Sister Laundry would no longer dry the sheets in the sun, for they looked like white flags of surrender and no one wanted soldiers garrisoned in the mauntery. Sister Hospitality began refusing shelter to wanderers through these isolated reaches, lest they turn out to be secret agents. Behind closed doors, Sister Apothecaire availed herself of a calming beverage usually reserved for those in medical distress. Sister Petty Cash had bad dreams. “The cost of war,” she murmured, her voice trailing off.

“We’ve no reason to fear either army,” insisted Sister Doctor, when the subject came due for an update at Council. “Three weeks ago, when the Munchkinland marauders swept by, making their inept preemptive strike into Loyal Oz, they didn’t stop to rape and plunder us as they passed. They hoped to wreak havoc on the Emperor’s forces massing to the west, but it appears the upstarts have managed only to wreak a spot of bother. Sisters, be sensible. Now the Munchkinlanders are in-what’s it called?-hot retreat. Fleeing for their lives. They’ll be too distracted to drop in for a refreshment while they’re being pushed back to their own borders. Lighten up.”

The maunts, pledged to obedience, tried to lighten up, though Sister Doctor’s customary brusqueness of diagnosis seemed, perhaps, inadequate to riddles of military strategy.

Still, the House of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows, meant to be remote from worldly concerns, stood this month like a Gillikinese sycamore trying to camouflage itself in a Quadling rice paddy. An exceedingly prominent target. There was no other establishment in the district so capacious, so securable, so fitted with supplies. Most of the maunts felt it was only a matter of time. And when the time came, which army would knock at the doors? The home team or the rebel rabble? The well-trained Emerald City army forces or the Munchkinlander militia, that ad hoc volunteer swarm? Though the mauntery stood in Loyal Oz, the maunts, by dint of their spiritual allegiances, considered displays of patriotism inappropriate, if not gauche. Though they did wonder: Would either adversary show mercy to the self-quarantined isolates of a religious order?

“Of course they will,” argued Sister Doctor from the lectern. “We are the exemplars of mercy. We set the standard, and an army has no choice but to respect our standards.”

The maunts nodded, respectful but unconvinced. Men were beasts. Everyone knew that. It’s why most of the women had entered the mauntery in the first place.

Dinner conversation revolved around nothing but military operations. These days the women had to raise their voices to be heard above the sound of military skirmishes. Practice charges, they hoped. Trees were being felled for the construction of catapults: Who could think properly with all that racket? Who could pray-or, put another way, who could stop praying?

To add injury to insult, a projectile of flaming pitch and straw went astray and landed on the leads of the chapel, so the Council was burdened with the added annoyance of home repair. It was impossible to persuade skilled trade to venture behind the battle lines. Sister Hammer did what she could, but even so.