Page 84 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

“Let’s go.”

“I hope this is only rhetoric, that I’ll pay for my offenses.”

“You will pay, Trism. You will. We all do. You’ll pay, but you won’t pay me.” He clutched the broom. “You’ve already paid me.”

As they hurried away, the noise rose. The poisoned dragons were falling into fits, roaring, throwing themselves against the walls of their stables. The basilica above shook with it.

9

THEY DIDN’T DARE present themselves at an inn or a hotel at that hour of the night, and all of the gates of the City were closed. After skulking about in the fog, they eventually hopped a fence in one of the City’s small private cemeteries, and found a lean-to used for wheelbarrows and digging supplies. The mist turned to a thunderous rain, sheeted with weird winter lightning. There, under the cape, they huddled for warmth, and shuddered. Just before they fell asleep, Liir murmured, “No humming, now.”

They rose before dawn. Trism had enough coin in his pocket to buy them milky tea and a few cream biscuits from the first street vendor. They argued about the best way to leave the City without detection, but their bravery had subsided. They chose Shiz Gate because the welfare of the Emerald City and the northern province of Gillikin were the most tightly entwined, and the traffic there the heaviest.

Providence provides: that’s why it’s called providence. They shambled through Shiz Gate by helping an old merchant whose wagon had suffered a split wheel on the cobbles. The sentries at Shiz Gate paid them little mind, deep in gossip of their own about the attack on the basilica the night before. Word of it was abroad already.

Once through, they abandoned the hapless old man in his search for a wheelwright, and ambled north until they came to a high road looping back. Hatless, in civilian clothes, they meandered westward, the gleaming profile of the Emerald City always at their left shoulders. The sun rose, shone for a while, and then became cloaked in cloud. By nightfall they’d reached the outskirts of Westgate. Liir wanted to keep on toward the Shale Shallows, until he could recognize one of the tracks that led southeast through the oakhair forest, between the great lakes, and back toward Apple Press Farm.

But their limbs, by now, would go no farther, so they counted up their coin. As night fell, colder than the one before, they presented themselves at the door of a ramshackle tavern and inn on the main Kellswater Road. A sign reading WELCOME ARMS dangled on a broken hinge from the lamppost. The Gillikin River ran close by, gurglingly, and bare willows hung over it like ghostly harps.

“Oh, there’s not much by way of rooms tonight, only two,” said the matron, a tall spindly older woman whose unkempt grey hair spilled from her bonnet. “The locals shivareed a new married couple last night, don’t you know, so the best room is a mess. I wouldn’t put my own disgusting mother in there. They’ll pay, that lot, but meanwhile I’m shy of chambers. I don’t want to give you the big room, as I often have a party arriving from the City an hour after the close of gates, don’t you know, and they pay government rates. Very nice little sinecure for a widow on her own. But up top a’that there’s a space not much used. No fireplace, mind, but I’ll gift you with extra blankets. You’re young and hot and you won’t notice.”

She rustled them a supper, buckled mutton with a side of tadmuck, stringy and dried out but warm enough to satisfy

. Perhaps a bit lonely, she poured them drinks of yellow wine, and kept them company through the first bottle and the second. But then there were horses in the yard, and she stirred herself to her feet, yawning. “It’s the trade I was hoping for, so if it’s all the same to you, gentlemen, I’ll leave you to a good slumber if you please.”

They found their way. The flight of steps led only to their chamber. The small room was an architectural afterthought, the result of a failed attempt at dignity, a mansarded cap on the larger guest dormitory below. Cold, indeed. More a storage space with a feather bed in it than a chamber for guests. A tall round-topped, gabled window was set in the middle of each slanting wall.

Liir sat down, weighted with fatigue and a little tipsy, on the edge of a trunk. The thing was felted with dust. They shouldn’t have to pay a penny for this attic.

Trism left to wash in the sink on the landing. Liir stared at shadows, seeing nothing. The smell, the sight, the notion of killing dragons—and what would Elphaba have thought of that?

But he wasn’t Elphaba; most days he was barely Liir.

He’d gone to get the broom, only, so he could fly for the Birds, ambassador for them. Then they would pay him by looking for Nor—or so they said. How could he identify her? He didn’t even know what she looked like after all this time.

Then, he’d done more. He’d murdered the herd of dragons. The Birds would be able to fly free now. He wouldn’t need to fly with them or for them: he’d removed the deterrence.

Trism came back. “Asleep sitting up?” Water slicked down the blond hairs on his thighs. He didn’t smell sweet and soapy, just less sour. His green tunic, unbuttoned at the neck and released from the belted leggings, was long enough to preserve modesty and serve as a nightshirt. “I think our dame has got the custom she hoped for, by the sound of it. More bottles opening downstairs. Hope they don’t keep us awake; they’ll be sleeping right under us.”

Ratty brocaded drapes, dating from no later than the days of the Ozma Regent, hung thickly on either side of the windows. Liir regarded the four separate glimpses of night: night north, south, east, and west.

“Come to bed,” said Trism. “It’s freezing.”

Liir didn’t answer.

“Come on. Why not?”

“The moonlight,” he said at last. “It’s so—seeing.”

“Well, I’m not going to go to sleep until you lie down. Do you think I’m going to turn my back so you can stick a knife in me? I remember that line: he will pay for his offenses.”

“That was theatrical.” Liir shuddered. “It’s the moon, I guess,” he said.

Trism got up and moved across the floor, huffing in irritation. “Paranoia. Very attractive. No one can see in windows this high, Liir. But we’ll block the moon for you, then.” The sills of the windows were three feet from the floor, and the columnar bulk of the heavy drapes rose six feet higher than that. Trism said, “Move, you,” and nudged Liir off the trunk, which he dragged to the first window. From there Trism climbed to the windowsill, his clean bare feet pawing in the grit and dust for purchase.

He reached up. The curtains hadn’t been shifted in decades, and they resisted. He grunted. The light of the moon fell on his ear tips, his lifting shoulders as his fingers just grazed the center of the curtain rod and walked their way east and west toward the edges of the drapes.

“Oh, company,” he said. “Those horses in the yard—five of them. They’ve got the Emperor’s caparisons. This is a soldiers’ sleepery.”

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