Page 40 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

The broom was withdrawn and Liir handed it over. “A right wreck of a thing, but for the new growth,” said Chyde, handing it back.

“What?”

Liir didn’t ask again, but felt it. The broom handle was notched with young nubs, and two of them had split, revealing modest embellishments of pale green leaf, like tiny rare broaches pinned to an old bit of scrap wood.

“It can’t grow!” said Liir in amazement. “It can’t do that.”

“Put it away,” said Chyde. “Some folks haven’t seen a green leaf growing in twenty years. You don’t want to get them all weepy now, do you? Mercy is the name of the game in this trade.” He kissed a vulgar emerald on the knuckle of his own middle finger, paying obeisance.

They set off, not in the direction of the waterway, but along a broad passage that served as a commercial parade for the underground settlement. More humans in evidence now, part of the vast employment network that kept Southstairs running, though the shops and stalls were largely staffed by elves who seemed to have raised obsequiousness to an art form. Here and there, the nice contrast of a grumpy dwarf. The noise was ordinary chatter and gossip, and it was some time before Liir realized what made it seem strange. For once, there was no little strain of music playing off to one side. Well, who would play music in a prison, after all?

The roofs of the cavern rose higher overhead, passing out of view into darkness. More of the structures were freestanding, supplied with their own tiled roofs, like buildings on any aboveground street. It felt like a city of the dead. Eventually Liir could see why: this must be the oldest district in Southstairs. It certainly seemed the most decrepit, so far. Above it, all at once, the claustrophobic blackness of cave-dark gave way to the blackness of a different sort: a moonless night, with scratchy scarves of cloud being drawn by the wind across ancient, disaffected stars. It was the middle of Southstairs, the original geologic bucket that must have suggested itself as a natural prison to the first settlers of the Emerald City.

“Stars, they give me the creeps,” said Chyde. “I hate to come this way.”

They found a set of steps leading farther down. Chyde asked for directions once or twice, and sent Jibbidee scampering to check the marks on buildings. “This’ll be it, I guess,” he said. “It’s an Animal district, so you’ll forgive the stench. Hygiene isn’t their strong suit, as you know.”

The air was so cold, though, with a wind whipping in from above, that the smell seemed negligible. At any rate, Liir was too excited to care. He found himself bobbing up and down, and once he nearly grabbed Chyde’s hand to squeeze it. So what that Shell was a bounder, that Lady Glinda was a glamorous airhead! They’d done something good; he’d gotten here. He’d find her, his only peer and friendmate, his half-sister if that version of history was true—the girl who befriended mice, and shared her gingerbread, and who had giggled at bedtime, even when threatened by a spanking. He would liberate Nor, and then—and then—

He couldn’t think beyond that. Just to see her, someone he had known once, back when the world had been something other than tragic, back when Elphaba had been stalking about the castle out west in her robes and rages! Back when home was still home!

Jibbidee skittered forward, back, anxious and irritable. “What, what’s the matter, thingy?” asked Chyde. “Cat got your tongue? Ha-ha.” He turned to Liir. “It did, you know. That’s why he can’t talk. It’ll grow back in time, but at the moment it’s a bloody little stump.”

They pressed into a building, more a pen than a set of salons. A Sow was lying in straw trying to warm some Piglets, most of whom looked to be dead. Improbably, the runt had survived, but it was not long for this world.

Chyde voiced what Liir was himself wondering. “An odd place to put a girl child. What was I thinking of? You. Sow. We’re looking for a girl, a human girl child. Name of Nor. Th

e register puts her in this unlikely spot.”

“She had some developmental problems,” explained the Sow without opening her eyes. “Some lodgings coordinator decided that, among the likes of me and mine, she wouldn’t seem as offensive.”

“Where is she?”

“I would construct a good story if I had the strength,” said the Sow, “but I’m conserving what energy I have left for my litter. In fact, the girl’s own story is good enough. Do you remember when the butchers came through a week or ten days ago to cull the crop because a roast of loin was required? Some celebration Upside. It was the Wizard’s deposal, wasn’t it?”

Chyde looked slantwise at Liir. “We don’t sacrifice Animals for ceremonial meals, don’t be silly,” he said hastily. “You’re talking through your postdelivery deliriums, Sow.” He twisted rings on his fingers, turning some jewels palmward, other jewels out.

“Whatever,” she said. “My deliriums remind me about a couple of Horned Hogs, long in the tooth if they’d still had teeth, who were going to make better rump roasts this year than next, I’ll tell you. They knew their days were numbered. One of them had broken off a horn trying to escape, and the bone spur was sharp and useful. Didn’t you read the report on this?”

“I’ve fallen behind. Terrible workload, and no one to pick up the slack. Jibbidee’s next to useless. Where is the girl, that’s what I want to know.”

“I’m telling you. The Hogs entered a kind of suicide pact, and the bull killed the bitch and then himself. They arranged it to be done on the same slab of old door on which they’d have been carried out for slaughtering anyway. A kind of final comment on the quality of life at Southstairs.”

“Only the best is good enough,” said Chyde.

“So they let themselves putrefy, and we neighbors left them to it for as long as we could stand it. It bought us all some time. But you know as well as I that the entrails of Horned Hogs breed a kind of maggot that likes to burrow into human orifices, especially the airless ones—”

“Stop…”

“And there’s little less airless than Southstairs—”

“I don’t want to hear about it—”

“So your colleagues had to cart the carcasses Upside. They had no choice.”

Chyde said softly, “You’ll get a huge extra bucket of slops for this. Keep on.”

“I had no way of suspecting that the poor suckling Nor had a functioning brain left in her skull,” said the Sow. “But apparently she did. She climbed onto the door-slab and pulled the Hog carcasses over her. I certainly hope for her sake she plugged all her valves. I saw her chewing candlewax once, so maybe she was softening it for just such a purpose. Anyway, hidden by corpses, she was carried away a few days ago, though what happened to her once she left our happy home I can’t say.”

---