by Melanie Rawn
I beheld me at a wedding such wondrous sights to see:
Ten flasks of ale a-quaffing—nine down my throat by sunset,
Eight twin Windthistles—seven not yet wedded,
Six famous players—five of them drunk a-reeling,
Four lissome ladies dancing, three old glasscrafters snoring,
Two Elfen dreadfuls banished, one swarm of magic waspies,
And a wedding to remember, it was!
Mieka would have applauded, but that would have meant relinquishing the bottle—and Cade, lounging nearby on the rug and too lazy to get up and fetch his own, had been casting covetous eyes at it for the last half hour. The food had been eaten, the toasts had been raised and drunk, the dances had been danced, and Jed and Blye had been waved joyously off to their wedding trip—a week on a river barge floating through the countryside towards Seekhaven, where they’d catch the public coach back to Gallantrybanks. Many of the guests had departed, and those who remained had got down to the business of serious drinking.
“In my professional opinion,” Cade mused, “the lack of rhyming is a drawback.” He sank his chin into his purple neckband and belched daintily. “But it sows promish.”
Chat wandered in with Deshenanda, who was leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, to say their farewells. “Mistress Mirdley vows that if I don’t take Desha home,” he said, “she’ll deprive me of the means to father any more children after this one. And I believe her.”
“You better!” Cade laughed, rising to give the girl a slightly unsteady bow, take her hand, and brush his lips gently across her wrist. “It was good to see you again. We’ll bring back shomething—something—lovely for the baby’s Namingday present.”
“Pale and tired as she is,” came Mistress Mirdley’s sharp voice from the doorway, “that might be sooner than anyone thinks if you don’t get her tucked up in bed! Cayden, make yourself useful and help her to their carriage!”
Cade rolled his eyes and did as told. Mieka had yet to meet anyone who didn’t do as told when Mistress Mirdley was doing the telling. Cade returned with a fresh bottle of brandy, and when Mieka sat up and looked hopeful, he received only a broad grin in return.
“But mine’s nearly empty!” he whined.
“Poor you.” He sank to the floor, folding his long legs, and uncorked the bottle. After a long swallow, he sighed and announced, “I do love a wedding. Let’s have another when we get back, eh?”
Mieka fluttered his eyelashes and in a perfect imitation of Jeska’s simpering maidens, exclaimed, “Why, Master Silversun! Was that a proposal?”
Cade pretended to consider, then shook his head. “You’d look dreadful in a white gown and lace gloves.”
“So would you,” Mieka retorted.
Alaen began a melodramatic version of “Wilt Thou Favor Me, Heart’s Darling, with Thy Pretty Glovèd Hand?” Mieka threw a pillow at him. A small snowfall of feathers escaped a ragged seam; Cade waved a lazy finger and the feathers drifted back to the pillow.
“Flaunter,” Mieka muttered. “Went to a Wizardly academy, he did, with all sorts of silly tricks up his sleeves. Never anything useful, though, not him!”
Alaen wasn’t listening. Neither was he playing his lute. Mieka glanced around and immediately knew why.
Sakary and Chirene had come in. The fettler was saying something-or-other to Cayden while his wife drifted elegantly through the drawing room with that instinct all supremely beautiful women had of finding the exact place in any setting where the light (in this case, sunset) and the backdrop (the only reasonably intact tapestry left at Wistly) showed her to perfect advantage. She glowed against the rich colors behind her, the daisies in her black hair like tiny sunbursts, the crumples and ruffles of her yellow skirts swirling with dark golden shadows. She was, Mieka supposed, a prize beyond anything most men ever dreamed on. Yet his own instinct told him that she was the type of woman who expected admiration from every man who set eyes on her. It wasn’t that she silently demanded to be stared at; she didn’t have to. Men did that all on their own. She adorned any scene she condescended to inhabit, but the air around her seemed oddly empty, as if all words and thoughts had fled, afraid of trying to compete. How she had ended up with dour, glowering Sakary Grainer was a total mystery. Something about his adoration must be different from the rest, more satisfying in some way Mieka couldn’t even begin to guess.
Even with his heart bespoken, Mieka was not immune to the allure of a fabulously beautiful girl, but not only did she fall into the category of Another Man’s Possession, he frankly found very little about Chirene that was truly alluring. There was a remoteness to her beauty, like a statue in High Chapel: not cold, but oddly distant. Instinct told him that although a man could look—he’d have to be three days’ dead not to look—she’d rarely if ever welcome touch. It might disorder her hair or smudge her lip rouge.
Alaen was looking at Chirene as if he would be content to touch the sole of her slipper with a single fingertip. There was a stunned helplessness in the musician’s blue eyes, much the same look most men wore around her—at least until they remembered their manners, as one of the glasscrafters had not this afternoon until his wife trod deliberately on his foot. But there was something else about Alaen’s eyes, too, something vulnerable and yearning. Something hopeless.
As Sakary held out a hand to his wife and she glided back across the room to him, Mieka glanced at Cade. He was frowning slightly, his gaze darting from Alaen to Chirene and back again. So he saw it, too, Mieka thought. It was an excellent thing that they’d be inviting Alaen along to—oh, wherever it was they were picking up the new Princess. A couple of months away, and the spell would fade. There would be other women, and she would be forgotten.
That was how it was, he reminded himself wisely, when the attraction was nothing but physical. A month or two, and—
Months away. Months.
He swore on his next swallow of brandy that tomorrow he’d write to her again, and the day after, and the day after that, so she would know this long separation wasn’t of his choosing.
Well, not exactly, anyway.
Chapter 10
Riotous as Wistly Hall could be on any given day, the morning of Touchstone’s departure for the Continent was pure pandemonium.
“Rafcadion Threadchaser, don’t you dare tell me you left your good cloak at home!”
“Just as you like, sweet love. I won’t tell you.”
“Has anybody seen Mieka?”
“Not recently, Mistress Windthistle. The cloak’s right here, Crisiant,” soothed Jeska. “He was using it to play dragons last night with Tavier.”
“Tavier? Oh Gods, he’s not in Mieka’s trunk again, is he?”
“No, Mum,” came Petrinka’s assurance, “he’s helping Cilka put Bompstable into his carry-basket so he won’t get outside again. I do wish they’d taken the cat with them. The poor thing cries for them every night.”
“He’d cry louder if he fell off the barge into the river,” Rafe pointed out.
“Where’s His Lordship got to?”
“Jinsie! Damn it, she was here just a second ago—Trinka, if you don’t get your thieving little fingers out of that food basket, I’ll tell Mistress Mirdley!”
“Mum! I didn’t, I swear—”
“Has anybody seen Cade?”
“Did that Blackpath boy get here yet? I’ve another set of strings for him. Just in case.”
“Crisiant, what happened to that little polishing kit Blye sent over?”
“Jinsie! Where are you!”
“Cade had it last—it must be in with the glass baskets and already in the carriage. Which remembers me, which of you has that little box Blye made for the new Princess?”
“Cade has that, too. I think.”
“You think—? Oh, Gods! Where is he? Jeska, have you seen him?”
“When did she have time to make it?”
“Jinsie!”
“The night before the wedding, I’m tol
d. She said she’d not be sleeping anyway, what with the fidgets, so—”
“Too much to hope that Mieka’s shown his ears down here yet, eh?”
“Haven’t seen him, sorry, Master Windthistle.”
“Hadden, give those strings to Rafe. Is anybody interested in the fact that if you don’t get out of here right now, the ship sails without you?”
“And where’s Cayden?”
“Haven’t seen him. Now, Rafe, you be sure to mention that these are for the rosewood lute, not the spruce—”
Mishia had had enough. She climbed nimbly atop the hall table and shouted, “Outside! Everybody! Now!”
There was a scuffle and a scrum at the door, and a slamming, and then a silence.
“Cade! Over here! No, you idiot, here!”
“Jinsie? What are you doing lurking under the stairs?”
“Shushup! I have to talk to you.”
“If you’re about to tell me to keep an eye on that brother of yours—”
“Not on him. On his letters. Like this one.”
“Jinsie—!”
“I took it off the pile on the desk yesterday morning, just like I took all the other letters he’s written to her since we found out about this journey.”
Another silence.
“And you want me to do the same, while we’re away.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t like her.”
“I pretend, for Mieka’s sake. I keep thinking it will burn out. But she’s—there’s something about her, Cade, it’s not just me, Cilka feels it, too! And that mother of hers, I know she’s becasting him, or her, or maybe both. Mum says we’re imagining things, but—you have to make sure he thinks his letters were lost—”
“No.”
“You have to! It’s months you’ll be gone, and if she doesn’t know why and doesn’t hear from him, then she’ll think he’s forgotten about her, and then she’ll set her sights on someone else—”
“Don’t you care how much it would hurt him?”
“Not if it saves him making the worst mistake of his life!”
“If it’s a mistake, it’s his to make.”
“I know my own brother! It isn’t just that she’s not right for him. She’s so completely wrong that it scares me. You have to help, Cade. You have to do this for me. For him.”
“The only thing I’ll do for either of you is never say a word about this to Mieka. Not what you did, nor what you asked me to do.”
“Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him? Like he’s a prize to be won at a village fair! She’s winning, Cade, and she can’t, and you have to help me stop it.”
“I said no!”
Mieka peeked again through the crack between the hinges of the partly open dining room door, and saw Cade stride angrily out into the street. A moment later Jinsie followed, scrubbing furious tears from her cheeks. When he could think again, breathe again, Mieka got a better grip on the half-barrel of Auntie Brishen’s whiskey that he’d stashed in the dining room cupboard and went outside. Jinsie was lucky his hands were otherwise occupied; he didn’t trust himself not to slap her. As for Cayden—he couldn’t even meet the man’s eyes. All the farewells had been said and all the last-minute advice had been given and all the baggage had been checked one more time and they were all in Fairwalk’s carriage rattling down the cobbles before he could even begin to think about what Cade had said.
Mieka was scrunched in between Jeska and Rafe, his feet propped on the half-barrel and his knees in his face, opposite Fairwalk, Cade, and Briuly Blackpath, who had accepted the invitation that Alaen had refused. If Mieka had his suspicions about precisely why Alaen had refused, he kept them to himself. He didn’t like riding with his back to the horses, and he was nervous anyway with the excitement of the voyage, and to put the crowning touch to his discomfort, his unsettled stomach was knotting around itself with rage. The drive was nearly over before he’d managed to argue his breakfast into staying where he’d put it, and then they were loading themselves and everything else onto a tall-masted ship, and he still hadn’t begun to work out what he thought and felt.
Briuly turned out to be even more obsessed with the safety of his lutes than Cade was about the glass baskets and withies. It did no good to soothe him with reminders that Mieka’s mother had becast the cases with the same cushioning spell Mieka had long since used on the basket crates, and that the cases themselves had been constructed by Jezael to each instrument’s exact dimensions. When the two polished, big-bellied wooden boxes were taken down from the carriage, Briuly had to check to make sure the lutes were all right. He carried them himself up the gangplank to be inspected by the Crown Port Officer for whatever such persons inspected for (a right nuisance, and one would think that players in the Royal employ sailing on a Royal ship on a Royal diplomatic mission would be exempt, but there it was). Then he had to check them again. It wasn’t until they were securely stowed in a cupboard of the stateroom he would share with Kearney Fairwalk (now, there was a pairing, Mieka thought, briefly amused) that Briuly breathed freely again. And headed for the nearest bottle of wine.
Mieka was sorely tempted to do likewise. He felt every tiny movement of the deck beneath his feet, and the ship hadn’t even left the dock. This didn’t bode well for what might happen when they actually set sail. He had a sketchy idea that there were spells that could move things and even people great distances in an eyeblink, but the Fae Folk had jealously guarded those as well as so much else. Now such spells were lost. There were stories of Wizards and Elves who had tried to replicate these spells based on what little information lingered. These stories always ended messily.
It remained, however, that at some point instantaneous transfer had been done, and he wished the shifty Fae to whichever hell least suited them for keeping the secret to themselves. He was not looking forward to the next few days. Cooped up with Touchstone, Lord Fairwalk, Briuly Blackpath, assorted Court functionaries of the lesser sort, servants, and a collection of sailors who ranged from twelve-year-old cabin boys to leather-faced veterans of a hundred voyages—no, he was not looking forward to it at all. Auntie Brishen had sent along the essentials, both for seasickness and otherwise, but even if he made use of them and stayed the whole time in the cabin he’d be sharing with Cade—still, it was a cabin he’d be sharing with Cade.
Which meant he’d best sort himself out, or a few days would seem like many, many years.
He stood at the ship’s railing, holding on tight, looking out at the south shore. Of the six bridges connecting the north and south banks of the Gally River, there was only one below the Plume—only about a half mile from Wistly Hall, in fact, but no ship this size with masts this tall could fit under it. The docks for vessels plying the Ocean Sea were downriver, and the banks were lined with warehouses, chaundlers, taverns, and brothels, and the dwellings of those who serviced the Kingdom’s trade. A rough district, for certes. It was just past dawn and already he could pick out four fistfights and a brace of trulls arguing with their customer. A warehouse door slammed open and two boys pelted out, arms full of burlap bags, and an instant later a hugely muscular man, at least half Giant, came running after them, knives in both hands. A Crown Constable was marching along behind a well-dressed and protesting gentleman, encouraging him to step lively at the point of the gentleman’s own sword—all a constable was allowed to carry was a truncheon, though most of them secreted other weapons about their mud-brown uniforms. Everybody shouted and nobody listened.
Cade strolled past Mieka, talking with Fairwalk. He nodded and smiled as he went by, nothing self-conscious or wary in his eyes, no hint of worry over what Jinsie had told him. Mieka frowned after him, noting that as the ship left the dock and was caught with a little jolt by the river’s current, Cade stayed sure-footed as a cat. Good image for him, Mieka told himself sourly: make sure he was fed and petted and praised, and had a nice warm place to sleep and his own way, and he was purringly content. Otherwise …
Mi
eka didn’t like being at odds with Quill. It always showed up in the magic. Those six illicit withies he’d made last year, for instance—Mieka had sensed the fear inside them, and had eventually found out why. Knowing what to feel for after working with the man this long (was it only a year and a half?), he could tell by the taste of the magic in the withies whether Cade had been annoyed, amused, tired, bored, unhappy, excited, or just doing his job when he primed them. The importance of their upcoming shows meant that Cade had to be cosseted into a good mood, a productive mood. To accomplish it, Mieka had to be, as usual, both clever and mad.
Just coming into view were the Royal Standards flying atop the Keeps, twin fortresses that faced each other across the river, protecting the approach to the city. Mieka had always wondered why anyone bothered to build anything that ugly even once, leave alone twice. The new Princess would be spending her time in the north tower until the official marriage, which he supposed was a good thing: after a month or so in that grim, gray place, even the grimiest Gallantrybanks street would seem a paradise. Not that she would ever be allowed to see any grime, of course.
Cade strolled by again, talking with Briuly this time as they shared swigs from a wine bottle. Mieka’s hands clenched around the wooden railing. Had Jinsie thought she was being clever when she tried to enlist Cade in her plot? How dare anyone not understand that all his happiness for the rest of his life was bound up in her?
Well, he’d deal with his twin sister another time. What was important now was Cade’s refusal to enter into Jinsie’s scheme. Cade wouldn’t make choices for Mieka. He’d said so before, of course, but Mieka hadn’t really believed him. And that shamed him. He was awestruck now by Cade’s faith in him. It was a degree of trust he knew he’d done little to deserve. Never consciously analytical, especially about his own soul, Mieka nonetheless knew himself to be capricious, impulsive, and thoughtless. He wasn’t the sort of person anybody ought to trust.