Window Wall (48 page)

“‘Change your plan.’ That’s it?”

Rafe scratched at his beard. “Somewhat … um … is
peremptory
the word I’m looking for? Or just plain
rude
?”

“That works,” Cade replied. He folded the page twice and wrote
His Grace the Archduke—urgent and private.
Then he glanced round the undercroft of Number Eight, Redpebble Square, where Touchstone was rehearsing, and saw one footman he recognized and two he was fairly sure didn’t work for his mother, pretending to scrub the stairs. Touchstone had used the undercroft so seldom in the last years that it was impossible for anyone who worked here—or, evidently, his friends—to pass up the chance to see as much as they could of the famous First Flight on the Royal Circuit.

“Here, you!” he called, suddenly ashamed that he didn’t even know the boy’s name. “Come here, please!”

“How will he get past the layer upon layer of servants?” Jeska wanted to know. “Not to mention the guards.”

Cade had no ideas. He’d been too busy being grateful that the Archduke was accessible, no longer at Great Welkin. He and his wife and children had moved into the apartments kept for them at the Palace, two days in advance of the colossal celebrations for King Meredan and Queen Roshien.

Mieka was eyeing the boy. “That’s not your livery.”

“No, Y’r Honor, this is me work clothes.”

Cade began to see what Mieka was after. He assumed what he hoped was a kindly smile. “You have a formal jacket—gray with silver braid, right? For when you serve tea, or go with Her Ladyship to the shops, and carry her purchases, and all that?”

“Yes, Y’r Honor, but not for nothin’ else, not never, not unless Her Ladyship says it so.”

“Well, you’re about to go on an errand for me, so go put that jacket on.” When brown eyes widened with alarm, Cade went on, “There’s half a royal in it for you. I want you to go to the Palace and give a note to the Archduke.”

Alarm became panic.

“If you’re there and back in good time, my mother will still be out paying calls.”

“Wait half a tick.” Mieka came round to Cade’s chair and bent down, fingers busily working at his collar to unhook the falcon pin. “He noticed this at Great Welkin. Use this as identification to the Archduke—no, don’t wear it, just keep it in your pocket! And remember to come back with it!”

It would have to do. The boy listened in tense silence to Cade’s instructions, which now included not just the half royal but also a promise to see to it that he lost his job if he didn’t return the pin and if this note did not go from his hand to the Archduke’s, without anyone else having touched it in between. Cruel but effective.

“As for you two,” he said to the other boys, still at the steps with pails and brushes, “take that lot back to Mistress Mirdley and scoot on home. You’ve seen enough for one day!”

When all three of the boys were gone, Mieka asked, “So what was in the Elsewhen?”

“Does it matter?” Jeska asked with a shrug. “Cade didn’t like it. The Archduke will have to think up something else.” Turning to Cade, he said, “Unless you want to present him with your own plan?”

“Well … no. And not just because I don’t have one. Even if I thought something up, how could I get it to happen?”

“So what
did
happen?” Mieka asked.

“He sends the Tregrefin a lectern and a copy of the
Consecreations
that seems to be filled with black powder. Or maybe it’s hidden in the lectern—that’s more likely. There are two candles attached to it, and I suppose that had something to do with it. But you’re right, it doesn’t matter. I only hope that whatever he comes up with next, I get to see it in advance.”

“If it’s something you can change, then you will,” Mieka reminded him. “Now, can we get back to putting the last touches on this thing?”

“If by that you mean we really have to think up a name for it,” Rafe said dryly, “then, yeh, let’s. Any ideas?”

The word came out of Cade’s mouth before he knew he’d thought it. “‘Bewilderland.’”

Rafe snorted. Jeska looked confused. But Mieka frowned and searched Cade’s eyes, and finally said, “That sounds familiar somehow. But it fits.”

He didn’t ask Mieka just why it sounded familiar—had he mentioned it as part of an Elsewhen? Had it
been
part of an Elsewhen? He couldn’t quite recall.

Neither had he asked Mieka to elaborate much on his encounter with the old man in the minstrels gallery. From the description, he had a fairly good idea of who the man might be—but that was insane. Why would Sagemaster Emmot associate himself with the Archduke? Whatever he’d done in the war for the Archduke’s father had landed him in Culch Minster with iron rings on his thumbs, and at the end of his sentence those thumbs had been lopped off as a warning to others. True, a few years after Cayden had left the Academy, Emmot had left it as well, but Cade’s understanding was that he had retired. How could it possibly be that he was in the service of the Archduke? And how old was he now, anyways—ninety? Wizardly blood usually meant a fairly long life span, though not so long as Elves and nowhere near that of Trolls. No, Cade told himself, it couldn’t have been Master Emmot. It made no sense.

But in spite of how little help he suspected such a thing might be when it came right down to it, he began to agree with Mieka’s determination to acquire and learn how to use a sword. However convenient and even instinctive the use of magic might be—such as that time on the continent when he’d put up a wall of Wizardfire against some rather unfriendly people—the use of magic in that way, without a withie to focus it, was exhausting and, truth be told, much less permanent than the pointy end of a sword in someone’s guts.

Not that he thought Mieka capable of killing anybody that way. Or any way. Not even by accident—and the Lord and the Lady and all the Angels and Old Gods knew full well that the Elf was careless at best and reckless at worst.

All the same, he reminded himself to ask Derien if the King’s College taught fencing, and if so, whether the master could recommend a good teacher.

Derien. Why had he never seen his little brother in any Elsewhen? He told himself it was because Derien made his own choices and decisions. After all, Mieka hadn’t shown up, either, because following them to Gowerion had been his own idea. Nothing to do with Cade at all. But Derien … damn the Archduke for his maliciousness, and damn him again for knowing precisely what would worry Cade the most.

The other three had kept talking while he was ruminating. “Bewilderland” it was. Rafe said it to himself, several times, as if tasting and feeling the silly word on his lips and tongue, a slow smile beginning somewhere beneath the thick black beard.

“So,” Cade said, “remembering all the while that we’re playing to children, how do we introduce ourselves?”

Jeska worried at a hangnail on his ring finger, then shook his head. “Hadn’t realized that they’ll have no idea who we are or what we do. I should’ve brought Airilie along today, or Tavier and Jorie. Certainly they all ought to be at the performance. We could borrow Chat’s tribe as well—and what about Tobalt’s daughter?”

It might have been the scant thornful of earlier this morning, or what he’d had for breakfast, or a special alertness for the quiver of a warning Elsewhen at the edges of his mind. Just before it coalesced, he wished rather forlornly that he could learn how to call them up at will. The Archduke seemed to think he could.

{ The curtain parted to rather tepid applause, led by the parents in the crowd. The little ones had no idea what to do or how to behave in this intimidating adult situation. Cade shared a smile with his partners and stepped forward.

“My name is Cayden Silversun. I stand over here, at this wooden thing called a lectern. I’m the Tregetour, the one who tells everybody else what to do.”

Mieka, behind the glass baskets, exclaimed, “Doesn’t he wish!”

Ignoring him, Cade went on, “That man over there with the beard, his name is Rafe Threadchaser. He’s the Fettler. That means he’s in charge of the magic.”

“A likely story!” Mieka grumped.

“Rafe stands opposite me, at his own lectern. By the way, it was a gift from his lovely wife, Crisiant, who’s here today with their son.”

Touchstone bowed to Crisiant, and Bram wriggled in his seat with delight, especially when his father grinned at him. He was almost ten, which meant he wasn’t yet old enough to think that his parents and their friends were hopelessly old-fashioned and even a bit ninnyish.
Wait a couple of years
, Cade thought with an inward chuckle.

“This is Jeska Bowbender,” he went on, “and he’s the Masquer. That means he’s the person who plays all the parts. The way he can do that is by his voice, and his gestures, and the expressions on his face—”

“And the magic!” yelled Mieka.

“And the magic,” Cade conceded. And then he was quiet.

“Well?” Mieka prompted.

“Well, what?”

“What about me, then?” he demanded.

“What
about
you?”

“I’m Mieka Windthistle!”

Rafe said, in a loud aside to the audience, “And praise be to the Lord and the Lady and the Angels and Old Gods that there’s only one of him!”

“I heard that!”

“He’s Mieka Windthistle,” Cade told the audience, hooking a thumb in Mieka’s direction.

More silence.

The Elf stamped a foot. “Mieka Windthistle, of Touchstone!” When there was no reaction, he added, “The Glisker!”

Still nothing.

He picked up a pair of withies and began to juggle them. Right on cue, Tobalt Fluter—somewhere in the audience with his daughter, who was older than most of the offspring here but adored theater in general and Touchstone in particular—called out, “Is that all he can do?”

A smattering of laughter. Mieka caught both withies in his fists and planted those fists on his hips and declared, “I’m Mieka Windthistle, the Glisker for Touchstone!” After a few moments, while he stood there looking as if expecting something—anything—by way of reaction, he stamped the other foot. “The one at the back!”

Jeska laughed at him. Mieka twirled a withie between his fingers, then pointed it at Jeska.

The Masquer disappeared. In his place was a very large potted plant.

“Oy! Stop that!”

The potted plant was replaced by a very large squirrel.

“Mieka!” he wailed.

By now the children were laughing. The squirrel became a lamppost and then a lady wearing a too-short purple ball gown and workman’s hobnailed boots. At last Jeska himself reappeared, glaring at Mieka.

“Have you finished?”

“I’ve only just got started!” Addressing the audience: “Because we’ve a story to tell you today, and what d’you say we get on with it?”

Cheers, applause, laughter—it happened every time. Cade grinned at Princess Miriuzca, who sat in the front row with her daughter—it was Levenie’s very first time at a play—and called out, “All right, then! Let’s begin!”}

“Well,” he heard Rafe say, “it wasn’t about the Archduke, anyways.”

“Just because he’s smiling?” Mieka scoffed. “Maybe he saw the Archduke getting caught up in his own plot. That’d make
me
smile!”

“It’s a lovely thought,” Cade admitted. “But I doubt the boy’s got past the first guards at the Palace yet. Much too soon to see any changes.”

“Hells,” Mieka said glumly, then brightened. “What d’you think, another half hour or so?”

“Perhaps. But for now—Rafe, write this down. I’ve got the perfect beginning for ‘Bewilderland.’”

And what a perfect relief it was, he thought as he told them what he’d seen, to escape into their work. If he had to sit about all day and half the night waiting to see (or not see) how the Archduke planned to thwart the Tregrefin, he’d end with his nerves scraped raw and bleeding.

Two hours later, they’d run through the delightful silliness of a befuddled young farmer trying to find his pig’s lost
oink
in a journey that took him all over the countryside and featured a dog that cackled like a chicken, a chicken that
moo
ed like a cow, a cow that chittered like a squirrel, a squirrel that
baa
ed like a lamb, and any other absurd thing they could think of. As the farmer came upon them and they heard their own voices, which startled them at least as much as it did the farmer, they followed him and his pig (Mieka was very happy to have another pig to play with) until he finally came upon a cat that
oink
ed. It was Rafe’s plan to have the audience help sort everything out by applauding when an animal got its own voice right again.

Cade was just saying to Mieka, “I think you ought to work on that horse,” when the boy in Silversun livery raced back into the undercroft, red-faced and panting, with a large folded letter in one hand and the silver falcon pin in the other.

Jeska kindly gave him a glass of Mistress Mirdley’s lemonade while Cayden broke the seal and read. His face must have shown his emotions all too clearly, for he was only halfway through the letter when Mieka told the boy to go on upstairs and change back to his work clothes before Lady Jaspiela got home and caught him. By the time the undercroft door slammed behind him, Cade had finished the letter. He cleared his throat, wished for some whiskey, and read aloud:

I am grateful for your advice. Upon further consideration, it seems to me that the most efficient course is to prevent anything from reaching certain hands while at the same time providing proof that those hands were in fact reaching. I will inform you of developments.

I have undertaken to repay my debt to you by paying Touchstone’s debts. If you would do me the favor of listing those establishments currently holding outstanding bills, these will be taken care of—quietly, and with no names mentioned, which I am sure you will appreciate. Once this is accomplished, I will consider my debt to be settled.