Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (24 page)

“I
know
.” I wiped my wet cheeks. “I just can’t make myself
believe
it. Toby — ”

“Toby will recover, and if it is learned that his attackers were motivated by your good works, that will be on their heads. Do the police know anything yet?”

“No. It’s not his investigation, but Fisher promised he’d keep me in the loop. There weren’t any witnesses and — They may never find out unless Toby suddenly recovers his memory.”

“Then you will have to forgive unknown strangers. And forgive yourself.” He waited until he got a nod from me, and rose with a groan. “And I am not getting any younger. We will be observing a Mass for the fallen Sunday at St. Christopher, for today’s dead and those in recent days to this latest outbreak of violence. Will you come?”

I nodded. “Thank you, Father — ”

“
Ozma has left for her lab
,” Shell broke in quietly.

“ — and I have to go now, too.”

“
Going to tell me what’s going on?
” Shelly asked when I punched the button for the maintenance level. We’d put Ozma’s lab down with the armory and the wards.

“A private conversation. Leadership stuff.” Private meant exactly that, and she wouldn’t be able to override the Dome’s protocols to listen in. It wasn’t a conversation
I
wanted to have right now, either, but given everything happening and how fast it could all go real bad... “I won’t be long, and then we can dish. Promise.”

Nothing else was going to happen until tomorrow, anyway; Blackstone had decided to give the new guys the day to settle before getting down to business, and he was deep into situation analysis with all of the information from the new Green Man attack.

“
Okay
.” Shell pouted audibly, but couldn’t make herself sound down. “
Crash and Reese have got a Dance Dance Revolution face-off going on the Common Room game system, anyway. I don’t think Reese is very smart
.”

I swallowed a giggle and agreed. Challenge a speedster to a dance off
? Yeah, good luck with that.
And with her computer-precision, Shell would totally own them both. If she joined in, she could download new moves off the Internet between steps.

The doors opened and I stepped out. The maintenance level was just like the others but without the starship-meets-Hilton trim, and even more secure. Willis, not usually a font of information, once told me the original designers had intended the level to include hard-cells for holding superhumans, but Atlas and the others had flatly refused to include detainment as a duty of the Sentinels charter. There would have been no way to keep us independent of the government
at all
. We’d just be supercops.

They’d given Ozma the space right across the hall from the armory (Willis had lettered the door in
green
) and she had already figured out the vocal latch; when I touched the door screen, it slid open at her “Come in!”

An oak cabinet stood in one corner and shipping boxes lay open beside the lab tables. Another corner had been turned into a temporary greenhouse. Megan would have said there were enough plant lights to grow a serious indoor marijuana crop, but I had no idea what the climbing vines and flowers were. Which was weird; Mom had a serious flower hobby and I’d helped dress lots of events so I could recognize breeds of poppy, lily, and tea rose, but I didn’t know any of these. Ozma knelt examining the plants. She still wore her party dress, and she dusted the soil off her hands as she stood to greet me. Beside her, two dolls watched me warily.

Dolls. A tiny goth punk, with long raven hair and a look that said he’d cut me if I messed with his princess, sat on a stack of books. The other doll, crouched in the plants, was dressed in silk leaves and sported fairy wings. She smiled uncertainly, like she hoped we’d get along

“Hello,” I said carefully. I couldn’t stop staring. I didn’t get a whiff off of them, confirmation that I’d finally stopped being able to “smell” magic. I’d stopped smelling the wards long ago, but wondered if I’d just gotten used to them.

Ozma smiled. “Those are interesting magic wards you have. They shield the Dome from all outside magic?”

“Doctor Cornelius set them up for us.”

“He did a very good job. Not my magic tradition, but a potent one.” She followed my eyes, smiled. “Would you like to meet Nox and Nix?”

I flushed. “I’m sorry! It’s just that magic ... gives me the wiggins. I know there’s really no difference between magic and Verne-tech superscience, but — Sorry.”

“And yet, here I am. With you to thank, too. Thank you. And why?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, huffed helplessly.
Oh well, in for a penny...

“How true are they?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The stories about Oz?” Mom had grown up with Grandma’s childhood collection of Baum’s Oz books and Dad had read them to me for bedtime stories. Which had made the Future Files on Ozma
really
disturbing — and sent me back to them to confirm what I’d remembered.

Ozma pointed us to a pair of lab stools, waiting for me to take one before seating herself. Her pictures really hadn’t done Baum’s description justice; she was perfect, a jewel of a human being, and though she looked
maybe
sixteen she carried herself with a sense of easy confidence in her worth and position that went down to her bones. She might as well have been wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m the Princess of Oz. Who are you?” — but the question would be absolutely unironic, asked with a cheerful, friendly smile that reminded me of Annabeth of all people.

She let me settle myself and adjust my costume skirt while she thought about it. Nix flew herself and Nox up onto the table beside us to watch.

“Baum and the rest were storytellers first, chroniclers second,” she said finally. “None of them were particularly enamored of factuality when it got in the way of telling children’s stories, so some of it is true, some isn’t quite, some of it is entirely fanciful, and it’s all cleaned up for bedtime reading. Perhaps if you told me what you want to be true?”

“I — can you make someone who is alive human again?”

Her perfect eyebrows rose. Obviously
not
what she had been expecting.

“For example?”

“Well, say that the Tin Woodsman wanted to be human again? Could you?”

“What an interesting question.” She gave it some thought. “Nick Chopper’s meat parts were replaced piecemeal, of course, but he was so proud of his untiring tin body that he never wanted anything of it back. Other than a heart. Is your living but not human friend enchanted?”

I was wound so tight my hands were trying to shake, and I fisted them against my thighs. “No. She’s a copy? A...” I had no
idea
how to explain quantum-ghosts. “She’s a cybernetic twin.”

“So she has no physical connection with her original body?” She frowned pensively when I shook my head. My heart sank.

“Only her mind, but — There is the story of Peg Amy, and I know you have Glegg’s Box of Mixed Magic...”

“So how much of that story is real? Yes, Glegg turned Peg Amy into a tree, and yes, she was chopped down, a branch later carved into a doll, the doll brought to life by Glegg’s Re-Animating Rays, and she was finally restored to human form when Glegg’s original enchantment was broken in more or less the traditional fairy tale way...” She tapped her perfect chin.

“Certainly at one point she was completely dead, but the dead piece of wood was still an enchanted bit of her body. People get turned into things all the time in Oz and the lands around it — I once spent a few hours as a knickknack in the Nome King’s hall. I assume we are talking about Galatea? Shelly? Does she want to be human again?”

“I doubt she’s even given it much thought.”
As in zero
. “I’m sure she hasn’t realized why you’re here — she wasn’t into the Oz stories like I was...” I swallowed, took a breath to get the quaver out of my voice. The shaking in my hands had turned into alarming tremors in my gut. “She’s so proud of what she can do now, but — ”

Ozma kept quiet, waiting for me to finish.

“But she’s not
safe
. Not if she scares the wrong people. They could take her away and... I can’t — I can’t...”

“You can’t protect her.”

“I’d do
anything
for her.”

Now
she smiled wide, a shared smile, like we knew the same secret. “Nothing truly bad, I’m sure,” she contradicted. “But then, I am not the best judge of how much badness is in a person.” She bit her lip thoughtfully — the first inelegant mannerism I’d seen out of her. It made her look a lot younger.

“Before my father’s reign, all rulers of Oz had been witches or wizards, not simply dependent on them. I decided after taking the Emerald Throne that the stability of the monarchy required me to become at least as good a witch as my grandmother was, so I studied with Glinda for years and years and collected a great many magical treasures.” She waved at the boxes around us, smile fading, and sat straighter if that was possible.

“When Mombi and Ruggiddo bound Glinda and the Wizard, I knew I couldn’t win against them on my own. I scattered the royal treasures, the Magic Belt, the Box, all the rest, throughout the mortal world before they trapped me and erased me again and sent me into exile. The Magic Belt found me and woke my memories, and now I search for the rest of my treasures and build my magical strength. There may be something I can do for Shelly. But.”

Her eyes glistened, bright with sadness deep enough to drown in. “I miss my beautiful emerald city, but I weep for my brave Gillikans, my fine Quadlings, my happy Munchkins and Winkies suffering under the tyranny of those two, and every weapon I have or can make is bent to their freedom. I will drop a house on Mombi and feed Ruggiddo scrambled eggs for breakfast and sit on the Emerald Throne again.”

Nix looked sad and Nox determined as they both nodded their agreement.

“I — ” I had nothing. What could I possibly say to that? I looked down at my fists, opened them. “Then, a trade? Certainly you will need more than magic. Please.”

Her eyes widened. I’d managed to surprise her again. “An alliance?”

I nodded convulsively. “I know about war. My father fought to end the war in China.”

Her smile wandered back, this time with a touch of whimsy. “And you will fight for people you don’t even believe in?” I realized what I’d said, and flushed a hot, hot red. She’d been so
convincing
. Was insanity contagious? She laughed at my expression, and crazy or not even
that
sounded graceful, nearly musical.

“But I accept, even if you won’t believe it until you see it. I know a word keeper when I see one.” She cocked her head. “So the mighty Army of Oz is two now. Brian will be happy. And one of my treasures ... I have not yet retrieved it, and it may not do what you want of it for Shelly, but will you accept my promise in coin?”

“Yes, but...” Giddy with triumph, I forced myself to stop and take a breath.
She can do it, she can
— “I can’t, not unconditionally.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “What are your conditions?”

“I won’t...”
I won’t help you steal Kansas, not even for Shelly.
How could I say that without telling her I knew plans she might not even
have
yet.... “I won’t do anything
truly
bad.”

She nodded in perfect understanding.

“And only you can be the judge of your badness. Done. I accept your word and your judgment.” Her lips quirked. “I feel that I should dub you Lady Knight or something. And I shall, but until that day, I am yours to command, apparently.” She laughed again, delighted at getting her turn to shock me. “Blackstone informed me that you would be our fearless leader. I don’t think the others know.”

Okey dokey
... I stood up, felt like melting. I was
so
done. “Two questions?”