by Melanie Rawn
In the play, the cloaked and hooded Fae had scarcely reached the wall, intent on hiding the Rights, when with senses heightened by thorn, Cade felt it begin: a twitching, a quivering, not of weariness in Mieka or Rafe or Jeska, but of eagerness. It wasn’t of his making; he had put nothing of that into the withies. Fear and defiance, rage and resolve—these things, yes, as the Fae heard the crashing hoofbeats and the resonant belling hounds of his pursuers, and toppled the stones onto the bright gleaming carkenet and crown. But Cade had not primed the magic to produce this fervent expectancy, this hunger. Tending to the general surrounds as he always did, as any good tregetour must do, he was aware of ripples in the ancient stone cellar, things that had nothing to do with what was happening in the play. Eager anticipation became growing need, and then blatant demand.
As quickly and deftly as magic flowed through the cellar, it was absorbed. Soaked up. Devoured. The painstaking structure of the play held, all the sensation and emotion Cade had put into the withies and Mieka released and Rafe modulated and Jeska used, but the demand for more and yet more increased by the minute. Mieka had abandoned his usual light, limber dance and was grabbing each successive glass twig with grim resolve. Rafe had to struggle to adjust the magic, not through any fault of Mieka’s but because the insistent hunger grew and grew. Jeska skipped lines here and there, which confused and then alarmed Cade until he realized that the masquer was editing as he went, dumping anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to the piece, hurrying ahead to the verbal cues that would prompt the change of scene to the trial and hanging. Mieka responded to those signals: bluethorn kept him alert; consummate professionalism kept him in control. Yet as Cade watched his glisker at work, he saw the strained jut of his jaw, the frown knitting his thick black brows.
{Cade gripped the tregetour’s lectern in both hands, watching in horror as Mieka’s dance became a lurching, flailing stagger. Drunk on whiskey or thornlost, or both, he missed his grab for a withie and as the magic surged and faltered, endangering three people onstage and three hundred people beyond it, Cade lunged for the glisker’s bench and—}
No! he told himself desperately. No! Not now!
The Elsewhen faded before it had truly begun.
He had no time to believe or not believe what had just happened to him. Mieka was gritting his way through the forming of the castle walls and the shadows that implied the condemning judges, but he was soaked in sweat and there was something wild and despairing in his face that made Cade’s decision for him. Striding over to the glisker’s bench, behind the illusory wall where the captive Fae stood, Cade took the withies right out of Mieka’s hands and shoved the Elf to one side. Mieka stumbled, then fell to his knees, gasping for breath, those eyes blank and staring. He wasn’t drunk; the bluethorn had worn off; he was simply and utterly exhausted.
The magic was faltering. Though it was Cade’s own magic inside these glass twigs, Mieka’s passion and skill were needed to transform it into sound and sensation, experience and emotion. Cade could do a glisker’s work. He’d done it before. But he wasn’t Mieka.
The least of his problems right now was the performance itself. He didn’t care if there was a juddering in the scenery, if the sensations wavered and weakened. He pulled back on the emotions and concentrated on hanging the Fae while Jeska, coping as always, jumped to the final speech. Cade couldn’t just tear the magic back from the grasping need; to do so would risk not just their audience—about whom he gave not the slightest damn—but Jeska and Rafe as well. It was for them, and for Mieka slumped nearly senseless on the floor beside him, that he worked. He wrestled with that ravening hunger, and each time he drew back, it lunged forward, wanting, needing, demanding, draining. And angry, so angry at being denied a feed.
He untangled Jeska from the magic, and then Rafe, sensing their shock and their gratitude. And as Jeska gasped out the final words of the play, Cade simply and brutally ended it. The cellar was emptied of all magic. It was like being pulled by someone’s hands, someone who suddenly let go, so that balance was lost and it was all Cade could do not to stagger back and fall.
Mieka, still huddled at Cade’s feet, whimpered softly. Jeska, over by Cade’s abandoned lectern, grabbed at it for support before straightening his spine. Rafe’s head was bowed, his chest heaving, as if he had battled a dragon.
Neither of the two fur-swathed occupants of those chairs moved.
Cade would never know how they got their glass baskets packed up. He was numb, emotionally hollow. He was aware, sporadically, of Mieka swaying upright beside him, of Mieka and Rafe stacking glass baskets inside their crates, of Jeska wedging a shoulder under Cade’s arm and gripping Mieka around the waist to guide them both towards the stairs. All he could really sense was the presence of those two silent, motionless watchers, who had somehow fed off the magic. They were still hungry. He heard, as if from a vast distance, the jangling of spent withies in the velvet drawstring bag Mieka clutched to his chest, trembling.
The chill of the cellar was no less than the chill in the huge hall where, as twice before, a laden table awaited. Food on golden platters, wine in silver cups, candles in crystal branches, and places laid for four. The sight of it sent a spasm of nausea through Cade’s stomach. Rafe, arms full of crated baskets, walked right past it out the door. Jeska took the withies from Mieka and followed Rafe without a pause.
Mieka wobbled a bit, then made it over to the table, where he seized all four purses. “We bleedin’ well earned these!”
That he didn’t seize a bottle or two of wine as well was testament to his fatigue. He nearly fell on the way to the door. Cade, none too steady himself, met him halfway and wrapped an arm around Mieka’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Quill,” came the dismal whisper.
“Not your fault, Elfling.”
With a flash of his usual spirit, he asked, “You admit to that?”
Cade hugged him tighter. “Not your fault this time, anyways.”
After a few more steps, Mieka said softly, “You did good.”
“I pay attention to you, y’know. Every show. But nobody’s as good as you.”
“Not thinkin’ of sacking me, then?”
“My glisker you are, and my glisker you stay—no matter how often I want to strangle you.”
Content, Mieka rubbed his cheek to Cade’s shoulder and was asleep on his feet before they were out the front door. Yazz was suddenly there, lifting Mieka, carrying him to the wagon. Cade found a convenient pillar and leaned against it, closing his eyes, wondering if there was enough bluethorn in the world to perk him up for tomorrow night’s show. Worry about that some other time, he told himself, when he could knit two thoughts together without unraveling half his brain with the effort.
Hugely muscular arms surrounded him, picked him up. He was too light-headed to protest. Time slithered around him so that the next thing he knew he was tucked in his hammock hearing the slam of the back door. A few moments later there was the soft trilling sound Yazz made to alert the horses, and the wagon began to move. But Cade didn’t feel that. The delayed Elsewhen had claimed him.
{Cade gripped the tregetour’s lectern in both hands, watching in horror as Mieka’s dance became a lurching, flailing stagger. Drunk or thornlost, or both, he missed his grab for a withie and as the magic surged and faltered, endangering three people onstage and three hundred people beyond it, Cade lunged for the glisker’s bench and shoved Mieka out of the way. The Elf didn’t even protest as Cade grabbed up first one withie and then another, so completely lost that all he did was sit on the floor and start counting his fingers like a toddling child.
It was a long-familiar play, “The Dragon,” and Cade knew what he was doing at the glisker’s bench—he’d done it before, even though he wasn’t the artist wielding the withies that Mieka was. If there were snags in the magic, it could be attributed to the unfamiliarity of the new Downstreet Theater, although the very thought of Touchstone’s being considered so unprofessional that th
ey made such amateurish mistakes clawed at Cade’s pride.
They finished the performance. The Prince spoke his final, weary words as the Dragon lay dead at his feet. Cayden left the wrap-up of the magic to Rafe, knowing he could count on his fettler the way he would never again count on his glisker. He ought to join Rafe and Jeska to take their bows, but the only thing he could think of was beating the living shit out of Mieka Windthistle.
He turned, fists clenched. Those eyes were looking up at him, big and bewildered, like the eyes of a hurt child. But something caught at Cade’s gaze in the offstage shadows, and he glanced round. There stood Thierin Knottinger of Black Lightning. From the tregetour’s wrist dangled a little gold velvet pouch. He waved it gently to and fro, a gleeful taunting grin on his face. In his other hand was a glinting glass thorn. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he lifted it slowly, making sure Cade was watching, and placed it against his own neck, not quite touching the skin. And then he began to laugh.
Cade knelt beside Mieka.
“Quill? What’s—I don’t—Quill, what happened?”
“Shush.” Taking Mieka by the jaw, he turned his head to the left, then the right, and saw it: a tiny puncture mark above his collar, a delicate drop of blood. Lord and Lady and all the Old Gods and Angels damn them, damn them to each successive Hell for all eternity—
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”
Smoothing the sweat-limp hair from Mieka’s face, he shook his head. “No, Elfling, it’s all right. Let’s get you someplace quiet, shall we?”
“But I don’t understand—I couldn’t—”
“I’ll explain it later. Come on.” He got Mieka upright, nearly losing his grip as the Elf shivered. “Easy now, easy—”
“Quill, I’m sorry!”
“I know. It wasn’t your fault.”}
* * *
“They’ll be rebuilding the Downstreet.”
Morning, and breakfast, after a night’s crushing sleep. Cade was still sodden with weariness. There were many long hours before their show tonight, and he intended to spend more than a few of them curled in his hammock. But he had to talk about this.
“Mmph?” Mieka swallowed a mouthful of bread and cheese. “Rebuild it?”
“As a real theater. There’ll be some sort of big opening performance, with us and Black Lightning and I’m not sure who else, but—”
“And you know this because why?” Jeska answered his own question. “Saw it, did you? Were we any good?”
“We would’ve been, if Thierin Knottinger hadn’t stung Mieka with some seriously nasty thorn.” Cade swirled tea in a lovely blue glass cup, part of the set made by Blye. She’d also given them two of the silver serving bowls that were part of the collection of ancient family plate that had been a wedding present from Kearney Fairwalk. There were eight bowls, she’d told Cade, and it wasn’t as if they got used more than twice a year, so Touchstone might as well have the benefit of them. At the moment one of the bowls held porridge. Personally, Cade couldn’t face it, and made do with bread and tea. “Crumpled up like a snarl of knitting yarn onto the floor, our glisker did, leaving all the magic to swirl about every whatever whichway. Not a pretty thing to see, even if it hasn’t happened yet.”
Rafe sat back at the table as if recoiling from the words, and bumped his head against a shelf. All these weeks in the wagon, and he still hadn’t quite got used to it. He rubbed the back of his head and with an attempt at his usual composure said, “And it won’t happen, by Gods. Good of you to warn us. Something of a departure for you, isn’t it?”
“Thierin is a bloody bastard,” Mieka growled. “I’ll break every withie he owns.”
Cade went on, “I don’t know when the new Downstreet will be built, but when it does, none of us gets anywhere near Black Lightning, right? We’ll bring Yazz to the theater as protection if we have to, or arrive half a minute before we go on, or—or anything, just so we don’t get in arm’s reach of any of them.”
“What exactly went on?” Rafe asked.
“Mieka lost control of the magic. I had to take over.”
“Like last night.” Mieka winced and took a sip of hot cinnamon tea. “I’m sorry for that—”
“I keep telling you, it wasn’t your fault,” said Cade. “We all felt it.”
“I should’ve been able to—”
“With those two leeches sucking us dry?” Rafe poured out more tea. “It felt like my bones were bleeding.”
“All the same—” But Mieka didn’t finish the thought. Instead, he demanded, “Why would Black Lightning want to do such a thing to me? Everybody knows we’re streets better than them, even on the worst night we ever had.”
“If we’d really lost the magic,” Cade began, “if it had gone wild on us—”
“At an important show like that,” Jeska interrupted, “it could ruin us.”
“There was a group, years ago,” Rafe said slowly. “Before your grandfather’s time, Cade. Nobody ever knew what really happened, whether the tregetour had primed the withies wrong or the glisker made a mistake, or maybe the fettler couldn’t keep a good enough hold on the magic. But a dozen men in the audience that night went mad, and dozens more didn’t speak for a fortnight. Nobody actually died, though it was probably a near thing.”
“The Gallymarchers,” Jeska said.
Cade nodded. One reason there were Stewards at Trials was to ensure that groups who would be playing to larger audiences actually knew what they were doing. A tavern with a few score patrons was one thing; a venue holding three hundred or more was quite another. The magic had to be stronger, and therefore under stricter control by the fettler.
“So what has to change?” Mieka asked. “We’ll have to play the show, that’s not in question. We made our start at the Downstreet.”
“And the owner’s wife likes you.” Cade smiled. “No, I wasn’t thinking of not performing. But the piece we did was ‘Dragon,’ so maybe if we do something else, that will be enough.”
“I don’t agree,” Rafe said. “What we do or don’t do onstage doesn’t affect what happens before we’re onstage.”
“Ha! I know!” Mieka exclaimed. “Let’s get Auntie Brishen to cook up something really vile, and give a little thornprick to Thierin instead!”
“As wild as they already are, do you think anybody in the audience could survive them losing control of the magic?”
“Enough sleepy-stuff, and he’d never even take the stage.”
Jeska shook his golden head. “And what’s the first rule of all theater folk?” He lifted a hand as if swearing an oath and declaimed, “ ‘If you’re drunk to the eyes or bone-weary/ If your folio’s lost, stolen, or strayed/ If your withies are scarred/ Or your memory’s marred—/ The play must always be played.’ Black Lightning would still perform, and we’d all end up gibbering.”
“Rafe has the right of it,” Cade said reluctantly. “It’s not onstage that matters, it’s what happens before.”
“Where did he get me that I didn’t feel it?” Mieka wanted to know.
“In the neck. But if you’re planning on a collar that reaches to the tips of your ears, I remind you that there’s lots of other bits of exposed skin—”
“I could wear a full suit of armor. Just until we got onstage.” He slid out of his chair and struck a pose in the middle of the wagon. “Always fancied meself with a sword and shield, clanking about like a walking steelworks!”
They’d manage to think of something, Cade knew—preferably something that didn’t involve a hundred pounds of plate armor. But something else had occurred to him. He had actually refused to see an Elsewhen.
Sagemaster Emmot had told him—and how long ago it seemed—that the foreseeings might change as he got older. That he might even be able to control them. That they might increase or decrease in frequency, that the content might be more detailed or less—all of which only meant that Emmot had as little idea about what exactly this “gift” of his would do as Cade himself d
id.
But this Elsewhen he had refused to see. Refused to give in. Refused, because his presence in the now was vital.
When it came back, as insistent as that hunger last night in the cellar, he’d learned something about a possible future. The blood chilled in his veins when he thought of what might have happened in that future if he’d resisted again.
What if he’d refused to watch, that second time, and they’d gone to the opening of the Downstreet Theater ignorant of Thierin Knottinger’s intent? Professional disaster, emotional danger—
If Knottinger would dare some kind of disruption, and stand there bragging about it with his little green bag and his glass thorn, then what else might he try?
Why not just kill Mieka? So simple, so final. No more Touchstone at all, not without Mieka.
“When Touchstone lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”
Think it through, he ordered himself. If he was right about Black Lightning, then the Archduke was even now courting them to become his own pet theater group. They’d agree; of course they would. A theater built to their specifications—but what would the Archduke receive in return? Chat had told Mieka about great lords and princes on the Continent who owned performers for the reputation it gave them. The Archduke was known to be theater-mad, but—what else would he gain?
No way of knowing.
Very well, then, what else about Black Lightning? The odd and eerie trick of identifying each man’s bloodlines—how did that work? How had they targeted specific magic to specific races? Mieka had sensed everything else he was besides Elfen; Rafe had sensed nothing at all, being nothing other than Human and Wizard. And that made sense, didn’t it—the subject of the play itself was how all the various races had come to be, a twisting of the old story, making Elf and Wizard the only clean blood, the only pure children of the Lord and Lady—
The answer was there someplace; he knew it was. But he was just too tired. Abandoning his breakfast and his puzzlings, he crawled back into his hammock and slept.