Touchstone (21 page)

{He sat beside the dark river, hugging his knees, breathing slowly the scents of water and crushed green grass and woodsmoke, listening to windrustle and distant chirring birds, feeling the languid warmth of the night—for once not trying to remember, interpret, catalog. What he sensed, and especially what he saw, these things were to be savored, not used. Silvery light glowed over the nearby hills, tempting, promising, and he held his breath. As the moon arced over the rise, and the river sparkled like a pathway of suddenly flung diamonds, he felt hands settle lightly on his shoulders. He didn’t turn his head; he knew this touch, gentle and strong.

After a few moments Mieka whispered, “I knew you’d be here,” and knelt behind him in the damp grass.

Moonglade shimmered the length of the river. Lingering drops of afternoon rain dazzled trees and pasture, and the whole world seemed suddenly slurry with stars.

“Did I get it right, then, Quill?”

He laughed softly, because Mieka already knew the answer. He gave it again anyway. “You always do. Whatever I give you, you give back to me better than I could ever imagine it. You always do.”}

In his sleep, Cayden smiled.

*   *   *

He woke with a single blink. There were moon-thrown shadows in the darkness of the bedchamber. One of these shadows wandered about the room, seeming to shed pieces of itself onto the floor.

“Pick it up. All of it.”

Mieka grasped dramatically at his chest. “Gods, Quill! Give me a seizure, whyn’t you?”

He didn’t have to ask what the boy had been doing. He reeked of sexual satiation like a noblewoman’s gowns reeked of pricey perfume. “Just tell me you didn’t break into the Minster.”

“Mad I may be, but stupid? Never.”

“I’d argue with that. We’ve the draw in the morning, and first rehearsal right after.” He kept his voice steady and calm. “I need you rested.”

The uncaring shrug was in his voice as he replied, “Then let me sleep in tomorrow.” He fell onto the bed with a grunt of satisfaction, wriggling amid the pillows to burrow a comfortable nest. “Shoulda brought you along. She had an adorable little friend—”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“No? All right, then. Sweet dreaming, Quill.”

Cade unclenched his fists and told himself he wasn’t angry because he was envious. He was angry because tomorrow was vitally important. Their career—hells, their
lives
from now on—depended on what happened tomorrow. And that worthless little Elf had to go out prowling—

—and come to think of it, had Jeska made it back tonight?

“I’ll cripple the both of ’em,” he muttered, pulling his pillow over his head to muffle the snuffling snores coming from the other bed. “
After
Trials.”

The next morning Cade was too nervous to eat. By the time he got downstairs Rafe was already up and fed—and quite abundantly, too, judging by the huge plate at his elbow—seated at the kitchen table writing a letter to Crisiant. Cade’s arrival elicited a nod and a question: “Where’s the Elf?”

He replied with a smirk. Far from allowing Mieka to sleep in, Cade had left him thoroughly awake: pillowless, coverless, and howling with outrage at the crisp breeze through windows Cade had flung wide open. Cade nodded his gratitude to the Trollwife as she gave him a huge cup of soothing tea. Her eyes were a soft lavender, unusual in her people, and the sympathy in them was an unexpected annoyance. How many tregetours had passed through her kitchen on just such a morning as this? He wasn’t like any of them—Touchstone was different, unique—oh Gods, which of the Thirteen would they have to perform? Please don’t let it be “The Dragon,” or “The Prince’s Plague,” or “The Treasure”— He gulped tea but his stomach kept gnawing on itself.

A plate of eggs and fried bread was set before him. He simply couldn’t face it. Turning to Rafe, he asked, “Where’s Jeska?”

“Jeska,” Rafe echoed musingly. “That’s something we need to discuss.”

Before he could ask, a voice from the taproom rose in a squeak of shocked dismay: “Holy Gods! What
happened
to you?”

“Oh,” Rafe commented, returning to his letter. “The Elf’s found him.”

They came in together, the one torn between horror and giggles, the other defiant and guilty.

“I didn’t know she was bespoken, all right?” Jeska snarled, then winced and groaned as his cut lip, black eye, and swollen jaw moved in directions no longer compatible with comfort.

“P’rhaps we should’ve attempted the Minster girls,” Mieka offered. “Might’ve been safer. No great hulking boyfriends lurking about.”

“You—you—” Cade’s considerable vocabulary deserted him. Or else so many words came to mind that they all got tangled on his tongue so none of them could make it out of his mouth.

“Was she worth it?” Mieka wanted to know.

Another incautious use of facial muscles—this time for a smug grin—brought another moan.

“No teeth for your collection?” Rafe taunted.

“Part Giant, he musta been,” came the reply, stiff-lipped. He looked down mournfully at bruised, scraped knuckles. “Bones like bricks.”

“And you’re still
alive
?” Mieka snagged a slice of bread and began tearing it into small pieces, handing each to Jeska with a mocking grin. “Chew gently.”

They went on teasing the masquer while Cade fought real nausea. Jeschenar’s physical beauty, especially that exceptional face, was something Cade counted on even though he never admitted it. Today—in less than three hours, in fact—they’d be presenting themselves, and that face, at Seekhaven Castle, intent not just on the draw but also on impressing the judges right from the start.

“Oh, don’t look so tragic, Quill,” Mieka chided. “Nothing’s broken.” He paused, then squinted at Jeska. “Nothing’s broken, is it?”

He shook his head and sipped warily at the tea handed him by the Trollwife.

“There must be a leech or physicker somewhere in town who can set him right,” Rafe said. “We don’t perform for another three days, after all—”

“I’ve a better plan,” said the Elf, grinning as if the whole situation had been crafted exclusively for his entertainment. Or, Cade thought suddenly, for him to use in entertaining others. Whichever, Cade wasn’t disposed to argue with anyone who had a practical solution to the cuts and bruises on Jeska’s face.

He really ought to have known.
Practical
and
Mieka Windthistle
were not acquainted with each other. Indeed, they had never even been introduced.

Two hours later, the Elf was perched on an overstuffed footstool upholstered in garish green silk, fascinated by a process most men never saw. Cade had effaced himself into a corner, wishing he could hide behind the nearby draperies. Rafe lounged on a velvet couch, sipping from a dainty teacup of what their hostesses called
mocah water,
the latest importation from a land so new and remote it didn’t yet have a name anyone recognized. Jeska sat rigidly before some of the most expensive looking-glass in the kingdom as the queen’s ladies-in-waiting made him beautiful again.

For Mieka,
practical
had meant marching right up to the castle gates, a thing that in anyone else would have been sheerest folly. But he shamelessly traded on Cade’s father’s position at Court, somehow got Touchstone through to the inner precincts of Seekhaven Castle, bluffed them past a succession of guards and footmen, and through a combination of cheek, charm, and chatter enlisted one of Her Majesty’s younger ladies in the cause. This girl whisked the four players into private hallways, up and down several stone staircases, and at last into the royal apartments. Because the Court had yet to arrive from Gallantrybanks, they used the queen’s own dressing room and the queen’s own cosmetics to repair the damage to Jeska’s face.

Cade watched mindlessly, not really paying attention. Every step he had taken inside this vast castle had been silently dogged by his father’s name and function. He’d expected raised brows and curious glances once his name was announced at Trials, but he would have been in familiar surroundings—
his
familiar surroundings, the honest stage, where fiction was labeled as such, rather than the play-acting that everyone pretended was reality at Court.

One of the ladies—a delicate redhead with the most elegant way of moving he’d ever seen—approached him and smiled. “None of us can wait to see you play, Master Silversun. We don’t have chances like this very often!”

The price of the ladies’ artistry was a private performance. In secret. It happened all the time, but rarely did ladies have the opportunity to make the arrangements for themselves. Or, in this case, to have a quick-talking glisker arrange it for them.

“And I promise none of us will get caught,” she added. “Or, if we do, all of us have enough credit with Her Majesty so that no one will be punished.”

Punishment there was—specified in the law books, at any rate. It was hardly ever meted out. Ordinarily Cade would have relished the risk of flouting tradition, but this was different. If Touchstone were caught, even after they’d won a place on the Winterly, that place might be taken away as an example to others. And it would be the Downstreet, and cold wagon rides to distant taverns, and living at his parents’ house for the next year until Trials came up again.

“The pavilion is lovely,” she went on. “We’ve seen other players there, when His Majesty wants to surprise the queen with a treat.” She gave him a smile through long lashes that owed nothing to cosmetics. “It’s rather exciting, sneaking about late at night, even if everyone knows where we’re going and why.”

Well, that was Court, wasn’t it? Behaving as if subterfuge were necessary even when it wasn’t. It must make a nice change from the
real
artificialities. Aware that he was confusing himself, he nodded again and managed a smile.

“Your glisker told us where you’re lodging, so I’ll send a note with the day and time—oh, and an official pass, so no one will question you in town or within the castle.”

“Beholden, Lady,” he said.

“He’s a bit of a lad, isn’t he? Your glisker.”

He flinched as a pretty little silver clock on the wood-paneled wall chimed the quarter-hour. “I-I don’t mean to hurry the ladies, but—”

“I quite understand.” Turning to the work in progress: “Bodgerie! Aren’t you finished yet?”

Cade hardened his face against a wince.
Bodger
meant “to fix something very badly.” Not a reassuring nickname. The redheaded lady saw it in his eyes, though—one had to be clever about reading people’s faces at Court—and smiled again.

“It’s to keep her humble. She’s quite brilliant, really.” Tiptoeing, she whispered, “Why do you think Her Majesty always looks ten years younger than her age? And the last time Princess Iamina—” She smirked. “Let’s just say she trips on cracks in the tiles and bruises her cheek or her chin, usually after she’s caught her husband with someone he oughtn’t to be with. But you’d never know it, after Bodgerie’s been to her.”

“Does Lady Bodgerie mend Lord Tawnymoor’s accidental falls, too?”

Her green eyes gleamed appreciation of the oblique inquiry. “No. He just tends to disappear for a few days after one of his and the Princess’s—”

“—mutual clumsinesses?” he suggested, and a grin broke across her exquisite face.

“All done!” Bodgerie sang out, and Jeska stood and turned for inspection. “What do you think?”

“Gorgeous,” one of the ladies sighed, without a hint of a blush for such frank enjoyment of a young man’s looks.

Mieka pouted a little before bouncing to his feet. He gave the ladies a low bow. “We are more beholden than we can possibly convey—but we’ll give it our best try any night you name! Your ardent servants, ladies, and do excuse us for running out on you like this, but we’ve an appointment.”

“Go, hurry!” said the little redhead, and they went.

Along the way, following directions given to Mieka, Cade scrutinized his masquer’s new mask. “A bit swollen still, but nobody will notice,” he decided.

“Don’t talk,” Rafe advised Jeska. “You’ll crack your face.”

Jeska raised a hand in an especially rude gesture. As they rounded a corner into a marble-floored atrium—and the full view of all the other groups of players waiting for the draw—Cade grabbed Jeska’s arm and yanked it down before anyone could see.

It appeared, however, that the moody tregetour of Crystal Sparks had noticed. Mirko Challender looked down his long, thin nose for a moment, then grinned and returned the salute with both hands.

An underling in the royal livery of sea-green and brown rapped a gold-topped staff on the floor, and into the abrupt silence announced the Master of His Majesty’s Revelries. This proved to be a tall, skeletal personage carrying a brown velvet drawstring purse. He started talking, but Cade didn’t hear him; his attention had fixed on the bag of tokens to the exclusion of everything else. It took Rafe’s elbow in his ribs to make him realize that Touchstone’s turn had come.

Side by side the four of them walked to what Cade devoutly hoped wouldn’t be disaster. A group of men stood just behind the Master, chains of office draping their shoulders in rivulets of silver. The judges. They looked directly at him when the velvet purse was held out and he reached in his hand and pulled out a small round token. Lord and Lady and Gods and Angels, why hadn’t he offered a prayer or a pence at High Chapel yesterday—they needed all the help they could get—

It would have been hideous manners to look at the token. Besides, he didn’t want to betray which of the Thirteen he’d drawn by an involuntary smile—or wince. He bowed, backed up the required two steps, and Touchstone returned to their places. Mieka was quivering with excitement at his side, Jeska stood as if his bones had suddenly turned to cast iron, and Rafe tried unsuccessfully to stifle a sigh of relief that the ceremonial part was over. Cade gripped the token in his fist and stared right back at the judges. It was so damnably unfair that his future would be decided by six fusty middle-aged men who had never stepped onto a stage in their lives, who didn’t know the first thing about creating and performing so much as a blank-verse poem, who had no magic and probably even less taste—