Window Wall

by Melanie Rawn

  “Mieka is quite the lad,” he admitted.

  “I expect his wife wants more children. That’s the only reason I can think of for not gelding him with a rusty pair of garden shears.” She paused, then said, “You’ve been gone all summer. This fashionable piety I spoke of—there are those within Chapel who encourage it, and not just amongst the nobility.”

  “Though it’s the nobility who have money to contribute to Chapel,” he put in.

  “Don’t state the obvious. Along comes the Princess’s brother, reminding her of the religion she came from, finding common cause with Iamina and the Archduchess—who also comes from their part of the Continent, married to a descendant of that same region. If Iamina spends so much time in their company, it means she forgives the offenses of the Archduke’s father against her own father, so why shouldn’t the rest of us? They raised that whelp carefully, I’ll give them that. Kept him out of Gallybanks for the most part, gave it out that he’s mad for theater and not much else. So inoffensive is he that he’s sent to the Continent to bring back the Princess, even standing as proxy bridegroom.”

  Cade remembered that night very well indeed. “And he’s kin to the Royals, don’t forget.”

  “Precisely. Yet consider the Royals themselves. I don’t think anybody’s heard the Queen say five words together in the last thirty years. Ashgar is a wastrel and a waste of good air. King Meredan does his best, I suppose, but he’s not his father and never could be. What’s more, he never wanted to be. Who’s left? Iamina has turned religious for reasons nobody can say. Her husband is about to be divorced, did you know? What happens if she marries again? She’s not yet forty, still able to have a child.”

  “The only Royal who matters,” Cade said slowly, “is Princess Miriuzca.”

  “And it will be fifteen years at least before her son is ready for the throne.”

  “You know, I rather think she might make a decent job of it herself. She’s far from stupid, no matter how innocent those big blue eyes might seem. But I gather what you’re really saying is that the Archduke is close cousin to the Royals, and wouldn’t mind getting all of them out of the way for himself and his children.”

  “His wife is snaking her way into the best graces of the Chapel. There might be a powerfull ally there.”

  “Yeh, but—” Suddenly he sat up straight. “That’s not it at all! Suppose this happens, suppose the North Keep falls right on top of Miriuzca and both her children—and the Archduke can prove it was her brother and the Nominative Brothers and even Iamina and his own wife—there can’t be all that many in the Chapel hierarchy who want to get rid of honoring the Angels and the Old Gods, and stay strictly with the Lord and the Lady—but if that’s true, then why did Black Lightning do that play? The one where everybody except Wizards and Elves is unclean? Oh, of course,” he said, answering his own question. “They must lean towards the idea of only the Lord and the Lady—though Thierin Knottinger never struck me as being particularly spiritual.” He paused. “But he doesn’t matter. If the Archduke lets this happen, if I warn him and he still lets it happen, he can place the blame on the Tregrefin and Iamina and his own wife, and that shows how wrong this whole new religious line is—he’s got a son and a daughter by Panshilara, she’s of no more use to him now—he can get rid of her and Iamina and win the Chapel traditionalists to his side forever!”

  Mistress Mirdley held up both hands, both in jest and in earnest. “Enough! What pathways there must be in that mind of yours, to take you such places!”

  He laughed ruefully. “Well, I know now why I never wanted to be in politics or at Court. My head is splitting!”

  “Come into the stillroom and I’ll give you something for that.”

  They left the kitchen and on the short walk down the hallway, he draped his arm around her shoulders. “We haven’t sat and talked like that in a long time. D’you remember when I was little, and I spent more time in your kitchen than anywhere else but Cindercliff Glassworks?”

  She leaned into him, then shook off his arm and opened the stillroom door. “It was so much simpler when you were a child. All I had to worry about was skinned knees and hurt feelings. Now it’s Princesses and Archdukes and magic and theater, and I don’t know what-all else. You’ve put years onto me, boy, and no mistake.”

  Cade disregarded her frown and put both arms around her for a hug. “You know what?” he murmured, resting his chin atop her head. “Whenever anybody at school said that with a face like mine, I must be part Troll, I was secretly proud.”

  For one of the few times in all the years he’d known her, she hugged back. But only for a moment. Then she wriggled away and got down a blue jar and a silver vial and a white bottle and a copper bowl to mix things in.

  “Don’t think that all those pretty words will please me into making this taste good,” she warned.

  “It never crossed my mind.”

  “Fetch me that green bottle over there. And tell me what it’s like, this writing that you do.”

  The request surprised him so much that the bottle nearly slipped out of his fingers. “How do you mean?”

  “You know very well what I mean.”

  Cayden chewed his lower lip. “It’s … actually, it’s awful when it isn’t going well. You get out the paper and sharpen the pen, make sure there’s enough ink in the bottle, and then there’s nothing. It just won’t happen. You know you’ll never be able to write something that has any relation at all to how you want it to be. You want to kick the furniture and the walls—”

  “And yourself.”

  “Oh, especially yourself! For being such a lackwit as to think you might actually have something to say. You can’t get the words to budge. They’re all in your head—too many of them, sometimes—and they won’t do what you want them to. But you can’t stop working at it, because it’s the only thing you’ve ever really wanted to do, it’s the only thing that you can do that really matters. And the insane thing is that when it’s all jumbled up like that, you know that you must really have something important to say. Important to you, at least.”

  “And when it goes well?”

  “You feel like all the Gods and Angels rolled into one.”

  He heard what that sounded like, and felt himself blush again. But Mistress Mirdley was nodding.

  “And the Elsewhens? What do those feel like? All of them, not just the ones that hurt.”

  “The outer world goes away. What I’m seeing becomes the real world. It’s not like dreaming, at least the way I understand most people’s dreams. Sometimes I’m there, doing things, like the one about the North Keep. Other times I’m just watching and listening, I’m not really there at all, if you see what I mean. Seeing the Tregrefin and the Nominative Brothers was like that. Things happen and I can’t affect them, I can’t communicate or warn or anything like that.” A small, sardonic laugh escaped him. “It definitely doesn’t feel like being one of the Gods!”

  “And so you write.” She poured the mixture into a clay cup and swirled it round. “Because of all these things—the Elsewhens and the performing and the writing—the writing is the only thing you can control.”

  “Sometimes it controls me,” he admitted. “Sometimes it’s a little like an Elsewhen, and it just sort of happens to me—” And then he remembered that the piece Touchstone had rehearsed but had yet to perform, “The Avowal,” had come to him as an Elsewhen. He’d mused once or twice on what it might be like to have all his writing come to him like that—and realized that when it was going really well, all his writing really was like that. The difference was that the writing was like a waking trance, not a sleeping dream or an otherworldly Elsewhen, and that Mistress Mirdley was right in that he could control it. More or less. He grinned to himself and quaffed the potion handed to him.

  It tasted absolutely foul. But his headache was gone by the time he reached his room upstairs. Tonight he merely glanced at the thorn-roll. No need for it. He would sleep tonight, and tomorrow he’d go t
o the Archduke’s residence just outside of Gallantrybanks, Great Welkin. And somehow he’d convince him to thwart the Tregrefin’s plot, not take advantage of it. He shuddered slightly under the sheet as he remembered Miriuzca’s furious face and the glass stabbing Megs’s back and neck. But he also remembered the swiftness with which the Princess had acted on his order, and her trust in him—and that Megs had shielded little Roshlin, possibly saving his life. He wished the Elsewhen had gone on just a few moments longer, so he could be sure she had not sacrificed herself in vain.

  22

  Early as Cayden was in his waking and washing and dressing, Mieka was downstairs waiting for him. Mieka, who considered morning to be the foulest of curse words, considered that what he heard from Mistress Mirdley that morning went beyond foul. It was fortunate that he arrived so early at Redpebble Square; he had time to recover from the shock. He would have to be in firm possession of all his cleverness if he was to accompany Cade to see the Archduke.

  When Cayden showed up, he was ensconced in a chair beside the kitchen hearth, placidly sipping spiced mocah from a big earthenware cup, telling Mistress Mirdley all about the Royal Circuit. He had just reached the tale of the mud baths when the door swung open and Cade stepped through, stopped, stared, and looked as if he wanted to turn right back around and flee the house.

  “Oh, good! You’re up,” Mieka said. “Have something to eat and drink, and then we’ll be off.”

  “Off?” He declined the Trollwife’s offer of a plate of sage bacon and raisin muffins.

  “Off,” Mieka affirmed. “And do eat something, Quill. It won’t do to cross verbal swords with the Archduke on an empty stomach.”

  He gave Mistress Mirdley a frown of betrayal. “You told him?” “I did. And he’s right. Sit. Eat.”

  Cade did as he was bidden. Mieka roused himself from his comfortable chair to pour him a glass of peach nectar, then sat back down with his cup of mocah. Taking a critical survey from neatly combed hair to shiny black boots, he nodded. “You’re dressed for it, that’s a start. That gray jacket always did look very elegant. But you’ll have to go back upstairs for that falcon pin Dery gave you. It would look better in a neck-cloth or a scarf, just for some color, instead of holding your collar together….” When Cade frowned, he shrugged. “As you please. Now, how do you plan to get there?”

  “Hire-hack.” He picked up and eyed a strip of crisp bacon, and started chewing.

  “Absolutely not. You can’t show up at Great Welkin in a hack!”

  “You’re suggesting we ought to hitch up the wagon?”

  “Don’t be so silly. I have a plan.” Mieka grinned again. “Don’t ask. Eat.”

  A short while later Mieka waited in the entry hall of Number Eight while Cayden fetched the silver falcon pin. A little while after that they were both looking into the mirror as he pinned his collar closed. His fingers twitched suddenly, and Mieka saw his eyes widen.

  “What?” he asked softly.

  “It’s—” His gaze flickered to Mieka in the mirror, and it was remarkable, really, how easy it was to watch the decision forming in his eyes as he chose not to lie. “Nothing substantial. Memory of a memory, I think. It’s silly, is what it is. I’ve looked into this mirror a million times.”

  “And in Elsewhens?”

  “That’s what it feels like.” He hesitated, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a short length of glass, barely five inches long. “Blye made a few of these for Dery when he was little.”

  Mieka accepted the toy withie. He sensed the presence of Cade’s magic within it. “So that’s what took you so long upstairs.”

  “We might have to get past an obstacle or two.”

  “Mm. It’s a right bright lad, innit?” He slipped it up his sleeve, made sure it was secure, and led the way out the front door, hiding how stunned he was that Cade was actually encouraging him to do such a thing.

  “Not the Archduke,” Cade warned. “I have to see him alone.”

  Mieka had been thinking about this since Mistress Mirdley had told him Cade was planning a visit to Great Welkin. Much as it pained him, he had to nod. “I don’t trust meself around him, ’specially not with one of these.”

  “It isn’t that you’re not wanted,” Cade began anxiously.

  Mieka interrupted with, “I know that, too. It’s that I’m not needed.” He saw this register in startled gray eyes and wondered why Cayden never could believe that Mieka had every faith in him. More lightly, he went on, “And I’m not dressed for it, am I? Now, where’s the nearest jewelry shop?”

  Cade gaped at him. “You want me to bring him a gift?”

  “I take back what I said about you being smart. Never mind. Save your wits for your talk with Himself, and don’t spend any before you have to. But first we have to get you there. Barely enough money for a hack, I take it? Well, don’t worry. Like I said, I have a plan.”

  “I almost always hate your plans.”

  “You won’t much like this one, either. But that makes no nevermind. Jeweler’s?”

  Cade led him out of Redpebble Square, one block down and two blocks over, and through the substantial iron-barred door of Spindletwist Fine Gems. The shop’s windows were many and narrow, six of them on either side of the door, allowing a glimpse inside at the sparkling wares but no hope of entry. Mieka strolled through the door as if he had just bought not only the shop but the whole block of buildings from street corner to street corner, too. Cade flinched slightly as a little bell rang with the opening of the door. Mieka paused, tilted his head as if listening, then beamed his approval.

  “A lovely note,” he said to the man who looked at them over a glass-topped case of gold and silver and glistening jewels. “My father is a lute-maker, and that happens to be one of his favorites for testing purity of tone. But I see by this marvelous display that your discriminating taste extends to all things.” He laughed, radiating pleasure. “Even to the color of the walls and carpets and chairs! Do you know, I was once in a jeweler’s shop—well, he called himself a jeweler, though by the time I left, empty-handed I might add, I very much doubted it—but I tell you with my hand on my heart that all his walls and furnishings were shades of brown. Brown! Every gem he brought out, from sapphires to emeralds to pearls—even the diamonds!—they simply lay there, poor things, trying their hardest to shine but doomed from the instant he placed them onto brown velvet. This elegance of blues, however, is perfect.”

  From a corner of his eye, he saw Cade grimace slightly. Really, he ought to be accustomed by now to Mieka’s interminable chattering. The proprietor, who introduced himself as Master Spindletwist, was nodding his approval of Mieka’s discernment. Most jewelers—most people who worked with metals—were at least partly Goblin. This man looked Human from his rounded ears to his straight white teeth to his long limbs.

  “My wife’s choosing,” he said. “What may I show you today?”

  “Wives!” Mieka sighed dramatically. “One has so much to do to keep them happy, isn’t that so? I’m just returned from months away, you see, and damned if I could find anything anywhere that would please her, and worthy of her beauty. Don’t you think so, Cayden?”

  “Oh, of course.”

  For a moment, Mieka thought Cade really had fallen out of the stupid tree this morning and hit every branch on his way down. He had underestimated his tregetour’s powerful understanding. Cade smiled at Spindletwist and went on talking.

  “Shollop, Dolven Wold, Sidlowe—well, you couldn’t really expect to find anything in Scatterseed, could you, Mieka? But New Halt and even Lilyleaf were vastly disappointing, too. And as for Frimham—” He flicked a hand in the air as if to brush away all memory of the town.

  Mieka had mentioned a long absence from Gallantrybanks. Cade had named in order most of the stops on the circuits. Master Spindletwist might or might not be devoted to the theater, but Mieka was hoping he wasn’t a moron.

  “And now, of course,” Mieka went on, “with all these fes
tivities coming up, my darling girl will need something new and wondrous to wear.” He laughed, looking up at Cade. “While you and I and Rafe and Jeska rehearse day and night for the celebrations, which means I probably won’t be seeing much of her at all!”

  “It’s a pity,” Cade said, “that Blye isn’t as clever with gold and silver as she is with glass.”

  All their first names, mention of King Meredan’s anniversary and rehearsals for same, with Blye the famous glasscrafter—who was the first to receive the Gift of the Gloves—they were running out of hints. Surely they’d provided enough by now?

  They had.

  “Of course, Master Windthistle. Delighted to be of use to yourself and Master Silversun.”

  His part in the proceedings accomplished, Cade had the sense to wander round the shop while Mieka dithered over trays of everything from hair ornaments to toe-rings. At last a brooch was settled on: a spray of gold leaves dripping diamond dew. Mieka expressed his raptures and assured Master Spindletwist that Mistress Windthistle would, too.

  Next came the slightly tricky part. Mieka was presented with the bill while the brooch was wrapped. The jewel had been carefully chosen, not for beauty and craftsmanship, but for price. It had to be expensive enough that no man could be expected to carry that much cash on him, but not so expensive that it would not leave the shop without at least a quarter of its value in the proprietor’s hands. Mieka signed the bill, hoping he’d guessed correctly.

  Master Spindletwist smiled and handed over a little wooden box painted bright blue and tied with a white ribbon.

  Mieka smiled back and left the shop vowing in the warmest terms to tell everyone he knew, including Princess Miriuzca, about the exquisite glory of wares to be found here. Once they were outside, he turned to Cade. “Where’s the nearest pledge-broker’s?”