Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02

by Son of a Witch

  Tea in a cup with a crack in the glaze; small beads of tea lined up vertically. He stared at it, wishing to learn a new language.

  “Whom will you choose to save?” said Candle, when the sun made an effort to lighten the room. “I am not that girl, you know. That Quadling girl you saw pitched into the burning river. You cannot make me her by beggaring yourself for my needs. You can’t choose me in that girl’s place.”

  “Maybe I can’t save anyone,” he said. “Since Elphaba died, how many times have I set out to try? There was Nor, who was in prison. There was Princess Nastoya, in medical extremis. I make no headway in either direction. Even some miserable boy I saw on a road, whose granny was willing to sell him in exchange for my broom—I just walked on by. Why should I be beholden to those Birds? Find the old broom! Speak out danger to the world! I’m not a spokesperson for myself; how could I be for them?”

  “You can do what you choose to do. You’re hardly on death’s door,” she reminded him. “I mean, not anymore.”

  “And you’d have me believe that I have lost my virginity, and I don’t even remember it. Life in a coma. Well, it figures. It’s consistent, isn’t it? I’ll give you credit for that: you’ve read me correctly.”

  “You owe me nothing.” Candle stood up and put her hands on the small of her back. “There is enough food and firewood here to see me through my months. It’ll be spring before the baby comes. The goat will provide backup milk if I run dry. Or I’ll take myself back to the mauntery for the final lying-in. The maunts will know what to do. It’s not the first time the maunts have seen such.”

  “If I owe you nothing,” he said, “no one owes anyone a thing.”

  “Maybe no one does.”

  “Except the Unnamed God.”

  “Maybe we don’t owe the Unnamed God anything,” she said. “Maybe not allegiance, maybe not gratitude, maybe not praise, maybe not attention. Maybe the Unnamed God owes us.”

  He sputtered at her impiety, but she looked queasy: a touch of morning sickness upon her, no doubt. She hurried away to take care of it in private. The yard outside the house was rimy with hoarfrost, and the new sun shone upon it harshly. He had to squint to watch her cast herself away from him.

  She was shivering. As the winter came in, she’d have to go more slowly to the outhouse, what with ice on the ground, and a weight in her belly. He would try to tie some straw to a pole, leave her a makeshift broom to sweep away the snow, if nothing else.

  He gathered the straw and threw it on the floor while he hunted for cord with which to bind it. In the splayed angles in which it fell, it spelled the burning letter again, a letter he couldn’t read.

  Dragonfings

  1

  WAS IT THAT he was better traveled now—or just that he was older? Had the Emerald City actually changed, or just his ability to apprehend it?

  The Big Itself had never seemed shy of self-regard—Liir remembered that much. Now he became aware of how everything flourished on a hefty scale. Architectural metastasis. The chapels were like churches, the churches like basilicas. The government houses out-bloated the basilicas, with bigger columns, more imposing flights of steps, higher spires. Private homes were nothing shy of palaces-in-training.

  In his absence, the Emerald City had undergone a makeover. Oceans of whitewash had been splashed to obliterate the grattifi. Along the canals, trees had been pollarded to force full head, and ringed with liquid lime to prevent disease. The strip he’d called Dirt Boulevard had been replanted and it served again as a promenade, with well-raked tracks for military drill, and meandering paths among bushes and fountains where the plutocrats might see and be seen.

  He supposed it came down to this: The Emerald City was no longer the capital of Oz. It was Oz. It survived for the sole purpose of insuring its own survival.

  Maybe it always had done so, but now there was no pretending otherwise. Were there always so many ministries, or were they simply better marked? The Ministry of Comfort—that was aid for the indigent. The Ministry of the Home Guard. The Ministry of Sincerity (the sign beneath read FORMERLY THE PRESS BUREAU).

  The Ministry of Artistic License. Apparently now you had to apply to be an artist.

  Obelisks, cenotaphs, marble statues, fluttering banners and pennants. Souvenirs in kiosks: Everything OZ. I love OZ! A keychain, a whistle, a reticule, a letter opener, a lorgnette case: OZ, OZ. A military band every half mile, performing gratis for the residents of the emerald hive. The City seemed to have its own theme song.

  But for what, wondered Liir. For background? For show? Everyone seemed in a hurry, more so than he’d remembered. The cafés were thriving, the public trams dripping with riders, the piazzas clotted with tourists, the museums thronged. “Apostle Muscle,” an exhibit showing at the Lord Chuffrey Exposition Hall, was advertised in broadsheets plastered on all the public notice boards. The graphic was brilliant, Liir thought: a male foot in an open, leather-strapped sandal stepping out of a cloud. The painted landscape receding to the horizon showed that wherever the Apostle had already set his foot, communities like miniature Emerald Cities sprung up within the precise outline of his footly influence, from the heel to the sprawl of toes.

  Liir turned his back on Southstairs, but it wasn’t all that hard to do. The Emerald City had grown taller, more prosperous. Southstairs was more hidden now, though some edict or other must be keeping the land around the Palace relatively low built, so its stately domes and minarets could still dominate the City center.

  2

  AS FOR THE citizens of the Emerald City, business seemed to be profiting them very well. Skirts were thicker, hems were longer, fur trimmed everything, from ladies’ hats to brougham bedeckings. Men’s waistcoats were cut fuller to accommodate bigger bellies. The dry goods used by clothiers looked overdyed: the colors richly saturated, as if intended to be seen from a distance, as on a stage. The effects would have been comic but for a costive sobriety that seemed to have swept the City like an infection.

  It’d be comfortable to be here, Liir decided. Everywhere else, ordinary folks laugh so much because they’re nervous. Being stationed in Qhoyre, we laughed like morons: it helped us deal. It also made us friends. But perhaps you don’t need to laugh if all your deprivations have been alleviated, your anxieties relieved. You can afford to be judicious, keep a civil tongue in your head, and speak in a lower tone of voice.

  There were riffraff, as before—and a good thing, too, or he’d have stuck out even more than he did. Not so many Animals, still. A few in the service industry. An aproned old Warthog Governess, pushing a pram, some Rhino security guards.

  And kids. Kids looking terribly old. Probably alley-cat thieves among the younger of them. Older kids, sloe-eyed teenagers, who cast him sly looks, trying to make out if he was an easy mark, competition for trade, or a possible ally.

  Ruddy Quadlings in their huddles of family, clam-colored Yunamata indigents surviving on handouts and ale. Dwarves looking uppity, and why not?—dwarves looking shifty, and so what. Munchkins, in sizes small, medium, or grande, who’d emigrated from their own Free State. Or maybe they were turfed out for passing secrets or engaging in black trade. Dirty-looking polybloods in tatters of blanket, stepping on hardened bare feet across raked gravel forecourts, holding out their hands until some welcoming committee came out with a cudgel.

  Elphaba had come to the Emerald City once, as a young woman. Maybe even his age—he didn’t know. She’d never said much about it. “Pimps and Prime Ministers, and you can’t tell the difference,” she’d growled once. Had she stuck out like a green thumb? Or were people more accepting back then? For better or worse, he was able to pass.

  He guessed by the end of the day he might be imprisoned in Southstairs himself. He thought he was ready for it, and perhaps he deserved nothing better. Still, if that were so, why was he taking care not to stand out? Skulking where he needed to skulk, striding confidently when the streetscape required it? A deeper intention at work, he guessed: that old
beast-in-the-bear-trap thing that humans did so well? Even the reprobate who knows he’s a moral coward wants to keep drawing breath.

  Despite the building boom that the new prosperity allowed, the Emerald City remained familiar. Liir found his way more or less correctly to the Arch of the Wizard and along the Ozma Embankment, through the tony district of Goldhaven right to Mennipin Square, at the far end of which the house of Lord Chuffrey presided.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what he could accomplish, but he had to start somewhere. The Lady Glinda, née Upland, now Chuffrey, was his only contact in the Emerald City. Even retired from public life, surely a former throne minister would have access to the army, yes? To its barracks, its dragon stables, the lot. Could she be convinced to come to his aid again, after a whole decade?

  Mennipin Square hadn’t suffered any loss of prestige in the years since he’d been here. The house fronts were decorated with swags of green and gold. Lurlinemas was coming, of course. Ceremonial greens and garlands of winter golds were woven through the uprights of the iron fence that surrounded the square’s private gardens.

  In order to get to the kitchen yard where he had once presented himself, he had to pass the mansion’s front entrance and turn a corner. When he reached the approach to the front door, he paused. Beyond the gravel of the carriage drive rose a flight of granite steps. At the landing, in front of the carved double doors, stretched a huge tiger in the act of licking its balls. A chain around its neck locked the tiger to one of the marble pillars supporting the portico, but there appeared enough length in the chain to allow the beast room to stretch and lunge. Sensibly Liir kept his distance. He looked, though. He’d never seen a wild animal chained in such an upper-purse locale.

  The creature paused an instant and shifted its eyes without lifting its head, looking out from beneath tiger brows. “What are you looking at?” he growled softly.

  A Tiger. A talking Animal, tied up like a farm dog, to scare off intruders.

  Liir wanted to rush on, but to ignore the Tiger’s belligerent question was to suggest a condescension he didn’t feel. And Elphaba would have taken it all in stride. “I’m looking at a whole lot of Tiger,” he said at last.

  “That’s the right answer,” purred the Tiger. “You’re either smart or lucky.”

  “I’m just brave,” said Liir. “Have to be. I’m coming to see Lady Glinda.”

  “Well, you’re not lucky, then,” the Animal answered, “because she’s not at home.”

  Liir’s shoulders fell.

  “She’s off at Mockbeggar Hall. The Chuffrey country estate, down Kellswater way. A month in mourning.”

  “Mourning?”

  “You just rolled off the cabbage cart? Looks like it. Her husband died. Didn’t you know? Lord Chuffrey. He made a big donation to the Emperor and the banker’s cheque had hardly cleared the First Accountant’s office when Lord Chuffrey breathed his rummy last. Perhaps he thought he’d never be in as expensive a state of grace again, and might as well take advantage of it. Lady Glinda’s bereaved.”

  “I’m sorry for her,” said Liir.

  “Don’t be. She’s not exactly a pauper widow. And she wasn’t much more than a paper wife to him, anyway, so I hardly think she’s fussed. She’ll miss him, no doubt—we all will. He was a good sort in his way. Supports my family upcountry. Or he did.”

  Liir slumped against the stone gatepost. “Great. So what next?”

  “I wouldn’t come too close if I were you,” said the Tiger. “I may be chatty when I’m bored, but if I chat too much I might work up an appetite.” He winked at Liir, who moved back a few feet.

  “Why do you stay?”

  “Well, it certainly isn’t the chains, is it? I sport these for effect,” said the Tiger. He tossed his head and his eyes flashed in anger. “I mean, it’s a statement of style, isn’t it? Or are you really only a cabbagehead?” He was on his feet, and he roared. The gate shook on its pins, and Liir was halfway through Mennipin Square before he realized he was running.

  So much for his first idea. Well, he’d have to work without the help and blessing of Lady Glinda, Society Goddess. And he’d hoped for a square meal to set himself up for harder campaigns. He had only the small scraps of dried fruit and bread that Candle had forced into his hands before he left.

  The last time Liir had been so destitute in the Emerald City, he had gone to work in the Home Guard. Ready to improvise, he headed again to the main barracks campus near Munchkin Mousehole, in the lee of the low hill on which the Palace in its opulence squatted.

  Boys, and a few girls, too, were running about the same sward on which he had once played gooseball with the bored soldiers. The grass was brown and flattened, weary of winter even before Lurlinemas Day, but the cries that rang out among the children seemed green enough to him. Unless he should run forward and capture the ball, and impress himself onto a team by dint of his swift responses, he would remain invisible to the children. Why not? He was a tallish, slightly ravaged young man, thinner, more ribby than the sleek soldiers who toyed with the kids.

  He saw himself through their eyes: his cord-held hair, his green eyes, his new habit of ducking his head, scratching his elbows. A handsome enough beggar, maybe, but a beggar nonetheless, and too grown up to be thrown a bread roll for charity’s sake. If the notion of charity still obtained here. He wasn’t yet able to tell if it did.

  Still, children at their games! It pleased him to watch. He remembered the children he had sung to, briefly, on the steps of a church when he first came to the Emerald City. He had smiled at them, had felt for them in a general sense, but he hadn’t stood solid with them. Each time of life is such a prison, a portable prison. The children here on this fairway, the soldiers messing about with them, were no more like Liir than a Tiger was, or an elf or a—

  “Cutting an old chum with impunity, and not blinking an eye. You’ve considerable nerve, you have.”

  Liir shook his head to register. A soldier at his left shoulder, breathing hard; he must have been among the fellows playing at gooseball, and come running up behind him. Hah. So much for the more sublime perception of the isolate.

  “You don’t remember my name any more than I yours.” The fellow swept his damp blond hair off his sweaty brow. “What’d you do to deserve early retirement? Our tenures have been indefinitely extended with no right to petition otherwise.”

  Liir shook his head, wondering if he should play dumb, play it as a case of mistaken identity. Play wounded in battle? Play for time anyway. He hadn’t worked out any particulars of strategy, just intentions.

  “It’s bon Cavalish, if you please. Trism, actually. You came into the service from this very field, and I was the one told you how.”

  Liir wrinkled a smile at him and shrugged. Work with what you have. Trism. Yes. A Minor Menacier…and in dragon husbandry, if he remembered correctly.

  Coolly, Liir said, “That’s a good eye you have for a distant acquaintance. I was standing there thinking how blind we all are to each other, and I didn’t even recognize you.”

  “And I got you, but not your name.”

  “Ko, that’s what I go by. Liir, commonly.”

  “Liir Ko. Right. You went off somewhere a few years back.”

  “I did indeed,” said Liir, “but I don’t want to talk about it, certainly not here.”

  “O ho,” said Trism, and then, “O ho. A deserter? No.”

  “You’ll get in trouble being seen with me.”

  “Trouble. That’d be fun.” Trism looked this way and that. “Well, unless you’re reenlisting voluntarily, you’re making a big mistake showing yourself here. Or do you want to be caught? Are you spying for one of our enemies?”

  “I don’t even know who our enemies are,” said Liir. “I never have.”

  “Well, if you’ve really gone and scampered, you count as one of them, so you better make yourself scarce. However, don’t drift too far. The service is a bit more lenient in some matters than it used to be. The
y had to relax a few rules if they were going to keep us enlisted forever. We get a little city freedom, if you know what I mean. I’m sprung tonight till midnight. Hang about somewhere and we’ll have a drink. Don’t forget. Don’t forget me.” He gripped Liir’s collar suddenly. “I haven’t forgotten you.”

  3

  TRISM WAS AS GOOD AS HIS WORD and was waiting at a sidewalk place in Burntpork, the low-rent district. “Welcome to the Cherry and Cucumber,” he said, handing up a full pint of lager before Liir’d had a chance to take a stool. “They keep their license to serve real beer because they sponsor the annual Holy Action Day festivities.”

  “The what?”

  “You’re way out of touch. We can change that. Cheers.”

  The place was too empty at this hour for Liir to bring up the matter most pressing to him. Voices would carry. Scrawled in chalk on a slate above the bartender’s station, though, was a message announcing: “Tonight, Fourth Comeback Tour, Sillipede Herself. 9:30. No tomatoes.” The notice didn’t actually promise a crowd, but Liir could hope. Or they could wander elsewhere.

  Liir wasn’t inclined to talk about himself much, and found that easy enough to manage. Trism didn’t ask. He relaxed almost at once, and chattered at length about the military as if he and Liir had been best of friends back then. This one, that one, regulations by the book, funny pranks on supercilious superiors. “And what’s become of Commander Cherrystone?” asked Liir as lightly as he could. He didn’t want to be recognized as a deserter by someone with the power to slap him in chains for it.

  “Dunno.” Trism turned to survey the room, which, as hoped, was filling up with a noisier clientele, some of whom had been drinking before they arrived.

  “We’re not likely to meet a commanding officer here,” said Liir, “I suppose.”

  “Anything’s possible. Tastes vary. Doubt it, though.”

  On their third round, Liir began. “You were special forces, weren’t you? Back then?”