She grimaced at the pain of every step. An old woman, a monolith of an ancient Scrow matron, easily the size of all her retainers standing together. Like a queen bee among drones.

Her face was scored with green and purple smudges, some sort of ceremonial marking.

The waft of vetiver and lily water, pleasant enough, couldn’t entirely disguise an animal odor.

“Princess Nastoya,” said the translator in comprehensible Ozish, “may I present Dorothy Gale, of parts unknown, and her companions, a Lion, a Scarecrow, a gentleman clad in Tin, and the boy about whom you’ve been told.” He then repeated the lines in Scrow, to indicate how he would go on.

“How do you do?” said Dorothy, curtseying.

Princess Nastoya was lowered to the ground so she could regard them while reclining on her side. Her spine was preternaturally long, as if she possessed extra vertebrae. The servants propped her knees on a yellow cushion, and her elbow on another, and they arranged a small mountain of cushions behind her so she wouldn’t roll backward.

The interpreter began a flowery biography, but the Princess cut him off. Her voice was low, tympanic, as if her nasal passages were large enough for the storage of melons.

“I am sore with disbelief,” she said, the interpreter translating. “I had only known that the Witch sent out Crows to call for help. Before they could reach me, they were attacked and their flesh devoured by a posse of nocturnal rocs.”

“How do you know about the Crows?” asked Liir. “If they were eaten by rocs?”

“Nocturnal rocs are mute beasts,” said the Princess, “but the attack was witnessed by a Grey Eagle who keeps an eye on a certain district for me. He drove the rocs away from one Crow, who managed to pass on the message of the Witch’s embattlement before dying. The Eagle delivered the message to me as I was closing a convocation with some of the southern Arjiki clans.”

“The Witch ought to have been told about that,” said Liir. “She considered herself an honorary Arjiki, sort of.”

“I won’t be lectured on strategy or protocol,” replied the Princess. “In any case, I did invite her. But I never knew if my invitation got through. I was told that she was distracted with grief over the death of her sister.”

“She was…unsteady…at the end,” admitted Liir. “I’m not sure how much she could have done for you, or if she would have bothered. In truth, she was kind of a hermit. She kept to herself.” Even when it came to me, he remembered.

“I’d have put the case forcefully to her, had I gotten her attention,” asserted the Princess.

“She was no fool. She saw that when the breadbasket of Munchkinland was ruinously taxed by the Emerald City’s chancellors, it had to break away and form a Free State. If pressed, we here in the west will do no less than that ourselves. My attempts to build an allegiance with the Yunamata have come to naught, and the Arjikis can enjoy their own insularity, obstinate slope dwellers!—but we Scrow will not stand by and let our Grasslands be plundered. The Wizard is amassing an army on the eastern slope of the Kells. I know how he works, you whippet.”