Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “Three?” Blye scoffed. “A pocket-sized Piksey with bad knees could pick you up and toss you off the nearest bridge without breaking a sweat. Cade, do you ever eat?”

  A little while later, Touchstone had taken their leave of the Princess and were seated, all four of them, in one of her carriages. The womenfolk—Kazie, Crisiant, Jinsie, and Blye—had accepted Miriuzca’s invitation to stay up very late at the Castle gossiping and then spend the night.

  Mieka dozed with his head against the padded brown suede window frame, kept awake only by the uneven jouncing of the wheels on cobblestones, until something occurred to him.

  “Damn it!” he exclaimed, and his partners actually jumped. “I forgot!”

  “Oh, Gods,” Jeska moaned.

  “No,” Cade said firmly, “you are not going back to shatter Blye’s new glassware!”

  “I didn’t mean that.” He peered at the three of them in the dimness. “Did anybody think to keep an eye on the Archduke’s face?”

  No one had.

  “Damn it,” Rafe echoed wearily.

  “Our only chance,” Jeska mourned.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Cade advised. “I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later what he thought of it.”

  Chapter 38

  Long-boned, rail-thin, spindle-shanked, and with a nose that sometimes seemed to take up most of his face, the one thing Cade had always been grateful for about his physical self was his height. Even as a lanky child whose limbs didn’t seem to be acquainted with one another, he’d been able to see over everyone’s heads. He used his height now to make a final count of players in what passed for the artists’ tiring room of Archduke Cyed Henick’s gorgeous new theater. Hawk’s Claw, the Crystal Sparks, Black Lightning, Touchstone. Cade strode to the stage entry, lit by torches on either side, and held up a hand for quiet. To his private amazement, they all obeyed. Even Thierin Knottinger.

  He sought out Trenal Longbranch with his gaze, and called out, “Before you go on, all of us should go onstage—”

  “To introduce ourselves?” Pirro Spangler, Black Lightning’s glisker, laughed a high, nervous laugh. “I thought there were Stewards to do that!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Thierin—of course it would be Thierin—chided. “It’ll give the rest of them a chance to hear some applause before we snatch it all.”

  Cade smiled amiably. “Some of you may know that my grandsire was a fettler who left me a lot of books. One of them described an old custom. I’d like to reinstate it here, at this new theater. Nothing fancy—just a few words to the King.”

  “Any objections?” Rafe drawled in a tone that indicated there wouldn’t be.

  A couple of minutes later, they had all filed onto the stage. Even with sixteen men spread out along its width, it was quite dauntingly huge.

  Mieka was evidently having the same thought. He nudged Cayden with a shoulder and said, “Shame we’re not doing ‘Dragon’ tonight—I could send it right up into the clouds!”

  “But think how much fun you’ll have at the end of Window Wall,” Cade replied. “All that room to play in.”

  Somebody in the back began to clap as all four groups assembled onstage. Applause was tentative, then enthusiastic. Cade took center stage and once again held up a hand for quiet. It was barely dark of a fine summery evening, the sky a deep purple-black, the stars just beginning to shine, the air green-scented and silken on the skin. A perfect evening.

  “In times long past,” he began, and hid a start of surprise as he learned for himself just how good the acoustics were, how well the theater had been designed. Black Lightning, it seemed, was good for something after all. His voice—never quite good enough for the stage—not only reached easily to the upper rows but also didn’t bounce back at him. He knew because the whole theater hushed by the time he’d got the third syllable out. “In times long past,” he said again, “it was customary to bring all the players onstage and to ask of the audience, ‘How may we please you?’ The most noble prince present would then reply, ‘Please us as you believe right and fitting.’ Tonight, for this new theater, we revive this venerable custom. And so we humbly ask of Your Majesty—How may we please you?”

  King Meredan stood at his velvet-cushioned seat. He had either forgotten the replying words, despite having heard them not three seconds ago, or had decided to add his own little embellishment. “Please us as you always do, good Masters—always right and fitting!”

  The audience laughed and applauded. The King turned and waved, and looked very happy. Cayden and all the assembled players swept His Majesty low, flourishing bows, withies twinkling in the hands of the gliskers. The King sat down again beside Queen Roshien, Miriuzca on his left, Lady Megs next to her. Beside the Queen was Prince Ashgar, and next to him was the Archduke. He was talking to a man seated on the other side of the little stone barrier, someone Cade didn’t recognize, who wore a wide purple sash crossing his chest from right shoulder to left hip, a mark of some sort of exalted station. Possibly he was the senior ambassador present. There were a dozen of them here with their retinues, plus Albeyn’s Lords, Ladies, Knights, Ministers of the Crown, Good Brothers and Good Sisters, justiciars—in brief, everyone who wasn’t back in Gallantrybanks keeping an eye on the country and making sure nobody broke it.

  Trenal Longbranch and Gorant Pennywhistle, the tregetour and masquer of Hawk’s Claw, had several days before made a startling request of Touchstone: that Touchstone open as well as close the night’s show. Further, they had a piece in mind. Touchstone had talked it over, and agreed. Thus it was that, to the surprise of everyone else, Jeska, Cade, Rafe, and Mieka stayed onstage.

  They were all of them in white and black: crisp shirts unbuttoned at the throat, lightweight woolen trousers, suede boots. The only difference was in their jewelry. Rafe wore the copper bracelets Crisiant had given him before they were married, and a silver wedding necklace. Jeska’s necklace matched that of his wife: gold, with a ruby pendant in the shape of a heart. Mieka had long since had his marriage bracelets unsealed and removed. He wore tiny diamond studs in the lobe and the tip of his right ear, and a large, dark amethyst ring on his left little finger. Cade had on the silver falcon pin his brother had given him years ago. Derien had surprised him again this afternoon with an austerely beautiful silver ring set with a sea-green beryl, worn on his right middle finger. Cade had put it on to admire it before Dery said, a bit defensively, “It was Father’s. I’m wearing the sapphire one,” and held up his hand. As Cade frowned, Dery added, “They weren’t really his. A description of his assets says they belonged to our grandfather.” This, Cade decided, made it all right. So he wore it.

  Thus torchlight struck glints off silver and gold and deep red and purple and green, and sharp, shining white diamonds. Touchstone finally looked what they were: the most successful theater players in Albeyn.

  There was no magic in the air, no shimmer of power. There were only the four men, and the audience was as silent as if every one of the three thousand seats had been empty. Jeska spoke the words Cayden had first heard in an Elsewhen, and then written down for Touchstone. That night, he was speaking for every player who would take the stage.

  “We will get to you. We’ll make you feel. That’s what you’ve come here for, that’s what you want. We’re that good. And you need us that much.”

  Cade had shortened it, adapted it some. It was no longer the defiant answer to those who claimed they’d been tricked into feeling. But it was a reminder to the audience of why they were there, and why players were needed.

  “We will give you excuses to weep and reasons to laugh. Within the safety of this theater, you can fall helplessly, wondrously in love. You can hate without reservation, cower without shame, or want desperately to ease someone’s suffering. You can laugh at the ludicrous, rage at injustice, pity the afflicted, sneer at folly. You can want and need and desire, all without fear.

  “You’re safe here. You can lick at sentimental tears and crunch on the b
ones of your enemies, sink your teeth into fury, taste pleasure or merely lust, swallow drunken draughts of joy. You can feel these things without shame or remorse. Because here, you are safe. You will feel all the things that frighten you, elude you, compel you, seduce you, exalt you. Things you cannot allow yourself to feel in their entirety, in their reality, in their mad intense awful purity for fear that they will overwhelm you.

  “Here, within the theater, there is no need to be afraid of what you feel and how deeply you feel. Here, you are safe.

  “Look around you at the thousands here tonight. Some you know, others you recognize, but most are strangers to you. And yet…” Jeska took a small step forward, speaking more intimately now. “Yet when you walk out of this theater tonight, every one of you will have experienced the same happinesses and sorrows, the same tears and merriments, the same excitements and amazements and wonders. What we will do tonight is something you will share, every one of you. And this, too, is something that you need.

  “You need us. You may trust us. You will be safe.

  “And we will provide.”

  Listening to the words he’d written, Cade had a moment of dread, realizing that something else shared was what Touchstone and the Shadowshapers and so many other groups had done at that mansion outside New Halt, what Black Lightning presumably still did. Provide. Sensation; emotion. Sustenance.

  He scarcely heard the applause as he joined Jeska, Rafe, and Mieka center stage and bowed. He was trying to calm himself down from sudden panic. There was no one here tonight to feed off what tregetours, masquers, gliskers, and fettlers provided. The players were as safe as the audience.

  As Hawk’s Claw left the wings for the stage, Jeska pulled Cayden to one side. “Listen,” he said urgently, low-voiced. “Thierin was talking to Pirro earlier, trying to soothe his nerves—”

  “Thorned.” Cade delivered the verdict as scornfully as if he’d never gone onstage with a skinful of liquor or an armful of thorn.

  “No, listen. What he said was that they had nothing to worry about. No Shadowshapers.”

  “Conceited snarge, ain’t he?”

  “And then he said, ‘If it had been them going on last, I’d be worried, too. But it’s not. It’s just Touchstone.’”

  “So?”

  “Pirro said something like, ‘It should’ve been us, we planned it to be us.’” Jeska pulled him farther into a corner of the tiring room. “And then Pirro asked if he could do it—Thierin, I mean.”

  “Can’t wait to hear the reply.”

  “Direct quote: ‘With both eyes closed and a girl on my cock.’”

  “To which Pirro said…?” Cade didn’t really care, but his masquer was insisting.

  “That everything depended on it.” Jeska shook Cade’s arm impatiently. “Forget the arrogance. We’re all used to that. Why would the Shadowshapers worry him when Touchstone doesn’t? What’s the everything that depends on tonight? And why would Black Lightning plan on performing last?”

  “I haven’t the first clue,” Cade said. “Settle down, Jeska. Leave it be. It’s just them being them. Be glad we’re us.”

  Disgruntled, Jeska moved off. Cade returned to the wings, wanting to catch a glimpse of what Hawk’s Claw had put together for tonight.

  They were a few minutes into their tale of a boy on the verge of manhood, surrounded by a large, squabbling family that paid no attention to him, especially when he cried out that he wanted to do something, be someone. Parents, sisters, and brothers hooted with laughter, and then a baby started to howl and the boy was forgotten again, shunted aside. The whole scene was composed in dreary shades of brown—unpainted wooden walls, table, and chairs, dun-colored clothing, beige curtains, tan rugs—and all the faces except the boy’s were blank and featureless below thatches of brown hair. Interesting effect, Cade thought as the boy stormed out the door and the stage went dark.

  The next scene was the one Cayden had heard about. He watched with interest as the boy wandered around a dull, nondescript street. Light began to glimmer in a storefront window. Intrigued and uneasy as the light glowed more strongly and sparked with color, he was drawn closer and closer. In a burst of tense courage, he entered the shop. After a few moments, cascading from the open door and into the characterless street came amazement and joy and the feeling of something cool and smooth in the right hand. The scene gained color—shop signs were brightly painted, trees turned green, the insipid gray sky changed to vibrant blue. The boy walked out of the shop—twice. One of him, dressed in black and red and yellow, held a shining glass withie. A second version, wearing black and purple and blue, held a sword.

  Thus was the story split into two equal halves, one on each side of the stage. Cade found it impossible to tell which was the real Gorant Pennywhistle. Rather than have two masquers onstage, the glisker, Tolz Flintsmithing, had brilliantly doubled him: identical faces, clothing, gestures, everything. Cade didn’t like to think how much rehearsal it had taken and what kind of precision had been demanded of Longbranch in priming the withies as two versions of the same boy, who danced gleefully into a wooded glen, intent on practicing with his new possession.

  The withie created magical things. Birds with long multi-colored tails sang in harmony with each other. The forest floor burst into life with a million flowers that turned into chiming butterflies. Acorns popped off the oak trees, dipping and twirling in time with the wild sweet music. The sword made different noises, cutting through bushes, hacking at tree limbs, hissing through the air to attack imaginary foes. Though the sounds and images were all different, the gestures were identical. So were the emotions.

  Two little girls scampered into each glade. Their voices rose, shrill and demanding, as they pestered each young man to show them what he could do. On one side of the stage, the withie conjured up a swirl of colors that resolved into a dance of whirring dragonflies. The children giggled with delight. At the same time, on the other side of the stage, the flaunted sword caught a girl in the shoulder. She burst into tears and she and her sister ran away, leaving one youth standing alone in the leafy hollow, guilt and unhappiness swiftly subsumed in defiance. He began hewing tree branches again, every swing of the sword stronger and more vicious.

  Now the stage held two different scenes. In the first, the young man was in a gilt-and-brocade drawing room, performing his whimsical magic for a crowned king and queen who laughed and applauded and showered him with gold coins. The other half of the stage was a battlefield. The boy swung his sword desperately in the thick of the fight, killing and maiming, dust and blood clogging his breath, fear shuddering through his veins.

  Almost anyone else would have ended the play there. Hawk’s Claw weren’t finished. In the grand drawing room, a Wizard took the young man aside and offered to make him famous and powerful beyond his wildest dreamings. A nod, an eager smile—and the two scenes became one. The boy wielding the sword spared not a glance for his double, who cringed and shook and finally, frantically, gripped the withie in both hands and flung it at the advancing enemy. It exploded in a flare of light and fear and shattering glass.

  The stage went dark. The audience, unnerved, took many long seconds to begin their applause. Hawk’s Claw stood at the front of the stage, bowed in unison, and strode off.

  The glisker and fettler looked exhausted. Longbranch caught Cayden’s eye, tilting his head in a silent question. Cade nodded slowly, knowing his approval wasn’t needed. It was welcome all the same.

  Crystal Sparks were next, and when Cade saw that they were doing one of their older pieces, a crowd favorite called “The Glass Glove,” he returned to the tiring room to find Mieka.

  Seated neatly on the ground, carefully polishing withies, the Elf looked up with raised eyebrows. “I’d started to wonder if you were intending me to prime these things myself.”

  “Sorry. I wanted to see Hawk’s Claw.”

  “Any good? The audience sounded a bit vague.”

  “Once they think about it for a w
hile, they’ll like it.” Something occurred to him. “Didn’t you sense any of it back here?”

  “Not a flicker. Now that I think on it, that’s quite an accomplishment for the first time on a stage this big, with this many seats. Keeping all the magic where it ought to be, I mean.”

  “Oh, be sure to mention that to Rafe.” Cade grinned, sitting down beside Mieka. “He’ll just love it.”

  He spent the next fifteen minutes at work, giving Mieka the magic necessary for Window Wall. So what if it was a long play? This was opening night of the grand new theater. Touchstone would give them something to remember. When he got to the last withie, a new one, dark blue with Blye’s thistle hallmark at the crimp, he lingered over the priming. Years ago, he’d promised Mieka this particular scene. They’d not used it at the King’s Namingday. Rolon Piercehand had ruined the play long before its ending. Tonight he wanted it to be extra special.

  Rafe and Jeska came over, pulling the two of them to their feet. “Black fucking Lightning’s doing their horrible ‘Lost Ones,’” Jeska said, disgusted.

  “And you can feel it all the way back here,” added Rafe. “When is that no-talent Crowkeeper going to learn his job? Lady Megs is ten times the fettler he is.”

  Cade opened his mouth, intending to reply that they lived in an age of wonders, indeed, when Rafe said such about a woman in theater. In the next instant, the words flew right out of his head. Replacing all thought, all feeling, was a self-loathing he’d felt only once before. Troll, something inside him accused, repelled by the very word. Goblin. Fae. Mongrel—

  Shame for what he had been born squirmed in his guts. Wizard and Elf he might also be, but those things could not cancel out or even mitigate the filth that ran through his veins. He wanted to fall to his knees and sob with the grief of being what he was. What he could never atone for being—

  “Cade. Cayden!”

  Somebody was shaking him. Rafe. Large, powerful hands on his shoulders. The mortifying self-hatred was gone. No, not completely gone … hovering out there, perhaps an arm’s length from where he stood. He took an involuntary step back. He didn’t want to feel that again, not ever again.