“We’re not likely to meet a commanding officer here,” said Liir, “I suppose.”
“Anything’s possible. Tastes vary. Doubt it, though.”
On their third round, Liir began. “You were special forces, weren’t you? Back then?”
“To the Unnamed God, we’re all special,” said Trism. Liir was unsure if he heard sarcasm in the rejoinder. “Minor Menacier back then.”
“Husbandry, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, the lad’s sharper than he looks. Yeah, husbandry, for a time.”
“Not now?”
“I don’t like to talk about my work when I’m out larking.”
“But I’m curious. Sounded very important. We dug the foundations for that new building—the stables.”
“Basilica.”
“That’s right. I remember now. No stables below?”
“Look, it’s Sillipede. The very one. A living legend. She must be ninety.” An extremely odd, angular creature was being hoisted onto a small stage. Behind her, whisking spittle from the mouthpiece of her willow flute, stood a young woman dressed in little more than golden epaulets slapped strategically about her body. A couple of Bears opened their music cases and began to turn pegs to tune up: an Ugabumish guitar, a violinsolo. “So few Animals with real jobs, but if you drummed Animals entirely out of the music business, nobody’d hear a note.”
Sillipede began to warble. She was so old that it was impossible to tell if she was a man or a woman, nor if she was trying to make an attempt to imitate either her own or the opposite gender. In the cracked and breathy voice, though, the singer still had considerable power, and the room quietened down somewhat. Liir had to wait for the first number to end before continuing his remarks.
“I mean, specifically, dragons,” he said through the applause.
“Hush, you’re not being polite,” said Trism. “Isn’t she something?”
“Something or something else or something else again. Maybe not to my taste. Do we have to stay?”
“And give up our good seats? Have one more beer and let’s see the first set through, anyway.”
Sillipede bumbled her way through some difficult patches, talking more than she sang. She lit a cigarette halfway through one number and burnt her fingers, and told her backup to can it. “I’m hardly myself tonight,” she told the crowd, “what with this dreadful heathen holiday approaching. Lurlinemas. Can you believe the Emperor in his goodness allows any reminder of those archaic superstitions? Can you believe that he in his goodness? Can you believe his goodness? I mean, can you? I’m asking you a question here.”
The room was silent. Was she spinning out a comic story or was she losing her marbles? She took a drag on her smoke.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I can see on the faces of those of you who still have faces that you’re afraid you’ve wandered into a conventicle of traitors instead of a comeback concert. Please. Relax. If we get raided and we all end up in Southstairs, I’ll lead singalongs on the weekends. I will. That’s a promise.”
The flautist relieved an itch beneath one of the epaulets.
“I’m not proselytizing. Neither for the Unnamed God nor against its holy un-name. That would be plain old sedition, and frankly at my age, I’m just not up to it.” She made a face. “Sedition is unthinkable. Although to say something is ‘unthinkable’ is, of course, to have been able to think of it. And I’m at the age where I’m losing language faster than I’m gaining it. I don’t know what sedition means anymore. I never said it. I never never said the word screwy, did I? Did I say the word complicity?”
Someone in the back muttered something a little ugly. Sillipede said, “I can see you back there squirming. You and your sour puss. Don’t get out much, do we? You remind me of someone. You remind me of someone that I would find really annoying. What’re you getting so feisty about? I’m just taking a cigarette break. Shooting the breeze. If you think I’m being unscrupulous, give me a break: I’m too old to have scruples anymore. Where would I put them?”
“What is she on about?” muttered Liir.
“She’s going to end up either in prison or the ward for the incurably old,” said Trism. He was red in the face. “Maybe you’re right; we better go.”
But they couldn’t get up while she was in her monologue: that would single them out for her catcalling, draw attention their way. She’d be all over them.
She wandered a bit in the crowd. Now she looked more like an old man in makeup, now like an old woman trying to look young. She looked more human than anything else, though that didn’t necessarily mean handsome. Liir prayed she wouldn’t come over and start talking to him. He had a strong feeling she would.
Under the table, Trism reached for his hand and squeezed it. He was more nervous than Liir. This place wasn’t sanctioned by the Home Guard, Liir guessed, and Trism would be in serious jeopardy if things got any hotter. Liir detached his hand.
“I’m a ditsy old relic, don’t mind me,” said Sillipede. “You young things take everything so seriously. But you don’t remember the bad old days of the Wizard. The drought. How we lived back then. How we laughed! Hah. A lark. And hardly anyone stood up to him. Only some fool witch from the hinterlands. And we all know what happens to witches.”
Someone hissed.
“These days are so much better,” the creature said. “Ask Sillipede. Sillipede knows. I’m old enough to remember when the Ozma Regent was still the crowned head of the nation, and baby Ozma a little bundle of coos and poos. I’m so old I was already retired when the Wizard arrived and set things to rights. Hard times then! Things are better now, ain’t they? Well, depends on your outlook, I guess. If things ain’t actually better, they sure are gooder.
“These times,” she continued, “so righteous! Everyone so much more moral! Put some clothes on your nakedness, girl, or the vice squad’ll be down our throats. Or down your throat, anyway, if you look at ’em like that.”
The flutist looked as nonplussed as the audience.
“You got to hold on to your values, if you can still reach them,” said the chanteuse. “Buy some values, rent ’em, steal ’em if you have to. Sell ’em for a profit when tastes change. Whatever works. Is this a crock, or what?”
She regained the small stage and put her hand to her eyes, shading the flare of the lights. “I can see you. I know you’re there,” she said. “I know you’re in there somewhere. I can wait.” She signaled the Bear on bass and said, “A torch song about lost hopes, Skoochums, how ’bout. For old time’s sakes. In the key of E, Harrikin. No, not B. I said E—E for Elphaba. One. Two. Three. Whatever.”
The Bear lazily thwacked out a bass run, and Sillipede drew a breath, but then spoke again, interrupting the intro. “And that other problem, all that graffiti! I saw it again on my way here, scrawled on some library wall. ‘Elphaba lives!’ What’s that supposed to mean? I ask you. Isn’t it just too much? Why don’t they keep their sloppy old slogans to themselves? Elphaba lives! As if.”
She flicked her cigarette butt into someone’s lager. “Now I just feel all riled up and alive. This ain’t happened since I left double digits. So I am going to sing a beautiful old hymn to prove it to you. Anyone who’s with the Emperor can stand and sing it with me, to show we’re not just scratching our balls here, are we, folks?”
The band patched together an intro and Sillipede sauntered into a familiar melody. The patrons of the place were irritated, a bit unnerved by the theatrics, and unsure who was being made fools of: the Emperor, the Unnamed God, Sillipede herself, or them—or anyone idiotic enough to take a position against the Palace. But the song was balm itself—devotional, a bit flowery, familiar. Complexities gave way to the simpler sentiments. People stood and sang in defiance of Sillipede’s posturing. In the shadows and shuffling, Liir and Trism escaped. Trism grabbed Liir’s hand as if he might try to duck away; Liir couldn’t help squeezing back. He was wound up. E for Elphaba. It was as if, these years later, he’d finally attended h
er wake.
4
THEY WALKED ALONG a quay in the Lower Quarter. Elsewhere in Oz it was probably snowing, but with the warm smoke of ten thousand coal fires, Liir and Trism felt only a particulate moisture in the air, part rain, part mist. Flames burning in lampposts gave off a pulsing, melon-colored glow.
“Mustn’t be late, I assume,” said Liir.
“One can hear the bells of the basilica all over the City. These days of the New Piety, they ring on the half hour. We’ve some time yet.”
“That place made you tense. Where’re we going?”
“I’ve been there before, but not on Treason Night.”
“You think that was treasonous?” Liir was aghast. “I thought it”—he governed his language—“only stupid.”
“She’d do better to keep her opinions to herself. Or organize them first, anyway. I wasn’t even sure what she was on about, but it takes something like whiskey courage to pretend that much skepticism about the Apostle Emperor. He’s a good fellow. The people love him. I myself feel flattered to have met him personally.”
“You have? Really? What’s he like?”
Trism shot him a look. “Of course I have. I was with you the first time it happened. The night before you lot shipped out? Remember? He offered us his carriage. He was cynical and louche then, as I remember. A lost soul. His Awakening hadn’t happened.”
“The Emperor of Oz…no. Shell? Shell Go-to-hell Thropp?”
“The First Spear himself. Can you really not have known? Where have you been? The moon?”
The very paving stones on the quay seemed more slippery. “I don’t get it. Everyone talks about the Emperor’s…his virtue. Shell was the last person to have any virtue. He was a spy, wasn’t he—didn’t someone say? Anyway, he used extract of poppyflower to opiate the young women in Southstairs and fuck them silly. I know that for a fact.”
“Well, who better to speak for the Unnamed God, then, than one who has sinned so egregiously? Talk about your recoveries…the Awakening happened, and he heard the voice of the Unnamed God, telling him to lead. You know his sisters were the two witches? Nessarose and Elphaba Thropp?”
Liir felt ill. “It’s just too…uncanny. Too unlikely.”
“Not as unlikely as all that. Who is exempt from the claw of salvation? The more sinful you are, the more likely salvation can take root. His father was a unionist minister, after all. A missionary, I think.”
“He’s a charlatan, Shell is.”
“May have been once. Don’t think so now. He believes he was Awakened in order to lead Oz through this desperate time.”
“Are we so desperate that we need the likes of him—”
“Well, you tell me,” said Trism. His voice had gone lower, intimate. He leaned in and almost put his chin on Liir’s shoulder. “How desperate are any of us at any given moment? Hmmm? Are any of us so desperate that we might, say, attack an unarmed rural settlement at night and burn it into the river?”
Liir pivoted to glare at Trism, who reached out and pinned Liir’s right arm behind his back, whispering, “You shitty little creep.”
“Let me go. What is this? A one-person tribunal? A vendetta? Let me go. Where are we?” In the mist Liir had lost his bearings. “How do you know anything about me? And what’s it to you? I was doing the Emperor’s work, Trism. Your precious leader. His bidding. Let me go.”
“I’m going to beat your head in and then shove your sorry carcass into the water.” By now Trism had both of Liir’s hands behind his back, and Trism was kicking at cobbles randomly, to find one that was loose and use it for braining.
Liir struggled. Trism, in military trim, was fitter and had had the advantage of surprise. To yell wouldn’t help: a police force would side with Trism at once. “Look,” Liir said, trying not to sound terrified. “I’m bone tired. What do you care about what happened south of Qhoyre? Aren’t you a company man? Head office mastered that situation in a flash, I’ve heard.”
“I heard what you did. How could I not? Soldiers gossip worse than housewives. Because of that attack, the Quadlings around Qhoyre struck out at Cherrystone’s garrison. You lost some of your buddies, buddy. And then the Emperor called up his brand-new defensive system and deployed it against the natives.”
Liir began to get it. “Oh ho. But that was your specialty. Those were your dragons.”
“I was one of the team. Prime Menacier of the division. Right. And I’d been told the dragons were to be held in abeyance, paraded for show on Holy Action Day. The annual display of military might and moral purpose. Scare the rabble and comfort the nervous. Nothing like good defenses to allow citizens to sleep well at night.”
“And you believed every word of what was told you, and never meant to hurt a fly. I know that story. Let me go, Trism. Come on. You’re hurting me.”
“I’ve only started to hurt you. Get used to it. Because of your fucking about, the dragons were called up from their catacombs. And you haven’t seen merciless until you’ve seen those beasts at work.”
Liir was near to spitting. “I have seen merciless, Trism. As it happens. I was attacked by your little trained pets.”
It was Trism’s turn to start, and with the advantage, Liir tried to pull away. He half managed, but they ended up in a tumble on the pavement, fighting. They rolled in puddles and a plod of horse dung, and Trism ended up on top, his knees on Liir’s chest.
“I’m going to kill you. I saw you standing there on the playground, and I thought: there is an Unnamed God, and it has delivered you to me to kill. Your cruel actions have sentenced me to a life more wretched than anything you have known. Once the military strategists saw what the dragons could do, nothing for it but that they should be used again. Trained more precisely. My life is chained to the job of perfecting the killing capacity of those creatures.” He was as close to wailing as yelling, and Liir saw now what he hadn’t noticed so far: Trism bon Cavalish was a shattered person.
“Kill me then,” Liir said. “It’ll make you feel a whole lot better, I can just tell. And maybe me, too, the way things are going. But hear me out first. It was the Emperor’s word that started this whole thing. He required Cherrystone to invent an incident. Maybe he wanted a reason to launch a dragony attack all along, I don’t know. I was doing the bidding of my company commander.”
“And that’s all I’m doing, and between us there’s hundreds and hundreds dead, and more hundreds living in terror, and even more hundreds ready to kill us back, if they could only find a way.”
Liir let Trism sob. Well, he didn’t have much choice. Trism’s nose dripped on Liir’s face, but Liir couldn’t lift his arms to wipe it off. “We’re more or less in the same boat, you know,” Liir said in as even a voice as the sentiment allowed, when Trism had regained some composure. “We’ve both done some serious damage.”
Trism took a huge breath, nodded, and then removed his knees from Liir’s chest. Liir sat up and, as discreetly as he could, shook the snot off his forehead.
5
THEY WALKED ACROSS the Law Courts Bridge and disappeared into the alleys and courtyards of the Lower Quarter. The place teemed with charlatans, addicts, and runaways; it stunk of sizzling night sausage and sewage, and rang with the laughter of the mad. We belong nowhere else, thought Liir; better get accustomed to it.
They could talk, though, without fear of being overheard; and in not looking at each other they could say more.
Trism bon Cavalish was the chief dragon master. He wasn’t governor of the dragon stables, but he trained the creatures with a sure hand and a regulating eye. He had the longest tenure on the staff. His work required him to follow the exploits of the dragons and fine-tune their training.
He knew that a pack of dragons from the west had returned with a broom and a cape, though he didn’t know where this bounty had come from. Liir, of all places! Trism knew about the scrapings of the missionary maunts, among, it turned out, several dozen others.
“Scrapings,” said Liir wi
th a shudder. Candle had mentioned such a thing. “I hardly know what it means…”
The claws are sharp as razors, oppositional pinchers like a human thumb and forefinger, Trism explained. A human can build a miniature ship in an empty jeroboam, and a dragon can remove a face with as few as nine incisions.
Trism was curt. “Don’t ask me for the rationale. I know one thing: the dragons only go after the young. They’re trained that way.” He squared his shoulders. “I trained them that way. The theory is that when the young are brought down in their prime, it is more—alarming—useful—than if some old codger or crone is bumped off.”
Why hadn’t the dragons scraped Liir’s face? He was young enough. Maybe they thought the broom and cape were all the trove they needed. Or maybe they saw something in Liir that stopped them.
“But maunts!” Liir said. “Young women devoting their lives to the service of the Unnamed God? It doesn’t figure.”
Trism explained that the old maunteries, with their traditions of independence, didn’t suit the leadership style of the Emperor. The Apostle of the Unnamed God—
“What’s all this about the Apostle?”
“That’s what the Emperor calls himself. The humblest of the humble has been exalted by the Unnamed God. So the Apostle feels obliged to exercise the authority granted him.” It seemed that some of the maunteries about Oz were led by older women raised in an archaic scholastic tradition. Some superiors were becoming dangerously out of touch with the needs of the common folk, and fell to asking bothersome questions about the spiritual authority of the Emperor. Such foment could only erode the confidence of the nation.
“Is that it?” asked Liir. “Is this a moment of foment?”
“I’m not privy to the thinking. Information’s meted out on a need-to-know basis. But I’ve heard the western tribes were close to uniting by treaty, to defend against City interests in their land. The dragon attacks could confound the tribes, cause them to mistrust one another, if they didn’t know who was behind the attacks.