The House of Saint Glinda 8 page

“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 yourboy ?” 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 KNOWhow 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 ofcourse, 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?”

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’SSOMETHING 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.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 680