Touchstone (14 page)

It wasn’t so much what Mieka had said that afternoon—the compliments were only slightly above the standard obsequious nonsense expected at Court—as the way he used those eyes when he said it. In the process of bespelling Lady Jaspiela into submission without use of magic, Mieka deftly persuaded her to repair to her own chambers where their noise and commotion could not disturb her after what must have been a long day—and just between us, Lady (in a low, confiding voice), is Princess Iamina’s husband really as free with his hands around lovely women as rumor has it? This with a quick glance down her figure, giving the impression that he just couldn’t help himself and undoubtedly the Princess’s husband couldn’t, either. Cade felt his face ache with the effort of compressing a smirk as he watched a second implication sink in: that he believed her to be of a rank to associate with Princess Iamina and Lord Tawnymoor, and, further, to know their circle intimately enough to share such choice gossip.

He found Dery’s reaction almost as entertaining as their mother’s helpless surrender. The boy positively gawked, mouth hanging open and brown eyes as wide as the porcelain teacups. Mistress Mirdley had turned her back on the scene, prodding an iron poker into the fire with rather more vehemence than strictly required, her shoulders shaking suspiciously. Rafe sat back to enjoy himself; Blye hid her grin behind her cup; Jeska watched so intently that Cade was in no doubt he was taking mental notes on the performance.

At length, Mieka returned from escorting Lady Jaspiela to the staircase and plopped down on a cushioned footstool. “If there’s anything stronger than tea in this house,” he whined, “now would be a perfectly splendid time to drink it!”

“How did you
do
that?” Dery asked, still awestruck.

“Do what?”

Cade snickered at the exaggerated innocence. “Send Her Ladyship up to her room without any supper.”

Mieka looked shocked, then spread his hands in an all-encompassing shrug. “The trick,” he explained to Dery, “is to deduce what people want to be talked into doing anyway, and then do all the talking that talks them into it so that they don’t have to talk at all.” He tilted his head at Cade. “Just what you did this afternoon, whether you know it or not. He
wants
us to play at the Downstreet. He
wants
to be able to boast that we’re breaking so much glassware with the power of our performances that he had to secure a whole new contract to resupply the bar.” He winked at Blye. “Can’t have patrons slurping out of an open barrel in the middle of the room, can we?”

“Of course not,” she replied gravely, dark eyes dancing, and Cade ventured to guess that she was growing to like the Elf. Gulping down the last of her tea, she rose and said, “I should be getting back to Da now. Beholden, Mistress Mirdley—and you, Mieka, for a show I didn’t have to sneak in to see!”

The contract Touchstone signed that afternoon was for five weeks, thrice a week on sequential nights, nonexclusive, so they could travel to other towns betweentimes to perform. The contract Blye took home for her father to sign was to provide replacement glassware to be kept on the shelves behind the bar—that way no hallmark was necessary because they would never be used to serve drinks: every night Touchstone would be shattering them, and every morning they would be replaced. Cade had expected her to grump a little about compromising her skills, but she only shrugged, saying that the work didn’t have to be good, just loud.

And so the weeks had hastened by. They gained more confidence in the playlets they already knew, added more to their folio, and the Downstreet was packed every time they took the stage. They had other bookings in Gallantrybanks and at least one outside the city each week, for money as well as food and beds and trimmings. There were coins in their pockets, and new clothes on their backs, and it had suited Crisiant to tell her skeptical parents that if things kept on like this, she’d be married to Rafe by Wintering.

Then the royal command arrived in late spring, cloaked as an invitation. They had two weeks to prepare for Trials, and although at every rehearsal Blye’s question came up again—absent bar glassware, what were they going to break?—none of them had an answer. They merely shrugged at one another and went back to sorting the traditional, basic versions of the Thirteen Perils.

These playlets described the deeds through which the ruling royal family had first got and then held the throne. No one king had accomplished them all; the actual incidents had been spread out over several centuries, conveniently long ago. There were cataclysmic battles (with and without magic), clever solutions to diplomatic difficulties that humiliated other kings, daring rescues, tournament victories, wise judgments of law—the whole panoply of kingly endeavors. Some of them were more exciting than others—the Eighth, for instance, was the tragedy of an heir’s death by treachery. But all the Thirteen were always treated with proper reverence, attributing to the royals all the virtues and making the villains utterly heinous.

Through the years the tales had been …
embroidered
was a polite word for it. For example, a knight defeated in a tournament had somehow been transformed into a Giant; rather than an insurrection of his own seditious nobles, the king in question had done battle against demons, and so on. But even taking away all obviously overstated aspects, the list of the royal family’s accomplishments was impressive.

“What must it be like,” Jeska mused one afternoon during rehearsal, “to be the right-now king, or the heir, and have to sit watching while your ancestors are shown doing all these impossible things?”

They were in Mistress Bowbender’s cellar—dry now that the rains had finally eased—where they could unleash more magic with less risk of damage than in Rafe’s mother’s sitting room. The disadvantage of the setting was the same as in the undercroft of the Silversun home: a chilly spring that had all of them in heavy tunics and coats despite the little firepocket Mieka had brought and Cade had stoked. Cade alone wasn’t wearing gloves, because he was the one who had to do the writing. His new cheveril gloves were thin and supple enough, but he didn’t want to spoil them with inkstains.

The horror of Trials was that they had to be conversant with every single one of the Thirteen Perils. After arriving at Seekhaven Castle, they would draw the token that indicated which they must perform, with two days to perfect their interpretation. These versions must be suitably respectful, but different enough from every other to set a group apart and earn a place on one of the three Circuits: Royal, Ducal, Winterly. Everyone started out on Winterly, which was a test of professionalism and endurance. The other two tours were scheduled for spring and summer, but Winterly was just what the name said it was. The ambitions of more than one group of players had frozen solid, never to be thawed, after a single Winterly Circuit. They either went back to playing taverns or gave up altogether.

That would not happen to Touchstone, Cade promised himself. And as they worked on each of the Thirteen, he found that collective effort actually provided him with new ideas. And he’d need them, he thought miserably, to spark some life into these tired old stories.

Jeska’s speculation had caught Mieka’s fancy. “Now, there’s a slant,” he said. “How
would
it be, all that pressure to live up to what your great-great-great-grandsir did, even if everybody knows half of it’s lies—Quill, could you work that in?”

He thought about it for a moment, then began filling the margins of his notes. “He can be wondering what his grandsir or whomever would have done, and whether he can live up to it. And then he gets the chance to find out, doesn’t he? At the ending I’ll give him some lines about how he hopes his own descendants will live in peaceful times, where they won’t have to rush about fighting Giants or dragons—”

“Doesn’t every king hope to distinguish himself?” Rafe asked. “Write his name in the histories, all that? Wars and suchlike, that’s how a king gets remembered.”

Cade scribbled on, listening as Mieka countered, “But how much better it would be to be known as—I don’t know, Bentifian the Beloved, or Pardrig Peacemaker. Someone more interested in helping people live good lives than getting them killed in wars.”

“How many of the quiet kings get remembered?” Jeska pointed out. “You had to make
those
names up!”

“My favorite was always Raquian the Rapacious,” Rafe said. “Remember, Cade, in school when we learned about him, and how glad we were to’ve missed that particular century?”

Mieka said stubbornly, “I’d think a king with any care for his country at all would
want
to have people wishing they’d known him and lived during his reign.”

“Not all that exciting, though, is it?” Jeska asked. “Norbilan the Nice hasn’t quite the punch of Seyen Warseeker.”

Mieka gave a crow of triumphant laughter. “Ah, but who’s the one who built the castle we’re headed for, to
seek
a
haven
in his old age when he’d got tired of battles? None other than!”

Cade looked up from his notes in time to see Jeschenar bow his head over hands clasped in surrender. “I can work that idea in, too,” Cade offered. “I can put something like it into all of them, so that no matter which one we draw, that will be our perspective. We’ll make them think about something they might not have thought about before.”

“You’re assuming Prince Ashgar
can
think,” Rafe mentioned dryly, “which is a fairly bold assumption.”

Cade dipped fresh ink onto his pen. “My father has intimated on occasion that something goes on between his ears besides keeping track of how many boar he’s skewered and how many women he’s screwed.”

“So what exactly does your father do at Court?” Mieka asked.

He didn’t look up. “First Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Which is why he knows how many women there’ve been.”

Mieka made the obvious mental jump; Cade had expected nothing less. But there was no shock or disgust in his voice as he said, and quite offhandedly, too: “You mean he’s the royal pimp.”

In the silence that followed, Cade couldn’t help but glance over at the Elf. Neither Rafe nor Jeska would look at him now, pretending to be involved in their folios, but Mieka seemed to have been waiting for Cade’s full attention. His expression was both puzzled and sad.

“Your parents don’t understand the first thing about you, do they? Nor about Derien. To think that either of you would tread in those footprints.”

“
That’s
different,” Rafe remarked. “Usually people ask why Zekien Silversun isn’t richer, considering what he does for Prince Ashgar.”

“Pimping doesn’t pay what it used to, evidently,” Cade replied. “Can we get back to work, please? I want to incorporate these ideas into all the Thirteen, so let’s go through them in order.”

Rehearsal broke at tea, and they all trooped upstairs. As was her habit when they weren’t using her sitting room, Rafe’s mother had sent along a selection of baked goods for them—and for Mistress Bowbender, who had neither the time to spare from her work as a supervising charlady to bake treats, nor money enough from that job to afford to buy them. Rafe, Cade, and Mieka always professed themselves still too full from lunching to eat much, which fooled Jeska and his mother not at all but which spared their pride.

Mieka offered to walk with Cade back to Redpebble Square, taking the new green velvet bag of withies. He had long since becast it, and the crates holding the glass baskets, with the same sort of cushioning spell used in the wallet he’d given Cade weeks ago, reasoning that they broke enough glass on purpose. The wallet had passed back and forth between them several times, even though blockweed hadn’t done for Cade what Mieka had expected it to. That evening, walking towards Criddow Close, where Blye was waiting to join them for supper, Mieka took back the empty wallet and stuffed it in a pocket, shaking his head.

“I still don’t understand why you want to keep on with this. You must have the oddest combination of bloodlines in Gallantrybanks, for it not to work on you. Auntie Brishen would love to find out why.”

“It works fine.”

“But you don’t dream. That’s no fun. All it does is send you to sleep.”

Even though blockweed hadn’t worked the way it was supposed to, Cade didn’t mind. For the first time in years, he didn’t have to be afraid of sleeping, because there were no dreams to haunt him when he woke up. But he couldn’t explain that to Mieka. Not just yet. He didn’t know why he was so reluctant to share what Rafe and Jeska already knew. Surely there wouldn’t be dozens of dreaded questions—look how Mieka had reacted to learning what Zekien Silversun did at Court. If he could accept that revelation without blinking, then perhaps …

Slanting a sidewise glance at the Elf, he smiled. “Before it does put me to sleep, though, there’s a few minutes when my imagination goes free. It’s incredible. I don’t have the sort of dreams most people have. Never did. But these—I’ve seen so much, Mieka, things I want to write up not just as playlets but as sequences to perform one after the other, all on the same night. Original things. Not reworkings or revisions of the usual stuff, but
mine
.”

“Tell me one.”

“Not yet.” But he softened the refusal with a smile.

For a moment it seemed as if Mieka might argue, but then he shrugged. “As you please.”

They walked on, the city twilight not yet deep enough to rouse Elf-light in the streetlamps. Cade thought about what he might have done, all those weeks ago, slamming Mieka up against one of the lampposts. Was it true, what that extremely odd turn had shown him? Did Mieka really feel the captured fear so acutely? He hadn’t asked.

Contemplation of the incident that had never happened had provoked other questions, too. Had it been instinct working to warn him what would happen if he lost his temper? Something had prevented him from hurting Mieka, something inside him that knew what would happen if he spoke even one more word—something that had stopped him before he could get started.