Elsewhens (Glass Thorns)

by Melanie Rawn

  Mieka chewed this over for a while. Finally he said, “I have to trust you. I have to trust that it’s more than simply not ever buying a yellow shirt.”

  “Buy one if you want. It’s your choice. Your life.”

  “You said you hated me.”

  He nodded wearily. “I’m sorry, Mieka. I don’t know how we got there. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “We won’t get there. It won’t happen. We won’t bloody let it.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “So the truth of it is that you’re the one has to trust me. And you don’t.”

  “I do, though. I really think I do. But there’s other people involved. They have choices to make as well.”

  Again the Elf was silent. Then, briskly: “I’ll still never buy a yellow shirt. Come on, Quill, finish packing. Or did you forget that you’re spending the night at Wistly Hall?”

  He had indeed forgotten. Much closer to the Palace courtyard whence the coaches for Seekhaven would depart, the Windthistle residence wasn’t the quietest place to spend the night, not with all those scores of relatives hanging about, but it was the most convenient.

  Cade and Mieka took a hire-hack to Wistly Hall. The driver, who turned out to be a theater enthusiast and knew their faces from the placards all over Gallantrybanks, helped them pile the luggage in the front hall. Up three flights of stairs, down another and a half, around several mazy corridors that would have had Cade completely lost had it not been for the glimpse of the river every so often—new windowpanes, he noted with a smile—at length, Mieka took him up yet more stairs and led him to a door that opened into a turret.

  “Take a look at the view—but have a care,” the Elf warned. “It’s got a bit rickety over the winter, and the floorboards aren’t what they ought to be in places.”

  Once the door had swung closed behind them, Mieka shoved aside a few planks and boxes, flung back a moth-chewed carpet, and opened a trapdoor.

  “This,” he said, gesturing grandly to the room revealed below, “is the only place in this whole great barn I can be completely by meself. Nobody knows about it, not even Jed and Jez. Nobody comes up here but me.”

  “I can see why,” Cade told him, eyeing the rotting joists, the rusting bolts. “Is this held together with magic, or just wishful thinking?”

  Mieka laughed. “It’s been here so long that it stays tacked onto the rest of the house by habit! C’mon, follow me.”

  He did, gingerly, through the narrow opening down onto another wooden floor. Looking round the little room, lit by the setting sun through very old, very bubbly windowglass, he began to smile. If the view of the Plume from the chamber above was spectacular, from here it was like floating over the river.

  “It’s wonderful, Mieka.”

  “I knew you’d like it.” He gestured to the pillows strewn about and flopped onto several of them.

  Cade sat cross-legged, and the change in altitude let him see all the little bits and bobs Mieka had tucked away in corners and on makeshift shelving. One of this spring’s Touchstone placards leaned against the back wall, and pride of place was given to the framed list of Rules (each one crossed through) from the Winterly Circuit coach, and just in front of it were two of the three candleflats Blye had made for him last year on his eighteenth Namingday.

  “I gave the other one to Jinsie,” Mieka said, following Cade’s glance about the lair. “And that remembers me. I missed your Namingday this year, Quill. Here.” He reached up to a shelf and took down a little paper twist. “I thought we might give it a try tonight, after dinner.”

  There was no ink mark to indicate what type of thorn it was. Thus far in his experimentations, Cade had used various combinations of green, purple, blue, and red. “What is it?”

  “Auntie Brishen got your letter.”

  “Oh.” The one where he’d told her that things didn’t work on him the way they did on other people, so could she suggest something else? “What is it?” he repeated.

  “Damned if I know,” Mieka said with a cheerful shrug. “She just said that you and me might find it interesting.”

  Cade pocketed the thorn. “After dinner. Beholden.”

  Rafe, Crisiant, and Jeska showed up with piles of gear in time for the meal, which tonight was strictly immediate family—Mieka’s parents, three brothers, and four sisters—in a small dining room overlooking the river garden. Master Windthistle confided to Cayden that this was his favorite place to eat dinner, for the view was soothing and the table sat only fourteen.

  “Not like that bloody great cavern on the other side of the house,” he sighed, plucking from a wire basket another of the feather-light bread rolls that Rafe had contributed to the feast. “Three trestles and a high table, as if we were Royalty—and I dare swear that the King himself doesn’t regularly sit down to almost a hundred, the way we do.”

  “A hundred?” Cade’s fingers slipped a little on his spoon. “I thought maybe fifty people lived here.”

  “If only! Mieka’s told you something about the family, I suppose. My six uncles and four aunts had thirty-seven children amongst them, and at last count there were seventy or so in the next generation, not counting my eight. Then there’s my wife’s relations—she was the youngest of seven—and all their progeny—Mishia, love,” he called down to the other end of the table, “what’s the count of nieces and nephews on your side these days?”

  “Too damned many!”

  “That’s what I thought!” Hadden Windthistle grinned a familiar grin, his third son’s mischief dancing in his dark brown eyes. “Most of ’em twins. Piksey blood in her line, y’see. Mayhap in mine as well, no matter what Granny Tightfist might pretend. Mieka will have said about her as well.” He arched a questioning brow and Cade nodded. “Uncle Barsabian—I know you recall him—”

  “More Elf than the first Elf, Mieka says.”

  A look of swift fury crossed his handsome face. “We threw him out after what he said to Blye last spring. A small army of relations I’ll tolerate, but not that sort of muck. He’s gone to live with the old miser at the Clink—Clinquant House, and don’t ask me how or why it was named that—and I’ve not a doubt he’s convincing her that we’re even more Piksillated than she believes us to be. So it’s likely she’ll leave him the Windthistle treasury. If she ever does the world a favor by dying, that is.”

  “You don’t seem concerned,” Cade ventured. “About the money, I mean.”

  “Not a bit,” he replied cheerfully—and honestly, which Cade found incredible. “For one thing, Mieka’s contributing quite a bit these days—your doing, and don’t argue with me, boy,” he warned, shaking a finger at Cade’s nose. “He’s good, and what’s more he knows it—but he’d be playing for naught but tavern trimmings if you and Rafe and Jeska hadn’t found him.”

  “He sort of found us.” Cade grinned.

  “There’s Jed and Jez as well, with a business starting to thrive. A few assorted cousins and nephews are advancing in their careers—and advancing out of my house is only a matter of time. Alaen Blackpath, the young man as played at the Threadchaser marriage and after, it’s three lutes he’s bought from me now, and there’s a cousin who’s coming by next fortnight, said to be as good as Alaen. We’ll see, of course. I’m told the King has it in mind to send musicians as well as players over to the Continent when they get this artistic exchange sorted, so there’s another few instruments.”

  “But you sell only to those with real talent.”

  “I can tell with a look. You’ve no music in you at all, by the bye.”

  “I know. I can hear it, but I don’t really understand it.”

  “And how many people can say much the same to you about how you work your art? Where Mieka got the glisking, I’ve not a clue. There’s never been a Windthistle or Staindrop or Moonbinder or any of our other Names anywhere near the theater.”

  “My grandfather was a fettler.”

  “I know. I saw his group a few times.”
>
  “Did you? Were they good?”

  “Yes, but not like Touchstone. Not like Touchstone at all. Traditional things, nicely played, that was the Summerseeds. They had a good run—ten years, I think it was, on the Ducal, after a few on the Winterly. Always good value, they were.”

  And after the tenth year on the Ducal, Cadriel Silversun had met and married the wildest and most beautiful of the Watersmith daughters, and it was from her that the Fae heritage had come to give Cade his Elsewhens. He didn’t mention it. Because it was this same Fae blood that had driven her half mad, and his Uncle Dennet entirely so.

  “Now, tell me,” said Hadden Windthistle in a low, serious voice, “as you’ve known her from childhood—do you think our Jedris will be able to make your Blye happy? Is he what she needs in a husband?”

  A few hours later, up in Mieka’s bedchamber, Cade put both hands on the Elf’s shoulders and grinned down at him. “I love your family!”

  “Things are much nicer around here,” he agreed, “with Uncle Breedbate gone.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He shook Mieka playfully, then sprawled onto the threadbare sofa that would be his bed for the night. “Anybody else would ask if a girl is right for his son. Your father wanted to know if Jed will be a good husband for Blye! I love your family!”

  “Then he’s asked her? She’s accepted him? Why, that miserable cullion! The whole morning I spent with him—his own brother!—and he never said a word!”

  “I don’t know if he’s asked, but she’d be mad not to accept him.”

  “He did say one thing,” Mieka mused as he flopped across his bed. “I didn’t understand at the time, but now it makes sense. He wanted to know if he was too tall!”

  Cade was still laughing over that as he brought out the little paper twist.

  “The others didn’t do what you wanted, did they?” Mieka asked, watching as Cade prepared the powder for the glass thorn. “You’re a huge puzzlement to Auntie Brishen, y’know. She wants your kinline chart to find out what you’ve got in you that makes you such an anomaly.”

  “Where’d you pick up a word like that?”

  “I can read, Quill.”

  “And the last time you opened a book was…?” he asked pointedly.

  “The one I snupped for you at the Castle Biding Fair.”

  Cade returned his attention to the thorn. In another moment they’d be talking about the girl, because the day Mieka had bargained down the copy of Lost Withies was the same day he’d met her. Cade had avoided this particular conversation with the devotion of a Nominative Good Brother studying sacred ritual. He certainly didn’t want it to intrude now.

  “Ready,” he said. “You first?”

  “No, you. I’ll make me own.”

  Cade settled back into the pillows and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. “Come sit beside me, and tell me what you’re seeing.”

  “Right now, just a lazy lumpkin of a tregetour.” Mieka left his bed and sank cross-legged onto the floor. “But wait a little while, and you’ll be singing hymns with naughty lyrics.”

  “You’ve got me confused with Jeska.” Things were growing hazy now, and he could feel the familiar flush of warmth across his cheeks.

  “Did I tell you I learned a new one?”

  “Mmm.”

  He could hear the smile in Mieka’s voice as he said, “Dream sweet, Cade.”

  {It was perfect.

  Lights blazed onto the stage, blinding him, dazzling the tiny shards of broken glass that lingered in the air like stars. He knew there were thousands of people out there, clapping their hands raw, screaming, chanting “Touchstone! Touchstone!” He blinked at the glare, and turned in time to see Mieka soar lightly over his glisker’s bench and land with an exuberant bounce. Cade seized his wrist, pulling him in, and they collided: laughing, triumphant. Mieka tossed his head back and shook his long wild hair, yelling, “And you thought they wouldn’t like it!”

  Jeska arrived, grinning wide enough to split his gorgeous face, and rumpled Mieka’s hair fondly. Rafe joined them, slinging an arm across Jeska’s shoulders, and they all stood there arm-in-arm, drinking in the adulation that never got old.

  And then he and Mieka were in the carriage, Cade stretching out across one whole seat with his boots propped against the closed window and his head on a velvet cushion. Pleasantly tired, still thrumming inside with the triumph of their show, he gazed over at Mieka, noting how the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. Despite the lines crossing his forehead and framing his mouth, and even despite the silver in his hair, he looked at least fifteen years younger than his age.

  “You were brilliant tonight,” Mieka told him. “On the tricky bits of Window-wall, especially.” He paused. “But you’re always brilliant. Why do I bother saying it?”

  “Dunno. P’rhaps because you’re crazy?”

  “P’rhaps,” he allowed.

  A few miles later, Cade pushed himself upright and peered out at the night. “We’re not goin’ to the Downstreet for a drink? And now that I think on it, why aren’t you out with that little Elfengirl? Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t notice her fluttering about backstage in the tiring room,” he scoffed when Mieka made innocent eyes.

  “Not in the mood. C’mon, off your lazy bum, we’re home.”

  The carriage came to a halt, and they climbed the front steps of a riverside town house built from mellow old brick. Glimpses of drawing room, terrace, garden, the doors leading to the kitchen where Mistress Mirdley concocted her daily wonders. Upstairs were four bedrooms, his library, Mieka’s studio. They went into the front room, designed to look like a very exclusive tavern. But instead of their usual after-performance snack of tea and muffins and whatever fruit was in season, arrayed on the bar were bowls of berries dipped in mocah powder, and a silver ice bucket with a bottle of sparkling wine, and a pair of crystal glasses that didn’t match the rest of the barware.

  “You didn’t remember, did you?” Mieka challenged.

  “Remember? What’s all this, then? Remember what?”

  Excited as a child, he gave a little bounce of delight that his surprise had turned out a surprise after all. “Happy Namingday, Cayden!”

  He was right; it was past midnight, and it was his Namingday. “Forty-five!” Cade groaned. “Holy Gods, Mieka, I’m too old to still be playin’ a show five nights out of every nine!”

  “Oh, I know that,” Mieka said with his most impudent grin. “But try telling it to the two thousand people out there tonight who kept screaming for more!”

  “You are crazy, Sir Mieka.”

  “I am that, Sir Cayden.” He unhooked the little wire cage from the bottle and carefully popped the cork. “Pity His Gratuitous Majesty can’t see us now—we’d be Knights of the Bar instead of—oh, whatever it is we’re Knights of.”

  “The Most Noble Order of the Silver Feather of Albeyn. Why can’t you ever remember that?”

  “Doesn’t get us good seats at Royal weddings or the racing meet, now, does it? Nor even a proper sword. So what’s the bleedin’ use of the silly things, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Mieka’s idea of a proper sword was in all probability a double-edged Huszar’s weapon taller than he was; Cade had never dared ask. “We’d only be Knights of the Bar if we were justiciars. And somehow, don’t ask me how, it’s just instinctive, but I can’t see you in a black cassock waving a gavel—” Then he broke off, correcting himself with a grin. “I take it back—you talk enough for twenty lawyers!”

  “I s’pose I have to be nice to you, as it’s your Namingday, but don’t push your luck.”

  He was suddenly alerted to trouble when Mieka flinched while reaching for a cloth to wrap the bottle. “Shoulder again, eh? Overdid the Mad Glisker act again tonight.”

  “Hark who’s complaining!” He tapped lightly at the scrapes and cuts on Cade’s fingers, tsking his disapproval. “Why do you do that? Rafe and me have it all planned and disciplined, but then you have to
do your little stunt—stupidest thing I ever heard of, juggling exploding withies. Someday, you silly git, you’re gonna slice off a finger!”

  “Why should you two have all the fun? And what about you, you maniac? Someday you’ll land wrong off your bench and break an ankle!”

  Mieka poured wine. “Two choices. Argue or drink. Which?”

  “Don’t ask foolish questions.”

  The crystal sang with their silent toast. Blye’s work was more exquisite every year.

  “Forty-five.” Cade sighed. “There’s times, lookin’ at you, when I feel a hundred. You don’t get older,” he accused. “It’s disgusting.”

  Mieka snorted. “With all this gray in me hair?”

  “You don’t get older. It’s un-fuckin’-natural, even for an Elf.” His gaze went to the framed imagings behind the bar. “There’s the proof.”

  “All I see is proof that you keep opening the best door.”

  Laughing, he toasted Mieka again. “Every single morning.”

  “This life?” His head tilted to one side, shaggy hair shifting to reveal the tip of one pointed ear where a tiny diamond gleamed.

  “And none other.”

  The front door slammed open and Rafe roared, “You started without us!” and a minute later they were in the middle of a party that Cade knew full well would last until dawn.}

  “Quill? Quill, wake up.”

  His eyelids drifted languorously open, and through his lashes he saw Mieka’s face. He was almost disappointed that there were no lines framing his mouth, that his hair was coal-black without a trace of silver.

  “We’d got old,” he heard himself say, and smiled. “I liked your diamond earring.”

  Mieka sat back on his heels by the sofa, head tilting to one side exactly as in the dream. “How old?”

  He heard something suspiciously like a giggle, realized the sound came from his own throat. “Your hair’d gone gray.”

  “Oh Gods,” he moaned. “I was old and gray and fat and wrinkly, wasn’t I? That’s right cruel of you, Quill! What else?”