“The Courts are building some kind of case, and I’m preparing a background paper.”

“A court case with Madame Morrible as a lead witness? I knew she was talented, but if she can give sworn testimony from beyond the grave, she has better connections than I thought.”

He snorted at this, and while his guard was let down, she jabbed at him, “Or are you sniffing around here for the young fellow named Liir? Last I heard, he’d disappeared into the lawless lands.”

The Lion started but hoped she hadn’t picked up on it. Once in his regrettable past he personally had known someone named Liir, a ragamuffin boy who had lived out west with the famous Witch. But Brrr would keep his own counsel. He sang softly in a lullabye voice, “I need to take your deposition, good granny. Don’t you worry your tired noggin over poor little me.”

“I needn’t answer you merely because you ask,” she said. “‘In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets.’ Isn’t that what the old bastard, our dearly departed Wizard, used to say?”

He hadn’t figured on her sass. “Perhaps you’ve been comatose through the current troubles. Oz has an Emperor now. One with an iron will, as it happens.”

“Threats don’t work on the chronically dead,” she replied, “which is close enough to what I am to make no difference. So try again, mister. You tell me something about yourself first. I want to know who I’m talking to before I decide. And what you’re really after. And for whom you’re working. And what immunity from prosecution I might be afforded. My testimonial privileges. Then we’ll see if I feel like rewarding you by answering your questions.”

He took a breath in. “And don’t lie to me,” she continued. “I can be vexed when I find I have been lied to.”

Where to start? Always the question. “Well, for one thing, I am a gentleman sporting a very fabulous weskit,” he said, partly mocking, and to see just how blind she was. But he regretted the gambit at once. If she leaned forward to feel his vest, she’d rip it to shreds with her nails, and it wasn’t in such good shape to begin with, actually. Secondhand, if not fourth-hand.

“Not a spot of mange?” she asked. Did she know he was a Lion, not a man?

“I’m not talking about my own hide. I mean I’m decked out in a gentleman’s item. A bespoke article. It swims on me a bit, since I’m leaner than I once was, but it’s a Rampini original. Teck-fur detailing, with a kind of red highlight. Can you see color?”

“No, but I can smell it,” she said. “Yellow, yellow, yellow.”

The cozy old invalid was sneering at him. He unsheathed his claws, just for a moment. Let her droopy ears catch the release of each horny talon from its velvet socket.

“A shame to start off on the wrong foot, don’t you agree?” he said. Plaintively, almost a miaow, to the castanet shuffle of his claws sliding against one another.