by Melanie Rawn
“But he’s not—that’s to say, he don’t look—”
Cade sighed a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose it’s his notion of an educational demonstration.”
“A what?”
But his fellow constable had had enough. “There’s laws about women bein’ in places like this here,” he said firmly. “And whatever anyone says, that’s women’s clothes.”
Abruptly Cade saw before him a letter that had not yet been written. “As for the events at the Downstreet, I think you will agree that Silversun’s cleverness in outwitting the constables—”
Not much cleverness needed, come to it. “Ah, but a man wearing them!” Cade said. “Are there laws against that?”
“If there were,” somebody yelled from the upper tier of benches, “there’s a noble lord or three would be in quod!”
“As it happens,” Cade went on, “there aren’t any laws about that. And since he really is a man under all that tawdry frippering—”
“Tawdry?” Mieka wailed. “I paid heaps for all this!”
“One can only wonder why!” Rafe yelled from behind the curtains.
Cade went on, “As I was saying, there’s no law against a man wearing whatever he pleases—”
“But—” The constable was choking on outrage. “But if that’s true—”
Beaming, Mieka finished for him. “Then any man could wear what he likes, and come right on in and sit himself down and watch the show. And it’s brilliant we’ll be tonight, no mistaking.”
“Talking of which,” Cade said pointedly, “I really do need my glisker to give this performance, so won’t you please excuse us?” To Mieka: “Get your scrawny ass onstage, Windthistle!”
Mieka scampered over to the steps, bounded up onstage, and sank into a deep curtsy. Applause thundered, even from the more straitlaced of the nobility sitting in the front rows. Proof positive, as if any could be necessary, that Mieka was as irresistible as the tide, a thunderstorm, or a brain seizure.
“You can’t work in all that lot!” Cade exclaimed, and had an instant of sheer panic. Surely the clothes were real. Surely he wore something beneath them.
“Oh—frightfully sorry, just give me a moment.” He peeled off the red lace gloves and smiled brightly at Cade. “Ready!”
“Mieka!” And if you’re dressed in nothing but magic, Rafe can hold my coat while I kill you.
Next went the hat, sailing to the side of the stage, where Alaen caught it. Cade folded his arms across his chest and glowered.
“Oh, very well. Bloody great bully! You never let me have any fun!”
Fingers scrabbled at his waist, strings were untied, and after a suggestive and ultimately undignified wriggle, the gold brocade skirt and purple petticoats dropped to the stage. Revealed—and here Cade paused to be monumentally grateful—were black trousers and boots. The billowing pink blouse stayed.
With a masquer’s sense of timing, Jeska reached from behind the curtain and yanked Mieka by an arm. As he vanished with a yelp, Cade bowed to the audience, then slipped between the folds of velvet to find Mieka already halfway to the glisker’s bench. Somebody cried out, “Touchstone!” and he and Rafe lunged for their lecterns while Jeska scooted hastily to center stage. With a muttered curse, he nipped back out in front just as the curtains parted, and kicked the abandoned skirts towards the wings. Alaen scurried out to grab them.
“Have a care, mate!” Mieka hollered. “Those go to me mother-in-law tomorrow!”
Rafe shook his head. “Gods pity the poor woman. May we start now, or are you the show tonight?”
Mieka stretched elaborately, cracked his knuckles, bounced on his toes a few times, twirled a withie between his fingers, then rapped the withie against a glass basket. “Pray silence for His Fettlership!”
“Enough!” Cayden bellowed. “My Lords and Gentlemen, we present for you tonight ‘Feather-head’—”
Mieka wailed a protest.
“—I mean, ‘Featherbeds.’ ” And praise be to whatever deities watched over theater folk that they’d planned a comedy for this performance. What it might take to settle an audience for something serious after the pre-show farce, he didn’t like to think.
21
It hadn’t been in Mieka’s plan to get arrested, and he knew full well that Cade would rescue him if things got risky. But he hadn’t expected Cade to understand almost instantly what he was about, nor to aid and abet with such enthusiasm and to such excellent effect. The expression on the constables’ faces, the reactions of the crowd—he really must stop underestimating the man.
“Featherbeds” (the rude version) was a rollicking success. Mieka clothed Jeska as the Bewildered Bride in gold brocade and purple petticoats to match what he’d worn during his grand entrance into the Downstreet, and even the constables (standing way at the back; the owner had offered them a free show to make up for the trouble) laughed themselves breathless. Mieka was again reminded that wielding his withies was problematic with wrist-ruffles.
Touchstone was called back for two extra bows. Splendid for them; not so great for the Shadowshapers, but not because they now had to follow a triumph. The trouble came because they had additional time to fight over what they’d perform.
When the curtains closed and Alaen and Briuly traded expert notes that ran each string of their Hadden Windthistle lutes, Touchstone began moving equipment and the Shadowshapers began setting up. Rauel and Vered seemed to be continuing a fight that had started a few minutes ago—or mayhap it was just one more episode in a fight that had started the day they met.
“I keep telling you it’s not ready!” Rauel snapped at Vered as he helped Chat carry their glass baskets to the glisker’s bench. “The middle part doesn’t make any sense, there’s no bridge to the final section—”
Vered hurled back, “You’re just too stupid to understand them!”
Mieka traded startled looks with Jeska and worked faster at packing baskets into their padded crates. The two tregetours had never been shy about expressing their grievances to each other, but rarely did they take their quarrels public like this. All that separated them from an audience was some velvet and gold fringe, and two lutenists playing old songs.
“What’s stupid is the whole concept!”
“And how would Your Lordship be writing it, then? All pathetic farewell embraces between childhood friends, and flooding the audience with tears by the fifth line? You never did have a clue about pacing, did you?”
“At least my audiences feel something! You’re all words, words, words, no real heart to them, never a laugh or a cry or an honest emotion—”
“If you ever put a genuine idea into one of your scribblings, it would die of shock and loneliness! Ask them!” Vered pointed at Mieka and Jeska.
Mieka almost dropped a withie. Quickly shoving it into the velvet pouch, he thrust the whole of it at Jeska and looked round for Rafe and Cade to come help carry the baskets. Kearney Fairwalk had taken charge of Cade’s lectern, staggering a bit beneath the weight of rosewood inlaid with polished dragon bone. The lute music still trilled from the other side of the curtains.
“Ask them!” Vered insisted. “C’mon, what d’you think of Rauel’s little muddles? Any of them ever manage to make you think a single thought?”
Mieka tried to smile. “Oh, me poor overworked brain’s too busy with working out all those deep thoughts of Cade’s that I—”
“Deep as a puddle of piss from a parched horse!”
Straightening, Mieka began, “Now, wait just a tick—”
“Partridge,” Cade drawled from behind him. “Puddle of piss from a parched partridge. It’s not like you, Vered, to miss a word-trick like that.”
“Doesn’t miss many, does he?” Rauel asked with a silken smile. “When you get right down to it, in spite of what Bexan thinks, they’re all he really has.”
Vered lunged for him. Romuald Needler appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Vered. “Stop it! Everyone will hear you!”
�
��I don’t fuckin’ care!”
Alaen and Briuly seemed to be playing and singing very loudly all of a sudden.
“I know you wanted to introduce the new play tonight,” the manager soothed, skeletal hands still holding on like grim death to Vered’s shoulders. “But you have to give them something light, something cheerful. You owe them a good, stirring story, a play to have them—”
“To have them sleek and self-satisfied at the end?” Vered interrupted. “You mean like ‘Doorways’? Have them go home all cozy-minded and happy with their rotten little lives, and—”
“Vered!”
“Oh, Cade knows what I’m talking of, right enough! Angels forfend that anybody should leave the theater discontented after ‘Doorways’ shows them their lives are just perfect! Protect them from wanting anything more, anything better—”
“Shut it!” Mieka roared. “You smug sniveler—always moaning about how the greatness of your ideas gets lost in—”
“Boys, please!” begged Fairwalk.
Cade had hold of Mieka’s elbow. “Don’t, it’s all right, he doesn’t mean—”
“Yeh, he does! The only one who really knows how to do theater, ain’t he? That’s enough to make a cat laugh! Compared to you, he doesn’t know which end of the pen to write with!”
Vered laughed a short, sneering bark of a laugh. “Oh, and he’s the eminent arbiter now, is he? Tell me, Tinwhistle, do they have to explain the whole story to you every time, or can you actually, y’know, read?”
Cade growled, and now it was Mieka holding him back from giving Vered the thrashing he so obviously courted.
“I think that’s enough,” Chat said mildly. “Unless you have it in mind, Vered old man, for the Shadowshapers to copy Touchstone.” As Vered spluttered his outrage, Chat lifted one of his own glass baskets. His eyes were as cold as a wintry sea. “Because if you don’t shut up, I’ll shatter this right over your head.”
With a final snarl, Vered pointed at Rauel. “Here, we do it your way. Your withies, your play. At Trials, we do it mine.”
Mieka was dragged to the wings by Cade, with Rafe and Jeska carrying baskets and Fairwalk helping out with Rafe’s lectern. Safely in the tiring room, they heard the somewhat desperate call of, “The Shadowshapers!” and Rauel saying, “ ‘Piksey Ride,’ ” but Sakary was much too expert a fettler to allow even a tendril of the magic to go anyplace but out into the audience. So Touchstone sat, and gratefully drank, and listened to the laughing crowd.
At length, Briuly Blackpath observed, “Well, that was pleasant.”
Mieka nodded. “Wasn’t it just.” Restless, he rose and went looking for his brocade skirt and purple petticoats. Cade joined him after a brief consultation with Alaen.
“He’s got the hat,” Cade said, “but the rest is over in the wings other side of the stage. Beholden for the defense with Vered, but you were about to clout him a good one, and that wouldn’t be nice.”
Mieka snagged a wineglass from a passing servant girl and took a few swallows. “I owed you, for the help with the constables.”
“When did you and me start keeping score?”
A little snort of laughter escaped him. “We were good, weren’t we? Oughta work it up as an opening act!”
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look in that blouse?”
Batting his eyelashes, he cooed, “But I thought you liked me in pink!”
Cade pretended to look him over. “Well, at least it’s real, and not magic.”
“I’m a good boy, I am. I follows me orders.”
Cade’s turn to snort. “Oh, always. Everybody knows that.” His expression changed subtly before he said, “Don’t be too hard on Vered. He’s been pricking a lot of thorn lately. His wife’s sent in the legal papers. She wants a divorce.”
“And what does Vered want?”
“His wife and children in one house, his ladylove in another up the road, with him drifting between as the mood takes him. A settled home, and the freedom to do as he pleases. An ordinary life, and the life of a traveling player.” Cade gave a little shrug. “He wants what the rest of us want, I suppose. And, like the rest of us, being denied it makes him angry.”
“Vered ought to be growing up a bit, I think.”
“This from somebody who frisked in here wearing purple petticoats?”
Mieka refused to take the bait or succumb to the laughter in Cade’s eyes. “He didn’t have to take his temper out on you.”
A second shrug, both shoulders this time. “Doesn’t matter.” He paused, then said, “I only met her that one time… what do you think of her?”
Mieka considered. “I can tell you this. Her eyes look right through you, but not because she’s looking into you, if you get what I mean.”
“As if you’re not even there?”
“More like she knows you’re there but you’re of absolutely no importance so why should she waste her time and energy seeing you? I think the only person she bothers to see is Vered.”
Alaen approached, the green pancake hat in hand. “Where’d you find this thing, anyways?” he asked, grinning as he arranged it atop Mieka’s head. “Your lovely lady wife didn’t sew it, that’s for certain sure. A woman of taste and discretion—not to mention a sense of color!”
“Bought it off one of the girls on Chaffer Stroll. Had six different sorts of Hell convincing her that was all I wanted! How’s the lute been treating you? Fa has a couple new ones he’d be pleased to show you and Briuly.”
“We meant to come by around Wintering, but we had other things to do—thanks to Cayden, here.”
“So you went after the Rights.” Cade nodded approval.
“Sought, but didn’t find. Skipped a good-paying job at the Palace to do it, too.” He shook his head, reddish-brown curls bobbing. “There we were, right time, right place, freezing our balls off, and not a sliver of sunlight to be had all day long.”
“Well, that was the trouble, then,” Mieka said. “Next year, mayhap—”
“Next year?” Alaen laughed. “Never again! You’re mistaken, Cade, and there’s an end to it.”
“No, I’m not mistaken,” Cade said, voice very soft. All at once Mieka saw the satisfaction of a good performance and the fun of the little farce they’d enacted beforehand vanish from Cade’s gray eyes. Mieka knew what the trouble was. Cade wanted Alaen and Briuly, not the staggeringly rich Lord Oakapple, to have the Treasure, but more than that he wanted everyone to know how clever he was to have figured out the truth of it.
“You go look for it, then,” Alaen muttered. “Haring off to the provinces in the dead of winter, chasing after some delusion—”
Mieka was annoyed, or he wouldn’t have said it. “You’d know all about that sort of thing, wouldn’t you?”
Alaen turned crimson, then white to the lips. His fist clenched dangerously around the neck of his lute until his thumb slipped and a string thwanged. He realized what he was doing and, with a sharp curse, turned on his heel and stalked off.
Cade nudged Mieka with an elbow. “You’re making friends right and left tonight, aren’t you? What’s got you in a temper?”
“He’s got a nerve, talking of delusions. The times he’s shown up drunk or thorned to the tips of his ears at Hilldrop, whining over Chirene—it’s no great astonishment that his favorite of your plays is ‘Doorways.’ For that little while at the end, he can believe that she’s his.”
“And that’s what Vered objects to,” Cade said softly. “Give people what they want, if only for a moment. It’s not what I meant with that play, not at all.”
“I know.” All at once it was as if they were alone in Cade’s room high over Redpebble Square, or in his own little lair in the tower at Wistly Hall. “It’s about choosing. About being aware of the choices as you’re making them.”
“How much trouble would we be in, I wonder, if we changed it up a bit, and rather than give them the satisfaction of what they most desire, we—”
“—sl
ap them with the exact opposite? ‘This life, and none other’ as their worst nightmare instead of their sweetest dream?” Mieka shook his head. “Save that for something else, Quill. ‘Doorways’ makes one point. Use another play to make a different one.”
Thin shoulders twisted his discomfort, and before Mieka could say anything more Cade called to Briuly, halfway across the tiring room. Alaen’s cousin sauntered over, all spindly limbs and extravagant ears, fingers twiddling idly at his lute strings.
Cade wasted no time. “I hear you looked for the Rights at Wintering.”
“Still scraping the mud and cow shit off me boots to prove it!” He laughed the type of loud, strident laugh typical of a little too much greenthorn. And his eyes held something reckless and wild that made even Mieka want to take a step back. Then, voice lowering conspiratorially, he went on, “Been there twice, I have. Once with Alaen, and I just got back from a trip on me own.”
Cade was frowning his bewilderment. “But it’s the wrong time of year—”
“Quarterday.” He winked and played a few cascading triplets on his lute. “You think on it a bit of a while, eh? I’m off!”
“Quarterday?” Mieka echoed as he walked away. “What’s he mean by that?”
“Damned if I know. Come on, they’re finished out there and we’ll be asked to join them and the Sparks for some final bows.”
* * *
Mieka was still trying to think through the puzzle of Quarterdays a week later on the walk over to Redpebble Square. It was a hike from Wistly, but he wanted the fresh air, the exercise, and the chance to hang about the streets of Gallantrybanks. All the months Touchstone spent on the Circuit, the nights onstage, the days going back and forth to Hilldrop, the time he spent there with his wife and daughter (and mother-in-law, still), meant that he had few opportunities to wander the city. He missed the noise and the colors, the bustle and the scurry. But he couldn’t stroll about the way he used to. He wasn’t anonymous anymore, not with Touchstone’s placards up all over. Every other block someone called out from loading a wagon or frustling a display of goods.