You're just a Namory who has narrowly escaped imprisonment for treason. How lucky that you have such patriotic impulses. All ready to help the nation in a little fact-finding mission! And since you're no traitor either, as I see you are about to claim, you'll have no qualms in working on behalf of Secret Affairs."

They had reached the place on the Ozma Embankment where one could turn around and look back along the Grand Ca.n.a.l to see the Throne Palace. It stood shining on its little blunted peninsula above the reflecting basin. The emeralds in its facade winked like reflections on a lake: at this hour, from this point, the palace looked as if it were built of the purest water.

This prospect was the subject of dozens of mettanite etchings and coldstone engravings. He knew it as he knew the back of his own paw. But seeing the view for real, in stone and jewel and waterway rather than in watercolor washed over ink on paper-well, it thrilled one to the bone, even as the power the Palace represented gave one a cramp.

"From what I hear tell," Avaric was saying, "Old Elphaba, that crankina on a broom, once gave the Wizard of Oz a page from a book she called the Grimmerie. She was tempting him with it, using the book as a bargaining chip to arrange for the release of a political prisoner named Nor. The good Wizard refused to negotiate with a terrorist like her, but, frankly, he was was tempted. He'd had knowledge of that magic book for some time, and he wanted it. The single page he managed to get from Elphaba that day was responsible for the knowledge of how to train dragons for use in military maneuvers." tempted. He'd had knowledge of that magic book for some time, and he wanted it. The single page he managed to get from Elphaba that day was responsible for the knowledge of how to train dragons for use in military maneuvers."

"Some book," said Brrr cautiously.

"How much more the Wizard might have achieved had he gotten the whole book! But the Wizard abdicated-some say he was deposed, as he deposed the Ozma Regent before him-and notions of those magic gospels were forgotten for a while during the short, giddy reigns of Glinda the Good and the Scarecrow after her."

"Yes," said Brrr, unable to resist boasting about his connections. "I was once quite au fait with the Scarecrow, as it happens."

"Indeed you were. Of course you were. Then you will remember how Sh.e.l.l, Elphaba's brother, ascended to the throne in that smooth, unresisted way. The Scarecrow as good as a butler, the way he melted away without a murmur."

"I was traveling at the time, but I learned of it later."

"It was Sh.e.l.l's ministers, combing the Treasury for negotiable commodities to fund his army, who came across the page on dragons."

Avaric explained further. Since the writing on the reverse side of the page had seemed to be the second half of a spell, not otherwise identified, no one had paid it much mind at first. But then the Emperor had engaged a scholar of magic at Shiz-a Miss Greyling, spelled g-r-e-y g-r-e-y, or maybe it is spelled g-r-a-y g-r-a-y-something like that-to decipher what she could of the spell's conclusion and to infer, if possible, the spell's name and intention.

"That would take some talent," Brrr ventured.

"She spent several years over it," continued Avaric. "Eventually she made her report to the Emperor. As near as she could tell, the verso of the ma.n.u.script page was the second part of a spell to reveal hidden inscriptions. Codes, watermarks, the like. A universal spell for the deciphering of runes. Perhaps even the location of individuals in hiding; could it be? Either that or, perhaps, a recipe for oatmeal fritters. It was hard to be sure.

"'What we need,' our Emperor Sh.e.l.l replied, 'is the rest of this text so we could use it to reveal the location of the Grimmerie to us. A circular ambition, but once we had the Grimmerie, what else we might be able to do!'"

"What does the Grimmerie look like?" asked Brrr. "Not that I was ever one for books or that sort of thing. My expertise was limited to flat pieces done on private presses."

"Few could ever have seen it," said Avaric. "So there's no reliable description. By the size of the page that Sh.e.l.l has in his treasury, it is a big codex, a tome-a foot square, perhaps." He looked narrowly at Brrr. "You were one of the few to go to the Witch's castle while she was thought to have it in her possession. I mean, the others-dead or disappeared. The entire Tigelaar family, who held the castle called Kiamo Ko before the Witch took up residence, was captured and imprisoned. One of them, that child named Nor, escaped from Southstairs a few years ago-she might know the whereabouts of the Grimmerie."

"Well, ask her."

"You find her and ask her. Also, the boy named Liir, who some say is Elphaba's son, had gone to Southstairs hunting for her. Perhaps he had seen the book, too, and was looking for his half sister to work with. But he also has gone into hiding. Oz is just riddled with hidey-holes, to judge by the number of useful folk that we can't seem to locate. Can you imagine what a boon it would be, if the government could get its paws on the rest of the spell-to say nothing of the rest of that book?"

"Surely the Witch's castle has been searched?" asked Brrr. He didn't want to go back there again; he'd almost rather sign up for a season in prison. Those flying monkeys-it made his flesh creep to remember them.

"The place was turned inside out," said Avaric. "Or so I understood. Nothing left there but an old family retainer and the monkeys. No, the guess is that someone took the Grimmerie from Kiamo Ko. But who-and why-is a mystery-and where it is now is an ever bigger mystery."

"To whom does it actually belong?" asked Brrr. "I mean, if Liir actually is the Witch's son, I suppose it is his book, really."

"It belongs to the government," said Avaric. "I hope I haven't misplaced my trust in you, Brrr."

"Not at all. I was merely making conversation. Wondering if perhaps Liir had found it after all, somehow."

"I don't think he has," said Avaric. "Because the betting parlors have it nine to one that when or if the Grimmerie falls into Liir's hands, he would find a way to use it against the Emperor."

"Is our national security policy governed by the odds in betting parlors?"

"You're funny," said the Margreave in a voice that betrayed little evidence of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Liir led a sort of protest of sorts against the Emperor seven or eight years ago. He commandeered a huge armada of Birds and they flew over the Emerald City. He had the Witch's broom and her cape. If he gets his hands on her book, too, there's no telling which corner the trouble will start in. The fact that things have been so quiet this past decade suggests he is looking for it as hard as we are."

"Maybe he isn't," said Brrr. "Maybe he's melted away like his so-called mother. He's done his conscientious objection-"

Avaric started.

"I mean his rabble-rousing," continued Brrr. "And if the rabble refuses to rouse itself further, why bother? Maybe he's retired to the country to take up croquet."

"He's certainly gone to ground," agreed the Margreave. "But it isn't Liir we want, specifically. It's the Grimmerie. Keep your eyes on the matter at hand. My advice is to start with Madame Morrible. She was, apparently, engaged by the Wizard to keep Elphaba under some sort of surveillance. She died two decades ago, but her effects are archived in the college of Shiz University, where she was headmistress. Crage Hall, it's called. Start there."

When they were about to take their leave of each other, Brrr asked, "How will you have me report?"

"I trust you," said Avaric. He pulled his cloak about his shoulders. Despite the spring efflorescence, a cold wind had sprung up, smelling of old ice. "You are the Cowardly Lion, dear fellow. You will fulfill your commitment to the Throne or find your pardon revoked. One can always trust a coward to behave in a certain manner; they are predictable as rust. That's why you're so useful."

"You are too kind," said Brrr.

Avaric laughed. "You can't even do obsequy with any conviction. The perfect spy. Here's hoping for your sake, and for ours, you can carry it off."

Freed to wander about again, though without his glad clothes. Brrr was reduced to seconds bought off the rack at the Poor Fair Boutique in the Burntpork district. A Lion s.n.a.t.c.hing for a Rampini knockoff and fighting over it with a toothless gentleman who wanted it, he said, to make purses out of. Brrr won the tussle but lost his dignity. Well, as if he had any left to lose.

Supplied with a sheaf of writs and a small purse for expenses, Brrr headed back to Shiz. It was eerie to be middle-aged, tramping about the quadrangles as a functionary of Secret Affairs, where once as a dandy he had sprung along the graveled walks in an opera cape and a daringly rose-scented cologne. Everything now looked as seedy as he felt. He didn't know if this was the aging process-the retreat from insouciance-or if the university was falling on hard times.

He'd met the archivist, Miss Greyling, a stoic in sensible shoes, and he decided that she was nuts. She couldn't work the latch on the cas.e.m.e.nt window, or remember with which hand to shake Brrr's paw-nor whether touching the felted pad of an Animal was gauche or daring or illicit or morally profound. How could she deduce what the half-a-spell was saying? It would be a half-magic not worth the coin, he guessed. Her credentials, in addition, seemed dubious. But she was devoted, and fl.u.s.tery, and her cheeks grew pink if he let his language get coa.r.s.e, which he did now and then, to remind her that he was, after all, an Animal.

"Oh, sir," she'd say, "m.u.f.fins at Lurlinemas, I shall scream!"

He was amused, and also chagrined. So it comes to this. I say naughty things to aging spinsters, to get a rise out of them. What a wolf I am. What a loser.

She found him the name of Yackle, though, and in time, with worryingly few other leads scrawled in his notepad, Brrr made to leave that hothouse atmosphere.

A gla.s.s cat had been sitting, grooming itself at the porter's lodge. Perhaps unused to seeing a Lion in the streets of Shiz, the cat had gone all devotional and even romantic, purring up a storm in its aging larynx. So this is what it's like to have a pet, thought Brrr, and while he didn't encourage the creature, he didn't kick it away, either. It had been too long a time since anyone, creature or human or Animal, had purred in his presence.

Why did the cat cross the Yellow Brick Road? To reach the Lion waiting on the other side.

Brrr had accepted the companionship. It was a novelty. He named it Shadowpuppet for its bright transparency, for its tendency to skulk in the shadows as if to keep from being overheated by the sun.

Going overland again-into the part of Oz most likely to see military activity-was no picnic. Until the first sign of battle, though, he preferred imminent danger to the froufrou of cottage guest rooms for hire. The lavender sachets, the geranium-mint teas, the caged songbirds embellishing the air with the pretty sound of their distress. Spinsters can decorate their own hearthsides with handiwork and camouflage, but to the Lion it seemed another sort of prison.

However, he was striking out in a new direction, and that had some merit. He had always relished the look of a virgin horizon. He headed due south, bypa.s.sing the EC, southwest toward the place where the dead lake called Kellswater most nearly approached the great reservoir of Rest.w.a.ter. The provinces of the Vinkus and Gillikin met here, and the Free State of Munchkinland to the east nudged up against them both. It was, quite possibly, the hottest spot on the map just now, due to the need for fresh water.

The various biddies from their porches agreed: Just north of the oakhair forest he would find the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows. He nodded and kept on. With luck the old b.i.t.c.h, Yackle, would still be clinging to life. If she'd survived to this unholy age, she'd be a pushover. He wasn't worried about it.

He would pursue any lead he could to learn from Liir, or from any source, the whereabouts of the fatal book of magic known as the Grimmerie. Even daring to dart about a landscape gone noisy with the movement of infantry divisions. Where, in a slightly horrifying night, he had come across Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire tending the wounded, and persuaded them to let him and Shadowpuppet accompany them back to the mauntery.

HE SAT IN the darkening room. Early evening was always the hardest to negotiate. He tried to concentrate on the immediate. The wind had died down a little; the oakhair forest moaned less strenuously. A moon was rising; it would be ducking in and out of clouds tonight. The world first in shadows and secrets, then in naked prominence. the darkening room. Early evening was always the hardest to negotiate. He tried to concentrate on the immediate. The wind had died down a little; the oakhair forest moaned less strenuously. A moon was rising; it would be ducking in and out of clouds tonight. The world first in shadows and secrets, then in naked prominence.

Nothing in his own life was worth remembering, really. Every turn had promised reward, and delivered something less. So in truth, searching out the twists of someone else's life-be it Madame Morrible's, or the wretched Liir's, or even old Yackle's-was a downright comfort. A welcome distraction. It was diverting to consider lives that had been as hobbled as his own troubled existence.

From a witch's familiar to a collaborationist of the Wizard to this: a civil servant yoked to the information agencies. Abhorred by the right and the left alike, as Avaric had said. In some ways, rounded upon by everyone, Brrr had nothing left to be, to become, but himself.

How limited, even sour a prospect, though.

One may, oh, cook poorly, or be socially graceless, or invest unwisely, or fail to achieve the best of personal hygiene. But one doesn't want to live wrong-from breath to breath, from start to finish, to get it wrong, so wrong, so fully wrong, that one has never had the glimmer of an idea that it might be better. Or does one? Maybe if you're going to get it that wrong, it's better to get it all wrong. The proverbial stupid ant crawling on the hat brim of the prophet, eager only for the shade behind the prophet's left ear, and ignorant of the civilization-altering sermon it is witnessing.

- 8 -

THE ACOLYTES of the Clock of the Time Dragon banged cooking utensils into dirty kettles, tying up their sleeping rolls. Their anxiety at the sound of distant cannon was obvious through their overeager laughter. Boys in the neighborhood of war. of the Clock of the Time Dragon banged cooking utensils into dirty kettles, tying up their sleeping rolls. Their anxiety at the sound of distant cannon was obvious through their overeager laughter. Boys in the neighborhood of war.

"We're pulling up stakes here, Missy Morosey," called the sergeant-at-hand, but when she didn't arise to hurry to them, he just cursed under his breath and continued knotting ropes to secure the carriage. There was too much to be done to waste his breath trumpeting at her when she decided to go deaf.

Her back was turned to them, her head bent as if listening to an interior argument. She was alone in the way that the terminally ill, crowded into an inst.i.tution, are alone. Had she a mirror to study her own features, she'd have noted with approval the early silvering of her hair, the spatter of liver spots on the edge of her temple. These would have helped her overlook that her skin still glowed, almost as if backlit, with the enviable sheen of youth.

But she wouldn't have a mirror. She cared to see in her own face neither shades of the hopeful child she'd been nor glimpses of the schemingly wanton maiden she'd become. In recent years, she had bridled at compliments-"How like a sylph you are! How maidenly!"-as if the efforts to survive her calamities and do useful work had proven incapable of maturing her.

The clearing was striped with oakhair strands. They'd been vibrating earlier, but as night drew near, the winds lapsed, the music stilled. It was almost time for a candle, but she didn't want to go back to her cohorts at the wagon. Bellow though they might, they wouldn't leave without her.