by Melanie Rawn
He said none of that, however. What he did say was, “You were at Coldkettle for the wedding as an invited guest, not extra help.”
“How clever of you to work that out.”
“Another of my endearing qualities. And at Lilyleaf you really were on holiday, but not because you’d saved and scrimped for it.” He nodded to her shoes. “A barmaid couldn’t pay for those with three months of what she makes in wages and trimmings. And please do forgive me for mentioning it, but those pretty green sparklies hanging from your earlobes aren’t cut crystal.” With a little shrug of apology, he added, “Knowing a glasscrafter, one notices these things.”
“Of course. I’d expect nothing less.” She eyed him sidelong. “But you’d still like to know how I know Croodle.”
“Hadn’t got that far yet,” he admitted. “I circled back to that young boy and his sister what you were protecting that night at the Keymarker.”
“Children of my father’s friends. They were at a Court banquet that night. The children slipped away, just as I told you. If I hadn’t gone along with them, they’d only have got into trouble. They’ve done it before. And working as a barmaid, I wouldn’t have to bother with trousers and boy’s clothing.”
“A Court banquet is work?”
“Ever been to one?” she challenged.
“Several,” he replied breezily, not adding that all three of them (three was the same as several, wasn’t it?) had been in the Princess’s country, and Touchstone had sat with those who couldn’t in decency be relegated to the servants hall.
“They’re work,” Megs said grimly.
“And that night was another chance to escape and have a little fun.”
“If you think it’s fun to block all that magic you hurl about like a nobleman strewing coins on Beggarly Day—”
“Tell me about Croodle.”
Again she smiled, and again he thought that she really ought to do it more often. “She knows who I am, of course. The official me. My father took me to Lilyleaf when I was thirteen, and being a good, dutiful child, I promptly ran off to play and got myself lost. Croodle was out taking the air, and we got to talking, and she brought me back to her inn. She sent to my father and he came himself to fetch me. She refused the purse he wanted to give her as a reward. That impressed him, as you may imagine. So he got her the contract for each of the Circuits. She applied for it, she earned it, and it only took a nudge from my father to secure it.”
“If you’re the reason we all eat, drink, and sleep at Croodle’s, then every one of us is eternally beholden to you.”
“It nearly didn’t happen,” she told him, frowning. “She’s from the Islands. There are Dark Elves nearly as black as she is, but from the way some of the commissioners talked…” She ended with a shrug. “They put it about that they were concerned because she doesn’t have any magic, and they like to place the players with someone who has at least a little, to make them feel at home. Lord and Lady, what twaddle!”
Mieka snorted. “Remind me to tell you sometime about what happened to us on our very first Winterly. The innkeeper had a misliking for Elves. Let’s just say I wasn’t welcomed with open arms, a flagon of his finest, and the key to his daughter’s bedchamber.” And he reminded himself to hide the black powder better on this year’s Royal, because the road would take them by that inn and Mieka owed the snarge a brief visit. “You go see Croodle whenever you’re in town?”
“That I do.”
He nodded his approval of her choice in friends. “Now that we’ve tidied up your past, what of your future? Seems to me you’ve two choices. Become a Steward and break your father’s heart, or wed some flutch of a frustling nobleman and break your own.”
“Flutch? And I had to explain to you what a mathom is?”
“Y’know,” he observed thoughtfully, “you’re almost as good at avoiding an issue as Cayden is.”
“Very well, then, what did you have in mind for my future?”
He only smiled. “You mentioned the Princess, and an ask.”
Megs folded her hands tightly together. “She wants,” she said with a barely repressed excitement, “Touchstone to give a private performance. Except that she also wants everybody to know about it.”
He mulled that over. “The King gave her a duchy when she got pregnant. He must be in raptures, now that the Prince is born.”
“He is. He’ll give her anything she wants. Everybody knows he waited years for Ashgar to marry and provide an heir. King Meredan is there in the nursery ten times a day. He’s as proud as if he carried the child and gave birth to him himself.” She broke off and twisted her fingers together.
“Your father,” he said softly, with an insight he felt worthy of Cade, “envies him.”
“That’s my business, not yours. Well? Would you be willing? Sometime before the Royal Circuit begins, mayhap? You’d come directly to the Palace, right through the front gates, no sneaking about the way they do at Seekhaven—even though everybody knows the so-called secrecy is all pretense.”
“You mean some upstanding self-righteous cullion of a guardsman might try to stop us?” He laughed. “I’d purely love to see them try!”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Have to ask me mates first, but I don’t see any problem.” He hesitated, then said, “What she just did for Blye, that’s a huge thing, y’know.”
“She wanted to come herself. But once I told her I’d met Touchstone—”
“Does she know you want to be a Steward?”
A slow, sly smile touched her lips. “She wishes she had magic herself.”
He whistled soundlessly. That was a change from her attitude back on the Continent.
It occurred to him that they now had several good friends at Court. Lady Megueris, Lady Vrennerie and her husband, the Princess herself—Lady Jaspiela would be giddy with the possibilities. And he knew without even thinking about it that it was a thing he wouldn’t be mentioning to his mother-in-law.
“Name the night for the show at the Palace,” he said. “Though ’tis a pity that any woman who wants to view a play can’t do so right out in the open.” Turning to look at her, remembering his own triumph at the Downstreet, an idea began to form in his mind. Not just clever, not just mad; a scathingly—nay, gloriously—brilliant idea. He fell instantly in love with it, even though he knew Cade would seriously consider killing him.
“It’s ridiculous,” Megs was saying heatedly. “Everybody knows that women sneak into theaters and taverns dressed as men all the time. All the Circuits play private shows where women are present—the New Halt Charity League, for instance, that’s a whole audience of nothing but women—it’s hypocritical and stupid and—”
“P’rhaps we might do something about that.” He paused, glanced out the window, inspected his fingernails, then twisted halfway round in the seat to look directly into her puzzled green eyes. “Tell me, Your Ladyship, have you ever seen the Shadowshapers onstage?”
* * *
The next week found Touchstone back in their wagon, traveling to and from engagements at country estates outside Gallantrybanks. Mieka was just as glad to be gone from town, where he could let slip to no one else what he and Lady Megs were plotting. Jinsie had been included, because Blye needed somebody to plan with, and Blye had been the first person he told because she’d never been caught out yet at one of their shows, and of course that meant Jedris had to be in on it. Mieka spoke in private to Jeska, who was apprehensive and enthusiastic in equal measure—mainly eager, because it gave him something to think about other than Kazie, who had returned to Lilyleaf without giving him an answer one way or another. Mieka confidently expected a marriage; Rafe was of the opinion that Kazie was much too smart to accept the likes of Jeska; Cade asked that if that were indeed the case, then why in the world had Crisiant, who was more than usually intelligent and perceptive, married Rafe? Jeska was simply too depressed to join in the teasing. So Mieka cheered him up with the prospect of performing of
f the stage.
He told him about it during a rest stop for the horses, taking the masquer aside for a little stroll through the soft spring rain. He didn’t want Cade or Rafe knowing just yet. Jeska had the same sort of objections the other two would have—the chance of being arrested, the risk of general outrage from a public that heretofore had supported them, the possibility that Miriuzca’s influence was not what Megs and Mieka thought it was and the scandalized King would order his Master of Revelries to uninvite Touchstone from Trials and thereby ruin their career. But Mieka needed him for his skills at portraying women, and Jeska’s heart wasn’t really in his protests anyways. He was at that stage in a love affair when anything that provided distraction from his frets was welcome. Once Kazie accepted him, he would become rational again. But until she did, he was ripe for any wayward outrageous notion that took his mind off her.
The rain eased by noon. They arrived under cloudless skies at Whitecrag Castle just in time for tea with the lord’s wife and four doe-eyed daughters. The evening promised to be gorgeous, so rather than cramp themselves into the great hall for the performance, Touchstone played “Dragon” in the courtyard. And if the ladies had to hide behind curtained windows upstairs to witness the show, Mieka vowed it would be the last time any of them would have to do so.
When they got back home to Gallybanks, he had to tell the Shadowshapers. It was, after all, their show Mieka would be disrupting. Vered was all for it, and suggested that Bexan join them. Rauel dithered for a few minutes before saying that he agreed, but leave his wife out of it. Sakary only remarked that if this worked, the Downstreet would have to be rebuilt yet again to accommodate all the new theater patrons. Chat rolled his eyes and said that if clothing in larger sizes was needed, the gowns his wife wore during her pregnancies were at present available.
“But you’ll have to stuff the bodices with half a petticoat each side,” he added innocently. “She gets a bit chesty when she’s in pig.”
The Princess’s invitation arrived one pleasant spring afternoon, sent to Lord Kearney Fairwalk’s Gallantrybanks residence. This brought His Lordship to the Threadchaser bakery off Beekbacks at a gallop (not his horses, which was illegal on city streets, but himself, right out of his carriage and through the front door into the parlor). Touchstone had gathered for a quick run-through for a show that night. That it was not in Fairwalk’s power to surprise them with the news of a command performance came as close to annoying His Lordship as Mieka had ever seen. He kept clearing his throat, running his fingers through his limp, sandy hair, and pacing the carpet, despite the kind urgings of Rafe’s mother to sit, take his ease, and do please have some tea and muffins.
But a surprise did arrive when they were halfway through “The Princess and the Deep Dark Well.” Mieka’s sister Jinsie showed up, with Mieka’s wife at her side.
“Oh, lovely! I was hoping we weren’t too late to see you working!”
“Shh!” Jinsie hissed. “Don’t ever interrupt!”
Mieka heard this through his self-created haze of magic and Rafe’s fine-tuning of it and Jeska’s recitation of the dialogue. Even though the strength of it was nowhere near what they’d use onstage, no glisker simply shut it all down without following a procedure learned before he was allowed even to hold a withie. They were professionals; they kept on with the piece, unfaltering. But through that odd connection of his with Cade through these withies, the ones fashioned almost three years ago by Cade’s own hand and breath, the ones he almost always used for rehearsals, Mieka sensed a flare of something far more dangerous than annoyance.
It happened sometimes, this spark of Cade’s immediate emotions even though the withies had been primed hours earlier. As “Deep Dark Well” drew towards its conclusion, the same thing happened again, only this time Cade was furious.
When the wisps of magic had faded from the Threadchaser parlor, Mieka saw that their audience, originally just Fairwalk, Rafe’s mother, and Crisiant, who all knew to stay silently in their chairs, now included not just the two young Windthistle ladies but also Lady Jaspiela.
Mieka busied himself with stashing the spent withies into their velvet bag. He had no ambition in the world to become part of whatever confrontation was about to occur.
He had underestimated Mistress Threadchaser. “Welcome, Your Ladyship. What a delicious gown! That shade of apricot suits you completely. Tea all round, I think,” she said heartily. “Mistress Windthistle—both of you!—do come help me choose some dainties from the bakery. Your Ladyship and Your Lordship will excuse us, I hope?” And she hustled the two young women towards the kitchen, with Crisiant following, tall and elegant and wry-faced, behind.
Tea and pastries for ten would take quite a while, Mieka supposed, giving his wife a smile as she went past. She was wide-eyed with sudden nerves and trying not to show it, poor darling. She wasn’t shrewd enough in the complexities of social interaction to know that Mistress Threadchaser had just presented Cade with enough time to settle his mother down from whatever high dudgeon she’d come in with.
And lofty it was, indeed. She ignored Fairwalk’s stammering civilities and tossed an unfolded, unsealed page of parchment at Cade’s feet. “Kindly explain.”
He leaned down, plucked it off the floor. It trailed blue and silver ribbons. Mieka realized that it hadn’t been just Fairwalk who received the invitation; a duplicate would be waiting for Jeska at his lodgings, and probably a footman was even now trying to find the Threadchaser bakery. Delivery to Wistly Hall had undoubtedly caused the stir that brought his wife and Jinsie. “From the Princess,” Cayden said.
“It’s an invitation!” Fairwalk burst in. “For a private performance! At the Palace!”
Lady Jaspiela favored him with a flickering glance of pure venom. “That is readily discernible from the briefest glimpse at the letter. What I wish to know, Cayden, is how this came about and what you plan to do about it.”
Mieka ditched his resolve not to join in. “Well, y’see, Your Ladyship, it was her very own idea. Really truly!” he assured her as her dark eyes widened involuntarily. “That day a fortnight or so ago, when Blye got the Gift of the Gloves—you’ll have heard about that, and isn’t it wondrous? The very first in the Kingdom!” His beaming smile invited her to be magnanimous and approve Blye’s good fortune; for the first time in his experience, she resisted him. Oh, shit, he thought, and during a half-second’s pause debated whether reining back the charm would be preferable to urging it to a full gallop. “Anyways, the lady-in-waiting who delivered the Gloves, she asked for my escort back to the Palace”—he was careful not to give this lady a name—“and she said the Princess had a mind to a private performance, not like at Seekhaven where the ladies all gather at midnight at the Pavilion—oh, in strictest secrecy, of course, and we never say anything about it even though it’s impossible not to know we’re playing to hundreds of ladies, but you know how some people are at Court, jibbering and jabbering out of turn.”
Whatever he was selling, she still wasn’t buying. Cade took over. Bless him.
“What Mieka might get to eventually, Mother, is that Princess Miriuzca is of a mind to treat her ladies to a performance by her favorite players, to express her gratitude for their kindness and care of her and Prince Roshlin.”
“It’s an honor,” Fairwalk began.
“She couldn’t simply buy them presents?” Lady Jaspiela asked icily. “This is out of the question.”
Cade’s eyebrows tried to make contact with his hairline. Mieka gulped. Rafe went to hold the door open for Crisiant, who came in with a tray laden with a teapot—the good one, flowery porcelain instead of plain pottery ware—and lots of stacked cups and saucers, none of which matched. Mieka hid an untimely grin, for he knew that for their wedding, Rafe and Crisiant had received a complete tea service for twelve. For all her forthrightness in almost everything, Crisiant also had means of making her opinion known without saying a single word.
“Your exploit at the Downstreet perfo
rmance was offensive enough,” Lady Jaspiela continued, and now Mieka knew why she had developed an immunity to him. “The Archduchess is in a very delicate condition and she was scandalized beyond words. I heard her say so myself.”
“We read about it in the Court Circular,” Cade said. “We’d been wondering who tipped off the reporters.”
The implication that it had been Her Ladyship who had spoken to something so low and vulgar as a reporter was a thrown gauntlet she refused to pick up. “What Her Grace and the rest of the Court will think of this is past imagining. Of course, the King will not allow it to happen—”
“Then I wonder why Your Ladyship has exercised herself in the matter,” Crisiant said smoothly.
Lady Jaspiela was so taken aback that she simply stared at this nobody who had the cheek to say such a thing to her.
“Oh, I think it’s rather obvious,” Cade told Crisiant. “She took the trouble to come all the way over here so she could be seen to order us not to accept, and in front of witnesses. But tell me, Mother, which would be worse? To go along with the Princess’s affront to protocol and tradition, or to refuse a Royal command?”
“Refuse—?” Fairwalk somehow managed not to swallow his own tongue and teeth. “There’s surely no question of—I mean to say, don’t you know, it’s not done to refuse—”
“And why not?” Lady Jaspiela snapped, thoroughly goaded now. “To decline—politely but firmly—would be to show yourselves decent, morally minded young men—”
“In spite of our sordid profession,” Rafe murmured.
“—who know better than to overset all propriety—”
“Mother!” Cade exclaimed, gray eyes glinting merrily. “Surely not all propriety! We’re good, verging on great, but that would be beyond even our talents!”
“—by acceding to the whims of this little nobody—”