by Melanie Rawn
When one of these markets turned out to be the stop Cade had mentioned, Mieka was delighted. But if he had thought they would be selecting their breakfast fresh off the carts, he was mistaken. Cade took him right past vendors of teas and mocahs, fruit pastries and buttered muffins, while Mieka entertained him with the tale of what he’d done on the school visit when he was ten.
“—great huge sacks of dried peas, like hailstones—Cade, don’t those muffins look wonderful? Couldn’t we—?”
“Maybe later. Come on.”
“But I’m hungry!”
“What did you do with the peas after you stole them?”
“How did you know?” He grinned. “It was only a couple handfuls—handsful?”
“Handfuls.”
“Oh. Anyways, there was a teacher everybody hated—a real snarge. Every day at exactly four he left his assistant in charge and went downstairs before everybody else to be first in line for the best cakes at teachers’ tea.”
Cade sidestepped a harried-looking matron with a huge shopping basket in one arm and a screaming infant in the other. “How far did he fall?”
“Only half a flight, bouncing on his great big bum. Not much of an audience for it, either. Just me, behind a pillar. But we were free of him for a whole fortnight!”
“Aggravating little smatchet, weren’t you? I take it you didn’t get caught.”
Mieka laughed for what felt like the first time in weeks. “Me? Never!”
Cade murmured, “But then you grew up.” He swerved towards a booth piled with sacks of flour. “Find us a handcart, there’s a good lad. Good morrow to you, Mistress Tola!” he greeted the Trollwife behind the counter. “I’ll be needing twenty pounds of your best.”
“Quite a while since last I saw you, Cayden. Out gallivanting, I wager.” She dusted down her apron and clasped one of his hands in both of hers. “How’s Mirdley doing these days?”
“As charming and winsome as ever, beholden to you.”
She snorted. “That’s not saying much. Fifty pounds, you said?”
“Thirty.”
“Oh, I thought I heard you say sixty.”
“No, forty ought to do very nicely.”
“We’ll make it fifty, then, shall we?”
“I think that’s fair.” They clasped hands on it and Cade turned to Mieka. “Weren’t you looking for a handcart?”
Mieka had never heard an odder haggle, but it seemed this was an old joke with them. Mistress Tola was eyeing him sidelong as she effortlessly hoisted ten-pound sacks of flour onto the counter.
“So that’s your Elf?”
“That’s him.”
Mieka waited to be introduced.
“Mieka, go find a handcart.”
He went to find a handcart.
When he returned, lighter by a couple of pence to hire it for an hour, he helped with the loading. Somehow in the interim, fifty pounds had become one hundred. He counted, then again: ten ten-pound sacks. But neither Cade nor Mistress Tola said anything about it, so neither did Mieka.
It took a little less than an hour for Cade to finish his shopping. In addition to the flour, other staples joined the haul: salt, porridge oats, loaves of sugar from the Islands. There were spices, too, and huge bags of tea, and boxes of sweets. At last Mieka helped roll the handcart back outside to the street, where Cade waved down another hire-hack and everything was loaded into it.
“Now do I get some breakfast?” Mieka asked.
“Worked for it, I s’pose. Here.” He delved into a pocket for two slightly crushed muffins. Another pocket yielded a bottle of apple cider—the uninteresting kind, Mieka was unhappy to note when he pulled the stopper and took a swig. “All for you, glunsh,” he mocked gently.
Mieka was too busy devouring the muffins to hear the address Cade gave the driver. A few minutes later he was feeling quite his old self and thinking that mayhap he wasn’t such a horrible person after all. He’d seen Cade cut people dead with a single glance. But Cade was still speaking to him, even teasing him and including him on whatever mysterious errand this was. So he couldn’t be so terribly awful, could he? Not if Cade was still his friend.
Anyways, plenty of men disciplined their wives—and their children, he reminded himself with a reminiscent wince for the swats on his bum he had to admit he’d earned. It wasn’t as if he beat his wife on a nightly basis. He’d never hit her before, and never would again. He’d promised.
And it wasn’t as if he didn’t give her everything she could possibly want. A lovely house, a child, blue tassels for the curtains, even her mother living with them. She had money and a home and beautiful clothes and now she was even acquainted with Royalty. So he’d given her a slap—what of it? He’d been provoked. He’d been drunk. He’d made a mistake about the card but not about the way she was lying to him.
Gods, what a tangle.
He was about to say as much to Cade when the hire-hack came to a stop. Eating and thinking had taken more time than he thought it had. When they emerged into a sluggish drizzling rain, Mieka saw with astonishment that this was the worst section of Gallantrybanks: clamorous manufactories and tenement blocks for the men who worked in them, men who used to be their audiences in the seedy taverns they used to play. Touchstone had got too grand and important and posh and expensive for these men nowadays. Somehow, this realization made Mieka feel a whole new sort of guilty.
Cade told him to stay with the hack. He went to knock on a wooden door that needed fresh paint set into a two-story brick building that needed fresh mortar and seemed to have been constructed entirely of clinkers fired in a kiln too long. Rain glistened on the blackened bits, shiny as glass. To either side were derelict manufactories, the signs on them so old that the words could no longer be read.
Within a few minutes a youngish man came out with a wheelbarrow, his powerful muscles and rolling gait proclaiming a goodly mix of Troll in his background. The transfer of goods began. It took four trips to get everything inside and stacked in a tiny vestibule. Mieka shook the rain from his hair and looked around the dim interior. A desk bare of everything but a pitcher and four wooden cups; two closed doors to the left; a short, narrow hall leading to a locked and bolted door; and a small, badly painted sign on the brick wall between two unlit lamps. GINNEL HOUSE.
He looked to Cade for an explanation. A ginnel was a passage between buildings, and Gallantrybanks was riddled with them. But how could a ginnel be inside a building? The implication was—what? He didn’t have the sort of mind Cade did, able to play about with words and make peculiar connections.
The locked door opened from the inside, and a small, dainty woman came out, seemingly in danger of being bowled over on a wave of children’s noises behind her: giggling, crying, yelling, singing. She shut the door behind her and touched her palm to a brick in the wall beside it, and suddenly Mieka knew that the steel lock was just for show. Whatever was behind that door was protected by magic.
“Master Silversun!” the woman exclaimed, holding out both hands. “You’re welcome for just yourself, but look what you’ve brought with you!”
“Trying to make up for being gone all these months,” Cade said, bending gallantly over her wrists. Each was circled by a thin, beautifully worked silver filigree bracelet; she was married, and to a man with taste, Mieka decided. She could have been any age from thirty to fifty, her dark face unlined but for a few strokes at the corners of her deep brown eyes. “This is my friend, Mieka Windthistle.”
“Ah, the glisker!”
Mieka received both hands as well, and noticed as he bowed over them that although her fingernails were scrupulously clean, they were cracked and ragged with hard work. “Delighted,” he told her, stepping back.
“And puzzled, yes?” She smiled. Turning to Cade, she went on, “The tour, but it must be quick. There’s a wagon due in about an hour.”
“Of course. We don’t want to trouble you.”
She opened the magical lock, and the noise washed
over them as they went through into a passage lighted by lamps at regular intervals. There were a dozen or so doors down its length—rather like Cade’s “Doorways” play. But unlike onstage, where the doors opened onto various scenes, here the the scenes were painted on the walls between doors. Green hillsides with cows and sheep, houses with bursting rosebushes, fanciful trees bearing fruit in all the colors of the rainbow, a farm with goats and dogs and cats and a dragon, white-sailed ships on a brilliant blue ocean with a mountainous island in the distance. They weren’t professional paintings, and none of them were magical—no movement, no changing colors—in fact, Mieka realized, they looked as if painted by children. Several of the doors stood partly open, and in each there were cots and a chair, a few toys, small stacks of neatly folded clothing. The brick walls within had been painted soft green or pale yellow, with counterpanes that sometimes matched.
The last door on the left opened into a playroom, whence the noise. Dolls and balls and a small menagerie of stuffed animals, tables and chairs, and children ranging in age from toddlers to ten-year-olds causing all sorts of happy racket. There were three middle-aged women in the room, but nobody would have said they were in charge; instead, they seemed to be guardians of chaos, not calm, and perfectly happy to have it so.
The door on the right led into a refectory. There was a mural all along one wall, of animals both real and imaginary. At the back was a wide window into the kitchen. Three of the seven circular tables crammed into the space were occupied. Mieka was trying to figure out how to ask Cade exactly what this place was and why they were here when he realized that not only were all the other people in the room women and children, but at the sight of him and Cade, all of them froze silent and stared.
He was used to being looked at. But not like this. Not with hunted eyes in faces bearing new bruises and old scars. Not by women—and some of the children—who had bandages on their jaws or their arms in slings or who limped as they rose from their chairs and backed slowly up against a wall. Staring at him.
“They’re having a bite to eat before the wagon arrives,” said their guide. “It’s a long ride, where they’re going. The others are back in their rooms, the ones who still need a few more days to heal before they go to their families or friends, or sometimes—like today—far from Gallantrybanks.”
“With different names,” Cade murmured.
“Oh, yes. It makes things impossible for them and their children legally, but their decision—and I agree with them—is that although they’re not free to marry again, not under their own names, at least they’re safe.” She tucked a wayward strand of dark curling hair behind her ear. “We’ll let them finish, shall we?” she asked softly, and they left the room. Out in the hall, as they walked she went on, “If you’ll excuse me now, there are still some arrangements to make. They don’t have much to pack, of course, but we did get two lovely big barrels of clothes last week from a friend.” Her smile was a marvel as she looked up at Cade. “Someone you recommended, and much beholden to you for it, Master Silversun.”
“A word here, a word there.” Cade shrugged. “I wish I could do more without compromising your precautions.”
“We have good friends, and they have friends who have other friends, and on the whole we do very well. A pleasure to meet you, Master Windthistle.” With another smile, she opened the main door for them.
Mieka dug into his pockets. He still had his winnings from the races. All of it went into her hands. Then he undid his golden topaz earring and gave her that, too. As he gave it to her, he saw the glint of the silver bracelet on his own wrist, and his fingers twitched towards its clasp. But it wasn’t just jewelry, it was his wedding jewelry, sealed with magic. All at once he knew that whenever he looked at it from now on, he’d be reminded of this place, and what he’d done.
The money and the earring went into the woman’s skirt pockets, and she touched his arm gently, and then Cade was guiding him through the door.
It was raining harder now. He turned his face up to the sky and tried to remember other times when it had felt so clean to do this. Cade would scorn the image as trite, he knew. But while he was neither as smart nor as creative as Cade, he had brains enough to know why he had been brought here. He got into the hire-hack and hoped the rain would excuse the moisture on his face.
Cade told the driver, “Just take us anywhere, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you when to stop.” He got in and gave Mieka a handkerchief and sat silently in his corner of the hack.
Mieka struggled for a few moments, then curled up and hid his face and wept.
After a long while Cade spoke again. “The man who helped us unload the provisions, he’s some sort of distant relation of Mistress Mirdley’s. So is Mistress Tola—the lady who sold us the flour at half price. I don’t know the name of the woman who runs Ginnel House. They tend towards privacy, as you can imagine.”
Mieka had recovered himself by now. But he still couldn’t look at Cade.
“Mistress Mirdley started helping them when they set the place up, about three or four years ago. I didn’t even know about it until this year, when she asked me to take some money by on my way to the Kiral Kellari one night. And I didn’t really know what Ginnel House was until a bit before we played at the wedding celebrations last spring. I’ve never asked how many women and children they help. From what we saw today, I’d guess it’s a lot. More than anybody wants to admit. There are probably other places like it, safe places, in Gallantrybanks, but I don’t know anything about those, either. It’s not necessary for me to know. That’s what Mistress Mirdley told me, and she’s right. The only people who really truly need to know about it are the women who haven’t anywhere else to go.”
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you? Ready for it. Elsewhen.”
“Yes. When I found out what the place was, I knew I’d be taking you there sooner or later.”
He repeated his question of last night. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Because even if you believed me, it’s something you had to learn for yourself.” Leaning forward, he opened the little grilled hatch beneath the driver’s bench and called through it, “Number Eight, Redpebble Square, please.” He sat back again, and they were both silent for a long time.
Then Cade said, “The other evening, back home after the races, Dery’s legs were hurting. He’s growing so fast.” He paused for a fond smile. “I remember being that age, and my leg bones outgrowing the muscles and tendons. It hurt like twelve kinds of Hell. Mistress Mirdley and I rubbed liniment into his legs, poor little bantling, and she gave him something for the pain. We kept watch until he fell asleep, and then she said, ‘That’s the way of it with everything in life. When it hurts, you know you’re growing.’ ”
Mieka scrunched farther into his corner. “I notice she did give him something for the pain.”
Cade shrugged. “That’s the kindly thing to do.”
He knew where Cade was headed with this. He resented it. “I’ll take the thorn over the hurting, beholden all the same.”
“Most people would.”
“Not you,” Mieka accused. “The sort of anguishing you do over every damned little thing—it’s not normal.”
“I’m not normal—hadn’t you figured that out by now?”
He heard the bitterness and, Gods help him, relished it.
“We learn only from the mistakes we make and the pain we endure,” Cade said quietly.
Mieka said nothing. What he was thinking was, So nobody ever learns anything from being happy? You’re wrong, Cade. Gods, you are so wrong! And one of these days I’ll prove it to you.
The hack drew to a stop at Redpebble Square and they got out. Cade went into the kitchen for something to eat; Mieka went upstairs to sleep. He hadn’t got much last night—this morning, really—and he suspected that anything he ate would come right back up again.
But of course he couldn’t sleep. He kept seeing those women
staring at him. He kept seeing her eyes with that look in them. He supposed all this meant he was growing, because—Gods, how it hurt.
At three by the Minster bells, Cayden appeared upstairs with a lavish tea: three sorts of muffins, baked eggs in little pastry shells with bits of ham and cheese, fried flatbread dripping in butter and jam, a bowl heaped with berries dusted with sugar, and a plate of sliced pears. Mieka discovered that he was ravenous and the instant Cade set the tray on his desk, he leaped on the food.
“Mistress Mirdley says not to be impressed,” Cade told him. “This is what she made for our breakfast, if only we’d had the decency and manners to come downstairs early enough to eat without rushing off, so it’s all reheated and stale and if it tastes awful, it’s our own silly fault.”
It was all delicious. A little while later, replete and sipping his fourth cup of tea, he nestled into Cade’s new chair and sighed. All he lacked was a nice glass of whiskey, and he’d be perfectly happy.
Not that he deserved to be.
Cade had been alert to the change in his mood. “So can we really talk about it now?”
“Want to hear every sordid detail, do you? Or—wait, I know. After what you made me look at this morning, you want me to relive all of it and make all the right connections so it hurts again and the lesson sinks in.” He met those gray eyes with a parody of a smile stretching his lips. “Fuck you.”
“You said there was a card.”
Relentless. Wasn’t that what he’d thought once—more than once—about Cade? Ruthless and relentless and inexorable when it came to the truth. Of course Cade wanted all the details; that was how his mind worked. Pull apart each tiny little piece of whatever it was, even if it was Cade’s own soul, for examination and interpretation, and only then could it all be put back together and understood. This was probably what made him a great writer. It was certainly what made him an annoyance.
“From the Finchery,” Mieka heard himself say, giving in with poor grace to the inevitable.
“Tell me about it.”