by Melanie Rawn
There was more swift, incoherent, tearful explanation on their way up seemingly endless flights of stairs. They’d been in Frimham when Princess Iamina and her ladies arrived for a fortnight seaside, and that had led to a Court appointment as seamstress, because Princess Iamina needed new and beautiful clothes for all the festivities surrounding her nephew’s wedding.
He listened, incredibly weary, barely taking in the tale of being seen at a tea shop with a friend—a girl friend, she quickly added—by one of the Princess’s ladies. The very next day a footman had come to the door with a Royal Command. She had gone with her mother to model the clothes.
“The cut didn’t much suit me, nor the colors,” she went on artlessly, “not on any of the gowns. But Mum knew what she was about, oh she for certes did! There’s a jewel the Princess wears—”
“I’ve seen it, yeh. Let me guess. All the dresses were made to flatter that jewel.”
“Wasn’t that clever?”
The yellow flower was spectacular. He could readily understand how Princess Iamina would be desperate to cut as magnificent a figure as possible, considering she was many years older than the new Princess. To build a wardrobe around the theme of her fabulous jewel of yellow pearls and diamonds—yes, that was a cunning move, well worth the risk of investing in silks and velvets and lace to make up some tempting samples.
“Here,” she said softly, and unlocked the door.
One room. Huge windows. Thick, dark wooden floor; brick walls; two chairs, a table, a standing wardrobe, and a single bed almost wide enough for two. They’d used leftover material to make curtains, with incongruous frills of lace at the hems, and a bright quilted counterpane and pillows.
“Mum asked for this one specially,” she said. “The windows.”
He walked the eight steps to them and looked out. Rooftops, the building next door, and a glimpse of a Palace tower.
“There’s light enough to see all day long for sewing, without having to stoke a fire.”
In summer, the heat from a fire bright enough to sew by would be unendurable—not that the hearth was big enough to hold more than a few sticks of wood or a handful of coal. He turned, and the sight of her exquisite beauty in this shabby attic made his heart hurt.
“If you could have anything you wanted,” he heard himself say, “what would it be?”
“I want you.”
“You have me. What else do you want? What shall I give you?”
She hesitated, still standing by the open door. “I—I want a drawing room, Mieka, a real drawing room, like in the best houses—with pretty chairs and velvet—and curtains with silk tassels. Blue silk tassels.”
He smiled. She really was a darling. “Just a drawing room?” he teased. “Not a whole house?”
She caught her breath. “Of our own?”
“Just for us.” He saw a flicker of dismay cross her face, and gritted himself, and added, “And your mother, too, if she likes. She’ll be company for you while I’m on the Circuit.”
“And—” Shyly, eyes downcast, she whispered, “And she can help me with the baby.”
He saw it then. She had a roundness to her, a fullness to her cheeks, a lushness to her figure. What Rafe had wanted so much and lost, he would have without even having thought much about it.
He didn’t know what to do. What to say. She bit her lips together and shifted slightly, her skirts whispering.
“A nursery, then, as well,” he managed at last. “And it’ll have curtains with blue silk tassels, too.”
She looked at him with radiant eyes—such amazing eyes, the rich purple-blue of irises. “Are you … are you pleased?”
“Yeh. Yeh, I am.” She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and she was his, and yet here she stood in this squalid little room, and suddenly he couldn’t stand it. “You can’t stay here. I won’t let you stay here.” He moved to the bed and plucked up the counterpane, tossed it onto the table, opened the wardrobe and started grabbing clothes. “You’re coming home with me. Right now, right this instant.”
“But—Mum—”
“My mother will take care of you. We’ll be married by next week—” He realized he had no tokens to give her, no necklet or bracelet or anything at all in the collection of presents he’d bought on the journey, only some trinkets, a shawl, a pair of gloves. And no toys for the baby, he thought—no, that was wrong, he had a box full of them, intended for Rafe and Crisiant’s child. He and Cade had picked them out.
“Next week?”
He returned to the more important point. “Nothing grand, and I’m sorry for it, but—”
“But with the baby coming at Wintering, we ought to hurry.” She nodded. “I don’t mind. Truly, Mieka.”
He left off piling clothes onto the counterpane and moved to take her in his arms. Holding her close, feeling the softness of her, the fullness of her belly, he wondered how he could have not known until she told him.
All at once he laughed, and kissed her, and together they knotted the counterpane around her clothes and started down the stairs. They met her mother halfway down, and the outrage in the old woman’s eyes swiftly became smirking complacence again, once she learned there would be a wedding. Mieka didn’t care. Let her think and say and do as she fancied.
He didn’t care about Jinsie’s stunned exclamation, either, when he flung open the front door of Wistly Hall. He gave her a look to char beefsteak, and called out, “Mum! Fa! We’re home!”
Chapter 21
Sagging with weariness after so many weeks of travel, Cade felt as if they’d already been on a circuit tour. But they’d played only a few shows on the Continent, that last three of them for naught but trimmings, and Jeska was right when he said they were rusty. They had to work, and work hard, before the Winterly.
Cade had too much to do. He was too tired and, contrarily, too restless, to do any of it. As far as the practical matters of his profession were concerned, there were the pieces to be decided on for the Winterly Circuit; conferences with Kearney Fairwalk regarding itinerary, accommodations, days off, and pay; withies to be counted and ordered, and glass baskets to be checked for damage; clothing for the stage and for warmth to be sorted and cleaned. Personally, he still had a double handful of Elsewhens to organize and label inside his own head. And then there was the nagging problem of “Treasure.”
And Lady Vrennerie.
And Mieka.
The very first on his list of things he didn’t want to do was helping Mieka decide on a house.
He was roped into it a week following their return. It was not in Mieka’s power to surprise Cade with the news of his marriage; he’d known it was coming. Simple knowledge of Mieka, not an Elsewhen, had warned him in advance. Neither was he surprised about the child, although this, too, involved no special foresight on his part.
Mieka had left it to Blye to inform Cade the day after the ceremony.
“Mishia sent word round to invite us to dinner,” Blye fretted. “We didn’t expect a wedding!”
They were seated in the kitchen at Number Eight, Redpebble Square, over cups of a hot mocah spiced with cinnamon. Cade had brought back a large box of it for Mistress Mirdley, along with half a dozen kinds of tea and a copper cloak-pin in the shape of a kettle, which had amused her even as she scolded him for spending his hard-earned money on her.
“Just as well nobody knew,” Cade said. “None of us could be there anyways. Jeska’s helping his mother move, Rafe and Crisiant—” He broke off and sought refuge in a gulp of mocah that tingled on his tongue. Rafe and Crisiant were in seclusion, in mourning.
“And as for you,” Derien accused, “once you got home, you slept for two days and then disappeared into the Archives! I haven’t hardly seen you at all.”
Neither had anybody else, especially not Lady Jaspiela, who had made several attempts to corner and interrogate him about the new Princess. Cade had avoided her, just as he had avoided Wistly Hall. He had been in no mood to watch Mieka marry
the girl he knew would turn out to be his ruin. He shrugged, ruffled his little brother’s hair, and replied, “You can come with me to inspect the house Mieka wants to buy.”
The ceremony had been a small one, just family one evening in the torchlit garden, but Mieka had promised a grand party once he found a house. To that purpose, he’d vanished each day for a week, armed with a list of properties for sale and to let, doing it all on his own until he discovered a house that was almost perfect, he informed Cade (in a note as scrawlingly illegible and badly spelled as ever; some things would never change).
“What’s he want to go live out in the wilderness for?” Dery asked. “He’s a Gallybanker, not a farmer! We’ll never see him, either!”
Blye smiled. “When you don’t inherit a house, you take what you can afford, where you can afford it.”
“But I thought Touchstone was swimming in money!”
“It isn’t out in the wilderness, smatchet,” Cade teased. “It’s but an hour upriver. And talking of rivers, I never had the chance to hear about your wedding trip, Blye.”
“I already asked when they got home,” Dery told him. “There’s nothing to tell about where they went or what they saw—” He danced out of reach of Mistress Mirdley’s wooden stirring spoon before finishing, “—because they never left the barge the whole time!”
Blye turned crimson. Cayden nearly strangled trying not to laugh. And Mistress Mirdley, who could move a lot faster than anyone gave her credit for, rapped Derien sharply over the knuckles.
“Keep a civil tongue between your teeth or you’ll spend the day in your room!”
“But Cade says I can go with him to Mieka’s new house!”
“Have fun,” Blye said. “Beholden, Mistress Mirdley, but I ought to get back now. Jed should be finished with the drawings by now for Mieka’s wedding present.”
“It’s a cabinet,” Dery said. “With beveled glass windows.”
“Rikka’s uncle is doing the hardware,” Blye added. “I’ll ask about your new cauldron when he brings them along, Mistress Mirdley.” And she betook herself off to the glassworks.
“Go put on a clean shirt,” Cade advised Derien. “And comb your hair. And try not to say anything stupid, right? No matter how hopeless this house of Mieka’s looks.”
When he raced upstairs, Mistress Mirdley eyed Cade sidelong. “Don’t let that Elf do anything stupid,” she said. “By which I mean make sure there’s a decent kitchen in this almost perfect house.”
“I doubt he’s even looked to see that there is a kitchen.”
But he had, and there was. Not a very big one, and it wanted the warm gleam of copper and a hearthfire and some comfortably cushioned chairs, but a nice kitchen all the same.
Cade was glad he’d asked Derien along. Mieka and the boy kept each other entertained on the long drive upriver and inland. Dery had brought a map of the Home Province, and traced their route diligently while Mieka pretended that his new house was somewhere off the page, in a village so tiny, it wouldn’t be on any maps. Dery eyed him askance.
“Everything in the world is on a map, so that you can always know where you are!”
“Is that all it takes?” Mieka asked whimsically. “A map? Did you hear that, Cayden?”
“I made a map of all the places you went on the Continent,” the boy went on. “Tobalt Fluter published one in The Nayword, but he was wrong about the days and distances. Being on the river made you get there a lot faster. So my map is right.”
Cade caught Mieka’s swift glance at him; they both remembered the river only too well.
“I’d like to see it, this map of yours,” Mieka said. “I’m not sure I always know where I am, and I’m really confused sometimes about where I’m going, but it’d be nice to have some certainty about where I’ve been!”
Once they reached the house, at the end of a lane that backed onto open fields, the pair of them leaped from the hire-hack and Cade was glad of that, too, for he suddenly knew what was about to happen to him.
The instant he saw the house, he knew it was coming. The outlines of roof and windows and doors were the same, even though the last time he’d seen the place it had been night. There was no mistaking the tilt of the chimney, the broken stones of the front walk.
Gulping a deep breath, he got out and told the driver to wait, and hoped he’d be able to cover the Elsewhen once it beset him. Better still, he’d be alone when it came. But he couldn’t count on that.
“Needs a bit of sprucing,” Mieka said, unlocking the front door.
“A bit?” Dery echoed as one of the hinges came loose.
Making a face at him, Mieka gestured grandly and bowed them inside.
Cade could actually feel it, sense it, hovering at the edges of his mind. He took one step, then two, barely hearing as Mieka enthused about the spaciousness of the drawing room, the four bedchambers upstairs (two that overlooked a tributary of the Gally river), the possibilities of the kitchen.
They went there first, down the narrow hall, and Cade managed to say something about how pleased Mistress Mirdley would be that there was actually a place to cook. He felt the Elsewhen ease off, for there were no echoes in this room, which he had never seen before. He’d resisted glancing to the left while in the entry, wary of the room where firelight had glowed while pages were ripped from a folio and burned.
Mieka urged them back through the passage and raced Dery up the stairs, dust whirling in their wake. It was then that Cayden made his mistake—or perhaps the real error had been in bringing Derien along. He glanced up, and saw his little brother’s face peering from between the railings, and heard him call out, “Cade! Hurry!” In the next instant he glimpsed another face. Only memory—and although for one of the few times in his life he was prepared for when it came, it wasn’t what he’d expected to see at all.
{Empty.
He walked slowly through the door. Paused a few steps from the hall into the drawing room with its cold hearth and scarred wooden floor, remembered the rustle of pages and the flaring of fire as they burned, one by one. Whatever chairs or tables or cupboards had been here once, they were gone now.
Empty.
He climbed the stairs wearily, not touching the oaken banister so thick with dust, almost as dirty as the first time he’d actually been in this house, scratched and splintering now with the many impacts of fists and fire irons and broken glass and Mieka’s drunken thorn-sullied staggering body. There was no carpet anymore to bunch and trip on, no framed Trials medals on the walls to fall and shatter. Just the worn, dirty wood underfoot, and broken railings.
Empty.
He bypassed the bedchambers and went to the end of the passage, opened the door of Mieka’s hideaway, hearing the familiar creak of hinges that had needed oiling for so long that to oil them now would seem like anointing the dead. She had kept them noisy to warn her when her husband had surfaced from immersion in alcohol and thorn.
It was not quite empty in here. A tall oaken cupboard still stood in the far corner—a fine piece of furniture once, with beveled glass set in the doors. Wedding present from Jed and Blye. One of the doors had been kicked in, wrenched almost off its upper hinge, the sole remaining pane of glass a splintered spiderweb.
A breeze through a window left open to the rain—there were water stains on the floor, and the casement had warped—fluttered something on a bottom shelf. He crossed the small, narrow room, deliberately not remembering the two deep velvet chairs where he’d sat so often with Mieka, the small cabinet between them with neat racks of glass thorns and paper twists, the tray of fine whiskeys and brandies and a set of Blye’s most elegant goblets. Crouching before the broken glass door, he squinted through the dust and recognized without much surprise a copy of their first portfolio, the one they’d used that first Winterly Circuit. The pages had been tied with a purple ribbon. He reached for them, steady-handed, and undid the knot.
“Dragon.” “Sailor’s Sweetheart.” “Silver Mine.” “Troll a
nd Trull.” “Hidden Cottage.” He turned pages, seeing the color-coding and private symbols he and Mieka had worked out together, and cramped scribbled notes on performing.
More here—make them feel it! and Green shirt NOT red and Anger fading to regret and Make sure Quill gives me enough for this—
—and all at once seeing that name in Mieka’s handwriting brought tears to his eyes.}
“Quill?”
There were tears in his eyes. He knuckled them away and smiled down into the worried face, and managed a cough and an exaggerated sniffle. “I’d better go outside before I start a sneezing fit—with a nose like mine, I’d break all the windows.”
“It’s a bit dusty,” Mieka admitted. “But it’ll be a good house, once it’s polished up and furnished—don’t you think?”
“You really want to buy it?”
“I want to know what you think.”
“I think the only thing holding those timbers together are the worms curling up in them.”
“That’s why the Gods gave me two brothers who work construction.” He peered up into Cade’s face, suspicious. “Did you just—?”
“Can we have lunching on the back porch, Cade?” Derien yelled from upstairs.
“Why don’t you run get the hamper?” he called back.
“Quill,” Mieka said warningly.
“Doesn’t take an Elsewhen to know that the chimney will come tumbling down in the first stiff wind. And I’m surprised that with those ears you can’t hear the mice in the walls.”
“You hate it,” Mieka said, crestfallen.
“I hate to think how much it would cost to put everything to rights. Why don’t you find a place that doesn’t need so much work? Brothers or no brothers, it’d be months before you could move in here.”
Mieka walked into the drawing room, over to the cold and empty hearth. Cade followed uncertainly, watching as he ran his fingers over the stone mantel.
“You’re right,” Mieka announced abruptly. “I’d do better to spend it all on something that’s ready now.”
“You can make changes to whatever you buy,” Cade suggested, trying not to sound relieved. “Put your own hallmark on it. This one’s just a little too much to deal with, innit?”