There was no safe place in Oz for Glinda. She knew this. The government administrators in the Emerald City—the Emperor’s men—were just waiting for her to emerge. She was too popular a figurehead to be alowed to swan about freely in the EC. Her longtime sponsorship of an institute of maunts latterly accused of printing seditious broadsides was enough reason to lock her away. Risky business, offering patronage. No, her bread was buttered good and hard on the wrong side. Better to tough it out here and manage her private obligations as best she might, for as long as she could.

3.

By noontime the next day the soldiers’ horses had drunk the fountain dry. The forecourt of crushed lake abalone reeked with horse manure. “Do bring a message to the General,” said Glinda, “and inform him that there’s a whole lake forty feet beyond the lawns. Since this invasion is al about the appropriation of water, perhaps he’d be so kind as to lead his cavalry down to the water’s edge?”

“I do not think, Lady Glinda, that he listens to me overmuch,” said Miss Murth unhappily. “I would not command his attention.”

“Try. We are al under pressure, Miss Murth. We must do our best. And we may be confined for some time, so I suppose I should convene a coloquy among the help. Propose a common attitude toward this intrusion, and so on. What do you think?”

“I was never good at current affairs. I preferred the arts of needlework and correspondence.”

“Correspondence? To whomever would you write?”

“Wel. The papers.”

“So you took the papers. You never read the papers, surely?”

“I found news somewhat sulying.” Miss Murth fluffed the feathers on Lady Glinda’s afternoon hat; they remained droopy. But Lady Glinda wasn’t going anywhere. “It wasn’t a wise choice, I now see,” said Miss Murth. “I might have folowed politics, but I preferred the society columns. When you were in them.”

“Surely I’m in them stil.”

Miss Murth sighed. “It’s a shame about the horse droppings.”

“Miss Murth. Are you listening?”

Miss Murth straightened her shoulders to indicate that she was indeed listening, damn it.

“You ought to folow events, Miss Murth. You remember that skirmish by Munchkinlanders into Loyal Oz last fal? Oh, don’t look at me like that, it was west of here, near that strip of land that divides Kelswater and Restwater. You remember. Near the mauntery of Saint Glinda, where I sometimes like to go and consider my soul, my debts, my diet, and so on? Yes?”

“Yes. With those cloistered ladies who think they’re so holy.”

“Miss Murth. Do try to attend. Out of the goodness of my heart I’m sharing what I have picked up.”

“The skirmish. Yes. Everyone was so vexed,” recaled Miss Murth, aiming at drolery and achieving condescension. “It completely upended the social season.” Damn the attitude of help; Glinda was talking this out to get it straight in her own head. “When by winter’s end our Munchkinlander tenants and neighbors had retreated under the superior fire of the EC