Touchstone (45 page)

Mieka didn’t relinquish Cade’s gaze even once during this story. The silver moonlight was almost gone by the time he finished. The room was colder now. A freshening wind outside fingered the pines and reached in through the cracks in the plaster. He pulled the covers more closely around them, burrowing down.

“Master Honeycoil?” he said, trying to prompt the words he’d been waiting for these many months.

“I—I worked for him, for a while. He’s a wine merchant. It ended the same way the bookbindery job ended.”

“You made a mistake on purpose.” He waited, but the words did not come. The words of honest confession did not come. He nudged a little more. “I don’t understand. Why would something like that, dreaming about what happened that night, make you so afraid? You were shaking in your dream, Quill, I
know
you were scared.”

“It’s what came after that … when I had to tell him what had happened at Wintering, when I was eleven.…”

“You don’t have to tell me.”
Please tell me, please tell me.…
That he didn’t want to was clear in his eyes. Mieka put a hand on his shoulder, confirming the tremors that had come back into the long bones. “Some other time. It’s too fuckin’ cold.” He smiled as Cade relaxed beside him. “Want me to warm us up?” Not waiting for an answer—answers were things he wasn’t going to receive tonight, if ever—he sneaked a hand out from under the blankets, gesturing at the second bed. “Hold your breath,” he advised, “and hope we don’t suffocate before I sort it out. Never had the benefit of a really good school. Not that I would’ve paid any attention anyways!”

Cade spluttered an apprehensive protest. A moment later suffocation was indeed a possibility, for not just the blankets but the mattress zoomed over and fell on top of them. By the time they struggled out from under, dumped the second mattress onto the floor, and wrapped themselves in the quilts, they were close to suffocating again, this time from laughter.

In a little while they were warm. The moon was gone, and it was dark and quiet in the bedchamber. Mieka inhaled softly of Cade’s scent: his breath that smelled of whiskey and his skin that smelled of Mistress Mirdley’s pure white soap scented with sage, the same scent that clung to his nightshirt. There was a faint tang of clean sweat, and a hint of woodsmoke in his hair. And perhaps an elusive touch of paper and ink, though that might have been his imagination making an instinctive association. Eyes closed, Mieka breathed him, and slowly realized that to him, Cade smelled like magic.

“What scared me first,” Cade murmured, as if there had been no interruption in the conversation, “was something he said later. I guess I dozed off, because suddenly I was awake again and he was talking. He said I’d shown myself willing to turn my back on what was familiar, the certainty of a roof over my head and food in my belly, on whatever love and friendship home could offer, so that I could chase knowledge. He told me that I’d already discovered that the learnings of the mind are more important than the promptings of the heart.”

Mieka couldn’t help but interrupt. “That’s not true, Quill. People need both. And he was wrong about you, anyway, you’d never—”

“Wouldn’t I? That night, I did. I turned and walked away. Derien, Mistress Mirdley, Blye, Rafe.… I left without a moment’s hesitation.”

“But that’s not abandoning them, you just—”

“I sent Blye a letter. I’m fine, hope you’re well, off to school, see you next summer. She sent it back to me inside an envelope, in shreds.”

“I just bet she did!” Mieka couldn’t help a snicker, and struggled not to end it on a coughing fit. “I’m surprised she didn’t shred
you
once you got home.”

“I didn’t go home for almost two years.”

He considered this. “Were you lonely?”

“I was too busy learning to be a great Wizard, just like Lady Jaspiela wanted.”

The self-mockery angered him. “Anybody can be a great Wizard. You’re a great tregetour, the best, and soon everybody’s gonna know it. Even your mother.”

“What’s important to me and you doesn’t mean anything at all to her. Or my father. I think my grandsir would’ve been pleased, though.”

“The fettler? The one who left your father that mirror?”

“Yeh. It’s been dead even longer than Grandsir has.”

Mieka wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t like glancing into that mirror over the Silversun hearth, because whenever he did, he felt as if his teeth itched. “I’m glad you didn’t become the kind of Wizard your mother wanted. If Master Emmot’s idea of being a great Wizard was to teach you how to walk out on whatever or whoever got in the way of what you want—”

“But it’s in me to do that, Mieka. I proved it that night.”

“
Would
you do it? Could you turn away from me and Rafe and Jeska? When you look at us, is all you see just three people who are useful to you?”

“No, of course not!”

“All right, then.” It spoke well of Cade that being told such an awful thing about himself had scared him. But Mieka didn’t say so aloud.

“After that was when he made me tell him about Wintering.”

Mieka wanted badly to see Cade’s face. But he knew that the prospect of being watched while he talked would shut Cade up quicker than the front door on a beggar at a Spillwater mansion. So he didn’t ask for a bit of light brought to the bedside candle. What he said was, “That was the first time he saw you, wasn’t it?”

“Saw me?”

“You told me he’d had glimpses of you. He was a Longseer, wasn’t he?” Again he gave Cade the chance to clarify, for Mieka was fairly certain Master Emmot had come to Redpebble Square because he had the kinds of seeings Cade had.

“That’s one of the things he could do.”

The disappointment was so severe that Mieka felt the sting of frustrated tears behind his eyes. He wanted so much to be trusted by this man, to be told what Jeska and Rafe already knew. It just wasn’t
fair
—

“He hadn’t seen me inside the Minster, though. Just outside in the yard, emptying slops.”

Mieka bit both lips together to keep himself silent as the story unfolded. Cade certainly knew how to organize a narrative, he thought bleakly, even when the story was his own. Mieka truly became that eleven-year-old boy, trimmed and garnished in velvet clothes, the elegance so laughable a contrast to his homely face that not even his mother’s triumph at finally seeing her son in service at Wintering could survive the sight of him. Mieka saw her expression wane from pride to dismay, saw her wave him out of the house as she would a stray insect. He felt the cobbles under the soles of thin shoes as he walked across Redpebble Square to the waiting hire-hack, smelled horse and leather and the pine bough for luck that decorated the driver’s bench, saw the lights of the Minster loom bright and then brighter and then so brilliant that his eyes hurt. He knew the humiliation of being banished to the back halls, to fetch and carry for the boys, the good-looking boys, who were allowed to serve at table.

Everyone else was stealing tidbits off tray after tray of delicacies, but he had no appetite. The other boys were sneaking drinks, too. When dinner was over and the entertainment began in the hall, he was the only one not staggering drunk. So he saw it all, from the sparse shelter of a half-closed door, peering through the gap between wood and stone, unable to move, unable to look away.

“They all wore costumes, disguises. Some of them not very good—I recognized several of my mother’s friends. I even saw the King’s sister. That’s when I knew why Lady Jaspiela wanted me to serve at that particular Wintering.

“Do you know what really goes on there? Most people don’t, not unless they’re invited to a Minster for a highborn celebration. They send the boys home once dinner is over. But one of the cooks ordered me outside with a cauldron of slops, and it was very heavy, and I spilled some as I was emptying it. The clothes I had on were borrowed, so I had to clean up as best I could. By the time I got out of the garderobe, everyone else was gone. I couldn’t find anyone to tell me how I was to get home. I heard the singing still going on in the hall. But I’d only opened the door partway when the procession began.

“Their costumes represent all the races. Harpy, Gorgon, Faerie, Elf, Pikseys and Gnomes and Goblins. Even Trolls, though they’re hard-put to convey the concept while still looking as elegant as possible. They wear wings of gold or silver tissue, and false coverings on their teeth, and twist ribbons of all colors together to make a Gorgon’s hair. I even saw one couple dressed as Merfolk—they had to carry them in chairs, of course, because the costumes ended in fishtails and they couldn’t walk. Everybody circled round and round the hall. I think there was music, but I don’t recall the tunes.

“When they’re all arrayed along the walls, that’s when it happens. The Woodwose is shoved in, and—”

“The what?”

“The wild man of the woods, all covered in hair—”

“I know what it is,” he said impatiently. “What’s it doing at Wintering?”

Distracted from his story, Cade asked, “Elves don’t celebrate that way?”

“Of course not. How barbaric! We banish the old year by singing and dancing. Just before the feast, the lights all go out, one by one. That’s the old year dying. Then somebody comes in dressed as Spring and lights everything up again, and hands out flowers—”

Skeptically: “In winter?”

“Preserving flowers is a specialty of the Greenseed Kin. How else d’you think Rafe managed to have roses sent to Crisiant for her Namingday last week? Told you I had connections, didn’t I?”

“I cry your pardon, exalted one,” Cade said dryly. “What happens next, at an Elfen Wintering?”

“We eat, drink some more, dance some more, and stagger home around dawn. Oh, and we take our flower along, and everybody has a vase at home to put it in, and we keep track of how the petals fall.”

“I’ve heard of that! Isn’t there somebody who comes by to interpret?”

“If you haven’t any Earth kin in your line, yeh. We’ve never had to pay anybody to come read for us—Mum’s quite good at it, and her mum before her, and my sister Cilka looks to be in the way of such things herself.”

“It’s too bad you’re missing that, this year.”

He shrugged. “So what happened at that Wintering? Why the Woodwose?”

For the first time since the blankets had warmed them, Cade shivered. “This one was a criminal—a murderer, I think, because his head was shaved beneath the costume. Robes made of hair, real human hair, stitched or woven onto burlap or something and then all knotted up and tangled with leaves and twigs and such. He was pushed into the middle of the hall, and stumbled about a bit—he looked drunk. But he was frightened, too. As if he knew what was about to happen.”

Mieka tugged back the covers enough so he could look at Cade. There was just enough dawnlight filtering through the windows to make him wish he hadn’t, and whatever he’d been about to say fled his brain. The gray eyes were colder than the snow outside, and for the first time Mieka glimpsed the possibility that Sagemaster Emmot had been right.

“I’m told,” Cade said, staring up at the ceiling, “that at other Wintering celebrations for highborns, it’s just playacting. The Woodwose is young and good-looking, and he doesn’t have to do much—just caper about, and they all snatch handfuls of hair or ribbons off his costume until he’s naked. Everyone laughs, drinks some more, and eventually they go home, and he gets paid quite a bit.

“But this particular Wintering was attended by the King’s own sister, and things were different.”

Mieka reviewed what little he knew of Princess Iamina, and decided he’d best prepare himself to hear absolutely anything once Cade started talking again. This took some time, but finally—tregetour to the deepest veins in his body—he was compelled to finish the story.

“As I said, he was a criminal, a murderer. They tore up his costume, and then they tore him to shreds. I watched them do it. They actually ripped him apart—and Iamina was right in the thick of it, laughing the whole time. Not that it took long, poor bastard.”

Mieka slid down into the covers again. “What did they do when they found you?”

“They didn’t. I hid. For the longest time, I couldn’t move—but then the blood started flowing towards me, just a little rivulet along a seam between the stones, and I stood there watching it get closer and closer. Thickening, as it began to congeal. Then somebody came over with a shawl or a scarf or something, and knelt to mop it up. He took it back to the Princess, and wrung it into her gold winecup. I can still see the flash of that jewel she wears, the yellow pearl flower, as she tilted her head back and he poured into her mouth.

“I started running down the hallway. I’m not sure how I got outside. I ran all the way home. Mistress Mirdley was waiting up for me, and put me to bed—she never asked a single question, bless her. I never told my parents, of course. You’re the first person I’ve told since Master Emmot, that night in the hire-hack.”

“What did he say, when you told him?”

“That I’d provided him with a very valuable piece of information about Princess Iamina, and we must keep it to ourselves for it to remain valuable.”

Was it still valuable eight years later? Mieka neither knew nor cared. Nothing mattered except that Cade trusted him with this, thought enough of him to tell him the truth. Not all the truth, not about the Elsewhens, but enough for now. Mieka recognized the gentle adjustment inside him for what it was: someone else began to matter to him more than he did.

The rising sun brought no warmth with it. The wind had picked up outside, seeking through the cracks, and even with two beds’ worth of blankets atop him, Mieka started to shiver again. Wordlessly, Cade coaxed him onto his side and spooned himself against Mieka’s back, wrapping his arms around him. It felt very safe. Not like a hug from his father or brothers, or even what he felt huddled in his little turret lair. It was both those things, and more. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t matter right now.

“So that’s the sort of thing you dream,” Mieka whispered. “No wonder you liked blockweed. Quill, when you said you ought to’ve learned how to control your dreams—I know I said it already, but nobody can do that, not even you.”