Thornlost (Book 3) (11 page)

Near Princess Iamina, and also providing competition, was the new Archduchess, flagrantly waving to someone. Had she wished to remain anonymous—and Mieka couldn’t think of a single reason why she would—she would have done better than to wear her husband’s colors. Included in this tribute of gray and orange was her wedding ring: a great lump of gray pearl surrounded by orange topazes. The thing reached almost to her fingernail and looked heavy enough to anchor a ship. Much had been made of this gift in the broadsheets, and it served to make her as recognizable as did Princess Iamina’s gaudy yellow flower. Honestly, Mieka thought to himself as he mounted the steps to the stage, the things women did to outshine each other. Rather than turning at once for the glass baskets that had already been set up for him, he walked over to where Rafe stood at his lectern.

“I think the Archduchess needs a bit of excitement, don’t you? For her dear husband’s sake, if nothing else.”

The fettler licked his lips and nodded slowly. “Iamina will be relieved not to be the focus tonight.”

“Oh, you can spare a touch for her, too. But have a care with Miriuzca. And with the Queen. They’re right next to each other, the ones in blue and pink.”

“The Queen?” After a quick glance into the audience, Rafe smoothed his beard with one finger. “Hmm. So
that’s
why the Stewards are here tonight.”

“What? Where?”

“You really do have to start noticing things that aren’t shoved directly under your nose. Four of ’em, tucked behind pillars. They’ll be protecting the Queen, if necessary.”

“But they never before—I mean, Iamina always comes to these things.”

“Yeh, but who cares about her? Nobody that I’ve ever heard of. Roshien and Miriuzca, though, they’re important. Even if they’re not officially here.”

“It’s insulting,” Mieka grumped.

“Yeh, it is. But the Stewards are here on somebody’s order, so we’ll just have to treat the ladies as delicately as mistflowers.” He chuckled. “ ’Cept for the Archduchess, of course.”

“Fine it down to a needle point and stick it to her,” Mieka agreed.

He darted to the back of the stage, stretching his shoulders loose as he went. Blye’s beautiful glass baskets awaited him. The usual fond smile never reached his lips, however. Laid across the black-rimmed basket was a huge feather, all iridescent blues and greens and touches of gold. A peacock feather.

He backed off, one hand groping towards Cayden. Mastering himself at once, he snatched up the feather and threw it to the far back of the stage. The others mustn’t see it, this traditional symbol of bad luck, this worst thing that could ever be discovered in a theater. He knew that the superstition was irrational, groundless, ridiculous, childish… and he felt a shiver down his spine anyway as he took up position and flexed his fingers. He would pay no attention to the peacock feather. Touchstone would be as good as ever—
better
, by all the Gods.

The play began with wind and rain, progressed through the hiding of the Rights of the Fae beneath the tumbling wall, the capture, and the scene inside the castle, with everyone gasping in all the right places. But when the cloak fell from the Fae’s
shoulders, instead of wings—minutely described to him by Cayden from his observations of his ancestress—instead of delicate iridescence Mieka created long, lush, gorgeous, many-eyed wings made of peacock feathers. From the corner of his eye he saw Cade’s startled blink, and grinned to himself. Someone had thought to unnerve Touchstone with a single peacock feather; Mieka created two dozen of the damned things, just because he could.

The Fae’s arrogance and contempt (and perhaps a bit of Mieka’s as well) spread through the audience, emotions that had put sneers onto other faces during other performances, though here, of course, expressions were invisible behind the veils. One of the tricks of the piece was the transition from the righteous defiance of the Fae to the righteous anger of his judges. However justified the Fae felt in hiding the Rights, what the Fae Folk had done in starting a war that killed thousands was an unforgivable crime. Lives broken and ruined, all for the sake of a few bits of gold and silver and glass, and the magic they represented. What merely mortal being—Human, Wizard, Elf, Fae, Piksey, Sprite, Goblin, Gnome, Troll, Giant—could justify destroying so many lives for his own ends? It was intolerable, and it was wrong. And Touchstone always made sure the audience knew it.

Mieka was gentler than usual with the transition to the grim finality of the condemnation, but added a droplet of fear just before the Fae was hanged, knowing Rafe would direct it at the Archduchess. Yet as Jeska spoke the last lines from the shadows, something odd happened. Mieka’s tutor had once likened the art of glisking to a river, in which one must be careful not to drown an audience. One slid emotions, sounds, tastes, sensations into that river—Mieka always thought of them in terms of colors added to clear water, or pinches of different spices that subtly altered the taste of a sauce—and blended them together. But all at once it was as if the fear he had just conjured was a trickle of
bitter blood seeping into a stream, and something—someone—beneath the surface was sucking it away with a ravening thirst. Sometimes a few people in an audience clutched at an emotion, so impatient to feel more or so empty of feeling themselves that instinct yearned beyond their controlling. Mostly they grasped at love, or happiness, or giddy laughter; at times there would be someone eager to experience the thrill of more brutal emotions, and this was why a fettler exerted such powerful control on the magic. But this was different. This seized on the fear and demanded more. He’d sensed something akin to it in only one place before: that weird old mansion outside New Halt. Twice now Touchstone had performed for an audience of a single mysterious person swathed in furs, but the feeling of being devoured was the same. Odd, though, that it was only fear that was so fiercely consumed.

He was too good at his work to allow this to distract him. As the piece ended, he paused to catch his breath. Then, as the applause swelled, he found the peacock feather and broke it off up near the eye, tucked it behind one ear, and leaped over the glisker’s bench to join his partners.

Cade flinched back like a spooked colt. “What in all Hells—?”

“Later,” he replied as they took their bows. He found the tall blue figure next to the short pink one, and chuckled; the Queen was applauding politely, but Princess Miriuzca was jumping up and down and clapping her hands like anything. It occurred to him that this was the very first time she’d ever watched a play from somewhere other than behind a screen or up in a minstrels gallery. He made sure their next group bow was directed right at her, and wished his ears were sensitive enough to hear that deep-throated laughter.

Briuly ended the evening with a lovely lullaby as the ladies left the Pavilion and Touchstone packed away their glass. Mieka
had just finished nesting the second crate of baskets when he heard Cayden say, “Hope you enjoyed it, sir.”

Mieka glanced up to find one of the Stewards nearby—not the white-bearded one whose wife had knitted him, though equally old to judge by the wrinkles all over his paper-fine skin. He was leaning on two intricately carved canes, and so bent in his spine that he had to twist his neck awkwardly to look up at Cayden.

“Always do, my boy,” the man rumbled in a voice surprisingly powerful for one so frail. “Always do. Knew your grandsir, I did.”

“Cadriel Silversun?”

“Well, him, too—I meant your lady mother’s sire. Lord Isshak Highcollar.” As Cade gave a little start of surprise, the old man went on, “Last of his line. Fine man.”

Husband of Lady Kiritin Blackswan, she who had invented new and horrifying ways to use glass withies in war. She was the reason glasscrafting was forbidden to Wizards. Mieka gulped and bent over the crates, and tried to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“Good man,” the Steward was saying. “Got the children spared—though you’d know all about that.”

“Yes. I know all about that,” Cade said in the rigidly controlled tone that meant he wanted to smash his fists into something.

“Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “Splendid to see the talent in you, boy. Excellent show tonight. Well-played. The ladies were impressed—or would have been if they were ever officially here, what?” He wheezed a conspiratorial laugh and limped away.

Mieka bit both lips together over the questions that stung his tongue. This was the Elsewhens all over again, he thought resentfully. Cade had secrets that it seemed everybody knew except Mieka. There were two methods of discovery, as far as Mieka was concerned: Wait for him to tell, or bully him into telling. Though patience was not one of his prevailing virtues, he always felt guilty whenever he worried at Cade like a dog with a sheep shank in its teeth.

He’d forgot that he had his own telling to do. They hadn’t taken more than ten steps into the night-dark castle grounds before Jeska snatched the feather from behind Mieka’s ear and ground it under his boot heel.

“I don’t know where you got that from,” he said, his voice low and shaking, “but I don’t ever want to see one of those things near me again!”

“It’s naught but silly superstition!” Mieka protested. “Did anything go wrong tonight? Did it? No! And anyways, what makes you think I had anything to do with it? Laid across the baskets, it was—d’you think I’d do such a horrid thing deliberately?”

“ ‘Silly superstition’?” Cade quoted back at him.

“Yeh, well—it surprised me a bit,” he admitted. “Still and all—”

“Who put it there?” Rafe growled. “Who’d like to throw us off our stride?”

Given a mystery to solve, Cayden forgot about the significance of the feather’s meaning and occupied himself with sussing out the significance of the feather’s presence. Mieka hid a smile and kept walking.

“Oy, Mieka!” a voice called from behind them. Turning, he peered at the three servant boys carrying the crated glass baskets—no, two boys and a young man of about his own age. A young man he knew: tall and thin, though not so tall as Cade, with badly kagged ears and a hint of Goblin about his uneven teeth.

“Dak?” Mieka was abruptly embarrassed that this person he’d once performed with was now fetching and carrying for him, the Master Glisker.

Dak revealed all his teeth. “What’s been, mate?”

Cade said pleasantly, “Oh, we’ve been here and there. Introduce us, Mieka.”

“Erm—Daksho Webholder. We—uh—”

“We were players together,” Dak said, hefting the crate casually higher in his arms, bouncing it a little. The crate with the precious glass baskets Blye had made—

“And who are you with now?” Jeska asked, all politeness.

Dak ignored him, his brandy-brown eyes fixed on Mieka. “Had a show, didn’t we, one night in Gallybanks, and there we all were, everything wonderful about us—except for lack of a glisker.”

“Rough luck,” Rafe commented.

“Never told you, did he? Bloody little snarge!”

“Told us?” Jeska inquired, still cordial.

Mieka could stand it no longer. “The night in Gowerion! That very first night! I know it wasn’t right of me, Dak, but—”

Now the Goblin teeth were displayed in a sneer. “We were gonna be famous! We—”

“No, you weren’t.” This from Cade, looking down his considerable nose. “That was more than two years ago. If you had the goods, you’d’ve found another glisker by now and been invited to Trials.”

Ruthless, pitiless fact. It was one of the things Mieka most disliked about Cade, this cold and brutal instinct for cutting to the bone with no concern for the blood loss. He’d known the sharp side of Cayden’s tongue often enough himself; now, used against somebody who didn’t really deserve it—all Dak had ever wanted was what Touchstone now had.

And then he remembered those boys on the Continent, the ones who’d stolen a withie. They’d thought the glass twig would make them players. But it wasn’t in them—the ability, the magic—any more than it was in Dak. Not really. Cade was right. As usual. And that was probably the most annoying thing about him.

It was a confusing mixture of compassion and disdain Mieka felt as he said, “I’m sorry, Dak.” Sorry, because it was more than the magic and the withies and even the skill and the talent and the ambition. “I really am sor—”

“Shut it, Mieka.” Cade hefted the crate from Dak’s startled grasp. “Perfectly lovely of you to stop by. We’ll take it from here.”

“Fuckin’ Touchstone!” Dak shouted, and the two boys carrying the other crates and withies flinched. While Rafe and Jeska relieved them of their burdens, Dak went on, “Greatest in the Kingdom, swigging tea with the Princess! Oh, I was there, I saw you—I’m a
player
, but here I am toting trays from the castle kitchens! It shoulda been
me
there, it shoulda been
me
!”

“It would never have been you,” Cade told him.

The cruelty of it didn’t strike Mieka the way he thought it probably ought to have done. It was only the truth. Ruthless, pitiless fact. Cade’s instinct. Part of what made him brilliant. Just as Mieka’s instinct had compelled him to skive off the show in a tatty Gallantrybanks tavern and head for Gowerion, certain sure that he was good enough, that he was their missing piece. Ruthless. Pitiless. Monumentally arrogant.

At bottom, he and Cade were a lot alike.

He became aware that his partners had walked off, leaving him and Dak and the two frightened boys, all of them empty-handed. Mieka dug into his pockets and came up with a dozen or more coins, which he pressed into Dak’s palm. A terrible struggle showed in the man’s face: fling the money contemptuously onto the grass, or keep it because he needed it?

“Bastard,” Dak said, and kept it.

“I really am sorry,” Mieka mumbled, and made his escape.

They were waiting for him by the castle gate. Jeska gave him the velvet bag of spent withies and said, “Webholder. Not Spider Clan, I’m thinking.”

Rafe snorted. “Think I’d be caught dead related to a third-rate fritlag like that?”

“Nothing to do with your clan,” Cade soothed. “Webholder is one of those names like Jeska’s. Foreign soldier, stayed here, took a name people could understand—”