by Melanie Rawn
“All right, children, that’s enough. Now that we’re all agreed that the three of us are brilliant and Cade Silversun is a shit-wit with delusions of intelligence, may we continue?”
And after that, everything was back to the way it used to be. Not that Cade had intended his little tirade to produce that effect—he was still wondering as he walked home just how it had happened, in fact, but was too grateful to do much analyzing. He had his group back. He was part of Touchstone, and Touchstone was well worth being part of. This was the life he wanted to be living.
Elsewhens and all.
Chapter 2
Every stitch of clothing Cade owned could not be stuffed into one small and one large satchel, but he was giving it his best try. The Winterly Circuit had taught him that laundry service on the road was dodgy at best. More than once he’d had to wash his undergarments himself—on one memorable occasion with the contents of a pitcher that Mieka had used the previous night as a piss pot. It had been nine in the morning and barely light in the room, and he’d had a hangover; how was he to know that damned Elf would set the pitcher on the windowside table instead of on the floor where it belonged? Cayden’s roar of outrage as he realized what he’d poured into the basin with his smallclothes had sent Mieka into gales of giggles. Only then did he realize that it had all been deliberate, and Mieka had been feigning sleep in his corner bed, waiting for Cade to use the pitcher one way or another. Threats to dangle him by the tips of his ears out the nearest window only made him laugh harder. The incident had taught Cade something about Mieka’s sense of humor that he hadn’t previously known: The Elf would prolong a joke far past anyone else’s paltry imaginings. For, that very next morning, Cade discovered that every other set of underwear he owned was gone, and in their place was a pair of knitted lamb’s wool short pants, soft as a cloud, wonderfully warm … lurid green and frilled at the hems with bright purple lace. He could only stare at them, fascinated in an appalled sort of way, and wonder where in the name of everything holy Mieka had found something so revolting. A desperate application to the innkeeper’s wife assured him that all his smallclothes were in the wash and would be clean and dry by nightfall. That day he also learned that whereas Mieka’s japes went several steps beyond what anyone else would ever come up with, he also possessed a nice sense of compassion. More or less.
This year, even for Trials, Cade intended to pack as many clothes, especially underthings, as he possibly could. It wasn’t just that now he had a much more extensive, and expensive, wardrobe; he was part of Touchstone, and Touchstone must be seen to be a raving success. Kearney Fairwalk had said so, and Cade agreed.
Besides, he liked dressing in flash clothes. It meant people noticed what he wore, not what he looked like.
That afternoon before the journey to Seekhaven, whilst he was sorting what he wanted to take with him from what he absolutely must find room for, his fifth-floor aerie was invaded without warning. Mieka had taken to flitting in and out of the Silversun house at Number Eight, Redpebble Square, as if he lived there, but rarely did he venture all the way up the wrought-iron stairs to Cade’s room. Today he did, waving a freshly printed broadsheet.
“Only you, Quill,” he announced, tossing the pages atop the clothes strewn across Cade’s bed. “Only you!”
“What?” he asked, eyeing Mieka warily. “What’ve I done?”
The Elf grinned and made himself comfortable in Cade’s desk chair. “And here I thought what you said about women at performances and onstage was scandal-making! Little did I know!”
Cade picked up the copy of The Nayword, unfolded to an article by Tobalt Fluter.
“Of course,” Mieka went on, “the chavishing from that has died down, so we owe Tobalt a drink or three for putting our name back out there again.”
“But I didn’t give him another interview. What’s he—?”
“Read it.” When Cade only stared at it, Mieka snorted and snatched it off the bed. “I’ll do the honors, shall I?”
UPCOMING AT SEEKHAVEN: TOUCHSTONE
Last year, the Ninth of the Thirteen Perils, the one about the Dragon, was performed at Trials by Touchstone: Tregetour Cayden Silversun, Masquer Jeschenar Bowbender, Fettler Rafcadion Threadchaser, and Glisker Mieka Windthistle. Whichever of the Thirteen the group may draw this time, count on surprises. This is a group that thinks.
Cade frowned. “That doesn’t sound scandalous.”
“Dead chuffed with yourself, is that it? P’rhaps His Lordship ought to have that printed on our placards from now on: ‘Theater for the Thinking Man.’ And bless his ink-stained balls, old Tobalt, for getting all our names right! But listen on, old son.” Holding the broadsheet to catch the early afternoon light through Cade’s window, he went on, “Let’s see … we’re impressive, we’re innovative, we’re clever—ah, yes, here it is.”
Yet for all his novel ideas about allowing women into theaters and even onstage (see this journal, issue Number 16), Silversun’s feelings about women as expressed in last year’s Trials play are curious indeed.
“Oh Gods,” Cade muttered, and sat on top of the shirts Mistress Mirdley had finishing pressing just that morning.
“It gets better,” Mieka told him.
The Prince was real, and the Dragon was real—uncomfortably so. The Prince had honest doubts, and by the end of the battle was honestly exhausted. The Dragon breathed flames so realistic that many of the audience flinched with fear (a tribute not only to the power of Silversun’s magic but also the brilliance of Windthistle’s glisking and Threadchaser’s stupendous control).
“You’re powerful, I’m brilliant, and Rafe is stupendous—Gods, he’ll be six different hells to live with from now on, won’t he? But poor Jeska! Nary a mention!”
“Keep going,” Cade ordered.
Both the Prince and the Dragon were real. But the Fair Lady remained a shadow, an unreality. Even though she was the reason for all the striving and agony, she was never seen. She was not real. She was not even an ideal of what to strive for. Her commentary on the battle was nervous, self-centered, even whiny. She was nothing like the perfect lady of a man’s fondest imaginings. Indeed, the audience never even found out whether or not she was pretty. She was never seen. Her loveliness was assumed—and assumptions are evidently dangerous, with Cayden Silversun.
“Oh Gods,” he said again, this time in a moan. Mieka went on reading aloud, with indecent relish.
To him, the importance of the play, and by extension the importance of life, is the struggle. The battle with oneself, with one’s personal dragons, with the world’s expectations, with doubt and fear and exhaustion, the conflicts that go on inside a man’s mind or body or spirit—the important thing is fighting through to win. What’s won doesn’t really matter: it is a shadow, unseen, insubstantial, even unreal. The Fair Lady, or whatever she represents, is not the goal. The battle is what matters: not to give in, not to give up. Moreover, through the battling, to discover truth.
When Mieka fell silent, Cade stole a glance at him. “Is that all?” he asked feebly.
“Well, there’s more. He can’t wait to see which of the Perils we’ll draw this time, expect to be surprised again, and so forth. But he missed something, y’know. Women aren’t quite real to you, are they? They’re more of a concept.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”
“Have you ever known me not to? Individual women, you’re fine—Blye, Crisiant, the mothers of your friends—the luscious Lady Torren of the lavender-scented pillows at Seekhaven last year—but as for whatever birdies you’ve dallied with from the flocks outside our shows—” He paused. “Do you remember any of their names, by the bye?”
Stung, he retorted, “Of course I do!”
“You’re lying, Quill.” Mieka shook his head sadly. “I’ve told you and told you, your eyes will always give you away. What I’m saying is that to you, there are women who are people, and the rest of them are just ideas. They’re a concept, lik
e money.”
Thoroughly bewildered now, he could do nothing but stare. Mieka wore a half smile, those eyes glinting merrily. “Money?” he echoed.
“You get it, you use it, it’s gone.”
He could think of no reply to this latest outrage. Mieka didn’t seem to expect comment, having warmed to his theme.
“Y’see, there’s seven types of women. There’s mothers—mine, yours, other people’s, and I include Mistress Mirdley and Croodle in that category, women like them. That sweet old lady where we spent Wintering, f’r instance. And me Auntie Brishen. That sort. Then there’s sisters—kind of the same category, just younger. Maybe Croodle should be put in with them, what do you think? Then there are women who have to be treated as men. That’s Blye. She does a man’s work, she doesn’t expect anybody to take care of her—”
“Jedris had to get used to that, didn’t he?” Cade asked with a smile.
“Oh, didn’t he just! You don’t mind about her and him—”
“Of course I don’t!”
“—because you see her the way I do. She’s a friend, we love her forever, but she’s not a woman like other women. All right, then, next we come to women who are women but we don’t want to bed them. You know, the ones who’re available enough, and sometimes even rather pretty, but there’s no spark. You know ’em when you see ’em—just like you know the next kind, which is the women who’re women and you’d love to have ’em, but they’re somebody else’s property. Wives, girlfriends, that sort. Have to leave them alone, no matter if the sparks are flying all over the room!”
“I’ve seen you flirt with—”
“Have to let a woman know she’s attractive, don’t I?”
“And you’re the only one who can, is that it?”
“I consider it one of my matchless contributions to the happiness and well-being of the Kingdom,” Mieka announced blithely. “Where was I? Oh yeh—whores. One needs must be nice to them, poor darlings, unless they forfeit the privilege one way or another.”
Cade recalled a night last spring, when a street trull had insulted him and Mieka had been, in his own matchless way, hilariously rude. “That’s six sorts of women. I bet I can guess the seventh.”
Mieka nodded. “Women a man wants to fuck.”
“Which in your case is the entire population of young, pretty girls.”
He smirked, wiggling his eyebrows.
Too late, Cade remembered the girl in Frimham. Amusement slipped away like a knife from a dead man’s hand. Quickly, he said, “What you mean is that I don’t categorize beyond women who are real to me and the general concept of woman.”
Mieka was abruptly serious. “What I mean is that you hold yourself back from everybody until you know them as people. Women and men both. Oh, you’re perfectly willing to bed a girl for the pleasure of it, but she’s not real to you, none of them are. You accept what people want to show you of themselves, but you don’t give anything back until you’re sure it’s reasonably safe.”
“Safe!”
“Well, yeh. It’s one reason why you don’t remember their names.” A broad grin, a sudden swerving into humor again; Cade told himself he really ought to be used to it by now. “There’s a good little comedic playlet in that someplace, Quill—wakin’ up in the morning next to some girl, tryin’ to recall her name, wonderin’ if you’ve caught somethin’ awful from her—”
“Is this me we’re talking of, or you?”
Mieka laughed. “I’m careful, oh-so-very-careful! How about you?”
“Isn’t that more the girl’s responsibility than the man’s?”
“Holy Gods, don’t ever let Jinsie hear you say that!”
Reaching for the broadsheet, he read the last paragraph for himself, relieved to find it was just as Mieka had implied: a tease about what Touchstone might do with others of the Thirteen Perils, speculating that great things were ahead. He liked Tobalt Fluter, and was grateful for the mention in this increasingly influential broadsheet, but he wished the man weren’t so perceptive about what Cade himself hadn’t even seen until it was pointed out to him. It was the sort of thing that could inhibit one’s writing, if one weren’t careful—or if one actually cared what people thought.
“This is new,” Mieka remarked all at once. He’d left the desk and was fingering through Cade’s closet. The shirt he picked out to admire was one Mistress Mirdley had stitched, tucked away for him to discover as a surprise belated Namingday present. Mieka held it up to himself, stretching out an arm with the sleeve lying along it. “More my color than yours, but—Quill? What’s wrong?”
“Any color is your color, you frustling little fop,” he managed to say. He also managed to look directly into Mieka’s face and smile.
He’d have to get better at it.
“You just saw something, didn’t you,” Mieka said flatly. “Don’t bother to lie. Damn it to all hells, Cade, don’t lie!”
“I’m not. I didn’t see anything just now.”
“Then it’s an echo of something. Tell me.”
“Mieka—”
“Why won’t you tell me?” he cried. “What’s so bloody horrifying that you won’t tell me? If it has to do with me, don’t I have a right to hear it?”
“No.” Pushing himself to his feet, he crossed the room and took the yellow shirt from Mieka’s hands. “Listen to me—can you shut it and listen? Who do you want living your life? You, or my Elsewhens?”
“What did you see, Cade?”
Defeated, he stared down into those eyes, watching them darken to brown with Mieka’s mood. He’d never seen eyes like these, so passionately changeable, so instantly responsive. “I saw you in a dream, wearing a shirt almost this same color. We’d finished a performance and Jeska had to hold you up when you stumbled onstage, you were that drunk. We were all of us older, but we were still Touchstone—Lord and Lady alone know how, because none of us liked each other much anymore. I don’t know what happened to us, Mieka, I only know what I saw. I don’t know how we got to be that way. I think I hated you.”
For two breaths, then three, Cade thought he might have been wrong about not telling Mieka, not warning him. That he could change what must change simply by sharing his foreseeings with this Elf who was Touchstone’s soul. That Mieka would somehow understand, would make the decisions that would preclude future horrors. That they could talk it all out, solemn and honest, and everything would be all right.
He ought to have known.
An insolent grin decorated Mieka’s face. “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll just have to remember never to buy a yellow shirt.”
Cade started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He heard the note of insanity, but he couldn’t stop laughing. “Only you,” he gasped out, “only you could say that and expect everything to be all right! Never buy a yellow shirt! As if that’s all anyone would have to do—”
Still mocking, but with an edge to his voice now, the boy said, “If you’re telling me never to take a drink again, forget it!”
“I can’t tell you anything! That’s the whole fucking point!” Collapsing into his desk chair, he hauled in a deep lungful of air, then another. “I’ll tell you a story, shall I? How I know that what I see is possible. The very first time it ever happened, my father was waiting to see if he’d got an appointment to the Prince’s Household. He—”
“I know this one,” Mieka interrupted. “Blye told me.”
“Then I’ll tell you one Blye doesn’t know—and if you ever breathe a syllable to her, I’ll take you apart and put you back together inside out. I didn’t remember dreaming about her mother, but when she was run down and killed by a noblewoman’s carriage it was like I’d already heard about it, I already knew. The lady blamed her maids for taking out the carriage when they weren’t supposed to, and swore to all the Angels that she hadn’t been there at all. But I saw her, upriver by a boathouse, and just as the carriage pulled away a man came out, a man who wasn’t her husband. I could smell the fish in the st
alls nearby, and hear the boatmen calling—” He broke off, took another breath. “When the constable’s runner came to Criddow Close, and asked at our kitchen door where Master Cindercliff could be found, I knew. I remembered. I knew what had happened and whose carriage it was and that the lady had been with her lover.”
“You never told anyone.”
“I told Mistress Mirdley. I said that if people wanted to know what really happened, they should ask if the lady smelled of fish.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Sometimes my father’s not all that bad a person, really. Mistress Mirdley told him she’d heard a rumor—not that it came from me, she never let on about what I said to her—and he saw to it that the lady paid for Blye to attend the same littleschool as me and Rafe from then on, even though crafters’ daughters aren’t supposed to go to the better schools. And she put together a dowry, too—though that all got used up when Master Cindercliff became ill. He thought she was just being kind because it had been her carriage. But my father could have ruined her with just a few words here and there, and he let enough hints drop that she knew it.”
“But—”
“It must’ve driven her mad, wondering how my father knew. He had this choice little piece of information—oh, not that her carriage had run over and killed Blye’s mother, that sort of thing happens all the time, nobody cares. But she’d been out that day when she said she’d been at home, and she thought nobody but her coachman knew, and he and the maids were her creatures so they’d never split on her. But for years she danced to whatever tune my father cared to whistle.”
“Murder doesn’t count, but having a lover does?”
“That’s the Court.”
“Who was she?”
“Let’s just say that the next Wintering I was allowed to serve at her private celebrations.”
Mieka caught his breath. “Princess Iamina?”
“The very same. Mistress Mirdley told me never ever say anything about it to anyone else—not just because of the Princess, but because it was the kind of Wizardly gift that could get me strung up from the nearest tavern sign.”