“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.
“I’ll sew myself back up. It’s good to let it breathe for a bit.” He waved me away, a bit of straw escaping from his cuff. “Take the trash on your way out, girl.”
I grabbed the wastebasket, almost tripped over myself curtsying, and got the hell out of there.
As long as I didn’t think too much about it, and if I followed my feet and let the spell do the work, I knew my way around the palace. After only one wrong turn, I finally found my way to the kitchen, which seemed as good a place as any to dispose of the Scarecrow’s garbage. It was empty now for the brief window between cleaning up after dinner and getting ready for breakfast. The place was even more huge than I had expected, which was fitting considering the size of the palace.
Not to mention the size of Dorothy’s appetites.
One wall was lined with a row of old-timey stoves while a row of sinks dominated the other. At the end of the kitchen was a fireplace, a small fire dancing behind the grate. I tossed the whole wastebasket in. It burned down to dust in an instant.
When I turned around, I was no longer alone. Ozma was standing in the doorway. She wore a nightgown so sheer I could see her pale, almost translucent skin through it. Her big green eyes were unblinking, glowing brightly in the kitchen’s candlelight.
I was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed me.
I held my breath and stepped aside into a shadow. But as I moved, the princess let out a lilting giggle and I saw that her eyes were trained right on me. I’d been discovered.
“Pardon me, Your Majesty,” I said, curtsying deeply and praying I hadn’t done anything technically against the rules.
Again, she giggled. It had a manic, almost crazed quality to it.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked quietly and carefully. “May I assist you to your quarters?”
She smiled and clapped her delicate hands together. “Quarters! Halves!” she exclaimed in delight, and then her face immediately drooped into a frown. “And have-nots.”
So this was the One True Princess of Oz. It was obvious to anyone that she was broken somehow. I wondered if this was what she did every night—if she just wandered around the palace reaching for whatever shiny objects caught the attention of her spooky green eyes and spouting weirdo puns. I turned to go. I didn’t want to be around if she started banging on pots and pans or something.
But as I tiptoed around her into the empty hallway, she called after me.
“Dorothy knows,” she singsonged. I stopped and turned back, wondering what she meant. What if there was a little bit of Ozma still in there?
“What does she know?” I asked, forgetting myself.
She began to sing. “Backward rivers, Dorothy knows, Lion’s den, Scarecrow’s nose.”
Oh. It was just more nonsense.
What happened to you? I wondered. But I knew it wasn’t worth it to ask.
Ozma’s hand reached out for mine as I tried to skirt past her. Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone so frail and thin that I could practically see through her.
I tried to shake her loose, to no avail. “Ozma. Your Majesty. You have to let me go or I’ll get into trouble.”
She gave me an angelic smile and patted my hair with her free hand. It was like my mom mid-bender.
“What does the owl say?” she asked me.
I inspected her face to see if there was even a hint of understanding, if there was anyone at all at home. It didn’t look like it.
I’d taken too long to respond, so this time her question was louder, echoing through the kitchen. “What does the owl say?”
“Please be quiet, Your Majesty,” I hissed, but when it looked like she was about to ask me again, I gave in. “Who! The owl says who.”
“Are you?” she demanded, cocking her head to the side.
“Astrid,” I replied, trying to stay calm, her clammy hand still on my wrist. “I’m Astrid.”
“Mm mm mmm,” she replied, pointing at my chest. “Naughty liar.”
I yanked away from her, more violently than I’d intended. Ozma teetered like an antique vase and then started to fall over. I had time to picture the princess of Oz cracking her head on the cobbled kitchen floor; that’d make for a pretty atrocious first night of espionage. I leapt forward to steady her.
Before I could even apologize for almost knocking her over, Ozma latched on to me. She put her lips right up against my ear.
“I’ll never tell,” she whispered.
And then, out of nowhere, she grabbed my chin and turned my head, kissing me softly on the cheek. Her lips were soft and smooth.
What the hell?
I pulled back gently and looked at her. Her eyes were wide open, too. She was still studying me. This time, though, she let me go. Without another word, Ozma resumed her wandering, leaving me in the kitchen to wonder if my cover was already blown.
“Today is a beautiful day to be in Oz!”
The lilting, sweet voice wafted across the crowded table in the servants’ mess hall where I was eating breakfast with the rest of the maids.
I was starting to sweat, and not just because this was the first time my Astrid identity needed to stand up to mass scrutiny; it was humid in the mess hall, the room seeming to trap all the heat from the kitchen. There were about twenty girls huddled shoulder to shoulder around the long, rough-hewn table—no boys. The butlers and footmen I’d seen hustling around must take their meals at a different time.
Jellia Jamb sat at the head of the table—the one who’d spoken with such unironic chipperness about what a beautiful day it was to be a servant. Jellia was in charge of the downstairs staff. She had a sickly sweet smile on her face and she looked like she was a few seconds away from bursting into song. She poised her fork above her plate and held it there. Everyone else followed suit.
Jellia was pretty, with rosy pink skin and golden-blonde hair. As the head maid, her uniform was a deeper, richer emerald green than the rest of our pale, washed-out shades that were somewhere between sea foam and olive.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d hoped I’d get the chance of a glimpse of Pete when the staff gathered, but no luck. If I was going to see him, it wasn’t going to be at mealtimes.
We were dining on a spread left over from Dorothy’s dinner last night, which meant we were eating dinner and dessert for breakfast. Braised ribs. Truffle-infused mashed potatoes. Chocolate cake. The fact that my mouth was watering felt like some small betrayal of the Order. Even the maids’ food in the palace was a million times better than what the Order cooked up in the caves. Still, I would have given anything to have Gert make me some green goo again, something other than the table scraps of a flouncy despot. And, back at the caves, I could eat without feeling that everyone was staring at me, picking up on whatever giveaway Ozma had noticed the night before. Green goo was a lot less stressful and a lot more ethically delicious.
“Praise Dorothy,” Jellia said, and nineteen forks descended in unison. Mine was just a second behind.
Glamora was right. The girls had perfect manners, and in that moment, I was thankful that she’d trained me so vigilantly. But there was something else, something a little eerie. They were more than perfect—they were synchronized. Every girl’s fork met her lips at the exact same moment and touched down on their plates again, like clockwork.
“Dorothy has been very generous. She was pleased with last night’s service. She didn’t actually say so, but I could tell. She didn’t have a single complaint. Well, except about the bread, but that wasn’t our doing, and I’m sure Her Highness knows that. Aren’t we lucky to work for someone as kind and understanding as Princess Dorothy?”
This girl was cheerful. Too cheerful. Dorothy wasn’t even here and this was at least the eleventh compliment she’d heaped on the princess before we’d even started eating.
And I’d hate to see what happened to the poor person who screwed up Dorothy’s bread—whoever that was.
“Astr
id, are you all right? “ Jellia asked as I took a braised rib from the serving dish at the center of the table.
I looked up, startled. “I’m fine.”
“You never eat that,” the girl next to me, whose name I’d learned was Hannah, said suspiciously.
“Maybe she’s trying to put on some weight,” offered another maid named Sindra. Her eyelashes were extra-long and she’d tied her hair into tight pigtails, almost like an homage to Dorothy.
I swallowed hard. Was Astrid a vegetarian? Had my stomach just given me away?
I shrugged as lightly as possible. “I guess I’m just extra-hungry this morning,” I said, trying to match the other girls’ perky tone and keep pace with their synchronized eating. “If it’s good enough for Dorothy herself, it’s certainly good enough for me!”
That seemed to satisfy them. Jellia nodded as if my logic was too unimpeachable to argue with, and I went back to trying to chew daintily, hoping I wouldn’t make any other mistakes.
I kept my antennae up for intel, but the only subject of conversation was Dorothy. Which should have been a good thing, considering that she was the one I was really here to learn about. Unfortunately, no one was sharing any useful information. It was all about how beautiful Dorothy was, or how kind she was, or how lucky we were to be working for the greatest person in all of Oz.
It was weird. They were like a creepy, overeager maid sorority.
By the end of breakfast, I found my fork moving in time with the other maids. I found myself nodding when they nodded, chewing when they chewed, blinking when they blinked. Part of me was proud for how easily I’d blended in, a necessity if I was going to complete my mission. But another part of me wondered if maybe the whole automaton routine wasn’t coming a little too easily.
Was it magic? I wondered. A spell to make us as orderly as possible? Did Dorothy have some kind of charm working to keep us from eating like slobs or tapping our forks? Or was the clockwork perkiness machine just the maids’ way of dealing with the constant fear of living under Dorothy?
Breakfast didn’t last long. Jellia merrily reminded us how much work we’d been blessed with and hustled us off to our tasks. Every room in the palace was cleaned every day, regardless of whether or not anyone was using it.
“I wish we could use magic for this,” I said leadingly to Hannah, glancing at her over our big bucket of soapy water. We were hunched on our hands and knees, scrubbing oil stains from the floor of the Tin Woodman’s suite.
My floor scrubbing was pretty half assed, since I was too busy checking out the Tin Woodman’s living space to really bother with my job. Except that his room was almost as boring as mine. The room was completely devoid of personal effects whatsoever, other than spare parts. The only thing that interested me was a strange contraption that was bolted to the wall, made up of two long metal brackets that held an ancient-looking mattress suspended about a foot off the floor in a perfectly vertical position. Just under it, a pair of boot-shaped scuff marks had become so etched into the wood that I was sure no amount of scrubbing would remove them.
At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it dawned on me. This was the Tin Woodman’s bed. He slept standing up.
The whole place gave me the creeps. On the other hand, at least we weren’t cleaning the Scarecrow’s room—that would have been terrifying—not to mention it would take all week.
Hannah shot me a sidelong look and lowered her voice. “You know using magic would be wasteful, Astrid. Dorothy needs it, every drop. Besides, doing the work the old-fashioned way is comforting to Dorothy. It reminds her of how she used to clean the farm back in the Other Place.”
“You don’t need to lecture me about comforting Dorothy,” I replied quickly. “It’s my whole reason for being here.”
Hannah smiled at me and I smiled back, hoping to match her cheerily vacant quality.
“I’m so glad our slaving away makes Dorothy feel better,” I muttered, pretty sure Hannah wasn’t the type to detect sarcasm.
“It really does!” Hannah exclaimed. “It reminds her how far she’s come.”
The soap we were using had a lemony, peachy smell. I wondered if this was the soap that her auntie Em used to use back in Kansas, before the tornado whisked her away. What could have happened to turn that sweet, innocent farm girl into this magic-hoarding fascist?
I wasn’t going to get any useful assassination tips out of a frightened airhead like Hannah, so I decided to poke around and see if there was any way I could get her to give up some information about Pete. Even posing as Astrid, I figured tracking down the only other anti-Dorothy person I knew of might be helpful, and surely servants cozying up wouldn’t raise any red flags. Not that I wanted to cozy up with Pete.
“Have you seen that boy around with the crazy green eyes?” I asked casually. “I wonder when he takes his break.”
Hannah looked up at me, surprised.
“Who? You mean one of the guards?”
“No, I think he’s a gardener.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Astrid,” she said.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You know any fraternization is strictly forbidden.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to figure out a way to cover my mistake. Before I could, Hannah leaned in close enough to whisper.
“I let Bryce—you know, the baker I was telling you about?—sneak into my room the other night,” she whispered. “But don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to get punished for Smuttiness again.”
“I promise I won’t,” I whispered back.
“I’ll keep an eye out for your boy, too,” Hannah said. “But I haven’t seen anyone with eyes like that.”
I leaned in close to the floor, trying to scrub away a particularly stubborn piece of dirt. Who was Pete?
After we finished the Tin Woodman’s suite, we were allowed a fifteen-minute break in the servants’ mess hall. For a snack, Jellia brought out an array of stale muffin bottoms. Apparently, Dorothy ate only the tops.
While the other girls ate with a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs”—I guess muffin butts were a treat around here—I took a moment to study the postings on the mess hall walls. There were a ton of brightly colored signs about proper cleaning techniques and uniform maintenance, but also a color-coded schedule of palace personnel. I tried to memorize it, particularly the times when the guards changed shift. Knowing when there could be gaps in Dorothy’s protection would definitely come in handy. The big wild cards were the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. They weren’t in the habit of posting their schedules anywhere, even though I knew they were always somewhere in the palace. The Lion, too, was rumored to be around.
The idea of seeing the Lion again, after what he’d done to Gert, made me sick.
But it wasn’t my job to be sick. It was my job to get past them, and I’d have my hands full enough with that as it was. One thing at a time. First, get a read on Dorothy’s comings and goings, then—
“Are you not eating, dear?”
It was Jellia. She’d sidled up next to me without my noticing.
“I will,” I replied quickly, waving at the fluorescent step-by-step guide to mopping. “Just feeling like I could use a refresher. I want to stay sharp for Dorothy.”
Jellia nodded approvingly and handed me a muffin butt wrapped in a napkin.
“Good girl,” she said. “Just remember to keep your strength up. It’s important.”
Jellia wasn’t kidding around. By the end of that first day I was so exhausted, I collapsed immediately onto my tiny bed. What’d felt stiff and lumpy the night before now seemed to my aching body like the most comfortable spot in all of Oz. The calluses on Astrid’s hands hadn’t prepared me for how intense a full day of nonstop cleaning could be.
I made it through. One full day posing as a maid, and no one seemed suspicious. Well, except for Ozma, but I hadn’t seen her around at all that day. And Dorothy’s guards didn’t come knocking down my door, which meant Ozma had ke
pt her mouth shut. That was a relief.
Better yet, I didn’t see any more of the Scarecrow’s brains after that terrifying first night. Rumor was he’d locked himself up in his laboratory—wherever that was no one seemed to know—hard at work on some project. In the meantime, we maids were instructed to leave his daily hay bale delivery outside his bedroom door. Secret science experiments were obviously ominous and something I should look into, but I was mostly just relieved the Scarecrow didn’t have time for his creepy dalliances with Astrid. Through the night, the bell next to my bed remained mercifully silent.
Today I’d mastered the routine and gotten used to my new body. Tomorrow, I’d work on getting closer.
The next day was more of the same. Cleaning my way through the palace alongside Hannah and the other maids, I started to put together an idea of Dorothy’s day. I didn’t get to see her or actually wait on her—it was more her absence that painted a picture. The bitch cast a long shadow.
First, I observed the hustle and bustle in the kitchen, the cooks preparing Dorothy’s breakfast. We’re talking a thorough inspection of bacon here, because Dorothy apparently doesn’t like it too crispy. That bacon then went upstairs on a tray, presumably to undergo a thorough inspection by Jellia before being allowed to be delivered bedside by a shaky maid.
The first room on our cleaning circuit, as outlined in Jellia’s thorough flow chart, was Dorothy’s solarium. It was her preferred location for midday tea with the ladies. I was partnered with Sindra, which meant I did most of the cleaning while Sindra gazed longingly at all of Dorothy’s gaudy decorations. After the solarium, our next stop was the nearby bathroom, where Sindra and I came upon a well-to-do woman in an elegant sundress, staring into the mirror like she was trying to psych herself up before skydiving. This was one of Dorothy’s ladies. She pretended not to notice us.
“That’s Lady Aurellium,” Sindra gossiped on our way out. “Her husband used to be the Master of Coin.”
“I didn’t even recognize her,” I said, then took a chance. “Horrible what happened to Lord Aurellium.”
Sindra snorted. “Well, he shouldn’t have told Dorothy what she couldn’t spend the palace reserves on.”
Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise Page 21