Chapter Fifteen. Tinman
FIFTEEN
Tinman
Faos’s shadow follows me overhead, making sure I stay the course. The Yellow Brick Road doesn’t stretch this far northwest, so I’m forced to keep to the well-trodden dirt track that stretches from the Crossroads to the mountain villages inhabited mostly by miners and outlaws.
The witch’s castle sits at the foothills of the mountains where the air is warmer, the trees a little greener. It’s been snowing in the mountains for months and the only things that grow there are the dense shrubs that find purchase between rock crevices.
When I reach the castle, Faos leaves me for the roost in back, the beating of his wings disappearing with his soaring shadow overhead. I consider turning around and leaving, but this potential deal has piqued my interest. I had just given up on the prospect of winning my brother’s freedom.
The dirt road from the mountains meets up with the Yellow Brick Road from the Crossroads and when I step onto it, the bricks glimmer gold.
They are a poor substitute for the river that used to run swollen with magic, but what they lack in power, they make up for in flash. It screams egotistical wizard in every fucking brick.
“Tin Woodman,” another winged monkey calls out from the gloom. He’s standing at the front gate wearing the guard’s uniform of leather vambraces and matching breastplate stamped with a W right in the center. His gaze pauses on the metal flash of my arm before cutting back to my face. “You made it.”
“Did I have a choice, Mantos?”
He shoves a key into the lock and gives it a turn. A thunderous clank sounds on the other side as a dozen cogs and latches open up.
The gate finally swings in and I stalk forward.
“Farewell,” he says behind me, not bothering to hide a snicker.
There are more guards at the next entrance—an arched metal gate with spikes lining its bottom edge. It’s open already, permitting me inside.
I’ve been here countless times before and nothing ever changes, and yet I look for clues as if a change in the atmosphere might give me something to exploit against the witch.
There are always guards stationed at the same locations. The same marble busts perched on marble columns. The same urns overflowing with dead plants.
I walk up the marble staircase, then across the mezzanine. Hung from thin wire are five oil paintings mounted in gilded frames. The first is a landscape. The second a lake. The third a depiction of a bloody battle in the Great and Terrible War. That one is my favorite.
It’s the fourth and fifth I always find sickeningly sentimental for a witch who helped overthrow the royal court.
The fourth portrait is an oil painting of the former queen of Oz. The fifth is a painting of Princess Ozma, all but two years old in a dress of blue and gold, a curl of dark hair at the crown of her head.
Sentimental, yes, but fodder to exploit? No. Just relics from the past.
I make my way to the gallery at the back of the castle.
Despite the late hour, the cavernous room is awash in light.
Three giant iron chandeliers hang from the pitched ceiling.
Stuffed with a hundred candles each, the lights flicker in the drafty castle.
There are more candles, more lanterns lit in every corner. The fireplace is cold though.
She may be the Witch of the West, one of the most powerful beings in all of Oz, but I think she may be afraid of the dark.
I spot her at the balcony surveying her vast territory.
“You called for me,” I say. “Here I am.” I come up beside her and lean against the railing where Faos’s claws have pitted the stone.
“I need help retrieving someone.”
I snort. “Isn’t that what Faos is for? He retrieved me, didn’t he?”
“This is different. I need a more delicate hand.”
“I am a Soldier of Fortune. There is nothing delicate about me.”
She turns to me, and the dancing torchlight skims the curves in her black dress. Her face is hidden behind the golden monkey mask. The expression is one of frozen menace, mouth wide, teeth sharp, cheekbones hollow.
All I can make out are her bright violet eyes through the oval cutouts in the mask.
“Faos is motivated by magical command and that’s not motivation enough. You, on the other hand, are motivated by blood.”
It takes considerable effort not to shiver beneath her stare. I’ve never seen her with the mask off and I’m not sure I want to.
“After three years, you’d release Gabriel in exchange for quarry?”
“I would.”
“Why? Who is this fugitive?”
“Not a fugitive.” She clasps her hands in front of her. “A girl.”
I clear my throat, try not to roll my eyes. “And what does the Witch of the West want with a girl?”
“That’s an answer you cannot have.”
I pace away to the opposite edge of the balcony, thinking. I do want my brother freed. I may lack the ability to love, but no one but Gabriel will put up with me and sometimes I miss that companionship. He keeps me balanced. Keeps me humble.
“Do you want the girl dead or alive?” I ask.
“Alive.” Her voice is unwavering, almost vehement.
“They travel better dead.”
Her golden mask tilts, regarding me. “If she’s harmed in any way, I will skin your brother alive, right in front of you, and then I will bury you in his tanned hide.”
“Well, don’t oversell it.”
She huffs and turns away. “To show my good faith, I’ve allowed you a visit to the dungeon. You have ten minutes. When you come out, I’ll have your answer.”
Flickering torches light the way from the dungeon’s entrance to the bowels below where the witch has kept my brother caged for the last three years.
I call out his name in the dark.
“Brother?” His voice is shaky and dry. He emerges from the shadows, his blond hair raked back and greasy. Somehow, even dirty and unkempt, he still looks like a handsome little shit.
He got our mother’s soft beauty but none of her brutality.
“Here.” I hand him a mug of ale that the witch permitted me to bring.
Gabriel takes the offering eagerly and drinks it straight down.
He remains there a beat longer, head hung back, savoring the taste.
You’d think it’d be cold and dank down here in the dungeon, but it’s insufferably hot, as if the stone prison is suspended over hell itself.
Gabriel hands the mug back and hangs his arms out through the iron bars, his forehead braced between two. “How about you give me a smidge of your Oil now, huh?” He nods at the canteen strapped across my body.
“You don’t need it.”
“Who said anything about need?”
I’ve never been able to deny him. As our youngest brother, what he asks for, he gets.
I pull the canteen strap off my shoulder, unscrew the lid, and pour some of the dark liquid into the cap. I hand it over and Gabriel takes it, careful not to spill.
Oil is an expensive drug in Oz. Best not to waste it.
He slings it back and then gives the cap a hard tap to drink down every last thick drop.
As someone who barely indulges in the drug, he’ll be floating on ecstasy for several hours once it kicks in.
For me, someone who has to dose up every few hours, I barely feel it anymore. I take it so I don’t lock up.
Gabriel hangs his arms out again. “You seen our brother lately?”
I cap the canteen. “No. Last I heard, he was hiding.”
“Hiding from you, you mean.”
I lean against the stone wall that juts out from Gabriel’s cell on the south end. “He’s not afraid of me.”
“Bullshit.” Gabriel slurs the word. The Oil is kicking in fast, likely on account of his empty stomach. “He’s terrified of you.”
I shake my head. “I think he’s more terrified of what he might have to do if he crosses my path. Fight or run. And our brother is no fan of either.”
Gabriel comes over to the wall and slouches against it. “Doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”
“Precisely.”
“And what would you do? If you came eye to eye with him?”
I consider his question carefully even though I already know the answer. “I’d kill him.”
“You’d regret it.”
I cut my gaze back to his. His eyes are heavy but he’s looking right at me.
There was a time when all three of us were inseparable. Gabriel got the best of us, then the worst. Of course he wants to return to the good parts. But how can we now? There is no going back.
“I wouldn’t,” I answer.
He raises a brow. “I have a lot of hours down here to think.”
“Lucky you.”
“And I think that if you truly wanted him dead, you would have killed him by now.”
I think of the blood splattered across my boots, the axe strapped to my back, the unimaginable power of my metal arm, and the void that yawns in the center of me.
“Have you considered that maybe I have? Where I go, bodies trail behind me. Maybe they’re all dead.
Maybe I’m telling you lies to protect you. ”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t care enough to lie.” He smiles and it looks stupid on his face, too wide, too many teeth. He’s slipping quickly.
“I don’t know why I bother trying to free you. You’re a pain in my ass.”
His eyes close and he chuckles to himself. “Because no one else will tolerate you.”
He’s right, of course.
His head lolls to the side.
“Tinman.” The witch’s voice slithers down the stairwell.
“I’m not done,” I shout back.
But a second later, my knees buckle and I sink to the stone floor as pain shoots across my chest. My arm locks up first. It’s always the first to go.
The witch might not have been the one to steal my heart, but she knows how to exploit the weakness.
“Best be going,” Gabriel says, his eyes still closed.
Before I lose all feeling, I scramble with my left arm, drinking back a capful of Oil. It’s no match for the magic of a Cardinal Witch, but she doesn’t want me dead. She just wants me to obey.
The drug warms my stomach, then creeps through my bloodstream. Feeling returns to my extremities, and I sigh.
Oil is like warm honey in your veins, like clouds in your head. Like everything will be all right and if it’s not, who cares?
I climb to my feet and sway a little.
“Get some rest, baby brother.”
He jolts himself awake. “There is nothing to do here but rest.”
“Then rest some more.”
He laughs again and his body sort of melts into itself and he slumps down the wall.
My high is already fading. “I’ll be back for you soon.”
“Mmmhm,” he says and curls into a ball on the stone floor. “Take your time.”
I snort and leave him to his temporary respite.
The witch meets me at the top of the stairs.
“You took too long.”
“I don’t have a watch.”
“I don’t want your excuses.” She folds her hands in front of her. “So?”
“I retrieve this girl, bring her to you unharmed, and you’ll release my brother? Also unharmed?”
“You have my word,” she answers.
I don’t often trust the word of Cardinal Witches, but the West has always been true to hers.
“Fine. Where will I find this girl?”
“Her name is Dorothy Gale. Her house came down in the East End. She’ll likely be close by.”
“I thought you were all-seeing. Can’t you tell me where she is?”
The witch’s shoulders level out, then rock back. “I can’t see her anymore.”
If I cared at all about any of this, I’d consider that interesting. I pull out another cigarette, stick it between my lips, and retrieve my lighter. But the witch snaps her fingers and the cigarette disappears in a swirl of golden magic. “Not in my house,” she says.
I sigh. My head is starting to pound. I rarely drink Oil anymore. It gives me a headache. Straight in the veins is how I prefer it. “Is that all then?”
“For now. If the situation changes, I will inform you.”
I turn and head for the door.
“But don’t forget, Tinman. The girl is to be unharmed.”
“I heard,” I say over my shoulder. “I’ll tie her up and wrap her in soft, gauzy linen and toss her over my shoulder if I must.” I stop at the door and glance back at her once more. “One way or another, you’ll have your Dorothy Gale.”