Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “The fourth, isn’t it? Or maybe the fifth?”

  “Seventh,” she replied coolly. “There was nothing wrong with him at all. I was quite fond of him, actually. But he did something I didn’t much like. He hid the shears until I was quite fond of him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re a man. You wouldn’t.”

  “Jinsie,” he warned.

  “The shears. As if I were one of Petrinka’s hedges to be trimmed to the proper shape.” She allowed him to help her on with her coat. “As far as I can tell, Miek, there are two ways for a marriage to work. The first is to know and understand pretty much everything about each other, and love each other in spite of it. The second is to know as little as possible and not bother trying to understand, and just blindly love each other—and not complain when something comes up that you’ve got no idea what it means or what he’s thinking. Either you marry somebody who knows you inside out so that you very rarely have to explain yourself, somebody who’s glad to let you be exactly who and what you are, or somebody who doesn’t know you much at all and won’t interfere or try to control you, so you can have some privacy. You can have understanding or you can have mystery, but you can’t have both.”

  There was something wrong with that. He was certain sure there was something wrong with that, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “I’m the very last person to lecture anybody on married life, but—”

  She laughed and patted his cheek. “Don’t worry about it, old dear. If I find someone, I find someone. If I don’t, I don’t. We can’t all be Jed and Blye, or Jez and Eirenn.”

  Back inside, what Cade, Rauel, Chat, and Sakary were trying to understand involved Mieka and Rafe only peripherally. The three who had known Vered best had plenty to say about the way certain lines were read. Jeska was content to wait until they came up with directions for him to follow, and meantime occupied himself by teaching Derien card tricks (after a stern admonition that he was never to use them in a serious game or they’d kick him out of the diplomatic service before he’d even been awarded his colors). Mieka watched for a while, learned nothing new, then wandered over to a table where Vered’s own folio lay. The code used by the Shadowshapers was different from the one Mieka and Cade had worked out, but he could more or less follow the changes—when to take up a new withie, what color it should be, how intensely to use it, and so forth.

  Vered’s style of writing was different, too. Doubtless Cayden and every other tregetour worth his magic could point out subtleties of phrasing and how the choice of what scene to include influenced the whole. For Mieka, it was much more basic. Vered’s plays and performances had always been more about Vered than anything else. In them he deigned to give others a glimpse into his soul. This is what I think, this is what I feel. I’ll show it to you and if you find something to think about or react to, great. But expressing what I think and feel is more important. Yes, I’m letting you take a look into my soul. Seeing into yours doesn’t much interest me.

  Rauel, on the other hand, did a lot of hiding. He presented things that would engage the audience’s emotions, and to that end he told his stories. Making people react the way he wanted them to was the most important thing. Don’t ever think that somehow through these stories you can catch even the briefest glimpse of my soul. They’re only stories. I create them to make you feel. I create them to touch your soul. But I’m not them and they’re not me, and to convince yourself otherwise is sheer folly.

  As for Cayden … Mieka smiled as he set aside the folio. He knew exactly what Quill would say. This is what I think and feel, and this is what I think you ought to think and feel about it. To that end, I’ll leave enough space for you to inhabit a character, find your way inside, discover things that are similar to and even exactly like you. But don’t ever think that because you’ve slid inside a character of mine that somehow you’ve also slipped inside me. My soul is my own, and I’ll let you see of it only what I wish you to see.

  And that ain’t much, Mieka thought. He’d walked past butcher’s shop windows any number of times, and if the brains of people were anything like the brains of calves and sheep to look at, Cade’s brain must be thrice as convoluted.

  Only two people witnessed the full rehearsal: Derien and Mistress Mirdley. By the end, Dery was limp in his chair, staring wide-eyed from one to the next of them, ending with his brother.

  “It’s…” He spread both hands helplessly.

  “Yes,” said Mistress Mirdley. “It is. Now, if you’re quite finished for the evening, there’s dinner about to burn in the oven.” She stood, making for the stairs, then hesitated and turned round. “I can’t decide if it’s more bravery or foolishness to present these plays, but people will be talking about them for a hundred years after we’re all burned and urned.” Then she smiled. She actually smiled. “I’m proud of you all. Now, wash up and come downstairs.”

  Chapter 32

  Every morning for many weeks, Cayden woke with an unfamiliar and mildly bemusing sense of peace. Not of tranquility; instantaneous recollection of Vered’s death and recognition of the work to be done tensed his muscles and impelled him out of bed almost the moment his eyes opened. Yet there was within him a deep certainty that this was what he was supposed to be doing, in the place he was supposed to be doing it. The work wasn’t so much an anodyne to grief as a defiant answer to the man he knew had caused it. Let the Archduke exert his power in stealth, in darkness, in silence. Cade had power, too, and of the kind that stood proudly in the light.

  Moonglade Reach had much to do with his mood. This house on this land next to the river was his. In a way, it had been ever since the first time he’d seen that Elsewhen of his own forty-fifth Namingday. How often had he gone this far and farther up the Gally River on boat or barge or just for a walk, and not noticed this peculiar building? It had been waiting to be seen until he was ready to see it.

  Now he had, and it was his. His and Mieka’s. And that was how things were supposed to be. And so he woke in the mornings rested in body and at rest in soul, feeling ready for anything.

  Three days before the King’s Namingday, Cayden woke with an Elsewhen in his head.

  {The red glow, a dark and sinister blood-circle round the view of the splendid sunny day outside, warned him that magic stood on his doorstep. Because he’d never known this woman to use magic in front of anyone, he suspected that it had something to do with the wrapped package cradled like an infant child. Something for Jindra, no doubt. Something stitched with Witching spells.

  He opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to see my granddaughter.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “My great-granddaughter, then,” she said through tight lips. “I’ve a right.”

  He stepped outside and pulled the door shut, leaning back against it. “Your granddaughter is dead, and all your hopes of power and fortune with her. Unless you count all those weeks on the Durkah Isle, gathering influence for the Archduke.”

  She looked startled for an instant. “Your foresight, I suppose. What I did or didn’t do is no concern of yours. I want to see Jindra.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Refuse me now, I’ll only keep coming back,” she warned. “I’ll appeal to the Archduke and demand my rights.”

  “You fool,” he murmured. “Who do you think gave the order that led to her death?”

  She laughed.

  “Panshilara tried and failed to destroy Mieka. She paid for her presumption. Your granddaughter’s death was the rehearsal.”

  “Liar. Liar!”

  “Didn’t you notice the similarities? The overturned coach, only the coachman surviving—the fatal wounds caused by ‘broken glass’? I never knew a shard of glass to slice itself neatly across anyone’s throat. And I’ve shattered quite a lot of glass in my time.”

  Her face crumpled. She swayed on her feet. He made no move to help her, keep her upright. He watch
ed the destruction he was causing and if he wasn’t quite rejoicing, he certainly saw it without compassion.

  “No—an accident—he wouldn’t—not my girl!”

  “The two coachmen were cousins. Did you know that? No, I don’t think anybody knows except the Princess, and whichever smart constable or courtier bothered to match up the names. Blackslash and Shiverwing are both Raven Clan.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t possibly—”

  He stared down at her. Merciless. She had had no mercy for anyone else, not for Mieka or for him or even her own granddaughter with her plots and weavings and manipulations. Why should he have any for her? “I know a great many things. I know that there’s useful knowledge, and useless knowledge, and knowledge that’s dangerous. Knowledge like Vered’s, about Knights and Caitiffs, that he put into his plays. And died for it.”

  “Whatever he wrote, he got it wrong.” Something had changed in her eyes, the same iris-blue eyes that she had bequeathed to her granddaughter, eyes that had bewitched Mieka at first glancing. No sorrow, no outrage, not even anger anymore—instead, a fervid passion that burned like ice. “Slaves they made of us—despised by all other magical races, regretting that they’d ever made the Knights at all. As for the Humans—the blind and stupid and giftless Humans hated and feared us.”

  “With reason,” Cade said. “Once the balaurin were defeated, and there was no more need—”

  She kept on talking. Lessoning him again. Speaking quickly, her arms clutching the parcel to her chest. “The Elves went first. Visible, with those ears. Easy to capture, with their terror of the dark.” She didn’t look at him. He didn’t think she was looking at anything in the real world. “Giants. Gnomes. Goblins. Wizards lasted longest, being most like Humans to look at. They cared for nothing but their feeding. We were exiled, sent to that miserable island—and there we learned to weave our weavings for ourselves, not in slavery to our masters. Our magic!” She pulled in a wheezing breath. “But they knew by then that they could survive without us. Without tasting fresh blood more than a few times a year. Fear and turmoil—violence, hatred—”

  Fascinated, the rapacious curiosity of the writer crowded out all other thought. “Why not just let them die?”

  “They don’t die. Hadn’t you guessed that by now? They grow weak, they languish beneath the shrouds we wove for them, they sleep beneath the castle—neither alive nor dead—”

  “Until somebody cuts their heads off.”

  She looked up at him then. “A silver sword is best. Remember that. Nothing does the work as well.”

  “Remember it?”

  “You’ll have need, when you defeat him.”

  “What castle?”

  “Theirs, you fool! His! Do it, you must do it for her,” she urged. “For my girl, my beautiful girl—” A small, tortured moan escaped her. “Don’t bother with wood. Don’t let them feed. They grow strong from the magic, wrench it from you, all the fear—all the pain—” Another moan rose from her very bones. “My girl—my beautiful girl—”}

  When he’d caught his breath, he lunged for the pen and ink and paper on his bedside table. He had to make a record of what he’d learned. He scrawled the words so swiftly that no one but he would ever be able to read them. And when he finished, he fell back into the pillows and shut his eyes tight.

  “Vered was wrong,” he told Mieka as they went downstairs for breakfast.

  “How do you—? Oh. Elsewhen.”

  He nodded. “It’s even worse than what he wrote. Send notes round to everyone. We have to do it all over.”

  “Quill,” he began in a whiny voice, then stopped. In a completely different tone he said, “Not all of it, surely. Just the third play, right?”

  “Yeh.” At the bottom of the stairs, he walked into a flood of sunlight through an east-facing window and flinched. “Wh—when did that happen?” he asked stupidly.

  “Sunrise? Happens every morning, Quill. Granted, neither of us is awake to see it, usually, and with all this rain one begins to forget what it looks like. Don’t forget we’re lunching with the Princess today—” Again he stopped, and again his voice became softer, deeper. “Will your Elsewhen happen today?”

  “I don’t know. Could be. Do we have any guards left?”

  “A couple. They’re not yet back from taking Dery and Jindra to school. Miriuzca’s sending a carriage for us. Will the Elsewhen happen soon?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. But I saw the damned thing once, I don’t want to live through it for real.” Was the light the same intensity? The same angle? Was there the same taste to the air, and the smell of carrot muffins from the kitchen? As far as he could tell … yes. “I know what I need to know.”

  “Tell me how it happened. We’ll change it together.”

  Oddly enough, the sensation of peace returned. Yes; this was what they were supposed to be doing. This was where they were supposed to be. There was nothing he couldn’t do, no puzzle he couldn’t solve, and no difficulty he couldn’t overcome.

  Except one thing. Mieka saw it first. Cade took some convincing.

  “We can’t do it. Not at the Namingday.”

  “We have to.”

  “Not at the Namingday.” Mieka set aside his teacup and turned slightly in his chair to face Cayden. “In the first place, the old man wouldn’t understand the half of it. I know exactly what he’ll look like—all confused at first and then impatient and then angry that he doesn’t understand, and resenting all that grim and grue on what’s s’posed to be a celebration night.”

  “Who cares? He’s not the one we’re playing to.”

  “Well, it’s his Namingday, poor old codger,” Mieka observed mildly. “And in the second place, you’re good, Quill—we all are, the best there is or ever will be—but not even we can put together the writing and staging and rehearsal of something this important in two days.”

  “Three.”

  “Two. If we slog away at it for three solid days, we’d be too knackered to perform. And it wouldn’t be right yet, you know it wouldn’t. And don’t you go locking yourself in your library all day and all night trying to get it written. Let it steep in your head for a while. I know you, old dear. I know how you work.”

  “But the whole Court—Hells, the whole Kingdom!—expects something new and brilliant and—”

  “So we’ll give them Window Wall.”

  “Mieka, it has to be Vered’s play. All three plays. I want to see the Archduke’s face when we—”

  “Oh, you’ll see it, right enough. When we do it at Seekhaven.”

  “At the opening of his new theater?” Cade snorted.

  “No, as the very last final-night performance given at Fliting Hall.”

  “But it won’t be the final night of Trials. This new theater’s supposed to be the setting for that performance from this year on. Everybody’s doing something new for it. I wanted to save Window Wall for that night.”

  Mistress Mirdley came in to remove the breakfast dishes. The two of them stared silently at each other the whole time she was there. She seemed not to notice their tension, merely poured more tea into their cups and left with the tray of used crockery. But Cade was certain sure he’d seen a smile twitch the corners of her mouth.

  “Window Wall is too long,” Mieka said as if there’d been no interruption at all. “There’s four or five groups performing that night. We’re the best, so we’ll be on last—and by then it’ll be getting late. Do you really think they’ll pay attention for another whole hour?”

  It had been understood, ever since the opening of the Archduke’s new theater (years in the building; everyone wondered what had taken so long) was announced at the beginning of the year, that the Shadowshapers would be the final act that night. After Vered’s death, Cade had assumed that Rauel, Chat, and Sakary would want to keep that position and do Blood Plight. But they were adamant: There would be only one performance of all three plays. At the Palace theater. On the King’s Namingday. />
  Mieka was right, and Cade knew it. He couldn’t rewrite it as it demanded to be written, and the rest of them couldn’t plan out the staging as it demanded to be staged, in three days.

  “I thought you were going to send letters to everybody, telling them the new plan,” he grumbled.

  “The plan to do Window Wall at the Palace, and save Blood Plight for when it’s ready?”

  “Yeh.”

  Mieka stood, reaching over to pat Cade’s shoulder. “Stop scowling like that. It’ll get done. The play, I mean. As for the letters telling everyone…”

  “All right, all right, I’ll do them!”

  He could have done the play. All it would take would be some thorn to keep him awake and sharp. But there was none in the house. Not a single twist of paper with powder in it, not a single glass thorn, nothing. Well, except for a tiny stash of blockweed deep in a drawer in his bedchamber. Just in case he had trouble sleeping—which, he realized with some surprise, he hadn’t since his very first night here.

  Mieka was moving towards the riverside door. Cade gave a start. “Where are you going?”

  “Somebody’s come. Didn’t you hear the knocker?” He spun suspiciously on one heel. “Is that how the Elsewhen started?”

  “I don’t want to see her. I already know what she’s going to say. Let Mistress Mirdley answer it. Tell her to send the old bitch away.”

  After a brief hesitation, Mieka nodded and started for the door to the kitchen. The knocker sounded again—Cade could see it in his mind, the polished steel made by Rikka Ashbottle’s uncle, the ironcrafter. A beautiful thing, the background a sunburst, the knocker a thistle. He could see it vanish under the woman’s fingers as she lifted it and let it fall. Her other hand would be clutching the package, whatever bespelled dress or shirt or coverlet she’d stitched for Jindra. The source, undoubtedly, of the magic to turn the edges of the glass red.

  She didn’t know. For Cyed Henick she had gone to the Durkah Isle to call the Caitiffs to their traditional service. Unsuccessfully; he gathered that, not content with their lot but unwilling to resume slavery, they had declined.