Page 33 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

“And now?” he said, not because he was interested, but because he didn’t want any more attention on himself.

“Now, I hold the key,” she said. “Now, for the time being, I am intended to stand in for the mighty on their thrones. It’s all I’m good for.”

“Are the mighty deserving of thrones?”

“That’s an Elphaba question, and out of your youthful pouting mouth it sounds preposterous. Like most of her superior cavils, it has no easy answer. How could I know?”

She sighed. “Sit back, I said. Yes, I’m nervous. You’ll find

in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they’re wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good. Perhaps being jittery helps me pay closer attention. You know, I didn’t want the hard work of government. They all say I need to clean house. Clean house! That presumes I’ve cleaned a house before. I say, hey, what are the servants for? Decoration?”

She was speaking to herself, in a way, but she was also trying to cheer him up. He turned his head, confused by her kindness, and busied himself from watching, at an acceptable angle, as the buildings nearer the Palace hove into view. One mammoth ministry was strapped with bas-relief marble panels depicting various historic Ozmas in characteristic poses. They looked at once venerable and ludicrous, and the pigeons of the Emerald City paid them no high compliment.

“But why are we going to the Wizard’s Palace?”

“The people’s Palace, now,” said Glinda derisively. “Though what the people are going to do with their own palace I have no earthly idea.” She chewed on a nail. “There’s a clandestine entrance to Southstairs from the Palace. Of course there had to be, a means of instantly spiriting away any treasonous Palace upstart sniffed out in the court. Though the common criminal condemned to serve time is more publicly lowered in a cage into the pit that drops down inside those bulwarky ramparts. You see, it’s mostly underground, Southstairs. It’s the most impregnable prison in Oz. Nobody who goes in via the cage comes out that way.”

“How do they come out?”

“In pine coffins.”

SHE DABBED A SACHET doused with oil of clove and root-of-persimmon behind her ears. By the time the door to her carriage was opened by a staff member of the Palace, Lady Glinda had become more regal. Her chin went up, a jeweled scepter was provided for her right hand. Her eye flashed with a steeliness Liir had not noted earlier.

“Lady Glinda,” they murmured. She deigned to supply the briefest of nods, as an indication that she was not deaf, and walked by.

Liir followed in something closer to terror than he had ever experienced before. He expected to be rushed away and beaten before he could even begin to protest. But Lady Glinda’s penumbra of influence extended eight feet behind her, it seemed, for his progress was unquestioned, and he gained the threshold of the Palace without anyone’s objecting.

The place was a maze, and he lost his bearings almost at once. Accompanied by a Palace flunky, Glinda and Liir swept up grand staircases, along arched corridors, past ceremonial chambers and receiving parlors. Another staircase or two, another corridor or three, and at length they traversed a long dingy room, where dozens of staff members were perched on high stools above ledgers. They splashed ink in their nervous abjection, though not on Glinda in her celestial blue gown.

Behind a wall with an interior window, the better for supervising workers, stood an office with a desk and some chairs. An elegant man absorbed in a newssheet was tipped back on the hind legs of his chair, his ceremonial boots propped on the desk and his saber stuck in the soil of a potted fern. “Commander,” said Lady Glinda, “we’re here. Show some respect, or pretend to anyway.”

He leaped to his feet with ostentatious speed. Liir blinked and gaped. “Commander Cherrystone!” he said.

“You’ve met?” said Glinda. “How droll.”

“I’m drawing a blank,” said the Commander, wrinkling a brow.

“At Kiamo Ko,” said Liir. “You were head of the Gale Forcers at Red Windmill. It was your men that kidnapped Fiyero’s widow, Sarima, and her sisters and her children.”

Commander Cherrystone smiled deferentially and offered Liir a hand. “Kidnapped? We took them into protective custody for their own good. How were they to know the depravity of the Witch they were harboring?”

“And how well did you protect them?” said Liir.

“Ooh, the boy has spit, has he,” said Commander Cherrystone, wiping his sleeve. “I like that, son, but please. This is my best dress uniform.” He was equable and seemed to take no offense.

Liir glared at Glinda. “You’ve taken me here, to him—betrayed me to the very man responsible for Nor’s abduction?”

“Recriminations, they get us nowhere,” said Lady Glinda. “And how was I to know? Consider it poetic justice: Now he must help you. Because I say so.” She turned to Cherrystone. “Look, Commander, I’ve laid it all out. You got my note? The boy wants to see Fiyero’s daughter, if she’s still alive. As an officer and a governor of the prison, you can make the arrangements, can’t you?”

“It’s an institution with its own appetite, is a prison,” said Commander Cherrystone. Rather approvingly, thought Liir. “I can’t say I remember you, lad, but my work involves many postings. And in none of them have I ever before met a soul who wanted to enter Southstairs voluntarily. You understand: No promises that you will leave it. Either dead or alive. It might be your tomb.”

“My name is Liir,” he said. He tried to lift his chin as he had seen Glinda do. “We have met. I liked you. You seemed decent.”

“I tried to be decent, within reason,” he replied. “Anyway, I had little choice if I wanted to gain the trust of that knotty little clan in Kiamo Ko.”

“What happened to Sarima?” asked Liir. “Fiyero’s widow.”

“Everyone dies. It’s a question of where and how, that’s all.”

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