by Melanie Rawn
Still … a theater built to their own designs and needs, where they could perform anything they pleased … the man knew how to tempt; that was for certain sure.
A startled cry went up from the crowd. Two stories up, a trellis of white and gold wove itself into an archway and burst into bloom. The girl stood there, astonished and then delighted, waving to the crowd, who cheered and applauded, proud of their young and pretty Tregrefina who had made such a splendid marriage. Cade held his breath until the bells appeared, and sighed relief when they all played the same high, sweet note.
He could see the Archduke hovering near the girl. It was to prove a theme of the afternoon and evening. Cyed Henick was her constant escort: from the balcony, into the great hall, around to the various tables to receive congratulations, up to the high table on what had been Touchstone’s stage. He sat beside her and chose delicacies for her plate and filled her wineglass and Cade began to wonder whether he didn’t want to own her, too.
Early on, Cade found a seat—and, more important, a tankard—and set himself to observing. The commonality were all still outside, feasting from trestle tables set up around the lake, entertained by jugglers, acrobats, and musicians. Briuly Blackpath was wandering the great hall, playing whatever he pleased, looking annoyed that the noise drowned out his efforts. After the food was devoured, the minstrels’ gallery came to life. Tables were pushed to the walls and dancing began. Cade chose a convenient corner and stood watching, taking note of a face or a laugh, a ridiculous arrangement of braided and looped hair, a sophisticated seduction, a highborn who’d had too much to drink.
After a while, Lady Vrennerie approached, looking exhausted but happy. He smiled to see her, lovely in all her finery, and snagged a flagon for her from a passing servant with a huge tray of drinks so they could toast the marriage.
“Your trellis was perfection,” she told him. “My lady—I should say the Princess—was thrilled.”
“Once she got over the shock.”
“Too strong a word! It was so beautiful, seeing her there in the sunlight with all the flowerings and bells.” Something about her gaze hardened as she went on in a quieter voice, “And it was a perfect reminder that the land she will be ruling one day is a land of people who can work magic.”
“Is that so important?” he asked, more for something to say than because he was interested.
“Oh, yes, Master Silversun.”
{Into the terrible silence his own voice said, “But I’m still here.”
He shut the door in the boy’s face, went into the drawing room, found a chair. He sat, staring at Kearney’s letter, at his own scarred fingers. Wondering why, on this night of all nights, the blood didn’t show.
“Cayden? Cayden!”
The woman’s voice—his wife’s voice—calling from upstairs, irked and impatient. He wished he’d shut the drawing room door.
“Cayden!”}
“Master Silversun?”
He looked down at her. “Can’t you say my name?” he asked irritably. “You never say my name.”
“I will if you like, Cayden.”
It wasn’t the same voice at all. He saw the bewilderment in her eyes and hated himself. How stupid he was, to have ever thought that a lady could even think of being married to him. Whoever the woman was who called down to him in that Elsewhen, it wasn’t Vrennerie.
He understood the turn instantly. What he decided to do about Vrennerie—whether or not he “worked at it a bit” as Mieka had recommended—could change things. If he did nothing … if he didn’t pursue her … if she didn’t become his wife and the mother of his children—
—Mieka would die.
He knew he’d fallen as much in love with her as it was possible for him to do. He knew he would never see boredom or impatience in her eyes, that she would not end by despising him and the work that was his life. She understood and valued what he did. She admired it. He had felt things with her and for her that he’d never experienced before.
As he made himself smile down at her with what he hoped was reassurance, he reflected bitterly that this was the real horror of his so-called gift: that he could even for a few instants seriously contemplate using this girl he cared for in order to change a future he feared.
He hadn’t lied to Rafe. He wasn’t in love, not completely. There was more to giving his heart than mutual affinity and desire. He loved Blye, but without the wanting; he’d wanted Lady Torren, she of the red hair and lavender-scented pillows at Seekhaven Castle, but there’d been no love. He heard Mieka’s voice saying “If I lose her, I’ll die!” and knew there was no such need inside him for Vrennerie. There was nothing in him of that panic. And if that was what love was, if it came with dread and fear and anguish, then he could do without it.
Rafe and Crisiant were proof enough that it didn’t have to be like that. Their loving was a sweetly comfortable thing, devoid of Mieka’s wild desperation. And yet they needed each other. Rafe would not be the man he was without Crisiant; Cade could not say the same for himself regarding Vrennerie. If he never saw her again, it would hurt. But he would survive it. He could survive anything, it seemed—hadn’t he heard his own voice saying, in response to the news that Mieka was dead, “I’m still here”? Hadn’t Tobalt Fluter said in more than one Elsewhen, “When Touchstone lost their Elf, they lost their soul”?
He thought all this in the time it took to drain his tankard and look round for another. Rafe or Jeska or Mieka would have seen in his eyes that he’d had a turn, and taken him someplace quiet until he could recover. But he could see none of them in the swarm of dancers and drinkers, and told himself it was foolish to want so much the sight of Mieka’s living, laughing face. Taking a sip from his fifth—or was it sixth?—drink of the evening, he shoved all else and Elsewhens aside, determined to enjoy what time he could get with Lady Vrennerie. Exerting himself to be polite, he found that she met him at least halfway, and soon they were discussing the woman she had mentioned earlier and pointed out to him in the throng.
“Lady Panshilara’s pretty enough,” Vrennerie said when Cade made some remark about the richness of her gown, “and knows it, too.”
“The sort who uses that to get what she wants, and doesn’t think she needs anything else?”
“The very same. Her family is very old and very poor—one of those extravagant ancestors, I’m sure you’re hearing the same story a hundred times. She’s the only child, so she inherits whatever’s left to inherit. They scraped enough for some elegant school, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. All the intellectual skills of a tree stump, that one.”
He burst out laughing, and she blushed.
“Well, it’s true! I know it’s nasty of me, but she’s so unkind to my lady. As unkind as decent behavior is allowing.”
“Let me guess. She thinks she ought to have been the one to marry Prince Ashgar.”
“It’s not so much that as becoming Queen of Albeyn.”
Cade tried to imagine her in Queen Roshien’s moonstone crown, and couldn’t. Not that it wouldn’t look lovely in her high-piled dark braids. Her eyes were dark, as well, and the form in a much-embellished crimson gown was both lush and willowy.
“She’s older than she looks,” he said.
“And than she pretends to be. My hope is that a few months in Gallantrybanks will give her the set-down she needs.”
“Ladies just as lovely, with brains and riches besides?” He snorted. “Don’t count on it. But try to be there when she meets Princess Iamina, if you can. That would be a thing to see!”
She asked with arching eyebrows, and he told her as much about the King’s sister as was appropriate. He left out his experience at Wintering when he was a young boy, and Iamina’s battles with her husband, but told Vrennerie how she’d disrupted Touchstone’s first performance in the Pavilion at Seekhaven Castle by arriving late and causing a fuss. When he finished the tale with Mieka sending the Dragon’s fiery breath right at her, Vrennerie giggled.
“Please tell me you’ll do something like to Panshilara!”
“We’ll do our best.”
A footman sidled up, all apologies, and whispered in Vrennerie’s ear. She asked him something, looking apprehensive. When he nodded, she sighed. “So soon. Forgive me, Mast—I mean, Cayden—I have duties. Perhaps I’ll be back later.”
Yes, he liked this girl, he thought, liked her far too much to do to her what he had for a few moments thought about doing. Court her, marry her, have children with her—use her—all to keep Mieka alive. Do all of that without truly loving her, needing her, either in the uncomplicated way Rafe and Crisiant had or with Mieka’s ferocity. Cade had more honor than that. It was a decision that left him sad but serene, which was a very odd sensation indeed.
He wandered about for a while, chuckling as he caught sight of Jeska dancing with two ladies at once. Quite the success here, was Jeschenar Bowbender. Both ladies looked as if they’d prefer to be doing their dancing with him while lying down.
“Master Silversun.”
He turned, so quickly that he was light-headed. Too much wine. The Archduke stood beside him, with an expression in his eyes that sobered Cade at once. “Your Grace.”
“I was under the impression that a performance was not required of you today. And yet—”
Cade shrugged. “Just a little gift for the Princess, Your Grace.”
“I wonder if you’ve given any more thought to our discussion of last night.”
“None at all,” he lied.
“Pity. I feel we might do great things together.”
“Touchstone is happy right like we are, beholden all the same.”
“This will be your second year on the Winterly Circuit, will it not? I heard recently from a friend in Gallantrybanks that Black Lightning has become a great success on the Ducal.”
Cade said nothing. The injustice would rankle until he took his last breath.
“They haven’t your subtlety, of course.”
“Rather like murder, innit?” said Mieka from out of nowhere, those eyes glittering with all their colors of green and blue and brown and gold. “What I mean to say is that there’s the smotherment of a feather pillow, or a quick sword in the guts, or slitting a vein or two so the quarry bleeds to death. I’d say Black Lightning’s more of the cudgel to the head and beating your brains out and then stomping on the corpse, wouldn’t you, Your Grace?”
A thin smile twitched the man’s lips. “You might very well think so. I couldn’t possibly comment. And Touchstone? What for you, Master Windthistle?”
“Oh, slow poison, for certes,” Mieka replied cheerily. “We get inside them, and before they know it they’re thinking and feeling things they never thought or felt before.”
“And survive it,” Cade put in.
“An interesting symbolism. Perhaps we might discuss it sometime. But if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m wanted up at the high table. I wish you a pleasant evening.”
“And to Your Grace,” Mieka said, all brightness and merriment. Once the Archduke was out of range, he dropped the pose and muttered, “Him, he’s a knife in the back, he is.”
“Beholden for the rescue, Sir Mieka,” Cade responded. “But I don’t need to be told to be wary of sharp shiny things around him.”
“I’d like to shove something sharp and shiny up his—”
Someone bellowed a word, and then again, and the musicians stopped playing. The dancers stumbled midstep. The hall grew quiet. All eyes turned to the high table, where the Tregrefin had pushed himself to his feet and was holding aloft a bejeweled golden winecup.
“Gift from King Meredan,” Mieka whispered at Cade’s shoulder.
“How do you know?” Cade breathed back.
“One of the maids gave me a tour of the wedding presents, didn’t she? The old man gets the gold, and we get the girl.”
Cade considered theirs to be the better part of the bargain. But right now the new Princess was not looking as if she was enjoying the transaction. She had turned white as whipped cream. Her father proclaimed something or other, raised his cup once again, yelled a few more words, and the great hall erupted in cheers and laughter. Vrennerie appeared at the girl’s side, gently coaxing her to rise. The Archduke was suddenly there, bowing over her wrist. She smiled tremulously, he said something, and her smile became grateful. Cade didn’t trust the look on his face for an instant.
“Party’s over, then?” Mieka yelled above the tumult. “Time and past time, if you ask me!” He held up an unopened bottle and two glasses. “I’m for the gardens. Come with me, Quill, I want to see the teacup hedge by moonlight.”
But suddenly they were being swept along to the music of lutes and twittering fifes, out the great hall doors and up the grand staircase, along a corridor and finally to a set of gilded double doors carved with swirls of ivy and flowers. Unable to move any way but forward, crushed amid dozens of people, they could not escape. The doors were wide open, and beyond them was a bedchamber featuring a bed the size of a boat. And the new Princess stood beside it, wrapped in what looked like half a wall tapestry, the frills of a white lace nightdress peeking out just above her bare toes. Vrennerie hovered protectively nearby. Lady Panshilara also hovered, her face a pleasant mask from which envious brown eyes glittered maliciously.
The Archduke arrived and took up position on the other side of the bed. For show, he took off his jacket. His hairline might be receding at an early age, but so, too, was his waistline expanding, and for the first time Cade noticed the flush on his cheeks and across his nose. Signs of a dicky heart, according to Mistress Mirdley.
Vrennerie lifted the bedcovers so high that when the tapestry robe dropped to the floor, no one saw the girl below the neck. Miriuzca slipped quickly into bed and sat back against the pillows, sheets and counterpane clutched to her chin. With the curtains wide open, the Archduke sat beside her and they drank from the same glass of wine—not quite loving cups, but as close as one could get with a husband-by-proxy. He leaned over to kiss her cheek and she jerked back, crimson and stammering when people roared with laughter. Cade didn’t understand the words being shouted all over the room, but he could guess their meaning from their tone: I hope that’s not how she’ll receive Prince Ashgar’s embraces! and Needs a real man, that one, to teach her what’s what! The Archduke set aside the wine, cupped her frightened face in his palms, and kissed her full on the lips.
“From your new husband,” he told her. “Lucky man!”
“Take it all, Your Grace!” someone yelled. “Be first in, for the pride of Albeyn!”
Mieka snarled softly. Lady Panshilara was smiling.
The Archduke rose from the bed, bowed low, and departed with his manservant skittering along behind, holding his jacket. Nobody followed him; indeed, there was a nudging forward that pushed Cade and Mieka even farther into the room.
“Witnesses, witnesses!” cried one of the Albeyn delegation just behind Cade. Before he could turn to ask the man what this meant, Lady Panshilara elbowed her way round the bed, tapping this person and that on the shoulder or cheek, smirking. She chose several handsome gallants, three ladies, and a brace of elderly gentlemen who were eyeing the Princess with an eager interest Cade found obscene. Then it occurred to him that this might be a variation on the inspection Vrennerie had told him about, and when Lady Panshilara’s sparkling fingers lifted once again, he shoved the chosen man aside and leaned forward so that her hand tapped his cheek instead. She looked startled, then annoyed; then smoothed her expression into a smile that said, See this silly player-boy, wanting a peek at a pretty girl! Cade looked her straight in the eyes and she didn’t falter for an instant.
“Cade? What the—?”
He looked back at Mieka, who looked confused. Vrennerie made shooing motions, and the remaining crowd groaned disappointment. Cade stood his ground as everyone not chosen left. Miriuzca was fairly cowering in bed now, her eyes huge and very blue.
In two languages the witnes
ses were told to search every corner of the room for illicit persons. They were asked to testify one by one that only the maids of honor and servant girls were present, and no man lurked anywhere to soil the Princess’s reputation.
Cade found it utterly barbaric. He stood guard on one side of the bed, catching Vrennerie’s grateful glance from where she stood on the other, and watched in disgust as draperies and bedcurtains were pulled aside and shaken, chairs moved to look behind them, the lace swathing various tables flipped up to check for someone hiding underneath. All the while there was much rude and drunken hilarity, especially when one of the old men brandished a dagger like a sword, staggering about while thrusting it and his hips to the danger of everyone and everything in the room.
And then one man—Cade was astounded to see it was Drevan Wordturner—darted forward and playfully snatched the covers from the foot of the bed. The girl cried out in shocked dismay as she was revealed in her lace nightdress. Cade yanked down one of the bedcurtains, flung it across her, and moved to grab Wordturner by the scruff of the neck.
“Just a joke, Cayden—no harm meant—must be thorough, make sure there’s no man lingering in the sheets!”
“Shut it!” Cade ordered. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
Wordturner laughed in his face, his breath withering. “There must be no fucking tonight!” he announced, wagging a finger at Cade and then at the Princess. “You can make a playlet from this, right?” Wordturner continued, squinting at Cade. “Ripping good show, surefire laughs!”
With a look to strip the scales off a wyvern, Cayden said, “As one of the Archduke’s attendants, perhaps you’ve never had the chance to meet my father. Zekien Silversun—First Gentleman to His Highness Prince Ashgar.”