Gregory Maguire - Wicked Years 03 by A Lion Among Men

Author:A Lion Among Men
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-02-15T16:37:20.194000+00:00

W ITHIN A few weeks of Dorothy’s departure, Glinda formally took the Throne. Brrr was able to get an audience with her, and, after a little fawning and purring, he wheedled a title. Sir Brrr, Lord Low Plenipotentiary to the market environs of Traum. It was, as he thought and others joked, a cruel blow: about as undistinguished a peerage as it was possible to acquire. One could pick up higher honors going through the garbage. Lord Low Plenipotentiary was a title without an estate, a job without a salary, an honorific without a voting voice in the Council of Agreement, which Lady Glinda had promised to reconvene after a lengthy hiatus.

And Traum? Traum, of all places? Lady Glinda was depositing him at the site of his public humiliation. Had she meant to rub his nose in it? Or in her giddy innocence did she hope to give him a chance to return as a conquering hero? He didn’t know and he didn’t bother to visit his district and find out. Let them get on without him.

He drank too much during the day, and he lost track of that agitated kid, Liir. When the Lion learned that the Scarecrow had been nominated to succeed Lady Glinda to the Throne—the Scarecrow elevated to be the Head of Oz, while the Lion groveled, a Lord Low Plenipotentiary!—well, he lost more acreage of guts to stomach acids.

Anhedonia, a doctor said. Fear of pleasure.

He almost bit the doctor, for the pleasure of it.

He might have survived the indignity if he’d had a circle of companions. Anything like a confessor, a crony.

But Dorothy was gone, disappeared perhaps the way Ozma Tippetarius had disappeared, too. The Scarecrow was busy with regal affairs and rarely met his public. (Some said he wasn’t even the same Scarecrow, but an imposter. Brrr never got close enough again to venture an opinion on the matter.) And Nick Chopper was filled with the romance of labor rebellion, getting in bed with dubious sorts to hatch out schemes to organize the tiktok workers, the mechanized servants of Oz. Change was in the air, everyone said—change of every sort except spare change: not that kind. Times weren’t better, they were just—different. Times were hard in a new way. You could be grateful for the novelty of it, but only up until teatime, when dried rye brisks and plowfoot jelly made their baleful appearance on the table. Unless you were Palace, of course.

He might have survived it if he had never learned to read. But what else was there to do but hang out in cafes frequented by the demimonde, sip stale tea or watered-down plonk in the Burntpork district, and scrutinize the cast-off newsfolds?

THE WORTHY SCARECROW HOLDS A PALACE RECEPTION

Dateline: Emerald City

Peers of the realm, from the level of Minor Establisher and up, gathered in the glittering Ozma Arcade last night in one of the season’s most exclusive soirees—

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