Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  Mieka jumped to his feet, shaking with fury. “Fuck you!” he snarled, and stormed out of the taproom.

  “That might have gone better,” Cade observed, and buried his nose in his drink.

  “I’m tired of that arrogant little Elf takin’ all the credit for your hard work.”

  “He didn’t, not exactly. And in a lot of ways he’s right, y’know. We weren’t going anywhere before he sat in with us in Gowerion.”

  Jeska was staring. “Why are you defending him?”

  “Just pointing out the facts. Yes, he’s an arrogant little snarge, but he’s mostly right.”

  “That’s what he always says,” Jeska retorted.

  “No,” Cade corrected softly, “what he says is that he’s always right.” Smiling, he toasted them with his ale, finished it off, and set the glass on the bar. “Whereas all of you ought to know by now that being always right is a privilege reserved for me!”

  Chapter 24

  He was a little disappointed with Mieka. The Elf seemed to have given up his self-imposed mission to violate all Seven Rules and live to tell the tale. Of course, he’d been ill or recovering from his illness for a significant bit of time, but anyone as madly clever as Mieka ought to have completed at least half of that list by now.

  Or maybe, Cade reflected as the coach rattled up a paved—actually paved—road to Castle Biding, Mieka was growing up.

  Certainly he took his work more seriously. Every performance seemed to be a challenge to the others and to himself: be the best. The absolute, unqualified, indisputable best. Cade had to admit that at times during this long, brutal tour, they’d got a bit sloppy, cut a few corners. Whoever would have thought that four young men, the oldest of them not quite twenty-one, would be so bloody exhausted by work they loved? It was the traveling that did it, he decided. But they couldn’t let the shows suffer just because they were tired. These men had paid good money and often traveled quite a ways to see them perform; they owed every audience their best. And it was their mad little glisker who’d reminded them of it.

  Out the coach windows he could see the beginnings of a fair-sized town made of tents and enclosed wagons. Castle Biding perched like a preening pale gold dragon on a small hill in the middle of it all, with winter-fallow fields on the left side of the road providing the living space for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who’d spend nearly a month at the fair. To the right was the fairground, already thick with garish pennants flying high above smaller tents, painted stalls, rickety wooden booths, and hawkers who could afford the entry fee but not the hire of a space. There were no fairs like this in or near Gallantrybanks anymore; the shops were too numerous and varied, and practically anything was available any time of year. The only event of the kind was the annual horse show on the Palace grounds, which combined a market with ten days of racing. But there was nothing like this fair available in the capital anymore, and for all the disdain of native Gallybankers for country folk and country living, Touchstone gaped out the windows at the sights. They were themselves objects of importance; carts moved out of the way for their coach, people waved, girls flirted with their eyes and smiles, and as the coach rolled across the bridge and began the ascent to the castle yard, and everyone stopped to cheer the newly arrived players, for the first time they had a hint of what it might be like to be the Shadowshapers, famous and beloved.

  Their lodging was in the castle itself, in two rooms set aside for the players who would arrive, one after the other, to perform at the fair. Their tower chambers were high above the river that bent around the castle hill before flowing straight and swift to the south. After dinner, Cade took his winecup all the way to the top of the tower to watch the sunset. Cooking fires and the occasional bonfire spattered the tent village, randomly, not like the every-twenty-feet torches that lit the fairgrounds in a tidy grid. Wandering to the other side of the battlements, where everything was dark, he stood finishing his wine, waiting for moonrise.

  “I knew you’d be here.”

  His fingers clenched around the pewter cup, then relaxed. He’d heard those words before, though in a different setting. The feeling, though, was almost the same. “Thought you’d be investigating the local ladies.”

  “They’ve been a touch too open about investigating me,” he replied wryly, coming to stand next to Cade.

  “That’s right—you like ’em shy, don’t you?”

  “I like not to find their hands down me trousers before I’ve done more than look ’em in the eyes. More wine?” He held up a bottle, sloshing it gently.

  “Please. Did you catch a look at the theater when we drove in?”

  “A bit small. No wonder they have us doing two shows a day, and a waiver of the five-and-a-rest rule. That’s partly why I came up here—His Lordship’s being motherly and says get to bed.”

  “In a while.” He sipped the splendid white wine, glad Kearney was back to provide such luxuries from the Continent—and to take over the day-to-day worries about lodgings and payment again. He hadn’t realized how little he’d missed having to organize things until someone had started doing it for him. “Shame the weather’s not reliable enough to try the outdoor theater.”

  “The weathering witches can keep the ground dry and the wind from blowing the tents down, but it’d take a hundred Wizards to chase the clouds away.” Mieka leaned his elbows on a crenellation, shoulders hunched. “I agree, though—a whole outside wall of the castle and the whole of the sky to play with—it’ll be fun, next time we’re here.”

  “You’re assuming we’ll make Ducal.”

  He laughed. “I’m assuming we’ll make Royal!” The he caught his breath and pointed down at the river. “Oh, Quill—look! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Moonglade,” he said softly, remembering now what the foreseeing dream had shown him. He hadn’t seen this, but something like it—when? Way last spring, at Seekhaven? He could scarcely credit the passage of time.

  “Write me one of those,” Mieka pleaded. “I don’t care what the rest of the piece is like, I want to do that!”

  “I-I actually do have something in mind,” he heard himself say. He wasn’t aware of making the choice to tell him. It simply happened. “Not with a moonglade, but—I dreamed once—a dreaming kind of dream, not—”

  “Not an Elsewhen?”

  “Is that what you call it?” he asked, amused. “Anyway, I was walking down a long hallway, just blank walls on either side—”

  “How can you tell?”

  “About the walls?”

  “No, lackwit, about what kind of dream it is.”

  He considered. “I’ve always just sort of known. The feeling is different.”

  “How?”

  “Are you going to listen to what I dreamed or not?”

  “I’m always listening, Quill.”

  He held out his cup, and in the moonlight Mieka shared out the rest of the bottle. “I couldn’t see an end to the hallway, and there weren’t any doors—it was a little scary. But the instant I started wondering how I was going to get out, there were dozens of doors along each wall. All different. Plain wood, painted, iron, some with brass hinges and some with bars, a couple with windows in them. I went looking for the right one, and I don’t know how I knew which it was, and I opened it, and there was a future inside. It was my own room at Redpebble Square, and I could see on the desk the book I’d been reading the night before—the night I had this dream, I mean, what I’d been reading before I went to sleep—”

  “Who said there was a wrong door?”

  “What?”

  “You said you opened the right door. How do you know there were wrong ones? Or—no, not wrong, just different. Like your other dreams. You chose a door even if you didn’t know you were choosing—”

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.” And neither do you hung unspoken between them.

  “You picked the door that went into your own life.”

  He turned from the beguili
ng moonglade to frown at Mieka’s earnest face, glossed with silver in the darkness.

  “All those other doors—you could have opened them, you could have at least looked or even walked inside to find out what was in them. That’s the way your Elsewhen dreams happen, innit? Only you don’t have a choice about opening the doors. You get thrown through them whether you want to be or not, right?”

  “More or less.”

  “Well, this is a future, too. Right now, this minute. Last year or last week, this was a future. At some point you walked into the room where this happened, this moment we’re in right now.”

  “What are you trying to say, Mieka?”

  With a shrug, he muttered, “Trying—and failing.”

  “Just talk. You always get to it when you talk it out.”

  “Is that what happens?” Quick glinting grin. “I thought I just blunder on and on until somebody tells me to shut up.”

  “I talk around a thing, circling in on it, surrounding it with words so it can’t get away. But you talk your way to a thing—your words sneak up on it and when it’s there in your hands, like as not you’re just as surprised as it is.” He smiled at the incredulous widening of those eyes. “Don’t worry. It’ll make sense eventually. The words will find their right places.”

  Mieka was quiet for a few heartbeats, then sighed. “In that dream, you walked past all the other doors. All the other futures. You opened this one. You chose this door. And I think—Quill, don’t laugh at me, please?”

  He shook his head. “I won’t. Keep talking.”

  “And don’t be angry with me—I mean, this sort of anguishing about something, it’s what you do, I’m no good at it—”

  “You’re doing fine. Just tell me.”

  Mieka took a deep breath. “I think what the dream was saying is that you keep choosing the same door on purpose every time you wake up in the morning. You feel in the dream that it’s the one you’re supposed to open, right? This life, and none other.”

  “Because this life is the one I want to be in?”

  He nodded gratefully. “Day after day, you choose to be here. Even if it’s not the kind of life other people would want, or that they want for you, this is the one you choose. The door you open.”

  “This life, and none other,” he echoed softly.

  There was another small silence. Then Mieka asked, “Did I just ruin everything you wanted to use about that dream in a playlet?”

  “I think you just told me what I need to write.”

  “Really?” He gave a little bounce of delight. Then, with a shrewd glance up at Cade: “Does that mean I’m more important than any of you will admit? And I really am worth all the trouble?”

  Cade nudged his shoulder, laughing. “You arrogant little Elf!”

  “Don’t say that as if you just found it out!”

  * * *

  Mieka was up early (for him) the next morning, and woke Cade by clamoring with all the smatchety determination of a spoiled five-year-old to go see the fair. Rafe was already out exploring; Jeska, predictably, hadn’t spent the night in his own bed. Cade took one look at the tidy coverlet and pillows, shook his head in a resigned sort of way, and went back to his and Mieka’s room to get his coat and fill his purse. Their first performance was scheduled for late afternoon. They would have just over an hour for dinner and a drink before the evening show. Cade had already primed enough withies just after their arrival yesterday, so he felt free to spend the day as he pleased. Correction: as pleased Mieka.

  It was an easy walk down from castle hill along the cobbled road to the fairgrounds. The scents of other people’s breakfasts from the campsites had them buying sage-flavored sausages wrapped in flatbread and apple preserves from the first food cart they saw. Happily munching, Cade and Mieka set off to investigate the fair.

  One aisle was devoted to fabric handiwork. Huge complex weavings and small embroideries; ready-made gowns, skirts, trousers, jerkins; clothes for children and clothes for their dollies; reels of plain ribbon and embellished ribbon and varying widths of lace; curtains and tablecloths and humble dish towels; pillows, bedsheets, counterpanes, and a really beautiful crib quilt in a pattern of tumbling baby blocks that Cade and Mieka bought to put away as their future gift when Rafe and Crisiant had their first child.

  “Which probably won’t be long,” Mieka predicted as the counter girl wrapped the quilt in a length of cheap but scrupulously clean burlap. “She won’t let him out of bed for a month once we get home. Oy, what do you want to bet she’s carrying when they get married?”

  “Do I look foolish enough to take that bet?” He tucked the small parcel under his arm. “Where to next?”

  “I saw some woodworkers over there, I think.”

  He had indeed, a round dozen of them, selling bowls and plates and goblets, handles for all manner of bladed instrument, even lighter-weight chairs, with the option of ordering more from the crafter’s catalog. There was even a selection of the new-style pens, though one had to go to a silversmith or goldsmith to get the nib made. Cade thought it rather impractical, offering this sort of thing at a country fair.

  “After all, how many letters does a farmer write in a year? And it isn’t as if a feather to suit the purpose isn’t available right out in the kitchen yard.”

  “You are a snob,” Mieka retorted. “They have to keep their accounts, for one thing, and for another, have you noticed how many traders are selling luxury goods? A farmer’s wife doesn’t need lace curtains in her front room, but they’d be lovely to have, wouldn’t they? And besides all that, how do you know the next great tregetour won’t buy one of those pens and write you off the map?”

  Cade stuck out his tongue at him, and Mieka chortled.

  They roamed through aisles featuring metalworkers (some of whom had fires and anvils going for customized items), silversmiths and goldsmiths and gemcutters, people who sharpened knives and people who mended all manner of things, all the while dodging other fairgoers and meandering singers, acrobats, jongleurs, and men who stood on painted crates declaiming classic poetry at the top of their lungs (thereby rendering the more tender passages of the love poems somewhat frightening). There was a section of glassblowers, at whose work Cade and Mieka both sniffed rather snobbishly, having been spoiled with Blye’s creations, but the parcel under his arm reminded Cade of something.

  “I have to write to Blye and tell her to start the loving cups for Rafe and Crisiant. If I know her, she’ll fret over them for months until she gets them perfect.”

  “Better than anything any Master Glasscrafter with a hallmark ever made.” Mieka shook his head. “I hope Tobalt gives a lot more space to what you said about women than he does to what you said about theater. At least get people thinking about it, instead of just accepting things as they are. And talking of that, the article ought to’ve been printed by now, right?”

  “Kearney said something about right before we get back to Gallytown, for maximum impact, but—” He forgot entirely what he was about to say, and nearly dropped the crib quilt. Right ahead of him two booths were jammed together, holding each other up. One of them featured wooden flutes of every imaginable size, carved and decorated and inlaid with little polished stones. The other was packed to overflowing with books.

  “Oy, and I knew the young lordship for a sensitive and learned man the instant he turned his head my way!” cried the bookseller, a Gnome-Goblin-Human-and-possibly-Troll mix who looked as if any attempt to read a book would make his brains bleed. “Collected from the finest libraries of the finest lords in all the Kingdom, bless and rest their scholarly souls, a better nor farther-ranging selection of books you’ll never uncover!”

  He waited for Cade to laugh at the pun. Cade was staring at a thick, heavy volume, bound in ragged leather, the spine cracked and some of the pages about to fall out. On its front, stamped into the leather, the gilt long since worn away, were two barely discernible words: Lost Withies.

  “How much?”
<
br />   “I knew it, I knew it—’tis a subtle and perceptive young lordship! That book there, that’s from the ancient and cherished library of—”

  “How much?”

  “For a knowledgeable person such as yourself—”

  He was about to snarl the question a third time when Mieka interrupted with a snort.

  “The cover’s a wreck, there’s water damage, and I’ll bet half the pages are missing! Name any price over a royal and I’ll have the castle constables on you for cheating your customers!”

  There followed much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the seller, and much scornful jeering from Mieka. Cade could only stand there and stare at the book. He would have paid a hundred royals for it. Two hundred. He moaned low in his throat when Mieka picked it up and opened it, showing the seller how loose the pages were, flipping through it as if it was a bound folio of inferior poetry instead of the historical treasure Cade knew it to be.

  “One royal and a happenny tacked on,” Mieka finally said, grudgingly. “And it’s a favor I’m doing you to agree to that.”

  “One and se’en-pence.”

  “One and two, and there’s an end to it!” He dug into a pocket and slammed the coins down onto the closed book.

  The man truly didn’t know what he had in his possession, or he would have haggled much longer and for a much higher price. Cade had been a fool to react this way to mere sight of the book, though Mieka seemed to have saved the situation for him—and a lot of money. The volume was tied together with string, and as the seller grumbled and fussed, Mieka said, “Oh, and we’ll have that copy of The Parchment Dragon right there as well. Consider it a sweetening,” he added, smiling with every single one of his teeth, “so that I don’t report you to the constables.”

  More groaning, more wringing of hands. Eventually Cade felt Mieka slide the quilt from beneath his arm and press the heavy book against his chest. He embraced it, and Mieka snorted again.