The noise of cannon, distant but not comfortably distant enough, corresponded with the sound of Yackle approaching down the hall, a sloughing and sighing presence.

She came into the room, hitting backward at the helpful hand of the novice who had been guiding her. “Enough, you crow; go pester some other poor wren. I’ll break my hip if I’ve a mind to, and nothing you can do about it.”

“Begging pardon, Mother Yackle, but Sister Doctor asks me to show the Lion to his evening chamber, and you to yours. I bring you here just to say your good evenings, and then I’ll bring you on.”

“I’ll sit here in the dark. I don’t need a bed.”

“I’m not wasting time at sleep,” said Brrr. “Can’t you hear that gunfire? Whatever is happening is coming closer. Let’s finish up here and I’ll be on my way under cover of darkness, the way I came. I have no intention of spending a night here.”

“I’ll wait outside,” said the novice. “I’ll give you ten minutes. I am not at liberty to countermand Sister Doctor’s orders.”

The young woman retreated, and the door closed. Yackle bumped her way to her chair; Brrr didn’t offer to help her. She seemed more tired, though hardly an ounce more dead than before.

“Restored, I trust?” said Brrr bitterly.

“They haven’t changed, those women,” said Yackle. “For what seems like decades I sat among them, wondering how they did it, all that continence of emotion, all that rigor and fervor. I still wonder. I wasn’t really made for this world.” By her tone he knew she meant the world at large, not just the mauntery.

“Sentimental religiosity?” he asked. “It claws at one, doesn’t it.”

“I haven’t the goods to define it. Not to defend it nor belittle it. It just gets the better of me, that’s all. How can they sing those hymns to an Unnamed God? What is the point?”

Not for him to answer, not that one. “Why are you so sour? You are a maunt, after all. Or masqueraded as one all these years.”

“I make as few claims for my spirituality as you make for your courage,” she snapped. “The truth is, I wish I were deaf as well as blind. Relieved from listening to the biddies going at one another. Sister Doctor is in charge, more or less, but her aide-in-the-surgery, Sister Apothecaire, has never forgotten that Sister Doctor was elevated while she was passed over. The rub of it hasn’t mattered much for years, I imagine, but with an invasion of Munchkinland by the Emperor’s forces about to happen, well, that stout little Munchkinlander Sister Bulldog-Apothecaire thinks Sister Doctor is proving too neutral a leader.”

“Very psychologic of you.”

“Don’t mock me. The scorn on both sides is deafening. Toadying appeaser, thinks Sister Apothecaire of Sister Doctor. Bloody hotblooded peasant, thinks Sister Doctor of Sister Apothecaire. You suppose I can’t hear all this in how they intone their prayers?”