by Melanie Rawn
“That’s a pity,” the Prince replied, flashing his mother’s smile. “I was hoping for some practical advice. There’s a perfectly terrifying old wardrobe in my rooms, about ten feet high and ten feet wide, and it’s just begging to be redesigned. From everything I’ve ever heard, Sir Mieka is just the man for the work!”}
“What’re you all grinagog about?” Rafe muttered as they freed the wagon’s left rear wheel from the muck.
“The prospect,” Cade told him, “of getting back in the wagon and getting warm.”
Arriving many hours beyond the expected time, they were welcomed to Shellery House with glad exclamations and a dinner made up fresh at ten in the evening by a Trollwife who, far from grumbling and grumping about the trouble they’d made for her, greeted them with the news that her great-aunt Mirdley had warned her to treat these boys right or else.
“Our Mistress Mirdley is your great-aunt?” Cade couldn’t help but say.
“More or less,” Mistress Gesha said with a shrug. “It’s been a bit of a tangled while. Most Trolls are related to each other, or claim to be.” She pointed to the small mountain of mussels set before each man. “Eat!”
They woke the next morning in a comfortable room overlooking the sea. Almost all the rooms, Cade found, overlooked the sea and the small fleet of fishing boats that plied the ocean and smaller craft that tended the lobster pots. Many generations ago, a previous Lord Mindrising had used the fallen stones of a very old castle to build a rambling house that undulated along the cliffs. Facing the courtyard was a long, narrow two-storied hall with a set of stairs at each end and one set in the middle. These led up to a gallery set with a dozen or more doors into the bedchambers and private rooms of the house. Only this upper floor was all of a level; the lower, more public rooms featured a few steps either up or down as the original foundations dictated. It was odd and rather charming, but not one member of Touchstone could figure out exactly where they would be performing.
Lady Megs showed them. Her presence was a surprise to Cade; he’d expected she’d stay in Gallantrybanks with the Princess and the new little Prince, as she had during Trials. But here she was, dirty-blond braid and all, dressed in a simple brown skirt and tan shirt, a turquoise scarf tied loosely around her throat. Cade finally knew why she kept wearing a color that so obviously did not become her: the family arms featured a black arrow on a turquoise background.
“You’ll have to decide for yourselves, of course,” she told them as they walked outside, past the courtyard and along a pathway paved in a chevron pattern of gray and brown bricks. “But it’s the only place that will accommodate everyone in comfort and provide you with a backdrop.”
Cade was just itching to say, In your professional opinion, of course, but wisely held his tongue.
Their destination was a lighthouse atop an outcropping of rock. The base of it had obviously once been part of the earlier castle; a hundred feet of solid stone, a hundred feet wide, with only one entrance set halfway up the wall. Back then, wooden stairs would have led up to the door, easy to burn down once everyone was shut up tight in the tower during an enemy attack. Now there were brick steps—steep ones—and a wooden platform with a balustrade outside the door. Rising another hundred or so feet was a more modern tower made of the same gray and brown bricks. The top was open for twenty feet beneath the roof to let the light shine out.
“Like a gigantic candle in a stone holder,” Jeska said, tilting his head back to look. “How often is it lighted?”
“Every night in winter,” Megs replied. “And other times, when it’s foggy or stormy. We use Wizardfire.”
“Not Elf-light? Not like in streetlamps?”
“It’s yellowy gold. Wizardfire is blue.”
As if that explained anything.
But then Cade remembered the purplish-gold light conjured by the old man that called up the vodabeists in the Vathis River, and wondered if the gold of Elf-light attracted them as well, and if they were indifferent to the blue fire of a Wizard. What had the old man said to Mieka? Looking at his ears, saying, “Kin”—was there something about the nature of light created by an Elf that differed in more than color from Wizardfire? Yet hadn’t it been Cade’s use of magic, Wizard’s magic, that had disturbed the monsters, unsettling them so much that final night on the river?
Passing by the Academy had put Master Emmot back into his thoughts, where the old man hadn’t been in months. Would Emmot have known about such things? And if he had, would he have told Cayden about them?
Rafe paced off the dimensions of the paved forecourt and pronounced it acceptable. Mieka decided to set up the glass baskets to one side, and use the stone wall as his backdrop, just as Megs had suggested. Workmen were already setting up benches and chairs, and standing torches here and there, for they would be doing the show at night. This was a rarity for Touchstone. They’d played outdoor venues before, but not often in the dark.
On the walk back to the house, Cade asked Megs about the Princess.
“Blooming, glowing, and quite pleased with herself,” said Her Ladyship, grinning. “She had so much fun that night at the Downstreet!”
“I would imagine that Prince Ashgar is beginning to wonder what happened to his meek and charming little golden mouse.”
“Oh, he is, that. There’s a look in his eyes these days, for certes. He put a good face on it, attending that night when you and the Shadowshapers and Crystal Sparks played for her and the ladies at the Keeps, but he could play the proud husband much better if she were somebody else’s wife!”
“Tell me, my lady,” he said with a delicate emphasis on the title, “how can one be so forthright about other people—” His hesitation was right out of one of Jeska’s performances, and created the same effect. Her smile was gone by the time he finished. “—And yet so evasive about oneself?”
“I didn’t lie!”
“Not that I recall.”
“If I’d told you who I really am, would you have believed it?”
“You might have said something, y’know.”
“And been laughed at, even more than you laughed at me for wanting to be a Steward?”
“Laughter at my ambition to become a tregetour was the least of the reactions I got.” He paused, then said with a sidelong smile, “Knolltender isn’t bad as a punning alias.”
She seemed relieved to be discussing something other than herself. “Mindrising is an old Gnomish name, truth to tell. Anciently, Gnomes were given lands all round the country, marking the limits of the Kingdom. Your Lord Fairwalk’s ancestor, for instance. His name is one of the oldest, because his holding is so close to Gallantrybanks. As Albeyn expanded, Gnomish families were sent farther and farther out. Sometimes Gnomish names are mistaken for those that describe a particular place, but they’re really gnomons, markers, indicators of the Royal lands.”
“And you’re a scholar as well. Tell me, how did you come to be so good at serving drinks?”
Any other highborn girl would have blushed with embarrassment that he knew she’d demeaned herself to become a barmaid, or with fury that he dared mention it at all. Megs looked him in the eyes and said, “I can be at a tavern without having to dress up in men’s clothing. I can watch the fettlers at work. And,” she finished, “my father owns a half interest in the Keymarker, so I can go there anytime I like.” With that, she walked off.
He was watching her, musing idly on the difference between the charm of a woman’s rustling skirts and the interest of a woman’s legs in trousers, when Rafe came up beside him.
“Learn anything from the Elf about that blossom on his jaw? It’s fading, but it must’ve been a sight to see when fresh.” When Cade only shrugged in reply, Rafe persisted, “After the garden show at the Keeps he went back to Hilldrop. One might assume they said their farewells rather less than tenderly.”
“Not our business.”
“True,” Rafe admitted. “But she’s got a fist on her wrist, that’s for certain sure.”
They played “Hidden Cottage” that night, the silly version complete with Mieka’s beloved pig. The residents of the estate and the inhabitants of the three nearby villages were still howling with laughter as they made their torchlit way home. Cade was feeling pleased with himself in particular and the world in general. There had been dozens and dozens of women at the performance, a little scared at first and looking to their young Lady Megueris for reassurance. Before Touchstone came on, she and her father circulated amongst the crowd, greeting everyone by name. They made sure people were comfortable on the benches and called occasionally for a pillow to be brought out from the house for this or that elderly person. The Mindrisings, Cade gathered, were universally adored.
Touchstone was served a late supper upstairs in a private parlor, just the four of them after the maids had brought platters of local shellfish and bread still warm from the oven. Mistress Gesha came in to collect empty plates and leave another two bottles of wine, mentioned that Yazz was already tucked up in bed, and recommended an early start tomorrow for Shollop. When the door closed behind her, Cade refilled his wineglass and settled back to relax and enjoy the rest of the evening.
Mieka, who had accounted for two of the bottles all by himself, suddenly turned to Jeska and asked, “Tell me, old thing, how would you like to fuck my wife?”
Cade stopped breathing.
“She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, yeh?” Mieka persisted. “Doesn’t everybody say so? The most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen.” He waited for an answer, then challenged, “What man wouldn’t want to fuck her?”
If the masquer said yes, he’d be admitting lust for Mieka’s wife. If he said no, Mieka would demand to know why in all Hells not, or go into some sneering rant about Jeska’s manhood. Cade froze, expecting an explosion that was as certain as striking flint to a pile of black powder.
But Jeska had been trained to nimbleness of wit, and just as he sometimes had to do within a play, he found a way out of it.
“It’s not question of like or want or would,” he said calmly, “but of could. As Rafe has said a good few times, I can’t get it up without the smell of hay and horseshit, and your lady wife is certainly not the class of woman a man takes to a barn.”
Mieka roared with laughter and the moment passed and everybody relaxed. Yet it nagged at Cade, the reason for the outrageous question. And then he remembered the business card from the Finchery, and it occurred to him that Mieka must still be wondering just why she would have such a thing in the first place. Cade thought that the issue had been settled, that he’d accepted the explanation that she wanted something to use when he was drunk or thorned and lost his temper—and Cade had seen enough in Elsewhens to know that violence was indeed more than possible in the futures. He hadn’t been all that surprised, truly, when Mieka showed up with that bruise. But he hadn’t realized that Mieka would keep mulling over the why of that folded Finchery card as Cade had done. He’d been hoping that the visit to the Ginnel House shelter had served its purpose, and shocked Mieka enough that he would never raise a hand to his wife again. But the contemplative bitterness, accentuated by thorn, in those changeable eyes when he’d asked Jeska, “What man wouldn’t want to fuck her?” frightened Cade. There was never any telling what Mieka might do when drunk or thornlost.
Talk started up again on uncomplicated topics: the long drive to Shollop over the next few days and whether it was more or less tedious than the even longer trip to Dolven Wold Road; relief that this year they’d refused the invitation to play at the sinister mansion outside New Halt; whose turn it would be tomorrow night to empty the wagon’s slops. Cade didn’t join in. He was thinking about what a contrast Shellery House was to Castle Eyot. Lord Mindrising was not an indiscriminate collector, like Lord Rolon Piercehand, but a discerning selector of fine, fascinating, beautiful objects. The floor of this very room was demonstration of his taste. At Castle Eyot, one walked on intricate tiled mosaics and costly marbles inlaid in dizzying patterns. Here, where storms would blow in all winter and half the spring off the Flood and the North Deeps, the floorboards had been painted as if sunlight were perpetually shining in through the windows. It was as much fool-the-eye as Mieka’s riotous gaiety that evening.
Jeska and then Rafe departed for their rooms. Cade lingered because Mieka lingered, and because somebody had to make sure he actually made it to his assigned bed.
“I didn’t hit her.”
Cade sat up straighter in his chair.
“I know you’ve been wonderin’. And she’s not the one as gave me this.” He gestured to his jaw, where the bruise was by now almost gone. “Not that she didn’t want to. Not that I didn’t want to.” He stared into his nearly empty glass and said softly, “She sewed me a yellow shirt.”
When he glanced up, Cade said, “And you reacted… badly.”
“She couldn’t’ve known. But it set me all wrong, y’see, and then that wretched foxling of hers damned near bit me, and after that she was all in a mistemper that there’d been no invitation for her to our show at the Keeps.”
“Oh.”
“Met the Princess, she has,” he went on in a nasty whine. “Talked with Her Royal Highness, she has. Sent her a pretty little pillow for the baby’s head, she did. As much right as anybody and more than most.” He finished his drink and reached for the bottle. It was empty. He sat there gripping it by the neck as he said, “That was when the third party showed up.”
“And he was the one who hit you.”
“Only because I hit him first.” Mieka snorted. “Don’t tell me it was stupid. I know it was stupid. Big strapping young muscly rustic, come by to check on what her mother wants by way of gardening done to pay for their secret, he says. A dress for his sister’s wedding, to surprise her.”
“But you thought it was something different.”
“Fuckin’ right I did! So would you, after half an hour of ‘I don’t mean anything to you anymore’ and ‘I have to go to Gallantrybanks to see you’ and ‘even when you’re home, you’re never really here’ and ‘so bored I could scream’ and ‘you think more about your next show than you do about me’ and—” He finally paused for breath. “And ‘Touchstone means more to you than I do.’ ”
Cade knew instantly what Mieka’s real problem was: His wife had spoken the truth.
“So when he winked at her and said to keep their secret, I had a swing at him. I’m tellin’ you, Cade, he was a head taller than me, all bulges in his arms from shoveling shit, and as purely and boringly Human as any Human ever born. I knew it was stupid even when I was doin’ it. But you know what really did it for me? The look in his eyes. Like he was doin’ me a favor because if we really got to slugging, he’d have to hurt me or I’d hurt meself. Like he felt sorry for me.” He shook the empty bottle as if it might have magically refilled in the last few minutes. Then he hurled it against the wall. “Me!”
Cade thought it likely that Mieka had mistaken the reason for the young farmer’s pity. Not because a slight-boned little Elf was no match for a hefty Human in a brawl, but because he had everything a man could want and still wasn’t happy.
As if Mieka had heard a partial echo of the thought, he said, “I give her everything she wants! I married her and gave her a child and a house and clothes and jewelry and her silly blue tassels on the curtains and everything she asks for and a shitload of things she doesn’t and I give them to her because I love her! I even let her Gods-damned mother live at the house! What more does she want?”
Cade had no answer for him. Or, rather, he had too many answers that Mieka wouldn’t want to hear. He settled for the obvious. “Fidelity, perhaps?”
“She’s the only girl I’ve ever loved and the only girl I will ever love. What’s it matter if I fuck half the girls in Albeyn, as long as I come home to her and love her and—”
“Women tend to see these things a bit differently than men do,” he ventured. And it was odd, but in a way he agreed with Mieka. The
betrayals of the flesh meant little compared to the betrayals of the heart, the mind, the soul.
“All I know is that seeing her with another man—”
“She wasn’t with another man. You know that. But if you keep on as you’re going, she might start to think about it, just to make you take notice. Like with that card from the Finchery.”
“She put her hand up to her cheek, y’know. Just like I thought she would. To remind me what I did. But I didn’t, Quill. I swear I didn’t. I never will again.”
“I know,” he said softly. But Mieka didn’t hear him, for he had succumbed to three—or was it four?—bottles of wine and slumped down in his chair, loose-limbed and senseless.
Cade sat there contemplating him in silence until a gentle scratching at the door made him glance round. A maidservant tiptoed in, glancing about her, and nodded to herself when she saw the green glass shards over by the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Cade said, and heard the thickness of his voice, and decided it was time he went to bed, too.
“You’re Touchstone, ain’t you?” the girl said with a quick smile, and went out again, presumably to fetch a broom.
Yes, they were Touchstone. They shattered glass for a living. It was probably time that they stopped.
Mieka revived enough to take a few steps on his own as Cade helped him to his room. He saw the Elf safely on his bed, if not actually in it, and went down the hall to his own bedchamber.
But he couldn’t sleep. Waiting for him on a low table was a large, flat package. Imagings of Touchstone collectively and each of them individually, sent by Kearney Fairwalk for their approval before being printed up on placards. There were several of them all together, two each of Rafe and Jeska, four of Mieka. Only one of Cade himself had been deemed fit for public viewing. This didn’t surprise him. What was a trifle astonishing was that he looked rather good, with his longish hair and high-necked white shirt, Derien’s little silver falcon pinned at his throat.
He spread the imagings of Mieka out across the table. I know what you will look like, he thought. I know that there are doors you might choose where youth and whimsical beauty will decay and the misery will weigh on you like whole mountains of wrong. I know that inside other doorways, your hair will turn gray and your face will be lined but you’ll be wearing a diamond in your ear and you’ll be happy. I know what you will look like and what you will become. What I don’t know is how any of it will happen.