The silence that followed the lightning was heavier than the storm.
Glinda stood in the mud at the base of the silo, her chest heaving. The rain had reduced to a steady, freezing drizzle, washing the smoke from the air but doing nothing to clean the rust stains from her champagne tulle.
She looked down at the five men. They were groaning softly, twitching in the mud, but they weren't getting up.
"Stay down," she whispered, her hand still tight on the Star Wand.
She couldn't leave yet. She had stopped the explosion, but she hadn't stopped the threat. She needed to know why they were here. She needed to see what the Ink Ghost had seen.
Glinda stepped carefully over the unconscious leader, her crystal heel sinking into the muck. She approached the ventilation intake.
The canister of "Combustible Aether" sat crookedly against the metal grate where they had dropped it. It was a nasty piece of work—a converted industrial fuel tank rigged with a crude copper timer.
Glinda knelt, ignoring the way the wet ground soaked into her skirts.
She examined the timer. It wasn't magical. It was purely mechanical. A simple clockwork fuse.
She pointed her wand at the copper wire. She didn't want to risk a spark.
"Glacies," she murmured.
A frost spread from the tip of her wand, encasing the timer and the fuse in a block of solid ice. The ticking stopped.
Glinda let out a breath she'd been holding. Safe.
She examined the canister more closely. It was old Wizard stock—the labels chipped, the valve poorly maintained. They are organized, she realized, but their tools are barbaric. She carefully used a subtle Ventus charm to clear the air around the intake, dissipating the highly explosive grain dust that coated the metal.
She turned back to the men.
She moved to the leader—the big one with the Unionist badge. She knelt beside him, her movements sharp and efficient. She patted down his heavy oilskin coat.
She found a wrench. A box of matches. A flask that smelled of cheap gin.
And in the inside pocket, wrapped in oilcloth to keep it dry, a folded piece of parchment.
Glinda pulled it out. She stood up, moving into the faint light of the distant street lamps to read it.
It wasn't a manifesto. It wasn't a rant about Witches or magic.
It was a schedule.
TARGET: NORTHERN RESERVE
Unit 4: Structural Compromise - CONFIRMED
Unit 7: Ignition - PENDING
Extraction Point: Rail Line B
Glinda scanned down the list. It was tactical. Precise. Military.
And at the bottom, stamped in red ink, was a supply authorization number.
ISSUED BY: DEPT. OF PUBLIC WORKS - EMERALD CITY.
Glinda went cold.
The canister. The fuses. The coats. They hadn't stolen these supplies. They had been issued them.
"It's not a rebellion," she realized, the paper shaking in her hand. "It's a payroll."
Someone inside her own government was arming them. Someone was paying these men to starve the North, likely to blame it on her incompetence—or her magic. She looked at the other four men, searching their coats. Every single one of them wore the same silver Cog-and-Fan badge. They were a dedicated, paid cell.
She stared at the authorization number. It was a common, easily forgeable DPW manifest, the kind Pincus signed off on a hundred times a day for road repairs or sewage upgrades. The sheer banality of the paperwork horrified her more than the bomb itself. The betrayal was hiding in plain sight.
She shoved the paper into her bodice, right against the silk of her corset. She needed to get this to Pincus. She needed to find out who signed that authorization.
Clang.
A sound from above.
Glinda spun around, raising her wand instantly.
High up on the silo, on the upper catwalk, a shadow moved.
It wasn't a guard. It was a bird. A crow.
It sat on the railing, looking down at her with intelligent, bead-black eyes. It didn't fly away despite the storm. It simply tilted its head, watching her.
A cold dread washed over Glinda.
I am the Eye of the City, the Ink Ghost had written.
Crows didn't just watch fields. They watched secrets.
The crow cawed—a harsh, rasping sound—spread its wings, and took flight, heading South toward the Emerald City.
Glinda didn't wait.
She stepped back onto the open ground, away from the blast zone. She tapped her heel.
CLICK.
The machinery hummed. The iridescent mist swirled around her, lifting the heavy, mud-soaked dress, sealing her inside the protective sphere.
The bubble rose swiftly.
Glinda looked down at the unconscious men one last time. The local constabulary would find them in the morning.
She had a bigger mystery to solve. She banked the bubble South, driving it through the gloom.
She was flying back to a palace that was filled with traitors, armed with a list of crimes and a dress ruined by mud.
She reached inside her bodice and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. The Department of Public Works authorization number stared back at her—the proof that the conspiracy went right to the heart of her administration.
The "Ink Ghost" hadn't just warned her about the North. They had warned her about the deception inside her walls.
Glinda looked at the manifest. She looked at her reflection in the bubble's sphere, illuminated by a flash of lightning. Her face was set, hardened by the night's events.
She thought of the Governors' rage. She thought of Pincus's anxious eyes. She thought of every smiling bureaucrat who had pushed her toward the crown. They hadn't wanted a Queen; they wanted a fool to sign their papers.
She was not going to ask Pincus to investigate his own department. She was not going to launch a formal, slow, political inquiry that would be buried in paperwork.
She didn't have time for the rules of "Good."
Glinda raised her snowflake shaped Wand, pointing it at the floor of the bubble.
"I am not the only detective in Oz," she whispered, her voice low and fierce. "But I am the only one who knows where the answers are buried."
She looked at the storm-tossed clouds outside, a flash of resolute cold in her eyes. The guilt she carried for Elphaba had always been a weight. Now, it became a purpose.
She was going back to the Grimmerie. And she was going to use it to reveal the traitor.