“You know, the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.” She sat up a little straighter. “Because she deserved it.”
“The Avenging Angel of Justice is now green?”
“A pretty good disguise, don’t you think?” They both grinned.
“So about this Madame Morrible, whom you claim to have killed? Did you know that she gathered your friends and associates together and gave us a little lecture after you’d run away?”
“You were never my friend.”
“I was too near to be excused. I remember the situation. Nessarose was mortified and shattered by the whole thing. Madame Morrible took out your records and read to us a profile of your character as assessed by your various teachers. We were warned about your spikiness, your fringiness, what were the words they used? I can’t remember that, they weren’t memorable words. But we were told you might try to recruit us in some sort of juvenile attempt to galvanize some sort of student uprising. You were to be avoided at all costs.”
“And Nessarose was mortified, well, that figures,” said the Witch grimly.
“Glinda too,” said Avaric. “She went through another slide, like the one she went into after Doctor Dillamond fell on his magnifying lens—”
“Oh please, is that hoary old lie still in circulation?”
“—oh all right, was brutally murdered by brigands unknown, have it your way. Brigands in the form of Madame Morrible, that’s what you mean me to suppose. So why really did you do it?”
“Madame Morrible had a choice. No one was better placed than she to see that her students got an education and not a brainwashing. By hooking up with the Emerald City, she sold out all her students who believed that a liberal education meant learning to think for themselves. Besides, she was a vile fiend, and she did conspire to have Doctor Dillamond murdered. No matter what you say.”
But the Witch stopped herself short, hearing in her words about Madame Morrible—she had a choice—an echo of what the Elephant Princess Nastoya had once said to her: No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst—there is always choice.
Avaric was rattling on. “And you’ve had her murdered. Two wrongs don’t make a right, as we boys used to chant on the playground, usually when we were on the ground with someone’s knee on our groin. Why don’t you stay for a meal? We’ve got guests, a clever bunch.”
“So you can call the police? No thanks.”
“I won’t call the police. You and I, we’re above petulant justice like that.”
The Witch believed him. “All right,” she said. “Who are you married to, by the way? Did you get married to Pfannee, or Shenshen, or someone else? I can’t remember.”
“Whoever,” said Avaric, pouring another finger of whiskey. “I can’t keep small details in my mind, never could.”
The Margreave’s pantry was fulsome, his cook a genius, and his wine cellar unparalleled. The guests tucked into snails and garlic, roast crest of fallowhen with cilantro and clementine chutney, and the Witch allowed herself a sumptuous helping of lime tart with saffron cream. The crystal goblets were never empty. The conversation was exalted and loopy, and by the time the Margreavess led them to the comfortable chairs in the drawing room, the plaster appliqué on the ceiling seemed to swirl like the cigarette smoke.
“Why, you’re flushed,” said Avaric. “You ought to have been a tippler all along, Elphaba.”
“I’m not sure red wine agrees with me,” she said.
“You’re in no condition to go anywhere. The maid will do up one of the corner rooms. It’s lovely, there’s a view clear to the pagoda on the island.”
“I don’t care for prepared views.”
“Don’t you want to wait for the morning papers, to see if they got it right? If they got it at all?”
“I’ll ask you to send me one. No, I must go, I feel the need of some fresh air. Avaric—Madame—friends—it’s been a surprise and I suppose a pleasure.” But she felt grudging as she said it.
“A pleasure to some,” said the Margreavess, who hadn’t approved of the conversation. “I think it improper to talk about evil all during a meal. It spoils the digestion.”
“Oh, but come,” the Witch said, “is it only in youth that we can have the nerve to ask ourselves such serious questions?”
“Well, I stick with my suggestion,” said Avaric. “Evil isn’t doing bad things, it’s feeling bad about them afterward. There’s no absolute value to behavior. First of all—”
“Institutional inertia,” claimed the Witch. “But whatever is the great attraction of absolute power anyway?”
“That’s why I say it’s merely an affliction of the psyche, like vanity or greed,” said a copper magnate. “And we all know vanity and greed can produce some pretty astounding results in human affairs, not all of them reprehensible.”
“It’s an absence of good, that’s all,” said his paramour, an agony aunt for the Shiz Informer. “The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.”
