Touchstone (49 page)

Cade followed Mieka into the taproom, found him gratefully gulping down ale. Ordering another, he sat at the bar beside his glisker and undid the top two buttons of his collar.

“You forgot your falcon,” Mieka said. “But it probably wouldn’t’ve shown up anyway. If he does the next one close-to, you have to wear it. Dery will be in transports, to see it on you.”

He nodded, ashamed of himself for not thinking of it. Again he wondered how Mieka could be such an infuriating, impossible little smatchet one moment and so gentle and thoughtful the next. All Elfenkind were capricious, but Mieka—

“And you were wrong, y’know,” he went on. “There’s men as go to the theater to escape everything around them, including the rest of the audience.”

The abrupt turn in subject left Cade a step or two behind—another of Mieka’s irksome qualities.

“They don’t want to feel ‘connected’ to anything but what’s happening onstage. It’s their own little world they retreat inside, and they let us in but they don’t let any of their own feelings out. Remember that night in that empty old house in New Halt? Whoever was sittin’ there, he sucked up everything we had and then some. You can’t tell me
he
wanted some kind of ‘communal experience’ or to be part of anything. Lookin’ back on it, makes me feel a bit of a whore.”

There was the other thing about Mieka, Cade thought helplessly: Just when you wanted to wring his neck, he’d come up with something shrewdly instinctive that rearranged Cade’s brain the way a foreseeing did.

“And as for protecting the ladies from theater but letting them watch a hanging—oh, but here’s His Lordship, come to haul us off to imitate statuary again.” Mieka sighed, and finished his drink, and called, “Oy, Kearney! Wait a bit while Cade gets his little silver falcon out of its cage, right?”

The second imaging took much longer than the first, because it was of their heads and shoulders only and thus required more and finer detail. The young man, sufficiently revived but still muttering under his breath as if rendering incantations, had them each sit before him in turn, stared without blinking until Cade marveled that his eyes didn’t water like fountains. He seemed determined to capture inside the withies each hair in Rafe’s mustache and beard, every faint freckle on Jeska’s nose and cheeks, the exact furl and point of Mieka’s ears. Cade didn’t want to know what feature of his own face occupied the man to the point of obsession. Or, rather, he was sure he knew: his nose.

His was the last imaging to be completed, and when he was finally told to go, he discovered his friends were a drink ahead of him. The ale kept coming courtesy of Croodle, whose heart had been melted days ago by one glance from Jeska’s limpid blue eyes. Not that she flirted with him; no, she had decided that he, and by extension the rest of Touchstone, were exactly the little brothers she’d wanted but never had. Mieka initially pouted a bit, that he hadn’t been the one to win her over. But as long as it got them free drinks, he’d evidently decided that Jeska could have the credit.

They were discussing the next night’s performance, which would be at the Old Bath Hall with its dizzying seating and oddly sunken stage. Jeska was worried about having to play up, not out and to each side; Rafe was worried about bouncing all that magic back down into the well. Mieka scoffed at them both. Full of liquor and full of himself, he turned to Cade all at once and said, “Don’t listen to ’em. You can put the usual magic into those withies, y’know. Hells, gimme some extra! Cram ’em up till they won’t take no more. I can handle it.”

“No,” Cade said quietly, “you can’t. And even if you could, there’s Rafe and Jeska to consider.”

“And the audience!” he said stubbornly. “The place must seat four hundred!”

“No,” Cade said again.

“Coward.” He raised a piteous face to Croodle, who chuckled and drew a whole pitcher. “Oh, beholden, sweet darlin’!”

“Cheeky li’l ol’ thing, you be.” She grinned. Then, spying the beginnings of a fight at one of the tables, she surged out from behind the bar, bellowing, “Oy! Under my roof, you raise your fist and you lose it at the wrist!”

Cade decided that a return to their conversation was necessary. “Rafe does just fine spreading the magic so everyone feels it. Even in a theater as odd as that one. I can’t give you any more than I’m giving you right now.” He heard what he’d just said and watched Mieka’s mocking smile and wanted to squirm.

“Really? Pity, that.” After knocking back the rest of his drink, he grabbed the pitcher and poured anew. “Y’know, Quill, you’re lucky I came along to Gowerion. Without me, you’d still be playing for blashed beer in leather tankards. Instead—” He held up the glass, swirling with green like a trapped whirlwind, which Croodle said must be used for Mieka’s drinks because it matched the color of those eyes when he was drunk and happy. “The best, an’ all ’cause o’
me
!”

Rafe, silent until now over his drink, glanced up, a sudden spark of danger in his eyes. Jeska merely snorted his opinion of Mieka’s boasting, perfectly sure of his own beauty, worth, talent, and destiny.

Cade said, “Without my magic to use, and Jeska to use it on, and Rafe to make sure it doesn’t get used badly—”

“Badly? When have I ever—?”

“My point precisely. It’s him you’re beholden to for that.”

Mieka slammed a fist onto the bar, abruptly furious. “You’d be nothing and noplace without me!”

“Really.” Rafe wasn’t smiling.

“It’s me they come for, I’m the one who does all the work! Who’s the one talks to the reporters at every stop on the Winterly as has a piddling local broadsheet? You can’t be bothered, Jeska’s off with some skirt, Cade goes on and on about what this piece or that piece means and nobody gives a shit—’cept for today, when he has to go and say somethin’ so outrageous, we’ll be lucky to keep him out of quod for incitement to rebellion! Women onstage! You never know when to shut up, Quill!”

“
You’re
saying that?” Jeska spluttered. “
You
?”

“Those other broadsheets, all they want is a funny story or two so they can sell a few copies of their two-pager! And it’s me as gives ’em what they want!”

“Good at that, aren’t you?” Rafe murmured.

“Yes, I am! And you oughta be glad of it. It’s for us. For Touchstone.”

“Well, if we’re such a chore to be around, and if we’d be nothing without you, find yourself another group of players. Go on, do it. Or—better still, do your absolute minimum next show, since we bore you and aren’t worthy of your brilliance. Show us how much we need you.”

Mieka turned white. “I can’t do that. I won’t. And you know it.” Then, shrewdly eyeing Cade, who had been silent this whole time: “And you won’t slack off on bespelling the withies, either, and for the same fucking reason. Oh, you’d love to, wouldn’t you? Give me almost nothing to work with, show me how much
I
need
you
? Your pride wouldn’t let you do that and we all know it.”

“Neither will
your
pride let you give anything less than your best,” Rafe reminded him. “You say what you like to us, in private, but if I ever read anything about Touchstone that even tinges of what you said just now, I’ll take you apart. Do you understand me?”

Mieka jumped to his feet, shaking with fury. “Fuck you!” he snarled, and stormed out of the taproom.

“That might have gone better,” Cade observed, and buried his nose in his drink.

“I’m tired of that arrogant little Elf takin’ all the credit for your hard work.”

“He didn’t, not exactly. And in a lot of ways he’s right, y’know. We weren’t going anywhere before he sat in with us in Gowerion.”

Jeska was staring. “Why are you defending him?”

“Just pointing out the facts. Yes, he’s an arrogant little snarge, but he’s mostly right.”

“That’s what
he
always says,” Jeska retorted.

“No,” Cade corrected softly, “what
he
says is that he’s
always
right.” Smiling, he toasted them with his ale, finished it off, and set the glass on the bar. “Whereas all of you ought to know by now that being always right is a privilege reserved for
me
!”

Chapter 24

He was a little disappointed with Mieka. The Elf seemed to have given up his self-imposed mission to violate all Seven Rules and live to tell the tale. Of course, he’d been ill or recovering from his illness for a significant bit of time, but anyone as madly clever as Mieka ought to have completed at least half of that list by now.

Or maybe, Cade reflected as the coach rattled up a paved—actually paved—road to Castle Biding, Mieka was growing up.

Certainly he took his work more seriously. Every performance seemed to be a challenge to the others and to himself: be the best. The absolute, unqualified, indisputable best. Cade had to admit that at times during this long, brutal tour, they’d got a bit sloppy, cut a few corners. Whoever would have thought that four young men, the oldest of them not quite twenty-one, would be so bloody exhausted by work they loved? It was the traveling that did it, he decided. But they couldn’t let the shows suffer just because they were tired. These men had paid good money and often traveled quite a ways to see them perform; they owed every audience their best. And it was their mad little glisker who’d reminded them of it.

Out the coach windows he could see the beginnings of a fair-sized town made of tents and enclosed wagons. Castle Biding perched like a preening pale gold dragon on a small hill in the middle of it all, with winter-fallow fields on the left side of the road providing the living space for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who’d spend nearly a month at the fair. To the right was the fairground, already thick with garish pennants flying high above smaller tents, painted stalls, rickety wooden booths, and hawkers who could afford the entry fee but not the hire of a space. There were no fairs like this in or near Gallantrybanks anymore; the shops were too numerous and varied, and practically anything was available any time of year. The only event of the kind was the annual horse show on the Palace grounds, which combined a market with ten days of racing. But there was nothing like this fair available in the capital anymore, and for all the disdain of native Gallybankers for country folk and country living, Touchstone gaped out the windows at the sights. They were themselves objects of importance; carts moved out of the way for their coach, people waved, girls flirted with their eyes and smiles, and as the coach rolled across the bridge and began the ascent to the castle yard, and everyone stopped to cheer the newly arrived players, for the first time they had a hint of what it might be like to be the Shadowshapers, famous and beloved.

Their lodging was in the castle itself, in two rooms set aside for the players who would arrive, one after the other, to perform at the fair. Their tower chambers were high above the river that bent around the castle hill before flowing straight and swift to the south. After dinner, Cade took his winecup all the way to the top of the tower to watch the sunset. Cooking fires and the occasional bonfire spattered the tent village, randomly, not like the every-twenty-feet torches that lit the fairgrounds in a tidy grid. Wandering to the other side of the battlements, where everything was dark, he stood finishing his wine, waiting for moonrise.

“I knew you’d be here.”

His fingers clenched around the pewter cup, then relaxed. He’d heard those words before, though in a different setting. The feeling, though, was almost the same. “Thought you’d be investigating the local ladies.”

“They’ve been a touch too open about investigating
me,
” he replied wryly, coming to stand next to Cade.

“That’s right—you like ’em shy, don’t you?”

“I like not to find their hands down me trousers before I’ve done more than look ’em in the eyes. More wine?” He held up a bottle, sloshing it gently.

“Please. Did you catch a look at the theater when we drove in?”

“A bit small. No wonder they have us doing two shows a day, and a waiver of the five-and-a-rest rule. That’s partly why I came up here—His Lordship’s being motherly and says get to bed.”

“In a while.” He sipped the splendid white wine, glad Kearney was back to provide such luxuries from the Continent—and to take over the day-to-day worries about lodgings and payment again. He hadn’t realized how little he’d missed having to organize things until someone had started doing it for him. “Shame the weather’s not reliable enough to try the outdoor theater.”

“The weathering witches can keep the ground dry and the wind from blowing the tents down, but it’d take a hundred Wizards to chase the clouds away.” Mieka leaned his elbows on a crenellation, shoulders hunched. “I agree, though—a whole outside wall of the castle and the whole of the sky to play with—it’ll be fun, next time we’re here.”

“You’re assuming we’ll make Ducal.”

He laughed. “I’m assuming we’ll make Royal!” The he caught his breath and pointed down at the river. “Oh, Quill—look! Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Moonglade,” he said softly, remembering now what the foreseeing dream had shown him. He hadn’t seen this, but something like it—when? Way last spring, at Seekhaven? He could scarcely credit the passage of time.

“Write me one of those,” Mieka pleaded. “I don’t care what the rest of the piece is like, I want to do
that
!”

“I-I actually do have something in mind,” he heard himself say. He wasn’t aware of making the choice to tell him. It simply happened. “Not with a moonglade, but—I dreamed once—a dreaming kind of dream, not—”

“Not an Elsewhen?”

“Is that what you call it?” he asked, amused. “Anyway, I was walking down a long hallway, just blank walls on either side—”

“How can you tell?”

“About the walls?”

“No, lackwit, about what kind of dream it is.”

He considered. “I’ve always just sort of
known
. The feeling is different.”

“How?”

“Are you going to listen to what I dreamed or not?”

“I’m always listening, Quill.”