Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “Another reason for striking out on our own,” Mieka remarked. “Blye’s convenience!”

  She had come to tea to give him and Cayden their glass boxes. It was a rare afternoon of quiet at Redpebble Square. There’d been no time for lunching with the Princess this year after Trials, no time for visiting friends—unless those friends happened to drop by, in which case they were given a crate and directed to pack something in it. This was true of all four members of Touchstone. Jeska, due to become a father again by Wintering, had found a larger house into which his growing family would move while he was away. Rafe, Crisiant, and little Bram were changing residence as well—though in their case it was only around the corner from his parents’ bakery. Cade, Derien, Mieka, and Mistress Mirdley were in the midst of moving to the new house on the river; Jed, Blye, Jez, and Eirenn would transfer to Number Eight; Rikka Ashbottle and her husband, Parlen Cropready, would take over the lodgings above the glassworks. It seemed to Mieka that almost everybody he knew was moving almost everything they owned that spring—except for Jindra, who would stay at Wistly Hall with her doting grandparents until his return from the Royal this autumn. He had the occasional attack of nervous worry, wondering how she would adjust. But surely it was better for her to grow up in a home full of people who adored her. He knew bloody good and well that anything was better than growing up around her grandmother.

  The problem of Derien and the journey to the Continent had worked itself out, no credit going to Cade. The boy had indeed won the competition, first place in both the examination and the interviews. He reported this news about twenty seconds after Cade and Mieka walked through the front door of Redpebble Square. Cade scowled and gathered himself for an argument; Mieka rolled his eyes; Mistress Mirdley snorted; Derien said cheerily, “You’ll be glad to learn I’ve politely declined the invitation. After all, I have family responsibilities. I’m needed here to supervise the move. Just filing all your books onto the library shelves will take weeks, after all. And as for your wardrobe—not to speak of Mieka’s—!”

  Mieka congratulated Derien on his triumph and his wisdom, while Cade seemed to deflate, his anger gone. The next day, however, fear replaced it, with the arrival of a sealed-and-beribboned missive written on expensive paper.

  Blye had given them the boxes, which they duly and sincerely admired. They were regaling her with the tale of Vered’s play when the only remaining Silversun footman entered the drawing room with a polished brass tray. Cade extended a hand, thinking the letter meant for him.

  “Master Derien, sir,” the boy said, and gave it over.

  Mieka saw gray ribbons and orange sealing wax and almost dropped his teacup. Derien ripped the thing open and started to read. After a moment, he grimaced.

  “He’s asking me to reconsider. Says his wife has taken a fancy to me—I’ve never even met the woman! Advantages to my future career, invaluable experience, yattering on and on—”

  “Mother will be thrilled,” Cade observed sweetly.

  “Mother’s never going to know about this—not any of it,” Derien warned. “I didn’t tell her about the competition. She’s given up Panshilara and Iamina for the Queen’s circle of ladies—”

  “Good Gods, can you imagine?” Blye laughed. “An afternoon with them would be like taking a nap without losing consciousness!”

  “—so she probably didn’t hear about it from that direction, either,” Derien finished.

  “Be deferential when you write your refusal,” Blye advised. “And be sure to save the letter. You can laugh over it with your grandchildren someday. Cade, I want to hear the rest of what happened. In case you’ve lost your place, Black Lightning had just arrived in the taproom. Say on, O Great Tregetour, say on!” She grinned at him. “But don’t let me forget to brag about our own news. Windthistle Brothers has the contract to build the Princess’s new sanatorium!”

  Mieka laughed. “Sudden large donation, was there?”

  “Very large, and very sudden. I think they’re naming the gardens for the donor, but, d’you know, I can’t quite recall who it is.”

  “That’s a shame,” Dery said with every evidence of sincerity. “And talking of names, we have to decide what to call this new house of ours.”

  Cade groaned and fell back dramatically in his chair. “Oh, Gods—not that again!”

  It had been a source of mischievous contention in the weeks before Trials. Mistress Mirdley favored “Garboil House” (even though it begged to be mispronounced), considering the uproar and disorder bound to be a daily feature of life there. Failing that, “Dringler’s Rest”—for, she pointed out, there was nothing Cayden and Mieka were so good at as wasting time. Mieka had proposed “Scrivenscrime,” a combination of scrivener (Cade) and scrimer (a fencer, for Mieka), though he had to admit this, too, was a silly mouthful. Cade voiced his suspicion that he’d put it forth to make his other suggestion sound better, but there was no chance that they’d called the place “Gliskering.” Derien’s idea was “Eyas Hall,” a reference to a nesting falcon, to play off his and Cade’s clan. Cayden, who one would think would have all sorts of notions, being a wordsmith and all, had not one single suggestion.

  Derien now presented each name to Blye, who had a few trenchant observations about each, and offered “Silverthistle’s Folly” as more appropriate. This led to possible names for Number Eight, Redpebble Square—Windthistle, Cindercliff, and Wooltangle provided fine material, especially after Cade started tossing in synonyms. Mieka didn’t join in so vigorously as he might have done; his gaze kept returning to that letter, now lying on the floor. Proof positive, as if any were required, that the Archduke had something nasty in mind. All by himself in foreign lands, with only schoolboy magic to defend himself in places where even the most benign magic was looked on as evil … it didn’t bear thinking about. Look at the trouble Touchstone had got into on that journey to fetch Miriuzca back to Albeyn, and they’d been grown men at the time. No, it was much better that Derien was staying home. His success in the competition would be remembered—and what possible diplomatic use could a boy of not quite fifteen be, other than running errands for a pair of highborn twitchies who despised anyone named Silversun in the first place?

  Mieka had a few errands of his own to attend to before Touchstone set off on the Royal. He spent a day at Wistly, putting together his wardrobe for the circuit and playing with Jindra. She was six-and-a-half years old now, as full of chatter as he was, and great fun. They went swimming in the river, built a fortress of ancient tables and rickety chairs and threadbare blankets on the back lawn, and borrowed Jinsie’s favorite cloaks to become dragons swooping down the stairs for Tavier to “slay” with a wooden sword. Jorie had taught her niece how to read, and at midsummer, she would start littleschool. Lord and Lady witness it, he couldn’t believe she was growing up so quickly. Surely it couldn’t be almost seven years since he’d come back from the Continent to find her mother pregnant.…

  Her mother was a subject not discussed. By anyone. Mieka had shied back a little at spending a night at Wistly in the room he’d once shared with his wife, scared of an assault by memories. He’d worried for nothing. Finding a stray vial of her rose perfume in a dresser drawer was merely an annoyance, not a shock. He wasn’t even tempted to open the vial and inhale of her scent. He threw it into the trash and considered himself cured.

  All the same, he made a brief trip to Hilldrop Crescent. He told no one but his mother where he was going, and didn’t bother to lie about it. He only mentioned that some of his clothes were still there, to which she replied mildly that she would’ve thought his closet at Wistly held enough shirts, trousers, vests, jackets, boots, and suchlike for him to be adequately clothed during the Royal. She said this while looking at him with her usual shrewdness, but didn’t comment further. He knew very well that she knew very well that he looked on it as a sort of final test. If he could enter that house and remember without too much regret the years he’d lived in it, then he could judge him
self truly free. If not … well, nobody would see him fall to pieces. Yazz, Robel, and their children were away at her parents’ dwelling, so both the house and the converted barn were empty. Mieka’s former wife was now living with her new Ripplewater relations; he had no idea where her mother was, and didn’t care.

  He spent a rewarding afternoon, returning just before dinner with two satchels full of clothes and the last of the three-branched candleflats Blye had made for his eighteenth Namingday. Jinsie, on the lookout for him, opened the front door of Wistly Hall as he was paying off the hack driver.

  “Quite the expensive journey,” she observed, taking one of the satchels.

  “There was a bit of a bother,” he answered easily. “Nothing dreadful, but I owed him a nice tip.”

  The man glared down at him, muttered something about his horse never being the same again, and drove off.

  Jinsie didn’t seem to notice. She had something to tell him. She had been singularly irritating the last few days, with her lists of private performances while on the Circuit and her admonitions to keep an eye on the man she and Kazie had hired to take Yazz’s place on the coachman’s bench (Rist being unavailable). Although Nevin Tranterly was big enough and brawny enough to control the horses—borrowed yet again from Romuald Needler’s growing herd, for not even Jinsie could coax an actual sale out of the Shadowshapers’ manager—he had never been more than twenty miles from Gallantrybanks and might not be able to read the maps clearly.

  Mieka turned resolutely for the stairs. “Whatever it is,” he said over his shoulder, “you can tell me while I pack.”

  “All right.”

  He paused on the third step. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  The rest of Touchstone didn’t like it, either. Their final gigging before the Royal was that night at the Kiral Kellari, and after “Dragon” and “Dwarmy Day” had been performed and they were having a drink in the tiring room, Mieka told them what Jinsie had said.

  “Books?” Cade stared at him. “Real leather-covered books? Is she joking? Who’s the publisher?”

  “Damn it!” Rafe said. “I had this idea years ago, for ‘Bewilderland’!”

  “How did Bexan come up with it, anyways?” Jeska asked.

  “Who cares?” Cade snarled. “As if anybody, especially Vered, is going to let anyone see his performance notes!”

  “That’s just the point,” Mieka said. “It’s the script that will be printed, with a few descriptions of the scenery and some stage directions for the masquer, but no notes. Not the color-coding for the withies—not that anybody could make much sense of that kind of thing—or any fettler’s cues regarding where more control is needed, or anything that has to do with the actual performance. It’s just the words.”

  “Bexan is one smart little Piksey,” Rafe mused. “All attention is on the Shadowshapers these days, wondering where and if they’ll perform together again, and that’s not even considering the chavishing going on about Blood Plight. Anybody who’s anybody will want copies to read for themselves.”

  “I still want to know why she’s doing it,” Jeska insisted.

  “She’s got four children to feed and clothe and educate,” Rafe pointed out. “And I think she knows that sooner or later Vered and Rauel will be at each other’s throats again.”

  Mieka nodded. “There won’t be any income from the Shadowshapers because there won’t be any Shadowshapers to generate income. Jinsie thinks so, too.”

  “But—but it’s giving away their secrets!” Cade drained his glass of beer down his throat and looked for a moment as if he wanted to throw it against a wall. “Not to people who just want to read the plays and who don’t have any magic or at least don’t have any ambitions for the stage—I’m talking about other groups! Any glisker worth his withies would be able to tell what kind of magic is needed for this or that effect—masquers and fettlers would see the cues without anybody having to show exactly where they are!”

  “I knew we should’ve followed up on ‘Bewilderland’ years ago,” Rafe said with a sigh. “But in a way this is good. She can take all the risks. If it turns out well, we can follow her lead.”

  “‘Follow’—are you insane?” Cade surged to his feet and started pacing. “Don’t you see it? Anybody—anybody—could take the script for ‘Dragon’ and do it exactly the way we do it—”

  Mieka led the hoots of laughter. “Now who’s joking? Nobody could do it the way we do!”

  “And anyways,” Jeska said, “isn’t the play already out there for anybody to see? In its original form, I mean. One of the Thirteen Perils. They’re all of them in books, and most of the other old ones are printed someplace.”

  “What about our originals?” Cade smiled thinly as the laughter faded. “Doing up ‘Bewilderland’ with illustrations as a children’s book might be all very well, but what about Window Wall? Do you really want anybody and everybody taking our script, our work, and doing it themselves? If they’re good with it, they’re getting a reputation based on our work. And if they’re lousy, the reputation of our play suffers.” He paused for breath. “And there’s something else. Had any of you considered that any idiot with money enough to pay for the printing—talent or not, magic or not—can have his scribbles published? Did Bexan think of that? I doubt it!”

  Mieka almost didn’t tell them the rest of it. Cade was furious enough right now; the remainder of Jinsie’s news would be adding black powder to the fire and produce a serious explosion. But he had to tell them.

  “There’s another thing. The Master of the King’s Revelries heard about this—don’t ask how, Jinsie doesn’t know—and he’ll probably decide that his office gets to inspect and approve plays for publication.” When Cade drew breath to roar, Mieka held up a staying hand. “The naughtier plays—‘Troll and Trull,’ f’r instance—not suitable for ladies and children to read.”

  They were still discussing it—at a much lower volume—weeks later when a letter from Jinsie was delivered by a special messenger who galloped up to the wagon on the road to Dolven Wold. They invited the man to share their dinner, especially when he pointed out that he’d had to ride fifteen miles out of his way because they were on the long road to Dolven Wold, not the shorter one. Jinsie, it seemed, had been correct about the new driver’s proficiency with maps. While he and the messenger were feeding and watering the horses, Mieka handed the letter to Cade, who read it aloud.

  The Master of the King’s Revelries has (so they say) been talking with the Archduke. The decision comes in two parts.

  First, any play first performed at Trials or on any of the Circuits can be published only if the Crown gets a portion of the proceeds. They’re talking 60 percent, but that will probably be lowered to 50 for the more successful groups, whose plays will be in greater demand.

  Second, old plays—all of the Perils, for instance—will have to be substantially different in the new versions, or the group publishing it can’t get more than 15 percent of the profits, even if they’re the ones paying for publication. The Master of So-forth-and-so-on will, naturally, be the one to determine the meaning of “substantially.”

  Thus Bexan can only publish original plays that the Shadowshapers never first performed either at Trials or on a Circuit. She’s not happy.

  I can’t imagine that Cayden will be, either. Kazie has, however, made an interesting point. The regulations say “at Trials,” not “at Seekhaven”—so a case could be made for any play first performed at the Pavilion or on the final night being exempt. I’ll have a talk with Master Burningcrag and get his opinion.

  By the by, other rumors have it that Princess Miriuzca is supporting this plan because a percentage of the Crown’s percentage will go to supporting her new sanatorium. Blye, Kazie, Crisiant, and I are lunching with Lady Vren and Lady Megs next week, and will take the opportunity to explain our point of view.

  Before I forget, Yazz wants to know what if anything you want done about rebuilding. I told him I’d ask.
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  Seeing Cade’s confused frown, Mieka knew he’d made a mistake by not reading the letter aloud himself and skipping that last bit. Well, how was he to know? Though it was addressed to him, the first few sentences had been for all of Touchstone, not just him.

  Rafe was gnawing on his mustache. “We’ll have to send a letter back.”

  “Obviously,” Cade snapped.

  “You write it,” Mieka said quickly to the fettler. “Nobody, not even my own twin sister, can read my handwriting.” Which wasn’t precisely true, but anyway was beside the point, and the point was that Cayden was so furious that he was more likely to use his pen to stab the paper instead of write with it.

  Thus, after dinner Rafe scrawled a letter to Jinsie asking her to ask her artist friends to submit sketches for an illustrated book to be titled Bewilderland. That and “Turn Aback” were the only two of Touchstone’s works that were both original and first performed elsewhere than at Seekhaven. Rafe didn’t mention that play, and neither did anybody else. Mieka was relieved. Ever since its failure, Cade had either flinched or got all defensive about the thing. Nobody needed to point out that of all their plays, that one was the most likely to sell two or three copies.

  But those were the only two plays they had. Jinsie might be right about the wording of the regulations, or she might not. Until this was cleared up, Touchstone had no desire to see a huge slice of the profits of everything from “Dragon” to Window Wall go to the Crown.

  “Although,” Cade mused the next morning after they’d seen the rider off back to Gallybanks (he’d pointed them to the easiest road to Dolven Wold before leaving), “I suppose Window Wall wouldn’t count. We’ve never done both parts together.”