Elsewhens (Glass Thorns)

by Melanie Rawn

  “Hence the thorn. Can you direct your dreaming like that? I mean, you’re talking about the past now, right? Can you see backwards like that?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” Stashing the pages in his leather folio—each member of Touchstone had been gifted by His Majesty with a new folio in the Royal colors of brown and sea-green—he propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “Briuly was talking about something else, too. Incorporating music into plays. Alaen’s notion, really, and Briuly doesn’t think much of it.” He smiled. “His music isn’t there just to adorn somebody else’s words and scenery. His songs aren’t mere embellishments for some wretched little play!”

  “Music specific to the piece?” Mieka asked. “Not just using a snatch of a tune like we do sometimes, but something composed just for—” His imagination leaped ahead. “Jeska can sing, y’know. If a song fit into a play, he could—”

  “I admit it’s intriguing. It would add a dimension to the work I’ve never thought about before.”

  “Another Touchstone innovation?” Mieka grinned up at him.

  “Well, it’s been more than seventy years, anyway, since anybody did it. There was a masquer named Falvieno Kilatas—”

  “Huh?”

  “I read about him in your book. Lost Withies. He came from Chat’s part of the Continent. He had a spectacular voice, and hired himself out to various groups, never really had one of his own. His last show was about ten years before my grandsire started performing. It’s said he was so good that nobody dared try the same thing after he retired.”

  “It’s been so long that everybody’s forgotten him, then.”

  Cade regarded him curiously. “You want to try it?”

  “We can talk to Alaen when we get home. But I think we ought to save it for when we need it. You know, something to get people talking about us all anew.”

  “You mean, of course,” Cade said stiffly, “that we ought to use it when the piece demands it.”

  Mieka arched his brows. “Did you just call Briuly arrogant?”

  “Not in so many words,” he admitted, smiling again.

  “Well, he has reason for it,” Mieka said frankly. “I heard him play last night. What him and Alaen did at Blye’s wedding was beautiful, but—he’s a real artist, Quill. Fa would never have sold him a lute if he wasn’t, of course. It’s not just that he can play. You have to hear it to believe it.”

  “You wouldn’t have heard him last night if you hadn’t taken yourself off in a temper,” Cade said innocently. “So don’t you owe Jeska a debt of gratitude for thieving your bed?”

  Mieka made as if to haul off the other boot and throw it at him, and they ended, as usual, by laughing. But Mieka took it as one more example of how his instincts were the right ones. Just now, talking about Briuly and music and “Treasure,” Cade’s twisty-turny head worked compatibly with his own in some uncanny fashion. Cade would always want to figure out the how and why of whatever happened; it would always be enough for Mieka that things did happen. He had every confidence that Cade would be forever explaining it all to him later.

  Chapter 11

  “Oh, and just by the way,” said Kearney as he dipped his fingers into a bowl of scented water—an elegance unexpected on board ship, even a Royal one, “Master Blackpath says he’ll be performing tonight for the crew down in their quarters. So if you’ve a mind to discuss what you’re doing with ‘Treasure,’ Cayden, I’ll be available all evening.”

  Firmly banishing from his thoughts what Mieka had said about Kearney’s doings of last evening, Cade nodded. “Beholden. There was something else I wanted to ask about,” he went on as the cabin boy collected empty plates. It had been a cramped meal, but an excellent one, with four of them at a tiny table and Rafe over on Kearney’s bunk, restricting himself to dry toast and tea but looking much better. They had settled on which plays would be done for which audiences, ranging from their old rollicking “Sailor’s Sweetheart” to “Doorways” and “Dragon,” things that wouldn’t require people to understand every word. This pained him, because he’d worked hard on those words.

  Mieka was constructing little barricades out of chicken bones. The cabin boy was hovering, his dilemma clear in his face: He had orders to clear the table, but one of the guests hadn’t finished with his food. Cade ended the boy’s agony by handing over Mieka’s plate.

  “Oy!”

  “Shut it,” Rafe advised. “Or I’ll throw you overboard.”

  Smirking, the Elf asked, “You and which regiment of the Guard?”

  “What I wanted to know,” Cade said hastily, “is if we might be doing a few shows for the locals. Something for people who aren’t the nobility. Are there any outdoor spaces we might—”

  “Have you run mad?” Kearney laughed shrilly. “We’ve talked about this before! Of course you can’t do that!”

  “Why not?” Mieka demanded.

  Spoiling for a fight, Cade thought—or the diversion from boredom offered by thorn. Mieka had gone through three cups of wine with the meal and was working on a fourth. Cade had seen this before—they all had, on the Winterly—but being stuck in a coach all day, at least there was always something to look at out the windows, and the stop each night at an inn. There was distraction to be had even in finding that their beds were a half-step above lice-ridden, or that the ale was blashed, or that the food was awful. On board ship there was nothing to see but the ocean and nothing to do but pace the deck. Cade counted himself lucky that the book he’d been fool enough to suggest earlier today hadn’t been flung directly at his head.

  “It’s just not possible, Mieka, don’t you see,” Kearney was saying, a bit more calmly now. “Recall where we’re going, and what these people are like.”

  “They’re people, ain’t they?”

  “They look upon magic as manipulative—”

  “It is.”

  “—and sometimes evil.”

  “Not in the right hands.”

  “And who’s to assure them that your hands are the right ones? The few magical folk who are tolerated tread a very thin line, very thin indeed. The skills they learn are of use to the whole community, and those skills are the only ones they’re taught. Whatever else they might dare to learn on their own, they keep it to themselves.”

  Cade sat up straighter. “And theater, performance, entertainment by means of magic—all that’s useless?”

  “That’s not what I meant at all,” Kearney assured him. “It’s only that they’re not accustomed to—”

  “If we were Black fucking Lightning,” Mieka interrupted, “I could see where there’d be a worry. But it’s us, innit?”

  Cade nodded. “Just as powerful—”

  “More powerful,” growled Rafe.

  “—but not reckless.”

  “Unless you count the broken glassware,” Jeska murmured to his winecup.

  “Kearney,” said Cade, “I think that showing them theater magic, how it can bring people together in a shared experience—”

  “Oh Gods!” Mieka groaned. “Not that again!”

  “I’m right, though,” he retorted. “And you know I’m right. We can show them we’re not wicked or anything to be frightened of. We’re just people, like them.”

  “What you’d show them,” Kearney said, sounding desperate now, “is that you’re not like them at all! Think what happens onstage, Cayden. You can make them see and hear and feel whatever you like, whether they will or no. Don’t you see how frightfully dangerous that is to people who don’t understand?”

  “Then why are we going at all?” Cade demanded. “The audiences at the courts, they won’t have seen theater the full-out way we do it any more than the rest of the citizenry ever has. Won’t that be dangerous as well? Won’t we be threatened by a mob?” he finished derisively.

  “Courts have rulers, and rulers have guards,” Rafe said quietly. They all turned to stare at him. “You plan as you like, Cade, but don’t include me. I don’t fancy l
eaving my wife a widow and my child fatherless.”

  Jeska turned all the way round in his chair. “Crisiant’s pregnant?”

  Mieka crowed, “Gods witness that she has every reason to be!”

  The fettler’s fragile state precluded the heartier sort of congratulations, and the ribald toasts that went with them. Especially the toasts. After agreeing to celebrate in earnest once they were on dry land, they also agreed that Rafe was looking a bit greenish again and needed to rest.

  “A baby!” Mieka exclaimed as he and Cade strolled the deck, soaking up summer sunshine. “They kept that quiet!”

  Cade smiled, but he was thinking that Crisiant was a woman in a million: she understood that Rafe had to go on this trip. Any other pregnant wife would have sulked or pleaded, demanded or wept. True, she’d reconciled herself long ago to the life that Rafe intended to lead. But she’d probably assumed with all the rest of them that Touchstone would make the Ducal and be gone during summer and autumn, back in time for the birth. He didn’t like to think what her disappointment had been when it turned out to be the Winterly again. And now, instead of having Rafe with her at least for the first few months of her first pregnancy, he would be gone most of the summer as well.

  But he knew she’d never spoken a syllable of complaint. And if she blamed Cade, as she very well might, he knew he’d never hear a word about that, either.

  “We’ve got the crib quilt, of course,” Mieka said suddenly. “The one we bought at the Castle Biding Fair, Cade, you remember. But we’ll have to find something pretty just for Crisiant. They’re s’posed to do wonderful woodwork in the new Princess’s country. Fa told me there’s a kind of wood comes from their forests, very fine-grained. Perfect for making lutes.”

  Cade put a frown on his face. “Interesting—but I don’t think there’s room in your bags, is there?”

  Mieka’s turn to be confused. “For what?”

  “Aren’t you planning to bring him back a tree?”

  They spent the next few minutes trying to trip each other, Mieka’s quickness matched evenly by Cade’s long legs. At length they fetched up, laughing, against the railing, aware of the disdainful sniffs and arched brows of their fellow passengers and not caring in the least.

  “Are we ever going to get there?” Mieka sighed.

  “We just started!” Then, with Jinsie in mind and what her cruel trickery had made him realize, he ventured softly, “You miss her.”

  A slow flush spread up the boy’s cheeks. “She—she has really beautiful hands, you know? Narrow, with long fingers … the nails are like pearl, almost, pink and white pearl.…” He paused, looking anywhere but at Cade. “I don’t want—I mean, a ring would be—I don’t think it would look right. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and her hands are so perfect, any sort of ring would—you know?”

  Amused in spite of himself, Cade said, “I think I might understand the essence of your incoherence, yeh. Damned good thing you’re not the one who has to write the plays. And talking of that, don’t we have an appointment?”

  Mieka brightened at once. “That we do. And I’ve an idea or three about it.”

  In their cabin—scrupulously tidy now, their usual morning clutter stowed, the water jug replenished—Cade got out his folio while Mieka dragged his satchel out of the closet and sat down on the floor.

  “What sort of ideas?” Cade asked. “About what thorn to use?”

  “That, and how to coax your head into going where you want it to. Simple, really, if it works.” He looked up. “Sometimes I have dreams about whatever I fell asleep thinking about. Why wouldn’t that work with you?”

  “I never tried it.”

  “If we talk about ‘Treasure’ and what you’ve already found out, that might carry over into what you see on thorn. Auntie Brishen says this is much the same sort we used at my house that time, and that’s kind of what gave me the idea. I mean, you were with me, and you had an Elsewhen about me, didn’t you?” He made a face. “The one where I was old and wrinkly.”

  Cade laughed. “I was old, too,” he reminded the Elf. “It was my forty-fifth Namingday!”

  “Forty-five?” He gave an elaborate shudder. “That means I’d be comin’ up on forty-four, and no self-respecting Elf gets wrinkles or gray hair that early.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re about to turn all More Elfen Than The First Elf, like Uncle Breedbate! And I never said you were wrinkly.” He paused as if remembering. “Some lines, and an extra chin, I think.”

  “I hope you’d gone bald or something equally appalling.” He selected a little paper twist and took one of the glass thorns from their padded box. “Warts,” he decided. “Hairy ones.”

  “No warts,” Cade told him. “Not even for you. Do you want to hear about what I’ve learned?”

  “Say on.”

  “I’ve been doing research—”

  “I know. I foresaw it,” Mieka teased as he prepared the thorn. “I had a vision of you in the Royal Archives, dropping dead of sheer boredom!”

  “You’re funny, aren’t you? Just hilarious. Why is it I’m doing all the work on this commission, and the rest of you just loll about—”

  “—waiting for you to be brilliant?” He flung Cade a grin. “We worship at your feet, O Great Tregetour, we grovel in gratitude, we breathlessly await your next spate of golden speech, we—”

  “Oh, shut up.” Cade laughed. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Talk.”

  Cade looked over his notes. Working on “Treasure,” he’d found that the intellectual challenge of sifting through all the sources for the truth, or as near as he could judge to be the truth, had often made him restless—not at being unable to reconcile various versions, but at being unable to comprehend the underlying reasons for the events. All that the standard script provided was conversation, some thunder and lightning, more conversation, a lot of rain, and the breathless arrival of a messenger who reported that there had been a mudslide and the Treasure had vanished. Then everybody ranted and moaned for a while, news came that the culprit had been caught, we’ll hang him on the morrow, Royal Justice triumphs, The End. Well, except for the very bad poetry that Cade had discovered wasn’t in the original at all. Someone was hanged, but the culprit was never named. Although for years it had been assumed that it was the contemporaneous Lord Oakapple, he was never actually identified as the thief. Neither was the reason for the theft, if theft it had even been. In one commentary on the tale, it was speculated that the culprit-without-a-name and the theft-without-a-motive were symbolic only, that none of it had ever happened at all and the whole story was meant to show that justice had been established in Albeyn with the accession of the Royal Family. Put a name to the thief, and he became a real person, an individual; keep him nameless, and he was a proxy for anyone who broke the law. Cade thought this an interesting interpretation, but the fact remained that the Oakapples had been destitute and despised ever since. Until the coal had been discovered, anyway.

  “That poem at the end, it’s been nagging at me. I won’t burden you with the tale of exactly where I found it all, but some of it was in your book.” He paused, smiling inside that the copy of Lost Withies Mieka had snupped for him had become in his mind Mieka’s Book. “I cobbled together what I’m pretty sure is the oldest version, though I’m not all that confident about the spelling.”

  “What’s the spelling got to do with anything?”

  “Probably nothing, but I do like to be thorough.”

  “Forgive me. I ought to’ve known.”

  “The rendering we did at Trials, it’s only about eighty years old. And it’s been diddled—you can trace the changes back through the old manuscripts at Fairwalk Manor and the Archives—”

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t be burdening me poor little brain with all your scholarly gibberish.”

  “I was only trying to say that I’m not making this up, it’s all there for anybody who cares to look.”

  Mi
eka sighed. “You looked. I believe you. Get on with it!”

  “From the oldest version of the poem, then.” He found it in his notes. “‘No night bedarked as soonly’—I think that means the shortest day of the year, don’t you? The day it gets dark earliest.”

  “But that would be Wintering Night. Didn’t you say once that the Treasure was stolen in the summer?”

  “You were listening to me?”

  “I always listen to you, Quill.”

  “Let’s say it’s Wintering Night that’s meant. ‘As athwart the crumbling wall’ means that night fell first on that wall. So this wall has to be in the shadow of a hill, and the sun goes down directly behind it—”

  “Why?”

  Impatient, he conjured up a bit of Wizardfire. “You won’t be able to see it clearly, there’s too much light in here. But watch.” He brought one hand in front of the blue glow balanced on one fingertip, then lowered the fire behind his palm. “Look at the shadow on the wall. It moves upward as the sun goes down.”

  Mieka squinted, then shook his head. “Can’t quite see it, but I’ll take your word on it. What’s next?”

  Cade banished the Wizardfire and consulted his notes. “Then comes ‘Cold stone a-tumbling fell,’ and the ‘cold’ ties in with its being winter. If it was in summer, the rock would be warm with the sun, wouldn’t it? Even at twilight.”

  “Not if it was raining that day. And there’d go your sunset and shadows, as well. Cloud cover.”

  “Damn.”

  Mieka patted his knee consolingly. “Never mind. Keep on with it.”

  “There’s thunder and lightning, and then the rain starts up, and the mudslide. The next line is ‘Klunshing and climping all’—”

  “Wait, that’s one of Uncle Breedbate’s words! ‘Climp’ means to put your dirty hands all over something shiny, smudge it all up. He used to yell at Fa for associating with Wizards and Humans and other riffraff who’d climp his Elfen heritage.”