Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  It was never the same as making love to his wife. But it sufficed, in a way, and if one had to be in thrall to something, it might as well be to bedsport with pretty girls.

  He thought about thorn constantly and not at all. It was always there in his mind someplace, but he never allowed himself to remember its pleasures. He knew Rafe was in much the same predicament—Crisiant had laid down the law and Rafe abided by it—but he didn’t seem to be struggling the way Mieka was. Perhaps he was less susceptible; perhaps he was stronger; perhaps the simplicity of the choice he faced—his family or thorn—made it simpler for him. Mieka didn’t know and didn’t ask. So determined was he to forget everything about thorn that it never occurred to him that Cade would seek a special blend from Auntie Brishen and use it in an attempt to answer certain tormenting questions.

  One night about a week before Touchstone was due to leave for Trials, Mieka returned from a brief but delightful visit to a young lady (whose parents were, appropriately enough, spending the evening at the theater) and wandered into Cade’s bedchamber, just to say he was home. His tregetour sprawled in the big soft black chair, slack-jawed and wide-eyed and oblivious. He knew instantly what Cade had done. It didn’t take the glass thorn, the discarded twist of paper, and the little cup of water on the bedside table to tell him.

  Mieka was furious. And scared. There was nothing he could do but wait it out. So he sat on the bed cross-legged with a pillow in his lap, hands folded, and watched the pale, staring eyes. Rumble, having returned from his own nightly ramble, sauntered through the half-open door and joined Mieka in his vigil. Did the cat look at Cade’s eyes and see what Mieka saw? Or, rather, what he didn’t see: there was no light. There were two gray holes in Cade’s face and no gleam of sense or intelligence in them at all.

  Eventually Rumble uncurled and jumped down, winding himself around Cade’s shins. A few moments later, with a twitching of fingers and a grimace writhing briefly across his face, Cade was back. He looked at Mieka, and then at the cat, and chose the latter for official notice. Bending down, he scratched ears and chin, saying with an almost desperate casualness, “Good hunting tonight?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” Mieka said. “What, exactly, were you hunting down? Derien or the gold?” When surprise flashed in his eyes, Mieka snorted. “Yeh, Quill, I really do know you that well.”

  “Both, in a way. And something else that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Tell me.” It wasn’t a question. It hadn’t been for a long time.

  Leaning back in the chair, with Rumble on his knees, fingers stroking idly through fluffy white fur, Cade waited a moment and then began. “I saw a letter he was writing—the Archduke. I don’t know the recipient—this was the third or fourth page. Something about everything being ready for his wife’s trip to the Continent, and how peaceful it would be at Great Welkin with her gone. Joking that the King would be in his debt for getting Iamina out of his way. But the way he wrote it, Mieka—it’s as if he doesn’t expect either of them to return.”

  “Well, Panshilara’s served her purpose, right? A daughter to marry Roshlin, a son to marry Levenie. And it ain’t like he’s madly in love with her. Who’d even notice if she and Iamina stayed on the Continent for the rest of their lives? What else did you see?”

  “He wrote that Fairwalk’s gold was at the workshop in New Halt, and he’d seen the designs and looked forward to the samples. A couple of weeks, he thinks, before they arrive for his approval.”

  “Samples of what?”

  “How should I know? He complained about how much he’s having to pay Fairwalk for the gold and his silence, and he’s aware that whoever he’s writing to will say it’s worth it.”

  Mieka thought that over. “Why doesn’t he just have Fairwalk killed?”

  “Maybe Kearney was smart enough to write down everything about the deal, with the threat that if he dies of anything other than fully demonstrable natural causes, the letter will be sent to the King. It’s what I’d do.”

  Mieka chewed the inside of his lip for a moment. “The gold is going to a workshop. Not to make a dinner service for forty, I’ll wager, or a hundred goblets, or a couple of thousand wedding necklets.”

  “There was something about an exchange rate, too. Five for three to start, then down to five for four as a warning to those who didn’t act fast enough.” He sat up straighter, dislodging the cat, who slithered down from his knees to the floor and stalked off. Cade ignored the animal, scowling as he tried to remember. “It’s coins, Mieka, it has to be coins. He wrote about melting down the old to keep up with demand for the new, and prices would be unsteady for a bit but that didn’t matter, things would settle soon enough, when—no, after! ‘After the people become accustomed to my profile’!”

  Mieka hugged the pillow to his chest, trying not to shiver. “His profile … on gold coins … made at the New Halt workshop…” Meeting Cade’s gaze, he said quietly, “You know what this means, Quill. For the first time we can be absolutely certain that he’s going to make a try for the throne.”

  “But we still don’t know how he plans to do it.” Cade wrapped his arms around himself, as if he struggled against the same chill that had come over Mieka. “And I don’t know what to do about any of it.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “I didn’t see it, exactly. It was kind of like another Elsewhen was trying to crowd out this one. That’s happened before.” Mieka wanted to ask When?, but Cade went on quickly, “Just a voice, low and harsh. And darkness. A man’s voice. ‘It’s not the drinking that makes them what they are, it’s what they are that makes the drinking necessary. So you see how wrong you were.’” He looked surprised, as if recalling something he hadn’t noticed at the time. “And there was another voice. I could barely hear it. He was saying, ‘Do it, do it.’ Then someone screamed.” He sat forward, arms still wreathing his chest. “I don’t know what that means. Any ideas?”

  “He could be talking about liquor, couldn’t he?” Mieka asked uncertainly. “Enough whiskey or thorn, and they become necessary. Nobody knows that better than me.” He saw the compassion in Cade’s eyes, and the pride that Mieka had been fighting this grim battle and (mostly) winning. “But I’ve never heard of anybody who has to drink in order to survive, and that’s what necessary sounds like, doesn’t it?”

  “I should’ve followed it,” Cade fretted. “I should’ve ditched what I was seeing about the Archduke, and gone after this other one.”

  “The gold is more important,” Mieka stated. “And—listen, Quill, I’ve just thought of something. Mightn’t it be inside your head anyways? When you’ve seen an Elsewhen, you store it away so you can look at it again later, I know that. But what if even if you didn’t really see all of it, couldn’t it be there all the same?”

  Pursing his lips, then biting on the lower one, at length he shook his head. “I think it’s like something that happens in life, like meeting somebody or taking a walk. It has to happen before I can remember it.”

  Disappointed that it hadn’t been the brilliant insight he’d hoped, Mieka was about to ask what Cade thought could be done about Fairwalk’s gold when Derien stalked through the door, followed closely by Rumble.

  “Are we speaking to each other today?” he asked Cade, who accepted the cat onto his lap again and eyed his brother warily.

  Mieka repressed the impulse to roll his eyes. Sometimes the two of them forgot that they were supposed to be furious with each other, and things were as they’d always been. Then one or the other would remember. Mieka had just about had enough of it.

  “Even if we aren’t, there’s something you want to tell me,” Cade said.

  “Yeh. Well, actually, Mieka.” The boy faced him. “One of my friends at school heard something the other day. It’s about that fox.”

  “Fox? Oh. Yeh.” Along with thoughts about drinking and thorn, he diligently avoided thoughts about his former wife. “What about it?”

  “His mo
ther’s maid is cousin to one of the gardeners at Great Welkin, and she heard from him that the fox got caught in a trap—it couldn’t get out of the grounds because of the walls. Lived on mice, I suppose. Anyway, after a couple of months of thinking they could catch it using the dogs, the Archduchess finally said to kennel the dogs and set traps. If it was running around free, she said, it might attack one of the children. Well, it got caught in one of the traps. They found—” He looked sick, but finished steadily, “It had gnawed its own foot off to escape, but of course it couldn’t run, and bled to death.”

  Mieka shivered for real this time. “Poor little thing.”

  “Better than being torn to pieces by the dogs,” Cade said. “Think about it. Cornered and ripped to shreds, or doing what it could and setting itself free.”

  Mieka almost made a protest, but Derien was nodding. “I happen to agree with you. Better to go out free and fighting than overpowered and helpless.”

  Mieka looked from one to the other of them. Did they honestly believe that? For himself, in an equivalent situation, he’d prefer to be surrounded and talk or magick his way out of it, rather than have the escape kill him. Well, at least Cayden and Derien were in sympathy with each other again. Mieka said, “Mayhap you can help us with something, Dery. What should we do about the Archduke’s gold?”

  The boy frowned. “Don’t you mean Lord Fairwalk’s gold?”

  Mieka cast an apprehensive glance at Cade, as if the slip had been an accident and he was sorry. It hadn’t been an accident, and he wasn’t sorry.

  Cade made short work of telling it. Elsewhen; Archduke; coins with his profile minted in New Halt from Fairwalk’s gold; entirely evident now that he intended to make himself King.

  “We can’t demand that Fairwalk give it to us, to compensate,” he concluded. “We can’t use ingots or whatever any more than he can.”

  “And if you do let on that you know about the gold,” Dery said, “that would bring the Archduke down on us like a wyvern on a flock of sheep.”

  Mieka asked, “Could we tell Miriuzca?”

  “How much does she understand about finance?” Cade countered.

  Mieka snorted. “She doesn’t have to understand anything about finance. All she has to understand is that the Archduke intends to make himself King. She’ll understand that much, right enough.”

  “If she knew,” Derien said slowly, “wouldn’t she do something? Let it slip somehow, say or do something the Archduke finds threatening—”

  “—and then she’ll be more of a target to him than she was to her own brother,” Cade finished, grim-faced.

  Dery had decided to sit down, choosing the desk chair, turning it to face his brother. “Doesn’t it work that you become King and then get the coins minted? When Meredan came to the throne, the coins were struck and exchanged for the old ones at the banks, and went into general circulation that way. Slowly. As the merchants came to deposit at the banks, they were given the new coins in place of the old, and those got melted down to be restruck as Meredan’s coins.”

  “If the Archduke grabs the throne and has the coins all ready to be distributed—”

  “Quill, didn’t you say he’d trade five for three? That’d make him real popular, real fast!”

  “Five for three?” Derien’s brown eyes widened. “That would muck up prices for months!”

  “Ah, what a thing it is,” Mieka sighed, “to have an actual education!”

  “If you’d bothered to pay attention in school, you might’ve learned something we could put to the purpose now,” Cade retorted. “Miriuzca must have somebody near to her who can ‘discover’ that gold and confiscate it or something.”

  “No good. Same result as if she confronted the Archduke openly. It would put her in terrible danger, her and Roshlin.”

  “Not the Prince,” Derien said without doubt. “He’s supposed to marry the Archduke’s daughter, and the Princess is supposed to marry his son. Oh, don’t look at me that way, Cayden, everybody’s known that forever! Even if nobody ever talks about it openly.”

  “Granted,” Cade said, “but isn’t it also true that the thinking is he’d wait until Prince Roshlin and little what’s-her-name were old enough, and then take the throne? That would give everybody a lot more time.”

  “To do what, exactly?” Mieka asked. It was the obvious question, and obviously not welcomed. He answered it—sort of—himself. “We need somebody a whole lot smarter than any of us who can figure the whole thing out.”

  “We can’t tell anybody, Mieka!” Derien was shaking his head emphatically. “Nobody can know about Cade’s Elsewhens, and how could we explain what we know otherwise?”

  “Blye already knows about the gold,” Cade mused. “Maybe she’ll have an idea what to do about that, anyways. As for the rest of it—you’re right, Dery, it can’t go any further than the three of us.”

  Mieka decided that the evening—by the sudden chiming of the Minster bells, it was fully midnight—could come to a close on this happy note of agreement between the brothers. It was long past Derien’s bedtime, and Cade’s face was ghastly pale. Elsewhen and thorn; bad combination. “Maybe tomorrow one of us will’ve had a scathingly brilliant idea. For now, I’m for sleep, or I’ll never be able to stagger to the glass baskets tomorrow night.”

  Good nights were said, and Derien departed to his own bedchamber. Mieka lingered to make sure Cade got into his nightshirt and between the covers.

  “And no blockweed, neither!” Mieka warned.

  “Don’t have any. All I asked Brishen for was this.” He stretched head to foot, long bones cracking. “Mieka … you know that I can’t really trust anything I see when it’s thorn that provokes the Elsewhens. It could be just my brain plotting out things like when I’m writing a play.”

  “Tell me this, then. Do you trust your own mind? Your instincts?”

  A shrug. “Mostly.”

  “Does anything else make any sense about this gold? Any other way of turning it into an asset for Fairwalk, I mean, instead of just a lot of shiny metal in boxes?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “All right, then. Go to bed, Quill. Get some sleep.”

  He was at the door before Cade spoke again. “Mieka … I still haven’t seen Derien.”

  And that was one of the things he had most wanted to know about. “An Elsewhen might come to you all on its own, y’know.”

  “You have more faith than I do.”

  Over his shoulder, Mieka smiled and said, “You only just noticed?”

  * * *

  On the first part of the drive to Seekhaven for Trials, Touchstone was privileged to host two distinguished guests. The coach that would carry the pair the rest of the way, with appropriate stops for food and sleep, tagged along behind Touchstone’s wagon, ready at any moment to receive its passengers, as any Royal conveyance must do.

  The coach had been borrowed from Princess Miriuzca. The guests were Lady Vrennerie Eastkeeping and Lady Megueris Mindrising. And the reason they’d caught up to Touchstone and demanded to ride along for a while was that they had a tale to tell.

  The gentlemen made the ladies welcome with a tour of the wagon’s comforts and marvels—which Vrennerie had already seen—then brought out chairs, wine, oatcakes, and sharp cheese. Jeska elected to sit in his strung hammock, while Rafe and Cade, being tallest and long-leggedest, took the other two chairs and Mieka perched on the sink shelf. All four prepared to listen to the ladies as they took turns telling their story.

  “I’ll start at the start, or where it started for Megs and me,” began Vrennerie. “Blye sent her a note, and she showed it to me, and I showed it to our Lady, who read it through several times before burning it.”

  Mieka nodded wholehearted approval. Miriuzca was no fool.

  “She had me write back to Blye,” Megs continued, “with a single question: How much gold was there in this cellar?”

  “And she asked me,” Cade said, unable to contain himsel
f, “and it took hours to figure it out!”

  Mieka knew what this had involved: trying to calculate how much it would take to make a five-to-three exchange for every coin now held by the banks. They’d taken a gold royal down to Mistress Mirdley’s stillroom and weighed it on the scale she used for mixing potions, come up with an approximate answer, and went to tell Blye their estimate. But as to why the weight of the gold was important, none of them had been able to say.

  “When we received Blye’s answer, we told the Princess, and she thought for a while more,” Megs went on. She glanced at Vrennerie, whose eyes sparkled over the rim of her wineglass. “We talked for a long time, almost all night. And the next day, wouldn’t you know it, we just happened to run across Lord Fairwalk along Narbacy Street!”

  “Such luck to find him,” Rafe drawled.

  “Wasn’t it?” Vrennerie grinned. “And considering that we’re telling this to the best players in the Kingdom, we’ll do the next bit in the form of a play. Megs, you be Fairwalk, and I’ll be you and me.”

  Megs instantly ruffled up her hair to mimic Fairwalk’s untidy fringe and assumed a smile that was a marvel of fawning snobbery. For her part, Vrennerie made her eyes wide and guileless, all trace of mocking humor gone. Mieka stifled a snigger.

  “A private performance!” Jeska exclaimed. “Play on, good ladies, play on!”

  Cade hushed him with a gesture that turned into a graceful invitation to proceed.

  “Your Lordship!” Vrennerie simpered. “Oh, how fortunate to find you here! We were just speaking of you!”

  “Were you?” Megs seemed to be struggling between wariness and delight. “I am undeservedly honored, don’t you see, but I can’t really imagine what anything to do with me might—well, as I say, greatly honored, I’m sure.”

  “Now, don’t be so modest! We all heard of your exploits across the Ocean Sea! How many thrilling adventures you must have had! But the Princess is terribly hurt that you haven’t come to see her and tell her all about it in person.” Now Vrennerie changed her voice a little, giving it Megs’s northland inflections. “As busy as he’s been, Lady Vrennerie, you can’t really expect him to fritter away an afternoon like that! Besides, my Lord, we’ve discovered your secret!”