Page 91 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

Liir shrugged but couldn’t deny it. From the side, mad Mother Yackle called, “Of course the rumors are true. The broom came from this very house. I myself gave it to Sister Saint Aelphaba years ago. Am I the only one concentrating enough to know this?”

She might, an hour earlier, have been hushed, and the Superior Maunt began to speak. But Sister Doctor raised her hand and stayed the Mother Maunt’s comment, and remarked, “You’ve been quiet for a decade, Mother Yackle, but of late you’ve come back to yourself somewhat. Have you anything to add we should know?”

“I don’t talk when there’s nothing to say,” said Mother Yackle. “All I have to add is this: Elphaba should be here to see this hour.”

“You have an uncommon association with—the Witch of the West.”

“Yes, I do,” said Mother Yackle. “I seem to have been placed on the sidelines of her life, as you might say, as a witness. I’m mad as a bedbug, so no one needs to attend, but I’ve taken some measure of her power. Oh!—but she should be here to see this hour.”

“Mother Yackle? A guardian angel?” called Sister Apothecaire.

“Well—a guardian twitch, anyway,” replied the old woman.

Liir trembled and thought of his lack of power, once again, and of his revery within these walls. Now he remembered what he hadn’t seen before: that in the corner of the room where the green-skinned novice had sat rocking the cradle, a broom leaned against a chest of drawers.

“Are there other remarks?” asked Sister Doctor.

Shocked somewhat by the developments, the maunts muttered quietly, but no one else spoke until Sister Apothecaire stood and said, “Mother Maunt, I would like to applaud you for your courage and your wisdom.”

Tears ran suddenly from the old maunt’s eyes as her house, to a person, stood and paid their respects. Outside, the horses shied and the men started at the sudden rain of noise from the chapel windows.

THE BROOM, THOUGH, wouldn’t carry Trism. In his hands it was no more than a broom. “I lack the proper spunk, it seems,” he said.

“Maybe it has lost its power,” said Liir, but in his own hand the thing leaped to life again, bucking like a colt.

“We might be able to manage a sleight of hand with only one man to hide,” said Lady Glinda. “After all, as you pointed out, they are looking for a pair of you. Perhaps Trism could be passed off as my bodyguard. It was unlike me to have ventured here without a bodyguard, after all, though I did. Sometimes I like to confound even myself,” she explained. “It isn’t difficult.”

“If the men who hold us under siege recognize Trism from the barracks at the Emerald City, he will be put under arrest,” said Sister Doctor.

“Well, I used to be good at makeovers,” said Glinda. “And I could do magic with a blush brush. He’s got big shoulders for a maunt, but he’s pretty enough, and a little peroxide on the facial hair, which is so conveniently blond—” She tossed her own curls. “Well, I never travel without it.”

“I think not,” said Trism in a steely voice.

“Then we’ll have to take the chance we can pass you off as my servant,” said Lady Glinda. “Liir will leave tonight, on the broom, and tomorrow morning I shall ride out with Trism at my side, and make no explanation. If you choose then to open your doors to the soldiers, they will find nothing untoward here. I shall wait outside your gate as an obvious witness until their search is completed. If they are that hungry for blood, they will not dally here but rush on elsewhere.”

“But where will you go?” the Superior Maunt asked Trism. By now they had retired to her office, and she was sagging against the worn leather of her chair.

Liir looked at Trism. As much as could pass between them in a look, without words, passed: and another moment of possibility crashed and burned.

“If Trism can get through, he should try to find Apple Press Farm,” said Liir. “He might smuggle Candle to safety elsewhere. The Emperor’s soldiers are headed vaguely in that direction, and the site has been discovered and ripped up by thugs and vandals at least once already. It seems to have been used as a clandestine press for the printing of antigovernment propaganda.”

“Yes,” said the Superior Maunt modestly, “so I’ve been told.”

“For you, I would try to find that farm,” said Trism. “And I will take the scraped faces, that they not be found here when the army does its ransack.”

“As for me,” continued Liir, “I’ve learned something from you.” He looked at the Superior Maunt, who was tending to nod. “I promised to try to complete an exercise, and I did this much: I helped rid the skies of the dragons that were attacking travelers and causing fear and suspicion among the outlying tribes. I will finish my work before anything else happens. I should let the Conference of the Birds know that, for now, they are free to gather, to fly, to conduct their lives without that undue threat. With the help of the Witch’s broom, and unimpeded by dragon-fings, I can manage that shortly.

“Beyond that,” he said, “I have other scores to settle. I set out years ago to find Nor, a girl with whom I spent some childhood years.”

“But, Liir,” said Sister Doctor, “the Princess Nastoya is expecting your return.”

Liir started. “I had assumed she’d have died long ago.”

“She’s been trying to die, and trying not to die, a complicated set of intentions,” said Sister Doctor. “She mentioned you, Liir.”

“I don’t know what I can do for her. I do not have Elphaba’s skills, neither by inheritance nor by training.”

They sat silently as he worried it out. “In the choice of what to do next, I’m troubled. On the one hand, you say the Princess Nastoya is old and suffering and wants to die.”

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