Thornlost (Book 3) (33 page)

N
othing in the past three days had gone right for Mieka.

Well, one or two things had been tolerable, but that wasn’t the point.

First, those hulking great bullies, his big brothers, had shown up at Hilldrop Crescent at some vulgar hour of the morning to drag him back to Gallantrybanks. Neither Jedris nor Jezael had shown any sympathy when he yelled out the window at them for interrupting the sleep he needed if he was to perform well at that night’s show. They stood in the courtyard and yelled back that the show wasn’t until the
next
night, and in view of his inability to figure out the days of the week, it was lucky he had big brothers to remember for him. Mieka yelled back, rather incoherently. This woke the baby, who started to cry, which got everybody out of bed.

Then Jed mentioned that he was taking Blye to the races, and that set off wheedling and then tearful appeal from his wife to join the outing. The frantic packing that went on after this didn’t bear thinking about.

Neither did the journey to town, with three of them plus the baby crammed into a hire-hack (Jez rode up top with the driver, and how Mieka envied him). The only good thing had been
leaving his mother-in-law behind, waving to them from the gate. Jindra had been lulled to peaceful sleep by the vehicle’s motion, so that was a good thing, too. But there’d been a bottleneck on the road into Gallantrybanks, caused by dozens of other carriages and carts heading into town, adding at least three hours to the journey. The street traffic had been horrendous. By the time they reached Wistly Hall, they owed the hack driver a small fortune and their dinner was cold.

Mieka sought relief and a better mood in a discreet thornful while his wife began hasty construction of a hat—of all the idiotic things to occupy herself with—and his mother and sisters cooed over the baby. His father was closeted in his workshop, polishing wood and plunking strings. On the main stairway, Mieka saw several people, presumably relations, he didn’t recognize and who didn’t recognize him as the famous son of the house. He felt like a stranger in the home he’d grown up in.

The next day he rose early—for him—and escaped to the shops, where life improved with the discovery of the cloth-of-gold cap. Then he betook himself off to the Keymarker and what he anticipated would be a quick rehearsal before drinks, dinner, more drinks, and yet another brilliant Touchstone performance. Only that would-be fettler girl had shown up, and he’d been made a fool of. They all had, truth be told, but Mieka felt it more than the others. He was angry with himself for not realizing what Megs was doing, and angrier still for being angry with her, and angriest of all at how forced the laughter had felt when he finally managed to laugh. Jokes weren’t supposed to be
on
him; they were supposed to be
by
him.

His wife had been vexed when he wouldn’t wear the hat she’d made for him—an unadventurous reworking of one of his father’s old caps with a fresh ribbon-band and some feathers. And then, despite Lady Jaspiela’s assurances, his own golden cap hadn’t been much remarked on at all. As for the things that
did
catch people’s
attention—he wouldn’t have worn any of those hats at moonless midnight into an unlighted coal mine, but that wasn’t the issue. And
then
his mother had caught him pouring a whiskey to get him through the first part of the day, and snatched it away from him with a stern warning to be on his best behavior—and no thorn, either, Mieka Windthistle, are you understanding me?

Not that anybody paid much heed to him at all, not even Cade—who prevented him from having any real fun with dire looks from those gray falcon eyes of his. And talking of eyes, every man who passed by stared at his wife, which was gratifying for about ten minutes and then became an irritation, then an exasperation, and finally a genuine infuriation. They had no right to look at her like that, no matter how beautiful she was, not with undisguised lust in their eyes and practically licking their lips. When she gathered up the pluck to speak to the Princess without having first been spoken to, he was stunned; his shy, gentle little darling! And in defense of Blye, too, which ought to be his and Cade’s and especially Jed’s job.

His temper had nearly exploded at the Archduke’s malicious little gibe. That Lady Jaspiela had got her retort in first—even before Cade—was startlement enough. That she had come to her own defense and nobody else’s with that claim about having met the Archduchess shouldn’t have wounded him, but it had; he thought she liked him.

Winning a nice sum at the races had improved his outlook. But on the walk to Lord Fairwalk’s carriage, his wife had gone on complaining that the Princess had paid more attention to Blye than to her. He had soothed and complimented and wished he were on the Keymarker’s stage, where he could forget everything except the joy of doing the work he’d been born to do. Then he remembered that their next show was tomorrow night, and even then there’d be Megs the Fettling Barmaid to worry about, and whether she would play her tricks on him again.

Not
an enjoyable three days.

At Wistly Hall he made straight for a liquor bottle before giving in to the urgings of his parents and siblings to be told all about the races. His wife told them breathlessly about the Princess. Neither of them mentioned the Archduke. After a time, his mother suggested that they both must be tired, and ought to have their supper on a tray upstairs. Mieka was grateful for the escape. In his old bedchamber, redecorated with new curtains and counterpane that his wife and her mother had made, he sought refuge in his thorn-roll.

She came in a little while later with a dinner tray. The whiskey bottle was half-empty and he wasn’t much interested in food by then. Besides, a fortnight at Hilldrop had made his clothes too snug again. He’d felt a bit sluggish last night in performance. It wouldn’t hurt to skip a meal or three. He watched through slitted, drowsy eyes as she fed Jindra, put her into the cradle that had snuggled three generations of Windthistles—and that was quite a lot of Windthistles—and sat down to have her own dinner.

“Good time today?” he heard himself ask.

“Lovely! Meeting the Princess—” She put down her fork and gave him such a look of loving delight that all his moodiness vanished. “Oh, Mieka, it was wonderful! And everyone was so kind—well, almost everyone—and so many people nodded and smiled—”

Especially, he thought with a cynicism he knew was borrowed from Cayden, after they’d been seen in the Royal Ring. “Glad you had fun.”

He sprawled on the bed, a pillow behind his neck, taking an idle swallow of whiskey now and then as he watched her undress and put away her things. She moved so gracefully, so delicately. He knew it must be an effect of the thorn, but it seemed to him quite natural that soft swirls of white, like smoke, like feathers, like fog, trailed behind her every gesture. It would be nice to be
wrapped up in that pale iridescence, like being inside a pearl. She sat beside him and upended her reticule onto the bed, sorting through coins and little pots and vials of makeup and scent, a handkerchief, a flat green wallet of sewing things, the ticket for the races to be kept as a remembrance, a folded business card, a few wrapped sweets. He was about to ask how women could cram so much into such tiny bags when his eye lit on the business card and he reached out for it and opened it and read through bleary eyes
The Finchery
.

“Wh–what’s this, then?”

“That? Oh, just something some man gave me today at the races. I took it just to be rid of him. Lady Jaspiela was talking, and me and Blye—I mean, Blye and I—that sounds so silly, doesn’t it? We were trying to listen to her but a man came up to where we were sitting and he was bothering me, he kept trying to give me his card. So I took it and he finally went away. Why? Who was he? Do you know him?”

He could always tell when Cade was lying. Something about the eyes. He wasn’t sure what. But he always knew. He knew now. Nothing to do with her eyes; she wasn’t looking at him. With her, it was her voice. The light quick eager rush of words. Too many words.

Whatever she was telling him, it was a lie.

He would never be certain of exactly what happened then. The next thing he knew for sure was that he was shouting and his wife was weeping and the baby was screaming and he was standing in the middle of the room, accusing her of being a whore or wanting to become one.

“Mieka! Stop it!”

He’d heard his father raise his voice mayhap four times in his life. Hadden Windthistle was bellowing now. He turned to the doorway, where his father stood, and realized there was a glass in his hand and he was about to throw it, just as it seemed he’d
thrown plates and teacups and a half-empty bottle of wine.

“Mieka!”

It wasn’t that he had any memory of throwing these things. It was that there were smears of food on his fingers, and broken crockery on the floor, and a dark stain of wine on the blue silk counterpane where she huddled and wept.

Someone in skirts pushed by him and picked up the baby. Jinsie, long pale hair streaming down her back and tangling in the baby’s waving fists. “There, lovey, it’s all right now, I promise it’s all right—”

“No!” his wife sobbed. “Give me my baby! Give her to me!”

“Not just now, my dear,” Hadden said softly, gently. “You’re too upset. And you’re bleeding.”

It was true. There was a smudge of blood at her mouth.

He had done that. He had slapped her. He could feel the sting of it now on his fingers and palm. And he had said things—horrible things.

But—
The Finchery
—

Almost like one of Cade’s Elsewhens, or what he imagined an Elsewhen might be, he could see the two of them standing in the night-dark street outside the Kiral Kellari, and the gray coat Cade’s father had given him, and the card inside a pocket that Cade had thrown to the street, and reading the card with the girls’ names on the back and little stars drawn beside the names. And Cade saying viciously,
“You can compare notes on what makes a ‘refined’ fuck.”
The Finchery was a whorehouse, frequented by Prince Ashgar himself.

He heard the muted patter of glass onto the carpet and half an instant later felt his hand sting anew. Not with the bloodied punctures and gashes of having broken it in his fist; no, this was a burning that left no blood and no visible wound, for he had done to the wineglass what he did almost every night to a withie. He had shattered it with magic.

Jinsie hurried from the room, carrying her wailing namesake, and cursed him as she went past. Hadden clenched his fingers around Mieka’s shoulder.

“Mieka. Come with me.”

He stared at his father, befuddled, thorn and liquor roiling in his brain, and remembered suddenly a time long ago when he’d been fighting with Jinsie—children, they’d been, ten or twelve years old—and his father had told him that any man who hits a woman was no man at all.

“Y–you don’t understand,” he mumbled. “The card. She—” Fury welled up in him again, a flood tide of it, acid burning his blood. “She took the card! She
took
it!” And he wrenched away from his father and towards the bed, where his wife screamed and flinched. “Bitch! Whore! You took that card!”

“That’s enough, little brother,” said a new voice behind him—Jezael, wrapping both arms around Mieka as he’d done to tease him all their lives. Mieka struggled, kicking and shouting, as Jez simply picked him up with his arms pinned to his sides and carried him out of the room. All at once he couldn’t breathe. Gasping, light-headed, vision darkening around the edges, he tried to keep fighting but felt his limbs lose their strength.

He woke on a hallway floor.

“No, don’t try to sit up just yet,” said his father. “Drink this.”

Anticipating alcohol, he swigged water and choked. He glared up at his father, feeling betrayed. He was helped into a chair. Jez had vanished, and so had Jinsie with the baby, but Mieka heard his mother’s murmuring, soothing voice down the hall. Everything was being taken care of, just like always; everything would be all right.

Not by bloody half, it wouldn’t.

“You said something about a card.”

His father always could read him like the headline of a broadsheet.

“Is this what you meant?”

“The Finchery,” he blurted. “It was—”

No, it wasn’t.

Finicking

Elegant Apparel for Ladies of Style

657 Kirtlers Lane

“I’ll admit,” his father said quietly, crouching beside the chair, “it does look rather like ‘Finchery’ if one takes but a passing glance.”

He held the card, examined it. Smooth and white, printed in deep blue ink.
Finicking
.

“From what she tells your mother, a man admired her gown and was hoping she would visit his shop. She took the card just to—”

“—to be rid of him,” Mieka whispered. “She told me. I didn’t listen.” He frowned at his father. “But—it
looks
like ‘Finchery,’ don’t it? And everybody knows what that place is.”

“Do you think that justifies what just happened?”

“I’m sorry! But I saw the card and I just—I couldn’t—I was so
angry
—” He gulped. “Fa, I’m sorry.”