Touchstone (16 page)

Mieka bumped him with a shoulder, laughing at him in the mirror. Cade blushed at being caught staring at himself.

“Oh, you’re a right eye-catcher tonight, you are, and that’s a fact,” the Elf murmured. He stood back a step and looked Cade over. Black trousers, pewter-gray shirt, charcoal silk tunic with dark red stitching at neck and hem—he’d taken the Elf’s advice about clothes, and the smirk on Mieka’s face meant that he knew it. “It’s good there’ll be no girls about at the place we’re going, or you’d never make it home tonight at all. And you just can’t disappoint the bantling, Quill, nor make him wait for tomorrow—he’s been so good at keeping the secret.”

“What secret?”

A grin was the only reply.

A hire-hack took them from Redpebble Square past the city mansions of middling-rich lords and very rich merchants, all the way to Amberwall Closure. This was another of the tincted districts of houses, long forsaken as a residential area and instead occupied by various businesses. The first two floors of each building were taken up by stores, snack shops where office clerks went for lunching, three rival tearooms, and, on the second floor of what had once been the home of the long-forgotten nobleman whose quarries all that dark gold rock had come from, a tavern.

The streetlamps were blazing bright when their hack stopped at the edge of the square. There were too many other vehicles, from pony carts to grand carriages, all woven together in an intricate knot, to permit a closer approach. But Cade suddenly knew where they were going, and sat back against the worn leather seat, stunned. Mieka paid the driver, hopped to the cobbles, and glared his impatience. Cade shook himself out of his shock and climbed down.

“Kiral Kellari?” Cade breathed. “Are you joking?”

“Happy Namingday, Quill!”

They started across the square, dodging others intent on hurrying to the tavern made famous in the last two years by the quality of its stage shows, and by one group of players in particular. Cade, taller by half a head than most of the throng, glimpsed the scrum at the entrance and frowned in dismay. “We’ll never get in, never.”

Mieka grabbed his elbow and pulled him away from the untidy horde, saying, “Haven’t you learned
yet
?”

Halfway down the block was perhaps the narrowest ginnel Cade had ever seen, scarcely wide enough for a drainage trench to the gutter. Gallantrybanks was webbed with these constricted little passages between buildings, shortcuts that allowed foot traffic from one street to another. Sometimes secondary passages would branch from a ginnel—there were several of them in Redpebble Square, a lovely maze to play in—leading to very private doors into houses or shops, or all the way through a building to the next alley. Unlit ginnels like this one made admirable hiding places for footpads who preyed on the unwary, and Cade held his breath as Mieka tugged him down a tributary passage.

Now it was seriously dark. Cade conjured a tiny flicker of bluish light over their heads before he was entirely aware of it, or realized why: Mieka was almost all Elf, and all Elves were afraid of the dark.

“No need for that, Cade. We’re here.”

Here
was a solid brick wall. But as he doused the light, he caught the gleam of a flat brass plate with a spigot projecting from it. Mieka flattened his right palm to the plate, fingers on one side of the spigot and thumb on the other, and a portion of the wall glowed for a moment before vanishing. Cade was pushed through the doorway, and Mieka skipped after him before it solidified again.

A steep flight of wooden stairs was lit irregularly by torches that reeked of pitch. The Kiral Kellari had always been a strutty place, proud of the exotic interior that went with its exotic name, but there was no advantage in spending money on the back halls. Halfway up was a landing and a closed door through which seeped the commotion of several hundred men drinking, talking, laughing, impatient for the show. Mieka ignored this door and led Cade to the top of the stairs, where a sign above another door proclaimed
ARTISTS ONLY
.

For some reason, Cade balked. Mieka looked up at him, smiling in the flickering torchlight. “First time? Wrap your brain around it, Quill. This is where Touchstone enters from now on.”

The door opened onto a small, overheated, underventilated tiring-room, with a round table in the middle covered in faded sky-blue velvet and wine bottles. The same velvet swagged the walls, upholstered the one-armed sofas along the perimeter, and curtained another doorway:
STAGE
. The room was empty; the only sign that anyone had ever been in here was a collection of hammered-silver goblets left lying about.

“Where is everybody?” Mieka wondered as he shrugged out of his coat. “I thought we’d have time for introductions beforehand. They must be setting up. We’re later than I thought.” He slung their coats behind one of the sofas and pointed up at the sign. “And you can get used to walking through
this
sort of door, too!”

Cade did walk through it, with a little tremor of nervousness—and impatience, because this wasn’t yet Touchstone’s night to play the Kiral Kellari. In one direction was the stage, but they went instead down a short flight of stairs into the familiar rowdy environment of a tavern packed with men of all ages who were already half-drunk and intended to get drunker—but not before they enjoyed the show.

Mieka elbowed a path for them to the bar. Whatever he said to the woman at the taps ensured that their ale was poured into the same kind of silver goblets Cade had seen earlier, not the cheaper pewter versions. Nodding his appreciation, he took a swallow and looked around.

The velvet draperies behind the bar were a darker shade of blue than the faded ones in the back room. The curtains across the stage were dyed a dizzying swirl of all the blues and greens of the sea. Cade thought it vulgar and distracting. The matching glass-shaded lamps on the tables were effective, though, their fragrant oils a distinct improvement over the torches in the back hall—though he wondered how much magic it would take to overcome those scents during a performance. “Silver Mine,” for instance, would be a right laugh if the air reeked of roses.

Someone’s magic had patterned the midnight-blue ceiling with twinkling stars that trickled golden Piksey dust—illusion, but very pretty all the same. The whole vast room sparkled with the gleam of silver and pewter and lamplight, reflected in the hundreds of palm-sized mirrors affixed to the dark blue draperies all over the side wall, framed in hammered tin. The Kiral Kellari’s theme statement, however, was the wall that those mirrors reflected in fragments. It was a huge mural that stretched from the main doors to the side of the stage and all the way to the starry ceiling, an aquatic scene featuring a Mer King and two dozen or so of his ladies drifting about his cellar choosing wine. Never mind that pouring liquids was plainly impractical underwater; logic, after all, had very little to do with magic.

The painting echoed the Kiral Kellari’s projecting triangular bar and the array of goblets and bottles behind it, but instead of blue curtains and lamplit tables, the underwater scene featured chairs made of huge, bright, unlikely flowers and rippling green seaweed, illuminated by darting clusters of tiny golden fish. If the monarch’s square jaw and slightly receding hairline were reminiscent of Prince Ashgar, the ladies were rumored to be modeled on his various mistresses. For a man of only twenty-six, he’d notched up quite a few. Cade knew for a fact that if anything this collection was lacking another two dozen or so women. But the moving, living mural was a lovely piece of magic, and he wondered who had worked it.

He also found himself wondering how much that magic would interfere with what happened onstage, and how much the owners of the Kiral Kellari would mind when Touchstone shattered all those lovely little mirrors.…

There being quite a few naked breasts on the wall—he hadn’t yet seen all that many in real life, and hoped he’d never grow indifferent to the sight of them—it took him a while to notice a slightly stuttering change of color on the third tier of bottles behind the bar and again on the ranks of barrels. He stifled a snigger, for he knew now who had paid for the painting: Franion’s Finest Bottled Ale, Bellchime Keggery, and, of all people, Master Remey Honeycoil.

A stout, bespectacled man in a dreadful purple-spangled jacket clambered up onto the stage. So swiftly that it might have been a spell, the room was silent.

“My lords, gentlemen—the Shadowshapers.”

Cade had seen them early on in their career, and he knew Rauel from talking with him at various neighborhood taverns. Now that he was working regularly and could afford visits to places like this, the Shadowshapers were no longer booked into places like this. They played at the real theaters now, places where one had to buy an actual ticket. He had no idea what they were doing here tonight, but he wasn’t disposed to complain.

The curtains parted, revealing the group. At the tregetour’s lectern stood Rauel Kevelock, his coloring proclaiming more Dark Elf than was usually seen except in the North Province where he’d been born. He was almost as innocently beautiful as Mieka, but the long bones spoke of Wizard and the round face more than hinted at Piksey. In front was tall, sinewy Vered Goldbraider, Wizard-blood competing with Dark Elf and Light and even Goblin to striking effect, long white-blond hair contrasting with nut-brown skin. On the left, at his own lectern, was Sakary Grainer, whose mother was almost entirely Human and whose father was almost entirely Wizard; he looked the former, with his red curling hair and blue eyes, but magic strong enough to make a fettler proved him the latter. And at the glisker’s bench, behind an array of glass baskets full of withies, sat Chattim Czillag, whose bloodlines were anybody’s guess, except for the Elf that was essential to his art. He was short, skinny, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, with a whimsically irregular face that attracted even though it wasn’t at all handsome. No one knew where he came from, but no one really cared, because he was brilliant. Odd, Cade thought suddenly, how a glisker had been the catalyst for the Shadowshapers, too; one clever, talented little Elf, making all the difference.

He glanced down at his own glisker and whispered, “Beholden, Mieka. Best Namingday ever.”

Mieka grinned from ear to pointed ear, then took both their silver cups and set them onto the bar just as soft tendrils of magic began to drift through the room, and all else was forgotten as the audience was gathered slowly, subtly into the hands of experts. Darkness like smoke swirled out from where the glisker sat, enwrapping each table lamp, cloaking in shadow first the mural and then the opposite wall of mirrors. In the dimness onstage a light tiny and bright as a candleflame glistened, drawing all eyes. And from it the play emerged.

Their first offering was “Dancing Ground.” It told the story of a brave and fine-looking knight who, spied one afternoon by the Elf Queen, was invited by her to join the evening’s dance. Wisely, he declined. Even to watch the dancing of the Elves was to lose all perception of time; it might seem that only hours passed, but in truth it could be many long years. And if watching was dangerous, what would happen to the mere Human who actually danced with them?

The Elf Queen hid her annoyance and offered gifts—which he was tempted to accept, for he was in fact riding to his own wedding. What marvels could the Elf Queen give him that he could bestow upon his lady for her delight? Riches were offered, and jewels, a never-empty golden wine goblet, and a magical bow and quiverful of enchanted arrows. But wisdom was yet with him, for he declined all gifts no matter how tempting. Being a mannerly young knight, he apologized for the necessity, and gave his explanation why he must ride on.

Now the Elf Queen was both angry and jealous. But again she disguised her feelings, and walked down to where the forest met the lake, to the place where her kind danced the night into morning: a large round dancing ground, marked at the edges by pebbles of silver and gold, and great shining diamonds. She bent down and plucked up a particularly fine gem, and a chunk of gold to go with it, and told the knight she wished to offer his bespoken lady a gift for the wedding. He saw no reason to refuse such generosity, and when she tossed the diamond and then the gold towards him, he caught the one in his right hand and the other in his left. And thus he had no hand to reach for his sword when the Elf Queen—

But that wasn’t how the Shadowshapers played it.

She had picked up the diamond and the gold and was about to fling them when the knight suddenly said she had not yet offered the only thing he really wanted, the only thing that meant anything to him. The Elf Queen demanded to know what that might be. The knight smiled, and said, “Give me your promise that after I’ve danced with you, the gift you’ll give me is that which I most desire.”

Intrigued, she agreed. And so they danced.

What Chattim did then was nothing short of amazing. Into the crowd, seemingly created from the chunks of gold and silver and diamonds, he flung separate bits of longing for those things men most desired: money, success, love, a beautiful wife, plenty of children, a fine home, an imaginative mistress, a bottomless barrel of beer. And as each man present grasped instinctively at what he wanted most, the magic expanded under Sakary’s skilled direction, permutations multiplying into vague and then specific visions, feelings, thoughts. Cayden held himself separate to observe what was happening: that every man’s most cherished desire was, for the length of this shimmering magic, granted.

Perhaps even more remarkably, as the enchantment slowly ebbed, not one man sighed with disappointment, nor frowned his frustration, nor surreptitiously wiped moisture from his eyes when that thing he most longed for faded from him. So gentle, so careful was Sakary that it was only pleasure that remained, and deep contentment.

Cade held himself back from this, too. The thing he most desired … He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want his mind or his heart to reach for the magic that would let him feel it for certain. Instinct told him that to know would be fatal to his work; experiencing such fulfillment would destroy the hungry striving that goaded him. Part of him wished he could share just a little of the audience’s satisfaction, and that part reached out a tentative fingertip, like a child trying to touch a raindrop on the other side of a window. Most of him backed away from it, and as the power seeped from the room in a slow swirl of shadows, he was unsurprised to find that both his hands were clenched into fists.