“I don’t respond to threats or prophecies.”

“Prophecy is dying, Lady Glinda. So I’m going on a hunch. Our best thinking is al we have left.”

“My best thinking wouldn’t boil an egg,” she told him.

“Look it up. This thing is as good a cookbook as any you’re likely to find. Come on, sister. Didn’t Elphaba trust you once to try? It’s your turn.”

“I don’t mention her name,” said Glinda. Not coldly, but in deference.

“Shal I leave you the Lion to help you protect the book?”

“I am not alowed pets.”

Brrr, circling the court and sniffing for trouble, gave a low growl.

“Sorry. I’m flustered. I meant to say staff. I have a skeletal crew on hand to look after me, but I think you need the Lion’s services more than I do.”

“His services aren’t much to speak of,” said the dwarf. The boys laughed a little nastily. They were Menaciers themselves, she saw, just in a different uniform, serving a different commander. She wanted nothing to do with any of them.

“When I saw you once before,” she told Mr. Boss, “you were on your own. You didn’t have this extravagance of tiktok mechanics at your heels.”

“Once in a while I park the Clock in secrecy when the times require it. That instance, as I recal, I was making a little pilgrimage on foot. I told you that I knew you had the Grimmerie, and what was in it. I told you things about Elphaba that no one could know. That’s how I convinced you to relieve yourself of the Grimmerie then, before Shel Thropp had acceded to the Throne and approached you, intending to impound the book. I trust he did make that effort?”

She nodded. The dwarf had predicted events quite cannily. Thanks to him, she’d had nothing to show Shel, not in the palace treasury nor in her private library, not in Mennipin Square nor in Mockbeggar Hal. She’d been clean of this dangerous volume.

And now, Cherrystone breathing down her throat every day, she was expected to take it back again? To hide it in plain sight?

“Are you working to set me up for execution?” she hissed.

“I never talk about the end game.” He winked at her. “I’ve lived so long without death that I’ve stopped believing in it.” From the shadows of the great Parrith onyx pilars with strabbous inlay, the Lion spoke. “Things are settling down now. Campfires being lit, men sorted out. We don’t have much time.”

“Please,” said Mr. Boss to her. “And I don’t say please often.”

Glinda kept her hands tucked under her arms. She looked up at the dark windows of Mockbeggar. If she took this book, she wanted to make certain that Miss Murth and Puggles and Chef were ignorant of it. She didn’t want to put them under any more danger than necessary.

There was no sign of a shape at the windows. Or was there? Perhaps a little thumbnail of darkness at a lower pane. Surely Rain was off and asleep?