Touchstone (15 page)

But why had instinct also given him Mieka’s voice telling him he could never be evil or cruel? Was it because Cade knew those things to be inside him, and wished so much that they were not?
“His mind’s cold, but his heart’s colder.”
He didn’t want to become that. He knew it was possible. Perhaps he’d been warning himself, in a way, that Mieka believed there was nothing vicious inside Cade—and was a fool for thus believing.

Don’t worry about going too lost, Quill, I’ll always come find you.

Perhaps that was it, he thought suddenly, pacing off the cobblestone streets beside the uncharacteristically quiet Elf. Perhaps he’d never before seen Mieka in any dreams or visions because Mieka had to be the one to find
him
.

But the thing that startled him most had been the immediacy of the vision: not weeks or months or years from the moment he was in, but the very next heartbeat. That had never happened to him before.

It had never happened to him, before Mieka had found him.

All at once a hand grasped his elbow. “You have to dream, y’know. You can’t live without dreaming, Quill.”

He wondered wildly if Mieka had somehow guessed.

“People like you—they have to teach everyone else how to dream.”

“What? What d’you mean?”

“Don’t you ever look at the faces? Eager, anxious, hoping we’re going to take them someplace wonderful, somewhere other than the miserable village or district they live in. Maybe they’ve been told by people who’ve seen us that they can count on us, we’ll do that for them. And by the time they leave—”

He pulled a face. “By the time they leave, they’re drunk.”

“Stop that! Don’t you understand what you do for them?
You dream
. Whatever it is inside you that got you through your childhood—”

Cade tried to pull his arm out of Mieka’s grasp. But those thin little fingers were surprisingly strong. “What do you know about that?”

“Not as much as I’d like, but I can guess quite a bit. Forgive me for saying it, but I have only to look at you to know you were bullied and mocked when you were little. Jeska told me once that on almost the first day you knew him, you asked him to teach you how to fight with your fists instead of your magic, because that’d got you in trouble. I don’t know the details, but I can guess. Still, whatever happened, there’s something in you that got beyond it. Or maybe you escaped by going inside yourself. A lot of people do. What’s different about you is that you found things other people never find. Maybe they never went looking ruthless or desperate enough, or maybe it’s just not there for them, but
you
saw things, dreamed things. Most people don’t, or don’t dare. Or their dreams are little ones, just wishes, really, not the big grand daring stuff that scares most people witless.”

He had never heard Mieka talk so seriously for so long. “You mean I have to do it for them? Teach them how?”

A nod of the dark head. “Did you ever notice that you don’t make eye contact much? I mean, we’ll be walking somewhere, just taking the air or heading over to chapel or off to see whatever sights there might be in some piddly little market town, and you don’t look at people. I know why. You think that if you do, you’ll see how they react to your face, the reaction you always saw as a child but never got used to, and the whole thing just makes you miserable, so you don’t make eye contact. You miss a lot, that way. For one thing, you miss that they don’t look at you like you think they do. They see your face, yes, and nobody could ever miss that nose—but they also see from your collar to your boots that you’re a success, that the world has recognized you in the only way most people understand: money. What they see is someone they envy.”

“Me!”

“You.”

They stopped in the middle of a block of shops closed for the night. No one was about. Elf-light was beginning to glow in defense against darkness, and Cade could just make out the pensive face, the solemn line of the mouth.

“It’s daft, y’know, this notion you have that pretty people don’t have problems, that they don’t get hurt or lonely or scared—”

“Ah, but they suffer so much more attractively!” Cade quipped.

“Stop it!” Mieka ordered again. “Everybody has a face like yours. If it’s not the face, it’s education, or birth, or accent, or not bein’ smart enough or good-lookin’ enough—that last, that’s especially with women. Haven’t you ever heard somebody say it? ‘Such a beauty she is, she could have any man she wanted!’”

“Or the other thing they say,” he mused. “‘Such a sweet girl, pity she’s so plain.’”

“Exactly! A man who marries the girl who could have any man she wanted, he wears her like a medal he won in the war.” He grimaced, with nothing comical about it. “Once she opens her mouth, it’s usually another story, but—”

“That’s not very kind of you,” Cade chided gently.

“But so often true! I can’t help it that I find girls fun but ultimately boring. Your Blye, now, she’s a shining exception.”

“She’s not ‘my’ anything.”

“Well, we’ll talk about that another time. We’re talking right now about you not seeing what it is you really do. Some of the men watching, they just take, and that’s fine—they pay for an evening’s entertainment, and that’s a nice, tidy little transaction. There’s not one of them could ever complain he didn’t get his money’s worth. There’s some who end the evening actually
thinking
about what they’ve seen. Those are the most satisfying, in a way. We’ve got to them somehow, reached something, y’know?”

“Sometimes,” Cade said, “just as Rafe is letting everything fade, I get traces of … I’m not sure what it is. Echoes, maybe, of what they’ve just seen, things that linger not just because you and Rafe and Jeska are good at what you do, but because they
want
them to linger.”

“Do you ever sense the ones who are so surprised they can’t hardly think at all? They’ve just seen something they’ve never seen before, and it’s shook them so hard they’re just staggering inside. That’s gratifying, only it’s a bit worrying as well, because the next time they come to a show they’re going to expect the same thing, and that’s just not possible.” A little smile graced his lips. “You can’t get drunk for the first time twice. I know—I’ve tried!”

“What else happens that I never notice?”

Mieka was abruptly serious again. “The ones who come out of it wanting to dream their own dreams. Whether they can, or end up sharing, those are things we’ll never know. But there’s a spark, and we lit it, and that’s one of the best feelings of all.”

“I think I understand,” Cade said slowly. “It’s something else I sense every so often.”

“But the ones as break my heart—those are the ones who come to see
your
dreams because they used to have dreams of their own and haven’t anymore. They want to remember what it was like before it all burned out.”

After a few moments, Cade said, “You’re telling me I shouldn’t use the blockweed anymore.” Which would leave him open not just to the dreams while sleeping but the frightening turns that happened while he was awake. He hadn’t had a single one since that first experience with the little glass thorn.

Mieka nodded gravely. “Your dreams are too important, Quill.”

Of all the things he’d ever thought or felt about his dreamings, that had never occurred to him. “Important,” he echoed.

“Yes. It’s—it’s the people we perform for, and it’s me, and Rafe, and Jeska—but mainly it’s you. Like I said, you
need
to dream.”

Staring down at the boy who had spoken with the insights of a man twice his age, he promised himself never to underestimate Mieka again.

Chapter 8

Not surprisingly, each time Cayden tried to settle on a final version of any of the Thirteen Perils, he came up empty. This was not a promising omen.

All else seemed to be going splendidly. They would leave on the special coach for Seekhaven in two days. Everyone was packed. The glass baskets were carefully crated. Mistress Mirdley had consulted Mistress Threadchaser and together they’d decided what their boys would be taking along by way of food (in a gigantic hamper, enough to last a month). Auntie Brishen had sent a half-barrel of whiskey with Mieka’s name on it. Cade had done the preliminary work on priming the withies, but couldn’t finish until he knew which of the Thirteen they would draw. Not that he had enough withies to work from; Mieka’s ruthless culling of those he considered substandard had depleted the collection. Blye had promised new ones before they left, but Master Cindercliff had been worse lately and she’d been tending him while trying to run the shop and get some work done at the kiln besides. At any other time, Cade would have helped her out, but this was
Trials
coming up.

He vacillated between calm confidence and a nauseating anxiety that blockweed soothed by letting him get some sleep. But what Mieka had said nagged at him—about the importance of dreams, and of
his
dreams in particular, a concept that still stunned him. He did want the dreams, but the ones that came before dreamless sleeping, the ones he could control, not the ones that invaded his mind with visions that might or might not come true. For the purpose of seeing what he chose to see, he’d become adept at judging how much of the prepared, liquefied mixture to siphon into the little glass thorn. Still, he was so edgy these days that less and less seemed to send him collapsing onto his pillows, rousing only when Derien or Mistress Mirdley pounded on his door in the morning.

Staring at the page on his desk, where the numbers
1
through
13
were all he’d written in the hour since dinner, he was within moments of giving it all up as a bad lot and reaching for the green wyvern wallet when Derien burst into his bedchamber.

“Aren’t you ready?” the boy demanded, breathless from running up all five flights of stairs. “Why aren’t you ready? Get dressed! Mieka’s here!”

He was indeed, and dressed to the ears—literally. Cade frankly stared at the display of honey-colored silk shirt, turquoise velvet jacket with black lace overlay on cuffs that reached nearly to his elbows, black trousers, and black boots polished to a mirror-gleam, with a little golden topaz charm dangling from the tip of his left ear. Glad that Dery had bullied him into his best, Cade stood at the bottom of the stairs, just outside the drawing room door, and watched as Mieka once again beguiled Lady Jaspiela into purring contentment.

“—isn’t
true
?” he exclaimed. “My mother will be crushed!”

“Well, it’s not for lack of trying,” said Her Ladyship with a refined sniff. “His reputation has become such that now he’ll have to look farther afield for a bride.”

“I’ve heard whispers about princesses and grand duchesses on the Continent.”

“You’re well-informed!”

“With these ears, Lady, it’s difficult not to listen!”

Cade heard his mother’s laugh ring out—a real laugh, not the delicate tinkle she had spent a lifetime perfecting—and shook his head in amazement. The Elf was capable of anything, it seemed.

“Good, isn’t he?” Derien whispered beside him. “D’you think he’d give me lessons?”

“You do all right on your own. Besides, I think it has a lot to do with those eyes.”

With a resigned sigh: “I s’pose. You’ll be wanting this,” he added, and pressed something small and cool into Cade’s palm.

It was a collar-pin, beautifully worked in silver, depicting a falcon in flight. “Where did you get this? Did you buy it? Dery, you’ve better things to spend your money on—”

“Better than my brother’s nineteenth Namingday present?” He chortled softly. “Forgot, didn’t you? Mieka told Mistress Mirdley and me not to say anything, and not even make a special supper, so it’d all be a surprise.”

“It is that,” Cade admitted. He did have a habit—a deliberate habit—of forgetting his Namingday. His parents were just as glad not to have to make an expensive fuss. Mistress Mirdley customarily marked the occasion with his favorite foods or a pie, Dery usually drew a picture with his best colored pencils, and once—just once—Blye had given him a kiss. His first, as it happened. They’d been twelve. This gift from Derien and whatever Mieka planned for tonight were unprecedented. He didn’t know how to react.

“Here,” Dery said, taking the pin, hopping up two steps so he could reach. “You needed something new for Trials besides that gray coat Father sent from the Palace. He says it’s more fashionable these days to put this in a neckband, especially the sort with ruffles—raise your chin!—but Mieka’s right, you shouldn’t ever try to style yourself a fribbler. Simple and elegant, and no fuss. There,” he concluded, critically surveying his work. “The falcon looks like he’s flying!”

“It’s beautiful. Beholden, Dery,” Cade managed, and gave in to his affection for the boy, and hugged him tight.

“Have a wonderful time, and come tell me all about it when you get back! I swear I won’t be asleep,” he added as a protest formed on Cade’s lips. “And even if I am, promise to wake me up!”

“And what exactly is it that you won’t be able to wait for tomorrow to hear?”

“I’m not telling! It’s Mieka’s surprise, just like this was mine.” He touched the collar-pin. “You look good, Cade. You really do.”

He rolled his eyes. “Flattery just
might
get you a waking-up when I come home.”

“Oh, I’m positive you’ll come tell me—you won’t be able not to!”

“That special, is it?”

Dery folded his arms and tried to look stern. “I’m
not
telling!”

“That’s the way! Keep to the oath!” exclaimed Mieka from behind Cade. “And you needn’t try to winkle it out of
me,
either,” he warned. “Tease us or taunt us, threaten us or torture us—”

“—we’ll never tell!” finished Dery. “Now, hurry up, it’s just struck seven!”

Adding to the astonishments, Lady Jaspiela wished them a pleasant evening as Mieka took his extravagant leave of her before tugging Cade into the vestibule. As they donned their coats, for one of the few times in his life Cade voluntarily examined himself in a mirror. Same long-jawed, beak-nosed, wide-browed, sharp-boned, undeniably plain face, but there was something different in the way he held himself, perhaps because of that touch of elegance given by the falcon pin; something different about his eyes.