Son of a Witch Read online

  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.