by Melanie Rawn
“I’m—I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Please—forgive me, I’ll never do it again, I swear—”
She flinched at the sound of his voice. He had sense enough not to approach her, even though he was sure that if only he could hold her and kiss her and make love to her, everything would be all right again.
“I swear,” he repeated. “By all the Old Gods, I swear I’ll never—”
“You hit me,” she breathed.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry—I love you so much—it will never happen again, I promise—I’ll do anything, anything, if only you forgive me—”
Her soft lips trembled, and after a long hesitation she nodded. And began to cry again, very quietly.
He couldn’t stand it. He took a few steps towards her, intending to comfort and promise—and she cowered back. He couldn’t stand that, either. He turned and fled the room, slamming the door behind him, and didn’t stop until he was in his tower lair.
Hunched in a corner amidst threadbare old carpets and pillows leaking feathers, he remembered that the thorn-roll in his bedchamber wasn’t his only supply. He supposed it was awkward, preparing the mixture with spit instead of water, and having no brandy or whiskey to cleanse the glass thorn before or afterwards. He didn’t much care about any of that. All he really wanted was to sleep, and dream pretty dreams, and have his hand stop hurting, and forget this awful night had ever happened.
* * *
Two of his wishes were not granted. He slept, but didn’t dream, and when he woke midmorning his hand no longer hurt from too-close proximity to his own magic, but he still remembered everything.
By now he was hungry. He couldn’t go downstairs; he couldn’t face his wife or his parents or his brothers and sisters or anybody. He just couldn’t. He wanted to stay right here where nobody could find him and confront him with eyes that were angry or disappointed or hurt or frightened. So he fixed up another thorn and curled into a corner and slept again.
This time he did dream, and it was both comforting and terrible. He dreamed that Cade had found him—Cade, who alone knew about this aerie because he was the only one Mieka had ever shown it to—and was seated beside him with long legs folded, waiting for him to wake up. He was so glad Quill was here. His presence meant that Mieka was safe from everything and everyone. It had always been like that with them: Mieka never felt scared and Cade never had bad dreams. But the last person in the world he wanted to see was Cade Silversun, because he knew he would have to admit to what he’d done, and that would be worse than the look in his father’s eyes last night, worse even than seeing her cringe away from him.
But maybe he didn’t have to tell. Maybe he could keep it secret.
No. Not from Cade.
And Cade had seen much worse things about Mieka in the Elsewhens, hadn’t he?
“I know you’re awake.”
No dream at all, of course.
“I can hear you thinking up excuses.”
Oh dear Gods—did Cade already know?
“You missed rehearsal. Nobody here knows where you went—they all think you crept out of the house sometime early this morning. They thought you were with us. Your father is confused, your mother is worried, and your wife took the baby and went back to Hilldrop at noon.” Cade stretched out his legs and sighed. “Nobody, not even Jinsie, will tell me what happened.”
Famished—it had been a whole day since he’d had anything to eat—he sat up and wasn’t at all surprised when his brain spun round a few times inside his skull.
“But I suppose it can wait until you’re fed and watered. No beer,” he warned. “Not on an empty stomach. We’ve a show tonight.”
He scrubbed his fingers back through his hair and groaned.
Cade wore a tiny smile. “You are Mieka Windthistle, right? It’s just that I’ve never heard you go so long without saying anything unless you’re sleeping or passed out.”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s more like it. Come on. Food and a wash, and a hire-hack to the Keymarker, and no bluethorn so don’t even think about it.”
Somehow Cade managed it so that he didn’t have to see anybody. The climb out of his little tower lair; the walk to his bedchamber where all the evidence had been tidied up as if nothing had ever happened, though the blue counterpane was missing; a quick soap-and-rinse in the garderobe down the hall while Cade went for something to eat—within the hour he was clean, fed, and clothed, and all without having seen a single person except Cade. Incredible, in crowded Wistly Hall. As he crunched into an apple on their way downstairs, Mieka reflected that it would be a nice life, this. With the addition of liquor, it would be just about perfect. Food and drink, peace and quiet, Cade to talk with, nobody to perform for except their audiences. Well, except to be clever and mad every so often, for Cade’s sake.
That night at the Keymarker wasn’t their best show, but it wasn’t their worst, either. Megs was not present. They did “Dragon” and “Dwarmy Day” and stayed for just one drink before Cade hauled him into a hire-hack.
“Redpebble Square,” Cade told the driver. Then, to Mieka: “You’re staying at my house tonight. I told your mother before we left.”
He discovered in himself a sharp loathing for Cayden when he was being helpful and understanding. He didn’t want to be helped or understood. He wanted a good bottle of whiskey and another night alone in his aerie with his thorn-roll. Performing onstage hadn’t done for him what it usually did. There was little of the release, the relief of emotions spent, the fulfillment of knowing they’d done well.
“Had a fight, did you?”
Mieka turned his face to the window and said nothing.
“The Prince was angrier, and the Dragon was horrider,” Cade went on. “So you must be feeling angry and horrid, and put that together with her going back to Hilldrop and you hiding in your tower all day—”
“We had a fight,” he conceded.
The horse clopped on.
In a completely different voice, Cade asked, “You hit her, didn’t you?”
Mieka’s head turned so quickly that he was certain sure he heard his neck bones crack. But it was dark in the hack, and he couldn’t see Cade’s face.
“More than once?”
“No.”
“Did she hit back?”
“No. But I think she wanted to.”
“I don’t blame her.”
After another half mile or so, he heard himself whisper, “I slapped her—just the once, I swear—and I threw things and—and I broke a glass. With magic. I had it in my hand and I broke it.”
“I wondered why you were a little wary tonight, reaching for the withies. Actually, I’m surprised you still have the hand.”
“Quill—I don’t know what scared me worst. And that makes me a complete shit, doesn’t it?”
“Yeh. It does.”
Mieka sagged back into the worn leather seat. “Can we go right up to your room? Please? I don’t think I can face Mistress Mirdley.”
“She doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”
“She’ll know there’s something to be known, and I couldn’t stand that.”
The hack rolled to a stop. Cade got out, paid the driver, and preceded Mieka through the front door. The tall, narrow house was silent, all the way to the fifth floor. No sounds from the kitchen; none from Lady Jaspiela’s chamber, nor Dery’s. Just their footsteps on the wrought-iron stairs, just the hush of their breathing.
Cade lit a candle and closed his bedchamber door. He pointed Mieka to the overstuffed chair in the corner: a new acquisition, covered in nubby black wool, big enough to curl up in comfortably without cramping Cade’s long limbs. Mieka hoped that Bompstable didn’t sneak up here often for a nap; that white fur would be impossible to clean offthe black upholstery. It must have been awful getting the thing upstairs, though possibly Cade had found somebody with a Hoisting spell to help. (Mieka supposedly knew one, but he’d never been much good at it—witness the Wintering Night when he�
�d tried to relocate just the blankets but instead moved the whole mattress.) Cade must be starting to gather things for the move to his own flat. Mieka had heard nothing about where.
“Sit down and start talking.”
“I need a drink.”
“Probably so. But not right now.”
Mieka felt small and insignificant in the big chair. He folded his legs to one side and leaned on the padded arm and stared at his hands. “I found a card that I thought was from the Finchery, and I started yelling and throwing things. Fa came in, and Jez, and Jinsie took care of the baby. After I settled down, I told her I was sorry. I went to the tower and that’s where you found me.” He looked up, knowing better than to use The Eyes but needing to know if Cade was as disgusted as he feared. “Can I have a drink now?”
“No. You left out the part where you shattered the glass with magic.”
“I shattered a glass with magic,” he echoed dutifully.
“And the part where you hit her.”
“I hit her.”
Cade sat on the bed and propped his elbows on his knees.
After a long silence, Mieka burst out, “Why aren’t you shouting at me? I’d be shouting at me right now.”
A wry smile twisted his lips. “You’ve been shouting at yourself all day. And especially during the show tonight.”
“I’ve been trying not to hear,” he admitted. “But I don’t understand why you’re not—I mean, what I did, it was horrible—”
“Yeh, it was.”
And then he knew he’d been right. “But you’ve seen me do worse. In an Elsewhen.”
Cade nodded slowly. “Much worse.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he cried.
“Would you have believed me?”
Mieka wanted to fling back a Yes! He knew it would be a lie. He would not have believed Cade. He would have said that he did, just to shut Cade up. But he would not have believed.
It wasn’t in Mieka’s power to shock Cade with what he’d done. He’d seen Mieka do much worse. Cade was sickened and disappointed, but he’d been waiting for something like this. Mayhap he’d been waiting for years.
“And you expect the worst of me, don’t you?” he challenged, sudden anger clenching his fists. “Whatever you saw—no warning, not a fucking word! You could change it—isn’t that how it works? You only see things you have the power to change—”
Temper flared black in Cade’s eyes. “What do my choices have to do with your marriage? If you can figure that out, you’re a whole lot smarter than I am—and we both know you’re not!”
“You’re going to let it happen—you want it to happen because you hate what I have with her, you’re envious, you can’t stand it that we’re happy!”
Cade met his gaze steadily, coldly. “Are you?”
Mieka pushed himself out of the chair. Before he could take more than two steps across the room, Cade added, “Planning on hitting me, now?”
He wanted nothing more in the world. Instead, he swung round and slammed the door behind him and ran down to the kitchen, where he knew he’d find the next morning’s breakfast ale in a jug on a shelf.
He couldn’t drink it. He couldn’t even pick it up.
There was money in his pockets, his winnings from the races. He could find a hire-hack and go—where? Not to Wistly. He didn’t want to see any of his family. Not Hilldrop Crescent. Gods, no. The Threadchaser bakery? Rafe would carve him into very small pieces with a very dull knife if he upset Crisiant by showing up at this hour. Jeska was undoubtedly entertaining a lady friend—or, considering the effect Kazie had had on him, lying alone in his bed moping.
An inn where they didn’t know him, where he could sit in the taproom half the night and drink himself forgetful and then somebody would haul him up to bed—if they didn’t simply rob him of what was in his pockets as he slumped inert over a table and then chuck him onto the street with the rest of the rubbish.
He sat beside the banked fire, listening as the mantel clock chimed one, and then two. At last he stumbled to his feet and climbed back up the stairs. Cade was in bed, asleep or pretending to be. Mieka was too tired to be more than remotely angry to find that a blanket had been spread on the shabby old couch. Cade had expected him to return. He knew as well as Mieka did that Mieka had nowhere else to go.
17
Early-rising tregetours were an abomination. Cade Silversun in a Let’s get going! mood was an offense against nature, common decency, and especially his long-suffering glisker. It didn’t happen often, this revoltingly cheery morning frame of mind, which was probably why he was still amongst the living. Cade with a purposeful glint in his gray eyes meant places to go or people to see, sometimes both, and Mieka knew the look well enough to know he had no chance of rolling over and going back to sleep. His last desperate gambit on such occasions was to suggest that Cade was looking a bit grubby and needed a shave. That usually got him at least another half hour or so while the water was heated and the straight razor stropped, lather was applied and whiskers were scraped off.
But today Cade only shook his head. “Nobody will mind, where we’re going.” He smiled slightly, adding, “And besides, you know it never matters what I look like, when I’m going someplace with you. Nobody ever even notices I’m there.”
Mieka had always thought this attitude was just plain silly. During the last year or so, Cade had started to grow into his face. He would never be conventionally handsome, and there was that nose to consider, but he seemed to think he was the ugliest thing ever birthed with the possible exception of the average new-hatched wyvern. And he truly had no idea how beautiful his eyes were. It was rather akin to the way he didn’t realize how brilliant he was. Sometimes Mieka was amused, and sometimes frustrated, by Cade’s ongoing bewilderment at being in possession of a really remarkable brain. At his age, one would think he’d have got used to it by now, or at least accepted that it did in fact exist and it was indeed his.
All that aside, Mieka was grateful that Cade was speaking to him. They’d said some rotten things to each other last night and he knew they’d been on the verge of the unforgivable. Yet here Cade was, sunny and teasing. It was almost enough for Mieka to absolve him of getting up so bloody early in the morning.
“So where are we going?” Mieka asked.
The only answer was a shrug. Mieka was handed clothes and a towel, and told to hurry up because the kettle was already on the boil downstairs in the kitchen. After a quick wash—no shave, because although his beard was very thick for an Elf, it grew very slowly—he trudged downstairs to find that a gulped cup of tea was all he would get for breakfast, for the hire-hack had arrived.
“Where are we going?” he demanded again as Cade waved farewell to Mistress Mirdley and hustled Mieka out the front door.
“Someplace you’ve never even heard of. But we’ll make a stop along the way.”
“Food?” Mieka asked hopefully.
Cade chuckled. “Food.”
But not for Mieka.
Long ago there’d been only one huge market in Gallantrybanks, but as the city grew, people began to complain about having to slog across town and back just for a few days’ provisions. The problems of housewives and servants made no impression, of course, on anyone with the influence or the money to change this state of things. One evening, however, a middle-aged lord was presented with a dinner that consisted of nothing that had not been salted, potted, pickled, dried, or otherwise preserved, because by the time his cook and her kitchen maid had fought through the ever-increasing traffic to the market, everything fresh had already been sold. That this outrage occurred in late summer, when everything from lamb to lettuce ought to have appeared nightly on his table, offended His Lordship. What absolutely infuriated him was that he was not dining alone, and whereas housewives and other people’s servants mattered to him not at all, to offer such a meal to his friends was insupportable. When told the nature of the difficulty, he ruminated for a few days, and then bo
ught and razed an entire block of Gallantrybanks within easy walking distance of his mansion and set up an indoor market. His Lordship was in most other respects something of a moron, but he did know good food, and its lack on his table motivated him to exert himself for the first and only time in his life. He made a fortune and was never heard from again. His grandson, however, built a second, third, and fourth establishment, his great-grandsons a fifth and sixth and seventh, and every spring for the last 143 years, the old man’s Namingday was celebrated with a minor parade through the stalls and free ale at lunching.
Mieka knew all this because of the annual excursion (not on the free-ale days) offered by the littleschool near Wistly that he and all his siblings attended. The children toured the stalls, were told where various fruits and vegetables and meats came from, and given free samples, and whereas Mieka had found all this most enjoyable at the age of seven, the next year he had matured enough to look on the outing as a lovely opportunity for some truly creative mischief. That year, Jez had been chosen to give the speech to the market guildmaster who always welcomed the children, and Mieka had been forced to listen to his brother practice it about a half million times. (Jez didn’t mention it in his speech, but that the cook had deliberately chosen to serve no fresh foods on a night when guests were present was something Mieka took for granted; no fool, she. It was also his opinion that His Lordship had been mostly a moron, along with everyone else in the olden days, for it had taken them such a very long time to come up with the idea of multiple markets.) Mieka’s antics on the day of his brother’s speech had been comparatively tame compared to what he got up to in subsequent years. He always behaved himself perfectly at school during the week prior to the outing. He always spent the following week in disgrace and confined to his room at home, but this was a small price to pay.