Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  She turned her head and stared at him with those magnificent iris-blue eyes. “Because I deserve to be happy!”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes! Happy and loved and rich and respected—”

  He asked again, “Why? I mean, why you, more than anyone else?”

  “Because I’m beautiful.”

  She believed it. She truly believed it. He remembered what Bexan had said only hours ago at dinner: that a pretty thing was useless if pretty was all it ever was. Witch or not, he could imagine nothing more useless than this girl sitting beside him.

  Well, useless except for one thing. She had produced Jindra, and Cade loved Jindra as if she were his own. He could just imagine Blye’s face if he ever said in her hearing that a woman, any woman, was worth only her ability to bear a child. Blye, who was still childless and likely to remain so. Blye, who had taught him from childhood that a girl could do anything a boy could do except piss standing up.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t see much use for this particular woman beyond Jindra’s birth. He couldn’t help thinking it, even though he knew that if he ever said it, Blye—and Megs and Jinsie and Vrennerie and even Princess Miriuzca—would have his balls on a silver plate. He shook his head and smiled.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me!”

  “I’m not laughing. There’s nothing funny about it, really. Actually, I feel sorry for you.”

  “Sorry? For me?”

  Indeed. She was beautiful. The most beautiful thing Mieka had ever seen. Cade regarded that exquisite face, the sweet childlike mouth, the wealth of gold-bronze hair. Her face was pallid with weariness, her mouth defensively tight, her curls drooping and looped braids fraying. He saw her plainly now in the growing light of dawn, saw the sudden fear in her eyes, and knew what she was about to say. He let her say it.

  “Why do you feel sorry for me?” she demanded. “What have you seen? What is it that you know?”

  Softly: “Someday, my dear, you will grow old.”

  Her face betrayed her for an instant—but only for an instant. He was who he was, after all, and she knew it. A glint in her eyes, a twitch of her lower lip, the slightest flinch in the muscles around her eyes …

  And then she laughed at him.

  It was a terror that would not really touch her until the morning she looked in a mirror and saw the first line, the first hint of sagging, the first white hair. She who could never pass a mirror without seducing it would one morning find the mirror had become her enemy.

  “Never,” she scoffed, secure in the magnificence of her youth and beauty.

  Cayden shrugged. She’d find out someday. “Would you tell me something, just for the sake of my own curiosity?”

  “What would you like to know?” She was confident again, a little smile on her lips.

  “The business cards. One from Finicking and one from the Finchery. Please don’t bother to deny that there were two of them.”

  For a moment she looked as if she were considering doing just that. Then she lifted one shoulder in an indifferent little shrug. “My mother gave me the Finchery card. I was to pretend I’d found it in Mieka’s things.”

  “Ah. Of course.” He could have written the scene himself, if he’d had a taste for melodrama: her anger and hurt and accusations; Mieka’s denials, increasingly frantic because he had never been faithful to her while Touchstone was on the road. Whatever she asked for, he would have given, just to stop her from crying.

  “But you did something else with it,” he said.

  “When the man at the races gave me his card, I decided to switch them while Mieka was busy with his thorn.” She hitched her shoulder again, angrily this time. “He wasn’t supposed to be angry at me!”

  Cade could well imagine how shocked and frightened she must have been. But not so shocked that she hadn’t realized that when Mieka hit her, it was something she could use for the rest of their lives. Even now she made the gesture: dainty fingers touching her cheek. It would have been easy enough to switch the cards once more, after Mieka had realized what he’d done.

  He regarded her thoughtfully in the dimness. She wasn’t a wicked person. She was guilty of nothing worse than stupidity and ambition. It was her mother who was behind it all—her mother, who must have been livid when the girl’s heart was set on Mieka instead of some wealthy lordling.

  “Beholden for clearing that up,” he said. “I’d wondered.”

  “I’m so pleased.” She curled herself into the farthest corner of the hack, drawing the blanket around her, and proceeded to ignore him. At last, silence, he thought, and returned his gaze to the drowsing streets of Gallantrybanks.

  She surprised him again when they reached Wistly Hall. Tavier, evidently set to be on the lookout for them, ran down the front steps to open the hack’s door. Every bit as susceptible as his brother, he worshipped the girl with his eyes as she descended unsteadily. He held out both hands to her. She waited until Cade had alighted before swaying, crying out in a soft whimper, and at last collapsed backwards into his arms.

  “Pay the coachman,” Cade told Tavier. Rather than swing her up to carry her inside, he set her down on her own two feet. He knew what she was doing. Beauty was one thing; helpless, vulnerable beauty was so much more. When she realized that he wasn’t going to do what she expected, she walked a few artfully unsteady steps. Inside, Cade heard Jinsie’s voice from the balcony and looked up.

  “What’s wrong? Is she hurt?”

  “Just tired. Still a bit in shock.” He knew that had to be true; now that she knew herself physically safe, she could give way to what had been an appalling experience. He had the grace to be vaguely ashamed of himself for treating her as he had.

  Jinsie ran swiftly down the stairs. She took charge of her sister-in-law, helping her up to her room, throwing a glance back over her shoulder at Cade as she said, “Yazz is in the drawing room. Good thinking, Cade, to send for Mistress Mirdley.”

  Of course it would have been impossible to carry the Giant upstairs to one of the bedchambers, even assuming Yazz would allow the indignity of being carried. Cade trudged wearily to the door of the drawing room, hearing as he neared a consultation between the Giant and the Trollwife, with Mishia Windthistle’s softer voice occasionally contributing. He didn’t listen to the words. The calm tones were enough. Yazz would recover. And Mieka wouldn’t be charged with murder.

  What he would be charged with, however, was an open question. Anything from disturbing the King’s Peace to assault—not on Yazz, who would never press charges, but what if someone in the crowd had been injured or even killed? Cade wondered if the thorn dissolved in that whiskey was still slowing his brains down. He should have thought of all this before, and never left Mieka all alone at the constabulary.

  And now he had to tell Mishia and Hadden that their son was more or less in custody, and he’d need a good lawyer—not some snollygoster with every crooked trick of the law at his fingertips, but someone clever and just this side of ruthless.

  He was so weary, he could hardly think. He found a chair just outside the drawing room door and sank into it, and it might have been moments or hours before he felt a gentle hand shake his shoulder.

  “Cayden?”

  He hadn’t expected Derien to be here—but of course he would be, rousted out of bed in the middle of the night by someone who demanded two gold royals from the stash in Zekien’s coffer, and the attendance of Mistress Mirdley at Wistly Hall with all her medical supplies. Cade examined his little brother’s face. He looked older, and not just because of lack of sleep. Something about the eyes, something more mature in them, something strained about the muscles around them …

  “Yazz is doing much better,” Dery said. “Come talk to Mistress Mirdley.”

  A corner of the drawing room had been set up for Yazz’s comfort. A large mattress had been brought in (Cade suspected that someone among the Windthistles had perfected the hovering spell that Mieka never seemed to get quite right) and suppli
ed with pillows and blankets. The Giant lay in this makeshift bed, his left arm immobilized in a sling tied close to his chest, looking mutinous. Judging by the frown directed at Mistress Mirdley, they had just concluded a discussion about his getting up and going home, and Yazz had lost.

  Approaching with a smile on his face, Cade warned, “You’ll not persuade her to let you up for at least another day, so don’t even bother to try.” That Yazz was alive was the truest relief he had ever known. “I’ve never won any kind of argument with her in the more than twenty-six years I’ve been alive.”

  “Longer than that,” the Trollwife retorted. “Made signs of coming into the world early, you did, until I bade you stay where you were for another fortnight. And that was the very last time I had no dispute from you in the meantime.”

  Mishia rolled her eyes. Derien and Yazz laughed—one clear high note, one gravelly low. Perfect sounds. Just simply perfect.

  “I’ll let you rest,” Cade went on. “I just wanted to see for myself that you’ll be all right.”

  Mistress Mirdley cast him an odd look. He let an eyebrow arch slightly, and her expression changed to one of understanding.

  Deaf to Yazz’s protests that he didn’t need to rest, the two brothers and the Trollwife went out into the hall, leaving Mishia to deal with the grumpy patient.

  “You saw this, didn’t you?” Derien challenged. “You knew.”

  “Not here, bantling. Wait until we get home.” Turning to Mistress Mirdley, he said, “Mieka’s wife could probably use something to help her sleep.”

  She gave him as fierce a frown as he’d ever seen from her, and stalked off towards the front door. Too late, he remembered that one of her nephews had been done to death by a Caitiff. She would move not one inch to help any of that breeding. He recognized this attitude as being the same kind of narrow-minded prejudice as was painted on the walls of Great Welkin’s ballroom. But somehow he couldn’t blame her.

  He draped an arm across Derien’s shoulders and followed the Trollwife. Wistly Hall was beginning to wake up—he wondered how the rest of the family would react to the Giant in the drawing room—and Cade wanted to be gone before people began descending the stairs to breakfast.

  He had barely set his hand to the front door when it opened inward to reveal a white-bearded man wearing the black tailcoat of the legal profession. His ears had been skillfully kagged. Evidently his teeth had been hopeless to change while still in his jaw, for Cade could hear the faint watery click of dentures when he said, “You’re not Hadden Windthistle.”

  “No, I’m not.” Full points for incisive logic. If this was the writ-rat Hadden was counting on to get his son out of nick …

  “I’m sure he’s just coming,” Derien said. Full points, Cade thought again, for paying attention during lectures on social niceties. He’d make a diplomat of himself, Derien would, if only to voyage to those lands he fell in love with on his maps. “Will you come in, sir, and wait inside?”

  “Oy, Burningcrag? Is that you?”

  Cade turned to find Mieka’s father hurrying down the stairs, knotting his neck-cloth into an approximation of tidiness. It was dark purple; his shirt was pale green; his longvest was an indeterminate blue; and his socks, visible between the hems of black trousers and the laces of a very old pair of leather shoes, were bright red. Mieka had definitely not inherited his elegant sense of dress from this man.

  “Cayden! I’m glad you’re here. Can you stay a moment longer and tell us what Mieka’s like to be up against?”

  He sent Derien (protesting) home with Mistress Mirdley in the hack Master Burningcrag had arrived in. Then he joined a family conclave in the dining room. Mishia was already there, and Jez and Jinsie, and when Hadden arrived with Cade and the lawyer, the doors were firmly shut.

  “She didn’t say much,” Jinsie began at once. “Too jumpy to answer any questions. So I put her to bed. Maybe later on today, she’ll have something to tell us, but not now.”

  “Yazz doesn’t know exactly what happened,” said Mishia. “He’d turned to confront the mob when the horse reared, the carriage lurched, and hooves came down hard on his shoulder and arm. He fell, and the carriage ran over him. Twice,” she finished with a wince.

  “You could see the marks of the wheel on his shirt,” Hadden said. “We didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was, so we told him Mieka would be back soon and to let Mistress Mirdley work.”

  “Mieka.” Jezael was shaking his head as he spoke his brother’s name. “He’s for it this time, I think. Yazz won’t press charges, but the Archduchess surely will. Does anybody know if other people were hurt? Cade?”

  “No idea. Somebody slipped some thorn into a flask of whiskey, and I came to in a carriage just outside the constabulary. But here’s the thing. The constable noticed a welt on Mieka’s leg. Thorn.”

  “Somebody—” Jez began, but Jinsie interrupted curtly.

  “He’s known to use it. Proves nothing, Cade.”

  “Nobody who uses would jab himself in the thigh like that.” He almost said, In the first Elsewhen, it was his shoulder—but both times the man in the yellow vest did it. If he’s not in the Archduchess’s pay, I’ll swallow a withie. But not everyone here knew about the Elsewhens. Only Jinsie.

  Master Burningcrag said, “Disturbing the King’s Peace is what all those people should be charged with. But they’ll have vanished by now. Your son is the most likely target, Windthistle. The young lady is right. A thorn-mark proves nothing.”

  Cade folded his hands together atop the table. “Mieka mentioned something before I left with his wife. The Archduchess said, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’ In just such a way: This. Which tells me that something was supposed to happen, but not the way it did happen.”

  “Can’t prove a thing that never occurred, either,” Master Burningcrag pointed out. “Well, if there were no serious injuries or fatalities, the charge won’t be anything but mischief or whatever the current weasel-word is for causing a ruckus. I shouldn’t think anything more would happen than a fine and a month or two in jail. Not prison,” he hastened to say when Mishia caught her breath. “That’s reserved for felons. I’ll do my best to keep him out, or at least limit the sentence. But that’s assuming the official report doesn’t include any injuries more serious than your friend’s. Are you quite certain he won’t—”

  “Yazz?” Cade snorted. “Never.”

  “Moreover,” Jez added, “he’ll say the whole bloody mess was his fault, not Mieka’s, and try to take all the blame himself. Not that Mieka will let him.”

  “If that’s all, then,” said Master Burningcrag, “I’ll return to my office. My clerk will inform the constabulary that I’m representing him, then wait for the official notification of Mieka’s arrest.”

  “And after that?” Jinsie asked.

  “I’ll go bail him out and bring him here. Can’t do anything until the proper paperwork arrives, you see.” He rose and swept the table with his gaze, then cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’ll send to you later with—that is to say, I won’t know what will be necessary, as it were—”

  “I’ll take care of the money,” Cade said. Derien wouldn’t have approved the bluntness, so thoroughly indelicate, but he had no time for polite back-and-forth. “No arguments,” he said quickly as all the Windthistles opened their mouths to protest. “He can pay me back out of our next giggings. If that’s all for now, I should get home.”

  “And get some sleep,” Mishia advised, practical and motherly. Then she shivered and rubbed her hands over her face. “A son of mine,” she murmured to no one in particular, “arrested and tried and jailed…”

  Hadden paused to clasp her shoulders gently before accompanying the lawyer to the front door.

  Jinsie held Cade back with a hand on his arm and drew him aside in the hall. “It’s good of you, offering to stand my idiot brother’s bail.”

  “And Master Burningcrag’s fees,” he insisted, thinking that at leas
t all those gold coins could be put to good use.

  “Oh, there won’t be any. He’s a Windthistle a couple of generations back—I’m sure you noticed the ears—and one of the few who never came freeloading at Wistly. But his sister did, and then left with Uncle Barsabian after the famous afternoon Jed and Blye got married. So he owes us both for giving his sister a roof over her head all those years and for the insult she offered when she left.” Her smile was uncannily like her twin brother’s, though her dark face with its frame of silky pale hair was the opposite of Mieka’s coloring. “We never saw it as an insult, of course. One less gaping, greedy mouth to feed!”

  One of the younger gaping, greedy mouths had run to the corner and fetched two hire-hacks. The lawyer got into one. Cade climbed into the other, told the man his address, and sank back, closing his eyes. He could prove Mieka’s innocence—well, not prove it, exactly, but at least turn people in the right direction, the direction of the man in the yellow vest, who was certain to have a connection to the Archduchess. If Cade revealed what he’d seen in the Elsewhens—evidence of something that hadn’t happened, but it wasn’t as if he’d be testifying on his oath before a justiciar—he could direct the investigation.

  Who was he kidding? There would be no investigation. Mieka’s carriage, Mieka’s driver, Mieka’s fault. And what even two days, leave alone two months, in jail would do to the Elf was something Cade couldn’t begin to contemplate.

  He went home to Redpebble and slept. Sometime after noon, Derien came upstairs to wake him, bringing notes from Jeska and Rafe. Both expressed fury and the unyielding determination that Mieka would not be tossed in jail for something that wasn’t his fault. Oh, and they assumed that the usual Wintering celebration at Wistly was canceled. Let them know if Cade or Mieka needed anything, from money to a couple of pairs of fists.

  “You wrote to tell them?” Cade asked Dery.

  “Just after we got home this morning. Mistress Mirdley says to come downstairs and eat something before you turn into a walking skeleton.”