Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  Yazz was driving. Robel was at Hilldrop with the children, and Giants didn’t make much of a fuss over Wintering anyway. Mieka was grateful for Yazz’s offer to drive them tonight, for not only was Mieka useless at the reins but he disliked horses on principle, and the horse between the shafts tonight was one of Romuald Needler’s huge white breed. Chat, who owned several of them, had obliged Mieka by lending him the filly for the evening, with the caution that she was young, fast and feisty.

  It was said that over the years since the Archduke had come into his majority, Great Welkin had been transformed from a starkly utilitarian fortress (suitable for the constant observation, if not the imprisonment, of the only offspring of the most infamous traitor in five hundred years) to a pleasant, even gracious home. Archduchess Panshilara was credited with much of the transformation. To Mieka, comparing it to the place he’d visited two years or so ago, it still looked like a big, ugly box with a squat protrusion on top for lifting the lid. The trees had grown some, and the last quarter-mile to the gates was lined with big-bellied urns flaunting flowering plants, lit by strategically placed torches. All the flowers were red, and all the urns were dark blue. The effect was pretty enough, Mieka supposed. His wife gasped her raptures. He wondered how long it would take him to talk her out of buying something similar for Hilldrop Crescent, where such things would look preposterous.

  He wasn’t surprised to see scores of people crowding around the gates. Long as the walk was from the main road, there were coins to be begged and even purses to be snatched if the perpetrators were fast and lucky and managed to evade the notice of the guards.

  Had the Archduke been in attendance tonight, Mieka would not have gone no matter how desperately his wife pleaded with him. As it was, the mere thought of being in that ballroom again with its horrible paintings gave him the wambles, his stomach churning around his dinner and making him wish for a tall, cold beer.

  Carriages and lesser conveyances (no hire-hacks—those invited to these festivities owned or borrowed private vehicles) drove through the gates, leaving the crowd behind, and waited in turn to decant their occupants. Mieka gazed idly around the courtyard, wishing he could escape with the drivers and grooms for some convivial drinking and storytelling. Instead, a footman in the Henick orange-and-gray livery opened the door of the rig, bowed, extended an assisting hand, and gestured to the steps where the great doors had been thrown open. Light and music and voices poured from the entry hall. As Mieka escorted his wife inside, vases crammed with whole meadowsful of flowers every imaginable color of red and blue—scarlet, sapphire, crimson, azure, blood, turquoise, cherry, peacock, apple—assaulted his nose with so many different scents that he was terribly afraid he was about to have a fit of the sneezes.

  The Archduchess Panshilara stood at the top of the stairs, receiving her guests. Princess Iamina was at her side. Both wore simple gray gowns, but Panshilara’s was of figured silk and embroidered everywhere with silver, and the necklet of silver filigree and huge moonstones around her throat matched the gems twisted in her dark, high-piled hair. Iamina no longer wore her famous yellow flower jewel; tonight, her only decoration was a silver coronet indicating her rank. The cloth of her dress was wool—a very fine-spun wool, to be sure, but wool just the same. Mieka bethought him of the story Cade had told about a Wintering more than twenty years ago, where the young Princess had been among a party who stripped naked a Woodwose (played by a convicted murderer) and then devoured him. Surely it was Mieka’s imagination, or Cade’s evocative storytelling, that even tonight the Princess’s lips seemed very, very red.

  From somewhere along the gallery, a choral group commenced a loud, complicated song while the reception line moved slowly upwards. Mieka nodded and smiled as his wife excitedly whispered the identities of various people ahead of and behind them: Lords with their Ladies, Lords with their mistresses, Ladies with their lovers, colossally rich merchants with their wives. She seemed to recognize almost everyone at Great Welkin that night, with gossip about many of them that he pretended to find fascinating. He needed no help from her to identify the tall, lean, dark young man just arriving through the main doors, a blonde girl of perhaps sixteen (and perhaps not) on his arm. Thierin Knottinger, dressed to the teeth in black satin accented with blood-red lapels and cuffs and a high, upturned collar picked out in black spangles, saw Mieka at the same time Mieka saw him. The slight stretching of lips and minimal baring of teeth they exchanged bore no resemblance to smiles.

  As they neared the top of the grand staircase with its gleaming brass handrail, Mieka saw that after introductions everyone headed for the ballroom. Having not the least desire to set foot in it again, he had prepared an excuse for his wife—that he had theater business to discuss with several people she didn’t know and would be bored by, and would see her a bit later on in the evening. He anticipated pouting objections, and to them planned to say that she had suggested it herself, hadn’t she? She wanted Touchstone to keep on earning lots of money, didn’t she? Enough to afford the flat in Gallybanks she’d been hankering after these five years and more? And to move ever higher in social circles? And to send Jindra to the best schools? And so on and so forth until she finally gave in and went to dance and left him alone.

  This, at any rate, was his plan.

  “Master and Mistress Windthistle, Your Royal Highness, Your Grace.”

  Mieka bowed. His wife curtsied. Princess Iamina stared at something in the distance. The Archduchess smiled.

  “So pleased you could tonight accept our invitation and come, remembering how long it was ago when Touchstone were performing at dear Princess Miriuzca’s home, and charming also,” she said.

  How the Archduke managed to communicate with this woman was beyond Mieka’s understanding. Mayhap with simple, direct commands: Sit. Roll over. Shut the fuck up.

  “We are so very much beholden to Your Grace,” breathed his wife, with a second bending of the knees. Silk scrooped on silk, a soft seductive rustle as the rose overdress shifted atop the silver-trimmed white petticoats scalloped below it.

  An unrepentant bit of Elfen blood sparked in Mieka. He smiled at Princess Iamina. “And glad I am to see you at last, Your Royal Highness, in the full and flattering light of all these torches and candles! It seems that every time I’ve had the good fortune to be nearby, it’s been very dark, or very dusty. Which remembers me, did my family ever express our gratitude for the use of your carriage that awful day at the Gallery?” He let his smile widen as Iamina’s color changed. She had been partly responsible for the exploding withie that had injured so many, including his brother Jezael, and his smile let her know that he knew it.

  Her head jerked downwards in a spasmodic little nod, her eyes brimming with helpless hate.

  Mieka turned his attention to the Archduchess and made of his face a mournful mask. “And I’m grateful, my own self, for the chance at last to give Your Grace my personal condolences on the untimely death of the Tregrefin Ilesko. A special friend of yours, I know.”

  One thing to be said for Iamina: she knew when she was being needled. Panshilara was too stupid to get the point, as it were. Somberly, the Archduchess said, “Yes, so very sad, and him so young and the promise of his life, regarding which we all hoped for so much, a tragic ending and for his family as well.”

  Mieka wondered if he should try again—some reference to her husband, perhaps. The Archduke had owned the vessel that had been wrecked on its way to Vathis, with the Tregrefin on board. Everyone had survived but the little weasel and two of his entourage, plus a Good Brother sent as a gesture of friendship between the High and Low Chapels of Albeyn and whatever it was they called their religion in the land whose name he had never been able to pronounce. Cayden had seen it in an Elsewhen while recovering from the wounds on his right hand, and remarked that losing a whole ship was an expensive way to be rid of one little quat.

  No, he decided, looking into Panshilara’s eyes, as big and dark and intellectually astute as a co
w’s. She’d never understand what he was really saying, and whereas Iamina would, he’d stuck her enough for one evening. Besides, thinking about Jez’s leg and Cayden’s hand made his fingers itch for the blade at his back. This would never do, not in this company and with so many witnesses.

  So he bowed again and coaxed his wife from their presence. Or tried to.

  “Such a pretty pearl,” Iamina crooned sweetly, nodding at the necklace. A phrase of gratitude from his wife ought to have come next, but as a Princess of the Blood, Iamina could flout social rules as she pleased. She went on, “But only the one? No earrings? Pity.” And with that she turned to the next guests in the presentation line.

  Mieka felt his wife’s trembling joy become shivers of mortification. Slipping an arm around her waist, he coaxed her along the gallery balustrade, looking down on the hall so she could compose herself without anyone noticing.

  After a few moments, he whispered in her ear. “There’s only one like it in all the world,” he told her. “Just like you.”

  She gave him a grateful smile. He guided her across the broad gallery to a window overlooking the torchlit grounds below. The trees had grown a bit since the last time he was here. So had the hedges. No matter the greenery and gardens meant to soften its aspects, Great Welkin was still a stone island in a marshy sea, girt with stout walls, all approaches glaringly exposed.

  Nothing down below was lit with any sort of magical light. Torches only. There might have been some dramatic effects produced by some Wizardfire here and there, but the Archduchess had a reputation for piety. This meant horrified avoidance of everyone and everything magical.

  Mieka began to wonder why he and Thierin Knottinger were here. A footman came by with a tray of glasses brimming with bubbling wine. Mieka took one for his wife and one for himself, drained his instantly down his throat, and took another. It was going to be a long evening.

  Behind him he heard some woman speak in the almost-murmur that meant she wanted to be overheard but that no one with manners could admit to having eavesdropped. “The rest of Touchstone isn’t here, I see.”

  A companion replied in the same sort of voice, “Oh, my dear! Didn’t you know? One of them is the son of a baker—and the other married some little flirt-gill with skin like the darkest of Dark Elves! Foreign, you know.”

  Mieka consciously relaxed his fingers around the crystal in his hand. If he didn’t, he’d shatter it and end up with scars like Cade’s. And speaking of whom—

  “The Islands, I’d heard. Absolute barbarians. As for Silversun … well, his father just died, didn’t he?”

  Refined giggles ensued. As the two women moved on, the second finished up with, “The Windthistles are ancient Elfen stock, but the wife is nothing, daughter of a dressmaker, which accounts for her clothes, which one must admit are quite nice.”

  “Shocking, how these old families have fallen. A theater player! My father would have drowned him at birth!”

  Mieka turned. Overpainted, overbred, overdressed, and overmatched. He smiled his sweetest smile once again. “It’s a shame,” he purred, “that your father was evidently absent when you came into the world. Then again, mayhap he couldn’t be sure he actually was your father.”

  Taking his wife’s arm, he drew her over to another window. She had pretended not to hear any of it. He rather admired her self-control.

  “It’s so lovely,” she murmured.

  He watched her dreaming, perfect face. Nothing in this world was as lovely as she. “Shall we take a walk, later on?”

  Eyeing him sidelong, flirting with thick lashes, she told him, “Only if I don’t have to hold you up. You will be careful with the drink tonight, won’t you? And dance with me before you start sampling the whiskey?”

  He knew he deserved it, and hid a flinch. “I shall stay as sober as a Good Brother on contemplative retreat,” he promised, and to prove it set his glass on a windowsill. It wasn’t quite time yet to present his case for staying out of the ballroom. He was about to point out the spectacle of an elderly lady dressed in an excess of the current fashion that would have challenged even a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old when a familiar voice spoke behind him.

  “Mieka, old son, we all know you much too well to believe that!”

  Chapter 9

  Deeply shocked, Cayden jolted himself out of the Elsewhen. Bexan was too busy reading aloud, and Vered was too busy admiring her and her words, for either of them to notice.

  Only two sounds in the black room: Bexan’s voice and the faint crackle of the fire. No screaming. Cautiously, he opened his mind to the Elsewhen, trying to observe rather than to lose himself in it. Night; Elf-light streetlamp shining on the blood covering Bexan’s slender white hands; her voice, screaming and screaming as she knelt outside someone’s doorway; Minster chimes very close by—Cade struggled to keep himself both in the black drawing room and in the Elf-lit darkness—eight, nine—

  A different scream and different bells pierced a different night.

  {Her face—that exquisite, innocent face—distorting to a mask of terror. The whip Yazz never, ever used on horses cracking high over the heads of rough-shaven men and straggle-haired women, to warn but not to hurt. The white filly, dancing nervously between the shafts of the absurd purple-blue rig, flinching at the sound. Yazz tightening his grip on the reins as he flick-snapped the long leather whip again, lower this time.}

  In another place, another time, Bexan was still screaming with agony and fear and, curiously, a note of disbelief, as if such a thing couldn’t possibly be happening to her. Cade had no time for that. Where the girl was, Mieka must also be. He pushed aside the vision of Bexan and the Elf-lit darkness, and sought the torchlit night where Mieka must be.

  {The crowd surged forward. This was not the usual ragabash of lifters and loafers, cutpurses and beggars, all looking as if they’d been scraped out of drains, that clustered about a great house on a festive night, hoping for easy pickings or at least an easy grab at flung charity coin. This was a purposeful mob with angry eyes and resentful faces and plenty of torches held high. How had they got within the main gates of Great Welkin?

  How had Mieka and his wife managed to get through this seething throng to their carriage?

  Mieka pushed her down, trying to shield her, tucking the big fur-trimmed cloak around her as if it held some sort of extra protection. Someone leaped up to the driver’s bench, and then someone else, and suddenly a dozen or more swarmed up, tearing at Yazz, who roared his outrage as they dragged him down to the cobbles. Another man wearing a bright yellow vest over a ragged white shirt climbed into the rig, teeth bared in a snarl, powerful fingers tangling viciously in Mieka’s shaggy black hair. They wrestled, scrabbling for the loose and flapping reins. Mieka snatched at the heavy silver hoop in the man’s earlobe, ripping it from his flesh. He bellowed in pain and rage. The girl shrieked as the horse reared and the man clapped his open palm into Mieka’s shoulder, trying to hang on as Mieka fought to heave him bodily out of the carriage onto the cobbles. The Elf reached one hand behind his back, fumbling for his knife. Swaying suddenly, grasping for the coachman’s bench in a vain try for balance, the knife dropped from his hand. Slowly he toppled onto the seat and rolled onto the floor.

  The man kicked Mieka and grabbed for the girl. “Witch! Witch!” he yelled, and all at once she reared up, both frightened and furious, with such rage and hatred in her gorgeous eyes as Cade would never have dreamed he would see.

  Long, sharp, pink-varnished nails sought the man’s eyes. “Fuck off!” she screeched, and with blood running down his cheeks now as well as his neck, he lurched as the rig jolted back and forth, the horse flinching and starting. The girl took advantage of his precarious footing and pushed him out of the rig.

  “Mieka!”

  But he lolled, senseless, without a fist-mark on him. She sobbed and shuddered, pulling the fur-trimmed cloak around her, and snatched up the reins in her slender bare hands.

  All the while Minster
chimes were ringing, and ringing, and ringing—}

  The muffled ringing of fine crystal against the wooden arm of his chair startled him out of the Elsewhen. Bexan and Vered were staring, puzzled and worried. He managed a smile as he bent to pick the glass from the carpet, grateful that it was empty and hadn’t shattered. When he straightened up and met their gazes, he had his story ready.

  “Sorry—a combination of excellent brandy and the most evocative voice I’ve ever heard. Bexan, my apologies. Vered, you are simply a snarge for marrying a woman who could turn the attention of a king from his own crowning. I was busy imagining the scenes of your play, and—” He finished with a self-deprecating shrug.

  In point of fact, Bexan’s voice was high-pitched and nasal; a less generous man would have called it shrill. Cade hadn’t the vaguest notion what she had been reading—doubtless more of the same impossible-to-stage declamations. But Vered’s appreciation and approval were so complete, and Bexan’s willingness to believe his estimation of her work so powerful, that they accepted his excuse without realizing for an instant how ridiculous it was.

  “And now,” he said, setting the glass aside and rising to his feet, “I really ought to go home. I know it’s a bit early for you and me, Vered, but I’m guessing it’s a bit late for them!” He gestured to Bexan, who put a hand on her belly and giggled that incongruous giggle again.

  “How did you know there’s more than one?”

  “Piksey, my dear. Piksey.”

  Had Bexan still been pregnant in that Elsewhen? He thought not. Kneeling, she hadn’t been clumsy or cautious in her movements. Whatever danger threatened, it was months in the future. No need to worry about it now.

  “And because you can bid farewell to sleep for the next year, I’d best leave you to get some rest while you still can.” Aware that he was babbling, he got himself out of there as quickly as he could. As he donned his coat and a thick woolen scarf, and waited for the hire-hack summoned by Vered’s footman, he counted up the ringing bells in that other Elsewhen. The one about Mieka and his wife and Yazz. That meant reliving it, but he was able to keep himself aloof enough from the quick, intense terror of it to number the sounding of the Minster chimes.