Window Wall (27 page)

“Finished?” Mieka asked.

“Umm—yeh. Are we in a hurry to go somewhere?”

“I thought for certain sure you’d want to walk out to the Chalk Dragon again. Last year you couldn’t find the Faerie Vale you keep saying has to be close by. Mayhap you could use Elfen eyes and Elfen ears to help.”

“It’s too far to walk.”

“I am
not
riding bitch again!”

Cade laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of asking. Maybe they have a little horse-cart we could hire.” He paused. “You really want to come with?”

Mieka shrugged and threw Cayden a shirt. “Got nothin’ else to do.”

Cade almost asked if he hadn’t noticed the barmaid’s giggling regard of last night, then recalled that with the letters had come a tightly wrapped package from Mieka’s wife: a new pair of trousers, dark blue with green and yellow interlocking patterns embroidered down each side seam. Evidently, Cade thought with a snide interior smile, she had decided to go right to the source of his infidelities. He got dressed, watching Mieka from the corner of his eye as the Elf preened in front of the mirror like a lady-in-waiting about to attend a Court ball, fussing with his hair, tightening his belt a notch. These past few years on the Royal Circuit, he picked up weight during the winter months at home that he lost during summers on the road. Cade didn’t know how much of that was due to the quantities of bluethorn he pricked, although he was well aware that his own clothing was getting looser. Not too many days before a nice bit of rest at Castle Eyot, he reminded himself. No performances, no worrying, no travel, nothing to do but sleep and eat and laze about in the warm summer sunshine.

Mieka had told Rafe and Jeska where they were bound. He had also done some asking, and heard about a farmer who came regularly in to New Halt to see the first show of any Royal Circuit. His lands were in the direction of the Chalk Dragon, and if he and Cade waited at a particular crossroads in midafternoon, they were more than likely to get a ride back to the city. They were just in time to catch the morning coach out of the Brindled Brach, an inn several streets over from their own, and jumped out when the driver obligingly halted the horses for about half a minute at that same crossroads. It was a long walk up into the hills, made longer by Mieka, who strayed now and then to pick daisies that he wove into a chain to drape about his shoulders, but finally they crested a rise and saw across a narrow valley the Chalk Dragon.

Cade had used up most of his breath in the climb. He stood in silence, staring at the gigantic creature drawn on the side of the hill, white outline against green, as if limned with strokes of a broad and heavy pen. This local point of interest wasn’t worth trying to see in winter, covered as it was with snow. But in summer, as he’d learned last year, it was magnificent. The wings spread from the crown of the hill almost to the row of hedges at the bottom, and the stark white lines of the body from nose to spiked tail reached at least three hundred feet across the hillside.

“Do they know who did this?” Mieka whispered. He had never seen it before, and it was one of those sights, like one’s first view of the Flood or the paintings in the Great Royal Minster, that demanded a hushed voice. Even the stream sparkling through the valley seemed quieted by awe.

“Not sure. It’s tremendously old, of course.”

“Fae, d’you think?”

“Could be. Some sources say they rode dragons, but how would you control one? Can you imagine trying to rein one in? And where would you put a saddle?”

“I’ll have to ask Tavier when we get home,” Mieka said, chuckling. “He’ll know. He knows everything about dragons.” He waded a few paces into the tall grass to pick more flowers. “And that remembers me, I promised Mum that for his Wintering present he can come to a Touchstone performance and we’ll do ‘Dragon’ for him.”

“A pleasure.” He watched the quick, clever fingers begin weaving more daisies: splitting the green stems, interlocking them into a continuous chain of yellow eyes and long white petals. “What in all Hells are you doing?”

He grinned and struck a pose. “I have proclaimed myself a Knight of the Most Excellent Elfen Order of the Daisy. If you’re very nice to me, I’ll invest you the same.”

“I’d rather go have a closer look at that dragon.”

Mieka squinted across the narrow valley. “There won’t be anything to see. Not if it’s Fae you’re after.”

“How do you reckon?”

“They always come from the west. That hill
faces
west. So if they’re around here at all, they’ll be on this side of the valley. In a cave or a hedgerow or something.”

He didn’t congratulate Mieka on his insight, too annoyed with himself for not having realized it before. He led the way down a narrow track through knee-high bracken, skidding and slipping but managing to keep his feet. Mieka gamboled down after him, trailing the unfinished daisy chain, and about halfway to the stream below misjudged his footing and landed on his backside.

“Clumperton!” Cade accused with a laugh, extending a hand to help Mieka up. A moment later, when the Elf was standing next to him, he exclaimed, “You’re bleeding!”

“Mm? Oh. Nothing to signify.” He hung the uncompleted chain over one elbow and brushed the dirt from his hands. After a brief inspection of the scrapes on his palms, he asked, “This is the way most people take, innit? Those as come to see the Chalk Dragon.”

“What of it?”

“So this is about as far as anybody ever goes, right? Not much of a trail, and it doesn’t go all the way to the bottom.” He pointed to a cluster of yellow-flowering bushes strewn across the path about twenty feet ahead of them, six or seven feet high, very thick, blocking the way. “I’ll wager you that this whole place is a Faerie Vale.”

Cade inspected the scratches on Mieka’s palms with more attention that they deserved. “The first time, I fell down a hill from winter into summer.”

“And met your great-great-whatever granny—yeh, I know.” Mieka looked grim. “If you think I’ll let you stumble back into the Fae world, think again! It could be hours or years before they let you out—
if
they let you out!”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

The flowering bushes rustled, and from them a high, harsh voice said, “Good question.”

L
agging a half instant behind his body, which had flinched and spun towards the voice, Cade’s brain registered the presence of a tall and elegant Fae emerging with graceful dignity from the bushes. His hair and his robes were made of green leaves, his eyes as yellow as the blossoms. He inspected Cayden and Mieka frankly as he took a few delicate steps towards them, gaze lingering on Mieka’s pointed ears that were a sort of child’s version of his own, which were extravagantly large and decorated at lobes and tips with emeralds set in gold. At first he appeared to be handsome, but as he neared, Cade felt a stinging sensation in his guts, for the finely drawn features had in them a hint of cruelty. It wasn’t quite fear, and it wasn’t quite revulsion, but the sensation held elements of both, and the shock of unfurled wings did nothing to comfort him. Those wings also seemed made of leaves: long, slender, translucent leaves like feathers, one overlapping the next, palest green and shimmering in the sunlight.

“It’s not many of the Blood who come this way, this far,” the Fae said. “Mostly they stay up there, staring at that brazen bit of self-congratulation the Giants carved into my hill. As if they ever let us forget who it was who rode the dragons, and left
us
with naught but the land and water beasts!”

Questions clogged Cade’s mind:
What do you mean
, your
hill?
and
Giants rode dragons?
and
Land and water beasts like the ones in the Vathis River?
and
I know
I’m
partly Fae, but—Mieka?

Before he could figure out which he wanted answered first, the Elf spoke.

“Your pardon for disturbing you,” he said with a jaunty bow. “We’ve come seeking someone you may know, or may have heard of. A Wizard—with some Fae blood for good measure—who arrived in your part of the world two Midsummers ago as Humans reckon time.”

“Friend of yours?” The Fae arched a mocking brow, as amused by this drawing room civility as Cade was appalled by it. Everything he had ever read about—and the one encounter he’d actually had with—the Fae cautioned wariness in dealing with them. But this one’s wings folded themselves against his back, their upper curves framing his face, as if he were settling down for a teatime gossip.

Mieka didn’t skip a beat. Neither did he directly answer the Fae’s question, which indicated to Cade that he had at least a little sense. “Curious fellow, he is—curious in the way of wanting to find things out, I mean, though the other kind of
curious
applies as well, now that I think on it. A bit strange sometimes, you know. Anyways, he has very dark skin and curling hair. Rarely seen not cuddling a lute in his arms. Goes by the name Briuly Blackpath.”

In the next instant, Cade knew he’d been right to fear the Fae. Wings shuddered with a clicking, rasping sound as muscles tensed and leaves shifted. The yellow eyes lit with sudden fire. “He who stole the King’s Right!”

“Oh, you know him, then?” Mieka smiled winningly. Cade wanted to tell him that he’d lost before he’d even opened his mouth. “At your Royal Court, no doubt, delighting all with his music?”

The Fae’s features had sharpened, his bones like razors beneath skin pale as parchment. All the beauty was gone, leaving something almost feral: the face of a predator. A killer. Cade gripped Mieka’s elbow, but to what end he could not have said. They could never outrun an infuriated Fae. However decorative the wings were, they could not be used for flight; Fae soared and swooped like dragonflies by manipulating the very air around them, and they were rumored to do it with indescribable swiftness. They couldn’t fight him, not with fists or with spells. Perhaps he got hold of Mieka just for the comfort of knowing that Mieka, bone and muscle and warm skin, was real.

“I know of him,” the Fae said harshly. “All the True Folk know of him, after the tribunal.”

“Really?” Mieka sounded mildly intrigued. “And what was the outcome of this tribunal?”

“Witless, chattering Elf! Scant wonder your kind stayed amongst the Humans—the only race even more witless than you! Can you not reason it out? On the one side were those who demanded his death for daring to touch and even to place upon his head the King’s Right. On the other, those who discerned in him the Blood, and argued for sparing his life despite the desecration, for the King’s Right had at last been recovered.”

“Desecration,” Mieka repeated thoughtfully. “It must’ve been rather muddy, I agree. How long did it take to clean the thing?”

He was scornfully ignored. “The Crown may be only slightly less crucial than the Carkanet, but neither are worth anything without Sealing. Our King quite properly refuses to wear his Right until the Queen wears hers again.”

“So why not go get it?” Mieka asked as calmly as if they were indeed sitting in velvet-covered chairs over cinnamon tea and buttered muffins. “If it’s as important as all that …”

Cade astounded himself (and, from the looks of him, the Fae) by saying, “The Oakapple lords—Briuly’s family—once owned Nackerty Close. One of their ancestors stole The Rights. Only someone of that blood could take them from where they’re hidden.”

“Such a clever Wizardling,” snapped the Fae.

“He is that,” Mieka said fondly.

“The Crown,” Cade pursued, “is basically just something fancy to put on the King’s head. It’s the Carkanet that really matters, because it’s the Queen’s Right, and the Fae are matriarchal.”

“‘Dancing Ground’!” Mieka exclaimed.

Cade nodded, and would have said more—though not about the Shadowshapers’ play—but the Fae’s blazing eyes stopped him. “What you do not know, stupid Wizard and stupid Elf, is that this ancestor who stole The Rights was a halfling. Begrudging his place in the Brightlands—lowly, as befitted a half-Human—he purloined Crown and Carkanet in the mistaken belief that he could bargain with them for a high place in the Seemly Court. And when the Humans learned they had been stolen, they began a war to retrieve them that killed many thousands, and—”

“No, they didn’t!” Mieka interrupted. “’Twas the Fae who made war on the rest of us!”

“Is that the tale they tell in your portion of the world?
I
say that this halfling was hunted down by Fae and Human alike, and at last he hid The Rights—”

Cade’s turn to interrupt. “And the Humans caught him at it, and before they hanged him, he said that no one but a Fae would ever wear The Rights, and if a Fae—meaning himself, of course—if he couldn’t, no one would.”

The Fae scowled at him, wings rustling. But he made no correction.

So
that
was how it happened. Cade was delighted. He could use this new information to change “Treasure”—no, he’d write an entirely new play, incorporating what the Fae had told him—no, he’d write
two
plays, one about the initial stealing and the second about the finding, and put “Treasure” in the middle, and perform all three on the same night—if he wrote fast enough, he’d present this innovation of connected tales in the same show before Vered Goldbraider could finish his play about the
balaurin
—but Vered had been working on the damned thing for the better part of two years, and still hadn’t finished, so it was more than likely that Cade and Touchstone would be credited with a revolutionary new concept in theater, and—