A/N: Aaaaand the latest chapter, ladies and gentlemen - the second round of my penance for the ridiculously long disruption to the schedule! It's been slightly chainsawed for the sake of length, but with any luck, you'll find it up to my usual standards of work - I can but hope, utterly madhatted egotist that I am!
Caliax: I'm glad we've gotten back to the real Elphaba too, though we might have to wait a bit for some Glinda scenes. I was going to include them in this chapter, but they ended up disrupting the tone - and plus, they were lacking a bit on the sweet and precious side. I'll be able to supply those scenes in the next chapter, with all the gloom and revelations balanced by some scenes of a precious, sweet and (above all) uplifting nature. I hope you enjoy this chapter despite this notable deficiency.
Nami Swannn: Yes, he has made a name for himself - quite literally - though he probably would argue that he isn't really Boq anymore. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep him as likeable as possible.
CurlyHairedWookie: I really like your review - I can't remember the last time any reviewer included "pterodactyl screeches" - and I'm glad I was able to provide a welcome birthday present. Hopefully, this chapter will prove as enjoyable as the last one.
So, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: {INSERT RED STAMP INDICATING NON-OWNERSHIP OF WICKED HERE}
For a time, Elphaba could only gawp in disbelief.
She'd thought there'd been something familiar about Dr Kiln back when she'd first met him; she'd wondered to herself if those murky blue eyes had looked familiar; she'd questioned him on how he'd gotten close enough to the Empress to get some idea of her behaviour, even managing to spook him when she'd asked him if he'd been one of the mage-surgeons who'd "reinvented" themselves. But the events of Loamlark had swept her suspicions from memory, especially when she'd started wondering about the medic instead; even after her latest dream-memory, witnessing the other Boq's recruitment into the Pottery and his studies in mage-surgery, she'd never been able to put the clues together until Kiln's impromptu unmasking.
And if she had, would she ever have really believed that the mage-surgeon was Boq, of all people?
Then again, she reflected sheepishly, it wasn't as if this was the first time Boq had been transformed beyond recognition. It was hard to tell which of the two had changed more, though: the Tin Man, a heartless facsimile of his former self, fuelled by all the anger and hatred that Boq had done his best to bury… or Dr Kiln, a man who'd reinvented himself so thoroughly that he might as well have been a complete stranger. His face, his height, his skin, even the shape of his skull had been extensively modified over the last few decades of this strange world's history: by now, the only thing he had in common with the Boq she'd known were his eyes – and the fact that he was technically still working for Glinda.
Eventually, the sound of Kiln's renewed laughter slowly trickled through her musings, and Elphaba hastily returned to reality. Fortunately, Kiln still hadn't made any attempt to escape, nor did he seem to be considering it: at the moment, he was currently doffing the remains of his disguise, allowing the tattered flaps of skin to melt back into his body, and peeling his gloves off to reveal the familiar mass of writhing tendrils beneath. And all throughout the slow transformation, his eyes remained carefully fixed on Elphaba, an ever-so-slightly nervous edge to his smile.
Elphaba took a deep breath, forcing herself to concentrate on the here-and-now: as astonishing as the last few minutes had been, she still had questions that needed answering, and she couldn't afford to waste what little time she had left before reveille. So, hastily wiping the look of bewilderment off her face and replacing it with her very best baleful stare, she whispered, "Alright, Boq…"
Kiln opened his mouth, but after the previous round of dream-memories, Elphaba could already guess what he was about to say. "Or Mr Heart," she corrected herself, "Or Dr Kiln, or whatever you call yourself these days – that doesn't matter right now. We can discuss your identity and reminisce on the good old days later, preferably when I'm certain that I'm not going to turn into a living pincushion the next time I go to bed. I want to know what you've been drugging me with, I want to know why, and I want to know right now."
Dr Kiln sighed. "I knew you'd find out someday," he mused. If his soothing near-monotone had wavered in the past, now it had disappeared entirely: now, with disappointment and exasperation layered thickly across his voice and his semi-hysterical laughter fading into the distance, he almost sounded like a regular human being – though he still couldn't have been mistaken for Boq in a million years. "With all the steps we were taking, it was inevitable that you'd catch on sooner or later… but I didn't expect it to be this soon." He smiled bemusedly, and very slowly closed his eyes. "Alright. There's not much point keeping quiet now that the cat's out of the bag; so, I'll explain as best I can. All I ask is that you hear me out, and try not to judge us too harshly."
"I can't promise anything."
"Can you at least let me sit up? It's a cold night, it'll soon be an even colder morning, and I'd rather if I didn't spend the first hour of it with my back pressed against an extremely damp rooftop. So if you could please loosen your grip…"
Elphaba was halfway through considering this, when a loud voice from below them roared, "What's going on up there?"
Peering tentatively over the edge of the roof, she was almost blinded by a spotlight shone from somewhere below her; shading her eyes with a hand, she saw that a small crowd of local police and militia had flooded the streets below, all of them armed with brand-new rifles and all of them clearly ready to fire at a moment's notice. With a flush of embarrassment, Elphaba belatedly realized just how much noise she must have made during the flight from the hotel and the ensuing brawl: certainly, there'd been more than enough to wake up just about everyone in the immediate neighbourhood and get the attention of every single watchman on patrol – it was just lucky that she hadn't managed to alert the rest of the garrison in the process.
"Miss Thropp?" bellowed one of the militiamen. "Izzat you? What's the situation?"
"False alarm!" she sheepishly called back, hoping that none of them could see her blushing.
"Well make sure it doesn't happen again, and if it does, keep the noise down, okay? We've got people trying to sleep down here, and they don't want to be woken up by anything other than a full-scale attack."
There was a long pause, as the police slowly vanished into the gloom of the surrounding streets, and the noise of marching feet gave way to the familiar sounds of night gradually bleeding into morning. Then, at long last, Elphaba finally released her magical grip on Kiln, allowing him to awkwardly haul himself into a sitting position.
"With that out of the way," she continued hesitantly. "Let's get to those questions: first of all, who's this "us" you keep talking about? Who sent you?"
"The Mentor, of course," said Kiln plainly. "Who else would it be? You're not seriously thinking that I'd actually defect to Unbridled Radiance after almost four decades of faithful service to the Deviant Nations?"
"I haven't exactly seen those four decades in the dream-memories just yet, in case you didn't know; in fact, what I have seen of you seems to involve you being recruited by the Empress and serving her faithfully. In the absence of any further evidence, what the hell else was I supposed to think?"
"Fair enough," the mage-surgeon conceded. "But if that's the conclusion you've drawn, then why haven't you called the guards yet?"
"Shock. Plus, I know for a fact that you're still the Mentor's personal physician: if you were really working for the enemy, she'd have died a long time ago – and I have to presume the Mentor didn't send you out here because she'd found out that you were a spy and sent you out here to get mowed down by the invaders."
"Well, there are much more efficient ways of playing Whack The Rat, of course."
"As for why you're here… were you really sent out here just to drug me?"
"Of course not: the drugging was just one of the duties I was assigned. You see, the Mentor essentially loaned me to you as a private medic to ensure that you'd receive the very best of medical attention in the event that you were hurt in the field. And before you ask, no, she didn't think the regular medics and mage-surgeons were up to the task; apparently, none of them had the skill or experience to treat the injuries you'd likely suffer."
"And how would they be any different to the injuries that the others would suffer?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe a potent mixture of extraordinary magical power and astonishing recklessness in the face of danger."
"Har har har."
In hindsight, it was almost insultingly obvious: after all the effort that had gone into testing Elphaba's allegiance and recruiting her for the Irredeemables, the Mentor wouldn't have sent her off to Loamlark without making sure that she'd live long enough to be of use to the war effort; no, she'd have wanted to keep her investment safe and sound. Looking back on all the clues, Elphaba could only curse herself for not realizing the truth sooner: the medic had been hovering over her from the moment she'd sat down in the troop carrier, and he'd been the first of the platoon to follow her into the city, even following her directly into battle that same day; and in all that time, she'd never seen him heal anyone other than herself. And the facial alterations! Why hadn't she thought that blubbery, face-concealing skein might actually be a mask? Why had she dismissed it as just another mage-surgeon's private fancy? She sighed furiously, already knowing the answer: the Mentor expected her to be too busy worrying about the battle to pay too much attention to the medic's activities, and she'd been absolutely right – up until now.
"But what about the drug?" she continued.
By way of an answer, Kiln reached into the depths of his coat and held out a miniscule vial of silver-grey powder. "Orecantheum dust," he explained. "Witch-Diamond. Witch-Crystal. Magic Itching Powder, if you're feeling informal. Of course, if you've ever been allowed into classified military research, it's just called "the stimulant." Not exactly the most accurate name we could think of, though: normal stimulants only provide temporary improvements to the user; the enhancements generated by Orecantheum are permanent and quite irreversible."
"And what is this stuff supposed to enhance?"
"Magical power: every dose taken increases thaumaturgical vigour, allowing the use of more demanding spells for longer periods of time before tiring; in your case, it also boosts your own intrinsic magical energies. I've been giving you fifty milligrams of stimulant twice daily ever since you accepted the Mentor's offer, and I'm already noticing substantial gains in strength and stamina – particularly during that chase back there."
"But why do I even need the powder? I mean, if I'm not powerful enough for the Mentor's purposes, then why even bother hiring me in the first place? Why not give the powder to any old witch or wizard and see what they could do with it?"
"Because, Elphaba, you're the only candidate worthy of the risks involved."
"What do you mean?"
"You and the Empress have the same potential, remember? You mightn't have witnessed last night's attack on Greenspectre, but you saw the damage she inflicted on it – once she brought down our border defences: that was barely a faction of the power she's able to wield; the only reason she doesn't simply hammer our cities into submission every other hour of the day is because… well, partly because we have magicians of our own, but mainly because the Empress has some warped sense of charity to her citizens. She likes to cement their loyalty through miracles: she cures the sick, she brings rainstorms to drought-ravaged areas, she ends famines through fast-grown crops, she makes amulets and talismans for favoured communities and garrisons, she weaves the enchantments that protect the borders… and of course, she also rains hellfire and pestilence upon her other enemies before they can set up alliances with the Deviant Nations. Oh, she could easily just delegate the tasks to an underling or two, but she wants to be seen as a saviour… and she likes to micromanage, of course. So, less overall energy to spend on beating us into submission, not to mention less time, given that she still has to govern the territories she's performing these miracles for."
"And she wants to convert the Deviant Nations rather than just destroy them, right?"
"That, too. But the point is, her potential is virtually unlimited and her power is increasing every year… and when I say "unlimited," I do mean exactly that. The Mentor's experts – myself included – have been studying your other self's energy output over the years, and it's showing no signs of weakening or even slowing its development: every year, the miracles are more extraordinary, the bombardments all the more devastating, and the intermissions between each act get shorter and shorter; less and less of these wonders are performed through complicated spells or rituals, and more through the power of her will alone. And we started to ask ourselves "just how long will it take until the Empress seizes control of reality itself? How long before she just wills her armies over the border and reduces our defences to dust with a passing thought?" Not exactly the most pleasant thought in the world is it?"
"But it's much worse than that, isn't it? I've seen enough of the dream-memories and the modern evidence: thanks to Morrible's spell, the Empress is effectively immortal by now, right? Well, I have to assume that she's immortal, given that she's still hale and hearty even after all these years. She doesn't age, she doesn't sicken, she doesn't need replacement parts or repairs like the Purified – and if what I've in most recent memories are still accurate, she barely needs to eat or sleep. So unless someone manages to find a way of killing her, old age isn't going to keep her from getting even more powerful."
"Correct. Hence why we needed to find a counter for her abilities, and ultimately decided that the best candidate would be you. As her alternate self, you have the same potential, but we can't afford to wait fifty years for you to catch up with the Empress – an unlikely prospect anyway; so, the Mentor decided that we would have to unlock your potential through the use of Orecantheum: it's a rough method, and it'll take several months of regular doses to get you anywhere near the Empress's level of raw strength, but within a few weeks, I think you'll be powerful enough to directly oppose her without being blasted out of existence on the spot."
"You mentioned risks, too."
Kiln sighed, offering a smile that was probably meant to look reassuring, but ended up looking horribly anxious. "Ah. Indeed I did. Well, as with all drugs, Orecatheum dust has side-effects. Well, it's not so much a side-effect and more of an effect, but-"
"Dr Kiln…"
"Sorry, sorry. You see, the enhancements to magic all have to come from somewhere, and… well, it's called Witch-Diamond for a reason, you see: with every dose, the body undergoes an extremely subtle alchemical transmutation, converting small portions of its tissues into crystal. This substance is highly conductive to magical energies, allowing the wielder a greater affinity for spellcasting and – in your case – channelling raw thaumaturgical current. The trouble is, the conversion process will continue with every dose, and more and more of your body will be transmuted into crystal."
"I see," Elphaba hissed. "And am I in any immediate danger of losing anything vital? My heart, for example? Or my brain?"
"Not at the moment, no: most conversions at this early stage are usually restricted to the epidermis, usually on the back and-"
"Shoulders," she finished. "I found a crystal growing there just a few minutes before I caught you spiking my coffee. But just how extreme can this transmutation get?"
"Uh…" Kiln floundered for a moment or two, his eyes darting from left to right in a very Boq-like expression of nervousness. "It's never been seen, but… well, it's theoretically possible for users to be completely transmuted into crystal."
"Theoretically?"
"Well, the more advanced the crystallization, the more debilitating it becomes to normal bodily functions, and… well, I'm sure you don't really want to-"
Elphaba held up a hand. "Kiln, I'm not really interested in hearing censored details: I want to know if this little scheme might end up killing me, and I'd like to know what my chances of survival are. If that's alright with the Mentor, of course," she added sarcastically.
Kiln sighed. "Once you've left the comparative safety of the primary and secondary stages of crystallization, the chances of long-term survival get progressively lower: long-time users have been left permanently crippled from crystallizations in the legs and spine, or dependent on life-support enchantments due to large-scale cardiovascular transmutation. And yes, there've been a few users who've ended up permanently brain-damaged when the crystallization started occurring inside their skulls – and those were the ones who weren't killed outright. And then there's the overdoses. They're… not nice."
"… Could you be a bit more specific?"
"They tend to involve rapid and fatal cases of full-body crystallization," said Kiln, suddenly unable to return Elphaba's horrified stare. "And a lot of collateral damage when the magical backlash kicks in. Suffice to say, there's a very good reason this stimulant's never been used outside of classified operations – and only ones where command's been assured that the gains outweigh the risks."
Elphaba took a very deep breath, furiously massaging her temples with trembling hands. "In other words, I'm the only witch powerful enough to serve as the exact kind of weapon you need to end the war for good, and thus the only one suited to be pumped full of volatile drugs until my eyeballs fall out and shatter. Wonderful. Why the hell didn't you tell me what might happen?!"
For the first time in a while, Kiln looked almost annoyed. "If we'd given you the stuff up front – just handed you a vial and told you to administer as needed – with the proviso of "it'll help you defeat the empress, but it'll kill you if you overdo the dosage and turn you into conductive crystal anyway," would you have agreed to take it?"
"Oh come on, you can do better than that."
"And if you'd thought it would get you home sooner? If it meant getting Glinda back to Oz and as far away from Unbridled Radiance as possible, would you have accepted the drugs?"
Elphaba blinked. "I… I don't know," she admitted.
"The Mentor and I remember you all too well, Elphaba: brilliant, courageous, headstrong… and almost suicidally self-sacrificing. And when a cause close to your heart was on the line or when someone you loved was in danger, you'd stop being headstrong and start being dangerously reckless. So, with past incidents in mind, we decided it would be safest if you didn't learn about the nasty little shortcuts you could take, and set you up with a doctor experienced in treating the symptoms of Orecatheum overdose – just in case."
"I don't like being manipulated," Elphaba snarled, her anger flaring once again.
"I know. The Elphaba I knew didn't much like it either-"
"-up until she went mad and started manipulating everyone else instead, I know, I've seen it! You don't have to keep reminding me!" She took a deep breath. "And I presume I've got to get used to the manipulation, haven't I? Especially from the Mentor. Until I shape up and march in a straight line like a good little soldier, she'll just keep lying to me, or hiding something from me, or baiting me with some promise or another… and if I step out of line too far, she's still keeping Glinda around as a bargaining chip."
Kiln's cadaverous face softened. "She's not the Wizard, Elphaba," he said gently. "She's not doing this to expand her control or to glorify herself: she's doing this because it might just allow the Deviant Nations to survive the war. I imagine she's told you of what's at stake, but I doubt she's told you of the lengths she's had to go to just to keep the Deviant Nations from being consumed by Empress's madness – not in great detail, anyway. I imagine you'll learn for yourself sooner or later, but until then, you can at least know that she's nothing like the dictators you've encountered in the past. Plus," he added, "You were the one who insisted that Glinda should stay back at the palace."
"Because I thought it was safe there at the time!"
"And it is safe. The Mentor isn't going to harm your friend, believe me: we're having enough trouble with one Elphaba trying to wipe us off the map; any more than that, and we might as well break out the suicide pills."
Silence settled across the rooftop for a moment.
"This is turning out to be an alliance for the ages, isn't it?" Elphaba remarked at last. "I can't trust her to be honest with me, and she doesn't trust me to follow orders. We're really off to good start, aren't we?"
"Well, look at it from the Mentor's perspective: she's already losing hope for anyone who's not approaching the war effort with utter fanaticism, and she knows that you're only doing this because you hope that it might allow you and Glinda to find a way home. Plus, she remembers just how rebellious you were. She's not exactly going to take an optimistic view of things, is she?"
"And what do you suggest I do? Just bow down and accept every single order without question?"
"No. All I'm saying is that you might want to think of other reasons for fighting on the Mentor's side: protecting Glinda's all well and good – after all, we all fight to protect those we love – but as for getting home… well, have you ever considered the fact that you might never go home again? For all we know, the portal that brought you into our world might have shut for good; and even if it's still open, there's no guaranteeing that it'll take you back to the Oz you know. In fact, from what little I recall of my studies into dimension travel, it'll just as likely send you to a dimension even more alien than this one."
"The possibility had occurred to me, Kiln, but I've got to try nonetheless. I mean, this isn't my world – and more importantly, it's not Glinda's world either: even if it's my duty to bring down the Empress once and for all, Glinda shouldn't have to be tangled up in a war that has almost nothing to do with her; doesn't she at least deserve a chance to go home?"
"She does… as do you. The question is, why would either of you want that chance at all?"
"… I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm a good listener, Elphaba: both you and Glinda have been very clear on what your lives were like back in the world you knew, and Mentor was kind enough fill in what little gaps were left. Respectable Ozian society declared you an outcast from the moment you were born, and spent over twenty years punishing you for daring to look different… before it declared you a fugitive for speaking out against the Wizard, of course. You spent the last few months being hunted from one end of the country to the next, and all your attempts at inspiring a revolution ended in failure because almost nobody outside the Animal populace could be bothered to listen to a single word of the truth; your sister was assassinated, your lover was tortured to death, your friendship with Glinda was strained to breaking point, and towards the end, you were intending to sit back and wait for the witch-hunters to catch up with you. As for Glinda, she was stuck in a job she hated, championing causes she didn't believe in and representing people she despised, forced to denounce you before all of Oz on a daily basis and spend the remainder of the day hating herself for it. And on top of everything else, she had to watch her fiancé being dragged off to be tortured to death, after finding out that he was in love with you, no less. Oh, and there's a distinct chance she'd probably be branded as one of your allies and face life in prison or outright execution if she ever found her way back home. So, with all that in mind, could you explain to me why exactly either of you would want to return to Oz?"
There was a long and distinctly uncomfortable pause.
After almost two minutes of embarrassed silence, Elphaba – now blushing a rich shade of avocado – could only shrug and say, "Well, there's no place like home."
"You might never see the place again anyway, Elphaba. So why fight just for a chance to go home if you'll never reach it? Why don't you make this world your home? You've already been accepted as one of the Irredeemables, so why not devote yourself to their ideals? I mean, I saw the footage of your initiation into the Irredeemables: you were happy – you were overjoyed that you'd found yourself in a group that suited you, that held the same beliefs you'd been nurturing all your life. You really want to try and think yourself apart from them?"
"Going for the hard sell, are we?"
"I'm not selling anything, Elphaba: I'm just saying that there are better things to fight for than the Oz you know – and that it might be a very good idea to have a very serious think about what motivates you. You can fight for the Irredeemables, you can fight to keep Glinda safe, you can fight to stop the threat of Unbridled Radiance from expanding any further – you can fight for anything you like, so long you can actually bring yourself to give a damn about it. At this point, anything is better than mindless mercenary desire."
And what motivates you, Dr Kiln? Elphaba silently wondered. Seriously, why are you working for the Mentor, fighting for the Irredeemables and the Deviant Nations? What I've seen of you in the dream-memories doesn't add up at this point: my other self supposedly broke your obsession with Glinda, so why are you working for the Mentor? Did you take a step backwards and start pining after her all over again? Or did you sign up for the sake of the cause? How much have you really changed since you joined the Pottery?
"Right now," Kiln rambled onwards, "you can say you want to return to Oz, but you're clearly not saying it with much in the way of conviction. So, why not-"
"Accept the Wizard's generosity? Oh, I beg your pardon – accept The Mentor's generosity?"
"You're a very negative person, you know that, don't you?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe it's just because my benefactor's been drugging me for the last few days? Or because said drugging was part of a scheme that still hasn't shown any results other than a potentially-lethal crystal growing out of my shoulder?"
Kiln's eyes narrowed. "No results?" he echoed.
"None. I mean, I've yet to see any sort of boost in magical power in the last few days, so you'll pardon me if I'm a little bit sceptical of you or the Mentor."
"How did we get up here, Elphaba?"
"Well, I chased you up the side of this building and onto this roof."
"And how did you chase after me?"
Elphaba wearily pinched the bridge of her nose and began silently counting to one hundred. "By flying," she said, in the slowest voice she could possibly use without actually spelling out each individual word for the benefit of the possibly brain-damaged listener.
"On your broomstick?"
"Yes! Obviously!"
"Then, if you don't mind me asking, where's the broomstick?"
Elphaba reached for the broomstick at her side, only to find it inexplicably missing; getting to her feet, she quickly realized that there was no sign of it anywhere else on the rooftop, and if it had tumbled over the side at any point in the last few minutes, there was no sign of it in the streets below. Even carefully scanning the alleyways and surrounding roofs showed no sign of it.
"You dropped it outside the hotel," explained Kiln, razor-thin lips curling upwards into a horrific-looking smile. "I'm pretty sure that first garbage can I threw at you knocked it out of your hand… but you didn't even notice: for the entire chase, you were flying under your own steam and you didn't even realize it. Up until now, you might have been able to perform the occasional split-second feat of self-levitation if you pushed yourself to the limit… but now, you can fly – probably only on instinct, and only for a few minutes at a time, but you can fly. And that's only the beginning, all thanks to that tiny crystal sprouting on your shoulder."
He laughed softly. "You always had it in you to be truly unlimited, Elphaba. It's just that now you're going to find yourself unlocking that potential a little sooner than expected."
And Elphaba couldn't help but shudder, the crystal in her back buzzing with almost imperceptible magical energies.
"And this is only the beginning?" she asked.
"Tip of the proverbial iceberg. Who knows? Maybe it'll be the one to sink Unbridled Radiance once and for all." That ghastly, thin-lipped smile once more. "Are you still interested?"
Elphaba bit her lip. "Alright," she said at last. "I'll take the drug… for now. But from now on, you'll tell me wether something's been dosed or not."
"Of course. And speaking of which, you didn't let me finish preparing that coffee for you…" This time, it wasn't just the vial of Orecantheum that emerged from Kiln's coat pocket, but a metal flask: unscrewing the lid and pausing only to waft the clouds of tantalizing steam away, he emptied the vial into the boiling mass of coffee – before handing it to Elphaba.
At first, she could only stare at it, wondering if she could really bring herself to drink it now that she knew what had been added to it.
If it means getting us home – or at least to safety – it'll be worth it, she told herself. If it means keeping Glinda safe, it'll be worth every single risk and every single sacrifice.
So, trying not to think of tiny crystals sprouting under her skin and colonizing her flesh from within, she lifted the flask to her lips and took the tiniest of sips. Then, once she was satisfied that she wasn't going to explode if she had another sip or three – and that Kiln hadn't used up all the sugar in Loamlark just to sweeten the damn thing – she went on drinking, trying to convince herself that the drink was just an ordinary cup of coffee, and failing every step of the way.
As it happened, the "only on instinct" part turned out to more accurate than expected: a few experiments revealed that she could only consciously levitate herself about half a foot in the air – at least until the dosage of stimulant continued. In any event, getting down from the building was something of an adventure: though Kiln had offered to carry her down, Elphaba had politely declined, resolving to hover her way down as gently as possible – allowing just enough gravity to filter through her levitation, slowly lowering her to the ground. It took about five minutes to make her way down all four stories, and the fact that Kiln had begun the journey by casually striding down the wall on suction-cupped feet only made things seem all the more onerous. The fact that this trip was conducted in near-total silence very nearly drove Elphaba mad.
It wasn't until she reached the ground and set off towards the hotel that Kiln finally broke the silence: "If I apologised," he asked quietly, "would you forgive me?"
Elphaba considered this as they rounded the corner, before finally answering, "What for? Drugging me for the last few days without my knowledge or consent? Lying to me? Manipulating me into acting out your employer's schemes?"
"Quite simply, yes. I hope you don't mind that I took so long in apologising… and I am genuinely sorry that I had to deceive you, even if it was necessary."
"Does my forgiveness really matter to you that much?"
"Well, given that we're now working together as equals, I was hoping that we could at least do so on a friendly basis. I thought an apology would be a good way to begin… but maybe after four decades of research and obsession, I've forgotten how to properly interact with anyone still possessed of their sanity. What do you think? Would you be willing to forgive me?"
In the pause that followed, Elphaba found herself absently wondering if passers-by could hear the sound of her grinding her teeth. "I might," she admitted, grudgingly. "The key word being might. You've got to earn my forgiveness if you really want it: if you're here as a medic, I want you to start acting like one – you're not a private doctor anymore, don't forget. I want to see you helping the other patients here, no matter what the Mentor says. Oh, and keep up the front-line combat: if you're good enough to conjure up a pair of glider wings on the spot, I expect you to be of more help on the battlefield."
"You're really determined to push my skills to their limits, aren't you?"
"Well, it's only fair I return the favour…"
Kiln laughed. "Just goes to prove my theory, I suppose. So, a challenge to my expertise as a mage-surgeon and my ethics as a doctor. Very well then."
"That's not all. There are a few other questions I want answered. See, if you want us to be friends, we'll have to be converse as equals – and that means no more secrets between the two of us: no "classified files," no "confidential matters," and no "ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies." Can you do that?"
"Ask your questions, heed my call: the great glass oracle answers all." The confusion must have shown on Elphaba's face, because Kiln offered an apologetic grin and remarked, "Just an old rhyme I heard in my Pottery days. Anyway, what do you want to know?"
Elphaba thought for a moment. "About you secretly being Boq -"
"Not at all, I'm afraid. Boq died a very long time ago; I might not hate him as much as I did forty years past, but I have no intention of bringing him back to the land of the living, and the same goes for Mr Heart and my days of allegiance to the Empress. Now I'm Dr Kiln, and I intend to stay that way for as long as inhumanly possible."
"Is that why you wore a mask instead of directly altering your face?"
Kiln smiled ruefully. "What can I say? I've never liked making unnecessary changes to the face I've settled on, especially with all those delicate muscles and nerves to work with; alter them the wrong way, and you'll end up looking like a stroke victim. Takes ages to fix, even once you've graduated from working mage-surgery with your fingertips and moved onto casting through muscle-twitches alone. So, I prefer fleshmasks for disguises – and keep a few photographic records around just in case."
"But back to what I was saying earlier: now that I know who you a- ahem, who you were, can you at least explain to me what happened after the Pottery helped the revolution along?"
"Could you be a bit more specific?"
Elphaba sighed. "Kiln, you were there when the Wizard was overthrown; you were there when the war broke out; you were there when Oz was destroyed and you were there when the survivors cobbled the Deviant Nations together. I'm just saying that it's a little bit redundant for me to keep reviewing all these dream-memories-"
"-when you can just ask me what happened? I'm afraid it's not as simple as that: remember, we've got you taking dream-pills so you can learn specific details that nobody else but the Empress could possibly know. I saw my fair share of confidential files and top-secret experiments, but I'd only be giving you the tiniest view of what was going on in the Pottery and the rest of Oz at that time; it's been invaluable to the Mentor, but it's still pretty limited. Now, your other self, she had a bird's eye view of just about every single operation– overt or covert – from the time she established the Pottery to the time Oz went up in smoke. Chances are, she was directing most of those operations herself. But the point is, your dreams will allow you a behind-the-scenes vantage point on what really happened – and unlike real dreams, they won't fade from memory the moment you wake up."
And sure enough, after a few seconds' concentration, Elphaba found that the memories of everything her other self had seen and done in the last few dreams were still embossed on her mind in perfect clarity: the first tentative letters to disenfranchised experts among the Animal community, the slow formation of what came to be known as the Pottery, the initial brainstorming sessions, the letters and acquisition forms sent out through intermediaries of intermediaries, and the brewing of the first batch of the Plague. Everything was there, right down to the typos on the requisition forms.
"So," Kiln concluded, "if you want to know what was really happening, you should stick to the dream-memories."
"But surely you can tell me some things – if only to put my mind at ease."
"Like what?"
"Like what happened to Nessa?"
Kiln winced. "Ah. I thought you might want to know about her sooner or later. Well, I'm afraid there's not much to tell: once Boq's death was properly faked, I didn't have much to do with Nessarose; your other self made sure of that. She kept me busy with work too interesting to ignore, and she made sure I felt justified in whatever I was doing at the time."
"And forgiving you for breaking Nessa's heart?"
"On the face of it, anyway. The Empress doesn't really forgive anyone, you see: she pardons them. She absolves them of guilt – only so long as they serve her without question and pay all due tributes. Unless of course, your crime is one of wilful ugliness: there's no forgiveness for deliberate imperfection… but it took a good long while before I learned that." He shrugged and sighed. "So, I paid for my indulgences and carried on working. At the time, I thought that so long as Nessa wasn't obsessing over me, she was better off. And she was."
"Where is she now?"
"Oh, now that's one the mysteries I can't shed any light on, I'm afraid: Nessa vanished from Exemplar decades ago, and nobody's ever seen her in person since; even the Radiant Empress herself doesn't know where she might be hiding, and she's one of the few people who's still in contact with her."
"So she's allied with Unbridled Radiance?"
"Not so much "allied" as "nominally associated." According to the last spy we sent into the palace, Nessarose is in the habit of sending her sister the odd astral projection just to let her know that she's alive and kicking. But that's about all that's known."
"Alright then, let's talk about Glinda – the Mentor, I mean: does she know who you really are? Oh don't give me that look, you know what I mean: does she know who you were?"
"Well, she knows that I used to be a researcher in service to the Pottery, and she knows that I was on friendly terms with the Empress. Boq, on the other hand, remains one of the few elements of my past I'm not prepared to share with her, if only because I'd rather not spend the rest of my life being called "Biq" – assuming she even remembers that particularly boring part of her university days. Right now, what matters to her is that I'm a qualified mage-surgeon who believes in the cause, can discuss things with her as an equal and can treat her as a friend as well as a patient. Who I used to be before my days in the Pottery doesn't matter all that much." He offered the ghastly smile once again. "Boq never really mattered all that much anyway."
"You've never met the version I knew back in Oz."
"Ah yes, the Tin Man. Believe it or not, I have met him… after a fashion."
Elphaba stopped short. "What?"
"Only in the mental sense: the Mentor wasn't the only one who started experiencing dream-memories when her counterpart arrived in this dimension. In fact, for the last few nights, I've been experiencing the most peculiar dreams of being Nessa's manservant – and being transmuted into tin."
"You mean Boq's here?! In this world?"
"Yes, along with the Scarecrow, the Lion, and that dog, too. Dorothy will be happy at least."
"But what are they doing here?"
"Well, the dreams have been slightly distorted – I haven't been taking dream pills, you see – but one of the most recent recollections involved the Scarecrow running off into Kiamo Ko just as it started collapsing, and the rest of Dorothy's friends following him into the portal. The last I saw of them, they'd all arrived relatively safely."
"And you don't know where they are?"
"Sadly not."
Elphaba fought a very powerful urge to bang her head against a wall, and decided to move on – both figuratively and literally. "I'd like to hear exactly what the long-term plan for dosing me was," she said, continuing the disorganized march down the street. "I mean, what was going to be your excuse when I started sprouting crystals? Were you going to blame it on some kind of U.R. weaponry, or something?"
"Pretty close to the mark: the existence of Orecantheum has been a best-kept secret of both Unbridled Radiance and the Deviant Nations, so only the highest-ranking officials and scientists would be able to recognize the symptoms. If you'd started showing symptoms before you left for Loamlark, the Mentor would have claimed it was a rare allergic reaction to the Clarity you were exposed to; if you'd started showing symptoms afterwards, we'd have just blamed it on some kind of local fungus."
"A fungus that makes you sprout crystals?"
"Oh, I've seen stranger things by far. There's actually a few very rare and special kinds of pollen that can vitrify organic tissue in a matter of seconds after being inhaled… but that's another story for another day. Now, if you caught me in the act of preparing a dose of the stimulant, I was supposed to run like hell and not get caught; I'd find a suitable hiding place, hope that I'd be mistaken for an enemy saboteur, remake my disguise, and return to Loamlark once suspicion had died down enough for me to start drugging your food and drink again."
"Hence why I ended up spending the most ungodly hours of the morning chasing you off rooftops."
"And as you saw, my escape attempt failed quite epically. Granted, I wasn't expecting to be found out so soon: I was hoping to carry on the ruse for at least a fortnight before I made the mistake of getting up too late in the morning."
"Technically, that wasn't your fault: there was a witness in the kitchen last night; he told me what happened, I told him to alert me the next time you tried to drug me."
Now it was Kiln's turn to stop short. "A witness?" he echoed.
"Of course. You don't expect you could just waltz into someone else's kitchen, drug the coffee and expect that nobody would notice, did you?"
And then, without warning, Dr Kiln's face was suddenly squirming with oily black veins, dozens of unearthly patterns racing across his bare skull for a split-second before sinking back beneath his deathly-pale skin. Even if Elphaba hadn't been able to see the look on the old mage-surgeon's face, she remembered her first night in the Deviant Nations well enough to recognize Kiln's unique way of expressing shock and alarm.
"Who was the witness?" he asked, voice unnaturally calm.
"Just a kid, really; one of the odd-jobbers around the hotel kitchens, delivering food and so on. He apparently saw you drugging the coffee right there in the kitchen."
"But I didn't drug the coffee while it was in the kitchen."
"What?"
"I didn't try that until this morning when the place was nearly empty. Last night, I waited until the room service tray arrived on the dumbwaiter on the same floor you were staying on, and I made sure I had at least a minute before those oddjobbers arrived to pick up the tray, more than enough time to dose your evening drink and hide."
There was a dreadful silence.
"So, Elphaba, how did your witness manage to see me drugging your coffee when I wasn't even in the location he claims?
"Does it matter?"
"Oh, it matters," Kiln hissed, breaking into a jog. "It matters a great deal."
By now, the sun was just beginning to peek over the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, and the hotel's upper-story windows gleamed brilliantly in the morning light, each pane coruscating vividly as they approached the improvised barracks. Kiln didn't appear in the mood to appreciate the spectacle, though: he was too busy bombarding Elphaba with a long series of questions about the kitchen boy – what his name was, how long he'd been serving her, why he'd clearly lied to her.
But as they rounded the corner and the hotel kitchen's smashed window slid into view, they immediately noticed the figure waiting for them by the back door: it was the kitchen boy.
Or at least, he looked like the kitchen boy.
On the face of it, he was identical to the kitchen servant who'd been waiting on her for most of the previous evening: a scrawny twelve year-old in a threadbare waiter's uniform several sizes too big for him, easily recognized by his unmanageable crop of blonde hair and the enormous slate-grey eyes that dominated his face. But there was something unmistakeably different about him, and it took Elphaba a few second to realize that it was in the boy's expression: gone was the cringing, nervous demeanour and the hunched "please don't hit me" posture; now, he leaned casually against the wall without a hint of fear in his stance. Now, his face wore an ever-so-slightly mischievous smirk.
"Welcome back," he purred. "I can tell you've already started to put two and two together by the looks on your faces… but it doesn't matter all that much."
"Really?" said Kiln icily. "Then why did you lie about seeing me drug the coffee?"
"More importantly, how did you find out the drugging was even happening in the first place?" Elphaba added.
The kitchen boy grinned. "Oh, I see things. I go places without anyone noticing. You might think the good doctor's a master of disguise – and he is – but what good is disguise compared to a fly on the wall?"
"Ah," said Kiln. "I thought I caught a whiff of serum about the building."
"And as for why I lied… well, why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Why say that I spied a medic crouched over a dumbwaiter in a lonely corridor, when I could say that I saw a man with no real face stride into a kitchen, drug a cup of coffee, and walk out again without anyone stopping him? I hope you don't mind: it's all in good fun."
"Fun?" Elphaba echoed. "Fun? Arranging for me to leap out of bed at the most hellish hour of the morning and chase Kiln halfway across this town was your idea of fun?"
"Not necessarily, though I do admit that brawl on the side of the building was an entertaining spectacle. No, my idea of fun is in seeing what happens when lies unravel…" The kitchen-boy's face contorted with amusement. "And my boss wanted to see if you were the genuine article."
"Oh dammit, not another secret test of character."
"Keep your spirits up, Elphaba: we're a much more relaxed society than Unbridled Radiance or the Deviant Nations; you've passed the test with flying colours… but I think you've got more pressing concerns than impressing my boss."
"What do you mean?"
Somewhere in the distance, an alarm sounded. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking the long, drawn-out wail of the warning siren from the outer wall: it had only been installed and tested the previous evening, and the Mentor's command post had firmly decreed that it was only to be used in the event of enemy attack.
"You hear that?" the kitchen-boy laughed. "They're playing your song, Elphaba. Best of luck – we'll see you again soon, once you've dealt with those smug bastards outside. Say hello to Omber for me!"
And with that, he spread his arms wide, like a conductor readying a fanfare from an orchestra. Kiln, clearly recognizing whatever the "kitchen-boy" was about to do, put his head down and lunged at the figure, propelling himself across the alleyway with one great spring-legged leap. But by the time the doctor's magically-augmented legs had left the ground, the kitchen-boy's form was already starting to change: his hair had gone from blonde to black, the flowing golden locks suddenly dark and almost feathery; then, the darkness poured across him like a shadow, turning his eyes to a gleaming obsidian and covering the rest of his body in glossy black plumage. Then, just as Kiln was reaching out to grab him, the figure erupted into a vast flock of crows – dozens upon dozens of them, all fluttering at once towards the crimson sky above – leaving Kiln to crash headlong into the hotel wall.
There was a long silence, as the colossal mass of shrieking birds retreated into the distance.
Then, almost as an afterthought, Elphaba's broomstick dropped out of the sky and landed with a clatter at her feet. Small mercies, she mused, hastily gathering it up.
"The Amorphous League," Kiln snarled, once he'd finally managed to stop swearing. "We had an Amorphous League operative under our noses all this time…"
"Well, if it's any comfort, they fooled me just much as they fooled you." Elphaba shrugged. "Oh well, I supposed it's just the way it goes in a war that's been running this long: conspiracies on top of conspiracies on top of conspiracies…"
"On top of mild pranks," Kiln finished. "Oh well, I suppose we should be thankful that the League are keeping up their reputation as tricksters rather than outright saboteurs. But what are they up to? Why the testing?"
The alarm sounded again, and nearby, there came the sound of hundreds of booted feet hurrying down the road.
"That can wait," Elphaba hissed. "We've got a battle to fight!"