Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  “He’s only seven this summer. So you worked for your brothers for a whole week?”

  “Give me a withie, I’m an expert. They’re even callin’ me ‘Master Windthistle’ now, right? But hammer or saw…” He shuddered.

  “Is that how you know so much about the way things are constructed, then? At the Downstreet, I mean, with the ceiling timbers. And you didn’t have any trouble at all with that copper roof.”

  “Think you’re the only one with peculiar accomplishments, do you?” A moment later, as Cade laughed aloud, Mieka heard himself say, “I wondered if you could do that, you know. When I first met you.”

  “Do what?”

  “Laugh. I thought it might be something else you only did in private, like the writing.”

  There was no answer for a long time, and Mieka began to worry that he might have overstepped again. But then Cade said, “It’s something you do, isn’t it? Make people laugh. I’m no more proof against it than anybody else.”

  But he’d been quite the challenge—though Mieka didn’t tell him that. “Doesn’t make for regular work, though, does it—except in doin’ what we do onstage. I helped out Mum’s father, too, for a summer. He’s by way of making everybody’s gardens lovely. That makes it nice when Jed and Jez get a job of work. They find a way to mention him, casual-like, and there’s Grandsir arriving the next week with five cartloads of fresh new soil and a dozen trees to be planted, and everybody makes money.”

  “And you not knowing a rose from a daisy!”

  “Do so! The daisy’s the one lacks thorns. And speaking of which—”

  “Been wonderin’ when you’d get round to that,” Cade said in deliberate echo of Mieka’s earlier words. “There won’t be time when we get back home, y’know. It’ll have to wait.”

  “Once we get Blye’s troubles sorted,” he agreed. “And that takes us to His Lordship. What did he offer, and what did you make him take instead?”

  “You don’t mind that I did the negotiating for all of us?”

  “Better you than me, Quill. Oh, and before I forget, I was wanting to tell you I didn’t have the chance to talk to Chat about Blye—he was all full of what the Archduke wanted from the Shadowshapers, which is a story in itself, and led to another story I want to ask you about. With all the books you’ve read, p’rhaps you can clear up a few things for me, about history and—”

  Cade suddenly caught his breath, shoulders flinching. Ahead in the road, lit by the side-lamps, was a small, cowering dark shape, its eyes glowing eerily green. Mieka barely had time to identify it as a fox when its luxuriant tail flashed white and the animal streaked across the road to vanish in the underbrush. One horse skipped a stride and the carriage lurched as the other one stumbled. But there was no firm hand on the reins to settle them back down: what Mieka could see of Cade’s face was dead white, eyes staring, lips parted on a gasp. The carriage picked up speed as the horses broke into a gallop.

  Mieka hung on with one hand to the ornate railing, hearing Jeska’s startled exclamation, Rafe’s sleepy growl, the coachman’s string of curses. He told himself to reach for the reins—though he hadn’t a single clue what he ought to do with them besides yank as hard as he could—when the tall body beside him gave a sudden jerk. Slack fingers clenched, Cade leaned back, gradually slowing the horses. After a dozen more strides they steadied. But the look on Cade’s face … Mieka realized he’d seen it before.

  “Quill? What—?”

  “You bloody fool!” bellowed the coachman. “Stop this rig right now! You hear me, boy? Now!”

  The carriage had scarcely rolled to a halt before the driver was out and ordering them down. Mieka dropped lightly to the road and said, “Sorry—it was me. I’d a fancy to give it a try, and—”

  “I told you—” the man began furiously as Cade climbed down.

  “No, no,” Mieka hurried on, “he’d naught to do with it, I grabbed the reins—it’s my fault, I’m ever so sorry—”

  “Shut it, Mieka,” Cade snapped. “I’m sorry, sir, he’s lying, it was me—”

  “I don’t give two shits which of you it was! Get in and shut up!”

  Within moments the furious driver was back on his bench, and Mieka and Cade were back in the carriage. And Cade, Mieka told himself silently, was back. Rafe had conjured a bit of light to the interior lamp, and by the look in Cade’s eyes Mieka knew that this was exactly the same thing that he’d witnessed before. Yet he didn’t ask. He knew none of them would tell him. Angry and frustrated, he curled into his corner, folded his arms, and prepared to pretend to be asleep.

  The lamp was doused and in the darkness Cade asked quietly, “Why did you say that, Mieka? Why did you try to tell him it was you, not me?”

  He could say that mayhem in his general vicinity was almost always his fault anyway, so why not take the credit for it and add to his legend? Less charitably, by putting it onto himself, Mieka was indebting Cade to him. Yet the truth, which he knew could be quite different from what was honest, was that he’d wanted to spare Cade being shouted at while still in shock. If the look in those gray eyes had been any indication—and Mieka knew it was—then Cade couldn’t be held responsible for what had happened. Deflecting the coachman’s anger onto himself had been a protective instinct. It rather surprised him.

  “Mieka?”

  He responded to the irritable prompting with a shrug lost in the darkness. “Seemed the thing to do.”

  “What, lie? Was that the thing to do?”

  “To people who aren’t us? Yeh.” He couldn’t help but add, “Something you might think about, next time you go elsewhere and won’t tell me what’s happening to you.”

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Now who’s lying?”

  “Shut it, both of you,” Rafe muttered. “Get some sleep.”

  Wedged into his corner, Mieka brooded and wished he had access to Auntie Brishen’s wyvern-hide roll of thorn for all occasions. He knew he was right about whatever had happened when Cade saw the fox in the road, he knew it. Why wouldn’t anybody tell him what was really going on?

  He’d been gnawing on this for quite some time when he heard the whisper and rasp of someone sliding across leather. He sensed the warmth of Cade’s body and smelled the combination of brandy, ink, shaving soap, and—annoyingly—just a hint of the lavender used by that girl with the red hair. Or perhaps that was only his imaginings.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Cade breathed, barely audible. “I’ll brook the drinking and the thorn and the foolery, and even the tricks onstage, but don’t ever lie to me. Because I’ll always be able to tell, Mieka, always.”

  “Same back to you, Quill,” he muttered.

  * * *

  Their first stop in Gallantrybanks was not Redpebble Square, or even Criddow Close. They directed the coachman to Rafe’s house instead, where they were sure Blye would be under the kind care of Mistress Threadchaser.

  She wasn’t. She was still at the glassworks.

  “I tried! Lord and Lady witness that I tried!” exclaimed Rafe’s mother. “She’d have none of it.”

  “She’s working, isn’t she?” Jeska asked. “Trying to make enough to pay off the next part of the loan when it comes due.”

  “That she is, day and night. Silly child, I told her she was welcome, that we’d take care of her—”

  Mieka didn’t cast a significant glance at Cayden; he’d decided he wasn’t speaking to or even looking at his tregetour until an apology or an explanation occurred, preferably both.

  Cade wouldn’t have noticed if Mieka had grabbed him by the shirtfront and shook him. He was swearing in a low, fierce monotone, and went on swearing all the way to Criddow Close. It was something of an education, actually. Mieka had heard most of those words at one time or another, but not strung together this fluently and embellished by fists slammed at intervals against the uncomplaining leather seats. Upon reaching the glassworks, Cade transferred the pounding to its
outer door, and the cussing resolved into a single bellow of rage: “Blye!”

  A titled lord’s elegant if dust-covered carriage was not the most common sight in Criddow Close. Doors opened all down the narrow street—including the back door of the Silversun residence. But the door of the glassworks and its shop stayed shut. Mieka had just followed Rafe out of the rig when Derien came hurtling up to them, talking so fast that not one word was intelligible. Mistress Mirdley was right behind him, alternating exclamations of relief that they were home with admonitions to Dery.

  “We weren’t looking for you until tomorrow—will you shoosh, boy!—but it’s a blessing from the Old Gods that you’re here so quick. She’s grieving and worried sick and I don’t know—Master Derien, if you don’t quiet down—”

  Rafe caught the boy up in his arms for a hug. “It’s all right, bantling, settle down and breathe. That’s the way.” Over the child’s head, he collected Mieka and Jeska with his gaze. Cayden was still yelling.

  The door finally opened, and Blye—dirty, disheveled, hollow-eyed—began screaming right back at Cade. “What d’you think you’re doin’, eh? Shrieking outside my door at this hour! Damn you, Cade, put me down!”

  For he had wrapped his arms around her and lifted her right off her feet, just as Rafe had done to Dery. “Why didn’t you send for me when it happened?” he demanded. “I would’ve come home, you know I would’ve come home—”

  “Why d’you think I didn’t tell you? Let go of me!”

  Rightly judging that this argument would go on for a while, Mieka turned to Mistress Mirdley. “Can you and Dery go get her things?”

  “She’s coming back to my house with me,” Rafe added.

  Dery wriggled his way down, breathing hard but coherent now. “She wouldn’t let me write to Cade, but after the man came and asked all those questions I knew he had to know and I knew you’d come back and—”

  “What man?” Jeska asked, frowning.

  Mistress Mirdley looked up at Mieka. “She won’t do it. She won’t leave.”

  “Oh yes she will,” he muttered.

  He strode past Cade—still holding the struggling, spitting Blye—and into the glassworks. It took him a few moments, but then he saw them on a corner table: a dozen new withies spread out for polishing. Grabbing one, he slid the crimped end up his sleeve, keeping a few inches of it concealed in his palm. Turning on his heel, he went back to the shop, estimated the distance between himself and Blye—back on her own two feet now, and shouting at the top of her lungs, standing too close to Cayden.

  Unpolished though the glass twig was, still he sensed the magic she had used to create it, familiar to him by now and comfortable. Comforting. Nothing of Cade’s work was in it, but that it had been fashioned for him was unmistakable. It was as if her thoughts about him while she’d worked, her deep understanding of his character, had imbued the glass. Here was his rigorous intensity, his striving, his passion, his need to be not just better than he was but to be the best. Yet there were other things, too, sparkles of humor and recklessness, and an entirely different sort of intensity that was arrogance and uncertainty in the same glints of magic. These things were himself, Mieka realized; Blye’s knowledge of him infused the glass as well. None of the others she had made up until now had reached him until Cade had done his own work. Now he could sense what made this withie his just as much as Cade’s. He was swept with affection and gratitude for Blye, and used these emotions as she finally stalked far away enough from Cade for Mieka to do what he knew he must.

  Gently, he awakened the withie. Unprimed, untouched by any magic but Blye’s, with nothing inside it he could use as he used onstage, yet it was a conduit just as it always was. Mieka held out his hand, trying to be casual about it, but nobody was looking at him and he could have waved the thing as he pleased. He kept it discreet, though, the magic he used to calm her down. He took nothing from her, not her grief or her anger, and he changed nothing about what she was feeling. What he did was ease feelings, not create them. He gentled her anger and her fear.

  It was how he had first figured out he had the makings of a glisker, this ability to affect others. He’d always thought it was his wit, his looks, his charm, his big innocent eyes. But he’d been working people’s emotions on instinct, even though before the withies and his training it had been unfocused and unreliable, quite weak in its effects—especially compared to what he could do now.

  Blye stopped yelling. She was shivering a little, arms wrapped around herself rather than waving furiously in the air, but she was calm. Mieka slipped back into the glassworks, replaced the withie, and went back outside in time to see that Cade had wrapped Blye tenderly into his arms and was smoothing her limp blond hair.

  Satisfaction put a smile onto Mieka’s face—until he happened to look at Mistress Mirdley. She knew. Muted as the magic had been, she had sensed it. They went on staring at each other as Rafe and Jeska unloaded Cade’s things from the carriage and Lord Fairwalk’s coachman drank gratefully from the huge cup of tea Dery gave him, and at length the Trollwife nodded slowly and Mieka could relax.

  Within the half hour, Cade and Rafe had taken Blye off to the Threadchaser home, and Jeska had departed for his own house on foot, grateful to stretch his legs after the long hours in the carriage. Mieka had elected to stay and explain as much as he knew—and discover if he could get explanations for what he didn’t know. Settling in the kitchen with breakfast enough for three piled onto his plate, he cheerfully stuffed himself and between bites, sips, and swallows managed to convey the gist of what Touchstone had decided to do.

  “—and that way, we’ll own the glassworks just like your grandsir did, Dery, with our very own crafter working for us—and for a few select friends,” he finished with a wink.

  “More tea,” said Mistress Mirdley, and poured from a fresh pot without further comment. She wouldn’t look Mieka in the eyes.

  “Do you really think Blye will let you do that?” Derien asked, frowning.

  “Well, it’s not just that she hasn’t much other choice. It’s for the best all round, she’ll see that eventually. But it has to be presented to her in just the right way, and I hope your brother isn’t babbling like a blatteroon when she’s in no fit state to hear above one word in ten. It’ll wait for tomorrow or the next day.”

  “I can help,” Derien offered. “It was me paid for the post courier, but I’ve still some left of what I’ve saved.”

  “What you paid the courier counts as a share in the business,” Mieka told him. “You can be special communications commissioner, and whenever we need to send a letter quick-like, you can arrange it with His Lordship.”

  “Whose Lordship?” the boy demanded, wide eyed.

  “Lord Kearney Fairwalk.” He grinned as he announced the name and Mistress Mirdley dropped a spoon. “I’m not sure of all the details yet—Cayden had the arranging of it—but he’s to take charge of our bookings, see to the equipment, make sure we have decent lodgings on the road and get paid on time and—”

  “So long as it’s understood,” Mistress Mirdley said severely, “that it’s Touchstone he’s working for and not the other way round.”

  Derien sniggered. “This is Cade we’re talking of! He’ll see to it, no worries! Who else is going to use Blye’s withies, Mieka?”

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me about the man with the questions.”

  “Thought you’d snag on that,” said the Trollwife. “’Twas the morning after the death, and then again two days after that.”

  “Blye didn’t see him, not either time,” Dery contributed. “I was outside waiting for the Good Brother, and Mistress Mirdley was upstairs helping Blye ready her father’s body. It was a lot of questions he had, and thought I was stupid enough to answer.”

  “Such an adorable, innocent little boy as you are!” Mieka teased.

  “So p’rhaps I don’t need lessons from you after all!” Dery retorted. “He was the stupid one, wearing a cloak to his boo
t-tops, and hot as the glass kiln outside at not even noon. Did he think nobody’d notice?”

  “It’s the foolish arrogance of high nobility,” Mistress Mirdley observed. “Thinking nobody but them has two wits to rub together. It seeps down into their servants as well.”

  “What did this man in the cloak want to know?”

  “Well, he told me at first he was from the Guild,” Derien said, “but the things he asked, he was lying about that, because the Guild already knows names and merchandise and shipping agreements and all that, don’t they? I asked him if he thought I looked like a business clerk.”

  Mieka pretended to examine him head to heels. “No, can’t say you do. There’s a decided lack of ink on your fingers—from lack of doing your schoolwork, no doubt. What else did he say?”

  “That he supposed the shop was popular, and did a lot of trade. I told him I wasn’t a tariff inspector, either.”

  “Snide child,” Mieka said sorrowfully.

  “Cade’s a terrible influence,” Dery agreed. “The second time he came round, Mistress Mirdley and me, we were just setting off to bring Blye something to eat, and there he was in his cloak again.” He paused a moment, brows knitting over a nose that would never even begin to rival his brother’s. “There was a breeze that day, Mieka, and it blew his cloak aside, and he was wearing a dark gray tunic with orange piping. That’s the Archduke’s livery, right? Those colors?”

  “You must have mistook it,” Mistress Mirdley said. “Why would the Archduke be interested in a glassworks?”

  “I told you before, I didn’t make a mistake!” Dery exclaimed, shoulders stiffening in the same stubborn way Cade’s did. “I know what I saw!”