The Conference of the Birds

WHILE THE TREK FROM the farmstead in the woods to the start of Kumbricia’s Pass was short, comparatively speaking, every step he took bit at his bones and taxed his joints in a way that none of the long forays across country had seemed to do before.

Well, he was older. Hardlyold yet-twenty-three, was he, or twenty-four? Something like that. Not old enough to feel like an adult, really, but old enough to look like one, and to know the distinction between being carefree and careless.

So he took care. Any little scatter of stones might shift beneath his weight, any patch of grass might prove more slippery than it ought. He latched his eyes to the ground. Confidence and stamina returned all too slowly.

But return they did. Eventually he was walking two hours at a stretch before pausing to rest. He fixed his gaze to the horizon and willed himself forward by setting himself serial destinations. That tallest blue pine, that nubble of grasses in the upland meadow, that outcrop of granite. Before long, the prospect grew grander, as the Kells swam into clearer focus, and the steep cut between them saidKUMBRICIA ‘S PASS: enter if you dare.

He remembered his childhood journey with Oatsie Manglehand and the Grasstrail Train, and how the travelers had traded tales. Fierce Kumbricia, the witch from the oldest tales of Oz! Kumbricia was so ancient a figure of lore that she seemed freed from the limitations of any particular moral position. She was not exactly the demon crone from hell, intent on the destruction of mortal souls, nor was she the nodding grand-tit of the world, providing succor in times of trial. Or perhaps, more truly said, she was both. One plus one equals both. Like the most insouciant and playful of earthquakes, collapsing villages and crushing populations, Kumbricia’s actions followed her own secret intentions. To a human, what might look like luck one minute was disaster the next, but what meant luck to Kumbricia, or disaster either? In the stories she was fierce, amoral, wholly herself. Unvanquishable and incorrigible.

And unknowable, really.

Like the Unnamed God, when you came right down to it.

Occasionally, Nanny had singsonged, as a nursery ditty, something probably derived from the Oziad or some other baroque history-legend.

Kumbricia stirs the pot, and licks the ladle,

Sets the table, pours a glass of tears.

Waits beside the ominous vacant cradle.

Waiting still. She can wait for years.

Yes, just like the Unnamed God.

THE CLIFFS OPENED BEFORE him and then closed behind him, for the track into Kumbricia’s Pass took several quick turns along the valley floor before it began to rise. The ground breathed different vapors here, and the season was delayed: the browning leaves of the trees hadn’t fallen yet. Not enough wind could wend through to tear them away.

The brightness of the sky was shattered into glazed mosaic bits by the fretwork of branches and foliage. This high-slung canyon went on for days, didn’t it?-wasn’t that his recollection? Until it opened on the western slope of the Kells, and the Thousand Year Grasslands spread out as broad as the imaginary sea from children’s stories? How would he ever find traces of a convocation of Birds in this secret haven?

But a good place to gather, he had to concede. The mountains served as ramparts, and the ravine was helpfully overgrown. Here the Yunamata made their home most of the year. And here Elphaba and Liir had picked out their way all those ages ago, pressing on toward Kiamo Ko and the hope for sanctuary.

He had all the time for rumination he needed-and then some. What had he understood, then, of Elphaba’s drive? Her need? The force that pushed her around? Precious little. But he remembered the day she had saved the infant Snow Monkey, who would become Chistery. Her native-talent? power? skill at concentration?-or maybe, merely, compassion?-had caused a small lake to ice over so she half walked, half slid across it to collect the abandoned, fretting monkey baby.

That’s what his memory said. The very ice formed under her heels. The world conformed itself to suit her needs. But how could this possibly be true? Perhaps it was the unreliability of memory, the romanticking tendencies of childhood, that made Liir remember it this way. The lake went ice. The baby monkey was saved . Maybe, really, she’d waded. Or maybe the lake was already iced over.

Maybe all that really mattered, as to her power, was thatshe saved the baby monkey .

At the shores of a small tarn, he paused, and became aware of a new variety of silence. It was the sound of everything holding its breath.

At the farther side of the tarn was a small island. A spinney of knot-branch trees grew in the center of the island, their five or six tree trunks so close as to resemble the uprights of a series of doors, all leading to the same interior space among the trunks, some dozen feet in diameter. The trees held what was left of the Conference of the Birds, and the Birds were holding their breath.

He stood, not ready to call out, for he didn’t want them to scatter. But they were aware of him, he was sure. How many hundred pairs of eyes blinked or unblinked at him from those ring-coiled leaves? They neither approached him in sortie nor twittered in fright. Perhaps, he guessed, they were stupid with fear.

Finally he thrashed about along the bracken and located a fallen tree trunk substantial enough to bear his weight. He hauled it to the water’s edge and pushed it in. No conjuring up an ice-walk for him. With the help of a staff, he balanced himself and began to draw his way across the water. He could have swum, he knew, but that would require his undressing either before or after the swim, and it seemed an undignified way to approach a Convention.

The Birds seemed patient, and as he got closer he thought: It’s as if they have been waiting for me.

This was so, according to the hunch-hooded Cliff Eagle who bade him welcome.

“You’re the boy-broomist,” he said. “The fledgling. We knew you’d been downed. A Red Pfenix got far enough through enemy lines to cry out that much information before being wounded and having to turn back. We trusted you would come. You’ve come.”

The Cliff Eagle paused smartly, puffing out his breast feathers.

“I almost didn’t,” said Liir. “It wasn’t even my idea, really.”

The Eagle made a mouth gesture as close to a sneer as he could manage. “Humans are fickle. We know. But you’re here. The boy-broomist.”

“I’m without the broom.” Liir put his staff down on the ground so the Birds could see. “I walked. Have you a name, by the way?”

The other Birds hopped a branch or two closer to see if the Cliff Eagle would answer. They were the larger creatures, mostly-a few random Finches and Fitches, some Robins, and a busy preening department of Wrens-but mostly Eagles, Night Rocs, a youngish Pfenix in its glowing halo. Nine Swans still waiting for their Princess. A blind old Heron with a twisted left leg. Others.

“I know what happened to the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, and told them how he had buried her-and, in a dim sense, come in her stead.

The Cliff Eagle took the news unflinchingly, though the Swans bowed their heads until their necks were white hoops, and their wings shuddered with an airy sound, as of an industrial baffle.

“I am the President of the Assembly,” said the Cliff Eagle. “Thank you for coming.”

Liir had no use for honorifics. “Am I to call you Mister President? Or just Birdy?”

The Cliff Eagle bristled, and then said, “General Kynot is my name, though my name isn’t important. And yours isn’t either. We’re soldiers at strategy, not a military tea.”

“Well, I’ve been a soldier and I’m not going back to it. I’m Liir, for what that’s worth, and I use my name. I’m not Broom-boy.”

Kynot ducked his head and bit at a nit under his wing. “Sorry, the place is crawling with nits,” he said. “Liir.” It was a concession, and Liir relaxed. He was about to ask permission to sit down, and then remembered he didn’t need it. So he sat, and the Birds came farther down from the branches, and most of them settled on the hardscuffle with the sound of small loaves of bread falling to a floor.

Kynot made quick work of their concerns. The Conference seemed to be comprised of seventy or eighty Birds who were now afraid to leave. They had met to convene about the threat in the skies, but that very threat had cornered them and grounded them. It would take a talent and a cunning greater than any of their skills to make the skies safe for travel.

“You’ve come to the wrong beak if you want talent or cunning,” said Liir.

“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Kynot, and continued.

He beat out every point of his argument with a hard flap of his wings. Whereas conditions of life under the Emperor had become intolerable, whereas his airborne army of dragons had systematically disrupted air travel, unsettled populations of Birds and birds, and interfered with the natural rights of flight and migration and convocation, now therefore a Congress of the Birds had been summoned, if sadly beleaguered by aforementioned hostile army, and such delegates as had managed to sneak in had concludedthereby that they were singly and in unity incapable of combating the enemy fleet. Therefore they needed help. Fast.

“I came to tell you of the death of the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, “because it is what Elphaba would have done. Beyond that, I can’t be of much use. If I’m the only hope around, you’re in a heap of trouble.”

“Unlike Animals, we Birds haven’t often lived wing by jowl with humans,” replied the general. “The human prohibition against eating Animal flesh being subject to abuse, think how much less strict is any taboo against eating the Bird of the air. We must be shot at and brought down before we can be interviewed to learn if we are talking creatures. Few hungry farmers are willing to extend Birds that courtesy, so those of us who talk tend to congregate in areas less frequented by human scum. My apologies, that was crude of me.”

“Don’t apologize too fast, you don’t know me very well,” said Liir. “But still, why ask me for help?”

“You have flown, as most humans have not,” said Kynot simply. “You have powers unique among the humans we’ve met…”

“I can keep my balance. So what. It’s the broom that has powers. Elphaba’s broom.”

“The wing doesn’t work separately from the feather, Liir. They work in tandem.”

“Well, I haven’t the broom any longer, or haven’t you heard? So I can’t fly-which means this hardly concerns me.”

“You were attacked by the dragons yourself. Weren’t you? Or have I been fed misinformation?”

“Well, I was. But that’s between me and the dragons. It has nothing to do with you.”

“And they call us birdbrains.” Kynot was livid. “There is a common cause among our kind and a flying boy, you dodo.”

“I object,” said a Dodo, just waking up from a nap.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for. Listen. Liir. You must have been intending to help us, or why did you come here at all?”

He thought of Candle. “It was the suggestion of a third party.”

“A suggestion of what? That you deliver your tragic news, and then stay to laugh at us in our plight? That you see your fellow creatures chased, tortured, kept from associating freely, just as you were chased, robbed, and nearly killed, and then you-what? Walk home and retail the event for amusing dinnertime conversation?”

“Don’t paint me so bleakly. I’m capable of doing that for myself. Look, it’s occurring to me that I might ask something of you. On and off over the years, I’ve been looking for someone. A girl-child. Perhaps you could help. On your various migrations and such.”

“We can’t fly freely, or haven’t I put that clearly enough, you cretin?” Kynot was apoplectic. “How can we serve your private needs when our numbers are being diminished by the day?”

“Well, then.” Liir shrugged. “It’s a no-go. I guess I didn’t really understand much about this skirmish involving the Birds. It’s sad, but it hasn’t anything to do with me. And even if it did, I’m powerless…I’m not Elphaba.”

A small Wren hopped forward and said to Kynot, “If you please, begging your pardon, General…”

“Do not beg my pardon! Do notbeg at all! How many times have I to drill this lesson into your brain, Dosey?”

“Sorry, Gen’ral. Begging your pardon for that one, too. It’s just that the young man might want to think on this bit somewhat.” Dosey turned to Liir and cheeped. “It ain’t just us Birdys, mister. Those dragonfings are bad cess for human beings, too. Scraping the faces of defenseless women in the wilderness! Have they no shame? Have you? If you cain’t helpus out of the kindness of your liver, surely you could work to keep such things from happenin‘ to your own kind?”

“Well said, Dosey.” Kynot sounded less apologetic than surprised.

“Those were unionist missionaries, I’m told,” said Liir, his shoulders slumping. “It was horrible to hear about. But I’m not a maunt, and I don’t even know if I’m a unionist.”

“So what next? They’ll kill your brother in his stockings, and you’ll say, ‘He had grey eyes and I have green, so it weren’t really about me a’tall’?” asked the Wren. “They already attacked you, duckie, so’s I heard. Ain’t you rememberin‘?”

“Maybe I deserved to be attacked.”

“Oh, save us,” muttered Kynot. “Somebody save us. But it’s not going to be this nutter.”

Dosey wasn’t ready to give up. “Mebbe you did deserve it,” she snapped. “But that’s giving those dragons an awful lot of credit for knowing the insides and the sinsides of your soul! So what if they fly out of the stables of the Emperor! They’re not Talking Dragons! They’re in the pay of the Emperor of the Ugly! And you cain’t be sartain those young maunts deserved what they got, can you? Their faces so scraped! It’s hideous is what it is!”

“It’s not for me to decide whose faces get scraped or not…”

“No,” said Kynot. He reared up and looked as if he wanted to peck Liir’s eyes out. “No. Leave it in the beak of the Unnamed God, or his mortal avatar, the Emperor. Leave it to the agents of the Emperor, who run the Home Guard for the security of the Emerald City at the expense of all others who live in Oz. Or leave it to the underlings who follow the orders of their superiors. Leave it in the beaks of the dragons themselves. Dragons don’t kill people, people kill people. They kill themselves by walking unprotected in a world where there are dragons. You make me sick.”

“I don’t have any idea why the dragons attacked those maunts-”

“It is increasingly obvious that you don’t have any ideas at all. The dragons attacked the maunts to stir up trouble between the Yunamata and the Scrow. Those human populations had finally positioned themselves to be ripe for treaty making, after ten hundred generations…They had been learning to trust each other. With random attacks on isolated humans, the dragons could keep the tribes suspicious of each other. Tribes are easier to intimidate when they are not united. You said you were in the military: didn’t you learn anything about military strategy?”

Liir thought about the burning bridge. He could see again the letter of burning straw, changing shape as it fell, spelling something fiery and illegible into the vanquishing water.

He thought about Candle, waiting for him to return-having done something. Having completed some action. If Liir assumed he wanted Candle, and how could he know that yet?-he couldn’t have her. Not until he had an alternative against which to make a choice.

“Look,” he said. “Flattering, all this. But I can’t fly anymore. My broom is gone. I risked having my face scraped by coming solo across the Disappointments as far as Kumbricia’s Pass. I came for the wrong reasons-as usual. There’s nothing I can do for you, even if I am a human. I have no talent. My broom had great talent!-if it even was my broom. But it’s gone. Either the dragons took it, or it’s lost.

“Listen. Keep listening. Wipe that squawky look off your faces. Please. Why don’t you band together to fly out of here? A huge clot of you? The dragons couldn’t take you all out-some of you would be bound to get through.”

“Nice,” said a small Barn Owl. “Very nice. I have an irregular left wing and I tend to fly in loops, which slows me down. I’ll be one of the first to go. Gladly shall I sacrifice myself for the great Conference of Birds!” He didn’t sound as if he meant it.

“While there are grubs to eat here in Kumbricia’s Pass, and the dragons can’t see into our hideout, we are imprisoned here,” said Kynot. “But to leave would be to risk even one of us-and that is a risk we don’t take. We won’t. The least little Sparrow that falls diminishes us all. I thought you knew all about that.”

“Yeah, well, my religious instruction was pretty feeble.”

“I wasn’t speaking metaphorically, but of military strategy. You could get to the dragons, couldn’t you? A witch-boy passing as a soldier? You could see if they had your broom, for one. You could get it back. You could be our voice-our ambassador. Our human representative, our agent, our proxy-”

Liir interrupted. “If I could get my broom-what good could I do? They would just attack me again. Last time they were satisfied with my broom and my cape. Maybe this time they’d scrape my face.”

“You just said it’s not up to you to decide whose face gets scraped or not,” said the Cliff Eagle. “If you believe that, put your face out there and deal with what happens.”

“This isn’t going to work,” said Liir. “I can’t do anything for you. I’m not a Bird. I’m not a witch-boy. I don’t even have a broom anymore. And even if I had it, maybe I wasn’t meant to fly. Maybe I shouldn’t even have that liberty.”

“Maybe none of us should have the liberties we have. We keep going as we are, we’ll find out soon enough. But if you help us squelch the dragon threat, we’ll do what you ask. We’ll hunt for that human female you’re seeking.”

The Wren hopped forward again. “You’re going to do it,” she said to Liir. “You’re going to try, ain’t you. I kin tell.”

“You read the future, Dosey?” said Liir.

“Begging your pardon, sir-”

“Dosey!” interrupted Kynot. “No begging!”

“Ooh, sorry I’m sure,” Dosey continued. “No, Mister Broom-boy. You’re going to do it for a perfectly selfish reason-our looking for your lost girl-fing-and that’s okay. Why not? Long as the job gets done.”

The Birds were silent.

“You’ve had a taste of it,” she said in a softer voice. “Not many has, but you has. You’ve tried flying, ain’t you. Now try giving it up.”

She came nearer. “Try giving it up,” she said. “Begging your pardon, sir, you cain’t.”

The Birds began to flap their wings and, one by one, to lift up, making their final argument. They swept counterclockwise around the dead little lake, perhaps in deference to the Owl whose wing anomaly made him list in a particular direction. There were more Birds than Liir had first perceived. Several hundred. The more timid ones must have been hiding higher in the branches, but listening intently: all listening. Now they flew, and as they flew, there could be no leader, no follower: they traced the same track in the air, faster and faster. The very force of their rhythmic pumping made the surface of the lake stand up in waves of its own, higher and higher, till wingtips of white froth were beaten up, and then the clots of pale spume lifted and circled beneath the vortex of birds like a second population, like ghost Birds, like the relatives of the Conference who had been slain. But what were ghosts without voices?

The birds were silent-none of them, even the Geese and Ducks, who liked to honk in flight, dared risk attracting attention to their stronghold.

“Stop,” cried Liir and held up his hands-not out of pity, nor fear, nor a new moral conviction: simply out of the lack of any further reason to resist.

The blind, gimpy Heron hobbled forward and pecked at Liir’s leg to locate him. “I can’t fly either, now my sight’s gone,” the Heron said. “Makes me no less a Bird, though, do it?”

Kumbricia’s Cradle

THE WALK BACK WAS FASTER. Now that his bones were knitted, all this trekking was building up muscle again. He hurt, but solidly, recuperatively.

The Disappointments afforded little by way of a blind, so he traveled by night as much as he could, hoping that dragons wouldn’t be abroad then. He tried to keep to clearly marked tracks, goat paths, stream sides, where the going was smoother, though the cover less useful.

Arriving back at Apple Press Farm an hour shy of dawn, he was unwilling to frighten Candle by approaching in the dark. He found an old tree on the edge of the orchard still forcing out small, deformed fruit, and he made a breakfast for himself, shivering with his hands in his armpits. He tried to feel the day warm instant by instant as the sun rose over the horizon, but his apparatus for appreciating such subtlety was too crude.

Then the donkey brayed, and a cock cried out his serratedConfiteor through the rising mist. Where had Candle got a cock from? She must still be roaming the province, releasing creatures from homesteads with impunity. She was lucky she wasn’t caught, as the donkey and the cock weren’t exactly keeping their whereabouts secret. The cock sounded like a tenor.

With all that noise, she’d be stirring by now. Still, he waited till he saw the smoke from the kitchen chimney roll up, and he heard a window shutter bark against the stone. He came toward the house ready to call out, but she was standing in the doorway on one foot, the other foot rubbing against the back of her calf. “What have you been waiting for?” she asked, her head tilted forward. “Isn’t it cold out there in the orchard?”

“You’ve been clearing the undergrowth.”

“The donkey has. Makes my life easier; he’s done enough for a kitchen garden. If we remove a few more trees, we’ll have a good open space, and fertile, by the look of it. But we’ll need fencing against the donkey and other comers. Why do you loiter, come in, you must be ice.”

He was about to sayI was afraid I’d frighten you, and then he remembered: She possessed some sort of a talent for reading the present. She’d probably known he was there; and indeed, she admitted as much when asked.

His fists clenched and opened at the notion of touching her sleep-warm body, of wrapping his arms around her, diving his cold fingers into the folds of her simple broadcloth sleeping tunic. But she ducked into the shadowy doorway before he could embrace her, as if his time away had made them strangers again.

The place was that much straighter, simpler, more pleasant. She’d been busy. Dried flowers set round in cracked terra-cotta pots. Tassels of herbs drying from strings, spooling their fragrance across the kitchen. In the fire nook, the andirons had been polished, and from the trammel hung a fine bulbous kettle with scented water roiling in it. “How did you know I’d be back today?”

“The cock crowed more self-consciously, so I guessed he must have an audience. Anyway, I sensed it would be you. Or maybe that was just hope, who can tell the difference? You must be weary. Rest your bones, Liir, and I’ll fetch some rennety milk pudding from the cold room belowstairs.”

“Don’t move about so. Just sit-here.” He patted a stool near him and smiled. Her hands flexed and met his at the fingertips, and their fingertips bounced gently against one another. Then she took herself off to get the pudding.

“You’ll eat first, and then you’ll sleep,” she said, like a mother, “for I don’t need the skills of divination to know you’ve been walking most of the night.”

She would hear of nothing else. He had to content himself with watching her flit across the kitchen, into the sunlight and out of it again. How is it that she is like a bird, too, he thought, and felt he was on to something, but then the food settled him, and Candle had proven right, for his head was nodding on his spine. She helped him to the room where they had so chastely slept, and after she had taken his shirt off and lightly run a damp cloth under his arms and behind the lengthening mane of hair at his nape, she dropped the cloth on the floor and pressed her hands against his bare chest, as if trying to interpret the arcane language of his heartbeat.

“Later,” she mouthed at him, and kissed the space where his lips would have been if he hadn’t just then begun to keel backward against the pillow.

The sleep was devoid of character. A good sleep.

He awoke well into the heat of the day, such as it was at this time of year. She had set out a tunic and fresh leggings. What a capable scavenger she was. The trousers, cut for a slenderer man, cinched too tightly at his thighs, but they were clean, and the tunic scented of pomander. In new garb he felt a new man, and looked out of the window to find her.

She was hard at work in the patch she’d mentioned. Using a sharp segment of the printing press’s broken iron wheel, she was levering aloft a resistant root of apple tree. Smudged now, where he was pristine, she wiped her face with the back of her hand and in vain tried to scatter a late population of midges who found the smell of her sweat enticing. He called to her, and she waved and fell heavily to her knees as the root chose that moment to yield.

“Let me do that,” he said.

“Done now. But I’ll rest a spell. Come down.”

They walked to the edge of the orchard, by turns sipping sweet well water from a single pipkin. “You’ve done good work here,” he told her gravely.

“I’ve had good reason.” With her little finger she picked at a bit of wax in one ear. “You’re back, now, and there’s one on its way.”

He arched an eyebrow, feeling very Commander Cherrystone-ish. “Company’s coming?”

“You could put it suchly.”

What was she reading out of this sunny hour that he couldn’t see-oh, he couldn’t, but then he could. “It’s not so. You’re not old enough.”

She said, “Though like you I can’t exactly say how old I am, apparently I am old enough, Liir.” Her tone was easy and a bit bored, but he thought he knew her well enough by now to suppose that she was at least a little frightened.

Many of the fellows in the unit had talked about this. They’d shared their observations. Women always knew, and a preternatural calm swept all other earthly considerations aside when it happened. But Candle was hardly a woman!-and not inaugurated into those mysteries. Or not by him.

“I’ve been gone only a few weeks,” he said, trying not to sound cold. “Or had you already charmed a local farmer with your domingon even when I was still recuperating inside? Is that how you got the goat, the cock, the hen-a bartering for your farmyard needs with your farmyard skills? Is that why you encouraged me to leave on a wild Bird chase?”

“You needn’t fuss so.” She bit her lip and looked at him levelly. “It was no other man, Liir.”

“It is not by me. Candle!” He slipped out of Qua’ati for a moment, to spew expletives in the orchard air. “I am a fool and a naïf and a monster, all at once, but I am not stupid about how a girl becomes pregnant. It is not by me. Don’t embarrass me with a hopeless ruse. Do you think I would abandon you over it?”

“I don’t think-”

“Or maybe you want me to? Well, I won’t. I haven’t that crooked a soul. Just don’t lie to me, for that’s intolerable. Candle! The whole thing is beyond belief.”

“Liir. I ask nothing of you. You’re not married to me. You didn’t choose me. I didn’t choose you.”

“You chose to save me,” said Liir despondently, “when I might have slipped away, and a good thing, too.”

“I chose to try to save someone. Someone sick in an infirmary, that is all. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know you yet. I don’t know you yet.”

“I amnot thefather, ” he said. “Am I required to remind you how it works? I kept my distance, Candle. I never slept with you; I never buried myself in your trove. I thought about it, yes, but thinking’s not doing, and no child is begat by the midnight thoughts of an adult sleeping alone.”

“But you did,” she said. Her shoulders slumped. “It would be easier to pretend you hadn’t, but it doesn’t matter one way or the other. The infant grows. I won’t turn it out of its nest now.”

“I didn’t!” he insisted, and then she told him how he had, and when, and why.

A small rain came up over the orchard, and in an eddy of chill, the drops turned to snow. The season turned several more notches in an instant, as can happen.

They made their way inside without further remark, and Candle put herself to kitchen tasks. She measured two handfuls of coarse flour and shook it through a boulter of cloth. The light greyed, and faded, and he pulled the shutters tight, and built up the fire. There were the cock and the hen to bring in, and the donkey to stable, and whatever else he could think of to do, he did: shifting firewood, scattering clean straw for the floor, arranging things on shelves. Things with handles and spouts, items with purposes he couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t imagine anything.

They ate, and after eating she said softly, “This is a good thing, Liir.”

“Then it couldn’t have come from me.”

As she prodded, and because it made a distraction if nothing else, he told her about the Conference of the Birds and the charge under which he was laboring-or had so labored, up until this morning upon his return-to find his broom.

She had always seemed unshaken by the notion of flying dragons. When he asked why, she told him that she’d heard rumors of such creatures a few years back. They were involved in an action in the provincial capital.

“Qhoyre,” he filled in. “It figures.”

“If there were going to be troubles, you’d expect them in Qhoyre,” she concurred. “It began as a tax revolt or something. The garrison of the Emerald City military was stormed by Quadlings, and more or less annihilated.”

“I don’t believe you can be more or less annihilated. You either are or you aren’t.” He thought of the suave, genteel Commander Cherrystone, and hoped that he had been one of the ones who had been killed.

“Don’t look to me for accuracy. I’m a simple soul. I’m merely telling you what I heard my uncle say. Some of the reasons we left.” Candle continued. It was calming for both of them to avoid the matter of her pregnancy. “He said that the Emerald City flared up in reprisal. Overreacted. A small fleet of flying dragons was unleashed against the Quadlings at Qhoyre. It was pretty terrible. There were only a few survivors, and who could trust what those poor traumatized loons said? Flying dragons? Quadlings are so superstitious. No one knew what to believe-so let’s get out of here, said my uncle.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “So I’m not surprised that it has turned out to have been true.”

He put his head in his hands. The other fellows in his squadron. Had any of them survived? Ansonby, Kipper, Somes? Burny, Mibble? The one they called Fathead? Or what about their girlfriends-were they tarred as collaborators?

It wasn’t just the girl slung from the burning bridge-it was all of them. Her parents, their neighbors, the countryfolk. The occupying forces, the officers and the infantry, the support teams, the ambassadors. The repercussions seemed endless and only to grow in force and significance, never to recede.

Candle saw his expression. She took his hand, and he had to work hard not to snatch it away.

“Remember why you went to the Conference,” she said. “Before you save anyone else, you have to save yourself, Liir. Otherwise you’re just a bundle of tics, a stringed puppet manipulated by chance and the insensible wind.”

“I will stay here, whether you’ve been sleeping round the countryside or not. We are called to be as limbs of God,” he said.

“That piety curdles on your tongue, and you know it. If you don’t rescue yourself, Liir, you might just as easily be a limb of evil.”

“One has to admit one’s destiny.”

“Naming your destiny the will of the Unnamed God doesn’t make it so. And self-glorifying, besides.”

They lay down in the same bed that they had shared before. Neither of them slept, though not this time from being racked with desire.

THEY AROSE WHEN IT was still dark, besting the cock at his own business.

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 oweyou nothing,” he said, “no one owesanyone 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

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.

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’renot 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 youreally 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, “Oho . 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 youwant 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. They 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.”

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’reway 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?”

“To the Unnamed God, we’re all special,” said Trism. Liir was unsure if he heard sarcasm in the rejoinder. “Minor Menacier back then.”

“Husbandry, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, the lad’s sharper than he looks. Yeah, husbandry, for a time.”

“Not now?”

“I don’t like to talk about my work when I’m out larking.”

“But I’m curious. Sounded very important. We dug the foundations for that new building-the stables.”

“Basilica.”

“That’s right. I remember now. No stables below?”

“Look, it’s Sillipede. The very one. A living legend. She must be ninety.” An extremely odd, angular creature was being hoisted onto a small stage. Behind her, whisking spittle from the mouthpiece of her willow flute, stood a young woman dressed in little more than golden epaulets slapped strategically about her body. A couple of Bears opened their music cases and began to turn pegs to tune up: an Ugabumish guitar, a violinsolo. “So few Animals with real jobs, but if you drummed Animals entirely out of the music business, nobody’d hear a note.”

Sillipede began to warble. She was so old that it was impossible to tell if she was a man or a woman, nor if she was trying to make an attempt to imitate either her own or the opposite gender. In the cracked and breathy voice, though, the singer still had considerable power, and the room quietened down somewhat. Liir had to wait for the first number to end before continuing his remarks.

“I mean, specifically, dragons,” he said through the applause.

“Hush, you’re not being polite,” said Trism. “Isn’t she something?”

“Something or something else or something else again. Maybe not to my taste. Do we have to stay?”

“And give up our good seats? Have one more beer and let’s see the first set through, anyway.”

Sillipede bumbled her way through some difficult patches, talking more than she sang. She lit a cigarette halfway through one number and burnt her fingers, and told her backup to can it. “I’m hardly myself tonight,” she told the crowd, “what with this dreadful heathen holiday approaching. Lurlinemas . Can you believe the Emperor in his goodness allows any reminder of those archaic superstitions? Can you believe that he in his goodness? Can you believe his goodness? I mean, can you? I’m asking you a question here.”

The room was silent. Was she spinning out a comic story or was she losing her marbles? She took a drag on her smoke.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I can see on the faces of those of you who stillhave faces that you’re afraid you’ve wandered into a conventicle of traitors instead of a comeback concert. Please. Relax. If we get raided and we all end up in Southstairs, I’ll lead singalongs on the weekends. I will. That’s a promise.”

The flautist relieved an itch beneath one of the epaulets.

“I’m not proselytizing. Neitherfor the Unnamed God noragainst its holy un-name. That would be plain old sedition, and frankly at my age, I’m just not up to it.” She made a face. “Sedition is unthinkable. Although to say something is ‘unthinkable’ is, of course, to have been able to think of it. And I’m at the age where I’m losing language faster than I’m gaining it. I don’t know what sedition means anymore. I never said it. I never never said the wordscrewy, did I? Did I say the wordcomplicity ?”

Someone in the back muttered something a little ugly. Sillipede said, “I can see you back there squirming. You and your sour puss. Don’t get out much, do we? You remind me of someone. You remind me of someone that I would find really annoying. What’re you getting so feisty about? I’m just taking a cigarette break. Shooting the breeze. If you think I’m being unscrupulous, give me a break: I’m too old to have scruples anymore. Where would I put them?”

“What is she on about?” muttered Liir.

“She’s going to end up either in prison or the ward for the incurably old,” said Trism. He was red in the face. “Maybe you’re right; we better go.”

But they couldn’t get up while she was in her monologue: that would single them out for her catcalling, draw attention their way. She’d be all over them.

She wandered a bit in the crowd. Now she looked more like an old man in makeup, now like an old woman trying to look young. She looked more human than anything else, though that didn’t necessarily mean handsome. Liir prayed she wouldn’t come over and start talking to him. He had a strong feeling she would.

Under the table, Trism reached for his hand and squeezed it. He was more nervous than Liir. This place wasn’t sanctioned by the Home Guard, Liir guessed, and Trism would be in serious jeopardy if things got any hotter. Liir detached his hand.

“I’m a ditsy old relic, don’t mind me,” said Sillipede. “You young things take everything so seriously. But you don’t remember the bad old days of the Wizard. The drought. How we lived back then. How we laughed! Hah. A lark. And hardly anyone stood up to him. Only some fool witch from the hinterlands. And we all know what happens to witches.”

Someone hissed.

“These days are so much better,” the creature said. “Ask Sillipede. Sillipede knows. I’m old enough to remember when the Ozma Regent was still the crowned head of the nation, and baby Ozma a little bundle of coos and poos. I’m so old I was already retired when the Wizard arrived and set things to rights. Hard times then! Things are better now, ain’t they? Well, depends on your outlook, I guess. If things ain’t actually better, they sure aregooder .

“These times,” she continued, “so righteous! Everyone so much more moral! Put some clothes on your nakedness, girl, or the vice squad’ll be down our throats. Or down your throat, anyway, if you look at ‘em like that.”

The flutist looked as nonplussed as the audience.

“You got to hold on to your values, if you can still reach them,” said the chanteuse. “Buy some values, rent ‘em, steal ’em if you have to. Sell ‘em for a profit when tastes change. Whatever works. Is this a crock, or what?”

She regained the small stage and put her hand to her eyes, shading the flare of the lights. “I can see you. I know you’re there,” she said. “I know you’re in there somewhere. I can wait.” She signaled the Bear on bass and said, “A torch song about lost hopes, Skoochums, how ‘bout. For old time’s sakes. In the key of E, Harrikin. No, not B. I said E-E for Elphaba. One. Two. Three. Whatever.”

The Bear lazily thwacked out a bass run, and Sillipede drew a breath, but then spoke again, interrupting the intro. “And that other problem, all that graffiti! I saw it again on my way here, scrawled on some library wall. ‘Elphaba lives!’ What’s that supposed to mean? I ask you. Isn’t it just too much? Why don’t they keep their sloppy old slogans to themselves? Elphaba lives! As if.”

She flicked her cigarette butt into someone’s lager. “Now I just feel all riled up and alive. This ain’t happened since I left double digits. So I am going to sing a beautiful old hymn to prove it to you. Anyone who’s with the Emperor can stand and sing it with me, to show we’re not just scratching our balls here, are we, folks?”

The band patched together an intro and Sillipede sauntered into a familiar melody. The patrons of the place were irritated, a bit unnerved by the theatrics, and unsure who was being made fools of: the Emperor, the Unnamed God, Sillipede herself, or them-or anyone idiotic enough to take a position against the Palace. But the song was balm itself-devotional, a bit flowery, familiar. Complexities gave way to the simpler sentiments. People stood and sang in defiance of Sillipede’s posturing. In the shadows and shuffling, Liir and Trism escaped. Trism grabbed Liir’s hand as if he might try to duck away; Liir couldn’t help squeezing back. He was wound up. E for Elphaba . It was as if, these years later, he’d finally attended her wake.

THEY WALKED ALONG a quay in the Lower Quarter. Elsewhere in Oz it was probably snowing, but with the warm smoke of ten thousand coal fires, Liir and Trism felt only a particulate moisture in the air, part rain, part mist. Flames burning in lampposts gave off a pulsing, melon-colored glow.

“Mustn’t be late, I assume,” said Liir.

“One can hear the bells of the basilica all over the City. These days of the New Piety, they ring on the half hour. We’ve some time yet.”

“That place made you tense. Where’re we going?”

“I’ve been there before, but not on Treason Night.”

“You think that was treasonous?” Liir was aghast. “I thought it”-he governed his language-“only stupid.”

“She’d do better to keep her opinions to herself. Or organize them first, anyway. I wasn’t even sure what she was on about, but it takes something like whiskey courage to pretend that much skepticism about the Apostle Emperor. He’s a good fellow. The people love him. I myself feel flattered to have met him personally.”

“You have? Really? What’s he like?”

Trism shot him a look. “Of course I have. I was with you the first time it happened. The night before you lot shipped out? Remember? He offered us his carriage. He was cynical and louche then, as I remember. A lost soul. His Awakening hadn’t happened.”

“The Emperor of Oz…no. Shell? Shell Go-to-hell Thropp?”

“The First Spear himself. Can you really not have known? Wherehave you been? The moon?”

The very paving stones on the quay seemed more slippery. “I don’t get it. Everyone talks about the Emperor’s…his virtue. Shell was the last person to have any virtue. He was a spy, wasn’t he-didn’t someone say? Anyway, he used extract of poppyflower to opiate the young women in Southstairs and fuck them silly. I know that for a fact.”

“Well, who better to speak for the Unnamed God, then, than one who has sinned so egregiously? Talk about your recoveries…the Awakening happened, and he heard the voice of the Unnamed God, telling him to lead. You know his sisters were the two witches? Nessarose and Elphaba Thropp?”

Liir felt ill. “It’s just too…uncanny. Too unlikely.”

“Not as unlikely as all that. Who is exempt from the claw of salvation? The more sinful you are, the more likely salvation can take root. His father was a unionist minister, after all. A missionary, I think.”

“He’s a charlatan, Shell is.”

“May have been once. Don’t think so now. He believes he was Awakened in order to lead Oz through this desperate time.”

“Are we so desperate that we need the likes of him-”

“Well, you tell me,” said Trism. His voice had gone lower, intimate. He leaned in and almost put his chin on Liir’s shoulder. “How desperate are any of us at any given moment? Hmmm? Are any of us so desperate that we might, say, attack an unarmed rural settlement at night and burn it into the river?”

Liir pivoted to glare at Trism, who reached out and pinned Liir’s right arm behind his back, whispering, “You shitty little creep.”

“Let me go. What is this? A one-person tribunal? A vendetta? Let me go. Where are we?” In the mist Liir had lost his bearings. “How do you know anything about me? And what’s it to you? I was doing the Emperor’swork, Trism. Your precious leader. His bidding. Let me go.”

“I’m going to beat your head in and then shove your sorry carcass into the water.” By now Trism had both of Liir’s hands behind his back, and Trism was kicking at cobbles randomly, to find one that was loose and use it for braining.

Liir struggled. Trism, in military trim, was fitter and had had the advantage of surprise. To yell wouldn’t help: a police force would side with Trism at once. “Look,” Liir said, trying not to sound terrified. “I’m bone tired. What do you care about what happened south of Qhoyre? Aren’t you a company man? Head office mastered that situation in a flash, I’ve heard.”

“I heard whatyou did. How could I not? Soldiers gossip worse than housewives. Because of that attack, the Quadlings around Qhoyre struck out at Cherrystone’s garrison. You lost some of your buddies, buddy. And then the Emperor called up his brand-new defensive system and deployed it against the natives.”

Liir began to get it. “Oh ho. But that was your specialty. Those were your dragons.”

“I was one of the team. Prime Menacier of the division. Right. And I’d been told the dragons were to be held in abeyance, paraded for show on Holy Action Day. The annual display of military might and moral purpose. Scare the rabble and c

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 828