29. Chapter 29
twenty-nine
Rye’s anger, at least his anger toward me, did not surprise me.
He perhaps had a right to be furious with me since I was mucking up the fa?ade of our marriage by switching my ring to the other hand and parading through the castle arm-in-arm with his best friend. One of his best friends…
His other best friend waited at the end of the hall I traversed.
I walked with Jack, straggling on purpose since bringing up the rear of our procession prevented me from entering a room that held only Dorothy. Well, Dorothy and Grip, apparently. Maybe even she, Dorothy, happened to be the true reason Rye had not accepted my offered palm.
Did she know about us now? That Rye and I weren’treally married?
The thing Jack had wanted me to see, the evidence he said he had to “show” me—that had to have been the sparring session. The display had revealed how Jack had somehow absorbed Rye’s fighting style, but how did that prove anything regarding the king’s feelings?
Just before I could stop Jack to ask him, we arrived at Nick’s study.
Dorothy didn’t even look up from her pile of books when I passed through the doorway.
Instead, seated at the long, rectangular table within, her chair facing the door, she remained engrossed in whatever text she’d been poring over. Grip sat perched on the backrest of her chair and the bird squawked a greeting when I entered.
Jack went to stand behind Dorothy, one hand grasping the backrest as he peered over her shoulder.
“I found it,” she muttered. “At least…I think.”
“Found what?” asked Rye, his demeanor still gruff, his agitation still high.
Dorothy began flipping forward. As she did, lavish, full-color illustrations flashed by until, suddenly, the text and illustrations both…stopped. Instead, blank pages leafed by until, halting, she looked up, eyes narrowed on me.
“It’s a book chronicling Pastoria’s reign,” she said. “But it stops after the princess’s disappearance.”
I blinked and ventured farther into the room, my steps slow and uncertain, as if maybe the people already gathered here, Dorothy, Rye, Nick, Jack, and Pae, might decide at any moment that I didn’t belong.
“Princess,” remarked Pae as he used his tail to scoot out the chair at the far end of the table, the end opposite from where Dorothy sat. “You can’t mean Langwidere if you’re in a history book about Oz.”
“We don’t,” said Nick.
Pae pursed his lips. “Surely you don’t mean…Ozma.”
“We do.” Again, Nick.
Dorothy frowned and glanced toward Rye who, wordlessly, claimed the armed and high-backed chair stationed at the head of the table, the one next to hers.
“Tip has requested Pae’s presence,” Rye intoned, taking the book, and scooting it in front of him as, with a flap, Grip switched to perch on the back of Rye’s chair.
“Well, she should un-request his presence,” Dorothy grumbled, though she aimed her ire at Pae.
“Pae stays,” I said, eyeing the demon. “So long as he remains civil.”
Pae only grinned as he leaned back in his chair and propped his boots up on the table.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” said the demon as he folded his hands behind his head. “And worry not. I shall be ever-so-gracious and mannered. There’ll be nary a fart out of me. Neither shall I curse nor pick my nose.”
“Gross, Pae,” I said, approaching the table.
“Please sit, Tip.” Nick motioned to the chair next to Rye’s—the one directly across from Dorothy’s. I hesitated until Jack rounded to my side and pulled my chair out for me. Only when I sat did Jack claim the chair on the other side of me.
This left all the Oz natives (with the exception of Dorothy) at one end of the table, and Pae…at the far end of the other.
A quick peek his way showed the demon now wearing Rye’s stolen crown—the one he’d lifted from Rye while the King of Oz had been unconscious. Though technically speaking it couldn’t be said the demon had stolen the crown if Nick had promised it to him. I glared at him, willing him not to make me regret this decision to include him in this meeting. To trust him.
“The timeline is the one thing that doesn’t work out,” said Dorothy.
“Timeline?” asked Pae.
“Ozma’s timeline,” I interjected.
“So, we are talking about Ozma,” said Pae. “Interesting. Did someone find out what happened to her? Who killed her? Wasn’t me, by the way. That was a bit before my time here. Heard it was East’s assassin.”
I swallowed hard, keeping my gaze downcast at the mention of The Shroud. I wanted his entrance into the conversation ignored, passed over. Thankfully, it was.
“The text doesn’t stop here,” said Rye as he flipped through the empty pages. “It just…pauses.”
“The text stops after Ozma’s birth,” clarified Dorothy, “and after fifty or so blank pages, it picks up again with The Wizard’s rule and East’s and West’s rise to power. It ends after the construction of The Ozma Fountain.”
“Which Diggs had installed five years after Ozma’s disappearance,” muttered Rye. “She was seven years old when she vanished…so, she would have been twelve when Diggs commissioned the statue that tops the fountain, an effigy that reflects that age. Today, she would be twenty-four. And that’s the part that I cannot reconcile.”
“She’s been missing for seventeen years,” droned Pae. “Seven plus seventeen is twenty-four. That’s not difficult math, scarecrow.”
“Diggs gave me the key that brought me here,” I blurted, prompting everyone to focus on me.
“Yes,” Nick said. “I realized The Wizard enabled—even facilitated—your return to Oz when you first mentioned Diggs to me. Since he was the one to give you the key. Since it is now no secret that Oscar Diggs and The Wizard are one and the same.”
“Return?” Dropping his feet to the floor, Pae sat up in his chair. He leaned forward over the table, bracing a forearm against the wood. “I thought Tip wasn’t from Oz.”
“Queen Lurline,” said Rye, “the founder of Oz, left Oz just after Ozma’s fifth birthday. Still, no one in Oz knows why. No one except for perhaps Glinda. Guardianship passed to her a year later, after Pastoria’s death.”
“Glinda?” I asked. “She had charge of Ozma?”
“After Ozma’s father, King Pastoria, died,” said Rye, “Glinda took Ozma to her palace in Gillikin Country. There, she tutored the young princess in magic. Until Ozma went missing.”
If I was Ozma, this part of the timeline could not be true. I’d been two when Mombi had found me. Said she’d found me…
“Glinda never elaborated on what happened to Ozma?” I asked.
“Glinda said she didn’t know,” replied Rye. “But…I’m no longer certain that was the whole truth.”“You’re not suggesting Glinda was responsible,” I said, my heart hammering harder with this suggestion. Because if Dorothy was the darling of Oz, then Glinda was the country’s patron saint. “Are you saying you think Princess Ozma was abducted much sooner, and that Glinda covered for her disappearance?”
That still didn’t make much sense. Not where my memory was concerned. Because I had no recollection of Oz at all. All I’d ever known was the carnival. And Mombi…
But then, during my dance with Rye at our false wedding reception, I’d experienced that strange glimpse of the past. As if I’d once, long ago, been in that same room. I’d seen a younger version of The Wizard, Mr. Diggs, in that vision. I’d seen a wizened old king, too.
Could that have been a memory? Even if it had been, that only made the answers seem all the more unreachable.
“Glinda has much to answer for,” grumped Rye. “But currently, she is not here to either help or harm. Since I know Glinda personally, I contend that she lied to protect you. Though, for all my research, I cannot sus out the nature or particulars surrounding her lies.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Pae, holding up a clawed hand. “Can we back up a few hundred words? I’m still stuck on The Ozma Fountain.”
“Glinda was in love with The Wizard,” said Dorothy, stealing the text back from Rye to trace its binding with her fingers, as if searching for some hidden catch or secret stowed material. “That was what led her to lie.”
“Glinda and the Wizard?” I asked, shocked.
“Speculation,” grumbled Rye without looking at me. His tone, though, suggested he didn’t doubt Dorothy’s revelation. Or that he’d since come to secretly agree with the idea.
“I know you said you’re sure about her, Rye,” said Dorothy, “but…it’s not adding up.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t,” Rye said. “There are obviously puzzle pieces missing. This book alone proves that. Someone made efforts to hide the truth.”
“All we know,” said Dorothy, “is that, after Lurline left, Pastoria aged rapidly and died. He’d befriended The Wizard by then who, during the king’s decline, began acting as regent.”
“Glinda confronted the Wizard on his infringement on Oz’s affairs,” said Nick. “Ultimately, though, she agreed to allow him to reign as regent until Ozma came of age. That’s when Glinda took Ozma South with her, to her castle in Quadling Country.”
“Did anyone see her leave the Emerald City?” I asked. “The princess? Ozma?”
“Lurline kept Ozma in hiding,” explained Rye. “No one but Pastoria, Glinda, and The Wizard ever saw Ozma growing up.”
“The tree,” I blurted. “Gleeah. Rye, that night we left the Emerald City Palace together to talk to Gleeah—the tree thought I was Lurline when I woke her up.”
“Yes,” said Rye, his deadpan tone betraying how he’d remembered this interlude much sooner than I had and had been dwelling on it for far longer. “Lurline was Ozma’s mother, the queen. A full-blooded Fairy and, as I mentioned before, the founder of Oz.”
“Oh,” I gasped. “That must be why…” I trailed off, the tree’s words about the Fae, Pastoria, and Oz echoing through my mind.
“I am so very lost,” mumbled Pae from his end of the table, his hand curling into a fist. “And I can’t say I like it.”
“If no one ever saw the princess,” I said, speaking to Rye, “then how could anyone be certain of how old she was? Could there, for instance, have been two princesses?”
“There was only one Ozma,” Rye said, stealing the book again from Dorothy, who huffed and sat back in her chair. “Also, one child with that much power would have been difficult to hide. Two children…? Impossible.”
“Could one have died?” I tried.
“One did die,” growled Pae.
“One vanished,” corrected Rye, at last acknowledging Pae’s presence, though again without looking up. Instead, he leafed even more madly through those blank pages, as if, in shifting them, he might reveal some coded message. “Ozma is not dead. She was not assassinated. She was stolen.”
“Wait a second,” said Pae, standing to press both hands flat to the table, which he leaned forward over. “Are you trying to tell me that our big bad battle plan is to find Ozma? The Ozma?”
“She already found me,” replied Rye, who now laid the book flat, those cool blues scanning the blank pages. “A coincidence that, like her disappearance, can’t really be so coincidental—or easily explained. The two incidents might, however, be linked.”
“Ozma,” Pae scoffed. “Lurline and Pastoria’s brat? She’s dead, scarecrow.”
“She’s sitting at this table,” mumbled Rye, at last slamming the book shut before holding out his hand for another tome in Dorothy’s stack.
Pae’s gaze shot to me. I returned his stare, which widened—before going squinty.
“No,” scoffed the demon.
“Gleeah,” said Rye, “the Fairy-magic-infused tree Lurline planted outside the Emerald City Palace, recognized Tip. Or, rather, she mistook Tip for Lurline, her mother. That was after Tip had been able to wake the tree, which had slept dormant for decades. Additionally, by Tip’s own admission, Diggs—the Wizard—was the one to give Tip the key that transported her here, to Oz. Back to Oz. That key was originally given to Ozma’s father—Pastoria. A wedding gift from Lurline. The Wizard returned it to Tip, knowing full well who she was. Knowing of her powers, too. And, sure enough, shortly after she arrived in Oz, Tip was arrested for the unlawful use of magic, something Diggs must have banked on happening sooner or later. With half Tip’s blood being Fae and with her having no knowledge of her true identity, Tip was bound to be apprehended by my people.”
This was true. It had to be. Hadn’t Diggs warned me to “beware The Scarecrow?”
He’d done so because he’d known I was going to meet with the king. By giving me that key, Diggs had set me on a collision course with Rye.
“Why would Diggs send her back when he did, though?” asked Dorothy.
“Glinda,” said Rye. “He must have found out that Glinda was in peril. And he sent Tip as a distraction—for me. So that I would be too preoccupied with uncovering Tip’s story and her powers to notice his return to Oz. Also, it might have been a last-ditch effort on his part to help save Oz from Langwidere. Or all these things.”
“Diggs,” I said. “Before he left Mombi’s tent, he said something about having a doorway to catch. I think Rye is right. He used the key to prop open a portal to Oz before he gave it to me.”
“Mombi,” echoed Pae. “From Gillikin Country?”
“You know Mombi?” I asked the demon.
“I knew of her,” he said.
“Presumably,” said Rye, interrupting, “Diggs ignored my banishment with the plans to take matters into his own hands to try and free Glinda. He knows better than to approach me directly. Perhaps, though, through Tip, he found a way to do so indirectly. Diggs, after all, recognized—at least partially—the damage he’d wrought on this land. Before he departed, he stated as much before swearing to abide by the exile I placed on him. Since he took the key with him, however—your key, Tip—my suspicions that he never meant to keep that promise seem confirmed. Unless he was saving it for you. Which, knowing him, I highly doubt.”
“How do you think he found out about Glinda’s abduction?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Rye. “You may be able to answer that question, however. Glinda could send dreams to those with whom she shared a strong bond. She would use dreams to communicate. Since I do not sleep, I cannot receive dreams from her. She and I do not share the necessary connection anyway. Nick does not dream, either. Cahal knows Glinda only as well as I do, and Dorothy even less. Perhaps, though, Glinda reached out to Diggs this way. I don’t know why she would choose him over someone inside of Oz, or even if her magic can stretch to your world. But it seems plausible. Especially since you have used dreams—or something like them—to connect with me.”
“You dreamed?” asked Dorothy.
“While I was unconscious,” answered Rye. “Under the influence of the poison.”
“And again, in the meadow,” I murmured. “Though then you’d been human.”
And in that instance, I’d put him into a sleep.
“Human?” said Dorothy, her eyes bugging.
“The arrows pierced me in that vulnerable state,” said Rye. “I explained that.”
“Yeah,” said Dorothy, “but I didn’t know she transformed you again.”
So, there had been a conversation about me. What, though, had Rye told Dorothy?
What had he left unsaid?
“She’s too young,” said Pae, rounding the table to draw nearer to us. Nearer to me. “Tip can’t be Ozma. You said so yourself. This is a crazy dream. A delusional bid to make pieces fit together that don’t.”
“Morella figured it out, too,” said Rye, at last meeting Pae’s gaze. “Perhaps she even cracked the puzzle before I did. You’ll no doubt recall how badly West wanted to take possession of Tip.”
“That was just because of Tip’s power,” argued Pae.
“Dorothy knows about Morella now?” I asked.
“I told her,” Rye admitted. “She deserves to know that West still exists in some capacity. Especially if she’s joining us to fight in another war.”
I met Dorothy’s gaze, but we both looked away quickly, perhaps equally discomforted by our separate but intense encounters with the Wicked Witch of the West.
Well, in my instance…my encounter with what was left of her.
“Proof,” snapped Pae. “I want proof.”
“Proof is what this meeting is about,” snarled Rye. “Jack has been laboring to uncover the truth, and since her arrival, Dorothy has been doing what she can to aid him. The texts, as you can see, don’t offer much insight.”
Pressing a gloved hand to the book pages, Rye then shoved the tome down the table, and it slid past me, careening toward Pae who caught it, his glower switching from the king to the book, to me…and back to the book again.
“As for me,” said Rye, “Ineed no more proof that Tip is the rightful Queen of Oz. At this point, I’m merely searching for explanations.”
“And your certainty,” said Pae, “that she is Ozma—the rightful ruler of Oz, as you say. Is that why you married her?”
“Pae,”I said.
“It’s a fair question,” allowed Rye, his response shocking me. “When the truth comes out about Tip, about Ozma—and it will come out—that will be the first question every one of my critics will ask. Even my allies will ask it. But Tip and I were engaged before I discovered the truth of her identity.”
“Oh,” said Pae, “then you just married her for her power.”
“Our union is political,” said Rye. “As most royal marriages are. I made my intentions clear to Tip from the start. So yes. I did.”
Rye’s words squeezed my heart like a fist, collapsing it.
While he wasn’t telling the full truth here, he also wasn’t lying. And there had been no feelings when I entered into my agreement with him, signed up for his plan.
That had all changed, of course. At least, it had for me…
“You’re a good liar, scarecrow,” snapped Pae. “I can’t tell where you’ve fibbed, but I can certainly sniff out that you have.”
I drew a breath, and then another. But the air in this chamber no longer seemed to hold oxygen. I placed my hands on the table and pushed to my feet.
“There’s no proving or disproving my identity,” I said. “At least not for right now. And first things first anyway. We’re in a war. And we need to discuss our countermoves.”
“Countermoves are already in place,” said Rye.
“You’ve decided to invade,” I guessed.
The marching ranks could attest to that.
“Pending any better ideas the members of this council might have,” replied Rye.
“So, I am a member of this council,” said Pae.
“Until the queen wishes otherwise,” snipped Rye.
“Glinda,” I said. “I think you’re right that she reached out to Diggs through dreams. Last night, I dreamt of Sebastian. But…it wasn’t a dream.”
“You spoke with him?” asked Nick.
Rye, in the meantime, remained silent. Though he stared straight into me, something odd swirled behind those glass-like eyes. Something undefinable and changeable, like hope mixed with despair.
“He…” I trailed off, not wanting to divulge what I’d learned. That Sebastian had concocted his own plan to fight Langwidere. By befriending her.
I couldn’t bring myself to share that. Because I could see Rye commending it—jumping at the chance to take advantage of Sebastian’s insider position. Perhaps I had Rye wrong in that regard. Maybe he would agree with me that Sebastian was in over his head.
Either way, Sebastian’s motives were misguided. Skewed, even.
While Rye wanted to defeat Langwidere to save Oz, Sebastian wanted to defeat Langwidere so that he could go home—with me. It wasn’t fair to allow Sebastian to assume the role of a double agent. Not when this fight had nothing to do with him. And not when his goals were not in line with ours.
With mine.
I didn’t want him in the Emerald City any second longer than he had to be.
I wanted him here, with me. So that I could explain everything to him. So that I could…send him home. Where he would be safe.
“I want to retrieve Sebastian myself,” I said, lifting my chin in defiance. “Which is why I want you to agree to the trade. A new trade. Me…for him.”