“How did you know I would come here?” asked Glinda.

“You forget for whom we work,” said the woman. “The Clock tels us things that may happen. Not what should happen, mind, or what wil happen. But what might.”

“Anything might happen,” said Glinda.

“The secret of why prophecy is so popular,” agreed the woman. “Good for business.”

“I brought you back the book,” said Glinda. “It’s too fussy for me to have. I thought so the first time I had it, and I think so again.” The Lion said, “We’l take it. You’re safer without it now, in case there are reprisals. But from the hil where the Clock is hidden—we have a good view of the lake. We saw what you were able to do with the Grimmerie. You used it wel.” He grinned at her. “Nice piece of work, sister.”

Glinda remembered the play. “Have the sailing Menaciers al drowned?”

“It’s not over yet,” said the woman. “But they saw the Clock’s performance, and the fear of their own drowning wil undo them usefuly. You’ve pinched exactly the right nerve. The alarm has been given, and the dragons have been slowed or made il.”

“A dragon with a head cold. Nasty thought.”

“You never knew a dragon to live in an icy realm, did you? Cold is perishing pain to them, one hears tel.”

Glinda took the Grimmerie from where it had lain like an old farmer’s manual on the floor of the carriage. It had shed its disguise while they clattered on the road, and it looked like itself. Perhaps a bit more tattered. Could a book that old continue to age?

“You’ve done a great service,” said the Lion, taking it from her. “Some wouldn’t have thought you capable.”

“Wel, I learned to cook. At my age,” she told him. “What’s next? Arts therapy? Anyway, I’ve had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases on down any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go.”

“Good-bye,” said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman.

“Not to them,” said Glinda. “To me.”

She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. “Mum?”

“He was too interested in you,” she said in as bland a voice as she could manage. “It’s become too dangerous. You are better off with them.”

“We don’t have those instructions from Mr. Boss,” said the Lion. He growled low in the back of his throat.

“Mr. Boss is not the only one who gives instructions,” she told him. “I am a Throne Minister Emerita. As I remember it, Sir Brrr, I am the one who conferred a Namory upon you. Many years ago.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, pussying about with his lapel. “Very nice and al that, but Lady Glinda.”

“I gets to go with the Lion?” Rain was unskiled at the control of elation. It cut Glinda like onion juice in a fingertip newly slit with a paring knife. Or worse.