Page 99 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

She began to lift a huge urn of water from the table in the yard; he took it from her.

“Candle. What happened? Was he all right?” Suddenly Liir had no trust: not in his own apprehensions of Trism, nor of Trism…nor even of Candle. Trism, after all, had once wanted to kill him. “Did he treat you poorly?”

“This water needs taking out to the Princess,” she answered. “She’s being laved round the clock. I’ve been preparing it with essence of vinegar, as that priestly prince instructed me to do.”

“What happened? What passed between you and Trism? Candle!”

“Liir. What could pass between us? He didn’t speak Qua’ati. And I could understand what he chose to tell me, but not answer him—I don’t speak that bossy a tongue. I have a small voice, a half-voice. As you know.”

In succession, Liir thought a half dozen crises. She knows I loved him. That I love him. That he loves me? That he loves her?

That she loves him?

What was this verb love anyway, that could work in any direction?

Did he hurt her?

“Candle. I beg of you.”

“Don’t beg,” intoned Iskinaary, standing on one foot. “Remember General Kynot. Don’t beg. Never beg.”

“We’ll talk later,” she said. “Now, if you’d take that water to your guest? And then you’d better do what you came here to do.”

“I came here to be here! With you.”

“And this band of ragamuffins who preceded you? They are, what? The relatives?”

Tears pricked his eyes. “Don’t be preposterous, and don’t be mean! I’ve been away, Candle. Doing what you asked. Getting something done. Anything. Learning where I wanted to be.”

“I have my bad moments,” she admitted, wiping her own face. “It hasn’t been easy. Let’s not talk. Go straight to work, and help that old sow if you can.”

“She’s an Elephant.”

“Whatever the beast she is.”

“Candle!”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Liir, you startled me. Carrying this child is hard work. I haven’t been myself.”

He could see that.

“Did Trism leave parcels for me?”

“Two packets in the press, hanging on strings from the ceiling, to keep the mice from them. The mice are very interested. Are you going to haul this water to the invalid, or shall I? I have other work to do now. Washing. The old woman runs through a dozen towels a day.”

She picked up a basket of wet laundry and wobbled outside to an old apple tree, where she began to sling the clothes on drooping branches to dry. She’s hurting, he thought: even I, dull as I am, can see that. But from what? My long absence? My affection for Trism? Or is the child inside her making her sick, draining her blood, eating her liver from within, kicking her pelvis sore with its ready heels?

3

HE WASN’T UP TO DEALING with Princess Nastoya yet, and the Scrow seemed to have settled in nicely. Hell, she’d been dying for a decade, she could die some more for another ten minutes before he finally had his reunion with her.

Stung by Candle’s reticence, he wandered into the barn to retrieve the parcels. If Trism had gotten them here safely, then he must have managed to elude Commander Cherrystone. Glinda’s glamour had worked once again, and riding at her side as her factotum, Trism had played the shadowy manservant, a known quantity. He’d been smuggled out of the mauntery safely.

But what had happened here? Had he followed Liir’s directions and found Candle in residence, beautiful and reticent and large with child? Had Trism resented the notion of a Candle? Had he been stung by the fact that Liir had never mentioned her pregnancy? Had he assumed Liir was the father?

Had Trism been cruel to her?

Liir took down the parcels, struck by the thought that the workings of the human heart could be as various and imperturbable as the workings of human communities. He didn’t know enough of love in all its forms to compare, to choose, to sacrifice, to regret. Held in Trism’s soldier arms, he’d been strengthened; held in Candle’s loving regard, he’d been strengthened, too. Now the only thing holding him was Elphaba’s cape. Was her mantle of penitential solitude to be his, too?

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