Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  Rafe flung open a door to the left of the landing. It was dark as a wyvern’s maw inside—and then a blaze of light erupted from a trio of six-branched clear glass candleflats framing a pyramid of pastries. Blinking at the glare, all at once he saw his parents and Jinsie and Blye, Jedris and Jezael, the Threadchasers and Mistress Bowbender and Crisiant, and even Mistress Mirdley and Derien, all laughing and cheering as Cade and Jeska bellowed, “Happy Namingday!”

  Never had he passed from wailful to joyful so quickly in his life, not even with the finest of Auntie Brishen’s thorn in him.

  He gave Jinsie one of the candleflats and put the other two in his under-the-turret lair. They would always hold pride of place in whatever home he made for himself later on—but for the time being he wanted them hidden where scavenging relations of the Uncle Barsabian sort couldn’t find them while he was away on the Winterly Circuit.

  And then one early autumn dawning he was in a coach, clattering out of one of the Palace’s lesser courtyards, and the Winterly had begun.

  There was no one to see them off except Lord Kearney Fairwalk, and it turned out that he wasn’t there to see them off but to accompany them. Mieka wondered when this had been decided, then shrugged. He didn’t much care whether His Lordship came along for the ride or not. And perhaps Cayden’s mood would improve, what with Fairwalk chattering away as usual about how clever Cade was at rearranging and rewriting lines, and urging him to work up some truly original things soon. This was what Mieka had been demanding forever, with not much result. If Fairwalk could manage it, he wasn’t going to complain.

  His Most Gracious Majesty had fastidious notions about the behavior of his players while on a Circuit—even when in the privacy of the coach he provided. It was, after all, his coach. Framed on the door just beneath the window was a set of printed guidelines for comportment.

  Abstinence from liquor is requested. But if you must drink, let it be no more than one bottle each day, and shared amongst you.

  No unsanctioned passengers are permitted. This includes relations, friends, acquaintances, business associates, strangers, flirt-gills, and all manner of trulls.

  At all stops, refrain from the use of rough language in the presence of ladies and children.

  Blankets and carriage-robes are provided for your comfort. Do not abuse the privilege by hoarding the majority of them to yourself. The offender will be made to ride with the coachman.

  Do not snore loudly.

  In the event of runaway horses, remain calm. Leaping from the coach in panic will result in injuries and leave you at the mercy of the elements, highwaymen, and hungry wolves.

  Should the coachman judge a passenger guilty of any of the following offenses, that person shall receive chastisement as the coachman determines.

  1. Foul language

  2. Drunkenness

  3. Incivility

  4. Indecency

  5. Incorrectness of attire

  6. Damage to His Gracious Majesty’s property

  7. Endangering the horses, the coachman, the outrider, fellow passengers, the citizenry, or the peace of the Kingdom

  Rafe read the whole of it out loud as the coach pulled away from the Palace gates, and finished with, “They musta known you were comin’, Mieka.”

  It instantly became Mieka’s objective to pull off each and every one of these infractions and get away with them unscathed. He kept his resolve to himself for the moment, however, because Cayden would simply have murdered him.

  Cade’s temper had not significantly improved with the waning of the summer and the preparations for the Winterly. Well, they were all nervous. Rafe kept fidgeting his fingers with the bracelet of heavy copper links Crisiant had recently given him; he’d be writing her ten letters a day, Mieka was convinced of it. Jeska had spent the first hour of the journey trying to read the folio of playlets he had memorized long ago, then given it up when the swaying of the coach began to upset his stomach. Cayden wore an expression as if just last night he’d seen an Elsewhen that included six months of lice-infested beds every night, ice-encrusted shaving water every morning, horrible food, and blashed beer. Fairwalk occupied himself with the itinerary, making notes and muttering into his lace-frothed neck-band. He would be traveling with them until word got round that anything but the finest treatment given to Touchstone would distress His Lordship most severely. Nobody said anything to anybody else for three solid hours.

  Mieka was bored.

  Thus he simply couldn’t pass up the chance to mark off one of the Rules when it presented itself.

  The coachman had called a halt beside a summer-parched stream so that the passengers could stretch their legs. On a walk round the vehicle, he found that one of the leather lashings that secured the boot had flapped loose. Cade blanched; his precious glass baskets and withies were packed in there. Mieka took one look at the coachman, who was puce in the face and speechless with fury, and saw his chance.

  “Who the unholy fuck was the fritlaggering fool back at the Palace who did this?” Mieka snarled. “Is this the King’s best coach and the King’s best driver, or is it not?” And then he let loose with a string of insults, invective, abuse, and just plain profanity regarding the sanity, antecedents, personal habits, and sexual practices of whatever idiot was responsible for securing the straps back in Gallantrybanks.

  Mieka’s cussing vocabulary had been faithfully gathered since the age of six. His sources included everyone from dockworkers to his own brothers, with contributions from his father (when referring to Great-great-grandmother) and even Uncle Barsabian. He used almost all of it in the space of two minutes. It was Auntie Brishen’s view that a gentleman ought to be able to swear fluently that long without repeating himself. Mieka did her proud.

  Then he conjured up a look of absolute horror, turned to the coachman, and began stammering apologies.

  The man smiled all over his weathered, snub-nosed face. “Not a worry be in your head about it, lad. That’s the best I’ve heard since me brother caught his wife with the stable boys.”

  Mieka’s turn to stare. Boys, plural? The impulse to inquire further was squelched when Cade yelled, “Mieka! Shut up!”

  After assisting in securing the boot, they all climbed back into the coach. Everybody was staring at Mieka. Perfect.

  “Cade,” he asked sweetly, “lend me your new pen?”

  Lady Jaspiela Silversun, giving in with surprising grace to the inevitable, had gifted Cayden with a beautiful new writing instrument that owed nothing to any duck or goose or swan ever hatched. It was a slender, elegant thing made of golden oak, and instead of the sharpened end of a feather, at one end was a silver nib to dip into an inkpot. It was absolutely the latest innovation, according to Prince Ashgar, who, according to Lady Jaspiela, had suggested it to her husband as an appropriate present. (Mieka knew the instant she said it that the gift was to please the Prince and not her son; he kept this to himself, and his opinion about persons who gave presents only when prompted.) Dery’s contribution had been heartfelt: a leatherbound book of blank pages to fill with ideas. Mistress Mirdley had brewed up the blue-black ink in her stillroom, and Blye had provided the bottles to keep it in.

  Once the mystified Cade had produced the requested pen and ink from his satchel, Mieka crouched on the floor beside the Rules and crossed out the words Foul language.

  Rafe was suddenly howling with laughter. Jeska, shoulders shaking, put his head in his hands and groaned. Lord Fairwalk looked bewildered.

  But it was Cayden’s face Mieka watched as he slid back into his place on the brown leather seat. A confusion of emotions played over the long, tense face, tightening wide mouth and thick brows, bunching the muscles of jaw and forehead. Finally—finally—he gave a great roar of laughter.

  Satisfied, Mieka folded his arms and beamed at them all. “One down, six to go!”

  Quite mad, yes; but he also congratulated himself on being very, very clever.

  * * *

  There wer
e many good things, several bad things, and a few really great things about being on the Circuit. Best of all was the traveling. Worst of all was the traveling. Or perhaps the best was performing—although that could be the worst, too.

  First Flight had many privileges: the newest of the traveling coaches provided by the king, the most experienced driver, the earliest schedule, which allowed Touchstone to miss—with a conspicuous lack of regret—the long slog round the north slope of the Pennynine Mountains in the middle of winter. The coach was fairly fast, too, so they spent fewer days cooped up on the road. Granted, they had to play more shows than the Crystal Sparks (Second Flight) and the Wishcallers (Third), but they also had more days off than the required one-after-every-fifth-performance. And the break so generously provided by Lord Rolon Piercehand at his lovely little Castle Eyot would be fully seven days long, as opposed to the five and four accorded the other Flights.

  Mieka had grilled Chattim at length about what to expect at each venue. He’d wanted to know what the halls were like, of course, before setting foot in each for the first time, having no wish to present Touchstone as floundering amateurs. But he’d also asked about what there might be to see and do, which taverns had the best drinks and food, and most especially where the prettiest and most willing girls could be found. Chat had eventually given up talking and given him a list. Cade had a list, too, assembled from books about history and famous sites and scenery; thoroughly typical of him, and to Mieka’s mind thoroughly boring.

  He’d guessed going into this that boredom would be his major concern. He was right. The excitement of travel wore off rather swiftly. He regretted that; the first weeks of swaying about in the big, leather-suspended coach had been quite fun, because there was always something new to see, someplace new to explore, and the prospect of an audience to amaze. After those first few hours of nervous silence had been broken, conversation didn’t lack, either. If they weren’t discussing the shows just finished or the shows soon to come, they were laughing at Fairwalk’s gossip about the nobility. They shared stories about their families and their childhoods, swapped lies about girls, and Jeska could always be counted on for salacious balladry. More important to Mieka, he was learning more about how Cayden’s mind worked and his ambitions for Touchstone. As for his own ambitions—after a week in the coach, these dwindled to procuring a wagon as comfortable as the one owned by the Shadowshapers.

  Four days out of Gallantrybanks, they might have been in another world entirely. The great city’s reach extended farther than Mieka thought possible. There were long stretches of road between towns and villages, and grand swaths of land with manor houses plopped in the middle, yet the grasp of the capital was almost a physical thing. Traffic in produce and people was constant, and the roads well-maintained.

  But on their fifth day of travel, he sensed a loosening of the hold. Conversation at inn-yards and taverns was of local matters, not what was going on in Gallantrybanks. They were just as far from the city as they’d been at Seekhaven, but the feel was entirely different. Especially when it started to snow.

  That fifth day, which ought to have been an easy ten miles to Shollop, a ridiculously early storm mired the roads and sent them to the boot for blankets and carriage rugs. Extra time was built into the Winterly schedule for bad weather and other mishaps so that canceled shows were uncommon, but everyone knew that luck would play a large part in whether or not they fulfilled their engagements on time.

  Luck, and Jeschenar’s skills at weather-witching. It was only one of the things Mieka was now discovering about his partners, these three young men he’d thought he’d got to know rather well by now. He’d found out, for instance, that Jeska’s family history was pretty much as Chattim had described it. His grandfather had been from some foreign land and sold his skills with the bow to the king, and took a name that matched his profession when he married a very pretty girl of scant education and no outward signs of magical forebears. Fortunately for the next two generations, her family insisted that his prize money be spent on a house. A hired soldier being of little use in a kingdom no longer at war, he had become a teacher, mainly of his expertise with the bow and occasionally of his language. His wife died bearing her fifteenth child in nineteen years—none but the eldest, Jeska’s father, had survived—and after that Bowbender vanished into the intricacies of Gallantrybanks’ worst districts, resurfacing when his only son married. He lived long enough to pay a chirurgeon for the kagging of his grandson’s deviant Elfen ears, then died in a tavern brawl. Jeska’s father succumbed a few years later to a shortage of gainful employment and an excess of drink. His mother, left a widow at twenty-three, supported herself and her son as best she could, somehow earning enough to keep them in the small house and keep him in school. She turned out to have a minimal knack for weather-witching, but poverty and exhaustion sapped the meagerness of her magic and for the last six years she had been an ordinary charwoman. But Jeska had picked up some tricks from her, which he used now to the gratification of his friends, Lord Fairwalk, and their coachman.

  Mieka had known nothing of Jeska’s history. Neither had he known that the masquer had turned twenty the previous spring and had a three-year-old daughter. The mother had married someone else because Jeska hadn’t been able to support a wife and child. He saw the little girl every so often, and she was acknowledged as his—she could hardly be anyone else’s, Rafe had remarked, not with those golden curls and squared-off cleft chin—but now that Touchstone was on the brink of making important money, Fairwalk was worried that the mother might apply to the courts for a share of it.

  Not that Jeska told all of this at one go. The revelations came over several days. It was Fairwalk who delicately coaxed their life stories out of each member of Touchstone, with many apologies for prying, saying that he needed to know their pasts so he could plan their futures. Mieka knew this to be something of a lie. The only one who truly interested him was Cayden, and not just because he was the tregetour, the source of ideas and the magic that could bring them to life.

  He never let on that he knew Fairwalk’s fascination with Cade was not merely that of a theater fanatic for a significantly talented player. Neither did he ever hint that there was a much better source of information about their futures available. Many, many futures.

  The first stop on the Winterly was the university town of Shollop. Very pretentious, very grand, and very full of students who, after a month in classes after the summer holiday, were more than ready for renewed carousing. There were artists of all sorts, from painters who relied solely on paint and painters who worked with magic, to musicians, sculptors, imagers, poets, and crafters and designers of everything from glassware to jewelry. Added to these were scholars of history and literature, languages and the law. Cayden was, predictably, intimidated. This did not sweeten his temper. By the night of their performance before the Shollop Marching Society (a private show arranged by Fairwalk; the official venue was the Players Hall on the university grounds), Mieka had once again had enough of his tregetour’s sulks.

  So instead of breaking a withie or two, he decided—with Rafe’s amused connivance—on a more interesting approach.

  The Marching Society’s venue had at one time been a greenhouse where the university’s naturalists and the university’s cooks battled constantly over how much space would be given to the exotic plants brought back for study from distant lands and how much to vegetables. Then an obscenely wealthy nobleman had left his entire fortune to Shollop for “the Health and Comfort of the Kitchens.” Gleefully in possession of a large new winter gardening location, the cooks had abandoned the old greenhouse to the naturalists. These worthies had petitioned the king, saying that this precedence of scholarly bellies over scholarly brains was an outrage. So His Gracious Majesty, who at the time had just begun his fascination with plants and beasts (and, eventually, people) from faraway regions, “encouraged” his nobles to contribute to the cause.

  Thus the old greenhouse had been a
bandoned, and the Marching Society had bought it up for practically nothing, and the only reminders of its previous function were the odd-looking plants in crumbling pots scattered about amid the tables, and a lingering odor of fertilizer.

  When Touchstone investigated the venue on the afternoon of their show, Mieka formed the opinion that the place needed a good airing out. Rafe agreed.

  So at the end of the riotous “Troll and Trull” they shattered one wall’s top row of glass panes.

  The students loved it. The authorities were not as pleased. It was left to Lord Fairwalk to adjudicate the matter—and keep Touchstone out of the local lockup—while Cade, Mieka, Rafe, and Jeska were treated to as many free drinks as they could swallow.

  Mieka fell into bed shortly before dawn, quite drunk and entirely delighted with his success, for Cade had lost his diffidence around these young men—his own age, most of them—who knew so much more about so many more things than he did. He’d actually enjoyed himself. Just like old times—if old included a few months ago. Not that Mieka had understood five words in twenty of most of the conversations Cade had been drawn into. But it was enough for him that the drinks were free, and excellent, and that Quill had had a good time.

  He hadn’t reckoned on the next morning’s hangover.

  They were due to depart for Dolven Wold that afternoon. Rafe always woke early by long habit, professing himself incapable of sleeping much past the usual hour when his parents began the day’s baking. He was hoping to get over it. Jeska, now that he no longer had to fit bookkeeping into his days whenever he could, was catching the knack of sleeping in. Since leaving school at the age of fifteen, Mieka never got out of bed until late morning unless physically yanked from the blankets. But even he was up and about before Cade that morning.