by Melanie Rawn
“No, Mieka, I mean I don’t know what I saw, it wasn’t clear—”
“Tell me! All of it!”
He seemed to wilt. Evidently fierce treatment while he was still stunned was the line to take. The others had coddled him far too long.
“You—we’d just finished—you jumped over your bench—” He frowned. “You stumbled, like your right leg had gone out from under you, and I caught you—Gods, you were white as bleached linen—like all the blood had drained out of your face—”
“Was I wearing a yellow shirt?”
Cade stared at him as if he’d gone completely out of his mind.
“The yellow shirt!” he repeated impatiently. “Was it that Elsewhen? The one where you hated me?”
“N-no … it was…” He looked Mieka down and up. “It was tonight,” he breathed. “Not even an hour from now—”
“So whatever it was, I got through the show?”
Cade nodded. “But you were hurt, your right leg—”
“I’m fine. Stop worrying.”
“It was tonight,” he insisted. “You had on exactly what you’re wearing now—except—except—”
“What? Tell me!”
He looked down at Mieka’s bare feet below the hems of white trousers. “The soft boots,” he mumbled. “You were wearing the soft boots.”
“I always wear—” Peering up into Cade’s face, he blew out a long sigh and said, “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? I’ll not wear them, not tonight. Will that do?”
“I don’t know. I never know.” He pulled away and opened the door. “Do as you like. I have to check the withies.”
Mieka followed him silently. Back in the tiring room, he stuck his feet back into the boots he’d worn over here. Stiff leather, not supple like the others, but if it kept that look from Cade’s eyes …
“So you finally learned,” teased Rafe as Mieka emerged into the little corridor next the stage. “Those tall black boots are all right for the black trousers, but with the white they cut you off at the knees and you look even shorter than Jeska.”
Hearing him, Jeska shot back, “At least I’m not getting as wide as I am tall!” and gave him a playful shove with one shoulder. Rafe bumped into Mieka, who jumped to one side. A servant girl, passing nearby with a tray of used glassware, tried to backstep, and the glasses fell shattering onto the brick floor. And Mieka, recovering his balance, crunched his right boot onto the wickedly sharp shards.
“My lords, gentlemen—”
Had he been wearing the soft leather, he would have sliced his foot wide open.
“The Keymaker has the honor to present—”
Scant wonder Cade had seen him white-faced. He’d finished the performance, while bleeding into his boot for more than an hour.
“Touchstone!”
He looked up and saw Cade, gray eyes huge with shock. Dredging up a smile, Mieka said, “That’s a first, then, innit? First time we’ve broken the glassware before the show.”
Chapter 26
Unhappily for Cayden, but ecstatically for The Nayword (the next issue sold out in two days), he ran into Tobalt Fluter that next evening. It happened in the Bag o’ Nails, the tavern that had taken over much of the Downstreet’s business but never quite managed the feel of the old place. The excitement here was whom you might see at the bar, not what you might see onstage.
Cade was alone at a small table in the back, drinking himself stupid. It wasn’t that he regretted telling Mieka about the Elsewhen. Unless he was prepared to endure the boy’s pestering and whining forever, he’d been pretty much compelled to start sharing his Elsewhens. That was what he told himself, at least. And in the end he didn’t truly mind that it had been forced out of him. It had to happen sooner or later.
What horrified him, and kept him flicking a finger in the air to signal the barmaid for another round, was that for just an instant—for less than an eyeblink of time—he’d thought to himself, What if I tell him, and it changes things, and he doesn’t finish the performance? After all, even if he’d been unsteady on his feet and pale as a ghost, the show had been successful. Everyone had applauded madly, and thrown buckets of coins onto the stage.
Had he really been willing to sacrifice Mieka’s well-being just to get through a show?
What sort of monster was he?
During the first two pints he analyzed the Elsewhen itself in light of what had occurred in the hallway. Mieka’s right foot had come down on the broken glassware; it was simple enough to assume that the soft-soled boots had been no match for the shards, and he’d cut himself, and spent the show slowly bleeding. The leather was tight enough that he hadn’t actually bled to death, and he’d managed to finish the performance, but—
Cade realized then that with only two days left to their booking at the Palace, it was entirely possible that Mieka could have been either too weak from blood loss or too immobilized by the injury to do his job. And that wasn’t even to consider infection and fever or even permanent damage to his foot, or—
What sort of monster was he, to think for even an instant about not warning Mieka?
The next pint was devoted to self-condemnation.
He began the fourth with a silent toast to the Elf, for he’d also realized that in the Elsewhen, as much pain as he must have been in, as increasingly dizzy as he must have felt, he had done his job. He’d not let them down. He knew how essential he was to them, how their success didn’t depend just on Cayden’s words or Jeska’s brilliance or Rafe’s strength and subtlety. The four of them together, they were Touchstone, a singular thing, and they had to work together or—or—
{“You can’t do this to him, Cade,” Rafe said quietly.
“No?” His mouth stretched in a thin smile that felt like a scar across his face.
Mieka strolled into the empty tavern. Late, as usual. Cade glanced at Rafe, then Jeska. They weren’t going to help him; he could see it in their faces. The masquer’s jaw was set and after a long glare at Cade, he turned his head away. Rafe—he wasn’t just glaring, he was clenching his fists as if ready to use them.
Cade felt his lip curl. If he had to do this himself, he would, and be damned to them. He turned to Mieka, sickened once again by those glazed, lightless eyes, the ruin of that once-beautiful face. He held himself from a flinch as those eyes focused blearily on him, as a cunning little smile stretched his lips and emphasized the creases framing his mouth.
“Good t’see you, Quill,” he said, his voice rougher, raspier, the drink and the thorn coarsening his voice just as they had coarsened his face and his body.
“Are you sober enough to understand this, and remember it?”
He blinked. “What? What’re you—?”
“You’ve one chance,” Cade said in a dangerously soft tone, “and one chance only. You drag yourself out of whatever gutter you’re wallowing in, you stop drinking, you get rid of the thorn—all of it—and you prove to me that you can still do your job without putting Jeska or Rafe at risk. You do that, or you’re out. Understand? Clean yourself up, or go to whichever hell will take you in. I mean it. If I think you’re a danger to us, you’re sacked.”
He was white to the lips, and for a moment looked as if he might topple with the shock. Betrayal, pain, anguish, shame, terror—so many things in that damaged face, in those lightless eyes. But then he lurched to his feet and stood there, gripping the table, swaying slightly before stiffening his spine.
“You fucking bastard,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t be anything if it wasn’t for me. You’d be licking boots at Court, the way your mother planned—wed to some puling idiot of a girl—” He laughed, a harsh and grating sound. “You think I drink too much? How many bottles do you get through each night? If it wasn’t for me, you’d be on your face or on your knees for anybody with liquor or thorn to offer you—”
Cade wasn’t aware of getting to his feet, or of drawing back his hand. He knew that he’d slapped Mieka—open-handed, a deliberate in
sult, the way he’d slap a whore—only when he heard the crack of his fingers on flesh, and felt the sting on his palm, and saw him stagger.
“You been wantin’ to do that for years,” Mieka hissed. “Felt good, did it? Why not do it again? I’m too drunk to mind much, have to hit me a lot harder to really make me feel it! C’mon, Cade! All the times you wanted to, here’s your chance!”
“You think you can’t be replaced? You think we need you so much, we’ll put up with this shit forever? I could walk outside and find a dozen gliskers I’d trust more than I trust you!”
“G’on then, and try!”
When Cade raised his arm again, Rafe stood up and grabbed Mieka, pulling him out of reach. “Stop it! Go home and sleep this off—both of you!” he snarled over his shoulder at Cade. “Nobody’s getting sacked—come on, Mieka, he didn’t mean—”
“He—he did mean it—” Tears spilled down his cheeks, rage and drunken self-pity that sickened Cade with disgust. “He meant it, Rafe—”
“At last you understand,” Cade said very softly. “Be at the theater tomorrow by noon, and be there sober—or I swear I’ll never work with you again.”
Rafe dragged Mieka out of the tavern. Jeska stayed, silent, then slowly raised his head and looked up at Cade.
“You know I don’t meddle. I masque what you give me, I do the work, and I’m bloody good at it. Whatever’s between you and him is your concern, not mine.”
“So what’s your point?”
“That I’ve never said anything like this before. And you’ll never hear anything like it from me again.”
“Say what you have to say, and then get out.”
A spark of anger flared in his limpid blue eyes—and Cade remembered suddenly the vicious street fighter of long ago. He hadn’t seen that Jeska in years. But the rage was gone as quickly as it had kindled, and his voice was very soft when he spoke.
“I want to know if you’re aware what you just did.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You just threw him away with both hands.”}
“Cade? I thought that was you. Oy, what’s been, old son?”
The chipper greeting, the companionable slap on his shoulder—he raised his head and met Tobalt Fluter’s abruptly worried gaze. He knew what must be scrawled across his face. Composing himself, he waved to the chair opposite and as Tobalt sat down, Cade drained the fourth pint down his throat and beckoned for another. The ale washed the sickness and anger out of his mouth. He needed more.
“How many bottles do you get through each night?”
“This one’s on me,” Tobalt said as the barmaid brought their drinks, and flipped her a shiny coin.
“Professional visit, then,” Cade observed. “Article to write, have you?”
“Only if you agree in advance.” He lifted his glass and took a swallow. “There’s rumors dancing from one edge of Gallantrybanks to the other about what Touchstone will perform.”
“Why don’t you go bother Vered, or Rauel? There’s rumors about the Shadowshapers, too.”
“They’re all locked up together at Chat’s house, rehearsing.”
Cade grinned mordantly. “Which, by implication, is what we ought to be doing, but which, by further implication, we don’t need to do because we’ve got it all done and dusted.”
“Do you?” Tobalt asked with innocent sincerity.
“Would I tell you if we did?”
“Probably not. But there’s plenty else to talk of, y’know.”
He considered, then shrugged. “Quote me accurately, that’s all I ask.”
Tobalt looked hurt. “When have I ever not?”
“Theater, in the right hands, can change lives. And if you change enough of them, you change the world.”
I point out that this is ambitious, even for Cayden Silversun.
“Think about it. The Shadowshapers do! They’ve taken theater to a whole new place, where the audience comes not just for a good time, a few laughs, maybe a tear or two while nobody else can see—what they do, it’s feeling and thinking and encouraging people to consider their lives. Mayhap without realizing it, but it happens all the same. It’s never just the same tired old playlets. They work new ideas into them, even the trite old things people have seen a thousand times.”
I mention that I’ve heard it said, by those who denounce theater in general and the Shadowshapers—and Touchstone, and Black Lightning—in particular, that it’s no good rousing emotions, stirring things up that way, and even less use to do it through the imagination. That it’s encouraging illusion.
Silversun disagrees.
“The emotion born of imagination is just as real as any other. You can’t laugh at the man in charge to his face—but you can laugh yourself silly in a theater, and I’m thinking now of the farce plays, you know the ones I mean. The ones where the head man always ends up in muck of one kind or another. Same with weeping, you know. Can’t cry, mustn’t cry, unmanly to cry. But I’ve seen grown men, stone-faced farmers and tough sailors and men of business who’d sell their own grandmothers, they weep buckets over something like ‘Silver Mine’ or ‘A Life in a Day.’ It’s a safe place to go, the theater. You can feel and dream and think without fear of the consequences. Without fearing yourself, that what you think and feel and dream will run away with you, the reason so many people keep themselves to themselves in their daily lives.”
I ask if this is what he means about changing the world.
“I know where you’re going, and that’s not what I mean at all. During the performance, people see and hear and experience what we want them to. It’s one purpose of Art to cause a reaction. The Artist has a purpose in creating, and one of those purposes is to bring about a reaction in the audience. But there are other objectives, and the most important of them is to have people think about what they’ve just experienced.”
Where does beauty fit in?
“A very wise person once said to me that when we see the truth, no matter how painful, there’s beauty in that. The courage to see and acknowledge the truth is always beautiful—but things that are beautiful aren’t always true.”
And what do the rest of Touchstone think about this? Your glisker, for instance.
“Mieka! I know exactly what he’d tell you if you asked—that thinking only gets in the way.”
* * *
“You never know when to shut up, do you?” Blye asked.
“Splash a bit more vinegar on it, won’t you?” Cade invited.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Dery soothed. “You didn’t mention women in theater this time.”
“Should have.” He stared into his teacup, wishing he dared spike it with a dollop of whiskey. Mistress Mirdley had sent up her best hangover remedy this morning without his even having to ask. It had mostly worked.
They had gathered as usual in the kitchen, where the Trollwife was pointedly ignoring him while she pounded her big fists into a pile of bread dough. With every blow came a little puff of flour. He imagined the dough to be his brain—it had certainly felt as thickly inert this morning—and the puffs to be thoughts of the arrogant sort he’d recklessly blithered to Tobalt Fluter last night. She’d have to pound harder to get them all.
“So you’re bidden to the Palace by the Princess herself,” Blye said. “Quite the honor.”
“You should’ve seen Mother when the note arrived.” Dery grinned. He skipped over to the door, then turned, and Jeska couldn’t have done a better job at imitating Lady Jaspiela. “Whyever would Her Highness want to see you? I trust you recall everything I ever taught you about addressing Royalty.” He strode over to the workbench, looked up at Cade, and went on, “Hire one of those boats. And bring a gift. Nothing presumptuous, mind. Flowers would be appropriate. And for mercy’s sake, wear your best jacket! And brush your hair! And clean your teeth! And do your schoolwork—” He broke off with a comical frown. “Oh, wait, that’s what she says to me!”
Cade bowed, shaking with laughter. “As yo
u say, Mother dear. Much beholden, Mother dear.” He supposed he oughtn’t to encourage the boy in such disrespect, though it was scarcely his fault if Lady Jaspiela was a snob.
“Why a boat?” Blye wanted to know.
“So nobody at the Palace titters behind a glove that the wife of the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber can’t afford her own carriage, of course,” Cade told her. “She was right about bringing a gift, though—I am beholden to her for that.”
“But not flowers,” Derien said. “And that’s where you come in, Blye.”
Cade nodded. “That little box of yours was such a success, I know there’s something else amongst your work she’d like.”
“And there might be a Royal Warrant in your future!” Dery concluded.
“And that dragon’s egg of Tavier’s will hatch any day now,” she retorted. “Well, come on, then, Cade—let’s go see what’s in the shop.”
After much deliberation, they settled on an exquisite three-inch-high candleflat swirling with white and forget-me-never blue, and at two precisely that afternoon Cade presented himself at the Palace’s rivergate after a lazy drift downriver below the Plume. This was the oldest part of the compound, built nobody knew quite when. The sand-pale riverstone walls were five feet thick and filled in with rubble, which made for an interior of seeping damp only partially mitigated by several miles of tapestries. Cade had been here once before, during a littleschool outing, and he could swear that the same frowning guardsmen who had been on watch back then glared disapproval at him now. He and Rafe had escaped their group and the guards, and played swordfight all the way to the top of the stairs before they were caught. He was vastly tempted to give these sentries the slip now, but there was no one to play with.
He’d no idea why they were looking at him like that. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t dressed for the occasion: his best pewter-gray brocade jacket, whisper-fine white shirt, boots polished to a mirror gleam, and the little silver falcon pin Derien had given him. He would in no wise disgrace himself, his family, or Touchstone. Yet when Lady Vrennerie came to greet him in the reception hall, he suddenly felt as ragged and motley as a crow-keeper in a wheat field. He’d forgot how pretty she was, how good she smelled, how her nose scrunched up a bit when she smiled. In the months since he’d last seen her, he’d taken advantage more than once of what was on offer after a show; it wasn’t that he felt guilty, now that he was taking her hand again, it was more that being with those girls was … expected of him. Monotonous. Even, once the immediate pleasure had passed, dismal.