by Melanie Rawn
“When the switch is made from the trapped miners to their sons waiting up on the hill, that’s when the work gets tricky for an inexperienced fettler. There’s a different essence to the anguish, and the transition has to be subtle. And of course there’s the change in backdrop—a touch of a breeze, the taste and smell of the air, mayhap some lights in the village far down below. Their legs are tired from climbing so quickly up the hill, and there’s another difference from the men inside the mine, whose arms and backs are aching with trying to shift the rock. You can hear that Jeska has made the voice younger. What happens in a real performance is a shift in costumes and faces as well.” He paused, glancing over at Mieka. “Show her a bit more, why don’t you? Just a touch. If you think she can handle it, I mean.”
Megs ground her teeth and glared. Mieka sniggered, plucking another withie from the glass basket at his feet. Rafe sat back slightly, as if withdrawing physically as well as magically, while Jeska, nearing the end of the first son’s speech, sat up a little straighter, alert to what was about to happen.
The idea had been to fool Mieka into thinking that Megs was doing it all: that Rafe had ceded control of the magic, which admittedly was a stingy shadow of what would be used in a real show. Then they would tease Mieka that although the Lilyleaves had dubbed him the first “girl” in theater, now he had some competition.
That had been the plan.
They’d neglected to include Megs in their calculations.
Well, how were they to know she really was good enough to take control of the magic for real?
And it wasn’t as if Rafe were giving her anything. She simply took over. Jeska made the switch back to the collapsed cavern with barely a flicker of reaction—ah, the agile and accomplished Jeska, forever prepared to turn on a pennypiece. Rafe’s big hands clenched and he looked for a moment as if he’d wrest control back from Megs, physically if necessary. Cade shook his head slightly; too risky, to fight over the magic with someone so blazing-eyed determined to hold on to it, even if she was only an amateur. There wasn’t all that much to battle over, still just traces and tinges, nothing of the all-out intensity that marked a real Touchstone performance. Yet Megs was doing most of what Rafe usually did, and doing it rather well.
No changes of costume or feature, not in rehearsal, but a full range of other effects. The taste of stale, dwindling air; the ache of exhausted muscles and the deeper ache of grief; shards of panic, quickly repressed; the gradual flickering-out of the lamp, leaving only the sheen of stacked piles of glinting silver ore (inaccurate, but everybody understood it to be symbolism: the price of the miners’ lives—it really was a rather subversive playlet); the increasing cold; the hitch of each breath in the throat; the soft, ominous clatter of stones presaging the mine’s final collapse.
Megs handled it all. The barmaids and stock boys who had strayed closer to the stage now stood transfixed, caught, watching mere shadows, feeling only trifles, affected all the same.
Mieka hadn’t noticed a thing. Lost in his own delight at creating—for this was naught but a rehearsal, after all, so he needn’t be as vigilant as onstage—he rocked lightly in his chair and smiled happily and enjoyed himself.
What was bound to happen did happen: Megs began to lose her nerve, compensated, overcompensated, drew back, adjusted, regrouped, tried for a stranglehold. Rafe, as alert and adaptable as Jeska, was ready. He gathered up the magic and at the same time did to her something of what she’d done to him all those months ago: set up a protective barrier. As the piece drew to a close and Jeska whispered the last lines, Megs stared at Rafe, anger and betrayal snapping in her eyes. All the magic drained away. Cade hauled in a deep breath, ready to say he knew not what, when she sprang to her feet shaking with rage.
“I had it!” she shouted at Rafe. “I had it, and you took it away!”
“Had what?” Mieka asked.
Rafe leaned back in his chair. “Not bad. Not bad at all, for a first real effort.”
“Real—?” Mieka looked from him to Cade to Jeska and then back at Cade again. “What the fuck—?”
Jeska clucked his tongue against his teeth. “Mieka! Language!”
Cade addressed Megs, who was still furious. “You really shouldn’t have done that, y’know. I realize it must have been a dreadful temptation, but—”
“I was doing it! It was mine!”
“For a little while,” Rafe said. “And don’t ever take it again without permission. That’s the sort of silly trick can get you tossed out of class forever.”
Mieka stuck his fingers into his mouth and gave a piercing whistle. When he had their attention, he asked, “It was her?”
“Of course it was me!” she snarled, and paced to the edge of the stage, arms folded around herself as if hugging the lost magic tight.
“You!” For a breath and a half Mieka looked as if he wanted to punch everybody in the room, including Megs. Then he collapsed into laughter. “That’s me made a fool, right enough! I should’ve known! Cade’s determined to get girls onstage as well as into the audiences—I should’ve known!”
Rafe arched a brow at Cade, who resisted the impulse to squirm in his chair. This hadn’t been their plan at all. It was supposed to have been Mieka fooled into thinking Megs had done the fettling. None of them had thought that a girl could actually do it. Megs had. And if girls could do that, they could do all the rest of it—with proper training, of course. The prospects were… unnerving. For all that he was the ready champion of a girl who had proved herself an expert glasscrafter, this was different. This was his profession. His art.
“Girls onstage as players,” Rafe was saying softly. “Cayden Silversun, what will you think of next?”
Megs swung round. “I don’t want to be a player! Gods and Angels, what a horrid life you people lead! I want to be a Steward.” Then, with a mocking smile for their gasps of disbelief, she said, “Much beholden for the lesson, gentlemen. Drinks after the show tonight are on me.”
15
Hangovers were, praise be to Auntie Brishen Staindrop, largely a thing of the past for Cade. Granted, the thorn she had only this spring concocted, and that Mieka highly recommended for the purpose, didn’t work on Cade the way she thought it would, but that was usual for him. His strange brew of bloodlines still baffled her, and in her last letter accompanying a month’s supply of the necessities—blockweed for dreamless sleep, bluethorn for working a performance even though he was exhausted, a few other mixtures that he enjoyed when he had the time and the inclination—she mentioned she was blending up something that he might find interesting. When he remembered to, he kept track of his reactions and occasionally wrote them all up so she’d have an idea of what to try next. Still, he continued to be a puzzle, and thorn that was supposed to alleviate if not actually cure a hangover instead gave him hives. (He discovered this on the Royal Circuit the morning after Mieka’s Namingday. Mieka had turned twenty; Cade had turned bright red and bumpy.) What did work, and what he asked for a goodly supply of, was a combination that Mieka used for something else entirely. He never would say just what.
Megs stood them to as many drinks as they could swallow, and the four of them had to be poured into hire-hacks without much idea of their ultimate destinations (other than Mieka’s one-word command, “Home!”). They were in luck, for the owner of the Keymarker knew their addresses and they all made it into their own beds before dawn. Cade retained just enough functioning brains to remember to prick the hangover thorn before diving onto his bed for a few hours of oblivion.
The next morning he was fine. The vaguest of headaches was eased with several cups of strong, hot tea. Then he climbed back up to his room for a quick wash and a long debate with himself over which jacket he ought to wear, for this afternoon he would be making An Appearance.
Cade and Derien knew very well why Jed had urged Blye to learn a proper curtsy. Each year, after the hottest part of the summer was over, a week or so of gorgeous weather always preceded the arriv
al of serious rain across the Flood. During this interval a two-day racing meet was held on the grounds of the Palace. It was distinct from the fair and horse market that took up ten days and twenty acres in spring, and to which Cayden had often escorted his mother and brother. This year, because he wasn’t readying for the Winterly Circuit, he would be taking Derien and Lady Jaspiela to the late-summer races. Jed and Blye would be joining them.
Blye had figured it out that morning, when at breakfast her husband presented her with a hat. Not just any hat; a hat. All the ladies, from Royalty to merchants’ wives to daughters of the horses’ trainers, would be wearing white dresses, the better to appreciate their hats. Blye marched through the back door of Redpebble Square, through the kitchen and hall, and into the vestibule wearing a new white skirt and blouse with a thin purple ribbon around her waist, and an expression that dared anyone to comment on what was on her head.
It was deserving of comment. Jed had good taste, Cade decided, and told him so as he followed, grinningly pleased with himself, behind his wife. He’d had the sense to recognize that a woman as little as Blye couldn’t possibly wear one of those extravagances of silk flowers and frills that Cade had seen before at the races. (Most other women shouldn’t wear them, either, but that was just Cade’s opinion.) Neither was Blye the sort for fussy lace or soaring feathers, broad brims or cascades of beaded fringe. Jed had gifted her with a close-fitting cap of dark purple velvet, decorated on one side with an embroidered thistle in the same purple picked out in tiny black glass beads. The rich color made her pale skin and silver-blond hair glow, and even allowing for the uneasy look in her big brown eyes, she looked genuinely pretty.
Cade knew better than to tell her that. She’d find it out anyway, when admiring glances were directed her way at the races. Neither did Derien make any remarks, but his elegant bow—with wrist flourishes worthy of Mieka at his grandiose best—was eloquent enough. When he straightened up, Blye suddenly laughed and swept him a curtsy, good humor restored.
Lady Jaspiela’s white gown was lace-over-silk, buttoned to the throat and almost to her fingertips against any encroachment by ill-mannered sunshine. Her wide-brimmed green hat formed the basis for a display of silk clover dotted with white flowers, rather like an itinerant lawn. Dery wore his favorite blue velvet peaked-and-billed cap, ornamented today with a silver falcon pin to match the one he’d given Cade a couple of years ago; it had been Cade’s Namingday gift to him this year and he was tremendously proud of it. Cade showed up downstairs wearing his pin in his jacket lapel. But as for a hat—
“Absolutely not. No. I refuse. Jed’s not wearing one and neither am I. We’re both tall enough without putting an upended vase on our heads!”
Jedris was just as adamant. “I don’t care if they’re made out of straw or covered in silk or rabbit fur—they look like exactly what Cade said. Vases turned upside down, with our faces growing out of the bottom.”
“Like flowers,” Blye cooed, patting his cheek as they went through the front door of Number Eight, Redpebble Square.
“Nothing to worry about,” Dery observed. “Mieka will make up for it.”
“Mieka’s joining us?” Lady Jaspiela so far forgot herself as to sound almost eager. She had greeted the appearance of Blye and Jed in her parlor with a scant nod, then ignored them in favor of adjusting her gloves. But the prospect of an afternoon in the Elf’s company nearly made her smile.
“And his wife,” Jedris said. “They were supposed to be here by noon—and there’s the Minster chime, and here they are!”
“Mieka?” Cade opened his eyes as wide as they would get. “On time?”
“I heard that!”
The Elf leaped from Kearney Fairwalk’s second-best carriage, lent to them for the occasion. Kearney was at Fairwalk Manor for a month or so, doubtless something to do with the harvest or the hunt or whatever it was noblemen did on their estates at this time of year. He had evidently taken his regular coachman with him, for the youth handling the reins was dressed in a groom’s deep blue coat that lacked the oak-leaf buttons and pin of senior Fairwalk servants.
“Greetings, all!” Mieka caroled, sweeping them all a bow. “Your Ladyship, you’re looking a right portrait, you are. Jed, unhand that girl—oh, wait, never mind, she’s your wife! Make yourself useful, Cayden, and climb up top with the driver—there’s not room enough for us all and your legs are too long. Unless you’d prefer to be stuffed into the boot?”
Cade approached in genuine awe. “What in the name of everything holy is that thing on your head?”
Mieka grinned. Tilted at a rakish angle was a cap rather like Derien’s in design, but on an ostentatious scale. Well, this was Mieka. The peak was at least a foot tall, the bill looked as if half a dinner plate had been glued on, and the whole had been executed in cloth of gold, with a purple feather sweeping from one side to the other.
“I didn’t make it,” his wife called anxiously from inside the carriage. “I had nothing to do with it!”
“No one would ever think that you did,” Jed assured her. “You have taste. That thing—it’s—”
“Words fail you?” Cade squinted and held a hand up to shade his eyes. The thing really was blinding in the sunlight. “Me, too.”
“Envy,” Mieka said with airy unconcern. “Sheer envy.” He turned to Lady Jaspiela. “Don’t you think so, Your Ladyship?”
She considered. “I think,” she said at last, “that it will be much remarked upon.” And she was inside the carriage before Cade could decide whether or not she had just made a joke.
No. Impossible. His mother had no sense of humor.
Neither did most of the people attending the races that afternoon, not if their hats were anything to judge by. They all seemed sincerely pleased to be wearing gardens of flowers, orchards of fruit, feathers enough to stuff a thousand mattresses, jewels (both real and fake) accented by lace veils and silk ribbons and beads in all the colors of the rainbow. Several of these concoctions, on women and on men, sported what looked at first to be small animals clinging precariously to their skulls. Flattened circles of straw or silk seemed popular, though to Cade they all looked like decorated pancakes. From the brim of one gentleman’s yellow silk hat, strongly reminiscent of an overturned pisspot, dangled talons that might once have belonged to a very large hawk or a very small wyvern. And one lady had braided her pale brown hair into a nest that formed a cozy perch for two improbably colored birds, fully feathered.
Mieka, who had never been to the races before, pouted a bit when he saw how many people, male and female, had outdone him. None of them, however, wore anything as glaringly bright as his golden cap.
“I made a perfectly fine hat for him,” his wife fretted to Cade after he’d paid their entry fees and they were strolling the lawn towards the stands. “He wouldn’t even consider wearing it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all. Please don’t worry about it,” he added as she looked so downcast that even he was moved. “We can pretend he’s a country cousin in the city for the first time, and more than a little touched in the head!” When he saw that this did nothing to lighten her mood—evidently she had little to no sense of humor, either—he went on, “And anyway, nobody, man or woman, will be looking at him once they see you.”
He’d meant it for a compliment—that the women would all be envious and the men would all be covetous. She truly was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. But she met his gaze with renewed anxiety in her iris-blue eyes.
“Is there something wrong with my gown? Or my hair? Is my hat not right?”
“No, no,” he soothed, “your gown is lovely, and your hair, and that red silk hat is perfection. There’s not a woman here who won’t be wishing she’d worn something else, and not a man who won’t be wishing he’d come here with you.”
“Do you really think so?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, quite honestly. Everyone would be talking about her—and it would be churlish of him to
believe that this was her principal ambition. Still, this was precisely the place for the socially striving to see and be seen.
The Palace in Gallantrybanks had been added to at various times through the centuries, mainly by kings who wished to impress the populace (and provide productive employment) or queens who had tired of their old apartments and wanted to start fresh and fashionable. Thus the building was really a series of buildings, some connecting and others not, with so many ginnels and breezeways and staircases and tunnels that even the Royal cats and dogs were said to lose themselves in the maze. This was true only of the part that most people didn’t see, for King Cobin had begun, and his son King Meredan had finished, a frontage that actually made logical sense. Visitors entered through huge wrought-iron gates in the shape of dragon wings into a vast courtyard giving a view of the river. The new three-story frontage had been tacked on to the old confusion of stones and styles, presenting an orderly row of white columns holding up a roof of rich cinnamon-brown tiles. Every so often a broad grand staircase led up to doors and windows, all topped with pointed arches. Today these stairs formed the basis of the stands (with barricades behind to prevent people from wandering into the Palace itself, of course). And the cobbled courtyard, a good quarter of a mile long, had been fitted out with a fenced-in oval racecourse. A few inches of sawdust cushioning several more inches of packed dirt made up the track. In two days’ time, everything would be shoveled back into carts and taken back to the Palace gardens. Nobody envied the workers this toil, which had to be finished before the rains blew in or the whole courtyard would become a sea of mud.
Today the weather was very fine, with only a few unenthusiastic clouds drifting past: no threat to the track. Or to the hats. This was a real shame, Cade thought as he shepherded his mother and brother and friends through the crowd towards the stands. Most of these hats deserved nothing so much as a drenching that would obliterate all traces of their existence.