He sat very still for a long long time. The glass cat watched with an unblinking eye.

“If you’ve known that all along,” he said softly, “then you must also know where it is.”

“Ah, no, not that,” she said. “Your comrade-at-war, then a mere commander, blinded me, and I have lost what powers I had. Tell General Cherrystone to come back and rip out my heart and fry it alongside your lunchtime bacon, and then we’ll see if I can lose the rest of my powers-like breathing, and thinking, and remembering, and hating. I should be glad to let go of some of these functions.”

“Let go of the drama, why don’t we. Tell me why you can’t just have a vision and find out where the Grimmerie is. That’s all I want. To get out of here with some hard information. We’re counting in hours now, not days, before this place becomes a militarized zone. Madame Morrible’s notes suggested you were Elphaba’s sentry angel. No one has a better chance of knowing where the book went but you.”

“An angel!” She began to laugh. It was a hideous sight, her eyes rolling about in her skull. She clutched her ribs and bent over. “Oh, that’s rich! An atheistic angel.”

He had to wait for her wheezing to peter out. “Please,” he said. “What must I promise you in exchange for the location of the Grimmerie?”

“It’s hopeless,” she said, her voice giddy now, as if having abandoned all hope. “One doesn’t have visions on demand. And even if I knew, dear Brrr, how could I tell you? We’re at cross-purposes. The EC would use it against-”

But she went from breezy hopelessness to a sudden frenzy; her face contorted.

“Are you all right?” he said. She shook her head. It wasn’t a pang of death-nothing as useful to her as that-but a grief mortal enough to carry away anyone less immortal than she continued to be.

“Stop,” he said. “It’s not that bad. It can’t be.”

“What will you do if you can’t locate the Grimmerie?” she asked at last. “Who is your next witness?”

“I have none.” He slapped his notebook closed. “Madame Morrible’s papers turned up precious little, actually. She was a bit of a sorceress herself-you must have figured that out-and she was sharp enough to have known exactly what to discard. Even her references to you were cryptic-more in the line of deducing your existence by a kind of magical algebraics. And learning your name through the agency of a mechanical spy named Grommetik.”

“All that lead-up, and I’ve given you precious little. What will you do next?”

“Assuming I can get overland without being molested, I will have to return to the Emerald City with what I’ve been able to gather. The Court won’t be pleased with me, but I’ve done my best.”

“They won’t drop you into Southstairs?”

“They won’t. My plea bargain has sorted that out, at least.”

“You trust the Court not to revoke its understanding?”