by Melanie Rawn
“Mm.” He scanned Jeska’s note again. Wintering. Jindra’s Namingday. A fine revel it would be for the child tonight, with her father probably still in the constabulary jail. The Windthistles might not want to throw their annual party for family and friends, but Cade knew they’d see to it that their only grandchild wasn’t disappointed on her sixth Namingday. Cade decided to join them. He had questions to ask of Jindra’s mother.
Jindra’s mother was unavailable. She had taken to her bed and would see no one but her mother. Mistress Caitiffer had arrived from Hilldrop Crescent with Jindra that morning, and on finding her daughter prostrate and her son-in-law absent, had pushed the child into her other grandmother’s willing arms and vanished upstairs. Cade, arriving just after tea, learned all this from Jinsie, who finished by saying, “And it’s not a word nor a whimper we’ve heard from either of them since. Now. Sit down and tell me what you saw my brother do last night.”
Lowering himself into a chair—sturdy of construction but threadbare of cushion, and thus relegated to the little room Jinsie used as an office—Cade spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “It was pretty much what actually happened. I don’t know how much I changed, except for one thing. What I saw before … Yazz didn’t make it.”
River-blue eyes narrowed fiercely. “He died? That’s what was going to happen?”
“Yeh.”
“Did you know about the fox? What little she told me last night didn’t make much sense—especially the pet fox. I can’t find the wretched thing, and I’ve looked all over Wistly Hall.” Jinsie scowled when Cade maintained a blank silence. She reached over and shook his arm. “What? Tell me!”
“I don’t really remember it.”
“Try.”
“It’s a long time ago. I was driving Fairwalk’s carriage, and Mieka was up on the coachman’s bench with me … it was night, and I saw a fox in the road, and the next thing I knew, the horses had bolted and I could barely pull them to a stop.” He looked down at his palms, crossed with faint scars from the exploding withie, where once the skin had been smooth. “It was something about the fox on a leash at some party. She didn’t take it with her last night on a leash, did she?”
“Of course not. But it might have stowed away in the rig and followed them into Great Welkin.” She laughed suddenly. “Oh, what I’d give to have seen the uproar! All those fine frustling ladies scattering every which way!”
“And that must be what the Archduchess meant!” he exclaimed. “When she said that this wasn’t supposed to—she did have something else planned, but if the fox was there and messed up those plans, and whatever she’d arranged with the man in the yellow vest didn’t happen the way she thought it would—”
“Yellow vest?”
“He seemed to be the ringleader. I’m guessing so, anyways. I did see him, and very clearly. Mieka ripped the earring out of his ear.”
“Did he return the favor?”
“Yeh. If Mieka gets bail today, take him some salve or something so it doesn’t get infected.”
She might have nodded or spoken. He didn’t know. He was too busy chasing down images in his mind. The fox in the night-dark road, abruptly illuminated by the carriage-lamps … the fragment of an Elsewhen that he’d deliberately forgotten … hauling on the reins … the memory of what had happened next, inerasable: Mieka taking the blame with Fairwalk’s coachman … salve on the reddened marks of leather streaking his palms … and another Elsewhen, seen just last night, standing in Mieka’s bedchamber after Yazz’s death, and the little pot of salve on the table—and in the coach that night long ago, when the reins had marked his palms with welts and blisters …
“Cade? Cayden!”
He glanced at the desk chair where Jinsie had been sitting. She was no longer there, but standing at the office door.
“Are you back? Because Mieka is.”
“I didn’t go anywhere.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I have to see him. Right now. Before he even goes upstairs to his wife. Right now, Jinsie!”
Chapter 14
Neither the amount of his bail nor who had paid it interested Mieka at all. The night he’d spent on that hard wooden bench, with only his cloak for a bed and a constable posted just inside the open door, had been cold, sleepless, hungry, and miserable. That they didn’t consider him dangerous enough to lock up in a cell was a very good thing; that they didn’t trust him not to sneak out unless somebody was watching him at all times annoyed him. By the time Master Burningcrag showed up (Mieka dimly recalled the old man’s sister, a whiny hag who used her long, sharp nails to pinch any Windthistle child who got within reach), Mieka was feeling sumptuously sorry for himself. At least he’d got his own clothes back—the jacket and shirt still bloodstained, to be sure, but nothing stank of vomit anymore. The kindly young constable had long since gone home, so Mieka simply walked out of the constabulary when Burningcrag said he could, without a word to anyone. He was in no mood for pleasantries, not even to relay his gratitude to whoever had cleaned his clothes.
He made the lawyer stop the hack at the first food-cart he saw. Once he’d washed down a chicken pasty with a bottle of beer—the driver obliged with a corkscrew—he felt much better. This feeling died as Burningcrag began harassing him about what exactly had happened last night in the courtyard of Great Welkin. Mieka lost count of the times he’d said, “I don’t know! I can’t remember! Somebody smacked me with some kind of thorn!”
At length Master Burningcrag observed, “Loss of memory can, in some instances, be a useful defense. Not in this case. You really must try to recall.”
Fortunately, they arrived at Wistly before Mieka could lose his temper.
Cade was waiting for him in Jinsie’s little office, into which she hauled him before he could do more than assure their mother that he was all right and ask after Yazz. Sight of his tregetour’s bleak gray eyes sent Mieka’s spirits plummeting again.
“Sit down and shut up until I’ve finished.”
“Tell me about Yazz first.”
Cade’s expression softened. “He’ll be all right. Mistress Mirdley isn’t sure if he’ll regain full use of his left arm. But he’s alive.”
“It was my fault, Quill.”
“I said listen.”
Mieka sat down, shut up, and folded his hands in his lap.
Cade seemed to be having some trouble knowing how to begin. Finally he said, “It wasn’t your fault. You were unconscious. The man wearing the yellow vest—the one who tore the earring out of your ear—he slapped your leg with a glass thorn. A few moments later, you were out cold.”
“How do you—?”
“Let me finish. Yeh, I saw it—in a different version, where Yazz was trampled and he died.”
Mieka felt his stomach lurch.
“But it wasn’t your fault, either time. You were right about what the Archduchess said. She had something planned, but not what happened. Whether you and your wife left too soon, or whether I got there in time to change things just enough, I don’t know. I think it was probably that fox. She couldn’t have allowed for that. The important thing is that when Yazz was injured, you were rolling about the floor of the rig and didn’t know a thing.”
“But—”
“Look at your hands.”
“What about them?”
“Are there any marks on your palms or fingers? If you’d been holding the reins, trying to control that huge horse, there’d be welts and bruises all over your hands.”
He stared at his palms. Not a mark on them. Some bruising and split skin on his knuckles—he remembered fighting the man wearing the yellow vest—but nothing on his palms.
“They said it was me, didn’t they?” Mieka whispered. “That I was the one who couldn’t rein in the horse, and that’s when Yazz got hurt, and—”
“It wasn’t you.”
“I thought it was just that I couldn’t remember. They said it was me. Why did they lie, Quill?”
A telltale hesitati
on. “They spoke the truth as they knew it.”
“Who told them?” He sat forward in the chair. “Somebody from Great Welkin? One of the drivers, or one of the crowd in the courtyard? Somebody who belongs to the Archduchess, for certes! Who saw it? Who told them it was me?”
Cade said nothing.
There was no one else. No one. But that couldn’t be true. Desperate now, Mieka demanded, “What did you see? In the Elsewhen and for real? Who was holding the reins?”
Cade stared down at his own hands. At length he said, “Do me one favor, Mieka. When you go upstairs … look at her hands.”
The rage was swift and total and like nothing he had ever felt before. Because Cayden was right, and Mieka knew it. “You’ve never liked her! Never!”
“No,” Cade replied, looking up, grim-faced. “I don’t like her. Or her mother. D’you know why? Because I saw them planning how they were going to win you, as if you were a medal for First Flight on the Royal. Oh, don’t look so shocked! What if I’d told you back then? What if I’d said, ‘Mieka, she wants to own you, and she’s going to use magic to do it?’ What if I’d told you what Mistress Mirdley told me later on? What the crowd was chanting last night—it’s true. You know it’s true. She’s a Caitiff, a Witch. She used thread-magic on you, from the first neck-cloth she sewed for you back before you were married. I saw her making it. You never would have believed me. You’re in love with her. You never could see anything but her. But I’ve seen what she’ll end up doing to you, one way or another, and what you’ll do to her.”
This scared Mieka more than he would ever admit. Cayden stood there, implacable, his eyes cold. How could he be so cold, when the fury and the hate were burning Mieka up from the inside?
“It’s actually quite simple, when you get to the bottom of it. Do you trust her or me? Do you believe the lies she’s told you, she and her mother, or do you believe that I’m telling you the truth? Don’t answer now, Mieka. Just go upstairs and look at her hands.”
For long moments neither man broke the gaze that was almost a physical linkage between them. Mieka became aware that he wasn’t breathing, and sucked in breath through his teeth.
“I betrayed you to her,” he whispered. “You said so. I told her what you are. But you betrayed me, too. You never told me. You knew all these things, and you never told me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You didn’t warn me!”
“You never would have believed me. Not then. Probably not now, either.” He went to the door, opened it. “Look at her hands,” he repeated, and walked out.
Mieka sat there, shaking with rage, staring at his own unmarked palms. As his heartbeats settled down, he pushed himself to his feet. There seemed to be more stairs than usual on the way to the bedchamber he shared with his wife when at Wistly; he was out of breath and his heart was rampaging again by the time he reached their door.
Her mother emerged, saw him, and anger tightened her features. “Don’t upset her. She’s not well.”
“I won’t stay long,” he said. Just long enough to look at her hands. Feeling a traitor, he crept into the room. He put off the moment with a detour to the wardrobe, where he shucked off last night’s clothes. He wanted something clean. Old clothes, soft and comfortably worn against his skin. Examining the discarded jacket, he decided that even if it and the shirt could be salvaged, he never wanted to see them again. As he yanked the belt from his trousers, he heard the spine-sheath drop to the floor and only then realized that the constables hadn’t returned his knives. This nettled him; they were excellent blades, perfectly balanced, set at the hilts with an amethyst each and engraved with thistles. No use asking for them back. Knives of such quality would be long gone by now.
At last, dressed in soothingly worn pants and an old green woolen shirt, he could delay the moment no longer. He turned to the bed.
She was as beautiful as always, as beautiful as an Angel with her soft childlike mouth and her bright hair in two long braids like a little girl’s. He approached quietly, but something woke her and she looked up at him, her eyes red with weeping.
“What is it, sweeting?” he whispered, sitting beside her. “Are you hurt? Should I call your mother back in?”
“N-no,” she stammered. “Oh, Mieka, I’m so sorry!”
“Why?” he asked, keeping his face and voice very gentle. “What could you have to be sorry for?”
“I lost the baby!” she sobbed, and threw herself into his arms. “I didn’t t-tell you before, because I wanted to be sure—I was going to tell you tonight at Wintering—but I was so frightened, it was all so horrible—I felt so cold and weak all the way home—and then—and when Mother came this m-morning she knew, and she helped me, and I’ll be all right and there can be other babies—but not this one, Mieka, I’m so sorry!”
She was lying. He heard it in her voice. Even thick with tears, the words broken and rushed, he knew it as surely as he knew by the expression in Cayden’s eyes when he was lying. And he’d heard this tone in her voice so many times. So many lies, over the years. Trifling lies that didn’t really matter, so he ignored them; significant lies, such as the Finchery card. And now this.
His own wife had lied to him for years. And he’d let her get away with it. Why should she assume she wouldn’t succeed this time? She always had before.
“Hush. It’s all right. Hush now.”
Cade was right: Mieka loved her. She was his.
Did he love her because she was his?
“Mieka, say you forgive me for losing the baby—”
What he would give not to be thinking these things. To have everything back the way it was. To not know that she was a Witch who had been using magic on him since the day they met.
“Please, darling, say that you don’t blame me—”
All the signs of magic had been there, too, as obvious as the note in her voice when she lied. What had he touched in that booth at the Castle Biding Fair, what had his fingers brushed against of skirts and shawls and neck-cloths that had gone straight to his heart? He thought about the first gift she’d given him, that first time she’d come to Gallybanks. At the feel of it on his fingers as he tied it, he could think only of her. All the things she’d sent him while Touchstone was on a Circuit—easy enough to explain his increased longing for her as the result of her sweet thoughtfulness in sending him presents she made with her own hands. And the sporadic weeks of celibacy? Could those be explained, too?
He drew away and took both her hands in his. “Of course I don’t blame you. You were scared and I didn’t keep you safe.” Holding her gaze with his own, he brought her hands to his lips and kissed each palm. Each bruised, reddened, welted palm. There was a vague taste of medicinal salve. But he didn’t look at her hands. “Poor darling,” he murmured, still looking directly into her eyes. “Poor sweet girl.”
Her face changed, so subtly that if he hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen. She had won. She thought she had won.
“You must be so tired,” he said, letting her go, standing up, grateful that his knees were holding him. What he wanted to do was fall into a mindless heap, or shout and scream and break things—or find a barrel of Auntie Brishen’s whiskey and dive into it and never come up for air. What would that solve? Nothing. Stupid idea. He stroked straying strands of hair from her face and said, “I’ll leave you to get some rest.”
“Don’t tell anyone—” She clutched for his hand. “Mieka, please don’t tell anyone what happened. Don’t say anything about the baby.”
A private matter; he understood. Yet the renewed panic in her eyes signaled something else. Oh. Of course. A miscarriage was a messy business. Someone, most probably his sharp-eyed twin sister, would have noted that no bloodied sheets had come downstairs today.
Amazing, this ability to set aside his feelings and look at things rationally; to find causes and reasons rather than simply explode; to suss out the whys and the hows, instead of running straight for a bottl
e or his thorn-roll. Cayden was a bad influence.
Or mayhap Mieka was just too deeply in shock to feel much of anything at all. Even the fury was gone.
“Nobody needs to know. You sleep now, sweeting.”
Master Burningcrag was waiting downstairs in the dining room. Mieka’s parents were with him, but none of his siblings. He closed the door and sat in his accustomed place. He was glad of his wool shirt, for no fire had been lit in the room. But his hands were cold, and he folded them together atop the table.
“You’ll have to appear in a court of law,” said Master Burningcrag. “There are witnesses who saw someone wearing a fur-trimmed cloak yanking back on the carriage reins. If that’s their only identification, and no one actually saw your face, then we may be able to shake their certainty.”
Aware that his parents were watching him intently, Mieka allowed nothing of what he was thinking to show on his face.
What he was thinking was that the witnesses were telling the truth.
And that he hadn’t been the one wearing the cloak.
And that if he told the truth, and let them look at her hands, she wouldn’t last more than five minutes in a courtroom before collapsing in tears. Genuine tears born of genuine terror, not the quick manipulative weeping she’d used on him for so long.
At least she’d spared him the fingers brushing her cheek where once he’d struck her across the face. At least he hadn’t had to see that again.
“But surely,” Hadden was saying, “the fact that he was trying to calm the horse—there were so many people about besides Yazz who could have been injured or even killed—Mieka was trying to get the horse under control—”
Cade had seen Yazz die. No, that wasn’t quite what he’d said. Yazz had died; Cade hadn’t seen it for himself, had he? None of that mattered as evidence, anyway. One could hardly go into a court of law and say, Well, it’s this way, Your Worship. My friend here has visions.
Cade had seen the man with the yellow vest, too. Mieka remembered him, remembered ripping the silver hoop from his ear and scoring his jaw with his knuckles. That must have been right before the thorn went into his thigh and the man tore off Mieka’s own pearl earring. He’d spent a long time looking for just exactly the same shade of pink as the pearl necklace he’d given her.