“Safe,” said Brrr.

“You’re a brave woman, good Sister,” said Ilianora, starting to help the dwarf strap up doors, slotting the stages like drawers back into the bureau of clockwork.

“Brave or good, coward or bad, I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said. “Get out while you can. I have the keys and there is no governing Council or Superior Maunt to stop me. I’m going to open the doors to the Munchkinlanders and give them a fighting chance. Unless you want to be caught in here with them, take to your heels, at once!”

“Which way should we go?” asked the dwarf. “We have precious cargo.”

Do we? wondered Brrr. He supposed that Mr. Boss was referring to the Clock of the Time Dragon and the Grimmerie. All the rest of them-Ilianora among them, even the dwarf himself-were more or less dispensable.

Sister Apothecaire replied, “I don’t know which army would trouble you least. It’s your choice. Munchkinlanders are sweeping up in a shallow curve from the eastern edges of the oakhair forest. It’s a counterattack in advance of the arrival of the Emperor’s armies. We maunts evacuated to the northwest-deeper into Gillikin, whether I like it or not. The pincers are closing exactly upon this troubled house: It stands precisely where the East and the West will meet and have their bloodshed, and in a matter of quarter hours, not days. I have sung my alarum to you, now fly if you will; be it on your own heads if you won’t. I must be at the ready. I will offer flame and pitch from the ramparts to any EC soldiers, or sanctuary should the Munchkinlanders get here first.”

“You can’t rely on virtue and vice being so evenly distributed,” said Ilianora.

“I am not talking about vice. I’m talking about clan.”

A pride of maunts, thought Brrr, is rather a self-made thing, isn’t it? And temporary, if it could dissolve under pressure of war into the clans from which its members originated. Still, there is no law that says all decent things must be permanent. Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

Having delivered her ultimatum, Sister Apothecaire turned, but she was moving so fast that she couldn’t stop herself. Her foot twisted on a crack between the stones of the staircase, and she tumbled nine or ten feet to the ground, and there she lay still.

“She won’t be dead,” said Ilianora, but Brrr thought her statement more hope than prognosis.

The dwarf wouldn’t wait for a report. “Leave the little old fussbody for her countrymen to tend. We’ll be off and away with the fairies, as advised.” He barked orders to the acolytes to withdraw the bars from the main gate, and then to position themselves for flight.

Four boys put themselves between the shafts of the cart, and the others went behind to push. But Ilianora said, “Mr. Boss, we can’t be sure the Munchkinlanders will arrive first. If the Emerald City Messiars beat them to it, this maunt may be in danger. Lay her on the coachman’s seat, and we’ll study her situation when we can pause for a moment to breathe. Brrr, help me.”