Page 29 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

“Sweet Oz…,” said Glinda. “Liir, take it. Take it back.”

“I’ll burn my hands!”

“You won’t.” Glinda chortled a few syllables in a language Liir couldn’t understand. “This is one of the few spells I could ever really master; it came in handy when my husband required me to hand him the burnt toast on the mornings I thought it my wifely duty to prepare his breakfast. Go on. Grasp it and bring it back.”

He did, and Glinda was right: the broom had not only neglected to ignite further—but it also wasn’t even warm to the touch.

“A burnt broom that has had enough, and refuses to burn further…Keep that with you,” said Glinda. “I was wrong to doubt you. Whoever you are, however you came by it, this is the Witch’s broom. And so I must trust you to be telling me the truth.”

She shrugged and tried to smile, and almost began to blubber. “Elphie would know what to do!”

“Tell me what you know,” he said, as softly as he could.

“I don’t have access to the register of prisoners in Southstairs Academy, which is the place your—Nor—is most likely to be if she wasn’t murdered long ago. I’m not even sure a register is kept. But I know someone could get you in, at least. Whether you could find Nor or get her out, or yourself either, I can’t guess. But I can make introductions for you; in memory of Elphaba, I will do that much.”

“Who would help me? A friend of yours?”

“No friend of mine, but a bereaved member of her family. Next of kin to the dearly departed Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West…”

“But I thought Elphaba’s sister was dead!” said Liir. “Wasn’t Nessarose—killed by Dorothy’s clumsy house?”

“Yes, she was. But didn’t you know? Didn’t Elphaba tell you? She had a brother, too. A younger brother named Shell.”

4

IN COMING TO THEIR SENSES, Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire were gratified to find they still possessed their faces. The pack mules were nowhere to be seen though, nor their food supplies, nor their hosts.

“What is that engine in my brain?” said Sister Doctor, after she’d vomited into some ferns.

“I feel as if the jackal moon had been down here snouting around in an unseemly manner.” Sister Apothecaire adjusted her garments. “It must be the effects of the ceremonial pipe.”

“And that’s why the Yunamata never built a city nor invented algebrarish nor bowed to the Wizard.”

“With a smoke that kicks like that, who needs a city or an Emperor?”

They ambled in oppressive daylight. “I suppose we should think about what we’re doing,” said Sister Doctor.

“Yes. If the Yunamata are right, then the Scrow must be responsible for the scrapings. So we’re liable to wander into hotter water if we are able to find them.”

“I think that’s our calling, isn’t it?”

“Hmmm.” They had a choice: to venture farther into the foothills of the Kells, and make their presence known to the Scrow—or to go back and claim they’d failed. Without discussing it further, they pressed on. Duty weighed more heavily than dread.

THE MAUNTS KNEW that their professional skills—to be loving, to be devout, to be local in their attentions and spiritual in their desires—had not prepared them to be government envoys. Still, since their mauntery served as a way station for those who acted upon the stage of the world, the good sisters considered themselves at least as broad-minded as any other cloistered soul.

Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire, nonetheless, were unprepared for the breadth of the Scrow camp when they came upon it. More than a thousand clanfolk, they estimated, maybe fifteen hundred, and a virtual zoography of physical types. The nomads tented in patterns that followed their occupations.

Some castes managed the animals, primarily a huge herd of sheep collected from fell-swards to be penned for a late winter lambing. Other castes specialized in creating sumptuous hangings and carpets from the wool of those same sheep. A contingent of fierce-browed young men with slender, tapering dark beards seemed to be a kind of clerks’ collective, running here and there with instructions, corrections, assessments, revisions. Older men and women—some much older—managed the care of children with surprising mildness and efficacy.

At the center of the hubbub rose a tented pagoda. Around it, a good many brass urns issued an aroma of raspberry and heart-of-musk. It didn’t take the maunts long to realize that the incense wasn’t devotional, but hospitable: the smell from the Princess’s pagoda was, well, a stench.

First fed on a peppery broth that seemed to clear both their sinuses and their brains, the maunts were then allowed a chance to pray and compose themselves. It was almost dusk when they were brought into a tent to meet an ambassador of some sort.

“Please, sit,” he told them, and sat as well. He was a portly man on the threshold of old age. One eye wandered as if bedeviled by an interior vision it didn’t appreciate. His skin was the color of fine whisky. “We hope you have been made comfortable. Or comfortable enough.”

The maunts nodded. Their approach had been greeted without apparent alarm, and they’d been welco

med respectfully.

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