Touchstone (50 page)

He held out his cup, and in the moonlight Mieka shared out the rest of the bottle. “I couldn’t see an end to the hallway, and there weren’t any doors—it was a little scary. But the instant I started wondering how I was going to get out, there were dozens of doors along each wall. All different. Plain wood, painted, iron, some with brass hinges and some with bars, a couple with windows in them. I went looking for the right one, and I don’t know how I knew which it was, and I opened it, and there was a future inside. It was my own room at Redpebble Square, and I could see on the desk the book I’d been reading the night before—the night I had this dream, I mean, what I’d been reading before I went to sleep—”

“Who said there was a wrong door?”

“What?”

“You said you opened the right door. How do you know there were wrong ones? Or—no, not
wrong,
just different. Like your other dreams. You chose a door even if you didn’t know you were choosing—”

“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”
And neither do you
hung unspoken between them.

“You picked the door that went into your own life.”

He turned from the beguiling moonglade to frown at Mieka’s earnest face, glossed with silver in the darkness.

“All those other doors—you could have opened them, you could have at least looked or even walked inside to find out what was in them. That’s the way your Elsewhen dreams happen, innit? Only you don’t have a choice about opening the doors. You get thrown through them whether you want to be or not, right?”

“More or less.”

“Well,
this
is a future, too. Right now, this minute. Last year or last week,
this
was a future. At some point you walked into the room where
this
happened, this moment we’re in right now.”

“What are you trying to say, Mieka?”

With a shrug, he muttered, “Trying—and failing.”

“Just talk. You always get to it when you talk it out.”

“Is that what happens?” Quick glinting grin. “I thought I just blunder on and on until somebody tells me to shut up.”

“I talk
around
a thing, circling in on it, surrounding it with words so it can’t get away. But you talk your way
to
a thing—your words sneak up on it and when it’s there in your hands, like as not you’re just as surprised as it is.” He smiled at the incredulous widening of those eyes. “Don’t worry. It’ll make sense eventually. The words will find their right places.”

Mieka was quiet for a few heartbeats, then sighed. “In that dream, you walked past all the other doors. All the other futures. You opened this one. You chose
this
door. And I think—Quill, don’t laugh at me, please?”

He shook his head. “I won’t. Keep talking.”

“And don’t be angry with me—I mean, this sort of anguishing about something, it’s what
you
do, I’m no good at it—”

“You’re doing fine. Just tell me.”

Mieka took a deep breath. “I think what the dream was saying is that you keep choosing the same door on purpose every time you wake up in the morning. You feel in the dream that it’s the one you’re supposed to open, right? This life, and none other.”

“Because this life is the one I want to be in?”

He nodded gratefully. “Day after day, you choose to be
here
. Even if it’s not the kind of life other people would want, or that they want for you, this is the one
you
choose. The door you open.”

“This life, and none other,” he echoed softly.

There was another small silence. Then Mieka asked, “Did I just ruin everything you wanted to use about that dream in a playlet?”

“I think you just told me what I need to write.”

“Really?” He gave a little bounce of delight. Then, with a shrewd glance up at Cade: “Does that mean I’m more important than any of you will admit? And I really am worth all the trouble?”

Cade nudged his shoulder, laughing. “You arrogant little Elf!”

“Don’t say that as if you just found it out!”

*   *   *

Mieka was up early (for him) the next morning, and woke Cade by clamoring with all the smatchety determination of a spoiled five-year-old to go see the fair. Rafe was already out exploring; Jeska, predictably, hadn’t spent the night in his own bed. Cade took one look at the tidy coverlet and pillows, shook his head in a resigned sort of way, and went back to his and Mieka’s room to get his coat and fill his purse. Their first performance was scheduled for late afternoon. They would have just over an hour for dinner and a drink before the evening show. Cade had already primed enough withies just after their arrival yesterday, so he felt free to spend the day as he pleased. Correction: as pleased Mieka.

It was an easy walk down from castle hill along the cobbled road to the fairgrounds. The scents of other people’s breakfasts from the campsites had them buying sage-flavored sausages wrapped in flatbread and apple preserves from the first food cart they saw. Happily munching, Cade and Mieka set off to investigate the fair.

One aisle was devoted to fabric handiwork. Huge complex weavings and small embroideries; ready-made gowns, skirts, trousers, jerkins; clothes for children and clothes for their dollies; reels of plain ribbon and embellished ribbon and varying widths of lace; curtains and tablecloths and humble dish towels; pillows, bedsheets, counterpanes, and a really beautiful crib quilt in a pattern of tumbling baby blocks that Cade and Mieka bought to put away as their future gift when Rafe and Crisiant had their first child.

“Which probably won’t be long,” Mieka predicted as the counter girl wrapped the quilt in a length of cheap but scrupulously clean burlap. “She won’t let him out of bed for a month once we get home. Oy, what do you want to bet she’s carrying when they get married?”

“Do I look foolish enough to take that bet?” He tucked the small parcel under his arm. “Where to next?”

“I saw some woodworkers over there, I think.”

He had indeed, a round dozen of them, selling bowls and plates and goblets, handles for all manner of bladed instrument, even lighter-weight chairs, with the option of ordering more from the crafter’s catalog. There was even a selection of the new-style pens, though one had to go to a silversmith or goldsmith to get the nib made. Cade thought it rather impractical, offering this sort of thing at a country fair.

“After all, how many letters does a farmer write in a year? And it isn’t as if a feather to suit the purpose isn’t available right out in the kitchen yard.”

“You
are
a snob,” Mieka retorted. “They have to keep their accounts, for one thing, and for another, have you noticed how many traders are selling luxury goods? A farmer’s wife doesn’t need lace curtains in her front room, but they’d be lovely to have, wouldn’t they? And besides all that, how do you know the next great tregetour won’t buy one of those pens and write
you
off the map?”

Cade stuck out his tongue at him, and Mieka chortled.

They roamed through aisles featuring metalworkers (some of whom had fires and anvils going for customized items), silversmiths and goldsmiths and gemcutters, people who sharpened knives and people who mended all manner of things, all the while dodging other fairgoers and meandering singers, acrobats, jongleurs, and men who stood on painted crates declaiming classic poetry at the top of their lungs (thereby rendering the more tender passages of the love poems somewhat frightening). There was a section of glassblowers, at whose work Cade and Mieka both sniffed rather snobbishly, having been spoiled with Blye’s creations, but the parcel under his arm reminded Cade of something.

“I have to write to Blye and tell her to start the loving cups for Rafe and Crisiant. If I know her, she’ll fret over them for months until she gets them perfect.”

“Better than anything any Master Glasscrafter with a hallmark ever made.” Mieka shook his head. “I hope Tobalt gives a lot more space to what you said about women than he does to what you said about theater. At least get people thinking about it, instead of just accepting things as they are. And talking of that, the article ought to’ve been printed by now, right?”

“Kearney said something about right before we get back to Gallytown, for maximum impact, but—” He forgot entirely what he was about to say, and nearly dropped the crib quilt. Right ahead of him two booths were jammed together, holding each other up. One of them featured wooden flutes of every imaginable size, carved and decorated and inlaid with little polished stones. The other was packed to overflowing with books.

“Oy, and I knew the young lordship for a sensitive and learned man the instant he turned his head my way!” cried the bookseller, a Gnome-Goblin-Human-and-possibly-Troll mix who looked as if any attempt to read a book would make his brains bleed. “Collected from the finest libraries of the finest lords in all the Kingdom, bless and rest their scholarly souls, a better nor farther-ranging selection of books you’ll never uncover!”

He waited for Cade to laugh at the pun. Cade was staring at a thick, heavy volume, bound in ragged leather, the spine cracked and some of the pages about to fall out. On its front, stamped into the leather, the gilt long since worn away, were two barely discernible words:
Lost Withies
.

“How much?”

“I knew it, I knew it—’tis a subtle and perceptive young lordship! That book there, that’s from the ancient and cherished library of—”

“How much?”

“For a knowledgeable person such as yourself—”

He was about to snarl the question a third time when Mieka interrupted with a snort.

“The cover’s a wreck, there’s water damage, and I’ll bet half the pages are missing! Name any price over a royal and I’ll have the castle constables on you for cheating your customers!”

There followed much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the seller, and much scornful jeering from Mieka. Cade could only stand there and stare at the book. He would have paid a hundred royals for it. Two hundred. He moaned low in his throat when Mieka picked it up and opened it, showing the seller how loose the pages were, flipping through it as if it was a bound folio of inferior poetry instead of the historical treasure Cade knew it to be.

“One royal and a happenny tacked on,” Mieka finally said, grudgingly. “And it’s a favor I’m doing you to agree to that.”

“One and se’en-pence.”

“One and two, and there’s an end to it!” He dug into a pocket and slammed the coins down onto the closed book.

The man truly didn’t know what he had in his possession, or he would have haggled much longer and for a much higher price. Cade had been a fool to react this way to mere sight of the book, though Mieka seemed to have saved the situation for him—and a lot of money. The volume was tied together with string, and as the seller grumbled and fussed, Mieka said, “Oh, and we’ll have that copy of
The Parchment Dragon
right there as well. Consider it a sweetening,” he added, smiling with every single one of his teeth, “so that I don’t report you to the constables.”

More groaning, more wringing of hands. Eventually Cade felt Mieka slide the quilt from beneath his arm and press the heavy book against his chest. He embraced it, and Mieka snorted again.

“Subtle as a thunderstorm,” he said. “All the pages are there, by the bye. While I was thumbing through it—and you were having an apoplexy—I took a good look. And for my brilliance in securing it for about the price of a bath each, you now owe me a good lunching. Wrangling the price down was hard work!”

Cade bought food and drink on the way back to the roadside, where they sat on the ground and ate while watching the traffic. More people were arriving, setting up tents, searching for their booths, lugging their wares. Cade wanted desperately to return to the castle with his book, but Mieka had plans for the rest of the money Cade owed him.

“A sign back there said there’s two whole rows of ales in competition for first prize. Who better than us, with our Kingdom-wide experience, to give an opinion?”

It was a cheap way to get drunk. Cade called a halt after the dozenth quarter-pint each—not all of which they had to pay for, it turned out.

“It seems they know who we are, sort of,” he mused, bewildered by the smiles and nods and free drinks. “How’d that happen?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. It’s prob’ly me charming manners and adorable smile.”

“No,” he insisted, “some of them, they looked like they recognized us.”

Mieka shrugged and plucked at Cade’s sleeve. “Still thirsty,” he whined.

“You’ve had enough. Lord and Lady know
I’ve
had enough.” He fought down a belch. “Back to the castle, I think—”

Mieka suddenly gave a crow of laughter, and pointed. Down at the intersection of aisles was a big placard framed in rough wood. Cade blinked to see his own face, and Rafe’s, and Jeska’s, and Mieka’s, looking at him. Printed in stark black on white, there were no shadings at all, which told him that either the engraving for printing plates had been done quick and cheap or that Kearney wanted the imaging to be as dramatic as possible and therefore had done away with fine detail. The placard bore four words along with their severely unsmiling faces:
TOUCHSTONE
running up the left side, and
CASTLE BIDING FAIR
at the bottom right corner.

“Look at us! We’re gorgeous!”

Mieka was already scampering to take a closer look. Cade followed more slowly, still clutching the book to his chest. Perhaps it was all that ale putting a blur into his eyes, but he had to admit that he really did look rather presentable. There was a bit of an insolent glare to his eyes, he thought, that he hadn’t noticed after the imager had done his work but was somehow brought out by the austere print. Thinking back to that day, he remembered that he’d been nervous about what he’d just said to Tobalt; that must be the source of the expression in his eyes. Odd; he didn’t know he looked like that when he was feeling defensive. The engraver had chosen to include the little silver falcon that Cade had pinned to his collar that day. He smiled, thinking that Dery would indeed be thrilled when he saw it.