Elsewhens (Glass Thorns)

by Melanie Rawn

  “Quill.”

  “No,” he mumbled, and turned onto his side with the covers over his head.

  “Lady Torren will be there.”

  “She’s bespoken now.”

  “Ha! So you did notice!”

  Of course he’d noticed. Who could forget that red hair and silky skin? Who could forget making love to her? Who could forget hearing her say afterwards, “You’re nothing like your father”?

  Thinking of whom—Zekien Silversun had once more managed to avoid his elder son completely. Cade had glimpsed him last night at Fliting Hall before the Shadowshapers’ performance, attending upon Prince Ashgar. There’d been no words exchanged, not even a nod of greeting. What did Cade have to do before his father acknowledged his existence someplace other than the privacy of Number Eight, Redpebble Square?

  He looked up, squinted round the room, and saw Mieka seated on the other bed. Bright-eyed, smoothly shaven, none the worse for last night’s party, the sight of him was a profound annoyance.

  “We’ve two choices, y’know,” Mieka told him. “We can get there a-times, and everybody’ll be looking at us, and we can brazen it out. Or we can get there late, and sit in the back where nobody will notice us, and sneak out as soon as the clasp-hands and chanting’s done.”

  Cade grunted.

  Mieka said casually, “Or, you’re right, we could not go at all.”

  He knew precisely what sort of smirks and falsely pitying glances would be targeted at them. The notion of smiling back, shrugging, saying Much beholden to those who commiserated, as if losing to Black fucking Lightning didn’t hurt like six different hells—it was unspeakable. But if no one saw them, everyone would think they’d stopped away out of shame.

  Cade wasn’t ashamed. He agreed with Kearney that the traditional version of “Treasure” had been the wiser move, and he regretted not having informed Mieka beforehand, and if he blamed anyone, it wasn’t himself for not having given Mieka more to work with. He blamed the Stewards and their incomprehensible favoring of Black Lightning. No, it wasn’t his fault and he wasn’t ashamed. He was furious.

  Mieka, watching him carefully, nodded. “That’s the way,” he encouraged. “Wear the blue-gray jacket, won’t you? There’s a good lad.” He bounded off the bed and was out the door before Cade could snarl that he wasn’t a five-year-old to be congratulated as if he’d just learned to tie his bootlaces all by himself.

  He washed, shaved, slid into last year’s jacket, and went with his partners to High Chapel. Or, rather, he went with them as far as the courtyard of High Chapel.

  Mieka spent the whole walk bemoaning that he’d had no breakfast. Jeska kept reassuring him that right after services, they’d buy some ale and find a congenial spot on the river and dig in to the bread, cheese, sausages, and fruit packed for them by the inn’s Trollwife. Rafe kept swinging the wicker basket of food in front of Mieka to coax him along the streets, like a chew-toy tempting a puppy. They were in the crowd moving slowly towards the huge carved doors when Mieka suddenly lurched against Cade, making him stumble into an overdressed matron and her three unlovely daughters. While Cade was apologizing, Mieka snatched the basket from Rafe, stuck his face inside it, and proceeded very noisily to yark.

  The immediate vicinity became abruptly uncrowded. Mieka sank pitiably to his knees, still retching into the basket.

  “Are you all right?” Jeska was all sweet solicitude, a hand patting Mieka’s shoulder.

  “Oh, the poor lad!” someone said.

  Rafe crouched beside the suffering Elf. “Bit too much to drink last night, eh?”

  The boy raised his head, tears streaming from those big, soft, innocent eyes, and whimpered, “I think I’m better now.”

  “Should we go?” Cade asked, concern and suspicion knotting his brows.

  All at once Mieka bounced to his feet, shook back his hair, and distributed a dazzling smile all round. “No, I’m fine. Still hungry, though.”

  And with that he reached into the basket and withdrew a gnaw of bread soaked with something brown, liquid, and lumpy.

  Which he happily stuffed into his mouth.

  The immediate vicinity became abruptly vacant. Jeska looked round the empty courtyard and grinned at Mieka. Rafe stifled laughter behind one hand.

  Cade knew it was sausage gravy. He’d seen it in a cauldron on the kitchen stove not twenty minutes ago. He’d watched the Trollwife seal up a jar of it and put it in the basket. He knew what it was. What it looked like, however …

  “That is without question the most revolting thing I’ve ever seen,” he announced. But he heard the tremor in his voice that meant his mad little glisker had done it to him again.

  “Worked, dinnit?” Mieka asked indistinctly, then swallowed, giggled, and dangled the basket in front of Cade’s face. “C’mon, let’s go eat!”

  * * *

  That night Touchstone performed “Doorways” in Fliting Hall for the gentlemen of the Court—with Cade’s full knowledge and cooperation this time. Touchstone’s was, in fact, the honor of giving the final performance at Seekhaven that year.

  “It ought to have been the Enticements,” Cade heard one of the Stewards say backstage after the show. “A farewell performance.”

  His companion gave a bark of laughter as they approached the drinks table. “Eh, who wants to see those tired old crambazzles?”

  Cade kept his back carefully turned, and took a long time to decide which of the eight different fruit brandies he wanted the serving girl to pour.

  “Their masquer wanted one more go at Trials, though, didn’t he? Said they could be great again.”

  “They should’ve gone out on top, or near it—and that was at least two Trials ago. Their Second Peril this year was just embarrassing.”

  “People still want to see them. People will still pay for a ticket—”

  “Apricot, p’rhaps, sir?” asked the girl, holding up yet another bottle, her professional smile growing a trifle strained. Cade nodded mindlessly and accepted the glass she poured out.

  “So why didn’t you and the others give them the necessary points?”

  “Because there would’ve been a bloody riot if they’d taken a spot better taken by someone else. Still, we couldn’t let them come in dead last. They’ve friends at Court. This way, they’re just barely out of the Winterly, so they’ve salvaged a bit of dignity.”

  “But they’re through. Everybody knows it now.”

  The Steward gave a reminiscent sigh. “They were great, in their day.”

  Beaten, broken, but not knowing it was time to hang it up … Cade repressed a shiver. The Shorelines, Redprong and Trinder, Kelife, Cobbald Close Players—all veterans like the Enticements, none of them aware (or admitting) that their day was past. Still, if all of them left the Circuits, who would take their places? The Nightrunners, who’d garnered even fewer points than the Enticements? Cade’s lip curled. At least the older groups were professionals who, though past their prime, could yet provide a decent show. They weren’t what they had been, and never would be again, but there was talent remaining in them. If they quit the Circuits, stopped coming to Trials, who would there be for Touchstone to beat?

  He knew the answer to that one.

  He’d heard that someone at the Castle gates had recognized Thierin Knottinger and Kaj Seamark, so they hadn’t spent the night in quod after all. Pity. They’d be leaving on the Ducal Circuit soon, so at least Cade wouldn’t be running into them in Gallantrybanks … while Touchstone waited through the long summer months and half the autumn for the Winterly to commence.

  He didn’t need anyone to tell him that it wouldn’t stop hurting until next year at Trials, when Touchstone blasted Black fucking Lightning off the Fliting Hall stage.

  The next morning he waved farewell to Rafe and Jeska as they set off for home with the Shadowshapers. Cade would be returning to Fairwalk Manor, the better to scour Kearney’s library for references he could use while rewriting “Treasure”—and t
his time there’d be no thorn to distract him.

  “When’s His Lordship collecting you?”

  He glanced down at Mieka, who would be leaving at noon on the public coach for Frimham. “An hour or so.”

  “You won’t have Lost Withies to hand at Fairwalk Manor,” Mieka fretted. “D’you really think you’ll find enough to work with?”

  Cade shrugged and led the way back inside. The Trollwife was just waddling into the taproom, carrying a tray laden with huge pot of tea and two cups plus a plate of various herb breads, on the chance that they’d grown peckish in the hour since breakfast. They took stools at the bar and expressed their gratitude, but the moment she was back in the kitchen, Mieka made a face at the steaming cup of tea Cade poured out for him.

  “Not a drop left of Auntie Brishen’s whiskey these three days gone,” he mourned, “or I’d be finishing it off. If we’re to make a practice of sharing with Chat and all that lot, next year it’ll have to be half a barrel for the ride here and another half for the ride back.” Raising his cup in morose salute, he said, “You should’ve asked Rafe to tell Dery to send you your book.”

  “Trust my copy of Lost Withies to the Royal Post? Not bleedin’ likely! I’ll be all right without it. I think I’ve memorized half of it by now, anyway.”

  “Someday, y’know, you’ll wear out your brain with thinking all the time.” Mieka chuckled as he slathered butter on a slice of bread. “You’re already planning the piece in your head, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve an idea or three. The difference is that before, I worked on it for my own curiosity. Now that there’s a commission, I have to consider Lord Oakapple, and—”

  “Quill!” Mieka looked horrified and set down the bread untasted. “Don’t write it because you think it’s what somebody else wants! Write it because you’ve no choice but to write it—and write it the way you have to write it or you’ll end up hating it and eventually yourself.”

  The vehemence startled him. “When did you start pondering the way I write?”

  “Since before that night in Gowerion,” he stated. “I know what’s real. I know what’s honest. Look at Blye with her glasswork. Does she love the stuff she does for money?”

  “Hells, no.”

  “All right, then. Those little boxes she made for our first Trials medals—she loved making them and it shows in how beautiful they are. They each have a bit of her in them—and that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Mystification was a condition familiar to him by now in Mieka’s presence. This time, though, he sensed a certain danger. He couldn’t have said why.

  “You behave as if putting too much of yourself into your work whittles away at your soul,” Mieka went on. “Like with ‘Doorways’ and how you said you didn’t want to perform it until it was perfect—whatever that means! You still don’t think it’s perfect, I’m dead certain you don’t. But that piece is more you than anything else we’ve ever done onstage. I tried to tell you, that night we did it for the ladies, but you didn’t listen, did you? You said it was brilliant, and I said it was yours.”

  “But it wasn’t ‘Doorways,’ it was cobbled together from—”

  “That’s the whole point!” Mieka exclaimed. “The magic you put into those withies is you.”

  As if that explained everything.

  Exasperated, Mieka rapped his knuckles on Cade’s forehead. “Solid granite! There was enough in the withies we used at rehearsal to shape the whole piece. Did you think I was the one providing all that? And when we did it last night there was so much more of you to work with—but do you feel less than you were? Like something’s been yanked out of you?”

  “No,” he admitted, dimly seeing where this might be going.

  “Just like Blye. Each of those boxes has something of her, something she made within herself and put into her glass. It’s her magic, yeh, but it’s also her mind, all her experience at her craft, and it’s part of her heart as well. She loves us, and she put that into the work. It’s real and it’s honest. The boxes were inside her head, she’d made them in her thoughts before she ever went to the kiln, and then she made them real. That’s what you do, as well. There’s something as gets created inside you, and when you put it into the withies for me and Jeska and Rafe to use, it’s not like it’s part of you that’s been taken away or—or stolen, or something. You’re not the less for what you give us.”

  “I s’pose not,” Cade mused.

  “What would make you less than you are is things you do because you think they’d be popular, or please somebody else. If you work like that, without putting yourself into it, then you may think you’re keeping your heart whole but you’re really crippling yourself. ‘Doorways’ is brilliant because it’s you!”

  “All right, I understand.” Suddenly he laughed. “If anybody’d told me, that night in Gowerion, that you’d be the one to aggravate me into being better than I ever thought I could be—”

  Those bright, changeable eyes went wider than ever, genuinely astonished. “Me? I do that?”

  “You do that. Didn’t you know?”

  “You’re not gammoning me?” he asked suspiciously. “You’re not laughing at me?”

  Cade set down his teacup and made the hands-open gesture that meant You may trust what I say. “It’s true that you can make me laugh when no one else can, but it’s never at you, Mieka.” He left his palms open, and Mieka matched his small hands to Cade’s long ones, laced their fingers together, and smiled. After a moment, Cade drew away, oddly humbled, and picked up his tea for something else to do with his hands. With a sidewise glance at the Elf, he said, “I can tell you for certain sure, though, I’ll never see sausage gravy the same.”

  “I been thinkin’ about that,” Mieka replied earnestly. “More colorful next time, I fancy. What d’you think of carrot-and-lentil soup?”

  The laughter was still tugging at his lips when he waved at Mieka from the window of Kearney’s carriage. It had to be imagination that the Elf looked a bit forlorn, standing there all alone with his satchel over his shoulder. What did he have to be glum about? He was about to walk over to the Seekhaven Coaching Inn on his way to see the girl, wasn’t he?

  Strange, Cade thought as he lounged back in cushioned elegance, how they never spoke about her. Hells, he’d barely heard her speak—just a few words when they were introduced—without her first name, of course—at Rafe and Crisiant’s wedding. He’d known what her voice sounded like long before that day. He’d heard her, and her laughter, as she and her mother agreed on the taming and the breaking of Mieka Windthistle.

  Pushing the Elsewhen out of his conscious mind, he watched as Kearney arranged his cunning little traveling desk on his lap, attending to letters, giving Cade a running commentary.

  “You’ve plenty of bookings coming up. The Kiral Kellari, of course—once each week until autumn. There’s a nice new place out by the Plume that wants you for ten nights, scattered through the summer. Here’s one from the Jubbe and Jar—no, that’s not your sort of place at all, very working-class, and we want only the upmarket venues from now on. I’ve seven requests for private performances in town, and two more at country homes.”

  “So we won’t be destitute, even though we’re still on the Winterly? We won’t get the fee we could’ve got if we’d made Ducal, though.”

  “Not a thing to worry on, Cayden, not a thing,” Kearney assured him. “We were right, you and I, to do ‘Treasure’ the usual way. Touchstone is safe on the Winterly Circuit, and you’ve the commission to do the piece your way.”

  “Yeh, all I have to do now is write the damn thing.” Safe—that was the word Mieka had flung at him in a rage. Innovative, glass-shattering Touchstone, playing safe. They’d got back at him, though, hadn’t they? “I still have to polish up ‘Doorways’ as well, y’know.”

  His Lordship folded away the desk, set it on the floor of the carriage, and composed himself to listen. When Cade couldn’t find a way to begin, Kearney suggested, “You�
�re still angry. While ’tis true they defied you, by doing ‘Doorways’ when you said not to, they do trust your judgment. They thought you were wrong this time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t trust—”

  “They’ll do it again,” he blurted. “The questions, the doubts, arguing about interpretations—defying me even as far as doing a play when I told them not to—they’ll do it again because they got away with it this time.”

  “It’ll come clearer to them as Touchstone goes along,” His Lordship soothed. “You’re the brain, Cayden, the visionary. They know it. They’re just not ready to admit it and give themselves over to your guidance. They will, eventually. But for now … let them win.”

  “What the fuck d’you mean, ‘let them win’?”

  “If they’re wrong, they’ll find it out, and learn that much faster to trust your direction. If they’re right—as I’m compelled to say they were about ‘Doorways’—then what do you lose? Nothing. It doesn’t really count yet. It’s a year from now, two years at the most, when it will really matter. Touchstone is making a name, but it’s not yet the name. By the time it truly counts, you’ll be in charge. They’ll turn to you for every decision. And that’s when the strength of your vision will make Touchstone the name in theater.”

  “Let them win,” he repeated sullenly.

  “For now.” Kearney smiled brightly and clasped his hands together with a Well, that’s settled it! air. “When we get to the Manor tomorrow night, all you’ll have to do is work on ‘Treasure’ for the next bit of a while.”

  “I already have some ideas,” Cade said.

  “Excellent! Tell me all about them!”

  * * *

  But for the first two days at Fairwalk Manor, Cade worked on “Doorways.” It wasn’t perfect, no matter how enthusiastic its reception at both performances. Even the version done with his full knowledge and cooperation hadn’t been what it ought to be. Perhaps he was being overly meticulous, fussing with it like this. Something else goaded him on, though, and eventually he understood that it was Mieka’s voice in his head, urging him to make it better, make it even more his. “Doorways” had so much of Cade in it—rather more than he felt comfortable with, but there it was—and “Treasure” would have to as well if it was to be any good. That was what Mieka had been telling him: Putting his heart as well as his mind into a piece was his only choice. Otherwise— He didn’t like to think about otherwise. Although an echoing voice saying, “His mind’s cold, but his heart’s colder” could still frighten him, he saw that to avoid it he must do the work with joy, not fear.