1

THE SUPERIOR MAUNT made it her business to get to the infirmary on a daily basis. She didn’t like what she saw. The young fellow made no discernible progress; indeed, a yellowish sweat rolled off him, hinting of turps. His skin was cold to the touch. He was still breathing, however.

“You may wipe him down when he becomes too clammy,” she said to Candle, and showed her how. The girl seemed reluctant to touch her charge, but did as she was bade.

Holy intuition, the Superior Maunt felt, did not figure among her own administrative talents. She was a common-sensist. She thought the Unnamed God had given her a brain to use, not to ignore as a snare of the devil. She had tried to lift herself up by clear thinking, and others, too, when she could.

Nonetheless, it was intuition as much as charity that had inspired her to call for a musician. This Candle seemed perfect: demure, even of temper, and increasingly proficient at her instrument.

The Superior Maunt wasn’t overly worried that whatever had befallen Liir—whatever it was, those bruises, those broken bones!—would afflict her pair of investigators. The young missionaries from the motherchapel in the Emerald City, whose faces had been scraped—the boy himself—were possessed of the loveliness of youth, youth’s fine ignorance of its own fleeting grace. The same couldn’t be said of Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire. Through long years of dedication and hard work, they had grown wizened and doughy, respectively. They would be safe from the attention of those who wanted to despoil the innocently beautiful. And their training in medicine had fostered keen observational skills; they could protect themselves, if anyone could.

The Maunt Superior noted that though her hearing wasn’t good anymore, the music of the repaired domingon had a way of traveling. The entire mauntery was filled with its soft phrases. Sister Linenflaxen said it was elegiac, damn it, Candle was wooing the lad to his final sleep. She should play something peppier. Everyone else said shhhh. The whole place had fallen under a sort of spell. They were waiting to see what would happen, but the music made them patient.

Sister Graveside ironed a fresh winding cloth and refilled the corked jug with anointing oil, to be ready.

 

CANDLE WAS MORE OBSERVANT than the Superior Maunt credited, though. She could see that Liir’s respiration responded to her choice of music. He went through periods of rhythmic breathing, like someone sleeping peacefully enough, followed by patterns of shallow flutterbreath.

Restored to glory by the feather of the Pfenix, the domingon had become responsive: the harmonic overtones hung in the air and complemented one another. When the invalid seemed too agitated, she would bring him back with long furling phrases. But too many of those and she was afraid he would deliver his last, deep outgo and breathe in no more: and then he would be dead. So she would agitate him with pizzicato comments and thumb-struck flat-tone responses, to alert his lungs and stimulate his heart.

She was guiding him. She knew it. She just didn’t know where he was.

 

LIIR WAS IN THE STOLEN BLUNT-BOAT with the Scarecrow, heading along one of the waterways of the Emerald City. It was a week or two after the Witch had died. There was trouble behind, and darkness ahead, but the windows of the town mansions that lined the canal—one flight above street level, above the barricaded stables and stout front gates—threw trapezoids of gold light onto the stinking canal water. Liir and the Scarecrow passed in and out of one another’s view.

“What will you do?” asked the Scarecrow. “Where will you go?”

“I have no place to go,” said Liir. “I’m not going back to Kiamo Ko. Why should I? Only old Nanny there.”

“Have you no obligation to her?”

“Now you ask me? In a word, no. Chistery will mind her well enough.”

“The Snow Monkey? Yes, I suppose he will. Well, the story of Dorothy is done. We won’t see her like again.”

“And a good thing, too,” said Liir. “Off and away with the fairies, just like that, and not so much as a decent good-bye!”

“Her departure was precipitous,” agreed the Scarecrow. “Glinda made the arrangements in something of a hurry.”

The light from a party, candles laid out on a balustrade. The music wafting out open doors: agitated phrases, comments and responses, from some instrument with multiple voices, or many instruments playing very close together. Haunting!

The Scarecrow said, “Don’t fasten on Dorothy. Only unanswerable longing lies down that road. Gone is gone.”

“How wise you are, now that you’re packed with brains. Everyone got some party favor from the Wizard except me. Everyone’s got somewhere to go.”

“Don’t look to me for a map, Liir. Figure it out for yourself. What about your friend, Nor? That Princess Nastoya seemed to think she might still be alive. Maybe you could find her.”

“First I better learn a trade and find a way to support myself. Or watch how the pickpockets practice their trade. Sure, I would like to find Nor, but I’d like to fly, too. Not bloody likely without some help.”

“I can’t be much help.”

“Too highly connected now, I’m sure. Too chummy with the chief cheeses.”

“I have my own plans. Appointments to keep. I’m out of here as soon as I can.”

“I thought that Glinda person had singled you out for a lead position in the government. That’s what they’re saying on the streets, where I pick up my news and other garbage.”

“Lady Glinda doesn’t confide in me. I’ve heard she intends to rule for six months or so, and then abdicate in favor of a straw man. Who?—well, as I’ve admitted, one scarecrow is as good as another. Do you think anyone would notice the difference? When a scarecrow blows apart in a gale wind, the farmer just props up another one. It’s the job to be done that’s important, not who does it.”

“That’s what they used to say at the mauntery,” said Liir. “If a maunt dies and goes to the Afterlife, another maunt comes to take her place. Like replacing a pane of glass. It’s the work that’s important, not the individual who does it.”

“Well, I’m keeping my own counsel about my plans,” said the Scarecrow, “and I’m not long for the Emerald City, I’ll tell you that much. One day you’re a celebrity, the next day you’re hauled off to jail.”

They contemplated this as they came upon a weir. From here, a system of locks stepped the water level down steeply until it disappeared into a fortified grate. Above, armed members of the Emerald City Guard were having a smoke around a brazier. “Better not get their attention,” said the Scarecrow.

“What’s over there, that the canal is guarded?” whispered Liir as they regarded their situation.

“Not sure. Couldn’t say. But it might be Southstairs.”

“Southstairs? What’s that?”

The Scarecrow made a face in the gloom. “The high-security prison for the heartland. Don’t you know anything? I’ve only been here a week and I know that.”

“Why would they be guarding the canal grate?”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re afraid there’ll be a move to liberate Southstairs. I’m told a lot of professional Animals ended up there over the decades, cheek by jowl with murderers, pedophiles. Rapists. Political pamphleteers.”

“The Wizard’s gone. Why aren’t they just throwing the gates open?”

“You want the murderers and rapists back in the neighborhood?”

“Well—no. No, but for the dissenters.”

The Scarecrow frowned. “Dream on. Who’s going to take it upon themselves to decide which is which at this point? The job of personal fiscal betterment is far more urgent.”

“Hard to argue with that. And I bet the suppressed Animals agree with you. Are they on the move, do you know? Or hanging low until they see what develops?”

“Look, I got you safely away from Dirt Boulevard before you were swept up in a purge. I’m not going to deliver you to Southstairs so you can check on the Animals there. Let’s turn about.”

The Scarecrow piloted the blunt-boat backward until there was room enough to swing it around. Their route took them back under the balustrades where the fancy-dress ball was in progress. The laughter was more unguarded, even strident, the music brassier. “Lots to celebrate these days, for those of the right station,” said the Scarecrow. “Good news indeed. Could be another Victory Gala.”

“Celebrating the Wizard’s departure?”

“Celebrating the Witch’s death,” said the Scarecrow. His face was impassive. “Oh, sweet Oz, it’s Glinda’s house!” He tucked his head down. “Liir!”

“She doesn’t know me,” said Liir. He scrambled backward along the boat to its squared-off stern, a small elevated platform for the loading of goods. Craning, he could see a woman leaning her hips against the carved stone balustrades of the balcony. The light from the ballroom fell on her golden hair, which was swept up on her head in a bubbly mass of curls hooped by a diamond tiara. He couldn’t see how old she was, nor her expression, for her face was turned away. She was trim and fit, though her shoulders were slumped—grief, or despair? Or boredom? She dabbed a handkerchief at her nose.

Liir didn’t speak, he didn’t call out—what did he care for Lady Glinda Chuffrey? Auntie Witch had mentioned her only in passing. Sometimes with grudging respect, more often with disapproval. As he watched her, something echoed along the waters of the canal, a sound—as if a private, smoky slide of music accompanied their blunt-boat, counterpoint to the party pandemonium.

Lady Glinda turned, and gripped the rail with both hands, and leaned over as their vessel was slipping beneath a pedestrian bridge. “Shit!” hissed the Scarecrow, and stayed the boat in the shadows by throwing his weight against the pole. “She’s seen us!”

“Who is it?” called Glinda. “Who’s there?—I almost thought—”

Liir wanted to speak up. The Scarecrow clapped a gloved hand against his mouth tightly. Liir struggled, elbowed the Scarecrow, but he wasn’t strong enough to break free before Glinda shook her head as if in disbelief, straightened the epaulets on her ball gown, and returned to her affair.

“What’s the matter with you?” railed Liir, when the Scarecrow had let him go.

“What’s the matter with you?” said the Scarecrow. “I’m trying to keep a low profile in order to help you, and you have to go and signal the heads of state and alert them about it?”

“I didn’t signal her!”

“Well, she must have a sixth sense then, for she turned, and she saw you.”

“She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know I exist!”

“And let’s keep it that way.”

2

THE ANIMOSITY THAT OBTAINED between Sisters Doctor and Apothecaire subsided once dusk fell on their first evening away from the Mauntery of Saint Glinda. The women erected the frame of thin skark ribs and fixed the waterproof awning to it. Then they huddled together under a blanket. When the wolves of the oakhair forest howled their midnight requiem, the Sisters mangled their devotions into such a gabble of syllables and sobs that, had the Unnamed God been condescending to listen, it could only have concluded that its two emissaries were afflicted with sudden-onset glossolalia.

“The Superior Maunt thought it safe to send us out on an exploratory mission even though the faces of those three young missionaries had so recently been scraped,” said Sister Apothecaire the following morning, which dawned damp and windless. “I trust her in every particular,” she added fiercely, unconvincingly.

“Our charge is clear,” said Sister Doctor, “safety or no. We are to make an effort to address the tribal Scrow, if we can locate them, and certainly the Yunamata. We must enquire about the disaster that struck those missionaries. With the conviction of our faith in the Unnamed God, no harm will befall us.”

“Do you propose the missionaries were in greater danger because their faith was weak?” asked Sister Apothecaire.

Sister Doctor’s lips became thinner as she folded the awning away. “Cowardice, said the Superior Maunt, will not serve us in this task.”

Sister Apothecaire relented. “Cowardice is a dubious attribute. Yet I possess it in spades, so I hope on this venture to learn how to use it to my advantage if I must. All gifts come from the Unnamed God, including cowardice, and self-repugnance.”

The mules dropped their heavy hoofs on the path, picking a way between ranks of thin trees with branches nearly empty of leaves. Little cover.

“Perhaps,” said Sister Doctor, “the Superior Maunt sent us out because we would be better able to tend to each other, medically, were we attacked.”

“If we survived. Well, I’ve no doubt that our skills here in the wilderness will prove useful. After all, I do speak a dialect of West Yumish.”

“When you’ve had a bit too much seasonal sherry.”

They laughed at that and proceeded in companionable silence until Sister Apothecaire couldn’t stand it. “Now Liir is Candle’s responsibility. Funny little thing. What can she bring to Liir that we can’t?”

“Don’t be stupid. She can bring youth and charm, if she can get his attention. She can give him a reason to survive. This is something neither you nor I could do. If he opened up his eyes after a long coma and saw either of us right off, he’d probably kick the bucket in a nonce.”

Sister Apothecaire did not murmur assent. She was rather proud of her looks. Well, her face, anyway; her figure was regrettably lumpy. “Perhaps,” she said distractingly, “Candle has a natural talent that the Superior Maunt can sense.”

“What sort of talent?” Sister Doctor shifted in her saddle and turned to peer at her colleague. “You don’t mean a talent for magic? That’s distinctly forbidden in the order.”

“Come come. You know perfectly well we resort to it when we must. Not that we’re very good at it. I need hardly remind you that these are dangerous times. Perhaps the Superior Maunt thinks that in the rehabilitation of the boy, such a talent is called for.”

By the straightening of her spine Sister Doctor signaled that she did not intend to second-guess the Superior Maunt’s motives. Sister Apothecaire regretted having brought it up. “Well,” she continued, falsely jolly, “I don’t have much of a sense of Candle one way or the other. If she’s got common magic or common sense, it’s news to me either way.”

“She certainly has no talent for music.” Sister Doctor sniffed. “I do remember the day she arrived, though. I happened to be suturing one of the novices in the kitchen. I turned to ask kindly for water, and there was that Candle, her rickety domingon slung over one shoulder like a crossbow. Mad old Mother Yackle had her by the hand, as if she’d just created her out of calves’ foot jelly. ‘The gypsy Quadling, her uncle leaves her to us,’ said Mother Yackle.”

“Mother Yackle doesn’t speak and hasn’t in years.”

“That’s why I remember the event so distinctly.”

“Did you see the Quadling uncle?”

“I went to the window, and he was making his way rather hurriedly through the kitchen garden. I called out to him, for there are procedures for the introduction of a novice, and this wasn’t one of them. But he wouldn’t be stopped, merely called over his shoulder that he would be back in a year if he was still alive. It’s rare to see Quadlings this far north these days. I imagine the poor girl is quite lonely.”

“Well, yes. No one speaks Quaddle.”

“I believe the term is Qua’ati. So is Candle mute or is it that she just hasn’t anyone to speak her native tongue with?”

“I don’t know.”

Perhaps it was Candle’s silence and self-control that had inspired the Superior Maunt to choose her for keeping vigil over Liir. The maunts began to regret their tendencies to bark and spark at each other. Thinking on their noisy failings, they fell into a silence now.

 

IN THE FOLLOWING FEW DAYS, they came across their share of blue squirrels, bald egrets, and disagreeable emmets. The egrets kept to the ground cover, rarely taking wing; the emmets preferred the bedding. It wasn’t until near dusk on the fourth day that the maunts came across an Animal, a lone and pagan Water Buffalo in the shallows of a cove of Restwater, Oz’s biggest lake.

“Oh, oh,” moaned the Water Buffalo at their approach, “not the missionary voice traveling in twos! Not again! I bury my own waste, I only speak when spoken to, I lick my knees fifty times a night before I sleep—what more am I to do to appease the fates? I don’t want to be converted! Don’t you understand? Oh, all right, get it over with. I’ll lapse before nightfall, I promise you. I can’t help myself. Perhaps I’m too far gone for you to bother with me?” He peered, both gloomily and hopefully, at them.

“We’re not converters,” said Sister Apothecaire. “We haven’t the time.”

“And who cares about you? You can go to hell,” said Sister Doctor, meaning to be cheerful. This was the right note, as it happened; the Water Buffalo began to smile.

“Scarcely see a soul coming from your direction who doesn’t have designs on my immortal soul,” said the Water Buffalo. “It used to be I was worried about my hide. I always thought a soul was private, but it appears it can be colonized against your will if you don’t watch out.”

“Well, we are maunts,” admitted Sister Apothecaire.

The Water Buffalo winced. “No. Say it ain’t so. You’re plates of glamour and glasses of fashion, as anyone who rests a sore eye upon you would have to agree.”

“Don’t be mincing,” snapped Sister Doctor. “These are perfectly respectable clothes for traveling in.”

“Depends on where you want to get to,” intoned the Water Buffalo.

“Look, we can evangelize like the best of them, if that’s what it’s going to take—”

“Sorry, sorry!” said the Water Buffalo. “I’ll be good. What’s your game?”

They told him. He knew nothing of the attacks on the young maunts and their scrapings, nor had he ever heard of Liir or his misadventure. But he had seen airborne battalions of trained creatures flying so high that he couldn’t make them out. “Something’s amiss,” he said. “I know there’s been an attempt to call a Congress of Birds out in the west, but lately I’ve seen few Birds brave enough to fly at anything like a decent height.”

“We can’t patrol the skies right now,” said Sister Doctor. “It’s the Scrow or the Yunamata we need to find.”

“The Scrow rarely venture this far east. However, you may come across a small band of Yunamata, if they haven’t moved off yet. They’re down from Kumbricia’s Pass. I came across them bathing this morning. We all minded our own business. They don’t have anything to do with the Unnamed God, so they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. They rinsed their totems and washed their hair, and one of them gave birth to a baby underwater. They’re rather froggy folk when it comes to birthing. They circulated a birth pipe around, passed out in the sun for an hour or so, and then gathered their things and left. They seemed to be heading southwest. Several dozen of them, no more.”

“If you see them, tell them we’re coming,” said Sister Doctor.

“Jubilation, they’ll be over the moon,” drawled the Water Buffalo. “If you want to meet up with them, better not tell them you’re coming, honeys.”

The sisters moved on, but before they had lost sight of the Water Buffalo, Sister Apothecaire thought to turn and call, “We forgot to ask your name!”

“Only the chattering classes of Animal have names!” the Water Buffalo replied cheerily. “And there hasn’t been a professional Animal the length and breadth of Oz for thirty years. If I don’t have a name, I can’t be targeted as a potential convert, can I?”

A moment later, when he was out of sight, his voice rang toward them thinly: “Though if you had to locate me, I suppose I’d answer to Buff…”

“Weird creature,” said Sister Apothecaire a while later.

“He’d survived, a talking Animal in the wild,” Sister Doctor reminded her. “It can’t have been easy. After the Wizard’s banishment, the Animals didn’t rush for reassimilation. Who could blame them, with all they’d been through.”

“Sounds as if the creature’s been dogged by zealots, though.”

“Indeed. Well, the Emperor is a devout man, and wants all his subjects to enjoy the benefits of faith, I suppose.”

 

ANOTHER NIGHT, and the wolves howled more fiercely than ever. The dawn seemed full of its own arcane purpose, a pale light leaching through grey cloud-hemp. The maunts ventured out across the Disappointments. Then, easy as playing at knackers, they came upon a group of Yunamata doing winter rush-work.

“Hail,” said Sister Apothecaire in Yumish, “or have I said hell by mistake? Hello? Yoo hoo Yunamata? We come in peace.”

“What are you saying?” said Sister Doctor. “They look mystified.”

“I’m addressing their tribal gods,” said Sister Apothecaire, and in Yumish, “I. Good. Good one. Good human person woman being. I. Good thing. Where is the library?” In her anxiety it was all she could remember.

“They look amused,” said Sister Doctor.

“That’s respect,” said Sister Apothecaire. But amusement was better than hostility, so she began to relax, and more of the plain tongue began to return to her.

The Yunamata were known for keeping to themselves. Nomadic, but not a horse culture like the Scrow, this Vinkus tribe was fleet of foot and economical of domestic impedimenta, needing only a few pack animals to carry their belongings. Generally they sheltered in Kumbricia’s Pass or the forested slopes of the Kells south of there. What were they doing out in open country?

Sister Doctor, who never liked to go slumming as a veterinarian, felt she could sniff out an Animal tendency: the Yunamata looked as if they might all have one giant, docile Frog among their ancestors. Way, way back. Nothing like webbing between their digits, no long flickering tongues, no, no; they were human through and through. But an amphibian sort of human, with leathery skin, narrow ridiculous limbs, and thin lips that seemed partly withdrawn into their mouths.

One could laugh at the silliness of them. Laugh—and then be carved to shreds, for when aroused they could be a formidable enemy. The Yunamata had skill with knives. Mostly they used their serrated tools—lethal curved blades set in handles of the hardest mahogany—for aid in the construction of their tree nests, where they harbored at night. Those same knives could carve a pig or eviscerate a minor canon with equal efficiency.

Sister Apothecaire set out to convince the Yunamata that the maunts were abroad neither to betray the clan nor to convert them. Just in case, like the Water Buffalo, they’d previously been targeted as a population ripe for conversion. As a group, they listened, promoting no spokesperson among them. By turns they mouthed small neat phrases. Sister Apothecaire took pains to translate these remarks to her colleague carefully, and to question her own understanding if she had any doubt. She didn’t want to assent to human martyrdom merely because she’d forgotten some nicety of Yumish grammar. Was there a retractional pluperfect subjunctive in Yumish?

“You are going on quite a while,” said Sister Doctor after an hour or so.

“I am doing my job and trying to see if we’re going to be invited to stay for supper,” said Sister Apothecaire. “Leave me be.”

“I hope they aren’t teetotalers. I think I’m getting a sniffle.”

When the conversation had concluded at last, and the Yunamata retreated to prepare a meal, Sister Doctor said, “Well? Well? I deduce from your smug expression that they’re not about to sharpen their blades to scrape our faces from us. Though I’d like to hear it put directly, to ease my mind.”

“They speak by indirection. They know about the scrapings. They have seen evidence of it. They say it must be the Scrow. The Scrow have a tradition of royalty, and their queen is an old woman named Nastoya who has been in declining health for a decade. Were we to fulfill the mission assigned us, we would next have to hunt for this Princess Nastoya and reprove her about these infractions. The Yunamata insist that the Scrow must be in allegiance with the Emperor.”

“Ridiculous. If the Scrow were in allegiance with the Emperor, would they be scraping his emissaries? Or are the Yunamata lying?”

“Look at them. Could they lie?”

“Don’t be soft. Of course they could. The most purring of cats can still kill a bird within half a purr.”

“I suppose I believe them,” said Sister Apothecaire, “because they admit to their capacity for vengeance. But they also have told me that this is the season of the jackal, and out of wariness of the moon’s opinion, they take a vow of gentility. Babies born under the jackal moon are considered lucky. Babies born in Restwater are luckier still.”

“Are you sure you’ve understood correctly? Throughout Oz the season of the jackal is considered dangerous.”

“Perhaps it’s a kind of propitiation,” said Sister Apothecaire. “They mentioned the Old Dowager, a kind of deity who harvests souls. She sounded a bit like Kumbricia. Do you remember Kumbricia, from your schoolgirl lessons in antique lore? Kumbricia, the oldest witch from the time of creation? Source of all venom and malice?”

“I turned my back on such things when I entered a unionist mauntery,” said Sister Doctor. “I’m surprised you remember such poppydegook.”

“I don’t know if we’re getting a meal,” said Sister Apothecaire, gesturing, “but look, it appears we’re getting a pipe of some sort.” A delegation of Yunamata was approaching with a communal smoke.

“A vile habit,” snarled Sister Doctor, but she determined to do her best at being sociable, and stomach such barbaric customs as courtesy required.

3

NO ONE AT THE MAUNTERY, Candle included, knew enough about musical instruments to appreciate the domingon she arrived with. It was made of seasoned wrenwood by a master from the Quadling Kells, and Candle had first heard it played at a summer festival. The master himself performed, using his fingers as well as a fiddle bow and a glass emulant that he kept tucked under his bearded chin when not required. Now Candle recalled that the domingon had been fitted out with a feather, though at the time Candle had thought it merely ornamentation—and a sexy fillip at that.

She had thought she was in love with him, and had slept with him before dusk, but a few days later she realized it was the music she had loved. What she heard in its music: a coaxing, an invitation to remember, to disclose. Perhaps because her voice was small and high, she couldn’t project, and she imagined it would be more gratifying to play music than to speak. Mercilessly she pestered her uncle to circle back and buy her the domingon; she’d been surprised when he obliged.

Candle was not simple, not in the least, but her debility had made her a still person. She listened to church bells, when they pealed, trying to translate; she watched the way the paper husks of an onion fell on a table, and examined the rings of dirt that onion mites had left in parallel rows on the glossy wet inside. Everything said something, and it wasn’t her job to consider the merit or even the meaning of the message: just to witness the fact of the message.

She was therefore a calmer person than most, for there seemed no dearth of messages from the world to itself. She merely listened in.

For a week now she’d been playing the domingon until her fingers ached, watching and listening for the language of Liir’s recovery. It wasn’t unusual that she had had experience with men; Quadlings were a casual sort in matters of sexual prudence. The carnal experience had neither scarred her nor much interested her. Through it, at best, she had learned something of the human body, its hesitations and reservations as well as the surge of its desires.

In the infirmary, as her eyes moved from the instrument to the invalid, she felt she was picking up some news. Was it some minor language of olfactory signals, an arcane pattern of eye twitches, a hieroglyph etched in the beads of his sweat? She didn’t know. She was sure of this, though: Liir’s body seemed the same in temperature, comportment, and color. But he was going through a phase of crisis, and would either awaken for sure or die at once: no middle ground.

She didn’t know if she should go get the Superior Maunt or if she should stay at her post. She was afraid if she left, if she dropped the domingon on the floor even for the twenty minutes it might take to find the Superior Maunt and get counsel, she would lose Liir for good. Wherever he was, he was lost, and the music of her instrument was his only hope back.

So Candle stayed seated and played till her own fingers bled, in ripples of waltz, as if nothing were wrong. The blue of the sky thinned till it was pierced with star prickers, and then the jackal moon rose and slowly lumbered over till it could look in the window and watch for itself. Watch, and listen, as Candle played Liir through his memories.

 

“SHE’LL BE THERE,” said Liir.

“Who? Where? Are you talking about Elphaba?” said the Scarecrow.

“Of course not. I’m talking about Nor. The girl I knew. Maybe my half-sister, if the Witch really was my mother and Fiyero my father, as some have guessed.”

“In Southstairs? A girl?”

“Can you tell me why not?”

The Scarecrow didn’t answer. Liir thought: Maybe he imagines that someone as insignificant to the mighty Wizard of Oz—a mere girl, no less—hardly merited imprisonment. Maybe he thinks she might as easily have been murdered, or tossed onto the streets to drift and starve. How long had it been anyway since she had been taken from Kiamo Ko? Two years? Three? But then Princess Nastoya had implied that Nor might have survived…

They had circled the canals a bit longer and found a place to berth underneath some rotting trees by the side of a pub. “I can’t stay with you for much longer, you know,” said the Scarecrow. “I only came to give you the Witch’s broom, and to wish you well, and to protect you from the clearing of Dirt Boulevard. I have my own path to follow. I would see you safely to the other side of the gates of this troubled city if I could. If you would let me.”

“I’m not going,” said Liir. “Not without Nor. Or not without finding out what has happened to her.”

At a crossroads, unwilling to move, they sat disconsolate.

“Look,” said Liir, at graffiti dashed sharply and sloppily on the pub’s side wall. It said HAPPY ENDINGS ARE STILL ENDINGS. “You’ve done your work, you’ve kept your word to Dorothy. I have the broom. But I won’t be ushered out of harm’s way. What’s the point? I have no happy ending—cripes, I’ve had no happy beginning, either. The Witch is dead, and Dorothy is gone, and that old Princess Nastoya has asked us for help. As if I could! Just because Elphaba would have!”

“You needn’t fulfill some promise Elphaba made. If you’re not her son, you have no obligation there.”

“Well, there’s Nor, too. Call it a promise to myself.”

The Scarecrow held his head in his hands. “The Tin Woodman has left to cultivate the art of caring. He has his work cut out for him, poor sod. The Lion is suffering severe depression; his cowardice was his sole identifying trait, and now he’s pitiably normal. Neither of them can help you much, I’m afraid. You should get yourself out of here while you can. Start over.”

“Start over? I never started the first time. Besides, it’s not getting out that I need to do. It’s getting in.”

The Scarecrow pushed a hand against his heart and shook his head.

“Into Southstairs,” said Liir.

“I know what you meant,” said the Scarecrow. “I’m not stupid. Now.”

“You’re the one I need to keep on my side—”

The Scarecrow interrupted with a brusqueness that might have been meant kindly. “Don’t bother to look for me. You won’t find me. Save yourself for someone you might recognize. I’m not in your story, Liir. Not after this.”

So they took their leave, with little fanfare or fuss. The friendship between them was no larger or more hopeful than the shape of a scorched broom, which Liir waved halfheartedly as the Scarecrow loped out of sight, once and for all.

The boy sat in the bobbing blunt-boat and listened to the sound of laughter spilling out the open windows of the pub. The smell was of beer and vomit, and old urine splashed against the wall. The moon was invisible behind the clouds. The sound of a tentative waltz, beguiling and minor, hung over the stinking waters of the canal and the desolate boy there.

 

THE NEXT MORNING, Liir presented himself at the servants’ entrance of the town house he’d passed the night before.

“We don’t give handouts and we don’t need another coal shoveler, so get yourself out of here before I assist you with a boot in your behind,” said the houseboy.

“If you please, I’m not looking for food or work. Sir.”

The houseboy smirked. “Toadying bastard. Call me sir again, and I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

Liir couldn’t follow. “I meant no disrespect. I just want to know how I can get an audience with Lady Glinda.”

The houseboy’s sneer needed rearranging with a good swift kick, Liir decided, but when the houseboy guffawed, his voice was less hostile. “Oh, a simpleton. Pardon me, I didn’t realize. Listen, the very Margreave of Tenmeadows, Lord Avaric himself, hasn’t been able to get her ladyship’s attention. She’s got her hands full, what with the goings-on in the Wizard’s Palace. The people’s Palace now. Or should be. Or will be. What, you want to fling yourself in her lap and call her mother? More urchins have tried that already than you could fit on a barge and drown in Kellswater. Now get off with you.”

“Whatever mother I don’t have, it certainly isn’t her.” He held up the broom and shook it in the houseboy’s face.

“What’s that then?”

Liir said, “You tell Lady Glinda that a boy at the back gate has the Witch’s broom. Tell her Dorothy gave it me. I don’t care how long you take, I’ll wait.”

“That thing? That’s a corpse of a broom. Not fit for kindling.”

“It’s been through a lot. That’s how you know it’s the real thing.”

“You’re a stubborn bugger. I can’t be standing here chewing the fat all day. Tell you what. Do me some magic with that broom and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“I can’t do magic. And the broom isn’t a magic wand. It’s a broom. It sweeps.”

“Sweep a floor with that thing, you’ll leave char marks, and I’ll be the one cleaning up after you. Get out of here, now. Go on.”

Liir raised the broom again and tilted it forward. The houseboy shrank back, as if afraid flecks of scorch would fall on his livery. Noticing this, Liir decided it would be worth his while to wait around and see what happened.

His instincts proved sound. The houseboy wasn’t able to resist gossiping about his conversation with Liir. Just before noon, a housekeeper came out, tucking her apron strings in and wiping crumbs from her lips. “Love a grouse, you’re still here, and that’s a good thing!” she gabbled. “The houseboy’s been docked a month’s pay for being silly-headed! Get over here, Her Haughtiness wants to see you at once! You reek, haven’t you washed? The pump, there, boy, scrub your grubby armpits and wipe that smirk off your face. This is Lady Glinda that lives here, not some cow-mistress. And hop smart, you. She’s waiting.”

 

HE WAS BROUGHT TO a lady’s parlor and told to behave and touch nothing.

He could look, though, and he did. He had never seen an upholstered chair before. He’d never seen one chair face another chair that looked identical. Cushions everywhere, fresh flowers, and gleaming crystal bubbles set on little stands. A collection of commemorative baubles, he guessed. To what end?

A fire of aromatic woods burned in the dainty hearth. Why a daytime fire in such a well-built mansion, when the citizens outside couldn’t get close enough to a brazier to warm their hands, let alone soften their supper bricks of congealed molasses?

He wandered to the window to open it, let in some air. It looked out over the canal where he and the Scarecrow had drifted the night before. From this height, he could see the rooflines of the fancy houses. Palaces, almost, or palaces-in-training. Beyond the chimney pots, beyond the roof gardens, the cupolas and spires and domes, two more massive buildings rose: the domed Palace of the Wizard, in the dead center of the City, and off to the right, the steep bluestone ramparts of the prison known as Southstairs.

It was like looking at a picture in a book—not that he’d seen all that many books. Only the Grimmerie, and that only from a distance. Here, the etched rooflines seemed like a hundred man-made hills. Set here and there to delight the eye with infinite variety in depth and perspective.

Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history.

He hardly believed he had summoned the nerve to come here. But it was all he could think of to do. The Princess Nastoya had promised, in exchange for his helping her, to listen for news of Nor. But why work backward? The Princess would have to be scrubbing the news of the Emerald City to learn about Nor. Whereas now—he was here already—so let Princess Nastoya work out her troubles for herself. Liir had all the City before him. He would be forthright and claim what he wanted for himself. On his own terms.

“The Lady Glinda,” announced a man’s voice. When Liir turned, the door was already being drawn closed behind her, and Lady Glinda came near.

It was like being approached by a decorated holiday tree tiptoeing in jeweled slippers. Lady Glinda was the most exceedingly dressed person Liir had ever seen. He almost flinched, but knowing that Lady Glinda had been a friend of Elphaba’s stiffened his nerve. “How do you do,” she was saying, in a voice like a piccolo blowing soapsuds. She tilted her head. Was it an upperclass gesture, like a genuflection? Ought he pivot his head in reply? He remained upright. “Liir, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He had never called anyone “ma’am” in his life. Where had that come from?

“They said it was Liir. I thought I might have misheard. Please, won’t you sit—” She took a better look at the state of his clothes and changed her mind. “Would you permit me to take a seat? I’m not resting well these days, and it’s a strain.”

“Of course.” He realized he was to remain standing, though he drew a little nearer. Settling gingerly on a chaise longue upholstered in peppermint stripes, she arranged a bolster at the small of her back, and then reclined, lifting one ankle up from time to time. Maybe she had a twitch.

“I’m told you have something to show me, a talisman of some sort. You’ve got it wrapped in that shroud. A broom, a witch’s broom. The broom? The broom of the Wicked Witch of the West?”

“I didn’t call her that,” he said.

“How did you come by it? Last I heard of it, that Dorothy Gale was humping it around the Palace like some sort of a trophy, brandishing it for all to see.”

“I’m told she’s gone,” said Liir.

“She is.” The tone of authority was convincing. Tired, regretful, convincing.

“Gone the way old Ozma is gone? Disappeared? Done in?”

“Gone is gone,” said Glinda. “Who knows, maybe Ozma herself will be back someday. I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“And maybe Dorothy, too? Or is she gone too far to come back?”

“You ask bold questions of a lady you’ve just met,” said Glinda, and she looked at him sharply. “And you haven’t answered mine. How did you come by Elpha—I mean the Witch’s broom?”

“You can say Elphaba to me.” Liir unwrapped the broom and held it up for Glinda to see.

Glinda didn’t look at the broom. She was staring at the Witch’s cape. She hoisted herself to her feet and reached to touch its hem. “I’d know this anywhere. This is Elphaba’s cape. How did you come by it? Answer me, thug—thief—or I’ll have you thrown in Southstairs.”

“Fair enough, I’m headed there anyway. Yes, it’s her cape. Why wouldn’t it be? I took it when I left her castle. I’m her—”

He couldn’t say son. He didn’t know. “I’m her helper. I came from the castle with Dorothy. When the Witch melted, all that was left was the broom. The Scarecrow brought it back to me after Dorothy vanished. No one else wanted it.”

“It’s a burned stick. Throw it on the fire.”

“No.”

Glinda reached out a hand, and Liir took it. She wanted help getting up. “Let me look you in the eye, young man. Who are you? How did you come to be at Kiamo Ko?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. But I served the Witch and saw Dorothy safely to the Emerald City, and I need your help.”

“You need my help? What for? Bread, cash, a false identity to help you slip sideways through the cracks? Tell me what you need, tell me why I should help, and I’ll see what I can do. In memory of Elphaba. You knew her.” Her head tilted again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. “You knew my Elphie!”

He would not indulge in cheap grief. “I want to find out what happened to a girl kidnapped by the Wizard’s men a few years back. She lived at Kiamo Ko when we got there.”

“We?”

“The Witch and I…”

“The Witch and you.” Her hands reached out hungrily for the cape and rubbed its hem, as if it were leaves of thyme or hyssop. “What girl might that be?”

“Her name is Nor. She is the daughter of Fiyero, one-time prince of the Arjikis, and his wife, Sarima, also kidnapped that very day. You knew Fiyero.”

“I knew Fiyero.” It was clear Glinda did not want to speak about him. “Why should I bother with you?”

“Nor was his daughter. She was my—” Again, he couldn’t say half-sister. He didn’t know. “My friend.”

Glinda reached out and took the charred broomstick and cradled it. “I know about friends.”

“Friends have children,” Liir said carefully. “If you can’t help your friends, you can help their children. Do you have children?”

“I do not. Lord Chuffrey was not so inclined.” She reconsidered. “I mean to say, he is so very old. Old and wealthy. His interests lie elsewhere.”

She drifted among the occasional tables. “I don’t know why this girl you mention was taken away, or, if she proved that much of a worry, why she should still be alive.”

“Everyone knows the Wizard is gone. Surely his enemies don’t need to stay imprisoned? If she’s alive, why shouldn’t she be released?”

A rustling of stiffened tulle sounded in her underskirts. “How do I know you are telling the truth?” she said at last. “These are such treacherous days. I’ve spent my adult life up till now in salons and theater boxes, not in closed assembly with grasping, pinching…ministers.” She spat out the word. “Insects. And I thought girls at school were devious. Here, every impassive expression hides a bloated ambition for—for dominance, I suppose. And any one of my so-called loyal cabinet could be sending you in here with a tale designed to catch at my throat. I must have more proof you are who you profess to be. This may not be Elphie’s cape you’re sporting. Maybe my sorrow tempts me into seeing what I would love to see. This may not be her broom. Tell me more, you Liir. How did her broom come to be so burnt?”

“I’m not sure. In truth, I didn’t see her die, I only heard what Nanny and Dorothy and the others said. I was locked downstairs. But the broom burnt, that’s all I know.”

“Anyone could tell a lie!” cried Glinda. “Anyone could burn a broom and make up a story about it!” She beat herself on the breastplate with a clenched fist, and suddenly rushed across the room, overturning a small table and shattering some china dolls. She flung the broom in the fire. “Look, I could do it, too. There’s nothing to it.”

“Take the broom, burn it,” he replied. “Take the cape and burn it, too, or sew it into a hairshirt and wear it under your fancy ball gowns. It doesn’t matter. Give me a way to get to Nor, and to get her out; you can have whatever you want. I will come back and serve you as I served the Witch. I have no other plan for my days alive once I answer the question about Nor.”

Glinda collapsed on the nearest stool and wept. She needed a man to come and take her in his arms, to give her a shoulder. Liir wasn’t a man, nor was his shoulder made for a highborn lady to weep upon. He stood foolishly by, twisting his hands, averting his eyes here, there.

“Look. Glinda, look.” In his excitement he forgot to use her title.

She raised her eyes and turned to where he was pointing.

The fire still danced and hissed. Some trick of physics caused the flue to hum faintly like an old folk melody, as if someone were on the rooftop playing an instrument. The music was not merely consoling—and it was that—but commanding: look, it said, look. The broom lay on the back of a log that seethed with flames of pumpkin and pale white. The broom was untouched.

“Sweet Oz…,” said Glinda. “Liir, take it. Take it back.”

“I’ll burn my hands!”

“You won’t.” Glinda chortled a few syllables in a language Liir couldn’t understand. “This is one of the few spells I could ever really master; it came in handy when my husband required me to hand him the burnt toast on the mornings I thought it my wifely duty to prepare his breakfast. Go on. Grasp it and bring it back.”

He did, and Glinda was right: the broom had not only neglected to ignite further—but it also wasn’t even warm to the touch.

“A burnt broom that has had enough, and refuses to burn further…Keep that with you,” said Glinda. “I was wrong to doubt you. Whoever you are, however you came by it, this is the Witch’s broom. And so I must trust you to be telling me the truth.”

She shrugged and tried to smile, and almost began to blubber. “Elphie would know what to do!”

“Tell me what you know,” he said, as softly as he could.

“I don’t have access to the register of prisoners in Southstairs Academy, which is the place your—Nor—is most likely to be if she wasn’t murdered long ago. I’m not even sure a register is kept. But I know someone could get you in, at least. Whether you could find Nor or get her out, or yourself either, I can’t guess. But I can make introductions for you; in memory of Elphaba, I will do that much.”

“Who would help me? A friend of yours?”

“No friend of mine, but a bereaved member of her family. Next of kin to the dearly departed Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West…”

“But I thought Elphaba’s sister was dead!” said Liir. “Wasn’t Nessarose—killed by Dorothy’s clumsy house?”

“Yes, she was. But didn’t you know? Didn’t Elphaba tell you? She had a brother, too. A younger brother named Shell.”

4

IN COMING TO THEIR SENSES, Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire were gratified to find they still possessed their faces. The pack mules were nowhere to be seen though, nor their food supplies, nor their hosts.

“What is that engine in my brain?” said Sister Doctor, after she’d vomited into some ferns.

“I feel as if the jackal moon had been down here snouting around in an unseemly manner.” Sister Apothecaire adjusted her garments. “It must be the effects of the ceremonial pipe.”

“And that’s why the Yunamata never built a city nor invented algebrarish nor bowed to the Wizard.”

“With a smoke that kicks like that, who needs a city or an Emperor?”

They ambled in oppressive daylight. “I suppose we should think about what we’re doing,” said Sister Doctor.

“Yes. If the Yunamata are right, then the Scrow must be responsible for the scrapings. So we’re liable to wander into hotter water if we are able to find them.”

“I think that’s our calling, isn’t it?”

“Hmmm.” They had a choice: to venture farther into the foothills of the Kells, and make their presence known to the Scrow—or to go back and claim they’d failed. Without discussing it further, they pressed on. Duty weighed more heavily than dread.

 

THE MAUNTS KNEW that their professional skills—to be loving, to be devout, to be local in their attentions and spiritual in their desires—had not prepared them to be government envoys. Still, since their mauntery served as a way station for those who acted upon the stage of the world, the good sisters considered themselves at least as broad-minded as any other cloistered soul.

Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire, nonetheless, were unprepared for the breadth of the Scrow camp when they came upon it. More than a thousand clanfolk, they estimated, maybe fifteen hundred, and a virtual zoography of physical types. The nomads tented in patterns that followed their occupations.

Some castes managed the animals, primarily a huge herd of sheep collected from fell-swards to be penned for a late winter lambing. Other castes specialized in creating sumptuous hangings and carpets from the wool of those same sheep. A contingent of fierce-browed young men with slender, tapering dark beards seemed to be a kind of clerks’ collective, running here and there with instructions, corrections, assessments, revisions. Older men and women—some much older—managed the care of children with surprising mildness and efficacy.

At the center of the hubbub rose a tented pagoda. Around it, a good many brass urns issued an aroma of raspberry and heart-of-musk. It didn’t take the maunts long to realize that the incense wasn’t devotional, but hospitable: the smell from the Princess’s pagoda was, well, a stench.

First fed on a peppery broth that seemed to clear both their sinuses and their brains, the maunts were then allowed a chance to pray and compose themselves. It was almost dusk when they were brought into a tent to meet an ambassador of some sort.

“Please, sit,” he told them, and sat as well. He was a portly man on the threshold of old age. One eye wandered as if bedeviled by an interior vision it didn’t appreciate. His skin was the color of fine whisky. “We hope you have been made comfortable. Or comfortable enough.”

The maunts nodded. Their approach had been greeted without apparent alarm, and they’d been welcomed respectfully.

“Very good, very good,” he said. “Even in these uncongenial times, with the Emperor cudgeling us heathen into conversion through the force of his holy mace, we pride ourselves on clinging to our customs. Charity to visitors ranks high among our traditions. My name is Shem Ottokos.”

“Lord Ottokos, you speak very well,” ventured Sister Doctor.

“For a Scrow, you mean,” he said, taking no offense. “I had a university degree at Shiz, back in the days when there was more collegiality at college. I studied the languages, ancient and modern.”

“You had a notion to be a translator?”

“My notions are insignificant. I am the chief interpreter for her Highness now. I assume you have ventured into our tribal lands to gain an audience with the Princess?”

Though the maunts believed the native land of the Scrow to be significantly farther west, on the other side of the Great Kells, theirs wasn’t to quibble. “Yes,” said Sister Doctor. “We have work to complete. We are investigating the cause and agency of the recent spate of scrapings. If it would suit the Princess to grant us an audience, we should be able to clear up our concerns and be on our way almost at once. Is the Princess up to seeing us?”

Without answering, he stood and flicked both his hands, which the maunts took to mean: Come. They followed him from his tent and toward the royal pavilion in the center of the camp.

“She has not been well for more years than anyone can remember,” said Lord Ottokos as they walked. “She has little energy for idle chat and I will not bother to translate anything that would upset her. I would suggest you contain your remarks to ten minutes, no more. When I get up to leave, so shall you.”

“We might have brought tribute…,” murmured Sister Apothecaire.

“Sister!” said Sister Doctor sharply. “We are maunts of the House of Saint Glinda! We do not bring tribute to a foreign princess!”

“I meant a cake, or a witty novel,” she explained unhappily.

“She has no need of cakes or novels,” said Lord Ottokos. “Meaning no disrespect to our Princess, I would recommend that you breathe through your mouths. It is not considered impertinent to hold your sleeve in front of your nose. Try not to gag, though; it upsets her Highness.”

The maunts exchanged glances.

The interior of the pavilion was dark and dank. Even chilly, come to that. Eight or ten heavy stone caskets with perforated lids slowly exhaled sheets of moisture that hung, nearly visible, in the air. Ice, thought Sister Doctor. They’ve carried ice down from the higher Kells, where it lasts all year long. And the cold serves to tamp down the smell of rot. Now that’s a labor, for ice is heavy, and the higher Kells are not convenient…Perhaps that’s why they’re so far from their normal territory at this time of year, for easier access to the ice pack up the eastern, more gradual slope of the Kells…

Sister Apothecaire, whose eyes had adjusted more quickly to the gloom, pinched Sister Doctor’s elbow and indicated a massive mound of reeking laundry on a low table. It was rolling on its side and opening its eyes.

“Your Highness, may I present Sisters Lowly and Lower-even-than-that,” said Lord Ottokos, before he remembered to speak in his own tongue. “Ladies, the Princess Nastoya acknowledges your presence.”

She had done nothing of the sort. She had not spoken nor even so much as blinked.

Lord Ottokos continued. “The Princess enquires after your health, assumes it is sufficiently robust or you wouldn’t be here, and compliments you on your courage. Have you news of Liir?”

The maunts turned to each other, but in the darkness of the pavilion they could scarcely read each other’s expressions. “Liir?” said Sister Apothecaire faintly. She was beginning to need her sleeve, as had been proposed.

“The boy who denied he was Elphaba’s son. Is that not why you came to us? To tell us of him? Where is Liir?”

Sister Apothecaire began, “Why, that’s uncanny, I never—”

But Sister Doctor cut her off, saying “We came to discover why the Scrow are scraping the faces of unarmed travelers.”

Lord Ottokos made his mouth into a pucker—amused, distressed, it was hard to tell. “I repeat, have you news of Liir?” he said.

“If you’re not interpreting our comments to your senior, need we have this conversation here?” said Sister Doctor.

“My good Sister,” said Lord Ottokos, closing his eyes briefly, as if experiencing a spasm, “the Princess Nastoya entertains visitors only once every several weeks. Do not waste her time. She is waiting to learn what you have to say.”

“We have seen Liir, we have!” said Sister Apothecaire, unable to govern herself any longer. “He was found not all that far from here some days ago, and brought to our mauntery for recovery, if he can be recovered.”

“Sister!” barked Sister Doctor.

Sister Apothecaire shot her colleague a look that seemed, vaguely, to imply: Give it a rest.

Lord Ottokos turned and spoke to Princess Nastoya. For the first time, she stirred; that is, her face stirred. Beneath its greasy robes her body had kept up a constant slow stretching, twitching, creaking. Her eyes widened, and globes of ink-colored tears collected in the folds beside her nose. She was a woman in mighty distress. When she spoke, the voice was deep and plain, a laundry mistress’s voice, no sonority to it. She said only a few syllables, but the language of the Scrow must have allowed for much meaning in enunciation and pronunciation.

“Forgive my not getting up,” began Lord Ottokos’s translation. “I am stricken, a creature severed unnaturally in two by decisions made long ago, when the Wizard of Oz set public policy against thinking Animals. Now, one part of my nature is nearly dead and the other clings to life waiting help.”

“I have training in surgery, and my colleague in applications—”

Lord Ottokos spoke over Sister Doctor. “I have entrusted the boy Liir with a task, and I have been waiting his return these ten years. Ten years is a decade to a woman, marking the difference between maiden and matron, matron and crone, crone and harpy—but to an Elephant it is only a breath. A long, foul breath, but only a breath. I know the loyalty of Animals, I know the fickle allegiances of men. Because Liir was possibly a flitch of Elphaba, I had placed my trust in him all these years. I have hoped he might discover or invent a solution for my dilemma. And I have been patient—an Elephant is patient. And you come to tell me you have found him. Bless you, my daughters. Is he coming back to me at last?”

“He is not well,” said Sister Doctor.

“He was not well,” corrected Sister Apothecaire. “Perhaps he’s improving. We’ve been traveling, so we can’t report developments in his state.”

“Why does he not arrive?”

“Something happened to him,” said Sister Doctor. “We don’t know what. Perhaps what attacked our sister maunts attacked him, too. He is sunk in a strange sleep from which he may not awake. If we knew what had attacked him, we might better invent how to treat him. Lord Ottokos, ask her my question!” she said suddenly. “It is pertinent!”

Lord Ottokos obliged this time, and muttered something to Princess Nastoya.

The reply. “We do not scrape the faces of maunts, nor of mice, nor sheep. We do not treat others as we have been treated. You must hunt the barbaric Yunamata and find out from them why they have taken against travelers.”

“It isn’t the Yunamata,” said Sister Doctor, and in making the remark out loud she suddenly felt certain about this for the first time; she had been dubious up until now. “They wouldn’t do such a thing. Can you be sure your people are not forgetting their traditions under the burden of sorrow they feel at your condition?”

“My people, as you call them, are not even my people,” said Princess Nastoya. “They honored me years ago and made me their princess, and even in my decay they will not allow me to abdicate. They are a nation that has elevated charity beyond what is possible even in the precincts of your religious order. If out of fealty to me they would rather be governed by a Princess who is partly a corpse, how could they raise a hand against defenseless travelers?”

“The young maunts who ventured this way were intent on conversion,” admitted Sister Doctor. “They were sent by the Emperor himself, we hear.”

“None of us admires the Emperor’s zealotry. But intention to convert is hardly a reason to kill people and defile their bodies. The murderers you seek aren’t among the Scrow. Don’t waste your time considering the matter. It is the Yunamata or it is someone else. Or something else. Perhaps they had a disease.”

“No disease makes one’s face fall off,” said Sister Apothecaire firmly.

“If you know so much, what is my disease?” said Princess Nastoya.

“We should have to examine Your Highness,” said Sister Doctor.

“Enough,” interrupted Lord Ottokos. “I won’t translate such a barbaric notion. The Princess has dismissed you. You may leave.”

But the Princess spoke over her interpreter, and he was bound to listen. He bowed his head and continued, “She says again—and she has too few words left to spend in life to say it a third time—where is the boy Liir?”

“But he is not a boy any longer. We have told you what we know.” Sister Doctor put her sleeve to her nose; in her line of work she knew the smell of putrescence all too well. “He is in a comatose state not six or eight days’ journey from here, though perhaps nearer to the Emerald City than you would like to venture.”

Lord Ottokos snapped, “We are not imbeciles. We know where his body is. You have told us. That is not the question.”

The maunts blinked at him.

“Where is he?” Lord Ottokos repeated. “Where is he?”

“We don’t know where he is,” said Sister Apothecaire. “Our talents are not that fine.”

Princess Nastoya shivered. Handmaidens came forward to withdraw shawls drenched with sweat and other seepage. “Let me help,” said Sister Apothecaire suddenly.

“Don’t you dare,” said Lord Ottokos.

“I do dare. What are you going to do, have me scraped? Sister Doctor, a vessel of water and some essence of citron—lemons, limoncelli, parsleyfruit, anything. And some vinegar reduced to the usual.”

Princess Nastoya began to weep then, full tears of a nasty vintage. They fell on Sister Apothecaire’s bare hands and burned them; she was not halted in her work. “What has she said just then, in that low murmur?” she asked Lord Ottokos, who stood sputtering and clutching his beard in rage and disbelief.

Finally he submitted to this dotty, disobedient woman. “She said she wishes she could be scraped,” he finally allowed.

“We can’t do that,” said Sister Apothecaire. “Vows of gentility and all that. But she can be made more comfortable. Sister Doctor, that pillow. The head. Watch the neck. What a weight upon this spine! Where is the dratted vinegar reduction?”

5

FOR A MOMENT, TO REST HER HANDS, Candle set the domingon down. The sound box thunked with a hollow expression. Its cavity was a kind of womb, she thought; how ineffable the secrets born there.

She wasn’t given to reflection herself, but she was tired. For a moment she allowed herself to remember her arrival here a month or so before. The one called Mother Yackle had been dozing on a bench in the sunlight; she’d looked up with a start at Candle’s approach. She had stretched out a wilted hand, peering with an expression canny, severe, and resigned. Resigned: that was much the way Candle had felt at that moment. Her uncle had tricked her here; he hadn’t wanted to keep her any longer. “The way you’re going, you’ll be pregnant soon enough, if you’re not already—and I can’t take a child and a child’s newborn with me on the road.” It seemed he’d bought the domingon from its maker as a way to bargain with her. Go into the mauntery for a year, and the instrument is yours. Do with it what you will, and I’ll be back to get you in good time. There’s not much left for us in our home marshes, but you’d be ruined in the north. They’d spit at you, your easy ways; they’d laugh, your little voice. Stay here, and remember me wherever I am.

That kind of remembering was another skill, but now she was attending someone else, and her uncle meant little to her.

Candle took Liir’s hand in her own. A clamminess. Was his color fading? Or was it just that the sun was setting, and the jackal moon was rising later than it had? The shadows lengthened and browned. By comparison his skin was bleached like an old, sun-whitened bone.

She took up her instrument again and leaned the edge of the minor bridge right on the edge of his bed. Her fingers running into the treble range, they danced in contrapuntal jiggery at the top register, not six inches from his right ear.

Where was he?

 

LADY GLINDA SAID TO LIIR, “I can tell you have no intention of leaving that charred broomstick behind, but if you try to walk into a public space carrying it over your shoulder like a blunderbuss you’ll be taken for a fool, or at any rate noticed. I think what you are after is something a little more like camouflage.”

She paused to regard herself in a convenient looking glass in the stairwell. Adjusting her everyday tiara, she conceded, “It must be said that camouflage is not an effect I have ever strived to master. Still, we’ll do what we can.”

Liir followed her down the marble steps of the central staircase. The place had gone quiet. “Goodness, everyone takes off for a smoke the minute my back is turned,” she said. “Where are the kitchens, anyway? Through here?”

She stumbled into a cloakroom, and then opened the door to a closet where two of the belowstairs staff were involved in recreational exercises. “I beg your pardon,” she said, and shut the door, and then locked it. “Eventually they’ll have to thump to be released, and one of them is bound to be cheating. Heaps of fun. But where’s the kitchen?”

“Have you just moved here?” asked Liir.

“Don’t be silly. Lord Chuffrey had this place long before we married. But I don’t cook for myself, if that’s what you mean. Nothing other than the toast that I mentioned earlier, and that’s done in the breakfast hall. Ah, here we are.”

A half-flight of stone steps descended into a cavernous whitewashed kitchen. A dozen members of the staff were sitting about the table so deep in conversation that they didn’t hear her coming. “Lady Glinda,” said a bootblack, and they all leaped up with guilty looks.

“Glad to be recognized in my own home,” said Glinda. “I hate to interrupt what are probably well-intentioned plans to kill us all in our beds, but if you don’t mind? A minor request for whichever of you has just a moment to spare?”

They melted away, all but the housekeeper and the houseboy.

“He’s about the same size as the bootblack,” said Glinda, pointing to Liir. “Suit him up in House of Chuffrey colors and find some decent shoes, and get him a leather satchel on a sling. You know, that long cylindrical thingy that Lord Chuffrey’s guests use to carry their arrows when they go hunting in the country. That ought to accommodate the filthy old broom, I think.”

“Asking your pardon, Lady Glinda,” said the houseboy. “We’ve no such satchels on the town premises. They’re all down to Mockbeggar Hall.”

“Do I have to think of everything? Haven’t we friends? Haven’t we neighbors to borrow from? Aren’t there shops still serving the public? Need I go tramping to the marketplace myself with a sack of coins between my teeth?”

The houseboy fled. The housekeeper pursed her lips editorially.

“Don’t speak. Don’t. It’s only a temporary appointment,” said Lady Glinda. “Just for the day, in fact. Now feed up this boy; he hasn’t had a square meal for weeks, I can tell. And when he’s equipped as I require, return him to the Yellow Parlor.”

Lady Glinda climbed the stairs, muttering “Kitchens!” in disbelief, leaving Liir behind.

“Well, peel off those beggar’s weeds and wash in the cauldron room, just there; I won’t have you staining her fancyfart’s good livery with your dirty limbs,” said the housekeeper. “I’ll put out some food, and you be grateful for it, for it’s out of our own downstairs supply, and we don’t take kindly to ravenous upstarts here in Lord Chuffrey’s establishment.”

 

“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” He peered out the window of the carriage.

“Put your head back. Servants don’t gawp out of carriage windows.”

How odd to be five feet higher than the street. It was not an experience to which he was accustomed. The carriage lurched under arched spans of stone, stopped for a squadron of uniformed cavalry on display, sidelined along a merchants’ parade, and picked up speed along Dirt Boulevard. Cleared of its village of indigents, the roadway showed signs of its original elegance, though its parallel rows of trees were in bad shape. It looked as if the grounds were being used for military drills.

Where had all the itinerants gone? “Where are we going?”

“To the Palace,” Glinda said. “Where you’ll keep your head down and your mouth closed. Are you scared?”

It seemed too personal a question for a woman to ask a boy. Perhaps she realized this. She continued, “I was, the first time I came here. It was with Elphaba. We were older than you are now, but only by a few years. And in many ways we were more naive. Well, I was, anyway. And I was terrified. The wonderful Wizard of Oz! My stomach just about dissolved in its own acids.”

“What happened?”

“What happened?” She turned the question to herself, examining it. “History happened, I suppose. We saw the Wizard, and we parted ways—Elphaba went underground, as it were, and…in time, I hugged the limelight.” She sighed. “With the best of intentions, and with limited success.”

“And now?” he said, not because he was interested, but because he didn’t want any more attention on himself.

“Now, I hold the key,” she said. “Now, for the time being, I am intended to stand in for the mighty on their thrones. It’s all I’m good for.”

“Are the mighty deserving of thrones?”

“That’s an Elphaba question, and out of your youthful pouting mouth it sounds preposterous. Like most of her superior cavils, it has no easy answer. How could I know?”

She sighed. “Sit back, I said. Yes, I’m nervous. You’ll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they’re wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good. Perhaps being jittery helps me pay closer attention. You know, I didn’t want the hard work of government. They all say I need to clean house. Clean house! That presumes I’ve cleaned a house before. I say, hey, what are the servants for? Decoration?”

She was speaking to herself, in a way, but she was also trying to cheer him up. He turned his head, confused by her kindness, and busied himself from watching, at an acceptable angle, as the buildings nearer the Palace hove into view. One mammoth ministry was strapped with bas-relief marble panels depicting various historic Ozmas in characteristic poses. They looked at once venerable and ludicrous, and the pigeons of the Emerald City paid them no high compliment.

“But why are we going to the Wizard’s Palace?”

“The people’s Palace, now,” said Glinda derisively. “Though what the people are going to do with their own palace I have no earthly idea.” She chewed on a nail. “There’s a clandestine entrance to Southstairs from the Palace. Of course there had to be, a means of instantly spiriting away any treasonous Palace upstart sniffed out in the court. Though the common criminal condemned to serve time is more publicly lowered in a cage into the pit that drops down inside those bulwarky ramparts. You see, it’s mostly underground, Southstairs. It’s the most impregnable prison in Oz. Nobody who goes in via the cage comes out that way.”

“How do they come out?”

“In pine coffins.”

 

SHE DABBED A SACHET doused with oil of clove and root-of-persimmon behind her ears. By the time the door to her carriage was opened by a staff member of the Palace, Lady Glinda had become more regal. Her chin went up, a jeweled scepter was provided for her right hand. Her eye flashed with a steeliness Liir had not noted earlier.

“Lady Glinda,” they murmured. She deigned to supply the briefest of nods, as an indication that she was not deaf, and walked by.

Liir followed in something closer to terror than he had ever experienced before. He expected to be rushed away and beaten before he could even begin to protest. But Lady Glinda’s penumbra of influence extended eight feet behind her, it seemed, for his progress was unquestioned, and he gained the threshold of the Palace without anyone’s objecting.

The place was a maze, and he lost his bearings almost at once. Accompanied by a Palace flunky, Glinda and Liir swept up grand staircases, along arched corridors, past ceremonial chambers and receiving parlors. Another staircase or two, another corridor or three, and at length they traversed a long dingy room, where dozens of staff members were perched on high stools above ledgers. They splashed ink in their nervous abjection, though not on Glinda in her celestial blue gown.

Behind a wall with an interior window, the better for supervising workers, stood an office with a desk and some chairs. An elegant man absorbed in a newssheet was tipped back on the hind legs of his chair, his ceremonial boots propped on the desk and his saber stuck in the soil of a potted fern. “Commander,” said Lady Glinda, “we’re here. Show some respect, or pretend to anyway.”

He leaped to his feet with ostentatious speed. Liir blinked and gaped. “Commander Cherrystone!” he said.

“You’ve met?” said Glinda. “How droll.”

“I’m drawing a blank,” said the Commander, wrinkling a brow.

“At Kiamo Ko,” said Liir. “You were head of the Gale Forcers at Red Windmill. It was your men that kidnapped Fiyero’s widow, Sarima, and her sisters and her children.”

Commander Cherrystone smiled deferentially and offered Liir a hand. “Kidnapped? We took them into protective custody for their own good. How were they to know the depravity of the Witch they were harboring?”

“And how well did you protect them?” said Liir.

“Ooh, the boy has spit, has he,” said Commander Cherrystone, wiping his sleeve. “I like that, son, but please. This is my best dress uniform.” He was equable and seemed to take no offense.

Liir glared at Glinda. “You’ve taken me here, to him—betrayed me to the very man responsible for Nor’s abduction?”

“Recriminations, they get us nowhere,” said Lady Glinda. “And how was I to know? Consider it poetic justice: Now he must help you. Because I say so.” She turned to Cherrystone. “Look, Commander, I’ve laid it all out. You got my note? The boy wants to see Fiyero’s daughter, if she’s still alive. As an officer and a governor of the prison, you can make the arrangements, can’t you?”

“It’s an institution with its own appetite, is a prison,” said Commander Cherrystone. Rather approvingly, thought Liir. “I can’t say I remember you, lad, but my work involves many postings. And in none of them have I ever before met a soul who wanted to enter Southstairs voluntarily. You understand: No promises that you will leave it. Either dead or alive. It might be your tomb.”

“My name is Liir,” he said. He tried to lift his chin as he had seen Glinda do. “We have met. I liked you. You seemed decent.”

“I tried to be decent, within reason,” he replied. “Anyway, I had little choice if I wanted to gain the trust of that knotty little clan in Kiamo Ko.”

“What happened to Sarima?” asked Liir. “Fiyero’s widow.”

“Everyone dies. It’s a question of where and how, that’s all.”

“Oh, bandying, bandying, please, my head,” said Glinda. “I feel I’m back at Shiz. The Debating Tourneys: what a migraine. I need a tonic. Are you going to do this for me, Commander?”

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t require it,” he answered. “Ready, lad?”

“I’m ready,” Liir answered. He turned to Glinda. “Ought I take off these silly clothes?”

“What, and go naked into Southstairs? I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Commander Cherrystone. Glinda waved dismissively. Then she tucked her hand against her mouth and bit her knuckles. It was hard to know if her pretty ways were studied or innate.

“Oh, oh,” she managed, “I don’t know that I’ll see you again…and you remind me so of her.”

“I haven’t Elphaba’s talent,” said Liir simply. “I’m not worth mourning, believe me.”

“Her power was only part of it,” said Glinda. “She was brave, and so are you.”

“Bravery can be learned,” he said, trying to be consoling.

“Bravery can be stupid,” said Commander Cherrystone. “Believe me.”

The boy didn’t move forward to touch her or kiss her. In Kiamo Ko, only Nanny had been the kissing type, and Liir hadn’t figured much in her affections. So he merely said, “Well, good-bye, then. And don’t worry. I’ll take care.”

They looked at one another. In a moment Liir would lose heart; he would do the shaming thing that the houseboy had predicted. He would let Nor’s life reach its destiny without intervening—in exchange for having someone stand in as a mother. Lord knows Elphaba hardly had!—and here was Glinda, blinking back tears or something.

She looked at him almost as if thinking the same thing. The moment passed, though. “You do your work,” Lady Glinda told him. “Ozspeed. And don’t forget your broom.”

“Her broom,” said Liir.

“Your broom,” she corrected him.

6

THE ROOM GREW SUDDENLY COLDER. Night was drawing in, and the rump flank of the wind hinted at the winter to come. Candle rose to draw the shutters closed. The jackal moon was at its most self-satisfied; soon the constellation would wane and its elements return to their ordinary, lonelier orbits.

She shuttered most of the windows for the first time, but she couldn’t fix one shutter securely; a rope of ivy with a stem stout as a forearm had grown across a corner. Candle took an extra sheet and hung it as best she could against the chill.

When she came back to Liir, she became alarmed. She felt his brow. His skin was colder still, and his blood pressure seemed to be dropping.

She wasn’t suited for work of this seriousness. She laid down her instrument on the floor, determined to run and get Sister Cook or the Superior Maunt. She found her way blocked.

The figure stood in the doorway, veil drawn to cloak the features. Candle reared back, startled.

The veil dropped. It was only the addled elderly maunt, the senior biddy in the place, the one known as Mother Yackle. What was she doing here?

“You can’t leave,” said Mother Yackle. “There’s no one else here to do what needs to be done.”

Candle picked up her domingon and raised it threateningly. Quicker than could have been imagined, Mother Yackle slid back into the shadows, and closed the door behind her, and locked it.

Candle thumped against the door, and threw her shoulder against it, but the heavy thing was quarter-sawn oakhair wood, and cross-built. She couldn’t waste her time clawing at it with her fingernails. Liir was failing.

She turned her attentions to the rest of the room. Not raised in the arts of medicine, she didn’t recognize much of what she found in the cupboard. A large mortar and pestle for the grinding of herbs. Several fresh-nibbed pens, with sheets of paper and a stoppered jug of ink, for the making of notes. Unguents of disagreeable viscosities. The body of a mouse on the bottom shelf. A few old keys—none of which fit the room’s only keyhole.

She sat down and played a few rapid runnels, in mischief mode, to concentrate her apprehensions. She felt for his pulse again, and brushed his hair away from his forehead. Even his scalp was cold.

She took off her tunic and tried to wave it from the window. Though she couldn’t attract attention by yelling, maybe someone in the kitchen garden would see her signal. But a wind came up and took the tunic away, and that was that.

At length she relied on what fate had provided her. She took the cleanest of the pen nibs and sharpened it further by training it along the stone windowsill. Releasing Liir’s left arm from its splint, she propped it up against a transept of the domingon, so his hand was raised in the air, a salute. To the extent that she prayed—which wasn’t much, even in these environs, even at this drastic juncture—she begged for her hands to be steady. Then she tried to play Liir’s bicep as she might her domingon, running her hands in light, feathery scales along the skin. She settled on a place near the inside of the elbow, and using the nib as a lancet, made a neat incision.

She caught his blood in the mortar, and when she’d filled it she rushed to the window and dumped it out. There, jackal moon, you want your blood offering, there it is. She collected a second portion, then a third, and she took off her habit to bind Liir’s arm and stop the flow.

In only her broadcloth shift she shivered, and her fingers trembled. Nonetheless she returned to her instrument. Her musical figures went wobbly, but she kept on.

 

AFTER GLINDA HAD GONE, Commander Cherrystone took no more notice of Liir than he might a napping dog. He disappeared behind his newspapers, humming to himself. Liir sat on a stool, waiting; something had to happen sooner or later. He watched the Commander’s well-trimmed nails hold the page, listened to various admonitory hums and clicks and editorial humphs breathed nasally. The career soldier was a fit man, a calm one, and his lack of attention to Liir seemed suitable. What was hard to fathom was the Commander’s composure. It was under his command that Nor and her family had been abducted, yet he seemed so oblivious to Liir’s contempt that Liir began to doubt himself. Maybe there was more to the ruling family of Kiamo Ko than he had known.

Not until the business day in the Palace came to an end, and the dozens of civil servants left their desks for home, did the Commander sit up. “Your guide will be along presently—ah, there he is.”

A handsome younger man with a keen, guarded expression blustered into the room. “Can’t have kept you waiting more than a tockety-tick, have I? Witches’ britches, the Palace staff gives you the once-over! Thought things would loosen up once the Wizard abdicated.” He shucked a jacket from his shoulders and slung it across the desk. “You notice. Nice, eh? A clothier in Brickle Lane. Yes, it’s black-market Munchkinsheep wool, I’d have nothing else. Feel that weight.”

“You’ve a prettier penny to spend than a military man does,” observed the Commander dryly.

“She is not that young and I am not that choosy: conditions for a bargain. Bartered it mostly. Fuck, I’m hungry. This is the boy, then. Got a crumpet or a butter roll anywhere, Cherryvery?”

“This is Liir. You’re to take him below and help him as best you can. I know you’ve your mind on other matters, so I don’t pretend to expect you will be thorough in your assistance. But do try. He seems a good sort.”

The young man shot Liir a glance. “He looks too wet to be after what I’m after down there.”

“I suspect he is,” said Commander Cherrystone, “but all good things come to those who wait, and he may grow into a sexual nature before he emerges, if he ever does. Liir, this is Shell.”

“The Witch’s brother?” Liir felt he had to check.

“The same,” said Shell, flexing his fingers. Liir wasn’t sure that he could see a resemblance, but Shell looked capable and cunning both. “Are you ready?”

Does he know who I am, wondered Liir. Has Shell ever heard of a Liir? A boy who might be his nephew?

“I’m ready.”

Commander Cherrystone flicked a speck of dust off his dress weskit. “The usual arrangements about your return, Shell. Liir—I wish you luck.”

He left, locking them into the office. Shell looked at Liir more closely, and his nose twitched as if on the scent of something. Then he shrugged and said, “I’m ready for an ale. You ready for Southstairs?” Liir nodded.

Shell went to an installation of cubbies for the sorting of interoffice mail. Liir couldn’t see how his fingers fussed, nor at what, but in a moment the whole wooden unit slid aside on a secret track. Behind, a plain door, and Shell had the key for it.

“Is this where Southstairs got its name?” asked Liir, pointing to the flight of timber steps that descended treacherously, without benefit of railings, into the gloom.

“Dunno. Never thought about it. Let’s go. I hope your thighs are good. Watch your step.”

“Was your sister a martyr?” asked Liir, innocently as he could.

“Which sister?” he answered, but before Liir could reply, he continued. “Martyrdom implies a religious faith, and Nessarose had so much faith that no one else in the family could breathe. Elphaba affected a salty agnosticism; I never knew whether it was genuine or not. For me to consider them martyrs, I’d have to have faith, and I don’t—not in unionism, the faith of my father; nor in the other varieties that clot the calendar with their hobbledehoy feast days. It took all the fancy dancing I could do not to be tarred as a traitor-by-family-association. Luckily, I have little interest in government, and I’m rather good at dancing, as it happens. Look…Liir, is it…I prefer to save my breath. Shall we not chatter like choirgirls on an outing? That okay with you?”

Liir didn’t answer. The wind siphoning through the slitted windows above made a sound almost like a spiral of music. He wanted to ask Shell if he could hear the strange effect, but he kept his own counsel.

They grew colder and colder as they descended. Soon Liir had to put out a hand, not just to feel his way in the gloom, but also because his legs threatened to buckle beneath him. The wall was damp, here and there soft with wet clinging growth.

Eventually the sound of their steps began to echo, and then it was clear a light was burning below. At last they reached a stone floor from which several dark corridors led.

“Here I usually stretch,” said Shell, and showed Liir how. Liir rubbed his muscles as directed. When they were ready, Shell took a club from a pile on the floor and lit it from the torch affixed to the wall. “Do the same; we won’t spend the rest of eternity together, you know,” he said. “Light is helpful. These are limbs of irongrowth stock, so they burn a good long time.”

“If we’re not going to stick together, how will I find my way out?”

“I don’t know. I assume you’re clever, though.” Shell’s nonchalance was cruel. “Very few emerge from here. Only the guards.”

Liir tried to memorize all of everything, just in case—but he intended to stick with his guide no matter what Shell might think about it.

The way was dank and sour, sometimes cut with a sulfurous gust. The torchlight made a tidal rush against flattened arches of milk grey stone. Parts of the walls were bricked, though the work was ancient and the brick face crumbling.

As they walked along the crushed cement and scattered rubble, and Liir got his breath back, he tried to think of how to speak to Shell. The man was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, and a certain class of fop; even Liir, knowing himself a rube and a naïf, could see that. But Shell’s eye was keen and his manner, variously courtly or casual, always suave. He was taller than Elphaba had been, sleek where she had been spiky.

As it happened, Liir had no time to ask questions. The path ended in a flight of shallow steps leading farther down. They were reaching the outskirts of Southstairs—not so much a prison as an underground city. The sounds of carts, and a murmur of voices. Somewhere, someone was playing a stringed instrument, far away; somewhere, someone must be cooking, for there was a grievous smell of rendered bacon fat on a hot griddle.

“The cowhand of mercy prepares his rounds.” Shell swept off his hat and left it on a ledge; a curl of yellow plume bobbed in the gloom.

“Will you lead me to Nor?”

“I’ve promised to take you to the central registrar, but I’ve a few stops to make first.” Shell patted the satchel on his shoulder. “Some folks need my attention, and it would be unthinkable to postpone their medications to rush you by first. You don’t mind?”

Liir did. “No, of course not.”

Around another corner, down a few more steps, and they came to a greasy waterway, not unlike the canals above in the Emerald City. “Come on then, if you’re coming,” said Shell, leaping aboard an abandoned canal dory. He seemed to be growing cheerier by the moment.

At length, the narrow waterway ran into a wider channel that curved beneath a high ceiling of rock face supported here and there with beams and buttresses. On either side of the channel, padlocked doors were set flush into the stone walls. Sometimes the doors gave out onto ledges or a path between cells; more often, just onto the water.

The stench and the noise grew. Before long Liir and Shell passed grey-clothed laborers hauling buckets of supper one way, buckets of feces back.

“Didn’t think a country kid would wrinkle his nose at a rural perfume,” observed Shell, berthing the canal dory. “You’ll stay and guard this; more than once I’ve had my vessel nabbed while I was at my errand of mercy.” He opened the flap of his satchel and removed a small glass syringe filled with a urine-colored solution. He wiped the needle with a clean cloth and then tapped the plunger once to make sure it worked. “Ripe and ready, she is,” he murmured. He looked sideways at Liir. “It’s humbling to be able to help those who suffer.”

With a practiced hand, he quickly undid the lock on a door and slid through, closing it behind him.

Despite his intentions to cling to Shell like a burr, Liir didn’t have the nerve to follow, nor was he tall enough to peer through the small window high in the door. But there was a gap at the bottom between the door and its sill. By sinking to the floor of the dory, Liir could make out the movement of figures inside. Apparently Shell had set his torch in a wall stanchion. His voice sounded soothing, even hypnotic, but the prisoner crouching against a back wall scooched her bare feet underneath her skirts. Shell’s boots drew near until he was standing flush against her. She moaned or whimpered, and her feet curled the farther under her skirts. Mercy was hard to accept, Liir guessed. Shell’s feet rocked from toe to heel, with a comforting rhythm, and his heels began to lift from the floor.

At the sound of someone approaching, Liir turned.

“You, what’re you lying there for?” A portly Ape with a ring of keys, dragging his knuckles on the ground. He was wreathed in his own weather of cheap cologne, protection against the smells, and he wore a collar made of mangy ocelot fur.

“I’m visiting,” said Liir. “With permission of Lady Glinda. I’m accompanying a man named Shell, who is inside tending to the needs of the sick.”

“I’ll say he is, and he’s sicker than most,” said the Ape. “But what Lady Glinda dictates means nothing down here; we’re our own society. Have you a writ of passage from the Under-mayor?”

“We’re on our way to get one. But Shell needed to stop first.”

“He sees to his needs. I’ll see to yours. Come with me.”

“I don’t think I’d better.”

The Ape insisted, and Liir called out repeatedly for Shell, who emerged, cross and agitated. “What’re you bothering my boy for?”

“Oh, he’s your boy?” asked the Ape. “Ever the surprise, Shell.”

“He’s under my care for the moment. Leave him be, Tunkle.”

“You give our Miss Serenity her weekly jab?” asked Tunkle, jingling the keys.

Shell replaced the syringe. “You interrupted me. I’ll go on to the next.”

“He’s a one-man festival of fun,” said Tunkle. “I wouldn’t get too close if I were you. He gets fairly hot and bothered over all these errands of mercy.”

Shell showed no sign of taking offense. “Clear off, Tunkle. We know the ropes. We’re on our way to the Under-mayor. We’ll just take our time, that’s all. You want a lift?”

“Not on your life. I go upside once a month and I can find my own fun, Master Shell; I don’t need your fancy imported sort.” The Ape spit in the waterway and let them go by. “Watch your back, lad.”

Making no effort to lower his tone, Shell remarked to Liir, “Tunkle. A collaborationist. Saved his own hide, during the Wizard’s campaigns, by signing on to bully his own.” Still, his tone was neutral, as if this seemed a reasonable enough strategy.

Liir asked softly, “How far are we from the Under-mayor’s office?”

“A stop or two, or three,” said Shell. “There’s more than one would like my attentions, but I pick and choose, trying to be fair. I can’t be all things to all people, now, can I?” He brushed his lapel and made ready to continue his missionary work.

 

LIIR DIDN’T KNOW how much time had passed before they finally reached the Under-mayor’s quarters, but Southstairs grew progressively warmer, stinkier, noisier, brighter the farther in they floated. Shell made two or three more stops, always, it seemed, to tend to young women—Liir could hear their voices, supplicating, sometimes weeping, once cursing Shell. But Liir couldn’t see them, nor did he want to.

Shell became more distracted as the hour passed, his bespoke clothes more disheveled. At length, however, they reached their destination. A foreman’s cabin stood freely beneath the lofty ceiling from which, in the stronger light, Liir could make out rock structures, strange candelabras of dripped stone frozen in place.

The prison Under-mayor was a sallow man, skin soft and pale as bleached linen. He looked as if he hadn’t seen the sun in many years. Multiple rings on every finger, even his thumbs: like a fence for stolen jewels. His name was Chyde. “You’re raising someone up in the paths of righteousness, I see,” he said, cheerily enough, to Shell. “I’m not used to thinking of you as concerned about the morals of the young.”

“One does what one can,” said Shell.

“I thought your motto was one does whom one can. But never mind that. You bring news of the starlight goddess?”

“Glinda’s all right. She’s coping. The City’s a mess up there, but you’ll have heard all about it.”

“You always have a special slant, though.” Chyde located some beer and a few stale rings of fried castipod. Liir declined, but Shell tucked in.

“Well, after all these years, it’s a right rich stew up there, that’s for sure,” Shell conceded through a mouthful of flaky breading. “The Wizard’s departure was weirdly unexpected, given he’s been in power for so long. Still, with so many having schemed behind the scenes to oust him, you’d think they’d have gotten their signals straight about what ought to happen next. Lady Glinda is looking in, a glamorous figurehead, and no one knows if she’s got a scrap of brain in her noggin. The trade unions should be rising any day, but the municipal militia wasn’t quite prepared to recognize a socialite for a queen. Hence, in loyal support of course, the guard has been on the offensive, clearing out the neighborhoods where the rabble is more likely to rouse. Glinda thinks it’s urban revitalization. So it’s an interesting time, a sweep of forces with everyone assessing the power of the other. Heads will roll, of course. It’s merely a question of in what sequence: who gets to laugh first, and who next, and whose laugh is cut off by the guillotine blade.”

“And you’ll be stealing in and out of the bedchambers of the wenches and the wives and the widows…”

“The wives laugh neither first nor last, but they do laugh best!”

“I live a quiet life down here,” said Under-mayor Chyde to Liir. “It’s part of your dad’s program of good works to fill me in on the local gossip. I could go northstairs if I could trust a soul, but I don’t trust a soul. And the minute the selfish bastards up there remember their relatives down here, if they ever do, I’ll be hamstrung before morning and bled by noontime. I’ve never felt I could leave my post, but especially not now. Not if I want to survive through these interesting times.”

“He’s not my father,” said Liir coldly.

“Oh? I thought I caught a resemblance,” said Under-mayor Chyde. “Well, more’s the pity. You’re training an apprentice, are you, Shell?”

Shell yawned and drained his beer. “No. I promised Lady Glinda I’d deliver this spawnling to you. He’s searching for a prisoner.”

“We’re all searching for someone,” said Under-mayor Chyde in a drawl. “People pay me well to begin searches I can’t somehow ever manage to complete.” He flashed his jeweled hands. “Care to make a contribution to the exhibit, lad?”

“He’s not buying your silence or your service,” snapped Shell. “Get on with it, Chyde-ey, or I’ll report your side business to the authorities. Lady Glinda has an interest in jewels herself, as it happens. A more seemly interest. She might not like to hear—”

“Name?” interrupted Chyde.

“Her name was Nor,” said Liir. “Is Nor. About, oh, sixteen? She was abducted by the Gale Forcers at the castle of Kiamo Ko, out west. In the Vinkus.”

“I can’t say the name sounds familiar, but we house an exclusive clientele, some of whom like to keep a low profile. We respect their wishes, of course.”

“Her father was the prince of the Arjikis.”

“A crowned head? Well, if she’s here, she must have one of the private suites. You haven’t been to offer her your particular brand of solace, Shell?” Under-mayor Chyde snapped his fingers with a clink and said, “Jibbidee, bring me the two green ledgers. No, sorry, the ocher ones, if she’s a Winkie.”

“She’d be young still,” said Shell. “Or young-ish. I do have some standards, Chyde.”

An elf with ears in an advanced state of decomposition appeared from a cupboard and scrambled about a rickety bookshelf. “Thank you, Jibbidee,” said Chyde, without inflection, and the elf returned to his cupboard and shut the door behind him when his job was done.

“You might remember the circumstances of her registering,” said Shell. “It was the same castle where my sister lived until recently.”

“Oh, that Kiamo Ko. How could I be so slow?” Chyde slid a pair of spectacles off his pate and down to his nose, and squinted. “My former wife, save her blessed hide, always said that I’m such a big-hearted guy, you know, everyone’s story gets to me, and so I can’t keep them straight. My heart bleeds for all. One and all.” Harumph. “Part of our marital problems, but so be it.”

He glanced up over the top of his lenses and fastened on Shell for the first time. “I am sorry about your sisters, though, Shell. Both of them meeting their ends within such a short time. It can’t be easy.”

“We weren’t close,” said Shell, studying his nails.

“Munchkinland’s in revolt, now that Nessarose is dead. It has to be said she ruled with an iron fist, for all her piety.”

“Spare us the civics class. I’m in a hurry, Chyde,” said Shell. “Can I leave the boy here for you to finish with?”

“Some poor widowling just aching for your attention, I know, I know…”

Liir put it together at last. What a dolt am I! “Are you sleeping with your patients?” he blurted out. “I mean—you know—”

“Patients,” mused Chyde. “Nice touch.”

“I am seeing to their needs,” said Shell, without apology or shame. He patted the satchel. “The comfort I supply is greatly appreciated. And of course they want to show their gratitude. What else does a lady in chains have to offer? She couldn’t accept charity. It isn’t done in polite circles. So she pays as she can. I’m not so cold as to deny them the chance to show their appreciation. It seems a fair exchange to me.”

I’m not sticking with him even if he is my maybe-uncle. Forget it. New plan needed. I’ll improvise. “You’re disgusting,” said Liir. “I mean, really. That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. I can’t believe it. It’s—it’s monstrous.”

“Oh, I’d need to be a good sight more ambitious to make it to monstrous.” Shell laughed. “Chyde? Sometime this week would be nice.”

“Might as well leave him.” Chyde turned to another volume. “Nothing is coming to light. Are you sure she’s here?”

“I’m not sure of anything, but this is the natural first place to start, I suppose,” said Shell. He stood and smoothed down his clothes, and offered his hand to Liir. “So we take our parting now, comrade. I hope the rest of your day is as amusing.”

Liir thought about biting the hand, but Shell would only make another joke. So the boy tucked his own hands high up in his armpits. “We’ll meet again,” said Shell. “Likely it’ll be down here, since it isn’t easy to obtain an exit visa. Sweet dreams, Liir-boy.”

He spun on his heel and disappeared almost at a run.

“Oh, the energy of the young,” said Chyde, sighing and continuing to flip pages. “You know, I’m not coming up with anything so far. What did you say her name was again?”

7

IN THE WESTERN DISAPPOINTMENTS, on the last evening of this jackal moon, the Scrow herders sent their dogs out to round up the sheep earlier than usual. Other workers erected a double row of pliant, bindweed fencing around the far edge of the fold’s perimeter. Unless cloud cover prevented it, the celestial beast would brighten the night more brilliantly than at any other time in a generation. It would make a good night for scavengers.

Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire had done what they could. They had provided comfort to the old Princess that her own staff could not. She was happier, though the mood in her tent, when she was asleep, was ugly. The Scrow were a proud people—well, what people weren’t?—and they were suspicious of foreign clinical practices.

The interpreter put it to the women as gently as he could.

“You should move on,” said Lord Shem Ottokos. “We have told you what you came to learn—that we know nothing of the scrapings of those colleagues of yours. If your profession is the extension of charity, you have performed your mission. You’ve benefited Princess Nastoya mightily. There is no reason to linger, and danger to you if you do.”

“We’re told you are hospitable to strangers,” Sister Doctor reminded him.

“Strangers, yes; that is the way of the Scrow,” said Ottokos. “After several days, you are less strange than you once were. You become familiar, and therefore, like family, less agreeable. I’ll be happy to provide you with a supply of food, but I recommend that you start home this very evening and take advantage of this unusually bright night.”

Sister Doctor said, “In the question of scrapings, we haven’t convinced you that the Yunamata are blameless. So why would you send us into danger?”

“You’ve been so good; we’ll provide what we can manage by way of an escort,” said Lord Ottokos, and left.

“The nerve!” said Sister Apothecaire. “We’re being disinvited. I believe I’m offended.”

“Are you going native?” Sister Doctor asked her Munchkin colleague. The tone verged on the cruel.

“They’re adorable heathen,” said Sister Apothecaire, somewhat wildly.

“Yes. Well, they’ll seem less adorable if they conquer their aversion to scraping the faces of their visitors. After all, when you were a child you were an adorable heathen, too, but you got over it.”

“I don’t appreciate your wit, Sister Doctor.”

It began to seem for a short while as if the maunts might disobey the instructions of their superior and split up. However, the Princess Nastoya requested a final interview with them, and she felt well enough to sit up on her pallet.

“Have you taken the full measure of my ailment?” she said, through Shem Ottokos. “To avoid the pogroms of the Wizard against the Animals, I went deeply underground many years ago, accepting a witch’s charm as a way to hide myself. I am an Elephant, and want to go to my death as an Elephant, but I am cursed to remain in this human body. I used to be able to change for a brief time, but infirmity and age have eroded those talents, and now I am trapped. I fear the Elephant within me has been dying for some time, and may be in part dead already; but I would join it, if I could only have help. Ten years ago I asked the Witch’s boy for help, but he disappeared. Now through your exotic skills you have helped me rally, and so I must press this request. Please return to your hive and collect the boy, the man, Liir. Bring him here or send him here; get him here safely. He may not be able to help me, but even the most blessed of witchcraft has gone underground in these trying times, and he is the only one I know who might be able to help.”

“Do you really think he is Elphaba’s son?” asked Sister Doctor.

“He had her cape, he had her broom,” said Princess Nastoya. “Maybe he wasn’t her son, but he cared about her life, and he may have learned something anyway. What other course can I take?”

“We’ve never even seen him awake,” admitted Sister Apothecaire. “It would be hard to promise we could persuade him when we don’t know what he’s really like. Yet.”

“In return for his help, I’d promised him something in exchange.” She began to wheeze a bit, and Ottokos collected her phrases haltingly. “I want—to tell him what I’ve heard—about—the word on the street in the Emerald City.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fascinated,” said Sister Doctor. “If he ever wakes up.”

“The threat to Animals during the Wizard’s reign crowded me—humanward—and I have been safer than many. Now, as our violently holy Emperor demands all our souls, I want to go to my death as an Animal: proud, isolate, unconsecrated. Find him for me. Hurry. I will give you—two rare male skarks to ride—and a panther to travel by your side as far as the forest. You will travel faster on the backs of those beasts than you did on foot or on mules. If you aren’t ambushed by soldiers or wolves or any other enemy, you may make it by sunrise. At the edge of the forest the panther will turn back, but the skark will keep on, and by then the worst of the jackal moonlight will be spent.”

The maunts nodded their heads and rose to take their leave. They didn’t expect to see Princess Nastoya again, dead or alive, an Elephant or a human. They didn’t want to tire her with further discussion. But it was she who raised the last point, when they were almost beyond addressing.

“My friends,” she said. They turned. “You have been kind to me, and good to each other. I am not so far dead that I haven’t seen this. How can you perform such works in the name of the Unnamed God, whose agents belittle us so?”

“The Unnamed God does not descend from the Emperor,” explained Sister Doctor. She was afraid that an obscure point of contemporary unionist theology might be lost on a pagan, but she was reluctant to treat the Princess like a fool. “The Unnamed God, whatever they may say in the Emerald City these days, is still in its essence unnamed. We have as much a right to work in its name as anyone else.”

“Hardly seems worth the bother to believe,” murmured Princess Nastoya. “Still, life itself seems more than patently fantastic, and we believe in life, so I’ll let the matter drop.”

 

THE RIDE WOULD BE SWIFT but rollicking. These skarks were large of pelvis, supported by longer back legs than other skark varieties. Around their legs circled the panther like an eddy of black oil, constantly swishing by.

Lord Shem Ottokos escorted them safely out of the camp. Sister Apothecaire was disappointed that there were so few Scrow to wave good-bye to them. “You’ll have noticed the creatures circling,” said Ottokos. The maunts looked uneasily at each other. “In the sky, I mean.”

“Vultures?” said Sister Apothecaire. “Sensing the carrion of Princess Nastoya? She would supply a healthy portion of carrion to a bevy of vultures.”

“They are higher up than vultures, I think,” said Ottokos. “So, according to the laws of perception, they must be larger than vultures. Besides, vultures wait for the body to die before approaching. I fear they are a squadron of attack creatures who don’t wait until the meat is dead. Perhaps—well, I hardly dare say it. Dragons.”

“Dragons are rare in the first place, and in any case docile,” snapped Sister Doctor. “Menacing dragons are only mythology.”

“Myth has a way of coming true,” said Ottokos. “I’m merely saying Be careful.”

“How kind to set our minds at ease, just as we depart from your protection.” Sister Doctor looked livid.

“You have the panther. Nothing will get by her.”

“Good-bye, then,” said Sister Doctor. “I hope you have learned something from us.”

Sister Apothecaire sniffled into a souvenir shawl that she’d bought at an inflated price from a Scrow weaver.

Shem Ottokos watched them leave. He did wish them well, at least as far as the mauntery, and the completion of their task for his Princess. Beyond that, he wished them nothing at all: Let their Unnamed God go on unnaming their lives for them.

 

THE SNOUT OF THE JACKAL moon poked over the line of the trees.

Liir was nearly grey. The bleeding was staunched, but his heart was lurching. Candle worked at her throat, trying to scream for help, but she could not make that strong a sound.

No, she thought, the poor cold boy, no. Not this.

She put her domingon down and rubbed his shoulders. Then she removed his splints and braces and massaged his arms and legs. The air was turning from chilly to icy, and the extra blankets were in the hallway, beyond the locked door. She felt something lurch in him—he, who had been absent for so long—something kicked and resisted the death that seemed to be settling upon him. His breath was halting. A long moment without a breath; another.

She leaned over his brow from above, and held his newly bearding cheeks in both hands, and laid her nose next to his, and breathed into him, and kissed him besides.

 

“WELL, THERE’S SOMETHING FOR YOU, NOW,” said Chyde. “It never hurts to read the small print, my lad. Jibbidee, my walking stick? And it’s not even that far, though in a quarter I rarely get to visit myself. Let’s go.”

The elf came forward with a walking stick, and Chyde stood erect, or as erect as he could. Long years of desk work had crushed his hips cruelly, and his posture was poor. Still, at a new angle, he was able to look Liir over a bit more thoroughly than he’d yet managed.

“You hadn’t ought to have arrived with a firearm,” he said with sudden harshness. “You’ll leave that with Jibbidee at once, my lad-ee-oh.”

“It’s no firearm. It’s a broom.”

“Show it me.”

Liir opened the satchel and displayed the top end of the charred broom-pole.

“Let me see the length of it, to be sure it’s not a blunder-bulleter in disguise.”

The broom was withdrawn and Liir handed it over. “A right wreck of a thing, but for the new growth,” said Chyde, handing it back.

“What?”

Liir didn’t ask again, but felt it. The broom handle was notched with young nubs, and two of them had split, revealing modest embellishments of pale green leaf, like tiny rare broaches pinned to an old bit of scrap wood.

“It can’t grow!” said Liir in amazement. “It can’t do that.”

“Put it away,” said Chyde. “Some folks haven’t seen a green leaf growing in twenty years. You don’t want to get them all weepy now, do you? Mercy is the name of the game in this trade.” He kissed a vulgar emerald on the knuckle of his own middle finger, paying obeisance.

They set off, not in the direction of the waterway, but along a broad passage that served as a commercial parade for the underground settlement. More humans in evidence now, part of the vast employment network that kept Southstairs running, though the shops and stalls were largely staffed by elves who seemed to have raised obsequiousness to an art form. Here and there, the nice contrast of a grumpy dwarf. The noise was ordinary chatter and gossip, and it was some time before Liir realized what made it seem strange. For once, there was no little strain of music playing off to one side. Well, who would play music in a prison, after all?

The roofs of the cavern rose higher overhead, passing out of view into darkness. More of the structures were freestanding, supplied with their own tiled roofs, like buildings on any aboveground street. It felt like a city of the dead. Eventually Liir could see why: this must be the oldest district in Southstairs. It certainly seemed the most decrepit, so far. Above it, all at once, the claustrophobic blackness of cave-dark gave way to the blackness of a different sort: a moonless night, with scratchy scarves of cloud being drawn by the wind across ancient, disaffected stars. It was the middle of Southstairs, the original geologic bucket that must have suggested itself as a natural prison to the first settlers of the Emerald City.

“Stars, they give me the creeps,” said Chyde. “I hate to come this way.”

They found a set of steps leading farther down. Chyde asked for directions once or twice, and sent Jibbidee scampering to check the marks on buildings. “This’ll be it, I guess,” he said. “It’s an Animal district, so you’ll forgive the stench. Hygiene isn’t their strong suit, as you know.”

The air was so cold, though, with a wind whipping in from above, that the smell seemed negligible. At any rate, Liir was too excited to care. He found himself bobbing up and down, and once he nearly grabbed Chyde’s hand to squeeze it. So what that Shell was a bounder, that Lady Glinda was a glamorous airhead! They’d done something good; he’d gotten here. He’d find her, his only peer and friendmate, his half-sister if that version of history was true—the girl who befriended mice, and shared her gingerbread, and who had giggled at bedtime, even when threatened by a spanking. He would liberate Nor, and then—and then—

He couldn’t think beyond that. Just to see her, someone he had known once, back when the world had been something other than tragic, back when Elphaba had been stalking about the castle out west in her robes and rages! Back when home was still home!

Jibbidee skittered forward, back, anxious and irritable. “What, what’s the matter, thingy?” asked Chyde. “Cat got your tongue? Ha-ha.” He turned to Liir. “It did, you know. That’s why he can’t talk. It’ll grow back in time, but at the moment it’s a bloody little stump.”

They pressed into a building, more a pen than a set of salons. A Sow was lying in straw trying to warm some Piglets, most of whom looked to be dead. Improbably, the runt had survived, but it was not long for this world.

Chyde voiced what Liir was himself wondering. “An odd place to put a girl child. What was I thinking of? You. Sow. We’re looking for a girl, a human girl child. Name of Nor. The register puts her in this unlikely spot.”

“She had some developmental problems,” explained the Sow without opening her eyes. “Some lodgings coordinator decided that, among the likes of me and mine, she wouldn’t seem as offensive.”

“Where is she?”

“I would construct a good story if I had the strength,” said the Sow, “but I’m conserving what energy I have left for my litter. In fact, the girl’s own story is good enough. Do you remember when the butchers came through a week or ten days ago to cull the crop because a roast of loin was required? Some celebration Upside. It was the Wizard’s deposal, wasn’t it?”

Chyde looked slantwise at Liir. “We don’t sacrifice Animals for ceremonial meals, don’t be silly,” he said hastily. “You’re talking through your postdelivery deliriums, Sow.” He twisted rings on his fingers, turning some jewels palmward, other jewels out.

“Whatever,” she said. “My deliriums remind me about a couple of Horned Hogs, long in the tooth if they’d still had teeth, who were going to make better rump roasts this year than next, I’ll tell you. They knew their days were numbered. One of them had broken off a horn trying to escape, and the bone spur was sharp and useful. Didn’t you read the report on this?”

“I’ve fallen behind. Terrible workload, and no one to pick up the slack. Jibbidee’s next to useless. Where is the girl, that’s what I want to know.”

“I’m telling you. The Hogs entered a kind of suicide pact, and the bull killed the bitch and then himself. They arranged it to be done on the same slab of old door on which they’d have been carried out for slaughtering anyway. A kind of final comment on the quality of life at Southstairs.”

“Only the best is good enough,” said Chyde.

“So they let themselves putrefy, and we neighbors left them to it for as long as we could stand it. It bought us all some time. But you know as well as I that the entrails of Horned Hogs breed a kind of maggot that likes to burrow into human orifices, especially the airless ones—”

“Stop…”

“And there’s little less airless than Southstairs—”

“I don’t want to hear about it—”

“So your colleagues had to cart the carcasses Upside. They had no choice.”

Chyde said softly, “You’ll get a huge extra bucket of slops for this. Keep on.”

“I had no way of suspecting that the poor suckling Nor had a functioning brain left in her skull,” said the Sow. “But apparently she did. She climbed onto the door-slab and pulled the Hog carcasses over her. I certainly hope for her sake she plugged all her valves. I saw her chewing candlewax once, so maybe she was softening it for just such a purpose. Anyway, hidden by corpses, she was carried away a few days ago, though what happened to her once she left our happy home I can’t say.”

“The very least of my concerns,” said Chyde. He glanced at Liir, who was tremblingly pale and gulping for air. “You take it so hard, lad? Why is that? Sounds like she got out—something you’d never have persuaded me into allowing. Don’t weep, silly boy.” Then he said, “Jibbidee. The runt.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said the Sow, struggling to her feet. The elf was defter, though, and he had scrabbled over the boards and across the straw, and snatched the Piglet before the Sow could position herself in full defense. “You bastard!” she cried.

“I’ve been remiss; I haven’t noticed. Poor Sow: You’ve far too much on your mind. This should relieve you of distractions.” Chyde grabbed the squealing Piglet from the elf and hurled it against a beam. His aim was true; the blood spattered and the body fell with a thud into the slop trough.

In shock Liir fell against the fence, and the maddened Sow went for him, but Chyde, laughing, pulled the boy away in time. “You should’ve let someone know these shenanigans were going on,” he said to the Sow. “Being a squealer isn’t such a bad thing in a Pig. And we all have to do our duty—you, me, and the least little daisy in the field. Eh? Eh?”

8

THE PANTHER HAD GONE as far as she would go, and turned back. Now the canopy of oakhair limbs formed over their heads. In the short time that they’d been away from the mauntery, however, the wind had scoured the trees of their last leaves. The jackal moon, though sinking toward the horizon, still watched Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire as their high-rumped skarks fleet-footed it through the forest. The unnamed creatures still circled overhead, following their progress.

“I could use a moment to pee,” called Sister Apothecaire at one point. “A Munchkin woman doesn’t have as large a bladder as some others.”

“Winter wolves come out at dawn,” Sister Doctor replied, “so shut up and hold your bladder if you can, or pee in your saddle.”

9

CANDLE HAD SEEN ENOUGH OF DEATH to know that Liir was about to die. She was breathing him and kissing him as best she could, rubbing his limbs to encourage what warmth remained. His scalp was like ice. She took off her underskirts and tried to wrap them like a turban around his head, to keep his brain alive. From time to time she went and kicked against the door, hoping to arouse some maunt doing midnight devotions, but she couldn’t keep up the effort. She couldn’t stay away from him. As he grew more distant and colder, she grew warmer in her panic, and climbed atop him and tried to rescue him with her own warmth. She kissed him and licked his eyelids as a cat might, trying to open them. She didn’t know what his eyes looked like, even, and she was stretched naked upon him like a wife.

 

LIIR BROKE AWAY FROM CHYDE, stumbling, his eyes shut against the tears and the memory of the blameless Piglet. Just like that, without cause! What then, thinking they had some cause, might they have done to Nor?

“Be it on your own head if you get lost down here,” called Chyde, not much alarmed. “You won’t get far, and there’s none to help. Come back to headquarters when you’ve had enough wheeling about and I’ll get you a hot meal. There’s no reason for me to be inhospitable, you being a guest of Lady Glinda and all. I’m not unreasonable. I live to serve, as my dear former wife always knew me to say.”

Liir lurched, first running, then sinking almost to his knees and catching himself, then running again. He didn’t know how to find the waterway on which he and Shell had arrived. He threw down his torch, hoping it would catch something on fire and turn the place into the hell it seemed, but the torch only rolled once or twice and then dropped into a canal. There it sizzled out, and the stick bobbed like a hard new turd.

The dark was less intense, though, than he’d reckoned on, and in a moment he thought to look around. He was in a small square of faceless buildings, just a few bolted doors, possibly a warehouse district. It was empty of pedestrians and fairly quiet, too, as this place went, and above him was a scatter of starry deep.

His only thought was that there was nothing left, nothing to live for, nothing to wait for, nothing to remember. The stars were cold and he couldn’t leap to grasp them, to pass fist over fist along their lofty network of knobs, arrive someplace new, and, if not safe, at least less heinous. They merely mocked, as stars were created to do.

He hugged himself, for here the wind swept in without interference. He pulled the cape like a blanket about him, and clutched the broom as if it were the Piglet, and he could will it back to life. His tears came hot and desperate, the only warmth in the universe.

The broom twitched once or twice, and he took it out of the satchel. It shook itself slightly, and seemed firmer in his grasp. The old dusty straws at the back end, bound in a bristly fagot for sweeping so long ago, were freshened with green—even in this starry half-light he could see the color. Cattails, or grass tips in seed, something like that. He didn’t know the plant.

He threw his leg over the broom without thinking and he held on tight, and he rode it up the draft from hell, and into the night.

10

WHEN SHE HEARD THE KEY IN THE DOOR OPEN, she came to her senses, and collected her hair from where it had spilled across his face, and climbed down.

Mother Yackle was smiling almost as if she had a sensible thought in her head, though according to the other novices Mother Yackle had been senile for as long as anyone could remember. The old crippled creature pulled the door aside and dropped her head, as if affording Candle some privacy as she composed herself.

Liir stirred, and sighed. Though his eyes remained closed, the lids both twitched, just faintly. One hand clenched, then released.

By the time the jackal moon was gone for another generation, and the Superior Maunt and her returning agents, Sisters Doctor and Apothecaire, had made it up the steps to the infirmary, Liir and Candle were gone, too.