Nearer, he could see Piyanta and Zibria and their cousins in a kind of open cloister, reclining behind a netting of pale golden gauze suspended from the branches of larch trees. The young females tended to one another’s needs with a simple affection that seemed both kittenish and provocative.

A few rapscallion youngsters were being taught the algebraics of pouncing by a seriously trim grandmother warrior. She was not afraid to draw blood with the cuff of her paw, though Brrr could hear no mew of complaint from the erring student.

“Is there a queen?” he found himself asking, thinking of Ursaless, that dowdy collapsing pillar of Bear.

“Are you referring to Ozma?” Muhlama nearly spit the word.

“I was not. I meant was your father blessed with a consort.”

“Uyodor H’aekeem does not take a mate for life,” said Muhlama. “Like so many tribes in Oz, we are a matriarchy. But if a Chieftess bears no female offspring, her oldest male cub becomes leader until he dies or is challenged successfully by an upstart. Uyodor, the son of our last Chieftess, has held sway since before my birth.”

“And you are in line, then, to lead the Ghullim when he dies.”

“I stand in no line,” she snapped, but that was a revelation she regretted at once. (She had a temper, he saw.) The rate of her breathing had changed; she was holding her breath-holding herself together, holding herself back. “You are correct. If tradition is followed, I am the next to rule.”

He decided to change the subject. “Since you mentioned her, I wonder if your clan believes that Ozma will return to rule Oz again?”

She snorted. “Ozma? Can you credit anything about the heap of gossip surrounding her? The washerwoman myths of a holy saint Ozma, our savior and our guide-hah! Those baby bones are halfway to dust now. The Wizard in the Emerald City is far too smart an operator to have sequestered that child somewhere off-site, where she could grow and thrive and command an army to return and reclaim her throne. We wait for no deliverers here, and we need none. We are in readiness when our terrain is threatened, and no Wizard of Oz nor any other agitator will co-opt our independence or receive our tribute.”

The vigor of her testimony seemed disproportionate, since his remark had been casual. This was a tribe that reveled in its iconoclastic identity with lethal earnestness.

“I only wondered,” he said. “It does seem to be an enduring story, that the baby Ozma was hidden somewhere when the Wizard accomplished his coup d’état.”

“Inane. What reason could that mad potentate possibly have for allowing a potential rival to survive?”

“I don’t know.” The Lion felt out of his depth when talking political strategy, especially if the discussion became heated. “I heard someone posit that if the Wizard were ever brought on charges for her murder, he’d be able to pull her out of hiding and prove his innocence. Other than that, I have no earthly idea.”