Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “Work it out for yourself,” she said. “It’s cold. I’m going in.”

  “Not until you tell me—”

  “Cayden!” Jinsie called from the dining room window. “Can you spare us a minute?”

  The old woman was halfway to the door. He stared after her, mind reeling, until he remembered something Drevan Wordturner had said—or had it been Vered Goldbraider, regarding his play? It didn’t matter. The vital thing was that Henick was a balaurin name. The Archduke descended from a family that had given at least one son to the Knights.

  “Cade?”

  “Yeh,” he said automatically. “Be there in a tick.”

  Chapter 16

  Even considering the urgency of his need, Cade was well aware that it was no use sending a message all the way to New Halt, where the Archduke had gone for Wintering. He waited until Tobalt Fluter gave him the nod that Henick was back in Gallantrybanks, in his chambers at the Palace, and then he wrote a letter. He delivered it personally, making his way with stubborn persistence through multiple layers of Court functionaries, trading shamelessly on his late father’s name.

  It required several hours of kicking his heels in reception chambers, hallways, and private waiting rooms, not to mention following flunkies up and down stairs, to get to the Archduke. Finally admitted to Henick’s presence, Cade bent his head in as minimal a token of respect as he could get away with, and handed over the letter.

  “For Your Grace’s immediate attention,” he said.

  “Ah. I thought I might be hearing from you, Master Silversun. Permit me to offer my condolences on the death of your father. How is your mother?” He paused, watery blue eyes watchful in a face unhealthily pale. “And your little brother?” he added at last—echo of the veiled threat he’d made years ago.

  Cade forced himself not to react. “As well as can be expected. And now I ought to leave, and not take up any more of Your Grace’s time.”

  He had to get out of there. He couldn’t stand being in the same room with that man. Returning to Redpebble Square, he sat in his room to wait for the Archduke’s reply.

  He knew what it must be. He’d written only four words: Look to your obligations. That should be sufficient reminder to Cyed Henick that he owed Cayden, and Cayden now intended to collect.

  Wintering had been a strange, anxious holiday, with everyone adamantly avoiding any talk about Mieka’s problems or his wife’s indisposition. They made Jindra’s Namingday celebrations as much fun as they could. Cade had the feeling that at six years old, the child understood that the grown-ups were worrying about something, and suspected their at times artificial laughter. He didn’t like what it said about Jindra that she didn’t ask questions. Soon enough, he told himself, soon enough she’d be separated from her mother and grandmother—great-grandmother, he reminded himself—and could grow up unstifled in the happy confusion of Wistly Hall.

  He hadn’t reckoned with Mieka’s thoroughly unexpected streak of self-sacrifice.

  Just before Cade took Dery home on Wintering Night, Mieka pulled him aside and said, “I did like you told me, Quill. I looked at her hands. But it doesn’t matter, don’t you see? I’m to blame. And that’s what I’ll tell Master Burningcrag tomorrow.”

  “Mieka!”

  “It was me they were after. I can’t let her go through all of it—court, and lawyers, the broadsheets—I can’t. And if you say a single word contrariwise, I’m gone as your glisker.” When Cade only gaped down at him, he shrugged and said, “She’s my wife.”

  After all this, all the lies and the manipulation, he still loved her. Cade searched the changeable eyes, seeing the well-known stubbornness. He saw also honor and gallantry and self-sacrifice—useless things, things she didn’t deserve.

  “You are without question the stupidest man I have ever known.”

  Mieka only shrugged and walked away.

  Now, five days later, with the witnesses formally identified, located, and informed by magistrate’s writ that they would be summoned to court in Gallybanks within the fortnight, Cade sat waiting for the Archduke’s reply to his letter. Yazz was on the mend, Robel had arrived with their two children, and Touchstone hadn’t performed in more than a month. Jinsie warned Cade that while the populace could stand another week or two of deprivation, Touchstone’s bank accounts couldn’t.

  In the dismal winter months, theater was one of the few diversions available, provided, of course, that one could get through the snow and the wet. Every group in Gallybanks and its surrounding area—even the barely professional ones who hadn’t yet been invited to Trials—performed every night to large audiences and made pots of money doing it. People were beginning to ask what had happened to Touchstone.

  When news of the disturbance at Great Welkin hit the broadsheets, people no longer wondered. They talked of it constantly (scandal being another major winter entertainment), and the few times Rafe and Jeska ventured outside their own front doors, they were stared at. Accustomed to it for much more agreeable reasons, they stopped leaving their own homes unless absolutely necessary.

  While he waited for the Archduke’s response, not leaving the house except to visit Blye at the glassworks, Cade carefully composed another letter. This one was to Vered Goldbraider, and covered eight pages. He told the story that Mistress Caitiffer had told him, fitting it into what he already knew about the Balaur Tsepesh and garnished with gleanings from his grandfather Cadriel’s library. It wasn’t just this research that took him so long; it was also deciding on the best way to tell the tale without giving away the name of the person who had supplied him with this astonishing source material.

  Cade was aware that Vered might already know some of it or all of it, and incorporated it into his plays. If this was new to him, he’d do one of two things: rewrite, or ignore it. Cade felt sure he would do the former, because it was a poor tregetour indeed who ignored such dramatic possibilities.

  By that fifth morning after his visit to Court, there was a rime of stubble on Cade’s cheeks, chin, and upper lip. He hadn’t bathed or changed clothes in days, shucking off only his trousers and shoes before crawling into bed at night. Derien brought him food at irregular intervals, and usually stayed to eat with him. Of Lady Jaspiela there was no sign. Presumably she was at Court. Cade didn’t much care one way or the other.

  He experienced no Elsewhens during this time. He was nightly tempted to use the thorn that Auntie Brishen had devised to trigger those odd visions that were part dream and part Elsewhen. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the one where Mieka had pleaded with them to let him go. His heart had just … stopped. Did anyone who used that much thorn—or used it at all—live to a ripe old age? Look at what had happened to Cade’s father.

  That fifth morning, Derien came running up the staircase and burst into Cade’s bedchamber, waving a copy of The Nayword.

  “It’s done, it’s all over,” he panted. “They’ve all recanted!”

  “They—?”

  “The witnesses! All of them—well, except for the one who drowned in the Gally.”

  And that, Cade thought as he took the broadsheet and began to read the article, was why the other three had recanted. Oh, there had undoubtedly been scenes: the footman, told by his mistress the Archduchess one thing and ordered by his master the Archduke to say another; the coachman and the lady’s maid, informed by their horrified employers that merely appearing in a court of law, even though they were only witnesses and not charged with any crime, was a scandal that could not be forgiven, and they had best think thrice about their jobs. The fourth witness’s death, however … that would have shut their mouths completely about what had really happened that night.

  He read the details of the recantations: “Very dark … bad lighting from the torches … hundreds of people milling about … happened so fast … couldn’t be sure enough to swear to it…” The interesting mention of a wound in the drowned man’s ear, as if an earring had been torn from his flesh. Yellow Vest, Cade thou
ght.

  His wife told the official inquiry agents that he had indeed been injured at Great Welkin, and that Mieka Windthistle had not only hit him in the jaw but also ripped a silver hoop from his ear. The Constabulary, deducing from this that he had been in the carriage with the Windthistles, have postulated in the light of this new evidence that Master Tanglemure’s were the hands holding the carriage reins.

  “So Mieka’s safe,” Derien said, a tinge of a question in his voice.

  “Of course he is. It’s all sorted now. I thought it would be.” Leaning back in the soft black armchair, he tossed the broadsheet to his brother. “I wonder when they’ll refund the bail money.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “I dunno—it just seems—” He kicked at a leg of Cade’s desk. “After everything going all crazy, it feels—”

  “Like a bit of a letdown?” Cade asked, amused. “Like a play that sets up something frightfully dramatic, a confrontation that will change everything completely and for all time, and then … Phut! Nothing!”

  “Well … yeh.”

  “I agree, it’s lousy theater, but life usually is.”

  “At least we got to do something good with some of Father’s money.”

  “Y’know, I’m coming round to Mieka’s way of thinking about that,” he admitted. “What if we give it all to Ginnel House?”

  “I think that would be excellent. That nice Mistress Cavenester will be so pleased.”

  “All right, then, it’s agreed.”

  “But save a bit,” Derien said with a sudden grin, “for the next time Mieka gets into trouble and you have to bail him out of nick!”

  Alone once again, Cade leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling beams and the cracked plaster between them. So much for Master Tanglemure, his tea-and-mocah cart, and his yellow vest. Cade supposed he’d never know exactly how the Archduchess had contacted him in the first place, or what she had agreed to pay him, or even what his mission had really been. That it had all been Panshilara’s idea he had no doubt. The Elsewhen showing him Princess Iamina and the Archduke had been indication enough that he was angry with his wife. Sending the ladies to the Continent was effectively sending them into exile for a whole summer—always assuming they survived the voyage, as Miriuzca’s brother Ilesko had not. The Archduke had two children now: a boy to marry Princess Levenie, a girl to marry Prince Roshlin. He had no more need of Panshilara.

  Cade reasoned that any decent man ought to be appalled by such thoughts and surmisings. True, he had spent years thinking for other people, putting himself in the places of all manner of folk so that he could write their dialogue and portray them as faithfully as close observation and extrapolating imagination could do. Still … that he could so easily perceive what Cyed Henick would probably do, up to and including murder, ought to have alarmed him. But he was too busy being disgusted.

  The trading of favors—his service to the Archduke in the matter of Ilesko’s plan to blow up the North Keep, the Archduke’s paying off the debt by getting Mieka out of trouble—made him sick. There was no justice and the law was a mockery. One woman’s treachery had led to a man’s death, and all of it would be covered up and smoothed over because the Archduke owed Cayden a favor.

  Starting with Kearny Fairwalk, Cade had taken full advantage of the advantages that knowing powerful men could bring. He’d paid for it, quite literally. But balancing out favor for favor didn’t make it right. There was nothing honest or honorable about it. He despised the powerful and himself and the whole corrupt system. But he’d used that system when it suited him. It seemed to him that in the end, all any man could do was conduct his own private affairs with as much integrity and honor as possible, and be as honest in his own life as he could. The greater life, that of society, was hopeless of remedy. Years and years ago, Sagemaster Emmot had spoken eloquently for the advantages of order. How had his little speeches gone? Every man in his proper place, doing his proper job. The great turning wheel with a million spokes, each one secure in its socket—glued in, with no risk of rattling free …

  “But what about people who have talent? What I mean is, my friend Rafe is the son of a baker, but he’s also going to be a really wonderful fettler—he’s got the magic for it and more. Should he become a baker like his father just because that’s where he was born?”

  “I can’t see that this could overset the proper order of society.”

  “Well … no. But lots of people are born into one kind of life and want something else. Something better or different. If they’re taught not to want anything different—I mean, if they ask, should they be told it’s impossible?”

  Though Cade had forgotten what Emmot had replied, he had concluded that order meant that answers need never be provided, because no one would know enough even to frame the questions.

  Tregetours—the truly gifted ones, like Vered—wanted people to ask questions and demand answers. Tregrefin Ilesko and his friends were right about one thing: Theater of the type performed in Albeyn could be dangerous. Looking back, it puzzled Cayden that Master Emmot had encouraged him in his ambitions.

  Rousing himself at last, he went to his desk and took out three sheets of paper. On each, he wrote the same words, then signed his name.

  Rehearsal here tonight at seven.

  The fourth and fifth sheets were for Jinsie Windthistle and Kazie Bowbender, telling them that Touchstone needed to work. It didn’t matter where or for how much. They needed to get back out there before the public again.

  He folded these notes, addressed them, and set them aside. Then he dug his letter to Vered from a drawer and read it through one last time.

  Caitiffs had refused to contribute when the other magical races had bestowed certain gifts on the Knights. For this, they were condemned to serve the Knights who survived after the invaders were expelled. The Caitiffs hid them when necessary, provided them with food, helped them in any way they could, until they were themselves expelled from the Continent. (What the Knights had done after their servants were sold into slavery, Cade couldn’t begin to guess.) Sequestered for centuries on the Durkah Isle, the Caitiffs—one of them, anyways—now wanted a path back to power, or at the very least to live in Albeyn instead of on their frozen island. Not that Cade told Vered this; it had nothing to do with the origins of the Knights, which were the subject of Vered’s plays, and Cade would have had a tricky time explaining how he knew.

  As he folded and sealed the letter, he mused on the implications of that servitude to the Knights. Freed from their island ostracism, would they try to honor the old agreement and set about finding the Knights who still survived? It would make a good story, he supposed. But he doubted very much that the Caitiffs would choose to return to the old ways. Unless, of course, any amongst those Knights had become powerful—

  The Knights, or their descendants.

  No. Were this true, Mistress Caitiffer would still be working for the Archduchess—

  But hadn’t she been the one to tell the Archduke about Cade’s Elsewhens? A thing not just to his advantage, but to hers as well. Had she played on the old relationship? Did he know anything about it at all? Had any tales been told in the Henick family for generations, conveyed in hushed secretive voices, about the sacrifice made by their ancestor in becoming one of the Knights who would vanquish the invaders?

  It was all much too tangled for him to unthread the knots. Frankly, the whole concept scared him. Witches who worked in textiles, allied with what logic dictated the term Vampires—it was too awful to contemplate. They would count on that, wouldn’t they? Two mostly legendary peoples, experts at hiding what they were … could the Knights even be accurately described as people? Few had even the slightest, vaguest knowledge of Caitiffs and the Knights. Even Cade, Wizard and tregetour and arrogant enough to consider himself a scholar, had never heard any of what Mistress Mirdley had told him whilst she was unworking any possible spells from that count
erpane. He glanced over at it, scrunched at the foot of his bed, years old now and harmless. The Knights were even more obscure. No one would take Vered’s plays seriously. No one would believe.

  Except Caitiffs. And the Knights’ descendants.

  Drevan Wordturner had had the right of it. Vered shouldn’t be writing what he had now finished. It was much too dangerous. Cade looked at the sealed and addressed letter. Would a few more pieces of that centuries-old puzzle help or hurt?

  Before he could change his mind, he tore the letter into shreds.

  Chapter 17

  Being a good, kind, thoughtful husband, Mieka didn’t sleep in his wife’s room. His mother made up a bed for him in one of the empty chambers. Jindra chose to stay in her aunt Jinsie’s room. All of this was for the best, because every night since Wintering, Mieka had nightmares. Actually, the same nightmare. Always the same.

  Enormous carriage wheels, tall as Yazz himself—even taller—red-rimmed, shining torchlit blood dripping from every spoke as the wheels turned slowly, slowly … He shouted for it to stop, but the rig kept moving, wheels and axles and springs screeching, grating, grinding. He leaped and grabbed the spokes and the wheel turned with him on it, over and over, and Yazz wailed with pain.… He fell off, through miles and miles of air to the courtyard, sobbed with grief as the carriage moved away, exposing the great broken body on the cobblestones. Blood frothed from Yazz’s lips in a last gurgling breath. Blood streamed towards Mieka, filling the little gulches where the stones met. Blood puddled at his feet, rising inexorably to his ankles, a pool of thick wet blood that caught on fire, gold-red fire that should have been reddish-brown because that was the color of Giants’ fire in Vered’s play wasn’t it but this was gold-red and licked up his legs like a starving beast and he was going to die, he wanted to die because he didn’t deserve to live, he’d killed Yazz and it didn’t matter that he hadn’t been holding the reins and his hands weren’t marked with welts and blisters, it was his fault, his fault, he hadn’t been able to stop the wheel and he pulled in a breath that was gold-red fire that burned his throat and he screamed Cayden’s name—