Touchstone (12 page)

He’d had another turn this morning, fortunately a very brief one and while he was sitting on his bed, but the abrupt vision had lingered to taunt him all day. The girl again, the one with bronze-gold hair and beautiful hands, seated before a hearthfire, sewing just as her mother had been doing in the first foreseeing. He stood behind her, trying to get a look over her shoulder at the work in her lap. He knew it wasn’t a skirt or a bodice she worked on, but something else, something she was bespelling, because although he still couldn’t catch a glimpse of her face, he could again hear her voice. She was murmuring, almost crooning a song, to the soft dark fabric in her hands, as if it were a living thing to be coaxed and cajoled and soothed. He recognized none of the words. That scared him.

Still, what was he supposed to do? Take Mieka aside and warn him?
“Listen, one day you’ll meet a girl, probably the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in your life. But be careful. She and her mother want to ‘tame’ you. I heard them say it. They want to trap you and own you. So if you see a girl like that, run like all hells in the opposite direction.”
Yes, it would be dead easy to present it to him just that way. Simple as peeling a turtle.

“Time you two were going, I think,” Crisiant said once Rafe allowed her the use of her lips again. “You’ll be coming back here as usual for some supper? Your mother’s experimenting with that new spice Lord Piercehand ships home from—” She paused as if searching for the name, then shrugged. “—from wherever it is. I can’t keep up with all these faraway findings.”

“I’m glad I’m not in school anymore,” Cade observed, “and having to learn them. Every ship as docks nowadays, a week later there’s a broadsheet announcing five more new places with names nobody can pronounce.”

“You keep up with it all, though, don’t you?” Crisiant asked, frowning.

“I like the imagings,” he admitted. “And Dery likes the maps.”

“But how much of those imagings can be believed?”

He shrugged. It was a strange art, that of the imager. It wasn’t like the magic of a painter or sculptor, ancient skills with hundreds of practitioners ranging from the brilliant to the hopelessly inept. There’d been a boy at Sagemaster Emmot’s academy who’d had the knack for it, and if all the students there had been odd, Arley Breakbriar had been downright weird. His big blue eyes would go all hazy and dreamy as he stared at whatever had caught his attention, while his fingers twitched over a single withie for many long minutes. Finally he’d wake up again, and shake himself, and smile a shy, rueful smile. Later on he’d release the magic, and on paper or parchment, or sometimes the walls of his chamber, there would appear an exact rendering of whatever he’d seen. Just how the images went from his eyes to his head to his fingers to the withie to a finished picture was something Cade didn’t understand and never would—he’d tried it a few times, under Arley’s stammering guidance, and whereas he might have thought it similar to the process whereby he imbued a glass twig with magic for the stage, he’d never managed to transfer an image onto paper. It took a glisker to render Cade’s magic.

The painters and the sculptors, they could guide and modify their visions—just as Cade could do. But an imager was limited to reproducing precisely what he saw. The technique had been developed over the last fifty years or so, and its practitioners were rare, and especially coveted on voyages across the Ocean Sea. The last Cade had heard, Arley had signed on for just such a journey. One reason he kept track of the broadsheets was in hopes of seeing his friend’s name. But he hadn’t, not yet.

“Anyway,” Crisiant was saying, “Jeska has a good appetite for new things, and your mother would like his opinion.”

Rafe had been listening to this with an indulgent twinkle. “Why don’t you just say it?” he teased. “No need to excuse it with a new recipe.” When she smacked him a good one on the arm, he laughed and told Cade, “She wants to meet the Elf. See if he’s really as mad as I’ve made him out to be.”

“I’m sure the description didn’t do him justice,” Cade said. “P’rhaps some night next week you and Blye can come to a show? Mieka’s sister wants a look at what we’re doing, as well. You could all sneak in together. You know how good Blye is at dressing up like a boy.”

Crisiant shrugged. “I’ll sit in on a rehearsal, if that suits. I waited too long to grow a figure to want to hide it.”

“And it’s a lovely one grew onto your scrawny bones,” Rafe assured her with a grin. “See you later tonight, sweeting.”

“Unless,” Cade remarked with entirely specious innocence, “you
were
the last one through the door yesternight, in which case—”

“Your servant, lady,” Rafe told Crisiant, kissed her one last time, and hauled Cade out into the alley with flakes of pastry still on his chin.

They met up with the other half of Touchstone on Beekbacks, and didn’t take the shortcut down the Stroll. Mieka teased Jeska about the crushing disappointment he was dealing the luscious Ferralise, until the masquer finally threatened to shove a withie up his nose. Cade exchanged grins with the Elf, and as Rafe and Jeska walked ahead, hung back a bit.

“He’s not angry—about the bluethorn, I mean. Just don’t ever try anything like that again.”

“Promise. Did you decide about the blockweed?” Not waiting for an answer, he went on, “Me, I’ve just a little bit of a blue thornprick going tonight. You can try some if you like. I’ve extra.”

Cade shrugged and shook his head. He wasn’t scared, exactly; more like he wanted to be in private when he went lost for the first time. To lose himself someplace where the ugly or frightening dreams couldn’t get at him … to lose awareness of the rest of the world for a while and dream as he pleased …

There was a capacity crowd at the Downstreet. Word had spread. Jeska responded as all masquers did to the audience’s excitement, and was even better than usual. All three of them were. Jeska’s nuanced performance, Mieka’s wild energy, Rafe’s stern and subtle control—but as Cade watched from stage right, he noted something apprehensive in the fettler’s eyes. The control was
too
rigorous. Rafe was being cautious—which meant that what the people had come to see tonight wasn’t going to happen.

So Cade did it himself. The other three actually flinched as glassware shattered along the bar. It was an interesting little exercise, Cade thought, unleashing just enough power to break a full pitcher of beer held aloft by a startled and horrified barmaid. To choose a target, to focus, to direct the magic as narrowly and precisely as he could, like a flying needle—this took skill, and he was delighted by the results. The drenched barmaid was the one who had sneered at him the other night after the show, and tried to serve him blashed whiskey.

Then he heard the splintering of glass onstage. Cade swung about and saw Mieka poised atop the glisker’s bench, throwing spent withies into the air and deliberately bursting them as they fell. Tiny shards of glass rained down, just missing the infuriated Jeska. The audience gasped, cheered, shouted encouragement. He took a bow, then another, and tossed an intact glass twig into the crowd for a souvenir.

“It was only the flawed ones,” he protested half an hour later as he and Cade and Rafe made their way back to the bakery. “Had to replace them anyway, right?” Laughter rang out and he danced a few steps down the icy cobblestones. “Why should Rafe and you have all the fun?”

The rage was as sudden as it was frightening. And it wasn’t in his power to fight it off. Without conscious thought, Cade reached out and grabbed him by the front of his tunic. One look into those huge eyes told him he’d never be able to say this to Mieka’s face; he spun him round and took him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him against a lamppost. “Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!”

Cheek to cold metal, tremors running through him, Mieka whimpered softly but stayed still, making no move to defend himself or to escape.

“I’d ask where you went to school, turning out this ignorant,” Cade hissed, “but it’s bloody obvious you never went to any school at all—and even if you did, you never paid attention. But you’ll pay attention now, and remember every word. Those lovely glass sticks you throw about are strictly controlled by the law. Wizards aren’t allowed to make them. Glasscrafters who do are inspected.” As he felt muscles tense along Mieka’s back, he shook him. “Did the one you threw to the audience have a hallmark? Did it? Or maybe there was magic still lingering inside—did you think of that? Did you? That’s why Jeska stayed behind tonight. If we’re lucky, he’ll find whoever caught the one you threw and get it back. But whatever he has to pay for it, you’ll pay him back double.” Another flinch of protest; Cade pushed him harder against the post. “Be glad I don’t make it triple.”

Rafe caught his eye, frowning slightly. “Cade—”

“You shut up, too! This stupid little cullion needs lessoning.” Leaning even closer, so that his lips were a breath away from the tip of one pointed ear, he whispered, “Do you know how withies were used in the war? Shall I educate you? Wizards on both sides stuffed magic into them, just the way I work them. Only what
they
put in was cursing magic that killed and maimed. Some were naught but dazzle-spells—but they could blind. Some, on the skin, were like slow acid. In the lungs—if you took a breath when one exploded nearby, you were dead if you were lucky. If not … Blye’s father could tell you all about it.”

Mieka whimpered again. “Cade—please—”

“Wizard glasscrafting is forbidden. Did you think it was just the Guild protecting its own? It’s especially forbidden to me. Do you know what I had to swear before I could so much as hold a withie in my hands? Of course you don’t. You’re a rude little fuckwit who thinks he’s the Gods’ gift to the glisker’s bench. My grandmother devised some of those spells. Her personal favorite, so I’m told, was a delightful variation on the one that lets people feel the warmth of the sun across their faces. Lady Kiritin ignited their skin and burned them alive.”

The Elf-light in the lamp over their heads flared as he reacted. Cade smiled grimly as Mieka’s whole body winced, and saw the boy’s hands grip the post for support. There was a small, frightened word that sounded like
I
. Cade ignored it.

“You know what’ll happen to me if I put a foot wrong? First they’ll cut off my thumbs. Then they’ll take as much of my magic as they can reach and lock it up inside my head during the five or ten years I’ll spend in Culch Minster with the rest of the Kingdom’s garbage.”

“Enough, Cayden,” Rafe murmured.

“You’ll escape punishment for knowing me—you’re only an Elf, you can use withies but not bespell them. And you Elfenkind, you stayed out of the war, didn’t you? Hidden, nice and safe inside your ancestral forest hovels—”

“Cade!” Rafe gripped his arm. Cade shook him off.

“None of
you
ended up in prison after a battle, did you? They probably wouldn’t do anything to Jeska, either. But Rafe, he’s almost as much Wizard as I am, and he works with me, and they’d take him, too. So the next time you have an impulse to throw a pretty glass twig in the air and shatter it on its way down, ask yourself something, won’t you? Ask yourself if you trust Lady Kiritin’s grandson.”

“Enough,” Rafe said again.

Cade flung Mieka away from him. The boy stumbled, caught his balance, slipped on the ice, landed on his backside in a snowbank. Rafe held out a hand to pull him up, but he ignored it and sat there, staring up at Cade. There was a red welt on one side of his face where warm skin had been burned by icy metal, running diagonally from his temple to the corner of his mouth. But the fear that had shuddered in his body was nowhere visible in those eyes, and when he spoke his voice was steady and clear.

“I don’t care who she was. It doesn’t matter. You could never do anything wicked. It’s not in you to be cruel.”

Cade’s turn to stare. Good Gods, hadn’t he just proved the exact opposite?

“Cade? Cayden!”

He blinked, felt frantic hands touching his face.

“What it is, Quill? What’s wrong?”

He was holding Mieka by the front of his tunic, fingers bunched in thick blue wool.

“Let go now, Cade.” Rafe’s voice, deep and calm. Rafe knew. Rafe understood.

Cade unclenched his fingers and watched them tremble. “What did I say?”

“Nothing.” Rafe was reassuring, his strong arm around Cade’s ribs keeping him upright. “It’s fine. Nothing happened.”

“Yes it did,” Mieka whispered. “You both know what just happened. Why won’t anyone tell me?”

Rafe growled a warning, and drew Cade gently over to a bench. But he let go too soon, and Cade stumbled against the metal pole. He squinted at the sign it supported, was informed that this was the queue for Central Gallantrybanks Coach Line Three, Law Courts and Adjudicators Chambers.

“Rafe—”

“Not now, Mieka. Leave him be.”

“But—”

“Shut it!”

Cade heard them arguing but couldn’t much care. Sliding onto the bench, he mused for an unfocused moment on how much simpler his life would have been had he taken his great-grandmother’s advice and become a clerk in a law partnership. His only worry in that sort of life would be whether or not he’d be in time to catch Coach Line Three, Law Courts and Adjudicators Chambers … of course, Great-Granny Watersmith had been quite, quite mad … took dozens of teacups outside to gather up rain and poured the water into a washtub and complained when a new gown didn’t show up … he did have rather unusual forebears, no denying it … his father always said Uncle Dennet had been damaged in the war, but perhaps it had been an inheritance from their grandmother … had Great-Granny foreseen things, too, and had it worn away at her sanity until her mind splintered like glass withies high in the air tonight onstage … or had he dreamed that, too?

He wrapped his half-frozen fingers around the sign pole. Behind his eyes was an image of Mieka’s hands—unusual hands, the ring fingers and little fingers nearly the same length—clenched around the lamppost. There had been fear in those hands, and in his voice. What was it he’d tried to say? Cade heard it again, over and over, finally hearing it for what it was.