Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  “I’ve been thinking, and if you’re really feeling better, then—”

  “Me? Fine!”

  Cade frowned more deeply as Mieka danced over to his side and picked up a withie. It felt cold, like a twig of ice. As if there was no magic in it and never had been and never would be, poor dead little thing—

  “Mieka?”

  The cold and lifeless withie wriggled in his hand, coiled around his fingers, up his wrist, hissed at him. With a frightened cry he shook it off him, dropped it, and it shattered.

  “Mieka! What the fuck did you do that for?”

  The glass baskets were full of glass twigs and they were all writhing, spiraling up to cant their crimped glass heads at him and he had to smash them, smash them all before they saw Cade and wrapped around him and squeezed the breath from his lungs and the foreseeing Elsewhen dreams from his mind—

  He slipped on the slick black marble floor. Cade caught him around the waist, lifted him off his feet, yelling in his ear. The withies were scary blue and viscous green and the dark thick red of blood, poisonous colors he’d never seen Blye make for him, and they hissed.

  He struggled against Cade’s restraining arms. Somehow he got free. Lunging for the glass baskets, he grabbed a handful of withies and flung them to the floor. When they shattered, he laughed.

  “Mieka!”

  Magic had escaped. He could feel it, flying around the hall, all the magic he used to make scene and scent and sound and sensation winging madly from stairs to ceiling to doors to window glass that splintered and shivered onto the black marble floor. Frigid snow-smelling wind roared through the empty windows, whipping at his hair.

  “Mieka!” Cade bellowed, and he looked up, and this time he knew the fist raised to hit him would connect. Blye worked so hard to craft those withies, Cade worked so hard to put the magic into them, and now—

  Yes, fear was a quick way back to near-sobriety.

  His legs gave out and he fell to his knees. Staring up at Cade, so tall above him, he saw stark rage and welcomed the pain he knew was coming, hoping he would be knocked out the way Jeska had knocked him out so he wouldn’t have to see anything more—

  But the fury was gone from the gray eyes, and the fist unclenched, and he didn’t understand at all. He deserved it, didn’t he?

  “Why dinnit you hit me?” he mumbled.

  “What?” Cade crouched beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

  “You were gonna hit me. Why didn’t you?”

  “You’re not going to remember any of this, are you?”

  It seemed perfectly reasonable to say, “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I didn’t because—because I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn’t stop.”

  “You mean you’ve seen it?” When Cade looked horrified, Mieka said, “Your Elsewhens. Your dreamings.”

  “Oh Gods,” he breathed. “How did you—?” Then he broke off and pulled Mieka to his feet. “I’m taking you back upstairs. You need to sleep this gone, whatever it is. Though where you managed to find—”

  “Pirro,” he said, leaning comfortably against Cade, tucked beneath his arm. He was right. Safe. Even with what had almost happened just now … safe. What had almost happened just now was proof that he was safe.

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might’ve tricked you, given you something that wasn’t what he said it was? If you pricked thorn before a performance, and acted this wild, you’d put everyone in danger the instant you picked up a withie.”

  Mieka shook his head. Pirro wouldn’t do that to him. Cade went on talking, but the words didn’t matter as much as the sound of his voice, the softs and grims of it, the risings and fallings, a curious music but music just the same. Eventually they were up the stairs and in Mieka’s room, where Cade coaxed him onto the sofa next the fire.

  “Just rest. Close your eyes and rest.”

  All at once he was incredibly tired. “Stay?”

  “Of course. Sleep it gone, Mieka. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

  He woke up in the high, big bed with its luxuriant covers tucked to his chin. The tapestry curtains had been drawn shut all around him, but through a rift came the red-gold glow of firelight and the low, soft voices of his friends.

  “… found the thorn-roll. I’ll keep it in my things from now on, so he can’t get at it. We can have somebody look at it and find out exactly what Pirro gave him.”

  “Cade,” said Jeska, “d’you have any idea what it was?”

  “None. The packets are all the same, though—blue ink along the edges of the paper. I’m assuming that means ‘bluethorn’ but who knows?”

  “Little shit-wit,” Rafe muttered. “It hasn’t made him sicker, has it?”

  Mieka thought that over. He felt remarkably well, his head clear now of thorn and the lingering remnants of his cold. He could’ve used a drink, though.

  “Not that I can tell. We’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “We’ll keep six eyes on him,” Rafe corrected.

  “Pity the next stop isn’t Lilyleaf. We could toss him into the waters there for an afternoon. I’m told it cures anything from a hangover to bonelock.”

  “Does it cure stupidity?”

  Mieka almost blurted out a protest, but Rafe’s next words made him glad he’d kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m surprised tonight turned out as well as it did. Even without the flourishes—yeh, I know you did your best, Cade, but I never knew Jeska was that good.”

  “A lot can be done just with the voice, y’know. It’s the tone, the speed, the rhythm of the words. Cade’s are good to begin with. I just had to put some extra into it tonight. I can get a rhythm going that makes people—I dunno, it’s like their breath and heartbeat keep time with the words. Not quite music, but close.”

  “I gave you the backdrop,” Cade said musingly, “and most of the costuming and even a few of the sounds. Rafe kept it all steady, just like always. But what you did tonight—it wasn’t just the voice. Whenever I caught a look at your face—that was amazing, just amazing.”

  Jeska said something about there really being only seven basic facial expressions, but Mieka had turned his back and pulled a pillow over his head.

  They didn’t need him. That’s what they were saying. All he’d ever wanted in his life to be was a good—no, great—glisker, and he was, he knew he was, and they had discovered tonight that they didn’t need him.

  “Fuck that,” he muttered into the blankets. He’d show them, he would. He’d be better than ever at the Bexmarket shows, leave the yobbos gasping, and they’d tell everyone they knew that the glisker for Touchstone was the best ever seen.

  Didn’t need him? They’d find out—

  “Mieka?”

  The whisper startled him out of feigning sleep. He rolled over and blinked at the firelight through the open bedcurtains. “What?” he snarled.

  “Feeling better, then. Good.” The mattress shifted as Cade sat down, his back to the fire so that Mieka couldn’t see his face. “You remember what happened this afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yes.” To prove it, he asked, “Why did you say that? About not being able to stop if you got started?”

  Cade caught his breath. A moment or two passed before he said, “Because you can make me more furious than anybody I’ve ever known in my life. That driver—your Auntie Brishen’s man who drove us back from Gowerion? He was right. You’re all kinds of trouble, aren’t you?”

  “But worth it.”

  “You heard him say that?”

  Mieka laughed to himself. Sometimes Cade was so easy to trick. “No. But I’m certain sure that’s what he said.”

  “You just never stop, do you?”

  “Not until I get what I want.” He punched a pillow and put it behind his back. “I didn’t mean for you to know that I know. About the dreams. I wanted you to want to tell me.”

  Low-voiced: “I nearly did, Wintering.”
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  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I’d already said quite enough, I thought. Who was it told you?”

  “Blye. Don’t blame her, Quill, I pestered her. And you know what I’m like when I pester.” Wishing he could see Cade’s face, he went on, “What is it you see about me in the future that bothers you so much?”

  “I can’t tell you. No, Mieka, I’m serious. It’s mine to sort out. What if I told you, and it was the exact opposite of what you really wanted, who you really are, and you changed just because of me?”

  “If you see me on horseback galloping over the edge of a cliff, I think I’d like to know so I can avoid riding lessons!”

  Cade laughed a little. “If it was something like that, I’d tell you!”

  “Oh, the intensity of my relief!”

  They were quiet for a time. Then Cade murmured, “My own life, that I can change with a clear conscience. But I can’t ask somebody else to rearrange himself just so I can sleep at night. Do you understand? And why do you believe me, anyway? What makes you sure this is the truth?”

  “Blye,” he said simply. “She’d never lie about something that important. You used to tell her about the dreams—”

  “Not after I started learning from Sagemaster Emmot. He let me work it out for myself, that it wasn’t right or fair to expect anybody to live life according to what made me comfortable. He made sure I understood that before I went back home the first time.”

  “So you didn’t hit me, because you’ve seen yourself do it and not stop.” Not that he believed that, not really. “It’s something you can change. Something you have control over. Do I ever hit you back?”

  “No.”

  “Because that’s something I control, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that means you have to trust me to make the right choices.” He paused. “But you don’t trust me, do you?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “So tell me. Explain it to me.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “When?”

  “Soon enough. It’s tough to explain.”

  “I’m not stupid, Cayden.”

  “It’d be easier if you were,” he retorted. “But you’ll want to know everything, won’t you? Every detail. Can’t you just accept it, and be like Rafe and Jeska and Blye, and leave me alone—”

  “No,” he said flatly. “The Elsewhens don’t have to do with them. They have to do with me. You’ll tell me, you won’t be able to help yourself.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “You’d lose. I never stop until I get what I want.”

  Cade stood and pulled the bedcurtains shut. “Dream sweet,” he added in a voice sharp with irony.

  “Quill!”

  But the door snicked shut, and he was gone.

  Mieka scrunched down into the pillows again. So he could make Quill angrier than anybody else, could he? Well, the feeling was mutual. Just when he thought he’d learn everything at last …

  And as for that part about not wanting to control him—Gods, what a load of chankings. Get to bed, Mieka, get some sleep, Mieka, don’t tire yourself out, Mieka, you won’t be working the piece tonight, Mieka—and that reminded him that they thought they didn’t need him, and that made him even more furious.

  “Tell me what I’ll do and not do,” he grumbled, “I don’t bloody think so! Do it or not do it because his dreams will show him whatever it is they show him that’s so awful it scares him silly—and he won’t even tell me—the hells with that!” He’d do as he liked and as he pleased, and those stupid Elsewhens weren’t going to stop him. “I’ll learn to ride, I will,” he decided aloud, not quite clear on what had prompted the resolve but liking the way it made him feel. “Dream sweet”—he snorted, and rolled over again, and went to sleep because he wanted to, not because Cade had ordered him to do it.

  Chapter 23

  Winterly was turning out to be nothing like Cade had expected.

  The traveling was worse, though the drinks were rather better. The performances were more exhausting, though getting easier as they gained experience to match their instincts. The accommodations ranged from their own coach that night outside the Prickspur establishment to the opulence of Castle Eyot. Thinking that he knew Rafe and Jeska very well indeed, he discovered that you never knew anybody until you traveled with them day after night after long snowy rainy muddy cooped-up-in-a-confined-space day. He’d anticipated having time to work on several original ideas for playlets—the more fool he. When he wasn’t readying the withies or his group or himself for a performance, he was in the middle of a performance, or downing enough ale or whiskey so he could sleep well after a performance, or worrying about the venue for the next performance—or trying to find Mieka before or after a performance.

  Now that the Elf knew his secret, Cade thought there could be real openness between them, real trust and friendship. Instead, there was less.

  Cade had to admit to himself that he was partly to blame. What bothered him wasn’t so much that Mieka knew; it was that Cade had found out that he knew, and if he could keep that a secret from Cade himself, whose secret it really was, then—he felt himself getting confused, which was pretty much his usual state around Mieka these days. What it fined down to was that he felt a kind of defiant justification in keeping the rest of the secret: the contents of his foreseeing dreams.

  That wasn’t what really bothered Mieka about all this, he felt sure. He kept remembering that resentful “I wanted you to want to tell me.” He did feel a bit guilty about that. But whenever he considered apologizing, he also remembered that arrogant “I never stop until I get what I want.” Cade felt a morose certainty that this would prove to be true.

  Now that he had recovered from his illness, the Elf was as madly entertaining as ever on the road and as madly intense during the performances. Bexmarket, Clackerly Minster, Coldkettle Castle, Lilyleaf, and half a dozen private engagements besides—Mieka was their cornerstone, as an elderly and distinguished lordship told Cade one night over a late supper. “I’ve been knowing the theater these sixty years and more, son, the last fifty of ’em here in my own manor, Winterly and Ducal and Royal every year coming to play for me and my guests. And I tell you to your head, son, for as good as you are even at your age, and as great as you’re going to be and your masquer and fettler with you, that Elf is the cornerstone of your art.”

  Cade had managed a smile instead of a flinch, and told himself to appreciate that the old man had called it art. But cornerstone made other words echo in his mind: “When the Cornerstones lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”

  It wouldn’t happen. He knew it. He was certain sure of it.

  At least, whatever had happened to the Cornerstones wouldn’t happen. There was so much else that could. He could never make Mieka understand. He was certain sure of that, too.

  Kearney Fairwalk had been waiting for them at Lilyleaf. It was his custom to take the waters there every winter. Indeed, much of the nobility could be found lolling in the baths or sprawling in the assembly rooms this time of year. The town had two venues: Lilyleaf Theater, a gorgeous place barely a decade old built by subscription and filled to capacity every night, and Old Bath Hall, a cramped structure with terrifyingly steep tiers of stone seats, with the players down at what felt like the bottom of a well. Those unfeared of heights preferred Old Bath Hall, for the intimacy of the place and the solidity of the stone made for an intense experience, especially if the players were less than cautious with their magic. Cade, surveying it the afternoon before their first performance there, wondered if this was where Black Lightning had made their reputation.

  Kearney brought with him two young men, one of them familiar. Tobalt Fluter had been meaning to go to Castle Biding for the great annual late-winter fair; His Lordship’s invitation to tag along to Lilyleaf had been gratefully accepted. The Nayword was doing very well, but circulation and advertising revenues were not yet so large that its editors would turn dow
n a free ride.

  “Not that he’ll be soft on you, not at all,” Kearney warned them the first morning of their stay. “This will be your first big interview—please do keep civil tongues between your teeth, won’t you?”

  Mieka bared his teeth in a grin, his tongue gently clenched between them.

  “Do try, Mieka,” His Lordship urged. “It’s important.”

  “Who’s the other one?” Rafe wanted to know. They’d all seen a wispy youth follow Tobalt up the stairs, carrying a leather-bound folio half as tall as he was.

  “The imager. I’ve brought new things for you to wear—he’ll want several poses—”

  “They’re going to print our imaging in the broadsheet?” Cade felt his stomach begin to ache. Apart from a single instance when he’d sat still for a small fraction of forever while his schoolmate Arley Breakbriar had practiced on him, he’d never had an imaging done. What that excruciatingly accurate rendition of his face had shown him was even worse than what he shaved in the looking-glass every morning.

  Mieka angled a look at him, and Jeska was about to say something soothing, he knew it. Rafe’s laughter distracted them all.

  “You honestly think you’re going to get Mieka to hold frozen for more than the space betwixt two breaths?”

  “I’ll practice, shall I?” the Elf said at once. He stuck his tongue out, lifted one hand in an obscene gesture, and held the pose as Rafe began a mocking count. He was up to twenty when Mieka collapsed in giggles.

  “Case settled in my favor, damages and court costs to be determined,” Rafe announced.

  “I coulda done it if you hadn’t been making faces at me.”

  “You’ll have to do it,” Kearney said severely. “This is important, Mieka.”

  The new clothing was … interesting. Kearney had decided to dress them in black, white, and two shades of gray. They met downstairs the afternoon of the interview and laughed at one another for a good ten minutes.