Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  Always the same. He would wake in a bone-chilling sweat, shivering, nearly convulsing with lack of thorn and alcohol. It would be so easy to stop the dreams and the shaking terror with a little of this or a trifle of that. But he deserved to suffer. All of it had been his fault. He was the one who had drunkenly blabbed to his wife about Cade’s Elsewhens. And from that, all this had come.

  By the time Cade called for a rehearsal at Redpebble Square, Mieka had been cold sober for more than a week. He felt like all Hells were competing for precedence in his brain and body, and the only person he made the effort not to snarl at was his daughter. That nobody ever snarled back—warned, he surmised, by his mother—didn’t help. When the note from Cayden arrived, he was more than glad to get out of Wistly, where his parents and siblings either replied gently to his spiteful moods (with a look of sympathy in their eyes that drove him wild), or simply walked off while he was still snapping at them. Refreshing, he thought as he walked over to Redpebble, to be with those who would answer insult for insult and sneer for sneer.

  He hadn’t counted on feeling so good after the even minimal rehearsal use of the withies. He’d missed performing. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it until he sat in Cade’s drawing room, glass twigs in his hands, and wished fiercely for an audience to play to.

  Jeska had brought with him the news that his wife and Jinsie had got Touchstone a gigging at the Keymarker the next night. This put Mieka in such a cheerful frame of mind—onstage again at last—that he didn’t even miss the usual tot of brandy in his tea. It was only when he realized that nobody else had indulged either that he became grouchy. Someone at Wistly had tattled on him. Cade, Rafe, and Jeska were abstaining to show their support. What was one little sip, for fuck’s sake? One little sip, one little pinprick on his arm where all the marks of thorn use had smoothed over …

  Mieka had always been adept at smoothing over whatever he was feeling by playing the clown. So, in rehearsal, when it came time to magick up the peerless vision of a girl who caused the boy behind the window wall to fall headlong in love, instead of a vagueness (all that was needed in rehearsal) featuring Kazie’s dark creamy skin, Crisiant’s height and grace, his own wife’s lips and eyes, and Cade’s contribution of shimmering golden hair, he used the withie to conjure up a version of Cyed Henick. Stooped, wheezing, scarlet-faced, squelchy of body and pallid of eye, Mieka put him in the gown he’d seen the Archduchess wearing that night at Great Welkin, and gave him a big flashing necklace besides, the carkanet of shining gold and silver plaques they’d devised for “Treasure.” Rafe and Jeska whooped with laughter. Cade growled. But there was a spark of laughter in those gray eyes, and for Mieka, that was enough.

  Throughout the evening, nobody talked about what had happened at Great Welkin and what had happened since. They all knew that the man who’d ripped Mieka’s ear (also healing nicely) was dead; they also knew who had ordered it. It was ended, and over, and not worth discussing.

  Perhaps they should have. Mieka couldn’t be the only one who recognized that now things were even between Touchstone and the Archduke. Nobody owed anybody any favors. He wondered how Cade felt about that, but didn’t ask. Was losing that advantage worth keeping Mieka out of jail? The answer had to be yes. Still, he couldn’t help wondering if there might be an even greater cockup in the future, when the Archduke’s influence might be needed for something more important.

  Then again, it was a weird sort of relief to know that they wouldn’t have to endure Henick’s fat slimy fingers twiddling about in their lives. In the next instant, he knew how vain that hope was. The Archduke would always be there, sometimes more prominently and sometimes less, but always there.

  The rehearsal ran very late, so he took a hire-hack to Wistly. It was nice to be able to afford such things again. He was so pleased by the quality of the work tonight, and so happy to be feeling so much better, that he told the hack driver to stop a few streets away from Wistly Hall, and got out, and went into a tavern for a celebratory drink.

  He was on his third whiskey when the Minster chimes rang out all over the city. He downed the rest of his drink, bowed genially to the three gentlemen from the neighborhood who did their drinking at the tavern rather than in the elegant confines of their mansions in the vicinity of Waterknot Street, and walked home whistling under his breath. And instead of seeking the little cubbyhole his mother had prepared for him, where he’d had nightmares every time he slept, he went to his wife’s room.

  She was in bed. Her bronze-gold hair was loose, freshly washed, gleaming in soft curls that framed her face. She wore a nightdress of purple silk and frothing black lace. The bed was made with clean, fragrant white linens and embroidered pillows. She was sound asleep.

  He spoke her name, very softly. She did not respond. He watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing and said her name again. Still no answer, nary a twitch nor a twinge.

  But he wanted her. She was his wife, she belonged to him, and he wanted her. Striding over to the bed, he touched her smooth shoulder, then shook it. Nothing.

  “Wake up!” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He picked up one of her hands, avoiding the sight of the still-reddened welts, and stretched out her arm. No thorn-marks. And she wasn’t one to drink herself into a stupor.

  “Open your eyes, damn it!”

  “She won’t. Not even for you.”

  He spun on one heel, swaying a little. Her mother stepped from a shadow, arms folded, watching him with unconcealed hostility.

  “I gave her something to make her sleep. She’s been crying her eyes out every night, grieving for the baby. Not that you, her own husband, could be bothered to come to her and comfort her! No, you spend your nights anywhere but with your wife!”

  Mieka echoed stupidly, “The baby.” And didn’t trust himself to say anything more. He hadn’t had enough whiskey to make him numb, nor yet to make him reckless. The baby that had never existed. The lie she had told, right to his face. The lie she had told the constables, which had got him a night in jail that could have turned into years. The lies she and her mother had been telling for years.

  It wasn’t precisely a lie that her mother had given her something to make her sleep. The nightdress and the sheets and the cushion-slips were new. He knew, now that he accepted what she and her mother truly were, that had he crawled into bed beside her, he would have been asleep, too, as soon as he closed his eyes. He wanted that, even more than he wanted her. But he couldn’t bear the thought of waking beside her, and looking into her face, and listening to more lies.

  So he nodded, and went past the old woman into the hallway, and found the room he’d been sleeping so badly in, and right where he’d hidden it behind the chest of drawers with the stove-in back was his thorn-roll.

  It wasn’t really cheating on his resolve to give up drink and thorn. After all, it was just to get some sleep. He needed sleep, if he was to perform tomorrow night. It wasn’t as if he’d be going onstage drunk or thorned.

  He arrived early and clearheaded at the Keymarker, laughing in delight at the placard in the window:

  The Keymarker proudly announces the return of the legendary

  TOUCHSTONE!

  Once backstage, a peek through a parting in the curtains showed him that the place was already packed, an hour before they were due to go on. Everybody would make bags of money tonight. His partners made fun of him for showing up so early. In his top-loftiest accent, he informed them that he was a Legend—it said that very thing on the placard outside. Early, late, it was all the same to him, for a Legend didn’t bother with trifles like time.

  “You can’t be a Legend,” Rafe told him. “You’re too short. So’s Jeska. I’m too young and too pretty to be a Legend. And as for Cade…” He pretended to scrutinize the tregetour. “He can be a Legend if he likes. In fact, it rather suits him.”

  Cade favored him with a crisp little bow. “Beholden to you. As your resident Legend, I decree th
at it’s bloody well time we got onstage. Move it!”

  The break from performing had done Touchstone a lot of good. “Hidden Cottage” was funnier than ever; “Silver Mine” more intense and moving. Cade had chosen the old standards rather than attempt any or all of Window Wall, reasoning that they needed to stretch any kinks out before getting ambitious. Mieka, Rafe, and Jeska agreed with him. Though they knew these plays backwards, forwards, and sideways, the sheer joy of being back onstage and the special alertness for flaws made them perform as if they’d never done either play before. The audience responded with wild applause, and broke convention (for, even though drinks were served, this was more theater than tavern) by pelting the stage with coins. Jeska, laughing, gathered up the trimmings and flung them high in the air over the crowd. Mieka tossed a withie even higher over his own head, and shattered the glass into a million glittering shards.

  Tobalt Fluter was present, and Mieka knew that tomorrow The Nayword would be singing Touchstone’s praises yet again. Backstage, he virtuously declined a mug of beer, stuck around for about a half-hour of congratulations, then took a hire-hack home to Wistly. He was very tired, for his performance had not been assisted by thorn tonight—but how good it was to put everything into the withies, and have it all come back to him in applause! The clean, fresh, positive energy made him truly happy. Touchstone was still the best in Albeyn.

  She was awake tonight, breathtaking by candlelight in the sweet tumble of soft sheets and her long bright hair. Purple silk and black lace were again on display. She pushed herself up onto the pillows, smiling, a tiny sleeve slipping down one shoulder.

  Mieka was cold sober and she was unimaginably beautiful and he didn’t feel even a spark of desire. This was unbelievable. He ought to have been shocked out of his wits. What was the difference between last night and tonight?

  She saw it, of course. The lace shifted across her breasts, exposing lush curves. “Mieka, darling,” she whispered.

  He sat down in a chair to take off his boots. The difference was that his wits were precisely what he was in. No thorn, no liquor, just himself.

  “Was it a good show tonight?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Stockings next. He reminded himself to replace all three of his knives, the ones for his boots and the one that went into the sheath at his back. And he ought to send a note to Master Flickerblade, and set up a training session.

  “I can always tell when you’ve had a good time,” she went on. “Those eyes of yours always turn more green, with a hint of blue in them.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt. Now that Lord Kearney Fairwalk was no longer dictating Touchstone’s wardrobe, all four of them wore what they pleased, what they were most comfortable in. Mieka had taken to dressing in plain black or tan trousers and white-on-white embroidered shirts. Just a hint of flash, no distraction. His jackets expressed his more flamboyant impulses: multi-colored brocades, figured silks, crushed velvets, decorated with gold or silver braid. He didn’t wear them onstage. They interfered with his work.

  “Do you want me to pour you a drink, darling?”

  What he wanted was for her to shut up. For if she did, he would hear no more lies.

  “Mieka…”

  Shirtless, he sat back in the armchair and looked at her. “Why did you do it? I mean, I know you must’ve been scared. I was, too. But why did you tell them I was the one holding the reins?”

  “What? I never—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” he said wearily.

  “I’m not lying! I didn’t tell anybody anything! They took you away and I was all alone in that horrid place—nobody even spoke to me! How could I tell them anything when they didn’t even speak to me?”

  He lifted a hand in a dismissive gesture, let it drop to his thigh. “The baby, then. Was that your mother’s idea?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was no baby. I know it as well as you do. Were you scared of what I might do when I found out that you’d lied about who was holding the reins? Did you tell that lie about a baby to—Gods, I don’t know, to make sure I didn’t yell at you? All you had to do was tell me the truth. I would’ve taken the blame anyway. I would have protected you. Why couldn’t you believe I’d protect you? Why couldn’t you tell me the truth?”

  “There was a baby—I was waiting to tell you, I was waiting to be sure—”

  “Don’t lie to me! Don’t you fucking dare lie to me!”

  Shrinking into the pillows, she put a hand up to her cheek.

  That gesture. Again. How many times had she used it in the past few years? The anger was suddenly a living, writhing thing in his guts, compounded of betrayal and hopelessness and the mockery that was his life with her. Springing to his feet, he tore at the buttons of his trousers. He saw the want kindle in her eyes, her stunning iris-blue eyes, and it sickened him and he suddenly wanted her right back—which made him even angrier.

  Naked, he stood next to the bed, glaring down at her. Never had he made love to her with anything other than the most exquisite tenderness. He didn’t recognize himself in the man who yanked the sheets off her body, who took the lacy front of her nightdress in both hands and ripped the flimsy thing in half.

  Certainly he was no longer the boy wandering the Castle Biding Fair, falling over his own feet when he first caught sight of her, hopelessly tangling his fingers in fine-webbed woolen shawls, stammering and blushing as she retreated shyly into the shadows.

  Nor was he the boy who had written callow, passionate love letters until finally, finally, he’d been allowed to spend a wondrous night in her bed.

  No, he was not that stupid, lust-struck boy, insensible to the magic swirling around him whenever he touched her, blind to her mother’s secret smiles.

  He wasn’t that boy anymore. But he didn’t know who he had become, either. He knew nothing right now except that he felt furious and betrayed and he wanted her and he hated himself for it.

  “What are you waiting for?” she taunted. “You know you want me. You always want me!”

  He didn’t know who she was, either. Had he ever?

  She laughed and held out her arms to him, spread her thighs for him. Her gaze roamed his body, her breath coming faster, her swift heartbeats visible in the pulsing of her throat. Lust in a woman’s eyes was nothing new. It was the possessiveness, the glitter that meant “I own you,” that had always excited him, even though he knew it wasn’t true.

  Cade was possessive, he thought suddenly. “My glisker you are, and mine you’ll stay”—what Mieka was, what he could do onstage, belonged, in a way, to Cade and Touchstone.

  Therein lay the difference. The work owned Mieka. The magic and the work had laid claim to him long ago. She claimed ownership of—of what? An upper-class accent, a flat in Gallybanks, clothes and jewels and social position—how much happier she would have been if those things had come to her in the form of a man with some pompous title. A man who came home every night at a reasonable hour, who escorted her to grand parties, who followed the Court from Gallantrybanks to Seekhaven and back and otherwise never went more than ten miles from the city, not even in imagination, because imagination had died years ago, dead along with youth and ambition and magic.

  It wasn’t her, he told himself. It was her mother. His accent, his grammar, his clothes; the luxurious flat in Gallybanks instead of the cottage in the piddling little village of Hilldrop; why did rehearsals take up so much of his time, why was he gone so long on the Royal Circuit every year and gone all over Albeyn during the winter and spring; he could work with his brothers, they’d be pleased to hire him, and what about the Princess, she liked him so much, he could ask her for a position at the Palace or the Keeps, and he could preserve his interest in theater by giving lessons to aspiring young gliskers—

  As he looked into his wife’s eyes, he saw another pair of eyes and they were the same. It didn’t matter whose ideas she had spoken. The fact remained that she was the one who had spoken them, and that meant that she belonged t
o her mother. Not to him. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. His? No. She was her mother’s creature. She had never really been his.

  “Mieka—I know it’s too soon, but—I do want another baby—please, darling, let’s make believe that the other baby never happened, and that tonight I’m ready—oh, Mieka, I want to give you a son—”

  “You don’t want to give me anything.” He heard his own voice, thin and cold, and knew it must be his own voice because he felt the movements of his lips and tongue, the breath leaving his throat. But he didn’t recognize this brittle, bitter tone, any more than he recognized this man who was suddenly, horribly unable to make love to her. A man to whom the touch of her fingers would be as the flaying of flensing knives. “All you ever do is take. But you’re gettin’ nothin’ from me, not ever again.”

  She didn’t believe him. How could she believe him, when he had never refused her bed? She tossed the hair from her face and reached one hand down between her thighs. A whimper, and then a soft moan. He stayed where he was: watching, listening, unmoved.

  “Mieka—!”

  She was crying now and he didn’t care. He picked up his trousers, his shirt, put them back on.

  “What are you doing?” An instant later, suddenly furious: “Go on, then! Get out! Just you try to leave me!” Then she laughed at the sheer absurdity of the notion. “Where would you go?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “There’s nowhere and no one would have you! Come on, Mieka—think of someplace you could go that would—” With a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed: “To him?”

  He’d always known she didn’t like Cade. He hadn’t known before tonight how much she hated him. “Get yourself gone by tomorrow afternoon, and your mum with you.”

  “You can’t leave me! I know things—about him and—and all of Touchstone—I could tell the Princess—”