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.

“Astrid, 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.