Page 34 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

“Oh, bandying, bandying, please, my head,” said Glinda. “I feel I’m back at Shiz. The Debating Tourneys: what a migraine. I need a tonic. Are you going to do this for me, Commander?”

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t require it,” he answered. “Ready, lad?”

“I’m ready,” Liir answered. He turned to Glinda. “Ought I take off these silly clothes?”

“What, and go naked into Southstairs? I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Commander Cherrystone. Glinda waved dismissively. Then she tucked her hand against her mouth and bit her knuckles. It was hard to know if her pretty ways were studied or innate.

“Oh, oh,” she managed, “I don’t know that I’ll see you again…and you remind me so of her.”

“I haven’t Elphaba’s talent,” said Liir simply. “I’m not worth mourning, believe me.”

“Her power was only part of it,” said Glinda. “She was brave, and so are you.”

“Bravery can be learned,” he said, trying to be consoling.

“Bravery can be stupid,” said Commander Cherrystone. “Believe me.”

The boy didn’t move forward to touch her or kiss her. In Kiamo Ko, only Nanny had been the kissing type, and Liir hadn’t figured much in her affections. So he merely said, “Well, good-bye, then. And don’t worry. I’ll take care.”

They looked at one another. In a moment Liir would lose heart; he would do the shaming thing that the houseboy had predicted. He would let Nor’s life reach its destiny without intervening—in exchange for having someone stand in as a mother. Lord knows Elphaba hardly had!—and here was Glinda, blinking back tears or something.

She looked at him almost as if thinking the same thing. The moment passed, though. “You do your work,” Lady Glinda told him. “Ozspeed. And don’t forget your broom.”

“Her broom,” said Liir.

“Your broom,” she corrected him.

6

THE ROOM GREW SUDDENLY COLDER. Night was drawing in, and the rump flank of the wind hinted at the winter to come. Candle rose to draw the shutters closed. The jackal moon was at its most self-satisfied; soon the constellation would wane and its elements return to their ordinary, lonelier orbits.

She shuttered most of the windows for the first time, but she couldn’t fix one shutter securely; a rope of ivy with a stem stout as a forearm had grown across a corner. Candle took an extra sheet and hung it as best she could against the chill.

When she came back to Liir, she became alarmed. She felt his brow. His skin was colder still, and his blood pressure seemed to be dropping.

She wasn’t suited for work of this seriousness. She laid down her instrument

on the floor, determined to run and get Sister Cook or the Superior Maunt. She found her way blocked.

The figure stood in the doorway, veil drawn to cloak the features. Candle reared back, startled.

The veil dropped. It was only the addled elderly maunt, the senior biddy in the place, the one known as Mother Yackle. What was she doing here?

“You can’t leave,” said Mother Yackle. “There’s no one else here to do what needs to be done.”

Candle picked up her domingon and raised it threateningly. Quicker than could have been imagined, Mother Yackle slid back into the shadows, and closed the door behind her, and locked it.

Candle thumped against the door, and threw her shoulder against it, but the heavy thing was quarter-sawn oakhair wood, and cross-built. She couldn’t waste her time clawing at it with her fingernails. Liir was failing.

She turned her attentions to the rest of the room. Not raised in the arts of medicine, she didn’t recognize much of what she found in the cupboard. A large mortar and pestle for the grinding of herbs. Several fresh-nibbed pens, with sheets of paper and a stoppered jug of ink, for the making of notes. Unguents of disagreeable viscosities. The body of a mouse on the bottom shelf. A few old keys—none of which fit the room’s only keyhole.

She sat down and played a few rapid runnels, in mischief mode, to concentrate her apprehensions. She felt for his pulse again, and brushed his hair away from his forehead. Even his scalp was cold.

She took off her tunic and tried to wave it from the window. Though she couldn’t attract attention by yelling, maybe someone in the kitchen garden would see her signal. But a wind came up and took the tunic away, and that was that.

At length she relied on what fate had provided her. She took the cleanest of the pen nibs and sharpened it further by training it along the stone windowsill. Releasing Liir’s left arm from its splint, she propped it up against a transept of the domingon, so his hand was raised in the air, a salute. To the extent that she prayed—which wasn’t much, even in these environs, even at this drastic juncture—she begged for her hands to be steady. Then she tried to play Liir’s bicep as she might her domingon, running her hands in light, feathery scales along the skin. She settled on a place near the inside of the elbow, and using the nib as a lancet, made a neat incision.

She caught his blood in the mortar, and when she’d filled it she rushed to the window and dumped it out. There, jackal moon, you want your blood offering, there it is. She collected a second portion, then a third, and she took off her habit to bind Liir’s arm and stop the flow.

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