by Melanie Rawn
Cade trusted him.
He suspected Cade was an idiot.
What had Mieka ever done to demonstrate that he’d think a decision through instead of simply plowing on ahead as pleased him, and be damned to the consequences? Consequences were for charming himself out of. Was that what Cade trusted in him? That whatever happened, Mieka could—
“I think I hated you.”
He stared unseeing at the passing view of the wharves. It was his life, not Cade’s. He had to please himself. He had to do what was right for him. But how was he supposed to know which was the right choice—the one that wouldn’t lead to “I hated you”? It wasn’t as if he was the sort of person who sat down to analyze alternatives, to pick and choose the way one would ponder the bill of fare at an inn. It wasn’t as if he had Cade’s education or intellect, or inclination to pick his own emotions to bits just so he could examine the component parts.
It was those damned Elsewhens, Mieka decided. They’d taught Cade to see everything in terms of which decision might lead to what future. Look at that “Doorways” piece, with its score of options. Touchstone only ever presented five or six of them during a performance, but Cade had cooked up plenty more in that overactive brain of his, and suddenly Mieka wondered which of them he’d actually dreamed, and which were the products of his imagination. But maybe for Cade, dream and imagine were the same thing.
“You said you opened the right door. How do you know there were wrong ones?” Mieka had asked him once. “Or—no, not wrong, just different.”
Was there just one right door, one right decision? Or was each merely different from the others, variations that led to lives that weren’t necessarily inferior, just not what he’d originally had in mind? Dream or imagine could turn to nightmare as far as Cade was concerned, but—how was Mieka supposed to decide?
Gods, this was giving him a headache. The morning sun was too bright on the water, and the shouts of the sailors were too loud as they made ready the sails. He squeezed his eyes shut but it didn’t help.
It was his life to be lived. Cade couldn’t and wouldn’t live it for him. Cade had faith in him.
Cade was a fool.
“I think I hated you.”
Suddenly he felt sick, and told himself it was the uncertainty of the wooden deck beneath his feet. Shivering, he turned from the railing, leaning back against it, wrapping his arms around himself. Somebody placed a bucket at his feet. He could hear laughter as he fell to his knees and vomited until his stomach was empty—“Still in sight of the docks, and he’s already seasick?”—but he didn’t care. An arm wrapped about his ribs and long fingers supported his forehead, and a light voice spoke into his ear.
“This isn’t another High Chapel prank, is it? No, I didn’t think so. You about done? Come on, then.”
Cade helped him stand, guided him down some steps and along a passage that smelled of wood and citrus wax. A little while later he was huddled in the lower of two bunks, a blanket round his shoulders and a cup of water in his hands.
“I hope Auntie Brishen sent along something to the purpose,” Cade remarked. “Or was this just your delightfully subtle way of claiming the lower berth? You’re sure to have a laugh every night, watching me clamber about, and every morning, watching me tumble to the floor.”
He looked up, and all amusement fled those clear gray eyes. “Quill—” But he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t ask why Cade trusted him. Instead: “I’m fine now. Just nerves, I s’pose. I’ll take the upper.”
“We’ll see. And there’s no need to fret, Mieka. It’s Touchstone they want. Not the Sparks or the Shadowshapers. Us.”
Us—such a little word, surely too small to contain so much meaning. Their lives were their own to live, but hadn’t their lives become intertwined the instant Mieka set up the glass baskets that very first night in Gowerion?
And then he remembered what he’d realized the day Jed and Blye got married: that the decision to follow Cade and Rafe and Jeska to Gowerion had turned out just fine. Instinct: the motive behind almost all his choices. Without it, there’d be no Touchstone. No us.
That had to be what Cade trusted about him, the trait in Mieka’s character, the quality in his heart that Cade believed in. It had served them very well so far.
Cade had crouched down in front of him, rocking lightly to keep his balance as the ship moved out into the river. “Mieka?”
He smiled, pleased that he’d solved the puzzle and even happier that the solution meant he didn’t have to think about any of it anymore, and tossed back the rest of the water. “You can’t sleep in the top bunk, Quill, don’t be so bleedin’ silly. That’s where the window is, and the way you jostle about in your sleep, you’d put a knee right through the glass.”
“I think they call it a ‘porthole.’ But you’re right, you should take the top.” He grinned. “That way, you can yark right out the side of the ship.”
He chewed his lip, then slowly made the face he’d used in Seekhaven to such brilliant effect, and whimpered, “Quill—I think I need the piss pot—”
It worked. Cade looked around frantically, scrabbling under the bed with both hands. Mieka made dreadful noises and clapped a hand over his mouth, hunching his shoulders convulsively. Cade overbalanced and landed on his bum, scuttling back like an upside-down crab to get out of range. He looked so ridiculous that Mieka fell back onto the bed and howled with laughter.
“This is a Royal ship, Cade! You don’t think they use anything so vulgar as a piss pot, do you? There’s a garderobe at the end of the hall!”
“Why, you little snarge!” Clambering to his feet, he loomed over Mieka with an awful frown. “How did you know there’s a garderobe?”
“Mum packed nightshirts and told me to wear ’em on board ship no matter how hot and stuffy it gets. So I asked, and she said about the garderobe, and no traipsing about starkers, she’d die of the shame.”
Cade chuckled, then scowled again. He snagged his satchel from the shelf and poked through it, eventually extracting a long linen nightshirt. “Touch this while we’re on board this ship, and you’re dead,” he told Mieka.
He pouted because he was expected to, but what he was thinking was that Cade had made a dreadful mistake. He hadn’t said anything about when they weren’t on the ship, now, had he?
By evening he was convinced they’d be on this poxy ship forever.
Once they left the river and were sailing across the Flood, Mieka found his sea-knees and Rafe took to his bunk. Auntie Brishen’s certain-sure seasickness remedy had no effect, other than making him moan more softly. The son of a baker, he could well afford to go a few days without eating. But Jeska flatly refused to sleep in their cabin—it being impossible to get any sleep in their cabin—and so arrived at Cade and Mieka’s door, vaulted up into the top berth without a by-your-leave, and opened the porthole to the fresh salt air.
“Where am I s’posed to sleep, then?” Mieka wailed.
“There’s a bed in my cabin.”
“Listen to Rafe yark and whine all night? I don’t bloody think so!”
Back on the Winterly, whenever they had to share beds, the rule had become one tall and one short occupant. But those had been beds, actual beds—not shelving with mattresses and sheets. Mieka and Cade looked at the lower bunk, then at each other, and Mieka waited for him to offer to sleep elsewhere.
He didn’t.
“Fine, then!” Mieka snarled, and slammed the door shut behind him.
There was a room on the next deck down where the junior officers had their meals: a trestle table, two benches, and a soft chair over in a corner. To Mieka’s astonishment, Briuly was there with a lute, and the off-duty crowd included a few men with significant gold braid decorating their sleeves. Once the musician began to play, he understood why they’d ventured into their subordinates’ domain—and couldn’t imagine how anyone could stay at his post when Briuly Blackpath had a lute on his knee.
Mieka knew enough from hearin
g his father test the instruments that Hadden Windthistle made the best in the Kingdom. His father was no musician, but even he could bring wonderful sounds from strings and wood. Briuly was a master, and barely twenty years old. Individual notes caught at the heart; lush chords enwrapped the senses. The strings and wood seemed connected directly to his hands, his body, mayhap his soul. Mieka understood for the first time why Fa refused to sell his instruments to amateurs. It would be a crime to put a lute like this into the arms of anyone but a master.
Mieka had no idea how long he simply stood there, swaying lightly to the rocking of the ship. Then he swung round and ran back up the stairs, not bothering to knock before shouldering the door open and exclaiming into the darkness, “Quill! You have to come listen to this!”
“Who is that? How dare you!”
He’d got turned the wrong way round. By the meager light from a hallway lantern, he saw something that brought a hot flush to his cheeks. He had always known Lord Fairwalk’s inclinations; seeing them in practice was another thing entirely.
“Sorry,” he stammered, “d-didn’t mean—I’ll just go now, shall I? Yeh, I better—sorry—”
He pulled the door shut and leaned back against it, biting both lips between his teeth. The scuffling sounds and a muffled snigger from within the cabin sent him fleeing down the hall, up the stairs, and out onto the windswept deck.
He’d always known about Kearney Fairwalk. This wasn’t the first time he’d ever seen two men together. He knew enough about these things that he shouldn’t have made such a fool of himself, blithering like a fourteen-year-old girl.
The night air cooled his face, and as he considered more calmly what he’d seen, he was glad it hadn’t been some little cabin boy or one of the servants, who had no choice when a great lord beckoned. The clothing strewn about the floor had been fine and silken, rich with embroidery. One of the Court officials, he supposed, a man grown, who could please himself as he liked.
If only he hadn’t seemed, for just an instant, so much like Cayden.
The same long, lean, lanky body. The same slightly curling brown hair. Not the same face; there could never be two faces like that in the world, with those gray eyes and that nose. It hadn’t been Cade, of course, but for just an instant—
He’d always known what Fairwalk really wanted from his association with Touchstone, too.
* * *
“Where’d you end up sleeping?”
He gave Cayden a dull-eyed glare over breakfast. “Junior officers’ mess, in a chair, under somebody’s cloak. It stank of fish and rumbullion. Pass the butter.”
They were up on deck, seated on benches at a trestle table hauled outside to take advantage of the gorgeous day. The second ship, larger and more luxurious because that was the one that the new Princess and her attendants would sail in, bobbed in and out of view over the railing. Sunshine gleamed off polished brass and the wind filled the sails so that the ships skimmed at exciting speed across the ocean. Mieka was not at the moment disposed to enjoy life at sea; he had a crick in his neck, he wanted a wash, and he hated mornings anyway.
“D’you think you might recover from your sulk by lunching?” Cade asked. “I don’t know what your plans are, but—”
“Plans?” He used the nasty-innocent version of The Eyes. “You mean there’s actually something to do on this scow other than make faces at the other one?”
Jeska looked up from shoveling in eggs. “I didn’t know a person could get up on the wrong side of a chair in the morning.”
Mieka pointed his fork at him. “Find out tomorrow, after you’ve slept in it.”
With a long-suffering sigh that made Mieka want to kick him, Cade said, “I’m working on ‘Treasure’ this morning, but Kearney wants to discuss finalizing our folio for the performances. The captain’s cook has promised to give Rafe something to settle his stomach, so I thought we could all meet in Kearney’s cabin after lunching.”
“Spectacular. Can’t wait.”
They left him alone after that, which was fine with him. There was nothing to do but walk from the front of the ship to the back again, nobody he wanted to talk to, nothing to distract him from his own thoughts. If he wasn’t careful, he told himself morosely, he’d spend the whole bloody voyage with only himself for company, trying to work out what he felt and thought so he could face the people those feelings and thoughts were about. He couldn’t even return to the cabin and seek refuge in a judicious application of thorn; Cade was in there, doubtless adrift in his own little sea of books and papers, muttering and scribbling.
“What’s chasin’ you, Elferboy?”
He nearly tripped over his own feet. The sailor was about fifty years older than Great-great-grandmother, and if the last of them hadn’t died out long ago, Mieka would’ve sworn this man was pure-blood Gnome. He was chewing on a smelly stick that looked like bark-wrapped cow cud, regarding Mieka with amusement.
“Fourth time you been stridin’ past,” he went on. “But that’s the thing ’bout a ship, ain’t it? Can’t outrun nothin’. Nowheres to go.” He paused, removed the stick from between his teeth, spit over the side, and grinned. “’Ceptin’ down there, o’ course.”
“I hate boats,” Mieka heard himself say.
“Now, y’see? We’ve that in common, we two. Forty year I been hopin’ pirates’d get me, but no luck yet.”
“Pirates?” he echoed, wide-eyed.
“Aye—but that’s more to the south. No cause to worry, boy. Escortin’ a Princess, we’ll be, and safe as safe ever was. There’s talk she’s full young, but eesome and then some.”
It was an invitation to gossip. Mieka might have succumbed to the inherent flattery—he was part of the delegation, after all, and thus assumed to be privileged to the choicest rumors—but he wasn’t in the mood. So all he did was smile and shrug, and say, “We’ll all soon see, won’t we?” and continued on his walk.
It lasted another two rounds of the deck. Then he went downstairs to his cabin, flung open the door, and announced, “Quill, I’m bored!”
Cade was seated on the lower bunk, talking earnestly with Briuly Blackpath. He paused in speaking long enough to reach into his satchel. Mieka caught the book he tossed over and stared at it, outraged.
“I’m bored,” he repeated, and threw the book back.
It missed Cade’s head by about an inch. Briuly looked startled. Cade merely looked annoyed. Mieka slumped onto the floor and folded his arms across his chest, fixing Cade with an affronted glare.
“How old did you say you were? Twelve?” Cade stashed the book in his satchel and brought out a corked bottle. “Here. Make a start on lunching, why don’t you?”
“Then I’d be half-drunk and bored.”
Turning to Briuly, he said, “Not much sleep last night. He gets cranky. And then he gets into trouble.”
“Not a worry about it,” Briuly replied, a grin teasing his lips. “We can talk more later, yeh?”
“I’d like that.”
The musician unfolded his thin limbs, tucked a few locks of wildly curly hair behind one pointed ear, and picked a path to the door, pausing along the way to pat Mieka on the head. “Only another couple of days.”
“Lovely—then I can be bored in a foreign country.”
“You’re a right little stab of sunshine today, aren’t you?” Cade remarked when the door had closed. “C’mon, let’s go stretch our legs.”
“I did that already. I wore a trench in the deck.”
“Poor you! No shops to visit, no girls to chat up, no rehearsals to get through, no sisters or brothers to plague, and no mum to tell you to settle down or she’ll tie you to a chair and put a gag in your mouth.” Cade laughed at him. “Tell you what. After our meeting with Kearney, why don’t you bring out Auntie Brishen’s finest, we’ll lock ourselves in—and lock the porthole!—and see what there might be to see?”
Torn betwixt the mockery and the offer, Mieka scowled. Then he understood. “Having trouble with �
��Treasure,’ are you?”
“How did you know that? Never mind,” Cade said, waving it away. “I should know by now. My eyes, right?”
“They always give you away,” Mieka confirmed. “All right, then, let’s. But there’s still at least an hour before lunching.”
“And you’re bored, I know.”
There was a short silence. Then Mieka blurted, “Kearney was with somebody last night. In his cabin.”
“Was he?” Cade shrugged.
“I mean he was with somebody.” When Cade still failed to react, Mieka said, “They were—you know. In bed.”
Cade appeared to consider this. “Did you learn anything?”
“Did I what?” Then he saw the wicked gleam in Cade’s eyes.
Everything within reach was either lashed down or too heavy. So Mieka hauled off a boot and threw it at Cade, who ducked, laughing. At that precise moment the door opened inward, hitting Mieka on the shoulder. He yelped and scrambled out of the way. His Lordship apologized profusely, and finally got round to stammering that the cook had been kind enough to arrange a private meal for them.
“It might be a bit crowded in my cabin, don’t you see, but—”
“Sounds fine. In an hour or so?” Cade started gathering up sheets of paper, all of them closely filled with his quick, upright script, liberally spattered with cross-outs.
“Is that ‘Treasure’?” Fairwalk asked.
“It will be, eventually.”
“Excellent! Lord Oakapple will be thrilled.”
When he was gone, Mieka searched Cade’s face. “Why were you talking about ‘Treasure’ with Briuly?”
“There, you’ve done it again,” he sighed. “How do you guess these things? It happens that Briuly and Alaen are not just each other’s cousin, they’ve connections to Lord Oakapple as well.”
“So if you end up vindicating the family—”
“—they’re all restored to grace and favor, yeh. But I don’t want just a good story that includes more of the truth than usual. I want this to be the truth. Briuly remembers a few family stories, things they whisper amongst themselves when nobody’s looking. Interesting, of course, and I’d like to use them if I can, but what I’m after is what really happened.”