Window Wall

by Melanie Rawn

  … which included an ability to sense gold.

  Absurdly, Cade began to giggle. A solution at last! The solution to everything! Send Derien off on one of Lord Piercehand’s ships, to return with cargo holds belching gold. Yeh, he could see it just like an Elsewhen: himself, waiting proudly at the docks below the Plume, Derien waving from the deck, flags flying, a brass band playing, their mother and even their father turning out to cheer the triumph and collect a share of the spoils—

  Wine and weariness caught up with him before he could decide, still cackling inanely to himself, which idea was more disgusting: using his twelve-year-old brother like a ratting dog, or using Megs as a bank account.

  19

  The first awful thing that happened was that his wife wasn’t at Wistly Hall to meet him.

  “I know you’re disappointed,” his mother said as she hugged him. “But Jindra isn’t feeling well, poor darling.” She stood back and looked at him. “Good Gods. How long since you had a decent meal?”

  Mieka shrugged off her concern. Pointing to Jeska, hovering near the staircase, he asked, “What’s he doing here?”

  That turned out to be the second awful thing, which made the first fade to insignificance. Jeska was there because, arriving a day earlier than the wagon, he’d discovered Kazie in a fury because of something to do with the bank, and first thing this morning he’d gone round to demand an explanation, and now he was here at Wistly with appalling news.

  They all looked round for Cayden, who seemed to have vanished. Jeska said he’d go over to Redpebble Square later, which led to Rafe’s asking why Redpebble, which led to Jeska’s tale of what he had discovered at the bank.

  The third awful thing was that Mieka was the only one who actually owned the house his family lived in. Rafe had been waiting for just the right country cottage; Jeska had been planning to buy a flat in one of the big new buildings down below the Plume; Cade—well, who knew what Cade had in mind, and Mieka didn’t care anyways. Now Jeska and Kazie would move into Wistly, Rafe and Crisiant and Bram would continue to live with Mistress Threadchaser over the bakery, and Cade would be back at Redpebble Square before the sun set this evening. Of them all, Mieka was the only one with his own home to go to. It was no fault of his; Hadden Windthistle had arranged to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible. Mieka and Yazz and their wives and children were perfectly safe. He didn’t know why this made him squirm inside with guilt, but it did.

  The most awful thing of all was finding out that he should have trusted his own instincts years ago about Kearney Fairwalk.

  Jeska described the whole dismal situation and set off for Redpebble to tell Cayden. Rafe went silently home. Mieka glanced into the dining room, where a welcome-home dinner was all arranged, and fled upstairs.

  The awful things just kept happening.

  His fully depleted thorn-roll could not be replenished with whatever he’d left here, because ten minutes’ search revealed that he’d left nothing here. Auntie Brishen would be unable to supply him for another week—it would take that long to send her a letter and for her to send the thorn. After a brief display of temper that no one witnessed, which included the grinding of one empty thorn-roll beneath his boot heel and the flinging of the other against a wall, he bethought himself of the Shadowshapers. Vered was known to savor thorn now and again. But the Shadowshapers were out on their own someplace, and probably wouldn’t be back until a few days before the King’s Accession celebrations. It took Mieka quite a while to recall the name of their supplier—Master Bellgloss—but he had no idea where to find him.

  Worse, taking vengeance on the empty thorn-rolls had broken the little glass thorns themselves.

  So, after a horrid night’s sleep, he dressed early and headed over to Redpebble Square. Even if Cade didn’t know anything about Master Bellgloss, he had his own thorn-roll and could bloody well share. Little as he relished having to speak to the man after that horrible “Now you know how it feels” in Stiddolfe, he set his jaw and walked the whole way there, angrier by the minute.

  But instead of the front or back doors of Number Eight, he walked down Criddow Close instead. Neither Blye nor Jed had been at Wistly last night. Working, his mother had said. Mieka knew he’d find at least one of them in the glassworks.

  The next awful thing was Blye.

  She refused to make any glass thorns for him, saying that glass thorns were hollow and she was forbidden to make anything hollow.

  Mieka scoffed. She made their withies, and they were hollow. Hells, she had the Gift of the Gloves and could make anything she fancied, now that the Princess was so obviously her patron.

  “You’re forcing me to say it, so I’ll say it.” Blye met him look for look, her brown eyes flashing with cold anger. “I won’t make any glass thorns for you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can see what you’re doing to yourself and I won’t help you do it.”

  He was not in the cheeriest of moods when entering the kitchen at Number Eight. Lacking thorn, he’d slept badly. Cade had bloody well better have something left, or he’d—

  “What are you doing here?”

  For a moment he forgot his own worries. Cayden sat at the worktable before a plate of barely touched food. He looked dreadful. Unshaven, uncombed, with bloodshot eyes and a sickly pallor emphasized by two ugly welts of color on his sharp cheekbones, he was so skinny that he’d run out of notches on his belt. It rested at his hipbones rather than his waist, and precariously at that.

  “Quill,” he began, soft-voiced. How had he not seen how bad Cade looked? He supposed that over the course of the circuit, the changes had been so gradual that no one noticed anything about anybody else. Familiar, and bringing a familiar guilt.

  “You can’t stay. I’m off to the bank. Have to scrape together whatever I have left and go pay the King’s College personally.”

  Oh, Gods—Mieka had forgot that Derien’s schooling would be involved in their collective financial disaster.

  “I can help pay it,” he blurted. “I still have—”

  “You still have a wife and a daughter and a mother-in-law to support.”

  “They can get by for a while. Dery’s education is important, Quill. I don’t know how much there is, but whatever’s there is yours.”

  Cade drew breath to continue the argument. Then, all at once, his eyes lost their stormcloud color and softened, and he said, “You’re such a miserable little cullion sometimes, and then you say something like that and—” He gave up and shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. I’ve had the footman run round to Jeska’s and Rafe’s to come by at noon so we can make some plans.”

  “Where d’you think we could get giggings that pay the best? How much would we be able to charge?”

  “Not sure. Fairwalk took care of all that for us.”

  Mieka noted, but did not comment on, the fact that not only was the nobleman no longer Kearney to Cade, he had even lost his title. “We’ve all been right little idiots, haven’t we?” Mieka asked ruefully. “It’s not your fault, Quill.”

  “Isn’t it? You didn’t much like him from the first, as I recall.”

  “No. But I got used to him. We all did. And with his connections, and how he always encouraged you with your writing, and—”

  “Stop trying to make me feel better, Mieka.”

  “D’you think anything could make any of us feel better? I just don’t want you to feel responsible.”

  “You’ll have to teach me how. It’s one of your specialties, isn’t it? Avoiding responsibility?”

  Goaded, Mieka snarled back, “And why didn’t you see this in an Elsewhen, eh? Before the very first time he showed up, when it was your decision to let him work for us or not—it all depends on what you choose, doesn’t it? Well, then, why didn’t you see this?”

  “As I recall, you and Rafe and Jeska had all but taken him on before I ever even met him!”

  “So now it’s our fault?”

>   “It couldn’t possibly be, could it? That would mean taking some respons—”

  “Stop it!”

  Another voice, scared beneath the anger, spoke behind them. They turned to find Derien, trembling, his hands fisted at his sides.

  “Stop it! You sound like the play yard at school! Which of you is going to say ‘But he started it!’?”

  Mieka dragged his gaze from the boy’s furious face to Cade’s shocked one. In point of fact, it had been on his lips to say exactly that. Cade’s shoulders slumped a bit, and he offered his right hand to Mieka: palm outward, the greeting of one nobleman to another. To an equal. Mieka looked him in the eyes as he matched his hand to Cade’s. Their fingers laced together, and each held on hard for a few moments before letting go.

  “Right,” Derien said, relieved. “Has anybody thought yet about renting your wagon to one of the groups on the Winterly?”

  Disasteful as the notion was, it would be income. Still—

  “They’d have to find their own horses and driver,” Cade said. “Yazz will want to be at home when the new baby comes.”

  “He might want the income,” Mieka argued. “Babies aren’t cheap.”

  “On the other hand, we might want the wagon for giggings outside Gallybanks,” Cade said. “Jeska can figure out if we’d spend more using it than taking the post coach and putting up at an inn.”

  Mieka opened his mouth to protest—they were Touchstone, and Touchstone did not take public conveyances—but just then Mistress Mirdley appeared, cast a withering glance at Mieka, and said, “Another skeleton in a silken shirt. Derien, get down the plates and cups. You, Cayden, stir up the fire. As for you, Master Windthistle—”

  “Yes?” he asked apprehensively.

  “There’s fresh apple muffins in the warming oven.”

  He found a basket, lined it with cloth, and filled it with muffins. Half an hour later, breakfast—scuffled eggs, slices of honeyed ham, apple muffins dripping butter, and strong black tea—had vanished down hungry throats and everybody felt better.

  Until, with the unmannerly insistence of a creditor insisting on payment, the idea of thorn barged into his mind. He could barely restrain himself from jumping to his feet and racing upstairs to Cade’s bedchamber. Many long, twitching minutes later, Cade suggested a remove to the drawing room.

  “I’d rather your room upstairs,” Mieka said. “No interruptions.”

  Derien snorted a laugh. “Don’t worry, Mother had breakfast in bed and she’s out visiting all day today.”

  It was only then that Mieka recalled Lady Jaspiela’s dislike of his charming self. His own fault, attempting to use magic on her to … he couldn’t quite remember why, but she had reacted rather badly. He hadn’t set eyes on her since he couldn’t remember when. The thorn-hunger reminded him of her utter unimportance.

  “We should get your folio,” he heard himself say—or mayhap it was the thorn talking. “We can plot out which plays people like best, and set a price on each of them. After all, it takes more out of us to do ‘Dragon’ or ‘Treasure’ than ‘Cottage.’”

  “What about your beloved pig? Would you really be willing to forgo your pig in exchange for more money?”

  “Poor pig,” he sighed. “I’ll miss him.” Rising to his feet, he pulled Cade along out of the kitchen. “C’mon, we ought to get started.”

  It was difficult to think up a good reason to ask Cade about his thorn-roll, for the unrelenting need made his thoughts skitter. By the time they were at the top of the five flights of stairs, he had his excuse.

  “You must be as low on thorn as I am. Why not make a list for Auntie Brishen? I can send it to her along with mine.”

  As they entered the bedchamber, Cade cleared his throat nervously and wouldn’t look at him. His long, thin hands fidgeted towards his satchel, where Mieka supposed the thorn-roll was.

  “Er … in fact, I was thinking that with all the thinking we have to do, and how badly I slept last night … I’m always tired after a circuit, and this one was pretty brutal, so I thought it might be a good idea … only a little, I mean, not really very much at all …”

  So Cade was feeling the same thing. Mieka made no reply, simply took the thorn-roll Cade handed him and began preparing the little glass thorns.

  They worked steadily for a couple of hours. Derien clattered up the wrought-iron stairs to tell them Rafe and Jeska had arrived, and they spent another couple of hours down in the drawing room, batting ideas back and forth like a four-sided game of shuttlecock. By the time Mistress Mirdley brought in a belated lunching, many things had been agreed upon. The wagon ought to be rented out, but it was Yazz’s decision whether or not to go with it. This notion of charging more for specific plays wouldn’t wash. They would write to the Shadowshapers to get an idea of what performances fees ought to be. Rafe’s suggestion of asking Romuald Needler, who managed the Shadowshapers and was moreover resident in Gallybanks and therefore could be contacted much more quickly, was turned down flat by Cade. It was his opinion that Needler would either name a figure so outrageously high that the Shadowshapers would be a bargain by comparison, or a figure so low that everyone would think that Touchstone would perform practically for free, so desperate were they for money.

  “Well, aren’t we?” Jeska asked, smiling his gratitude to Mistress Mirdley as she came into the drawing room with a tray of tall glasses and a huge pitcher of ice-cold lemonade.

  Mieka shook his head. “Yeh, but we can’t let on that we are. Cade, write to Vered and tell him you’ve found a book he’d be interested in—doesn’t matter whether you have or not—is this your special recipe, Mistress Mirdley? With the pinch of juniper berries? Beholden! Anyways, Cade, you just have to remind him that he owes you for the books he’s borrowed so far, then ask him all casual-like what the Shadowshapers make. He’ll likely be more honest that way.”

  “Vered’s not stupid,” Cade said. “Wouldn’t he try to do what Needler probably would?”

  “They’d both assume,” said Mistress Mirdley, “that you’re to be setting yourselves independent, just as they have, and in direct competition with them. That’s not a kick towards honesty, to my way of thinking. I have another idea.”

  “Say on,” Rafe invited.

  “You might send him a present—him or all of them. Matching scarves or suchlike.”

  Mieka heard Cayden suddenly catch his breath, and didn’t understand the quick, swift, almost guilty glance in his direction.

  Mistress Mirdley replaced the pitcher on the tray and turned to face Mieka. “Your wife and her mother could sew them.”

  “They could,” Mieka agreed. “But—”

  “It’s what they could sew into them that matters.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mieka complained. “What are you talking about?”

  “You really don’t know?” Rafe asked, earning himself startled looks from the Trollwife and Cade. What did they know that Mieka didn’t? And about his very own wife!

  Cade said quickly, “Or we could just do the practical thing and ask the owners of the Keymarker and the Kiral Kellari and the Downstreet what they pay the Shadowshapers, and find out that way—yeh, that’s what we ought to do.”

  Mieka knew a desperate diversion when he heard one. “Will somebody please explain what my wife and her mother have to do with—?”

  “He really doesn’t know,” Rafe observed.

  “Neither do I,” said Jeska. “What are you talking about?”

  At the same time, Mieka bellowed, “Know what?”

  Now Cade looked truly guilty but also annoyed. Rafe looked mildly intrigued, as if the scene and its possible resolution were interesting, but really nothing to do with him at all. Mistress Mirdley looked the way Mistress Mirdley always looked: composed, skeptical, watching the follies of all these silly, ignorant people who could live to be a thousand and not have one-eighth the wisdom of the Trolls.

  Cade opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. And then, ti
med as if he’d written the script to get himself out of an awkwardness, Derien ran into the room, skidding to a stop that rumpled the carpet, and announced breathlessly, “Cade—Lord Fairwalk is here!”

  “Excellent. Let’s have him in.”

  “Why’s he here?” Jeska demanded.

  “Because I sent for him.”

  Cade wore his I Can Be Snootier Than Any Highborn Ever Born face. Mieka could just imagine the note that had summoned His Lordship. The demeanor Cade had inherited from his mother (and possibly his father; Mieka had never even met the man, so he couldn’t know for sure), but the words were all his own. Knowing that he’d get no explanation about the scarves and his wife and her mother for quite some time, he pushed the matter aside and prepared a few choice phrases of his own. Pity Mistress Mirdley was still in the room; he’d have to mind his language.

  Fairwalk swanned into the drawing room, fashionably dressed and smelling of lilacs. The smile dropped off his face like a withered leaf from a dying tree when he met Cade’s eyes. But he put a brave front on it, seating himself in one of Lady Jaspiela’s spindly chairs, and apparently not noticing that he was not offered a glass of cold lemonade.

  “I’m so pleased that you asked me to come by today, Cayden, I have such excellent news! That wonderful new theater that’s been so long in the planning is finally going to be built, don’t you see, and you—that is to say, Touchstone—has been asked to contribute ideas.”

  “The Archduke’s theater, you mean?”

  “Yes—with the additional patronage of Princess Miriuzca!”

  Fairwalk was beaming as if he had personally done something exceedingly clever. A quick glance round the room told Mieka that, like him, nobody else liked this development. Cade looked not only displeased, but disgusted, too. Mieka asked, “How’d she get mixed up in it?”

  “Well, don’t you see, she can’t really say anything about it officially until after her brother leaves for home—his being so disapproving of theater and all—but the Archduke tells me that she’s thrilled to be a part of it, and because you’re all such friends and she shows you such favor, he says that your participation is crucial, and—” He broke off, bewildered that they weren’t in ecstasies. “I thought you’d be pleased—flattered—”