by Melanie Rawn
Mieka fell back in his chair, appalled. For the first time in his life, he regretted his atrocious career as a scholar. He should have known these things, he told himself, he should have listened.
“I bought myself back years ago.” The dark blue eyes slanted a look at Mieka. “How old d’you think I am? You’d be—what, eighteen, nineteen?”
“Um … eighteen this summer, but don’t tell anybody.”
A brief smile angled across his face. “I’m thirty in a month. Most people guess early twenties, and being Elves, we all of us look the same and young for years and years without even trying. But it took me from sixteen to twenty-four, saving enough to buy myself back.” He contemplated his glass again, brows twitching. “I expect those years will show up with a vengeance once I start to age like the rest of our folk.” He glanced over at Mieka and shrugged. “You’d best be getting back if you’re to be leaving today—and I soundly recommend leaving before the Archduke’s fingers start scrabbling for you.”
“I—yeh, I should go—” He stumbled to his feet. “See you back in Gallytown, then.”
“Safe going.”
He left his friend solemnly drinking in the dappled sunlight of the garden, and walked back along the river only dimly aware of where he was. When he caught sight of the twin spires of the High Chapel where everyone was supposed to attend worship again tomorrow, he hesitated a moment, then shook his head. He would find nothing there, no information and no counsel. There were the self-consciously splendid windows and self-congratulatory sculptures, and nothing that spoke to him at all.
Because what he was thinking was not that if this foreign tour scheme occurred he and everyone like him would be seen as freaks, nor that it would be dangerous to perform in places where Wizards and Elves and Goblins and other magical folk were reviled, nor even how horrifying it was that people had been chased out of their homes and countries under threat of death. What Mieka was wondering was why, if the king during what Chat had called the First Escaping had been part Wizard, he had done nothing to stop it.
Quill would be able to tell him what to make of all this. Quill enjoyed anguishing himself about such things. And with an abrupt insight into a mind that had intrigued him from the start, Mieka knew that once Quill thought about it, he’d not be writing sympathetic lines about living up to one’s forefathers but instead would make each prince of dubious legend speak about striving to be better than his ancestors had been.
Turning from the cold and lofty symbol of Wizardly devotions, he hurried back to the inn. The chaos of departure had happened without him: everyone else had done all the packing, and a sprightly two-horse rig was almost loaded. The landlord was happily thumbing through voucher chits that would gain him money without his having to provide further room and board. Mistress Luta stood by with their hamper, and by her grunt as she hefted it into the carriage she had accounted for most of the vouchers anyway. Jeska was saying their farewells to the landlord’s wife, and Rafe was already inside and fussing with the window latches. Cayden stepped down from the carriage, scowling, then caught sight of Mieka and waved.
“Late as always! We were about to leave without you.”
“Never,” he replied, giving the horses a wide berth as he jogged up to the rig. “What would you do for entertainment along the way?”
“You—you must be Master Windthistle,” said a voice nearby, and he turned to find a Gnomish little man with too much sandy, curling hair regarding him with dark eyes that blinked too often. “I’m Kearney Fairwalk. I hope—I do so much hope we’ll have a chance to talk, back in town, don’t you see.”
He supposed he really ought to accustom himself to being called Master Windthistle, and not feel he ought to be looking round for his father or one of his uncles or brothers. He was a player on the Winterly now. He had performed before the King and Court. He was a part of something worth being part of. “Uh—pleasure,” he managed, wondering where his manners had gone, his glibness. There was something odd about this man; he knew it without knowing how he knew it. But perhaps he was being foolish, spooked by Chattim’s tales of noblemen who bought groups of players or forced magical folk into exile. From somewhere he dredged up a smile and a bow. “Yes, of course, looking forward to a good long conversation—”
“Mieka!” Rafe bellowed. “Get in here!”
Cade stood aside as Jeska climbed into the carriage, then came forward to shake Mieka by the scruff of the neck. “Now!” was all he said, but the shake was affectionate, and Mieka grimaced an apology at His Lordship before scrambling into the rig.
There was barely room for the four of them. The hamper of food and the empty whiskey barrel were on the floor. Mieka propped his feet on the latter and look around at what would be his home for the next long, wearying while. Surprised by the softness of the dark blue leather upholstery, impressed by the ornate wrought iron firepocket (even though they wouldn’t need its warmth), he was delighted by the rack of glassware and bottles—and amazed by the shelf of books, each one bound in blue leather and stamped in gold with a design of oak leaves.
“His Lordship’s own rig,” Jeska affirmed. “We’ve hired him.”
Mieka leaned out the open door of the carriage to call out his gratitude, but forgot his manners again as Cade bent down to hear whatever it was Fairwalk was saying to him. He could see only Cade’s long, thin back, but the nobleman’s face was turned upwards and there was a look in his dark eyes that Mieka recognized instantly. He’d seen it directed at himself, from men and boys and women and girls alike, since he was fourteen years old.
Not that it shocked him. He didn’t care one way or the other what anybody else did in bed. But another flashing instinct told him that Cayden would never identify it for what it was. For all his learning and his brilliance, Quill was rather touchingly innocent in many ways.
Which reminded him of something else Cade was innocent about, and he looked round the carriage. “Where’s me things?”
“Luggage boot.” Rafe eyed him knowingly. “You’ll have to settle for drinking Lord Fairwalk’s liquor.”
Mieka gave a shrug, annoyed that Rafe had guessed so accurately that he’d been looking for his wrapped roll of thorn. “Fine by me—but I hope the rest of you don’t get thirsty.”
Chapter 15
“Earliest we get there is dawn tomorrow,” said Lord Fairwalk’s coachman, “so you might’s well relax. His Lordship’s orders are to get you to Redpebble Square as quick as may be, and that’s what I’ll be doing. We stop for naught but changing horses. No pissing out the windows—splash the paint, and you’ll be licking this rig clean with your own tongues. Need the garderobe, you’ll have about five minutes—His Lordship keeps his own horses at the post stations, and the ostlers know to be quick about the changings. The seats fold down into a nice big bed if you’ve a mind to stretch out and don’t mind rolling about a bit. Sheets in the compartment next the bookshelf. If we get a wheel stuck, it’s all of you out to help push. And I don’t answer questions. Right. We’re off.” He slammed shut the little door just behind his seat, and true to his word the carriage surged forward after a whistle to the horses.
Mieka looked round at Rafe, Jeska, and Cade. “Sheets?” he echoed faintly.
Snuggling broad shoulders back into the padded seat, Rafe grinned. “Rather like being able to run people over with my bed.”
Sometime after midnight, at their third very quick stop to change horses, Mieka had had enough of scrunching himself into a corner while Rafe sprawled across the folded-down seats and snored. Jeska was similarly asleep, though in a much tidier fashion. Cade practically fought Mieka in a scramble to the door and outside into the fresh cool air.
The coachman was limping slightly as he paced around the carriage to check the wheels. Mieka offered him a swig from a bottle of Lord Fairwalk’s excellent peach brandy, but he shook his head regretfully.
“It’s as much as my place is worth for anyone to smell anything stronger than onions on m
y breath when I get back to His Lordship’s stables. Beholden for the meat pies, by the bye, lads. Usually I’m choking down whatever lukewarm swill’s left over from supper at these places.” He nodded to the closed and darkened tavern, his lip curling.
“No trouble,” Cade said. “If you’d like a breather, I can drive for a while.”
Mieka squinted in the dim light from the stable lamps. “Drive? You?”
“Oh, I’ve all sorts of peculiar accomplishments.”
“Gods! I can’t even ride!”
“Nothin’ to it. I’ll teach you one day.”
“No, you won’t!” he replied fervently.
The coachman was chewing his lip as he scrutinized Cade’s face. “I can’t deny I’d like an hour’s rest. And you wouldn’t be putting yourself or your friends in danger just for the fun of whipping the horses to full gallop—you’re not that sort. Oh, I know the look,” he added. “Saw it often enough in His Lordship’s father, didn’t I?” He leaned in close, sniffing. “How much did you drink tonight?”
“Glass with supper, about sundown,” Cade replied promptly. “Nothing since.”
Mieka thought of the other bottle of peach brandy, now empty, and kept his mouth shut—a thing neither he nor Cade had done while the bottle was still full.
“Well … come up on the box for a bit, and I’ll see if you know what you’re about.”
It took the coachman ten minutes to assure himself that Cade did indeed know what he was doing. They stopped to allow him to climb down and settle himself in Mieka’s corner of the carriage—which Mieka vacated in favor of joining Cade up top.
“But don’t you let that Elf touch those reins,” the man warned.
Mieka’s best big-eyed-innocent look was lost in the dimness. He perched happily beside Cayden as the rig moved off again, throwing his head back to enjoy the breeze in his hair.
A few uneventful miles later, Cade said, “It’s good of you, Mieka, offering to help Blye.”
“It’s more than an offer. It’s a promise.” He paused. “How d’you know she wouldn’t have you? Bespoken, I mean, and married.”
“Because I asked.” There was a soft chuckle. “We were eight years old at the time.”
Mieka nodded. That was all right. As long as it was nothing more recent.
“I wish she would,” Cade fretted. “She’ll be all alone now, and—”
“—and if there’s any woman in Gallantrybanks who can take care of herself, it’s our Blye,” Mieka finished for him. “You were about to say something silly about protecting and providing for her, Quill, and you’d best not say anything like that to her.”
“She’d only laugh at me. Or slug me a good one.”
“Or both!”
“You’re right, though—we have to look out for her the only way she’ll accept, and getting her to accept it will be a misery.”
They were quiet for a while, and Mieka peered out into the darkness beyond the carriage lamps. Forest now, though soon enough they’d come out onto the Tincted Downs, so called because with almost every month in spring and summer a different sort of flower bloomed and painted the rolling grassy hills yellow or pink or blue. One day, he told himself, he’d have to come see them in the daytime, and not go rattling through by night.
All at once Cayden said, “I can’t help wondering…”
He glanced over, wishing the side lamps directed more light in Cade’s direction than onto the road. “Yes?”
“Forgive me for being blunt, but—why don’t you just ask your father for the money and buy the glassworks outright?”
Slumping back against the seat, he nodded to himself and took a pull from the brandy bottle. “Been wonderin’ when you’d get round to that.”
“You knew I’d take note of the address you gave the hack driver that night. Waterknot isn’t what anybody would call a slum, now, is it?”
“Might’s well be, for all the coin we’ve got. You want to know all of it, don’t you?”
“Doesn’t it fall under the category of ‘entertainment’? Tell me a story, Mieka.”
“I owe you one, I s’pose, for all the tales you think up for me to play. The short of it is that my grandfather married somebody his grandmother didn’t much like. The Waterknot house is entailed to the eldest son, but the money she could do with as she pleased, and it pleased her to make Grandsir into a man with a bleedin’ great barracks by the river and not a single penny of the Windthistle money. Still pleases her, in fact,” he added thoughtfully.
“Your great-great-grandmother’s still alive?”
“Well, that’s the thing, innit.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s Elfenblood in six of her eight great-grandparents. That’s about as pureblood as anybody gets nowadays. Likes to pretend it’s eight of eight, the rotten old horror. And considering she’s past a hundred, it might’s well be eight of eight and she’ll live for-fuckin’-ever. Her only son died young, and left only my grandsir. When he married a girl with barely enough Elf to give her the right sort of ears—” He waved a hand lazily. “—there went the money.”
“So your father’s the eldest son, and he inherited the house. But your elder brothers—they’re all Human to look at, you said?”
Mieka laughed. “Makes the old besom grind her last three rotting teeth every time they’re mentioned—because they’re named after her grandfathers. She had high hopes when Fa married, because Mum’s a Staindrop and a Greenseed and a Moonbinder. Thought it would cribble out the blood, y’see, a proper little sieve. Get rid of the Wizard and Human and Piksey and so forth, make for the appropriate number of sweet Elfen children, all with sharp little teeth and big pointy ears. Me grandmum—the one who started all the trouble by not bein’ the one grandsir should’ve married—she had eleven children.”
Cade whistled softly through his teeth; the horses’ ears pricked up and he cussed under his breath, holding tighter to the reins. “Quite a crowd.”
“Great-great-grandmum thought it was just plain vulgar. But I’m told she was actually thinking of coming to Gallantrybanks for Jed and Jez’s Namingday—until somebody worked up the spittle to tell her that the high and mighty Sharadel Snowminder had two redheaded Humans for great-great-grandsons.”
“So you and your parents and brothers and sisters—”
“—all live in that echoing old pile of rock by the river, with assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins. And all of us who’re old enough either work in the house, not so much to keep it clean as to keep it from fallin’ apart, or go out to earn what we can.” He hesitated, then finished, “Fa makes instruments, y’see. Lutes, mainly, though he’s done a harp or three in his time. Couldn’t play to save his own life, but there’s somethin’ about his fingers and a lovely plank of spruce.…”
“Like your fingers and a withie?”
“The same,” Mieka said, pleased that Cade understood. “Not much money in it, ’specially as he’s picky about who he sells to. Sends packing all the simpering maidens and lovesick swains wanting to learn just that one perfect all-purpose song for wooing. You really have to be able to play before he’ll sell you something to play on.”
“Let me guess. There’s magic in them.”
“He can’t help it. It’s not in the strings, it’s in the wood.”
“Like it’s in the glass, what Blye does.”
“Exactly! I knew you’d feel that, when you made those withies.” He paused a moment, then decided it wasn’t the right time to talk about what else was in those glass twigs of Cade’s. “In the hands of somebody who knows what he’s about, a lute of me old Fa’s crafting makes a sound like an Angel come down from the clouds.”
“Your father has no patience for amateurs.”
“Less than none. Nor for deceit, neither. You should see how he treats the ones who come round pretendin’ to be actual musicians!” He paused in uncorking the bottle. “He’ll like you.”
Cade snorted. “You have this idea
of me that’s all wrong, y’know. Leaving aside my character or lack of it, look what it is I do. I make up stories. That’s professional deceit.”
“But there’s truth in those stories, Quill.”
“Of a sort.” Cade adjusted his grip on the reins, long fingers suddenly fretful. “I don’t know, Mieka—getting to a truth by way of guile and trickery—”
“Don’t you bloody dare start,” Mieka warned. “You talk that kind of talk with Rafe or whoever’s interested. But not with me. We give an audience things that are unreal, but that doesn’t make them any the less true.”
“Oh, I’d like to set you loose on Master Emmot, I would!”
“Is he the one taught you to grow a garden maze in your own head and then try to puzzle your way out of it without a map?”
“That’s one way of putting it. So your Fa will like me, eh?”
“Of course. You’re making sure I’m doing what I want to do.” All his parents had ever wanted was for their children to be happy. Easy enough to say, but Mishia and Hadden Windthistle really meant it. He knew Cade wouldn’t believe it until he saw it for himself, though.
Cade was still chuckling. “I can’t even begin to guess how many things you found out you didn’t want to do. But I know very well how miserable you made everyone while you were doing them!”
“Oh, and I can just see you dancin’ happy off to work in a shipping office, with a million pieces of parchment to keep straight and tidy!”
“They wanted you to be a clerk?”
Mieka laughed softly in the darkness. “It wasn’t as bad as the whole long horrible week I spent workin’ for me own brothers. Jedris and Jezael, they’ve a good business going, especially after Lord Coldkettle’s house nearly collapsed over in Spillwater. They spent so much time while they were growing up climbing the rafters and crawling the spaces betwixt the walls of our poor old Wistly Hall, by now they know without knowing how they know what’s needed in any building they walk into. They’ll tell you it’s the listen and the smell of a place, but I think it’s a bit of magic showing up—odd, for certes, but there it is.” He paused for a swallow or two, then asked, “Anything definite in your little brother yet?”