Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  for

  MARY ANNE FORD

  and

  PHIL DION

  Prologue

  Covered from toes to chest by a quilt that not so long ago had reached to his nose, Derien Silversun lay absolutely still in bed, waiting to hear Mistress Mirdley’s weighty footfalls fade downstairs into silence. He knew just how long it took her to descend the staircase, and just how many short, sharp paces it took to walk to the kitchen. He knew the specific noises of each door (the one into the back hallway creaked; the one into the kitchen whined). He could judge her mood by the swiftness of her steps and how emphatic they might be. Tonight she was worried, but not overly so, and very tired. This correlated perfectly with what he had seen in her face and her eyes when she’d told him Cayden would be all right and his hand was not permanently damaged. Had she been afraid, he would have heard it in quickened footsteps or a slammed door.

  He was tired, too. But he had a task to complete before he slept. He counted to one hundred, and again, then called blue Wizardfire to a candle and reached under his mattress for a folded-up parchment. He spread it out on the sky-blue velvet counterpane and gently smoothed the creases.

  He had always loved maps. Though he’d never been farther out of Gallantrybanks proper than Mieka’s house at Hilldrop, he could look at the markings on a map and instantly envision cobblestone streets or dirt roads, forests or rivers or plowed fields, lofty mountains or green-ferned valleys. Maps spoke to him as charted music spoke to a lutenist, and he read them with the suppleness Alaen Blackpath brought to his strings—or had, before thornful after thornful of dragon tears began to obliterate his talent.

  This was a different sort of map. It was of his own making and not contiguous; its five sections bore no relationship to one another. The sole common point of reference was the Gally River. That, and the substantial wealth of the neighborhoods depicted. There was the odd anomaly—Wistly Hall, for example, situated in one of the most exclusive areas of the city but inhabited by a chronically impecunious family (though with the successes of several of the younger generation, the Windthistles weren’t so skint as they’d been when first Dery had visited there). Some of the houses belonged to the parents of his schoolfellows. All were neatly labeled with the name of the family who lived there.

  His work tonight was to add a few notes while everything was clear in his mind. He hadn’t his older brother’s remarkable memory. It was an effort to memorize his lessons at the King’s College when the learning involved listening to a lecture or reading a text. He was at his best with drawings. Any mention of a country or town or district, and a map of it seemed to conjure itself before his eyes. It was simply a quirk of his brain, and by no means the most important. That one was what he had used at intervals today, roaming about Gallybanks with his friends to watch the celebrations of the King’s twenty-fifth year on the throne. He’d nearly burst with pride during Touchstone’s display in Amberwall Square, laughing and cheering with everyone else at the scenes displayed on the outside wall of the Kiral Kellari. Afterwards, he and six friends had somehow managed to scurry through the crowded streets in time to see the Shadowshapers’ tribute on the newly renamed King Meredan Bridge. He’d been looking forward to telling Cade all about it, but that would have to wait.

  Derien shoved aside anxious wonderings about what exactly had happened to the withie that exploded and injured Cade’s hand, and who had done it, and why, annoyingly aware that everyone would think him too young to understand or even to hear the ominous details. Cade would tell him, eventually. Or mayhap he could persuade Mieka. But that was for later. Right now, he had work to do.

  After rising from the bed, he retrieved a box of watercolors and a brush from his desk. A little water from the pitcher on his bedside table went into a small glass bowl. Seating himself cross-legged with the map before him, he coaxed the Wizardfire a trifle brighter and mixed a brushful of yellow paint. And then he began to carefully mark certain houses on his map.

  * * *

  Shortly before dawn, four young men descended the grand staircase of Archduke Cyed Henick’s mansion at Great Welkin. They managed this descent in various ways. One of them, tall and thin and dark and intense, leaped down with light, purposeful steps, head high and eyes glittering. The man who followed him moved with the same lithe assurance, though he was the first man’s opposite to look at: blond and fair-skinned, with the type of limpid-eyed golden handsomeness that inexperienced girls wanted simply to stare at, and daring women wanted to see distort with lust. The third young man, nondescript in every way, had a shoulder wedged under the armpit of the fourth, who staggered and stumbled, small whimpers escaping his lips with every step.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Pirro!” the first man snarled. “Shut it, would you?”

  “I think he’s gonna be sick again,” said the blond.

  “If he is, he’ll lick it up off the floor himself. Come on. I want to be back in Gallybanks for breakfast.”

  The word caused the unfortunate Pirro to groan mightily and slip from his companion’s support to the marble floor.

  “You have to keep it down this time, old son,” was his friend’s advice as he looked up with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Yark it up again, and we’ll just have to go back.”

  The main door opened on the feeble beginnings of the day. The light, murky though it was, seemed to make the dark young man pause, but after a moment he laughed—a bit high-pitched, a bit nervous—and strode outside. The blond hesitated, glancing uncertainly from the door to the other two men, then shrugged and went to help them.

  “Mind the drink and the thorn from now on,” he said as he helped Pirro to his feet. “Until we’re certain of what the changes will mean, we all have to have a care to that sort of thing. How are you feeling, Herris?”

  “Fine. Up you come, Pirro, there’s a good lad. We’ll take you home and you can sleep it all off, and wake up fit for anything.”

  Between them, they managed to get him across the marble entry hall and out the door. They shoved him into the waiting carriage, where the dark young man received him with an exclamation of disgust. Once they were all four inside and the door shut behind them, enclosing them in wood and leather and black tapestry curtains, Kaj drew a square of green silk from a pocket and handed it to Pirro, who had curled miserably into a corner.

  “Here. You’ve blood on your chin.”

  Even in the dimness of the closed carriage, with curtains shutting out all exterior light, the other three clearly saw him wipe feebly at the smear, and then pause, and then slide the silk into his mouth and suck at it: eagerly, hungrily, with a grin spreading across his face.

&nb
sp; “Anticipating in advance of the plot, are we, old lad?” Thierin Knottinger laughed and patted his glisker on the knee. “Have patience. It’s still sunlight by day and stew at dinner for us, until that theater is finished.”

  * * *

  She finished scraping her hair into a knot at her nape and didn’t bother glancing into the mirror to make sure she was tidy; at this hour, and after last night’s events, nobody she was likely to see would care. Neither, nearly always, did she.

  About to turn towards the warm anarchy of her bed, a scratching sound at her door swung her round in the other direction. “Vren?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  A young woman of about her own age peeked in. “Good Gods, Megs! You’re already dressed!”

  “Well, until about five minutes ago, I wasn’t—I promise!”

  The two women laughed silently as they shut the bedchamber door behind them. No one stirred in the long hallway that led to Princess Miriuzca’s apartments, but the place would soon be swarming with servants. Though there would be no fires to lay and light in this mild weather, wake-up cups of tea or mocah would be coming from the kitchens within the half hour. There were no guards here. Not only had Miriuzca charmingly, politely, and adamantly refused them on the day she moved into the chambers, but there was also no need. Someone had once asked Lady Vrennerie who guarded the Princess when she went outside the Palace to do some shopping or visiting, and Vrennerie, somewhat surprised, had replied, “Everyone does.” And she was right: Miriuzca was adored in Albeyn only slightly less than the King himself. No one so much as criticized her—not even Princess Iamina, not in public. No one would even dream of harming her—except her younger half brother, and he was halfway across the Flood by now.

  Miriuzca was already awake in bed, with little Princess Levenie at her breast. This was another matter on which she had insisted: She fed her children herself for the first year of their lives. By the time she asserted this maternal prerogative with her firstborn, Prince Roshlin, her husband had seen that delicate jawline harden to stubbornness often enough to know that she meant what she said. It wasn’t the first time he simply shrugged and avoided the matter. They both knew it would not be the last.

  Forget-me-never blue eyes glanced up and brightened at the sight of Megs and Vrennerie. “And so?” she asked eagerly.

  Megs waited until Vrennerie had closed the bedchamber door. Then, with elaborate casualness, she replied, “Not half bad.”

  “Even one-handed?” Vrennerie teased.

  “Even so. Though I doubt he’ll remember much, poor dear. His eyes kept glazing over like fog on a lake.”

  “He does have lovely eyes,” Miriuzca commented. Levenie stirred and whined fretfully. Megs went to the bed, frowned slightly with concentration, and the child quieted while Miriuzca guided her back to feed. “I wish I knew how to do that,” the Princess sighed. “Especially when Roshlin is shrieking the roof tiles loose. But tell me everything, Megs. Everything,” she emphasized with a muffled, deep-throated laugh.

  “Ah, if others only knew what we know about you!” Vrennerie said with the ease of long friendship.

  “Look at that face!” Megs scoffed. “Who’d believe it?”

  Miriuzca batted long golden eyelashes, then chuckled again. “I want to know everything, Megueris. Gentlemen might not tell, but we ladies have a duty to each other.”

  “Absolutely,” Vrennerie seconded, seating herself on the other side of the bed. “I have to know whether he liked that thing I told you about, the one Kelinn taught me, where you—”

  “He liked everything.” Megs looked bemused. “As if he’d never done it before. We all know he has, and quite often, too. But he was so sweet about it all, and sort of … I don’t know, grateful.”

  * * *

  She was roused from sleep by the sound of her husband’s mutterings. It was barely dawn; he couldn’t possibly be awake; and yet there he was, hunched in a chair to pull on his boots.

  “Silly git,” he grumbled, “coulda blown his fingers off—or his whole hand—everybody saying how brave he was—brave being another word for stupid!”

  “Mieka? Where are you going? Why are you awake so early?”

  He gave a start and looked over at her. “Didn’t sleep much. I have to go see Cayden.”

  Always Cayden. The thought was there in her eyes, and the sudden twist at the corner of his mouth meant he had seen and understood. He stamped his right foot into his boot and started work on the other one.

  “I have to make sure he’s all right.”

  “But didn’t you say Mistress Mirdley and the Court physicker and—and everyone said he wasn’t permanently damaged?”

  “Won’t know that until his hand heals, will we?” A second thunk of a bootheel on the carpet, and he got to his feet.

  Propping herself on one elbow, she stifled a yawn and then said, “Be sure to give our best wishes to the Princess. She’s been so kind.”

  “I’m not going to the Palace to pay a social call.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean it that way. I just thought that if you happened to see her—or Princess Iamina, or anyone like that—”

  “Anyone important?” he snapped.

  She flinched and lifted a hand to her cheek.

  “Stop that! I’m bloody sick and tired of it!”

  But when her huge, iris-blue eyes filled with tears, he came to her and sat beside her and took her into his arms.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’—forgive me, I didn’t mean it.”

  She snuggled into the warmth of his body to show that she accepted the apology. Rubbing her cheek to his shoulder, she frowned on feeling the plainness of his linen shirt. Couldn’t he wear something more appropriate? Something grander, more expensive? Didn’t he understand?

  Of course not. She had always had to do that sort of planning. And though on any other day she might have pleaded with him to put on a nicer shirt, this morning she said nothing, for those plans, intricately set by her mother, were on the verge of fruition.

  She drew back and smiled. “Go carefully, love.”

  * * *

  Of course Cayden knew about none of these occurrences. He wasn’t there to witness any of them. Neither had he seen them in Elsewhens. The decisions that led to them had never been his to make.

  He woke to full morning sunlight. He felt fine—remarkably fine, really, but for a tingling sensation in his right hand. His fingers were curiously stiff. He looked at the bandages and the pale greenish ooze staining them here and there, and remembered last night all of a piece, as if he’d turned a corner to confront a huge magical painting that moved and spoke and changed with every second, showing him exactly what had occurred. The performance, the back hallway, the withie, Mieka’s horror-stricken face and swift movements, Blye’s glass basket shattering inside the cushioned crate. Princess Miriuzca, her physicker, Mistress Mirdley, and everyone’s assurances that there would be no permanent damage to his hand. And then the thorn: no idea what kind it had been, trying to communicate that most thorn didn’t work on him the way it did other people, feeling it spread through his body, looking up at Megs’s green eyes—

  Oh, shit.

  Cade wasn’t dismayed that he and she had made love. What worried him was how little of it he remembered. With every other girl he’d bedded, it mattered little what they’d done or how often, what had been said or left unspoken. Megs mattered. He knew this because he wanted so much to remember all of it.

  Whatever thorn he had been given left him with only disconnected flashes, scenes like fleetingly glimpsed Elsewhens. He retained impressions of wonderfully smooth skin and satisfying laughter, and he had awakened feeling very happy, but anything that might have been said and most of what had been done eluded his memory.

  And that was a real shame, he thought as he studied the morning sunlight dappling the sheets and the smears of ointments and blood dappling the bandages on his right hand. Megs would be well worth remembering. But the thorn that h
ad deadened pain while allowing him the full use of the rest of his anatomy evidently worked oddly on the brain—or maybe just his brain, quirky and unpredictable (Mieka would have said weird and wobbly) as it was. For all he knew, the stuff ought to have sent him right to sleep until noon today.

  In which case, he would have missed even those few lovely remnants of memory, fragmented though they were.

  When the door opened, he sat up in bed, ready with a smile (but no words; he’d have to wait and hear what she said before he could frame an appropriate reply). It wasn’t Megs who came in; it was Princess Miriuzca.

  “Ah! You’re awake! They said you were still sleeping a little while ago. How are you feeling?” She bustled over to the bedside and picked up his right hand, turning it this way and that to examine it, chattering all the while. “It doesn’t hurt when you move? Good! I’ve been so worried! But you mustn’t be fretting about anything, everyone says you’ll heal quite nicely, with only a few scars.” She gave him her wide, wonderful smile and sat down on the bed beside him. Folding her hands in her lap, she looked at him with sudden seriousness. “Now. Who could have done such a thing? For I am believing it was deliberate. None of you is careless with magic.”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Arching brows told him she knew he was lying. “You need not spare my feelings,” she said softly. “It was someone working for my brother, wasn’t it? Someone who believes what he believes, and wants what he wants. To me, it is a sign that the Lord and the Lady do not look with favor on his way of believing, that nothing these foolish people have tried is succeeding. But how angry it makes me that they try anyway!”

  He could never tell her that but for him, they would have succeeded all too well. Sobering thought, that: If not for me … Sobering, and quite disgustingly conceited. And frightening. It was too much responsibility, too unwieldy a burden for scrawny shoulders such as his. Of course, he could always refuse to see the Elsewhens again, as he’d done for almost two years. If he’d continued rejecting the visions, the woman seated beside him might be dead right now.