by Melanie Rawn
“Ready in a se’ennight, Your Lordship.”
The most interesting thing about shopping with Fairwalk was that there were no bills to settle. During all the time they spent in the arcade, Mieka saw not a single price ticket on anything and not a glimmer of a coin sliding into a cashbox. All of it was on tick. In one shop specializing in leather goods, while Fairwalk probed through a selection of hides to be made into boots at a shop down the road, Mieka helped Cade choose a pair of bright blue cheverel gloves for Derien. When Cade reached for his purse, the clerk flung his hands in the air, dismayed and embarrassed.
“Oh no, young Master, certainly not!”
“But they’re not for me, or on Lord Fairwalk’s charge, they’re for my brother.”
“And I’m sure he’ll like them—you’ve taste, young Master, no doubting of it. It’s an honor to be of service to a refined gentleman.” The clerk glanced round and lowered his voice to a furtive murmur. “If you’ve a mind to it, you might mention where they came from—nothing more pleasing than a referral from anyone connected with His Lordship.”
“Does anybody ever pay for anything in these shops?” Mieka asked, also very softly so the owner wouldn’t overhear.
The clerk shrugged and rolled his eyes—gestures that would have cost him his place had his employer seen, Mieka was sure. “There’s them as do when the goods are sent round, and them as waits for a bill, and them as don’t never pay up. But there you are, that’s the nobility for you.”
The glance was so swift, Mieka almost didn’t catch it. Yet a glance there was, and at Kearney Fairwalk, with the words them as don’t never pay up. Surely not, Mieka told himself. His Lordship was rich, and when the bills came in surely he must settle them. The alternative was a visit by one of the unpleasant men who on occasion used to come round to Wistly Hall, in the bad old days before Jedris and Jezael and now Mieka himself started earning decent money.
That set him to wondering how much Touchstone would be paid for the honor of representing the Kingdom—or whether the honor would be considered payment enough. He’d counted on making enough this summer to contribute to the rest of the roof repairs, and make sure his father got the best of the new exotic woods for his lutes, and—and get married before the Winterly Circuit began.
Rummaging through his rather sketchy education, he recalled that the journey across the Flood to the Continent lasted between three and five days, depending on the weather and the destination port. And here his memory failed him—or, more to the point, he succeeded admirably in being unable to remember things he’d never bothered to learn. He had no idea where Gref Jyziero was. How long it would take to get there, how long back. How many places they would stop along the way, how many performances—how many weeks or even months it might be before he’d see her again.
Back in the little carriage, he turned to Fairwalk and demanded, “This journey to collect the new Princess—how long will it take?”
“You leave in eight days,” said Fairwalk.
“And we’ll be back about a month before the Winterly,” said Cade.
Mieka opened his mouth, but before the instinctive wail could come out, His Lordship added, “And if we’re lucky, when the public celebrations occur next spring, you’ll be asked to perform at Court.”
Appalled, he scrunched into a corner of the seat and said not a word as they started back to Wistly Hall. Cade and Fairwalk went on discussing the journey and the pieces that would translate well—or at least not suffer too much from a lack of translation. Mieka wanted to yell at them to shut up, didn’t they understand that this thing they were so excited about meant he wouldn’t see her again for months? Gods, he should’ve asked her to marry him before she went back to Frimham, he should’ve married her while she was still here—months he’d be gone, who knew but that some other man would come along and be able to offer her so much more than he ever could—of course there’d be another man, a dozen other men, she was so perfectly beautiful, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life—
“I rather had it in mind,” said Fairwalk, “that you’d do well with a few of the Thirteen. ‘Dragon,’ of course, it’s still your signature piece, but Jeschenar works a frightfully good comic ambassador in the Fourth. And of course ‘Treasure.’ Yes, that one ought to play quite nicely.”
Mieka glanced up. “You knew,” he blurted. “You knew this was coming up, and that’s why you had us do the old version at Trials.”
Cayden stared at him. “What’re you on about?”
“He knew. So that we wouldn’t make enough points for the Ducal, and we’d be the only really good group available.” He bounced upright in the seat, fists clenching. “Think on it, Quill! Who else were they going to send? Somebody who didn’t even make Winterly? Not bleedin’ likely! They can’t take anybody off the Ducal or Royal, there’d be all those bookings scrapped—both Circuits would be in an uproar.”
“They could have done,” Cade argued. “They could’ve chosen the Shadowshapers or Kelife—”
“And sent us out in their place?” He snorted. “That’d play well with customers who paid to see them and got us instead! D’you know how much harder we’d have to work to win them over?”
“Actually,” murmured Lord Fairwalk, “I’m told the Tregrefina herself asked specifically for Touchstone.”
For an instant Mieka was confused—he’d thought Tregrefina was her first name. Cade settled back against the upholstery, a triumphant smirk all over his face. The grin vanished with Fairwalk’s next words.
“Though in a roundabout way, you’re right, Mieka. I was hoping Touchstone would be selected, and it did occur to me that your availability without oversetting any Circuit arrangements might be an advantage, don’t you see.”
“Just like I said,” Mieka flung at Cade. “He knew.”
“So what if he did?” Cade challenged. “It works out, doesn’t it? She wants us, we’re available, it can’t do us anything but good!”
“It’s months away from home, Quill!”
“You mean ‘away from her.’” In a lethally quiet voice he asked, “Which takes precedence with you, Mieka? Your work, or your cock?”
“Boys, boys!” Fairwalk pleaded. “It’s perfectly understandable that Mieka will miss his lady—and nobody’s accusing you of neglecting Touchstone’s career, Mieka, not in the least little bit!”
“He just did.” Mieka sat back, fists tucked tight beneath his elbows so he wouldn’t use them to make a few necessary adjustments to Cade’s face.
“It won’t be for that long,” Fairwalk went on, alarmed when they continued to glower at each other. “It’s such a tremendous opportunity, once-in-a-lifetime—”
“So is she!”
Cade laughed nastily. “And now you’re about to tell me I’m just envious because you have someone to come home to.”
“Please,” Fairwalk begged again, hands fluttering helplessly. “This isn’t necessary—”
“Maybe it is,” Cade said in that velvet-over-a-vial-of-acid voice. “Your choice, Mieka.”
“You got that right! My choice!”
There was a certain satisfaction in seeing all the color drain from Cade’s face. There was a definite shame in hearing him say softly, “Yes. Always.”
He couldn’t ask, not in front of Fairwalk. His Lordship didn’t know about the Elsewhens. Mieka couldn’t ask if Cade had seen some grim and desolate future—maybe the one where he hated Mieka.
“Quill—”
He shook his head. “No, it’s all right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, not any of it.”
“Nor me,” he replied. It was as close as he could get to an apology. After all, the whole conversation had been Cade’s fault. The instant he thought this, he wanted to squirm. Cade had been generous, so why couldn’t he? Then he remembered that “Your work, or your cock?” question, and what it implied, and wanted to snarl all over again.
A fundamental and inconvenient honesty demanded that h
e admit, if only to himself, that smashing Cade’s face apart for the insult to her reputation would make him a hypocrite. That she had been a virgin when he’d first had her was undeniable—but it was equally undeniable that he’d had her. And with that thought, he ached anew at how long it would be before he could have her again.
The rig pulled up in front of Wistly Hall and Mieka jumped out before the horse had come to a stop, bypassing two startled sisters and his parents on his headlong flight up the stairs. He paused only long enough to fumble through the desk in Jedris and Jezael’s office. Armed with pen and ink and paper, he went straight to his secret little turret room and then sat there, staring at the blank page, without an idea in the world what to write.
How did Cade do it? How did he organize his thoughts into words and sentences? How did he fill great gaping empty page after page after page with words that meant something?
It wasn’t as if Mieka hadn’t written to her before. After Castle Biding, he’d worked hard to compose letters that would amuse, endear, coax, entreat, or all of these and more besides. Difficult as those words had been to find, even after he’d got started, now he couldn’t even work out how to begin.
Minster chimes up and down the river had rung five before he was able even to write Mistress Caitiffer. The rest of the page, white and pristine, mocked him. He wasn’t giving up, he told himself as he climbed back up through the trapdoor and trudged downstairs for dinner. He was just taking a bit of a break. Get his thoughts in order, arrange what he wanted to say in a fashion that made sense—that would make her fingers tremble and her heart race and—and—
“Not nervous about the trip, are you?”
His father’s low, worried voice. Mieka looked up from his almost untouched plate and smiled. “Me?”
“Quite the adventure,” he mused. “Seems my boys are growing up. It’s an interesting thing, it is, watching my sons spread their wings and fly.” A grin that Mieka knew was the model for his own suddenly decorated his face. “And then there’s Tavier, of course.”
“I’ll bring him back a collection of Continental worms, shall I, to grow into dragons?”
“That would make him very happy,” his father said, nodding. “Though how you’d keep them alive and wriggling is something I’m quite sure I don’t want to know.”
Jeska and Rafe had come to dinner, because Touchstone had a gift to bestow on the happy couple before the wedding on the morrow. Once dessert had been passed round, Cade unfolded his long body from his chair and cleared his throat portentiously.
“After due consideration,” he declared, towering over them all, “which lasted about as long as it took this pair to fall in love—oh, shush up, Blye, you know it happened the instant you clapped eyes on him—and a discussion that took about as much time as it took Jed to forget everything and everybody in the world except Blye, which was by my precise calculations about an eyeblink—we concluded—”
“Get on with it!” Rafe shouted.
“I’m working my way there!” Cade grinned. “Where was I?”
“Consideration, discussion, conclusion,” Jeska summarized.
“Of course. Beholden. The conclusion was that the four of us really have no idea how to run a business.”
“Being Artists,” Mieka contributed, just a bit spitefully, “we’ve no time to spare for anything other than being brilliant.”
“Thinking great thoughts,” Rafe added.
“Planning how next to startle the world,” said Jeska.
“Unquestionably,” Cade agreed affably. “So, except for a paltry two percent each—just to give us an excuse to make nuisances of ourselves—”
“When did you ever need an excuse?” Rafe wanted to know.
“—we hereby bestow upon Mistress Blye Cindercliff, soon to be Windthistle, all of Touchstone’s share in the glassworks at Criddow Close.” When Blye gasped and started to her feet, he pointed a long finger at her. “It’s already done and dusted, nice and legal, so don’t even think about objecting.” Raising his glass, he proclaimed, “To Blye and Jed!”
As Mieka shouted an echo of the toast along with everyone else, he happened to glance at Lord Fairwalk—who looked even more stunned than Blye and Jedris, and not with the same delighted gratitude. Mieka had no idea what Touchstone’s percentage of the glassworks was worth in terms of profit, leave alone the value of what they’d just given as a wedding present. But he was certain sure that His Lordship knew down to the last penny.
Mieka escaped the evening’s chatter about tomorrow’s wedding and slipped off to his turret. The words still wouldn’t sort themselves, no matter how he tried. Cayden would know how to phrase things, but asking for his help was so impossible that he physically flinched. When he heard curfew bells ring, he very nearly gave up.
Then he remembered the little collection of thorn.
Not half an hour later he was finished. The letter wasn’t entirely coherent, but he couldn’t help that. The basics were there: the journey, the longing, the need, the fear. The plea to wait for him. The love.
Back downstairs in his brothers’ office, he folded, addressed, and sealed the letter with the purple wax used by the Windthistle family forever, then left it on the desk atop a small pile of other post. The thorn was fading as he trudged up to his bedchamber. Cade was already asleep on the rickety old couch, curled on his side, looking perhaps fourteen of his twenty years. Their clothes for tomorrow hung neatly in the closet, and on the windowsill rested the small white velvet bag containing the necklet Blye would give Jed. It would be fastened with magic, just as Rafe’s and Crisiant’s had been, and only magic would ever unfasten it. Some couples chose bracelets or earrings to show they were bespoken or married. Mieka’s parents wore rings. But whatever kind of circle signified the vows, those circles were always sealed with magic for magical folk.
As he settled into bed, and the thorn withered and left him exhausted, he wondered sleepily what she would want him to give her when she became his wife. He ought to have asked, in his letter. He really ought to have asked.
Chapter 9
“Damn it to all hells!”
The stack of letters on the office desk was gone. The post had already gone out—some younger cousin whose duty it was to see to it every day had been too efficient this morning. Mieka ground his teeth and resisted the urge to skive off the wedding and write another letter this very instant. He’d woken with the thought in his head that he hadn’t asked what marriage token she’d like, and that on the Continent he might find something truly spectacular by way of rings, bracelets, necklets, or earrings. Stupid, stupid.
Cade was already dressed and gone when Mieka got up. Good; Mieka’s pride was still smarting from their exchange of yesterday, and he wanted to give it a bit of time. The wedding would be the perfect distraction. By day’s end, their scrap could be conveniently forgotten.
But by day’s end, he would have only six days until Touchstone and who knew how large a parade of nobles and functionaries would sail for the Continent, and that was barely enough time for a return letter from Frimham. If he bought bracelets, she might want rings or necklets instead. If he didn’t hear from her before they left, to be safe he’d have to buy sets of each and let her choose. And he still didn’t know what, or indeed if, they’d be paid.
Rafe, he thought suddenly. He’d take Rafe shopping with him. Rafe could bargain down the price of anything even better than Mieka could. Between them, they could haggle until Mieka had a set of everything. Imagining the exquisite wonderment on her face when he kept pulling jewelry out of his pockets, he grinned to himself and went downstairs whistling.
Blye looked as close to perfect as a girl who hated wearing a skirt would ever look. The gown was simple: three layers of misty white silk, close-fitting sleeves, cuffs of wide purple ribbon matching the sash around her tiny waist. She seemed to float across the lawn, one lace-gloved hand resting lightly on Cade’s wrist, the other clutching the nosegay of white and purple flowers
. Her silver-blond hair was loose around her face, a soft breeze off the river catching it now and then to reveal amethyst earrings set in silver that had belonged to her mother. She had found them in her father’s things after he died, safe inside a tiny glass box.
Standing with Jezael as their brother’s patrons, Mieka heard Jedris catch his breath when Blye came into view. Mieka grinned and caught Cade’s gray eyes, and Cade winked at him. They were all right again, Mieka thought with relief. Neither of them could hold on to a begrudgement very long—and all at once it struck him that with whatever terrible things Cade must have seen in the Elsewhens, he didn’t bear any grudges about those, either. How could one resent things that hadn’t even happened yet? Mieka didn’t resent Cade for having seen them, did he?
Well, mayhap he did. Just a little. Life had been a lot simpler before he’d acquired a friend who could see the future. Mieka did as impulse took him, without worrying much about consequences and without ever thinking that there might be other choices to be made. He wondered idly if Cade had foreseen this wedding or the trip to the Continent, then remembered something about if the choices weren’t his to make, he wouldn’t glimpse any futures that might come of them. So, because the decision to fall in love had been Jed and Blye’s—
He stifled a snort. Who ever decided to fall in love?
Cade was fulfilling a paternal role today, escorting Blye across the lawn while Alaen Blackpath and his cousin Briuly traded delicate phrases on lutes made by Hadden Windthistle. Cade would present her to Jedris—but not “bestow” her as her father would have done. She had chosen as her patron none other than Derien Silversun: wearing his first grown-up suit of clothes that matched Cade’s elegant gray and white (with purple neckbands), and terribly serious as only an eight-year-old could be as he stood with Mieka and Jez as guarantors of each partner’s good behavior towards the other through the course of their lives.
As Cade tucked Blye’s gloved hand in Jed’s and the couple faced the Good Brother and Good Sister, Mieka watched his tall, broad-shouldered, redheaded brother smile down at tiny, silvery Blye, and all at once they were the most perfectly matched pair in the world. The quirks of heredity—Elf, Goblin, Wizard, Sprite, Piksey, Human, and who-knew-what-else—in the Windthistle and Cindercliff bloodlines had somehow created these two people who were right for each other. And who’d found each other, Mieka told himself gleefully, all because of him. If ever he needed proof that one decision—his, to travel to Gowerion on the chance that he might sit in with Cade, Rafe, and Jeska as their glisker—could change lives, the sight of Jed and Blye claiming each other convinced him beyond all doubting.