“Surely you’l stay for a glass of refreshment? Zackers isn’t Chef, of course, but he’s learning his way around the larder, much as you are.” She didn’t reply, but swept away. In her rooms, she wept momentarily, feeling foolish. She rang for Murth and asked her to find out more about Chef, but neither Murth nor Puggles was alowed outside of the house anymore. “I didn’t hear ‘drowned,’ ” insisted Miss Murth. “I only heard ‘let go.’ But he couldn’t swim.”

After lunch the Menaciers began moving soldiers’ trunks and sleeping rols into the gilt-ceilinged guest chambers. Zackers oversaw the setting up of cots in Glinda’s retiring parlor. Three of them, one for Puggles, one for Murth, one for Rain. “I can’t sleep in the same room as Puggles,” begged Miss Murth. “I am an unmarried woman.” Glinda didn’t answer. She told Puggles to find Rain. Glinda would see her at once, in the privacy of her boudoir.

I3.

Ineed something of you, Rain,” said Glinda.

The girl didn’t answer. She doesn’t speak often, noted Glinda, not for the first time. Maybe learning to read wil change that.

“We are being asked to keep from walking about in the gardens for a while,” she said. “But you’re young and can run and dash about, and no one much notices. Can you find out something for me?” Rain looked up sideways at her mistress. Despite years of Glinda’s watching her own diet and performing knee-bends in the privacy of her chambers, she suddenly felt fat. Fat and squat and old. And she feared she smeled of caramelized carrots. But enough about me, she said to herself, and shook her curls, which were due for a bleaching in a solution of lemon juice and extract of milkflower. Later.

Concentrate.

“Are you up for this, Rain?”

The girl shrugged. Her hair was dirty and her calves were dirty, but prettying the child up wouldn’t do her any good, Glinda thought. She was safer looking a little revolting. That snarled cloud of unbrushed brown hair! “What do you want me to lookit?” Rain finaly said.

“I want you to find out what they are building in the barns. Can you do that?”

Rain shrugged again. “They’re always hammering inside there, and the doors are shut.”

“You’re smal. You can stick to the shadows.” Glinda fixed the girl with as fierce a glare as she could manage. “Your name is Rain, isn’t it? Rain slips in the cracks and slides through the seams. You can do it? Can’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You better try, or I might have to cancel your reading lessons.”

The girl looked up sharply, more keenly than before. “Not that, Mum.”

“I trust the General is treating you wel?”

“He teaches me good enough,” said the girl. “I knows a passel of letters now.”

Glinda pursed her lips. She didn’t believe in putting children in danger, nor of frightening them overmuch. “He’s permitted to teach you no more than letters,” she finaly said. “If he tries to teach you anything else, you come let me know. Is that understood?”