by Melanie Rawn
Jeska elbowed him, and he walked forwards with his friends so Cade could accept the token of their draw. He could see the long, nervous fingers exploring the face of the token, trying to discern which it was. Mieka wasn’t worried. He knew they’d be on the Royal this year. It was only a question of second or third flight—the Shadowshapers would of course take first. For now, anyways, he told himself as everyone bowed and left the hall for the walk back to their various lodgings.
Cade said nothing, and showed the token to no one, until they were well into Seekhaven Town. At last he stopped, looked at his glisker, masquer, and fettler. He grinned.
“The Treasure,” he announced happily.
Mieka wrapped his arms around his head and moaned. “Nobody ever gets important points with that one!”
“We will.” Cade was actually smiling. Excited. Looking forward to performing the second-dullest of all the Thirteen.
Someone laughed behind them, and Mieka whirled round to find Black Lightning sauntering up the street.
“We drew the Dragon,” said Thierin Knottinger, with a sneering smile that almost disfigured his darkly beautiful face. “Can’t think how we’ll find the courage, can you, lads?”
Mieka caught a little shrug of apology from Pirro. He ignored it.
“Oh, I think we’ll manage,” Thierin was assured by his masquer, Kaj Seamark. “Once they get a look at what the battle wins.”
“Not just a ‘shadow’ or ‘insubstantial,’” taunted their fettler, Herris Crowkeeper.
“Substance, that’s the ticket,” said Knottinger. “Lots of substance.”
Mieka interpreted this to mean that they would go for the sexiest, most gorgeous Fair Lady ever seen onstage, wearing as few wisps of clothing as permitted, a vision calculated to appeal to an audience in a whorehouse. There’d be no thought to the piece at all, none of Cade’s introspection or reasoning, not a hint of perspective beyond the best look at the girl’s gargantuan tits.
“Here’s luck to it,” Cade said amiably, and walked on.
As much as he wanted to fling a Gods know you’ll need it! at Black Lightning, Mieka took his cue and smiled sweetly before running to catch up. Jeska was seething, Rafe was coldly amused, and Mieka furiously demanded, “How can you not want to take that arrogant pillock apart?”
Cade laughed. “He’s still stuffing his trousers, didn’t you notice? He can’t get beyond ‘See how big mine is.’ He’s still thinking with his cock. And while he does, we’ve nothing to worry about.”
During the rest of the walk back to their lodgings, Mieka considered this. They’d made the turn from the river up the two blocks to the inn when he asked, “What happens if he ever discovers he’s got a brain?”
Cade replied with a quote. “‘Open things, and things will be open to you.’ Do you honestly think the man who wrote that has a brain?”
Mieka joined in the laughter, and even bought the first round at the bar. But he kept fretting over the question of arrogance.
It was an hour after dinner, and they were up in Cade and Mieka’s room going over the Tenth Peril, before he decided that Cade had earned his arrogance, and went on earning it every day of his life. He was the smartest man Mieka had ever met, and the most creative. Those things clasped hands more or less constantly with a tendency to anguish himself about matters Mieka found supremely silly, but maybe that was what having a brilliant mind meant. And if that were true, he was very glad he hadn’t got one. As he listened to Cade outline his new plans for making “Treasure” an experience such as no audience had ever known before, Mieka knew that as irksome as he might find it to deal with, the anguishing uncertainty was necessary to Cade’s art.
He doubted that Thierin had ever concerned himself with anything more consequential than which stockings to use in stuffing his crotch.
“The rhyme that’s been used for fifty years or more,” Cade told them, “it’s not the original. Somebody rewrote it to make it scan better.”
“Not exactly great poetry now, is it?” Jeska said, then recited the verse that had been the stock bit of this playlet for more than half a century.
As soon as fell the night
Along the crumbling walls
The stone a-tumbling falls
To hide the golden light
Ere morning touched the field
Regal bells had pealed
To doom the wretched thief
Condemned and hanged aright
Long years bring no relief
Of poverty and blight
Scepter, ring, and crown
Ever lost and never found.
“It’s putrid,” Cade agreed. “But it does what it’s supposed to, which is condemn an innocent man, destroy his family, and conceal the real Treasure. We’re going to change all that.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this when we were rehearsing back in town?” Jeska complained.
“Because there was only a one-in-thirteen chance we’d draw the thing.”
The gleam in his eyes was positively fiendish. Mieka jumped to his feet and grabbed the pitcher. “Back in a tick-tock,” he said, and went downstairs for more beer. He had a feeling they were going to need it.
* * *
The invitations came as Touchstone had expected: one to perform for the ladies in the Pavilion with its great copper roof, and one to Fliting Hall. Lord Kearney Fairwalk brought the elegant rolls of parchment, waxed and sealed and beribboned, when he arrived on the third morning of their stay at Seekhaven.
“Looked in at the Castle, don’t you see,” he explained over a late breakfast. Touchstone had been up half the night revising “Treasure” and could work up very little enthusiasm for the coveted invitations. “How is everything so far?”
“Well,” Rafe said in his laconic way, “Cade’s the only one getting any sleep. I miss my wife, Jeska hasn’t put a polish on his blade since we left Gallytown, and Mieka’s worried that Cade wants us to quit breaking glass.”
Fairwalk’s pale, watery eyes suddenly took up half his face, and his already limp sandy hair seemed to wilt further. “Oh, no! You simply can’t do that! I mean, it’s what you’re known for!”
“And if that’s all we’re known for—” Cade began.
“Ignore him,” Mieka advised His Lordship. “The rest of us do. Did we say we drew the one about the Treasure? Cade wants to rewrite the whole bleedin’ thing.”
“He’s been busy thinking again.” Jeska shrugged. “It’s a right bother, it is.”
For a moment His Lordship was torn between the glass and the Treasure. It was odd, Mieka told himself, that sometimes he could watch the thoughts forming in the man’s eyes: as if an idea was like a nutmeat to be examined for quality, put back into its shell, and replaced on the tree, and only then could he back away and understand it. There was an old saying about being unable to see the water for the waves, but that wasn’t how Fairwalk’s mind worked. Individual things made sense to him only as part of a larger whole.
“Curious,” he said at last, and Mieka had the impression he was looking at a whole grove of walnut trees, or the entire Ocean Sea. “No one drew it last year, or the year before.…”
How this mattered was of course about to be explained to them. Mieka poured more tea.
It so happened that the last descendant of the family held responsible for losing the Treasure had discovered on the last of his ancestral lands a nice seam of coal. The proceeds these five years enabled him to slink his way back to Court, though not in Gallantrybanks where he had no place to stay, the family mansion having been sold long since. Half the nobles at Seekhaven hired rooms for the duration of Trials, invitations to guest at the Castle being rare, and thus Lord Oakapple could blend in with the crowd. And thus here he was in Seekhaven, renting rooms along with everyone else.
“But here’s the interesting thing,” Fairwalk concluded. “This is the first time he’ll see ‘Treasure’ performed. The first time anyone will see it with an Oakapple in attendance. I
mean to say, there hasn’t been anyone of that name anywhere near the Court in longer than anyone can remember. Will he be just frightfully humiliated at the reminder, or—”
“—or pathetically grateful that somebody’s finally doing the real version?” Cade gave Fairwalk’s shoulder a gentle shake. “We’re going to be in trouble, aren’t we?”
He didn’t sound vexed by the prospect. Mieka didn’t waste mental energy trying to figure out why. Cade could never resist sharing when he’d been especially clever.
Sure enough, his next words were, “If we do the old version, Lord Oakapple is humiliated anew and probably never sets foot off his lands again—and hates us forever. Depending on how rich he is, he might be able to annoy us one way or another. If we do the new version, my version, he’s thrilled, he’s grateful, he can’t do enough for us—which might be interesting, depending on how rich he is! But there are factions at Court who won’t like us mucking about with one of the sacred Thirteen.”
“Had you considered,” Fairwalk said diffidently, “that whereas the traditional playlet isn’t what one would call … erm … vigorous, don’t you see—”
Mieka interrupted with a snort. “People talk, there’s thunder, they talk, a flash or three of lightning, more talk, it rains, and some yobbo runs in blithering about a rockslide. Fair tingles the hairs on me neck, it does, every time!”
“Yes, of course, but you’re very good at thunder and lightning, Mieka. Unbeatable, really.” If that had been meant to soothe and flatter, His Lordship was much mistook. “My point is,” he went on, once Mieka had given another snort, “don’t you see, that Touchstone can work the piece with your flourishes, and startle everyone at the most unexpected moments—”
“Nobody ever earns enough points with ‘Treasure’ to make the Royal,” Jeska stated.
“You could.” Fairwalk took a dainty bite of toast. Mostly Gnomish though he looked, he had the small, square white teeth of a full-blood Human. Mieka wondered suddenly if those teeth were really his—and just how much Gnome he really might be. He certainly dressed with an un-Gnomish flamboyance, and spent money like a drunken Elf.
“How long since it all happened, anyway?” Jeska asked. “I mean, everybody seems to behave as if it was last fortnight.”
“Hundred and fifty years, give or take,” Rafe said at the same time Cade announced, “Two hundred and eighty-one years ago.” When they all stared at him, he added, “It’s a simple calculation, really, even though everything’s been confused a-purpose. It all has to do with how King Meredan’s family got and kept the throne in the first place.”
“Oh Gods,” Mieka whined, “spare us, won’t you?”
“But it’s important!”
“So was the Archduke’s War,” Rafe reminded him, “and look who’s going to be at every performance at Trials: his very own son and heir.”
“Well, that’s not long enough past that they can muddle things up, now, is it?” Cade retorted. “Wait another century or so, and there’ll be a Fourteenth Peril.”
“Beholden unto all the Gods that we won’t be around to perform it!”
“Speak for your ownself,” Mieka told Rafe. “Me great-great-granny’s still making everyone’s life a misery, and looks to be doing so for another hundred and five years.” Abruptly he realized that if his plans went aright, one day he would have grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren, which would make him old. Gods, what a thought.
Jeska turned intense blue eyes on him. “But it’s a young man’s game, innit? Bein’ a player. And glisking the way you do—”
“Everything still works,” Mieka snapped. “Now, if nothing’s been decided, and isn’t likely to be in the next hour or six, I’m off.”
“Stop a while, please,” begged Fairwalk. “Cade’s right, this is important.”
“Just tell me what to do and give me the magic to do it with. See you at rehearsal.”
“Mieka—”
The kitchen door to the back garden was closest. He used it.
Cade wasn’t the only one who’d been doing a lot of thinking lately. This new idea, the one about grandchildren, needed contemplation. But despite himself, and despite Cade’s Elsewhen where he’d seen them both old, he just couldn’t picture it. More to the point, he couldn’t picture her as anything but sixteen years old and achingly lovely, a girl to steal a man’s breath and heart every time he looked at her.
Old? Never.
But that was what inevitably happened if one lived long enough, even those substantially Elfenblood, who kept their youthful looks well past the time when other races turned gray and wrinkly. Hells, his own mother still looked barely thirty. Mieka would look young, feel young, for a very long time—and Jeska was a right fool to worry about theater being a young man’s game. What did a masquer have to anguish himself about? Any glisker worth his withies could make Jeska look like anybody in the world even if he could barely totter across a stage.
No, it wasn’t youth that mattered. It was—he struggled with the words, and a passing Trollwife grunted at him when he nearly bumped into her. Sidestepping, he sought out a nice little patch of grass by the river and sat down, scowling at the water.
Inspiration? Was that it? The older groups—the Enticements, Kelife and the Candlelights, even his well-loved Shorelines—they were all doing the same things they’d always done. They were still good enough for the Circuits (well, mostly), and audiences came to see them because they were comfortable, reliable, always good value. They were safe. But when was the last time any of them had done something new? Something original, shocking, thought-provoking, amazing?
Cade was all those things and more besides. Cade was inspired, and caught up Jeska and Rafe and Mieka in his visions. They refined Cade’s insights, flashed new ideas off one another. Touchstone would never be safe and stale any more than she would ever be old.
No thinking about her during working hours, he reminded himself, and jumped to his feet, and ran back to the inn to share the planning of how they’d astonish the judges this time. Mad and clever, he reminded himself, grinning. It was all part of his job.
* * *
The last needle-fine shards of glass glittered to the stage. Mieka stalked out from behind the glisker’s bench, stood between Cade and Jeska, waited for Rafe to join them, bowed, and wrenched his arm from Cade’s sudden, warning grasp. He kept a wide smile on his face as Touchstone took another bow, snapping at Cade, “Leave me the fuck alone!”
The curtains drew shut. Servants, warned in advance to be armed with brooms, scurried out to sweep up the glass. In the wings, he saw Black Lightning congratulating themselves. Rather than exit stage left as all the other groups had done, Mieka spun on a heel and strode off stage right, where the remaining three groups waited in varying states of nervousness to perform their Perils.
If Cade didn’t stop grabbing at his arm, he’d be experiencing peril in ways he’d never imagined.
“Mieka—”
“Let go of me!” he snarled.
“We had to do it the old way, we couldn’t take the risk!”
He found a staircase and climbed it, two and three steps at a time, infuriated anew to find his eyes stinging. He knew Cade and the others were following him; he could hear their boots on the well-worn stone. Up the narrow spiral he ran, until at last there was nowhere to go but outside onto the crenellated walls. Excellent view of the sunset across the river, he supposed, had he been able to see through the wash of angry tears.
“Mieka.”
Knuckling his eyes, he whirled round and shouted, “I couldn’t believe it when I felt what you put into those withies—what you left out of them—why?”
Cade approached warily. Jeska and Rafe hovered in the doorway behind him, looking at each other and then at Mieka and then back to each other again. He wanted to chuck all three of them off the battlements. But he’d settle for breaking Cade’s nose. A nice, big target. Not that anybody would notice. Might even be an improvement.
“So you did what was safe!”
“I did what was necessary to win us a place on the Circuit.” He paused, his long face flinching a little. “Please, Mieka. Try to understand. I can’t bear to have you disappointed in me.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you forced us to do that useless piece of shit!”
Jeska spoke up from the doorway. “It wasn’t just him. It was me as well. And Rafe. And Kearney.”
“And he’s a player now, is he? Part of Touchstone?” Something worth being part of rang mockingly in his mind. “What the fuck does he know about—”
“He knows the Court,” Rafe said.
Cade took a half-step forwards, one hand reaching, pleading. “Mieka, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, but I knew this would happen, I knew you wouldn’t—”
“You spineless, gutless—”
Temper flashed in the gray eyes. “You want to spend the next year playing for trimmings in taverns? If you ever paid attention to anything beyond your next drink, you’d know that Jeska’s mother hasn’t been well for months—he needs the money! So does Rafe. He’s married now. He—”
“And what of you? What is it you want, O Great Tregetour? Think they’ll pat us on the head for being good little boys and send us off on the Ducal or Royal? They were bored! What they expect from us is something brilliant, something amazing—and we gave them safe and traditional and—and—” Tears threatened again and he turned to stare out at the town and the river beyond.
“Mieka…”
“You saw them,” he said thickly. “You saw their faces. We could’ve been anybody up there, anybody except Touchstone. We were safe and comfortable and ordinary. Did Kearney Fairwalk take that into consideration when he told you what to do?”