by Melanie Rawn
Cade winced. There was no mistaking the sentence structure—or lack of it. He could amost hear her voice. “I wonder who gave him the tip.”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not. Just curious. Easy enough to find out, though. Where she was, who she was with—” He broke off, eyeing Mieka. “You’re plotting something.”
“Me?”
“No magic.”
“Why, Cayden, whatever are you talking about?”
“Clothes. Women’s clothes. No skirts, no blouses, no gowns, no dresses. Not with magic. And you can quit with The Eyes. I’m immune.”
“You’re no fun anymore.”
“I mean it, Mieka.”
With a groan: “Do you have any idea how uncomfortable a corset is?”
“Tried one on, have you? Already planning your attack on the Shadowshapers’ next show?”
“Don’t have to try one on to know it looks like one of the more refined torments of one of the worser Hells. And why should I attack the Shadowshapers?”
“Mieka,” he warned.
“And you never let me have any fun, either!”
“Just because I wouldn’t let you take any black powder along on the Royal—”
“You searched me bags! Turned everything inside out, including all the pockets of all the trousers—”
“And I found it, too, didn’t I? When I think of what you might’ve done with it—”
The boy pouted for a moment, then grinned. “There’s always this year.”
“Mieka!” But it was useless, he knew that well enough. He’d have to inspect even more carefully from now on. Still, that wasn’t the main point. “I know you’re plotting to sneak some girls into a Shadowshapers show. I saw it a long time ago.”
“Did you?”
“Well, it changed a bit,” he admitted. “I know there’s nothing I can do to stop you, short of trussing you up in your lair at Wistly and letting you out only for our own performances. But you can’t use magic like you did in Lilyleaf. You really can’t, Mieka. For one thing, I’m not going to give you any. And I’ll confiscate all the withies after every show, too, so you won’t be able to use any leftovers.”
Mieka chewed his lip. “I could dress up as a Good Sister. Nobody would dare touch—”
“Absolutely not!”
“I never knew you had a religion to be blasphemous about!”
“I don’t. But it’d get you thrown into jail for crimes against Chapel. Not only would it cost a small fortune in legal fees to get you out, we’ve bookings and I need my glisker.”
Head cocked to one side, Mieka asked, “Do you?”
What did Mieka want him to say? “Yes, we need you desperately, we’re nothing without you, you can do whatever you please just so long as you show up for performances.” Arrogant little Elf. He ignored the memory of another Elsewhen—“When Touchstone lost their Elf, they lost their soul”—and said, “Well, a glisker. There are agencies we could consult, with an endless supply of—Mieka, don’t you dare throw that glass at me!”
“Give me a reason not to!”
Cade relented and poured more brandy. “No magic. No Good Sister robes.”
“And no corset! Mayhap I’ll just have a ball gown made to me measure.”
Cade grinned. “Now, that’s a shopping trip I don’t want to miss.”
Mieka’s face was suddenly decorated with his most sweetly, fiendishly, Angelically maniacal grin. “You already did, old son. You already did.”
After a confused minute or two, Cade sat down very hard in one of his mother’s dainty little chairs. It creaked a feeble protest and he heard a pillow stitch rip.
“Had to get meself somethin’ to wear, didn’t I? Not often that there’s anythin’ left in the withies. Got the girls in just fine, with me makin’ the distraction. And then Bexan got to feelin’ defiant, or so Jinsie told me later, because o’ course they wouldn’t let me in—”
“Jinsie was there?” Well, he’d known that before. But Megs had been the third girl. Odd that he hadn’t had an Elsewhen that corrected the first two, he mused, then realized that his ability to change what happened had been assumed by someone else. Mistress Quickstride, probably.
“Anyways, Bexan pulled out her purse, all silk and beads—Wintering present from Vered—but even that would’ve been all right if she hadn’t left her shirt open enough at the neck to make somebody suspicious. A nice pair on her, I’ll say that.” He finished off his brandy and held out his glass for more.
Cade gulped down his own drink and poured again. “What about Blye? Was she there?”
“You don’t think she’d miss the fun, do you?”
“Jed must’ve been furious.”
“Jed helped her get dressed.”
Realizing at last that there was nothing about this that he was going to win, Cade gave up—but not on his earlier decree. “You’ll try again. I’m fully aware that you’ll try something like this again. But no magic. I’m serious, Mieka.”
“Yeh, yeh, I’ll be arrested for public indecency and you’ll have to go to an agency—” All at once he sat up straight and smacked a hand against the arm of his chair. “Agency! We’ve been looking for that meddling fettler all wrong!”
* * *
Three groups were invited to perform at the Downstreet’s grand reopening: Crystal Sparks, Touchstone, and the Shadowshapers—and not Black fucking Lightning. Cade didn’t for an instant believe that this meant his Elsewhen about Thierin Knottinger and that malevolent thorn was now impossible. He’d just have to be on the watch for something else.
Mieka had to be right about an agency. Cade cursed himself for a fool not to have realized it long before. Before Mieka had come along, he and Rafe and Jeska had not only relied on friends-of-friends to provide a glisker for a few shows, but they had twice hired someone from Clap and Cheer Theatrical Productions. Mayhap he had deliberately forgotten; the experiences had not been pleasant.
Some groups got together after advertising in The Nayword or broadsheets like it. Mostly it happened the way it had happened with Touchstone: like-minded friends, somebody who knew somebody, a player dissatisfied with the group he worked with went out looking for another or, as with Mieka, conducted a deliberate stalking. But there were a few small agencies who traded on the hopes and dreams of would-be players by offering to set them up. There were jobs to be had outside Gallantrybanks, and short-term hires for private performances. Very occasionally a member of an established group would become ill—as Chat had on the night when Mieka filled in for him—or be injured or otherwise unable to appear, and if friends couldn’t help out, then one of the agencies was contacted. Personally, Cade would rather cancel a performance than risk an inexperienced or incompetent hired player. And what a change that made from the reckless old days.
As it happened, Cade didn’t make the rounds of these agencies to ask if someone had hired a fettler to wander about Albeyn during the Royal last year. Just how he would have phrased his questions was a difficulty he didn’t have to resolve, though he had made inquiries about where the agencies were located. Two mornings after he and Mieka discussed the possibility, he was in his room at Redpebble Square, about to prime withies for the night’s performance and wondering how much brandy it would take to celebrate Jeska’s Namingday and how much more to ease his pining over Kazie, when an Elsewhen showed him the truth of the matter.
{“—reliable means of telling who’s what,” said Thierin, looking quite chuffed with himself. “Took a bit of a while to sort all of them out, but—”
“You’re that certain of your skills, then?” Cyed Henick stood by the inner doorway of a windowless little chamber, arms folded across his chest.
“Just said so, didn’t he?” challenged Kaj Seamark.
“I thought you were having trouble discerning between Piksey and Sprite.”
“That was months ago. Now we don’t just make them squirm inside, we can tell who’s squirming why!”
&nb
sp; “Well.” The Archduke shifted slightly, fur-lined robes gleaming with silver embroidery in the thin light of a single candle. “And the other matter?”
Thierin stopped looking happy. “It takes some doing, y’know.”
“Being neither a glisker nor a fettler, I would not know. Explain it to me.”
“Never had trouble with the Humans,” Kaj said. “But think how it would seem, with only Humans demanding the goods. We need more practice.”
“You’ll have the opportunity in Vathis.”
“About that,” Thierin began.
“It’s been arranged. Or are you frightened of sailing across the Flood?”
“Not that. We heard what happened to bloody Touchstone. Windthistle having to hide his ears—”
“Shall I send armed guards to protect you? If the prospect of a few superstitious thugs turns you into puling cravens, then perhaps I ought to reconsider this bargain.”
“Oh, fine for you, isn’t it?” Kaj burst out. “You in your castles and palaces, surrounded by swords! It’s us who’ll be out there amongst the rabble!”
“Enough.”
“Not by bloody half! Go here, do this, figure out what magic touches a Gnome but not a Wizard, push this idea or that notion into their heads—but not all of them or it’d look dodgy when a whole audience goes out the next day to buy at the same bakery or draper’s shop—and now this trip to Vathis—”
Thierin interrupted the spate of complaints. “Ten shows in one city won’t be enough to judge how much magic there still might be over there.”
“That is my concern,” said the Archduke.
Kaj wasn’t yet finished. “And as for working out ways of blocking a fettler—”
“That is something else I wish to discuss.” Suddenly his eyes were narrow slits of fury. “You hired someone to experiment. On Touchstone.”
“Yeh? And what of it? You wanted us to find out how to—”
“And you hate them so much, you thought you’d find out using them. How dare you act without consulting me first? Crystal Sparks, those morons the Nightrunners, Hawk’s Claw, even the Shadowshapers would have been better targets. But you had to set your sights on Touchstone. Did it occur to you that once they figured out what was happening, you are the first people they would suspect?”
“So what?” Kaj shrugged.
“Word came to me that Silversun has been asking around various agencies for the past week. Will he discover anything?”
“No. The fettler’s just somebody Herris had classes with. Never good enough for a real stage. He won’t talk. We paid him enough!”
“Very well. Heed me, little boys. Do not ever—ever—initiate such a plan again on your own. Do not interfere with Touchstone again. Or it might happen that I will change my mind. About everything.”}
The resentment in Kaj Seamark’s watery blue eyes had told an obvious story. If “everything” was not forthcoming, he would react like a child deprived of a promised toy. What shocked Cade was the angry fear in Thierin’s face. If the Archduke changed his mind… about what? This “everything” he spoke of was something Thierin craved so deeply that its threatened loss infuriated him even as it sent him into a panic.
“Everything…”
Unknowable, without further information, which might come in additional Elsewhens. What was important right now was that Thierin and Kaj had been behind the meddling fettler. What was more important was that Black Lightning would be forbidden to interfere with Touchstone ever again.
Cade knew why. The Archduke still had hopes of persuading him to his schemes, whatever they might be. Cade was valuable. Cade could see the futures.
He went to the Downstreet on the night of the grand opening as sure as he could be without having actually foreseen it that none of Black Lightning’s members would even show up. There would be no grinning, triumphant Thierin Knottinger brandishing a thorn. There would be no need to protect Mieka from him or anyone else. Cade had visited a couple of agencies just to make sure that the Archduke would learn of it and give Black Lightning that little lecture.
The new Downstreet was furbished and frustled and shiny clean. The rows of benches glowed with polishing that had left a faint scent of citrusy wax in the air, soon to be overpowered by the scented clothes of the hundreds of invited guests in the first ten rows of the theater. These smells in turn would be obliterated by whatever fragrances first Crystal Sparks, then Touchstone, then the Shadowshapers cared to bestow upon the audience. Cade peeked out from behind the heavy brocade curtain—all lush flowers and swirling leaves—and grinned to himself as he caught sight of the owner of the Kiral Kellari sitting third-row center, chin sunk sulkily in his neck cloth. Whether Master Warringheath would succumb to temptation and redo the whole of his establishment as a real theater or content himself with a new mural remained to be seen. What he obviously could not resist was the chance to see what the competition had on offer. The rest of the seats were filling with paying customers who had bought tickets weeks in advance of opening night. Cade heard that seats had sold out within two hours.
Vered and Rauel were squared off over in a corner of the tiring room, with Romuald Needler grasping each with a placating hand. The Shadowshapers’ manager was Giant-tall but Wizard-thin: towering over both tregetours but without the muscular heft to be any real physical threat. In fact, he looked exhausted, as if he’d been intervening in an argument that had gone on all day.
Cade heard Vered snarl, “Why play it for the toffs at Seekhaven when we can show it to those what’s supported us all these years, our real audience?”
“Because it’s not ready!” Rauel snapped back, and Needler pushed them farther into the corner and told them to keep their voices down.
Someone tugged on Cade’s sleeve. He turned to find Jeska fidgeting at his side. “He’s not here yet. I knew one of us should’ve gone over to Wistly to fetch him!”
“He’ll be here, he’ll be here,” Cade soothed.
“You don’t think Bl—anybody got to him anytime today, do you?”
Black Lightning were engaged to perform at a nobleman’s country home. They let it be known that the pay was so colossal, they couldn’t possibly refuse, but everybody knew they were hiding their mortification at not being invited to perform here tonight by leaving town entirely. Cade couldn’t help but smile every time he thought about it. “They’re thirty miles off,” he said. “Stop fretting. He’ll be here.”
“He’ll be here or I’ll kill him,” Rafe muttered.
“Fuck you!” Rauel shouted, and everybody flinched. He stalked off to the drinks table, leaving Needler behind to plead with the equally furious Vered. Sakary and Chat, standing nearby with large beers in their hands, simply looked resigned.
By the time Crystal Sparks had finished “The Glass Glove” to rousing applause—nobody did the old standards better—Mieka still hadn’t shown up. Alaen and Briuly Blackpath went out in front of the closed curtains to entertain while the Sparks removed their glass baskets and lecterns and Touchstone set up. Music was its own magic, and the two lutenists wove spells with notes and their voices while Rafe, Jeska, and Cade did what Mieka ought to have been doing.
“I’ll kill him,” Rafe kept saying under his breath. “I will kill him.”
“Queue forms on the right,” Jeska told him.
Cade was beginning to worry that he’d been mistaken, and that even though Black Lightning wasn’t actually present, they had done something in defiance of the Archduke’s orders, when Alaen and Briuly broke off in the middle of a song, laughing.
“What the—?” Jeska hurried to the curtain, twitched aside a fold, and half a moment later was doubled over in silent giggles. By now the whole audience was laughing, hooting, whistling, calling out raucous and obscene suggestions. Cade and Rafe joined Jeska at the curtain and peered through the gap.
Flouncing down the aisle was a preposterous vision in bright pink silk ruffles and gold brocade swagged over purple petticoats. Small
hands in red lace gloves waved enthusiastic greeting to the audience; a head topped by what looked like a green velvet pancake decorated with an eruption of downy white feathers nodded gracious acknowledgment of the cheers and applause.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rafe whispered. “I really will kill him!”
Mieka’s progress was about to be interrupted by a pair of constables—faithfully posted by the local station because the Shadowshapers were playing tonight—and how he’d got by them in the first place didn’t bear contemplation. They were advancing down the aisle after Mieka, who was almost to the front row.
Cade didn’t need an Elsewhen to show him what was about to happen. Mieka would be seized by the constables, and yell something like “Unhand me, you fritlags!” in the best tradition of Uncle Breedbate, and escape them somehow, and race through the theater, and some people would aid him and some people would try to catch him, and there’d be a bloody riot and not only would Touchstone never work the lovely new theater at the Downstreet but they’d have to pay for the damages, too.
Cade stepped out from behind the curtain. Part of him was cursing the mad little Elf—he had to choose tonight to make his point?—and part of him was writhing at the total unprofessionalism of what he was about to do, but most of him was cheering Mieka on and perfectly willing to help. Planting his fists on his hips, he roared, “What’s all this, then? Mieka, you’re late!”
Mieka came to a halt in a flurry of pink and gold and purple and green, with feathers. “Goodest of good evenings to you, dear old thing! Excessively sorry, sincerely I am!”
Knowing themselves to be superfluous, Alaen and Briuly and their lutes departed for the wings. The audience quieted—more or less—to take in this unscheduled show.
The constables paused, suspicious and confused. One of them said, “See here, now! There’s not to be no ladies in no theaters!”
“That’s no lady,” Cade told him. “That’s my glisker.”