Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  It was a fine, cloudless day, though very cold, when Cade came along on one of Mieka’s walks. He wanted a break from polishing the final version of Window Wall. They crossed Gallybanks, heading south to the river, then turned west to stroll along the meandering path of the water. Nothing so spectacular as the Plume featured here, just a broad expanse of clear, rippling water winding its way to the sea. Few bridges, few businesses, no manufactories at all—it was much quieter, and in places almost rural.

  Mieka tramped along with his cloak pulled tight around him and his gaze on his boots, grimly denying that he had any desire for a drink before sundown. He allowed himself one beer with dinner and one small whiskey after a performance; he’d convinced himself that so little could do him no harm, and it did diminish the cravings. He could’ve used a drink—to be honest, quite a few drinks—after receiving news this morning that his wife and mother-in-law were still at Wistly Hall. Mieka refused to return home while they were still there; they refused to leave without Jindra; Mishia and Hadden refused to allow Jindra to leave. Master Burningcrag had drawn up various documents necessary to divorce proceedings, and as generous as the terms were, they had been rejected.

  In any divorce, the wife was assumed to be at fault. The husband might be a dedicated bedswerver, a famous drunk, a pock-armed thorn-thrall, a giddy spendthrift, and a downright flaming bastard (all present and accounted for in Mieka’s case), but responsibility for the success of the marriage was always a woman’s. If she wanted out, she got nothing. If he wanted out, he had to pay back her dowry. But that was all. Thus it was rarely to a woman’s financial advantage to free herself from a rotten marriage.

  Unless, of course, she had a wealthy lordling waiting to become her second husband. In the last week or so, Mieka had heard the name Ripplewater mentioned. He pitied the man profoundly.

  Master Burningcrag, with stiff though mostly silent disapproval, had drafted a settlement that gave Mieka’s wife Hilldrop Crescent to live in for her lifetime—but the deed was changed to make Jindra the legal owner. A set amount would be paid quarterly for housekeeping and other expenses, which would stop the instant she became Lady Ripplewater. Mieka, in accordance with tradition and the law, kept full custody of Jindra.

  His wife knew that their daughter was her best asset. To be sure, he had no real fault to find with her as a mother. It was her mother that worried him. (In point of fact, her grandmother—and his amazement when Cade casually mentioned it had lasted several days.) Mieka had said and meant that he wouldn’t allow Jindra to grow up under the old woman’s influence. If he had to pay to keep his little girl safe, then he’d pay.

  However, moral outrage was no substitute for the sustaining comforts of ale, whiskey, or thorn.

  Mieka plodded along the path, wondering how far he’d have to walk today to wear himself out for a few hours’ decent sleep tonight. Touchstone was free for the evening, and those nights were always both the best and the worst. He loved giving a show, but the tiredness that came after a gigging was always matched by the exhilaration of the work itself and the applause that half-deafened Touchstone whenever they performed. He’d talked this over with Cade several times, and they’d concluded that various kinds of thorn could either evoke that sensation or dampen it down, depending on one’s needs of the moment. How they would learn to cope was still problematic. But Mieka was touched and humbled that Cayden had decided to support him by swearing off thorn, too. Almost five weeks now; Mieka told himself it was getting easier, and mayhap it was, because he didn’t have to tell himself that quite so often.

  All at once he realized that Cayden was no longer beside him. Turning, he saw his tregetour rooted to the narrow pavement skirting the slope to the river, staring at the opposite bank.

  It wasn’t an Elsewhen. He knew what those looked like on Cade’s face. He also knew what recognition of part of an Elsewhen becoming reality—a scene, a conversation—looked like. Retracing his steps, he squinted to see whatever was clutching Cade’s attention so hard.

  Brick steps led up from the narrow dirt track beside the riverbank to a terrace that fronted a very peculiar building. It had a hole through the middle. The tall three-story house, constructed of warm dark-gold stone accented by silvery-gray window casements, was split in the middle by an archway wide and tall enough to drive a coach through. Studying the place, it seemed to Mieka that it might have been a gatehouse of sorts, with stabling for horses and carriages, and the grooms and coachman living on the floors above. Or maybe all the outdoor servants, he thought, counting windows. But such a building ought to have been on the grounds of some huge estate. There was no such mansion visible; hedge fences and stone walls marked the boundaries of the property to each side and around back, and beyond were other houses, modest in size and embellishments—though some ambitious soul had provided his somewhat squat two-story dwelling with a ridiculous row of columns across the front facing the river.

  Mieka returned his attention to the odd building, wondering firstly why anyone would put a gatehouse on the river, approached by stone stairs up the bank, when it ought to have been at the road, and secondly whether there was a kitchen and suchlike so it could be turned into a real house—for a kitchen hearth was no safe thing to have anywhere near the wooden stalls and straw bedding of a stable. Unless, of course, one knew a Wizard or, more likely, a Goblin with a seriously brawny spell that restrained fire to hearths and torches and candles where it belonged.

  “Quill?”

  At last he got a response. Cade looked down at him, gray eyes bewildered. Yeh, this was an evocation of an Elsewhen, all right. Mieka thought for a moment, then laughed.

  “Forty-five?”

  The confusion increased for a moment before Cade’s face cleared and he laughed, too. “Exactly! I only saw it at night, but this has to be it. There couldn’t be another place like this, could there?”

  “Looks like a gatehouse stables or something.” He tilted his head slightly to one side. The shape of the thing was like the letter U, only upside-down and bottom-heavy. Top-heavy. Whatever.

  “It’d probably cost a bleedin’ fortune to make it livable,” Cade mused.

  “Lucky, then, that you’ve credit with Windthistle Brothers, that renowned and accomplished firm of builders, who, for reasons that utterly elude me, like you so much that they’ll give you a discount. C’mon, let’s go have a closer look.”

  They’d passed a bridge about a half-mile back. Returning, they crossed to a tidy little street of shops, and chose the shoemaker at random to ask about the neighborhood and that strange building.

  The door opened with a brisk ring of a bell. Mieka looked up instinctively at the sound—but there was no bell for the door to hit. Magic. He grinned to himself. Nobody around here was likely to look askance at a Wizard tregetour, at least not for being a Wizard. The disreputable profession of traveling player might be another matter. But if Cade spent generously at the local shops, they’d all get to liking him right quick.

  Cade had already made his ask of the shoemaker—who was Wizard-tall, Troll-faced, and looked at least two hundred years old. From the array of wares on his display shelves and the tools at his workbench, he was not just the maker of shoes but also the snobscat who repaired them.

  “Hopeless pile of rock, ain’t it?” he said to Cayden. “Sir Blasien Linstock, as whose grandsire had the firings of all the King’s cannon under his eye—this was during the war, mind, and I doubt me Sir Blasien could light a candle with both hands and a book to guide him, he’s that thick, the poor looby, and everyone’s always said that whichever land his grandsire came over to Albeyn from must be swimming in stupid. Anyways, with the knighthood the grandsire got that nice bit of land on the river to build himself a home. He’d barely married before he was buried—the custom of his homeland, and savages they must be as well, to put a man in a box and put the box in the ground! But his wife had a son three months after he died, and spent all her years in that big house up the road,
the one with the roofline that heads off in twenty different directions and a hundred different angles, which makes it a puzzle to thatch, and I know this for why? My daughter married the thatcher.”

  Cade cast a quick, laughing glance at Mieka, who knew exactly what he was thinking: This old crambazzle talks more than you do!

  “But now we come to Sir Blasien, the grandson, who bethought him that it was high time the house got built, and by this time had to sell off half the land to do it with, for his mother was naught but a lovely little lozel who spent everything she could get her hands on and then some.”

  “Beg pardon?” Cade asked, unwisely, marking himself as a lackwit in the shoemaker’s scornful eyes. Mieka hid a smirk by pretending interest in a pair of heeled suede boots. Lozel was another of Uncle Barsabian’s preposterous words. This man looked to be of the same generation, and maybe even older.

  “Wasn’t I just saying that she couldn’t hold on to a coin if it was glued to her hand? All Sir Blasien could get built was the gatehouse, according to a plan his grandsire sketched up. Tribute to the old man, all that.” He shook his head. “There was talk at one time of a road, a proper road, with pavement and all, along the river, and that’s why the cobbles were laid to the gatehouse and through the middle, for they were supposed to connect with the road. The steps down to the river were meant to receive guests, even Royalty, coming along by boat. But that never happened, neither.”

  “I see,” said Cayden. “Has anyone ever lived there?”

  “Rats, mice, birds, and the cats what dine off ’em. All empty on the inside, and for why? Sir Blasien invested his last penny in some voyage of Lord Piercehand’s ships to some distant place or other, and lost it all. Been trying to sell the gatehouse ever since.”

  Mieka nodded sagely. Cade ought to be able to get the place cheap. But as for what might have to be done to it to make it habitable …

  Ah, but hadn’t Cade seen it in that Elsewhen? What if possession of that strange house was a requirement for that Elsewhen to happen? Or might it happen anyway, wherever Cade—and evidently Mieka himself—lived?

  And then he had it. It wasn’t just Cade’s house, it was his house, too! How perfect it would be: half of it his, half of it Cade’s, with a shared drawing room and dining room and whatever—and most of all, a shared kitchen where Mistress Mirdley could reign supreme.…

  He heard Cade express gratitude to the shoemaker for the information, and followed him back outside. When the door had shut behind them with a sharp ring of its magical bell, he peered up into Cade’s face.

  “Well?”

  The gray eyes were staring down the road, where the top of the house was visible through the trees. “Can’t afford it.”

  “You might not, but we can.” Laughing at the shock he’d just administered, he danced a few steps into the middle of the street, then whirled round. “Just think of the discount my brothers will give me! Now, what shall we call it?”

  “Call what?”

  “You’re the tregetour. Think something up!”

  “Mieka, I don’t even know if I want to buy the place or not!”

  “Did you or did you not see us there? I mean, here? And look—it’s a nice little village—not quite enough people to be a real village within the meaning of the Royal Census, I expect, but it’s got what’s needful, greengrocer and butcher and baker and everything in between, and they don’t mind magic, and it’s an easy drive from Gallybanks and right on the river and Jed and Jez will have a fine old time frustling it all up for us—”

  He stopped talking only because Cade reached out a hand and clapped it over his mouth. He grinned and pretended to bite the heel of Cade’s thumb.

  “I’ll think about it,” Cade said firmly. “C’mon, it’s getting late and we ought to get home for dinner.”

  Stepping back, Mieka waved extravagantly in the general direction of the house. “We are home, Quill!”

  Chapter 19

  Ready and willing as Cade had been to give Mieka a room for the night—or as many nights as he wished—Cade had been too sleepy that first night to feel much besides bewilderment. Six weeks later, he was still bewildered, and nowhere near growing used to it.

  No Elsewhen could have warned him. The choices had been Mieka’s to make. Cade had thought that Yazz’s survival and getting the girl out of the way—and, totally unexpected, finding the house—would negate all those futures of drunkenness and thorn-thrall and death too young. He cherished this notion until one morning about a month after Mieka moved into a spare bedroom at Redpebble Square, when an Elsewhen disabused him of his hopes.

  {Tobalt sat at his desk, sorting old issues of The Nayword. All the issues dealing primarily with the Shadowshapers went to his left; everything that was mostly about Touchstone was placed to his right. He paused in his methodical sorting when an issue appeared with a front page bordered in black. The imaging was of Vered Goldbraider. This he set aside. Searching for something in the unclassified stack, he finally pulled out a similar issue. The black border was the same, but the imaging was of Mieka Windthistle. Tobalt contemplated each in turn, then placed his palms, fingers spread wide, to cover each face.

  “Fa? Are you done yet?”

  He snatched his hands back as his daughter peeked around his half-open door. He waved her in.

  “Funny,” he remarked. “Just about the same number of years for both groups, and almost the same number of column inches.”

  “Did you include the ones about the Shadowshapers after Vered Goldbraider?”

  He gestured to a plain wooden chair in the corner. Stacked on it were more issues of The Nayword; another pile was on the floor beside it. “There. And those about Touchstone after Mieka Windthistle.”

  “Fa!” she chided. “You’re being like Rauel or Cade—only they pretend that what they lost doesn’t matter as much as the way they dealt with losing it. A life is a whole and entire thing, not bits and snatches and only what you want to remember—or things that you want others to remember about you.” She pointed to a framed imaging on the far wall. “Is that how Touchstone would want to be remembered? Or would they want that one over there?”

  The first was of Cade and Rafe and Jeska, dressed to the teeth, beside a tall young man who looked a great deal like Princess Miriuzca. Around their shoulders were ornamental chains from which depended oval medals. The second was an old placard of Touchstone, one of the first imagings Lord Fairwalk had ever commissioned of the four of them. Tobalt contemplated each, his eyes clouding with memories.

  “For Rauel and Sakary and Chat, I suppose it simply hurts too much to think about it. What they were, what they might have become…” He looked at his daughter, gaze sharpening. “But Cayden … He despised Mieka for his weaknesses. The one he really despised was himself, for his lack of compassion. What he did to himself afterwards showed that clear as Blye Windthistle’s finest glass goblets.”

  “Well, Fa, you can understand that, can’t you? Trying to rein in Mieka Windthistle would wear out anybody’s patience.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Once Mieka was gone, he went about trying to do him one better. Dragon tears—daring Mieka’s ghost, I think. He knew by then—how did Jeska put it, in that interview he persuaded me not to print?”

  “That Cade had thrown Mieka away with both hands.”

  “Yeh. So how could he have compassion for his own failures when he’d had none for Mieka? I remember how he used to look at Mieka—disgusted at what he’d willingly done to himself, horrified at what he’d unknowingly done to himself. As if it made him physically sick to see him. Well, that was true of everyone who knew him, of course. Nobody could look at him, not even those who loved him, and not wince. Dear Gods, he’d been so beautiful.… And after Mieka’s death, Cade set about doing the same things.”

  “Punishing himself,” she remarked. “As much as he could, without actually dying.”

  “Y’know, I’ve spent years trying not to see Mieka as a tragedy—not in the
way Vered was a tragedy, of course. I’ve tried to see it as merciful, that death took him before age and illness could, that he didn’t wither slowly but burned out instead, like a snuffed candle flame.” He paused. “No. More like he burned up from the inside.”

  “Fa,” said his daughter, pointing now to the stacks on his desk, “do you think Mieka would want to be remembered for being there—” Once more she indicated the imaging of Cade, Rafe, and Jeska with the Prince. “—or for not being there?”

  “You know,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure which would scare him more.”}

  That made no sense to Cade. Mieka wasn’t scared of anything. Well, mayhap one or two things. But not of the dark, like almost all Elves. Certainly not the kinds of things Cade feared—making a fool of himself in public, presenting a play that everyone loathed, losing Mieka …

  He was in his room, seated at his desk, when the Elsewhen came. His gaze focused once more on the rows of figures before him: calculations as to how much he could afford to pay for that peculiar house he had found. It was his; he knew it was his. He’d seen it in Elsewhens—the best Elsewhens, his forty-fifth Namingday. Recently he had become obsessed with finding a way to pay for that house and everything that would be necessary to make it livable. If he could only establish himself and Mieka there (with Derien and Mistress Mirdley and Jindra), then everything would turn out all right.

  And now this new Elsewhen—but had it shown him that it wasn’t as simple as buying a house (or not buying a yellow shirt, memory gibed at him), or did it mean that until he held the deed in his hand, losing Mieka was still possible?

  He chose to believe the latter. And if even that choice was one that affected the Elsewhen … well, he had second-guessed and out-guessed himself so many times that he really couldn’t bring himself to care. There were only so many things a mind could deal with at once. Doing a thing, not doing a thing—he had to take responsibility for the outcome either way. Wasn’t that what adults did?