by Melanie Rawn
Not much in this naughty world could bring a blush to Mieka Windthistle’s cheek, but these brazen ladies had managed it. He scooped up his towel and fled for the changing room. Cade followed, looking torn between laughing at Mieka and setting plots to kill Rafe. Jeska merely looked bleakly determined.
“There’ll be nothing to wear, count on it,” he said. “Nothing of our own and nothing to borrow. But it’s only two blocks to Croodle’s.”
“You’re joking!” Cade exclaimed.
“No. I’m not.” Taking a deep breath, he secured his towel as best he could and marched into the hall and out the front door.
Resigned, Mieka and Cade followed him.
Two blocks of whistles, laughter, shocked faces, cheers, and lascivious propositions later, they were scrambling up Croodle’s back stairs. Halfway up, they bumped into Jeska, who didn’t seem able to move.
One glance up at the landing told Mieka why. The second-most-beautiful girl he’d ever seen stood there, delicate black brows slightly arched above eyes as big and brown as a doe’s. She was tall and slender, with a heart-shaped face, full lips, high cheekbones, a broad nose with thin, flaring nostrils, and skin the color of a cup of hot mocah mixed with a dollop of milk.
“Your pardon, I’m sure,” Mieka said to the girl, pushing past the unmoving masquer. A quick glance at Jeska’s face showed a man so utterly gobsmacked that he didn’t even remember how to breathe. “Slight problem with our clothing—won’t take up a moment of your time—”
Cade followed, and when they both stood on the landing near the girl, they looked down at Jeska. His towel was securely in place, but there was a bump in front. Mieka clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle. Cade snarled Jeska’s name, and when there was no response, he jumped down the few steps and hauled him up by the arm, stumbling and slack-jawed.
“Sorry,” Cade mumbled as they passed the girl, who was biting her lips together, dark eyes twinkling. They were in their room with the door almost shut before she began to laugh.
Mieka would have joined in, but was distracted by the sight of Rafe lounging in a chair by the window, at his knee a little table bearing a tray with four pints of ale. He waved graciously, like King Meredan acknowledging a crowd of cheering subjects.
“Make no mistake,” Cade intoned. “You will die for this.”
“You can’t kill me tonight, we’ve a show in four hours. Have a drink, whyn’t you? And I’ll tell you who I saw on my walk back from the baths.”
Mieka grabbed up two glasses and shoved one at Jeska. “Here. Down this, and then go do something about downing that.” He nodded to the now very obvious result of staring at the girl.
Rafe had noticed. It was difficult not to notice. He smiled sweetly and observed, “I see you’ve met Kazie. She’s only just arrived this past spring from the Islands, and she’s Croodle’s cousin, so hands to yourself, Bowbender—and, like Mieka, I do mean that literally.”
Having emerged from his daze, Jeska glared at them all, took a few swallows of ale, and snatched his clothing from a chair. “To Hells with you, then,” he said, and betook himself off to the garderobe down the hall.
“Who’d you see?” Mieka asked, discarding his towel and stretching out naked on his bed.
“The little blond. The one from the Keymarker. Again. She saw me, as well, and hurried the opposite direction.”
“Delusional,” Mieka said sadly. “How will we break it to Crisiant and his mother?”
“I saw her,” Rafe insisted.
“Of course you did,” Cade agreed. “And when you find her again, you can hire her to protect you.”
* * *
Something was wrong with this audience. Mieka suspected it almost from the start of “Hidden Cottage,” but he knew it for certain sure when nobody laughed at the pig.
He’d been casting worried glances at Rafe since the evil sisters spirited away the beautiful bride. By the time the young lordling went in search of her, Mieka was watching Cayden as well. Nothing was different from how they usually played the piece. Jeska was spot on with his lines and gestures. Mieka created and Rafe managed the magic with all their customary skills. But Jeska was having to work hard at winning the audience—something he never had to do. Rafe was having to struggle with the flow of magic—and not because it was irregular or Mieka was bungling it. Cade was knot-browed, hands gripping his lectern as his gaze swept the audience again and again, searching for Mieka knew not what.
People simply weren’t responding. Moreover, they knew they ought to be responding, and were becoming restless.
Mieka didn’t have the skill to probe the audience the way Rafe and Cade were doing. All he could do was his work, although the temptation to ratchet up the intensity of the magic was nigh on irresistible. The bluethorn meant he could do it if he chose. He held off, sweating and baffled, until all at once there was a roar of laughter and everything was suddenly, simply, completely fine.
They got through to the end of the playlet and the applause was, as he’d come to expect, deafening. If the audience didn’t note the grimness of the smiles as Touchstone took their bows, mayhap it was because Rafe had left lingering laughter in the hall.
There was no laughter on their walk back to Croodle’s.
“That performance,” Jeska said wearily, “was not fun.”
“That performance,” Cade announced, “was interfered with, and by somebody with only half an idea what he was doing.”
“It wasn’t a ‘he’!” Rafe snapped. “I told you I’d seen her—and now look what she did to us tonight!”
“Erm…” Mieka plucked at Cade’s sleeve. “What exactly happened? I mean, I felt it, but I’m not sure what was going on.”
“Nothing like what she did at the Keymarker. This was—it was like a wall between us and the audience. Nothing was getting through. Oh, bits and pieces here and there, but—no, it wasn’t a wall, like,” Cade said, searching as always for the right words. “More of a—”
“Like somebody’d wrapped the audience in wool,” growled Rafe. “Things were getting through, but nowheres near the way they ought.”
“I couldn’t get them to laugh,” Jeska muttered. “Not like they usually do.”
“Not your fault, mate,” Mieka reassured him.
“It wasn’t the visuals or the sounds or anything that got muffled,” Rafe said. “It was the feelings. It must be the same as seeing a play on the Continent, one without any magic at all.”
They walked on in silence for a while. Then Mieka said, “The one Vered and Rauel did that time—in the first part, eating breakfast and whatnot, there wasn’t any emotion. That made people restless, too.”
“That was on purpose. Designed so.” Cade shook his head. “And whether they were aware of it or not, the audience knew there’d be a—a balance. Culmination. They trust the Shadowshapers.”
“Was this done to make people not trust us?”
“When I catch up with that girl—”
“So now you believe me,” Rafe grumbled.
“Is she following us around?” Jeska asked. “Has she been trailing us all through the Royal?”
“How could a barmaid afford all that travel?” Rafe countered.
Mieka gave a shrug. “How could she afford to be at Coldkettle, and now in Lilyleaf? Somebody’s paying her.”
“And when I find her,” Cade finished ominously, “I’ll find out who.”
They were nearly at Croodle’s place. Mieka eyed Jeska sidelong and said, “Gods, what a look on you! Put on your pretty-face, old son, or Mistress Kazie won’t recognize you.”
Even in the uncertain lamplight on the street, he could see the masquer’s blush. Schemes flittered through his head, but he rejected them firmly. Rafe was his target for the next little while; Jeska could woo the luscious Kazie in peace.
Three days later, the masquer still hadn’t managed it. This was unprecedented. The lady seemed equally smitten—when she thought nobody was looking at her, of
course. Curiously enough, none of them ragged on Jeska about it. They all knew serious when they saw it. More to the point, perhaps, they all knew what Croodle would do to them if her cousin or her favorite player were mocked in any way for their feelings. And feelings there definitely were; proof enough was that neither could talk much around the other.
Mieka found this amusing. All those words Jeska had memorized over the years, and he couldn’t think of anything to say? He was discussing this with Cayden one afternoon over a pint out back—Croodle had added a brick courtyard with tables and chairs, with big earthenware pots of flowering plants—when Rafe strode out from the taproom with the girl in tow.
“Tell them what you told me!” he commanded as he hauled her down the steps.
“Leave me be and I might consider it!” About halfway to their table, she managed to reclaim her wrist.
Mieka leaped up, got another chair, and flung Rafe a chiding glare as he settled the girl into it. “Go get her a glass of wine,” he directed, “and go find your manners while you’re about it!”
“Pegs, isn’t it?” Cade said.
“Megs,” she corrected. “Beholden, Master Windthistle, but I’d rather have a pint.” She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse—a fine, thin white linen, almost a man’s shirt, lacking decoration or embroidery—and tucked stray strands of dark-blond hair behind her ears. Human ears, Mieka noted, and in all other respects a wholly Human girl. Except for that fettling ability, of course, and a certain lightness to her bones that hinted at Piksey or maybe even Sprite. But where the Wizard in her might show, he’d no notion. And partly Wizard she had to be, to have the fettling talent.
Cade hadn’t stood to greet her, nor even shifted from his lounging pose, long legs extended and crossed at the ankles. He sipped his ale and looked for all the world as if a friend had just dropped by for an afternoon visit. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” he observed.
Megs didn’t bother to reply to this inanity. She glanced over at Mieka. Her eyes were the deep clear green of a glass bottle with that sparkly white wine in it. A glint of gold here and there, shadowed by thick dark eyelashes. She wasn’t terribly pretty, not by Mieka’s standards, but there was something interesting in her face. Again he thought Piksey, perhaps, or Sprite.
Black Lightning could have found out in an instant. There was a thought hiding behind that, but he had no time to coax it out.
“Beholden for quieting Threadchaser,” she said to Mieka. “He yelled at me for five blocks.”
“Why’s that?” Cade asked in that perfectly amiable tone that always meant trouble.
Mieka was interested to see that the geniality didn’t fool Megs one bit. Shrugging, she said, “Because he thinks I was at Coldkettle—”
“Weren’t you?”
With another glance at Mieka: “Can’t you shut him up, too?”
It pained him to admit it. “Short of stuffing a gag down his throat… no.”
“Shame, that.” She looked over her shoulder to the back door.
“You were at our show a few nights ago,” Cade said. “Why?”
“I wasn’t anywhere near your show. How could I be? I’m a girl.”
“Girls have been known to dress as boys to get into the theater.”
“Not this girl. I was at the White Columns, and I can prove it.”
Cade hooted with laughter at this reference to Lilyleaf’s most exclusive and expensive inn. “Swanning about the best chambers, no doubt, with two maidservants to wait on you hand and foot!”
“I didn’t say I was stopping there. I said I was there. For a tregetour, you’re not very precise about words, are you?”
Mieka waited for the explosion, which to his mind was as inevitable as if Cade were a pile of black powder and she’d just scraped a flint-rasp in his general direction. Rafe came up then and deposited a pint glass on the table. He sat down, folded his arms, and glared at her.
She took a pull at the drink. With venomous sweetness she said, “Beholden, kind sir. Dragging a girl through the streets is thirsty work—won’t you get something for yourself?”
He went on glaring. “Talk.”
“I was about to. I don’t know what happened at your show, but I gather that it had something to do with interfering in your performance.” She paused for another swallow. “All I can tell you is, it wasn’t me.”
“Don’t you mean ‘it was not I’?” Cade asked, all treacle pudding with candied raisins drizzling honey. It made Mieka’s teeth hurt just to hear him.
“What are you doing here, then?” Rafe demanded. “If it’s not to mess about with our magic—and for that matter, why were you at Coldkettle?”
“For the wedding, of course.”
“Invitation personally signed by His Lordship, I take it?”
“His steward hired more servants for the banqueting. Notice any of the Keymarker’s tall redheads?”
“Certainly not!” Mieka said. “He’s a happily married man.” This dim attempt at humor earned him a kick under the table from Cade.
Rafe was saying smoothly, “None of the Keymarker’s tall redheads ever mucked about with a performance.”
“I already told you why I did what I did!”
“Oh,” Cade said, “and your fragile little friend just happens to be in Lilyleaf taking the waters, so you thought you’d come along and see her safe?”
“I had enough money after Coldkettle for a little holiday. You ought to’ve been lawyers, the both of you!”
Mieka reflected that observing this conversation was a bit like watching a three-sided game of battledore. And it was giving him a headache. So he said, “May I ask something?” He kept his voice gentle and polite, winning another grateful glance for his manners—which concept would have had his mother fainting with shock. “I gather Rafe described what happened the other night. What do you think it might be about?”
“It’s something only a fettler could manage, if I understand correctly?”
Rafe nodded. “Not a very good one, but—”
“But good enough to give you some trouble?” A tiny smirk twisted her lips. “Not for very long, I’m sure. You’re Touchstone, after all. I’d look for someone who wishes you ill, first off.”
“Funnily enough,” Cade drawled, “we managed to suss out that bit.”
“And then find out if they’ve any unemployed fettler friends willing to come make some mischief.”
Black fucking Lightning, Mieka thought instantly. He knew Cade and Rafe were thinking it, too. Aside from personal experience and mutual loathing, there’d been that Elsewhen of Cade’s, about Thierin Knottinger giving Mieka some vile sort of thorn that toppled him in the middle of a show.
Megs had finished most of her ale. “May I go now?”
“With Rafe’s apologies,” Mieka prompted.
“I can talk for myself,” the fettler reminded him. “And I am sorry. But you have to admit that after what happened at the Keymarker, and then again the other night…”
She stood, shook out her skirts, tried again to tuck her hair tidy, and said to Mieka, who had risen to his feet, “Beholden, Master Windthistle, for your kindness and the ale. No, I can manage quite well without an escort. I give you gentlemen good afternoon.”
She crossed paths with Croodle, who was coming out with fresh pints. They exchanged a few words Mieka didn’t hear; Croodle laughed and nodded.
“Spicy little piece,” Rafe observed as Mistress Ringdove set their drinks before them.
“That she is.” Croodle nodded and sighed. “If I had her working here, I’d not be having to rise up my voice half so often. She’s the sort keeps ’em sorted.”
“You could probably hire her away from the Keymarker,” Cade said. “She doesn’t much fit in with their usual barmaids.”
For some reason this struck Croodle as hilariously funny, and she walked back to her kitchen door still laughing.
12
“You have to hear this,” Rafe said, waving a broadsheet as h
e entered Croodle’s taproom.
Cade looked up from the letter he was writing to Derien. The boy was fretful about starting at King’s College next month and was positive of three things: The sons of the nobility would despise him, he didn’t know half of what he ought to know, and he’d be absolutely miserable from the instant he set foot outside Redpebble Square each morning until he returned home each night. And besides all that, Dery had written, some of them will have magic and use it on me and nobody even knows if I even have any magic or not and even if I do it won’t happen for years yet!
Cade couldn’t play the hypocrite by reassuring Dery that highborn ancestors didn’t matter; in such a setting, blood counted. Neither could he tell the child that all he need do was study as hard as he could and he’d be fine; considering his own rather sketchy academic career, he’d look a right fool harping on the virtues and rewards of dedicated scholarship. As for the magic—the least said about that sort of thing, the better. Not that he had any doubts that his little brother would turn up with something interesting and useful and perhaps even powerful. With their background of talents on both sides of the family, it would be extraordinary if magic had passed Derien by. But whereas Cade might easily mention their grandfather the fettler and all the other Wizard and Elf and so on blood in their veins, he reasoned it would be for the best not to bring up their mad uncle Dennet, or their even madder great-grandmother Raziel Watersmith, and especially not their mother’s mother, Lady Kiritin.
What he’d decided to write about instead was how this was Dery’s first step to independence, and how much Cade envied him setting out so young because he’d been almost thirteen before he’d gone to Sagemaster Emmot’s Academy, and surely there’d be at least one boy willing to make friends. The words were coming slow and thin and unconvincing, and thus it was with relief that he set the letter aside and turned to Rafe.
Lilyleaves was the isn’t-it-just-too-cute name of the local broadsheet, which during the summer catered to out-of-town visitors. Interspersed with adverts for various baths and inns and shops were articles sketching week-old news from Gallantrybanks, cullings from the Court Circular, advice columns on healthful habits and the latest fashions, and reviews of local taverns, musical performances, fortnightly public balls, and theater.