“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 documents. He expected if he kept replying she would keep answering his assertions 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. 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.