Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “If you want to stop talking about this, you don’t have to be so obvious.” But she got to her feet and turned for the door, saying, “I drove here in that purple contraption of yours, with a hired horse and driver. It’s light enough to make good time, but we’d best leave at dawn tomorrow if we’re to get there for the service.”

  “Jinsie—wait. Mum and Fa won’t come, will they? Nor Jindra? It’s no place for a little girl.”

  Hand on the doorknob, she faced him again. “Jindra is very happy exploring her new home. Derien and Blye are taking her to spend a few nights there, with Cilka and Tavier and probably Jorie, with Mistress Mirdley to look after them all. Mum will tell Jindra about her mother when she thinks it’s right. And Mum always knows what’s right.”

  “She does, doesn’t she? I wonder if it ever gets boring, being right all the time.”

  “Well, you’ll never know, that’s for certain sure! Wash your face and come down for some dinner.”

  He nodded, and she left the room. He could guess at his mother’s reasoning. The house at Hilldrop Crescent, Jindra’s home, was a pile of rubble. She hadn’t seen her mother in months. Give her time to learn and like the new house, where she would live with her father but not her mother, before telling her that she would never see her mother again. Give her a place to think of as home, where family and friends and father would be. Give her something real and secure.

  She would have that. So, he realized with a start, would he. A house that was really his—not the place where his wife lived, not the place where his parents and siblings lived, but a home that belonged to him as surely as his magic and his withies and his work.

  But before that happened, there was the rest of the Royal Circuit to be finished. And before that, he would travel to an unfamiliar house and sit in a chair beside his sister, unwelcome, while the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen burned to ashes.

  Chapter 26

  Predicting that Mieka would be gone for roughly five days (two going, two returning, one in between) seemed fairly safe. Cade figured he’d spend the days as he always did at Castle Eyot, reading, relaxing, taking long walks and hot baths, joining Jeska for afternoon rides, catching up on letters. He was engaged in that last activity when Rafe entered his room without knocking and told him to take a look down at the bridge.

  “Has it crumbled into the river so we’re trapped for the next week?” Cade glanced over his shoulder at his fettler, much annoyed. He was right in the middle of an amusing passage to his brother and Mistress Mirdley about the driver’s unexpected detours, none of which had been funny at the time, and the interruption had broken his rhythm.

  “Just look,” Rafe insisted.

  He did. That nonsensical purple rig of Mieka’s was crossing the bridge to Castle Eyot’s little island.

  “They only left day before yesterday,” Rafe said.

  “And they didn’t even use our driver,” Cade added sourly.

  He and Rafe and Jeska went down to the courtyard, full of questions that, after one look at Mieka’s stormy face, they didn’t ask.

  “They oughta fucking mend their fucking bridges,” Mieka griped when he slumped out of the carriage. “I’m full-fucking knackered, and I’m going to bed.”

  Rafe murmured, “My, but he’s eloquent when he’s tired, isn’t he?” But he waited until Mieka had gone inside to say it.

  Jinsie—who had been jounced and rattled from Gallybanks to Castle Eyot and then halfway to Ripplewater Tower and back—moved as if her bones had aged a hundred or so years. Cade offered her an arm as she got out of the rig. She accepted it and limped up the steps.

  “We had to turn back,” she explained wearily. “The manor is up in the hills, and their poxy river floods every spring. It’s all put right by early summer, but last week there was a thunderstorm high in the Pennynines that washed two villages downstream and took out five bridges. Every road was just simply hopeless. So here we are.”

  “They were too cheap to hire weathering witches?” Rafe asked.

  “That’s the other thing.”

  They reached the entry hall, and Jinsie sighed at the welcome coolness. That was the problem with courtyards: no trees, no shade, nothing but heat radiating off stone.

  “What other thing?”

  “The weathering witches are doing a down-tools until they get their own Guild.”

  “Tools?” Jeska asked, bewildered. “What tools? I didn’t know they—”

  “It’s an expression,” Jinsie explained. “The tilers and thatchers got together after the wind did all that damage to the Tincted Downs a few years ago, remember? Only I guess you were out on the Royal and didn’t follow the news. Anyway, they put down their tools and refused to work until the Crown granted them a Guild charter.”

  “And now the weathering witches are doing the same? Interesting,” Cade mused. “I have the feeling it’s going to be a miserable wet winter in Gallybanks this year.”

  “And a lousy harvest this autumn,” Jinsie said. “Nobody ever thinks about weathering witches in the city unless they’re late clearing the snow off the streets. But farmers need them, and badly.”

  “So they applied for a charter,” Rafe guessed, “and when they were refused, let the rain fall so long and hard that it flooded out villages? That’s not going to go over very well.”

  “It’s the only weapon they have,” Jinsie said.

  “What I meant was that anybody going to Ripplewater Tower for the service won’t be at all happy.”

  “And that’s the other thing. Nobody can get there who isn’t already there—and that includes the dead.” She winced a little. “I mean, the deceased. The bodies. Oh, you know what I mean. I’m so tired that my brains are rattling around inside my skull. Can I please go upstairs and rest now?”

  They stood watching her climb the stairs, and Jeska said quietly, “It’s about bloody time. My mum was a weathering witch. She had to work every single day she could, to keep us with food and a roof. It broke her in the end. It even broke her magic.”

  Cade had forgotten that. Impulsively, he put one arm around his masquer’s shoulders and hugged tight. “We can send them the proceeds from our gigging at Lord Mindrising’s next week. They can distribute it amongst themselves, and hold out longer for their Guild charter.”

  Jeska nodded his gratitude. Rafe frowned thoughtfully at Jinsie’s disappearing figure up the stairs.

  “Mayhap we ought to follow their example. Mayhap players need a Guild as well.”

  Cade felt his eyebrows attempt to hide in his hair. “I thought you were all for making this our last Royal, and going out on our own like the Shadowshapers did.”

  “I’ll have to think on it some more. And have a talk with Jinsie. She and Kazie do our planning, after all.”

  Jeska regarded him, lips pursed. “Y’know, now that you mention it, Jinsie would make an excellent Guildmistress. My wife can handle Touchstone’s business on her own … or hire whomever she needs.”

  Gaze flickering from one to the other of them, Cade asked, “You’ve been thinking about all this? And never told me?”

  “It’s been in the back of my mind, yeh,” Rafe said. “Out on our own would be no use to the other players who have to put up with whatever the Master of the King’s Revelries negotiates for circuit performances. But if every single one of us on all three circuits did a down-tools…”

  “There are plenty of groups who don’t get invited to Trials who’d be thrilled to take our places.”

  Rafe snorted his opinion of these upstarts. “And how much money d’you think the Crown would make off ’em?”

  “Point taken. We’d all have to agree on what exactly it is we want—a guaranteed fee for each performance, no matter if anybody shows up or not, and a bigger cut of the profits.”

  “As for asks,” Jeska laughed, “I’m sure Jinsie’s got a whole long list!”

  Cade was still considering it a couple of hours later when he knocked gently on Mieka’s d
oor. Thinking about something suppositional was infinitely preferable to thinking about the something definite he had to tell the Elf. But telling him was obligatory, so when the light voice called for him to enter, he took a deep breath and went in.

  “Jinsie told you,” Mieka said.

  “Floods, bridges, and a down-tools by the weathering witches,” Cade summarized. He chose a chair by the window, with the afternoon sun behind him. It was just possible that without a clear view of his face, and especially his eyes, Mieka wouldn’t notice any little … prevarications. “I asked them to bring you up something to eat.”

  “Beholden.” Mieka punched pillows against the headboard and sank into them. “So what is it that you just can’t wait to tell me? I know that look, Quill.”

  So much for shadowing his face. “One of the Princess’s men arrived yesterday. One of her guards, the sort that don’t look it. He wasn’t in her livery.”

  “She wouldn’t send somebody anonymous to bring condolences.”

  “No. He was here—” Breaking off as someone knocked at the door, he waited until the servant placed a tray of cold beef, cheese, bread, and dill sauce on a table. The man finished arranging the meal, then took up a large earthenware pitcher and poured out two tall glasses of something that wasn’t beer or ale. As had become his practice at all their stops, Cade had privately asked whoever was in charge of the kitchen to serve alcohol only if Mieka asked for it specifically. But he had no idea what this drink was. A cautious sip revealed it to be cold cinnamon tea with a little honey.

  “Excellent,” Mieka announced. “Ever tried chilled mocah?”

  “I’ll inform the cook, y’r honor,” said the servant, and bowed his way out.

  “We should open a shop in Gallybanks,” Cade said. “Mistress Mirdley’s blends of tea over ice, and various kinds of mocah, Threadchaser baked goods—open only in the summer because who wants a cold drink in winter?” Cade knew he was babbling, and shut his mouth.

  “So tell me,” Mieka invited. “What did the Princess’s messenger have to say?”

  He plunged in. “It was a warning. What happened wasn’t an accident, any more than what happened to Yazz was an accident.” He spoke quickly, like ripping a bandage off a wound. Only this would be a new wounding. “Their regular driver wasn’t with them. They found him at the bottom of a cliff, with a broken whiskey bottle nearby, as if he’d got drunk and fallen to his death. But he was murdered. And so were they. The driver they had that night survived, and was questioned and released. And vanished.”

  He could see Mieka struggling with it, fists clenched and lips bitten. “Why them?” he demanded at last. “What did she and Ripplewater ever do—”

  “It was naught to do with them, except that they’re to do with us. We’re being warned, Mieka. He’s put us on notice. He’s willing to go this far, to have them killed just to make clear to us—”

  “Make what clear?”

  “I don’t know! But whatever it is, he’s serious about it. This is a warning that if we do anything at all to try to stop him—”

  “No. It’s got to be wrong. None of us ever even met Ripplewater—”

  “The usual coachman turns up broken at the foot of a cliff, his replacement gives the constables a sad little story and then disappears—”

  “No, Cade, it can’t be that way. I won’t have it be that way.”

  “What you will or won’t have has nothing to do with anything. The Princess’s man showed me a copy of the crowner’s report. They both had gashes across their throats along with all the other bruises and broken bones that would happen in a smash-up like that—Mieka, I’m sorry, but you have to hear this. The only explanation is that somebody took a knife to their throats. They were dead before the—”

  “Or they survived the crash and the driver made sure after. And not because he didn’t want them to suffer.”

  He’d been hoping Mieka wouldn’t realize that. “The coachman said maybe it was shattered window glass, and the crowner accepted it—was paid to accept it, like as not. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Mieka.”

  Mieka drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Because of me. They’re dead because of me.”

  This was what Cade had been most afraid of: guilt. “No,” he insisted. “They’re dead because the Archduke ordered them killed.”

  Mieka rested his forehead to his knees and tried not to be sick. Cade respected the silence for a time, but when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he spoke Mieka’s name.

  Those eyes were staring at him, their different colors glinting angrily. “Why didn’t you know? You with your ‘gift’—why the fuck didn’t you know?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. You know it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Oh, that’s right—it’s only the important things, the things that affect you! She never meant anything, she wasn’t worth much, whether she lived or died didn’t matter—not to you!”

  Very softly, Cade said, “I never saw you. Not once.”

  “What?”

  “I never had an Elsewhen about you. Not until after you showed up that night in Gowerion. I can’t control it, Mieka, even with thorn, I’ve never been able to control what comes to me, waking or sleeping—but one thing I can tell you, I saw her before I ever saw you in an Elsewhen. I don’t remember exactly what it was—I got rid of it, the way I got rid of so many Elsewhens—but I do remember that I saw her. And when she showed up at Rafe and Crisiant’s wedding—”

  “So that’s why,” Mieka whispered. “I never did understand the look on your face. You never told me. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “There are some things that aren’t mine to tell. I can’t make the choices. I’m not supposed to decide. If you could’ve been happy with her, it wasn’t anything to do with me. And anyway, I knew you’d never believe me.”

  Mieka had the decency not to argue with him again over that. “You never saw me? Not even once?”

  “Meeting you was the most important thing that ever happened to me, and I never saw it coming. I think it has to do with how much choice I have, how much influence. You were the one who decided to come to Gowerion that night. But with her—maybe what I saw was a warning not to intervene, or maybe it was to let me know what was coming so I could work out what to do, how to make it different—Mieka, I just don’t know!”

  “So you couldn’t have seen this … you didn’t have any choices to make. It was all someone else.” He sounded even more exhausted than when he’d arrived. “Forgive me, Quill. All these years, I should be able to understand by now. I forget how helpless you must feel.”

  Cade was astonished to find his hands were shaking. He set down the glass and pushed himself to his feet. “I should let you rest.”

  “Wait—please, Quill. If they were murdered, and the Archduke is responsible—what’s he warning us about? What does he get from killing her?”

  “You loved her,” Cade replied gently. “Perhaps he thought that this would send you over the edge. He can’t know that you’ve already looked over and seen what’s down there, and turned and walked away. You chose, Mieka. You saw the truth—”

  Mieka shook his head. “What I finally saw was all the lies.”

  “This wasn’t your fault, Mieka. What happened to them wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s what Jinsie kept saying.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Whatever Mieka might have said in the next few moments was lost to Cade. It was another voice he heard, harsh with sorrow.

  {“Only tell me what I must do,” she pleaded. “My girl, my beautiful girl—she’s dead, and I want him as dead as she is!”

  “Not dead. Not just yet. I still need him.”

  “You have Black Lightning.”

  “I do. But unless you can guarantee that they will overtake both Touchstone and the Shadowshapers as the most revered and admired group in Albeyn, they will never be of as much use to me as—”

  “The S
hadowshapers are easy,” she interrupted. “Only wait for the two tregetours to quarrel again. They’ll not last together past this Wintering. As for Touchstone…” She brushed a hand through the air. “They’ll never be yours. You ought to have known that long since.”

  “I find it amusing,” he remarked, wiping sweat from his brow and squinting across the river to the South Keep, sunripples glinting off the water in between, “to be told what I know and don’t know by someone who knows exactly nothing.”

  “I know this,” she countered. “There are hundreds, mayhap thousands, of purebred Caitiffs on the Durkah Isle. Women, Your Grace, not the men who live in Albeyn and keep the name alive here but never the magic.”

  “And are they ready, all these women, to renew the old vows?”

  “Yes.” She repeated it, sunlight cruel on her grief-lined face. “Yes!”

  “To serve as your kind were sworn—no, let’s use the term that white-haired bastard used in his pathetic play—plighted to serve in whatever shall be required?”

  “Yes. I ask in return only his death.”

  “You have no right to ask anything, Caitiff! How little you understand. How stupid you are—what is it you wanted from me before? Riches, position, favor—banal ambitions for a banal mind. And now you want a death.”

  “Only the one. Vengeance for my girl.”

  “As it happens, death is a more worthy ambition … so long as life comes of it. Very well. I require an understanding with all Caitiffs that their service is again expected. Commanded. Will you do this? Renew the ancient alliance on behalf of all your kind? Will you go to the Isle and make sure they’re ready when called? If you do, you will have the death you seek.”

  “I plight myself and my kind—”}

  He came back to himself still standing—barely, with one arm slung over Mieka’s shoulders. The Elf was speaking softly, giving him something to concentrate on, anchor himself to in real and not future reality.

  “… nervous when you go away like that and you’re upright—but this didn’t last long, barely enough time for me to get over to you and hold you up if you needed it. Back now, are you? No, don’t say anything. Let’s get you sat down again, eh? That’s it. Have some tea.”