by Melanie Rawn
9
Touchstone’s performance before the Princess’s sailors in New Halt went very well, even considering a lingering collective exhaustion. Bluethorn all round, enhanced by the cheers of an enthusiastic, roisterous crowd—they were so pleased with themselves that after “Dragon” they decided to give the men a rousing version of “Sailor’s Sweetheart.” Even better, after the show, an official wearing Princess Miriuzca’s new badge (a blue forget-me-never on a silver ground, with a three-pronged coronet above) appeared and handed Cayden a little purse of gold coins.
“Lovely!” Mieka exclaimed when handed his split. “Something to spend at the Castle Biding Fair!”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to hang on to it that long?”
“Well… you’re right. You’d best keep it for me, Quill. And my mother’s letter as well—she sent a list, and I know I’ll mislay it and buy all the wrong colors and such.”
Cade wanted to say, Why not keep your mother’s letter with your wife’s? But he didn’t. Mieka had a small wallet of iris-blue leather in which he carefully folded his wife’s few letters. It never left his pocket except when he was onstage.
Neither did Mieka wear anything she’d sewn for him while he was working. Bearing in mind what Mistress Mirdley had told him about Caitiff spellcastings, Cade wondered whether this was why Mieka could so unthinkingly bed whichever girl took his fancy after a show. Hadn’t there been something, though, about such spells lasting only a month? Thinking back, he recalled that Mieka had taken to coming in well after midnight only after the first few weeks on the road. If there had indeed been magic, it had worn off by now, and young Mistress Windthistle must be anguishing herself something to behold. She must know at this point that Mieka had no more been born to be faithful to one woman than to become Royal Librarian. It simply wasn’t in his nature—and if she was trying to change him, as in the smaller matter of correcting his speech, she was destined to fail. Evidently knowing wasn’t the same thing as understanding. Mayhap Blye had been right about what constituted a happy marriage.
He thought about the marriages he had observed at close view. Rafe and Crisiant; Hadden and Mishia; Jed and Blye. Yes, there was both knowing and understanding between the partners in each, and acceptance of dreams and desires, and all of them were happy unions. Then there were his own parents. Lady Jaspiela knew and understood very well what her husband did at Court. As far as Cade had ever been able to tell, she was neither happy nor unhappy about it; she simply ignored it. Was that acceptance? Presumably Zekien Silversun was contented in his life as Prince Ashgar’s First Gentleman of the Bedchamber—although Cade supposed he was more circumspect now that the Prince was a married man. Still, the Palace was a big place, and aristocratic couples always had separate bedchambers. Now that Miriuzca was pregnant, Ashgar could use this as an excuse to absent himself from her bed and return to his bachelor habits. Which meant that Zekien would be consulting with the Finchery and suchlike places to supply the Prince’s bedwarmers.
Cade hoped that Miriuzca didn’t know. If she knew, would she understand? And even if she could understand it, would she accept it? Perhaps she was the kind of woman who found her happiness in her children. And possibly her friends, he thought, remembering Lady Vrennerie, now married to Lord Eastkeeping. Perhaps they were happy. He hoped so. He hoped so very much.
Well, none of it was his problem, nor was it likely to be. Who would ever marry him? Gone on the Circuit for months at a time, constantly performing while in Gallantrybanks, vanishing to a rehearsal or the Archives or his own library the rest of the time… it would take a rare woman indeed to tolerate that sort of marriage, much less find happiness in it. Chat’s wife, Deshenanda, seemed content with her home and children; the Gods alone knew what Sakary’s wife, Chirene, thought; Cade had never met Vered’s wife, or Rauel’s, but apparently they had worked out their own manner of dealing with their husbands’ long absences. Crisiant, he understood more and more, was a woman in a million and Rafe was a fortunate man. Cade always had in his mind that Elsewhen, about the woman who lived with him and had borne his children and didn’t want to be bothered with anything to do with how he made the money that supported the family. It was warning enough, wasn’t it? Taken together with Blye’s merciless words about his never being able to live an ordinary kind of life, it was certainly warning enough.
Besides, he thought wryly as the wagon rolled towards Castle Eyot and a five-day holiday from the Royal Circuit, he spent more time with these three quats than most wedded couples spent together. Was Touchstone a happy marriage? Onstage, absolutely. They knew and understood each other perfectly. Offstage… they bickered and sniped, took care of head colds and hangovers, yelled at each other for being late or being sulky or just being themselves, discussed and listened and commiserated and accepted (however grudgingly) each other’s foibles. And created. And protected each other.
No, it wouldn’t be his problem, marriage to a woman. This marriage that was Touchstone was trouble enough.
Well, as long as there were pretty girls around to serve drinks and his other needs, of course. Cade enjoyed that aspect of being a famous player very much, and almost every night.
Castle Eyot was even more beautiful in summer than in winter. Blooded horses frolicked in green velvet pastures, the orchards were heavy with ripening fruit, and on the island mid-river, the castle glistened white as a wolf’s tooth. Their stay overlapped that of the Shadowshapers by a day, and all eight players took full advantage of Lord Rolon Piercehand’s hospitality and especially his wine cellar. The last night of the Shadowshapers’ holiday, they all went up to the top of the tallest castle tower with a dozen bottles of the finest Frannitch brandy, which rendered Cade drunk enough to broach the subject of the mansion outside New Halt.
“Creepiest shows we ever played,” Vered said with a shudder. “Heaps of money for it, of course—”
“And every penny earned twice over,” Mieka put in. “Mayhap thrice.”
“Can’t say as I won’t miss the coin,” mused Rauel. “But we decided after last year that we’d never do it again. It was a relief not to be invited.”
“Good eats,” Sakary offered. “But not worth it.”
The tower room was a hideaway that had nothing in common with Mieka’s little aerie at Wistly Hall. For one thing, it was securely attached to the rest of the building. For another, it was sumptuously furnished with deep couches, velvet pillows, patterned carpets strewn one overlapping another, delicate little tables, and gigantic hanging lanterns lavish with faceted crystal drops the size of a fist. Cade made mental note of these, thinking that perhaps Blye might enjoy making them. They weren’t hollow, so they would be perfectly legal.
“Who really got fed?” Rafe wanted to know. “Thrice now I’ve felt as if the marrow was being sucked out of my bones.”
“Yeh,” Mieka said, “but it’s what all audiences do, though, innit? Not like that, I mean, but—” He stopped, frustrated, and appealed to Cade with a glance.
“In a way, you’re right,” Cade allowed. “The difference is that they take what we give, and there’s none of that demand to be fed—”
“But there is, y’know,” Vered interrupted. “More and more and more, and the groups that don’t or can’t provide aren’t booked much, are they?”
“Not everybody’s like that,” Jeska protested. “Not everybody is there just for—for—”
When he seemed unable to find a word, Cade finished for him, “For an hour’s swilling at the trough? I agree.”
“More ‘communal experience,’ is it?” Vered teased, rolling his eyes. “Shared occasions creating a bond, and all that?”
“Have done,” Sakary said with a rare grin, “or I’ll tell ’em all the truth about you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I, though?”
Vered made a hideous face at him, then laughed. “He’s got nothing on me—been threatening that for years, just to see if I’ll go al
l cowardly craven. But that’s what some people in the audiences are, aren’t they? Too spineless to feel things in their real lives, and our job is to do their feeling for them.”
Cade frowned at this characterization, but not because he entirely disagreed with it, not if he was being honest. He simply preferred what Mieka had said to him years ago—that players did the audience’s dreaming for them.
“In that cellar,” Rauel said, “that man, whoever he is, wants more and yet more—and knows how to get it. And that’s the difference.”
Vered nodded agreement with his partner. “And now you say there were two of them?” he asked Cade.
“Like Vampires, only it’s not blood they’re after.”
“Funny you should mention Vampires,” said Chat, staring into his drink. “Where I come from, there are stories—”
“Quick!” Mieka cried. “Get the garlic!”
“Like I said—funny,” Chat growled, blue eyes dancing. But only for a moment, and his face was solemn again as he went on, “There came an invading army from the East—likely you people here never even heard about it, it being that long ago and naught to do with your tidy little Kingdom anyways. It was back when magical folk still lived in the open, and did their work whatever it might be, and nobody thought much of it. Oh, they kept themselves mostly to themselves, but things went along just fine until these balaurin swept in with their war chariots and monster-sized horses to pull them. Ancestors of Rommy’s breed, y’know, but with the demons bred out of them by now.”
“Demons?” Jeska asked, startled.
Vered rolled his eyes. “Now you’ve done it. He’s about to tell you all about all those filthy Eastern knights and their filthy Eastern ways.”
“Been nagging at us for years, he has,” Rauel confided, “to write it all up as a play.”
“Why don’t you?” Rafe asked. “Even the tiny piece you’ve let him tell sounds a good story.”
“And I’d tell the rest of it,” Chat said pointedly, “if this lot would shut up.”
“Something to moisten your throat, then,” Mieka said, passing over a bottle.
When Chat—and everyone else—was sufficiently lubricated, he went on, “The balaurin invaded, and the Humans were losing, and even alliances with Wizards and Gnomes and Goblins and Elves and all other magical folk couldn’t help. There were great battles and small skirmishes, and every day the balaurin killed more people and took more land. So the wisest elders of all the races had a lengthy and worried talking, and it was decided that a special order of knights should be created, and bestowed with powers given by each of the magical races according to their ability.”
“Like ‘The Pikseys and the Sunrise Child’!” Mieka exclaimed. “You know, the one nobody does anymore, about the baby and the gifts the Pikseys gave her, and the Fae weren’t invited to the Namingday and got all huffy and then—”
“Tripe,” Vered sniffed.
“Twaddle,” Rafe agreed.
“Twee,” was Sakary’s verdict.
Mieka sulked. “I like that story.”
“Let him get on with this one,” Cade said. He rested his head against the piled pillows of his chosen couch, watching the lantern crystals spin rainbows over the ceiling as a breeze drifted through open windows. His imagination supplied what Chat’s narrative talents did not, and he began to see what a true storyteller might do with it.
“Where was I? Ah. It’s not known exactly what skills and powers were given these knights, or who gave what, or how it was done. There was a mighty battle, and once the dust blew clear, the balaurin were all dead, except for a few that were sent back to their Eastern homeland in silver chains.” He glanced at Mieka and added, “And draped in necklaces of garlic, because, it was said, that was the only plant with a scent strong enough to counter the stench of demons.”
“So how did garlic get linked to warding off Vampires?”
Chat gave a shrug. “Hells if I know. Anyways, once the balaurin were defeated, the knights were so exhausted that none of them lived much longer. All of them died within weeks of each other. They were buried in a single huge tomb with a stone monument above it, and a shrine that got added to as the years went by. The shrine’s a ruin now, of course, after all these centuries. But spellcastings were put onto the tomb and the stones have never so much as quivered in an earthquake—and that part of the Continent gets earthquakes every few score years or so. They say the locals talk of a curse being put on it by the few balaurin who survived, and they won’t go near the place.”
“And from that,” Vered said, “he wants us to write a play.”
“It could be done,” Cade mused. “Pick one of the knights to be the hero, do the scene with the giving of powers—”
Sakary gave a soft, heartfelt groan. “You’re about to suggest the big battle, aren’t you?”
Rafe nodded in sympathy. “Dust, blood, wounds, terror, clashing swords and screaming horses, shouted orders, thirst, confusion, spellcastings—and that’s just for starters. It’d be a horror for a glisker, even worse for a fettler.”
“One of the stories,” Chat said stubbornly, “says that some of the new-made knights were given silver arrows. Some others were given wooden lances. And one of them, who’d had his hand lopped off in an earlier battle, he got a replacement hand made of wood that worked as well as his real one.”
“Not with the girls, I’ll bet,” Mieka said.
Jeska was unamused and saucer-eyed. “But—garlic and silver, and a wooden spike—those are all to do with Vampires!”
“Exactly.” Chat drained his drink and wrapped his arms around a huge crimson pillow. “Which is why it’s so odd that tales about Vampires linger on the Continent, and even crossed the Flood to Albeyn. If the balaurin were all killed, except those few who were sent back, and there were never any more of them seen again, why do we know about garlic and silver and wood?”
“We like nightmares,” Cade mused. “The more scared we are, the better it is to go home to our nice warm safe beds.”
“The way I hear it,” Rauel said with a sly grin, “no bed is safe from Mieka Windthistle. There’s a girl in Sidlowe—”
“Which one?” Mieka asked innocently.
Rafe drained his drink and pushed himself upright amidst his nest of pillows. “By your kind leave, gentlemen, I’ve heard enough stories for one night. I make my living by them, ’tis true, but there’s naught in my contract says I have to listen to him any more than absolutely necessary. I give you good evening,” he finished, and fell over onto the carpet.
Yazz was summoned to carry him off to his chamber. The Shadowshapers’ driver, Rist—also part Giant—came to help, but Sakary, Rauel, Chat, and Jeska departed under their own power. Mieka lingered a while, finishing off a bottle, then made his slow, lurching ramble to the stairs.
Vered waited for him to go, then turned to Cade. “Learned me lesson, finally, about drink,” he confided wryly. “One glass of wine with dinner, one glass of brandy after, and I’m done.”
Cade grinned. “Keep it quiet, though, or you’ll ruin all our reputations.” So saying, he upended the last of a bottle down his throat.
“Can you keep it quiet that I’ve been working on the very tale Chat told us tonight?”
“Have you, now?”
“I know a good story when I hear one—even if it’s been mangled in the meantime. Like your ‘Treasure’ piece. That’s what gave me the encouragement.” He hesitated. “Mieka says you have a lot of old books.”
“Ah.” Now Cade understood. “Anytime. For an appropriate fee, of course!”
Vered threw a pillow at him. “You’ll be in luck if I don’t hold them to ransom, once I’ve got me hands on ’em! Where’d they all come from, anyways?”
“They belonged to my grandsir, who was a fettler.”
“Not a Vampire tregetour, like you and me and Rauel?”
Cade spluttered with laughter. “Where’d that notion come from?”
“Think
on it, son. When we prime the withies, is it just our own experiences we use? No. It’s observing other people. Taking note of how they react. Gathering up bits and pieces from all over the place to put into the plays. We take, whether people want to give or not—and if they don’t want to be giving of it, we know how to be taking of what we need anyways.”
Cade had never thought of it like that before, and said so.
“Like the knights in the story,” Vered went on, speaking to the starlight outside the windows. “They were given powers and spells, I reckon, just like us. They used them, just like us—”
“And knackered themselves unto death! Not one of my ambitions!”
“Yeh, but—I’ve a thought that perhaps they took, too, mayhap what they weren’t supposed to, and there’s more to their dying after the final battle than Chat ever heard the telling of. So I’d like a look into your books, if I may. Something’s there in that tale that niggles at me brain.”
Cade tried to weave his own brain around it, and for a moment thought he knew where Vered was going. Then the last swallows of brandy hit him, and he lost the threads.
{“—writing about the Knights of the Balaur Tsepesh, Your Grace. At least, that’s what I gather from what my daughter’s husband has said.”
It was a dim little room, scarcely more than a cubbyhole, with no windows and no furnishings. But although it was very cold, she wore only a thin cloak. She stood with hands folded and head raised high, an interesting combination of servility and arrogance. The disparity of emotions on the man’s face was more complex: impatience, a contrived boredom, alert interest, and annoyance at his dependence on this person he despised and needed.
“Tell me precisely, woman.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Vered Goldbraider has borrowed books from Cayden Silversun. One afternoon Goldbraider arrived at Wistly Hall, where Touchstone had gathered for rehearsal, to return several of these books and request several more. His words were these: ‘Anything to do with the Knights of the Balaur Tsepesh, the ones with a red dragon as their symbol.’ My daughter’s nephew-by-marriage is a child fascinated by dragons, so she looked into one or two of the books, thinking most kindly to find a story to tell him—”