Thornlost (Book 3) (41 page)

“That,” Mistress Quickstride concluded, with a sidelong look for Vered, “is the superiority of a man of imagination and
intellect over the man of intellect and feeling.”

Mirko’s lip curled slightly, indication enough of what he thought of women who put forth opinions. But nobody seemed to have anything to say in reply, though for a few seconds Rauel looked as if he might. The sweetly boyish smile returned to his face and Cade had the impression that even if Vered had noticed its faltering, he wouldn’t much care.

The party broke up soon thereafter. Cade was safely alone in a hire-hack on his way back to Redpebble Square when he finally allowed the Elsewhen to claim him.

{Jeschenar walked lithely to the center of the stage, a slim white candle, hair like curls of golden flame. Rafcadion stood at his lectern to the left, just visible beside the lush tapestry curtain, tall and bearded, dressed all in black. Cayden took his position far to the right, clad in subtle shades of gray. And Mieka, scorning as always the glisker’s velvet bench, stood behind the arrayed glass baskets, also in white, his hands empty. There was no magic in the air, no shimmer of power. There were only the four men, and the audience was as silent as if every one of the thousand seats had been empty.

Jeska swept his gaze once, arrogantly, through the theater. Then he began to speak the words Cade had written on behalf of them all, as a promise and as a warning.

“We
will
get to you.

“We’ll make you feel. That’s what you’ve come here for, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To feel.

“You may ridicule yourself after, you may accuse us of manipulation, but you knew when you came here that you would feel.

“We’re that good.

“And you need us that much.

“We give you an excuse to weep. Within the safety of this
theater, you can fall passionately in love. You can hate without reservation, cower without shame—or want desperately to ease someone’s suffering. You can laugh at the ludicrous, rage at injustice, pity the afflicted, sneer at folly. You can want and need and desire, without fear. Later you may wince, and tell yourself you were duped, tricked into these emotions and their intensity. But to feel is what you came here for. You know it, we know it.

“You call us Vampires, feeding on other people’s feelings so that we may reproduce them onstage. Feeding on our own, so that we may use them, scheme with them. This is true enough. But you feed, too. You lap up the emotions available to you, craving more, devouring the magic that allows you to feel things you’re afraid to feel in real life. The dangerous things, the things that are so deep and strong and severe that to give in to them for even an instant would render you utterly helpless. You don’t know what to do with such tumult of emotion, do you? You shy away from it, out there in the world.

“But here, you are safe. Here, you can lick at sentimental tears and crunch on the bones of your enemies, sink your teeth into rage, taste the lust, swallow drunken drafts of joy. You can do these things without shame, without remorse, without responsibility. Without retribution.

“You are safe here. We will let you feel all the things that frighten you, elude you, compel you, seduce you. The things you cannot allow yourself to feel in their entirety, in their reality, in their mad intense awful purity.

“But do not pretend that you do not need this. That you do not need us. Do not delude yourself. And do not denigrate us for making you feel. It’s what you came here for. It’s what you want. What you need. We will accomplish it, you may trust us, and you will be safe.

“But do not say, later, that you were tricked. You were not. You know it, we know it. You want this.

“And we
will
provide.”}

W
hat Tobalt would do with his notes on all the talking they had done, Cade had no idea. He didn’t much care. He was too busy writing down that Elsewhen, tweaking it here and there, trying to guess from the clothes they wore and any changes in their faces exactly when this piece—which wasn’t really a play at all—would be presented. It would be within the next few years, for there was no gray in their hair or Rafe’s beard, and their faces and frames seemed young, no older than twenty-six or -seven (which seemed far away from the vantage point of not-quite-twenty-two, though much closer than the Elsewhen of that forty-fifth Namingday surprise party). He spent the morning after Tobalt’s dinner working on the script and part of the afternoon trying to puzzle out the when of it, before realizing that it simply didn’t matter. The words had been written and when the right time presented itself, he would use them.

This was the first time he’d ever Elsewhened a theater piece. “Doorways” had come from a dream he’d had—a real dream, the kind other people had while sleeping—so it didn’t count. As for “Treasure”—that hadn’t been a play when it appeared to him on thorn. It had been a combination of speculation and research, dream and fantasy, influenced by thorn and his Fae ancestress and his frustration. But this… this statement of purpose and
intent and promise and warning, this had appeared inside his head fully formed. It fascinated him to imagine that he might be able to do this again and again, or that, more accurately, it might
happen
to him again and again, with whole plays already written, presented in a private theater inside his own mind, and all he’d need do was remember them and write them down.

It was what he did anyway: collect all sorts of seemingly unrelated things, stir them together with his learning and his imagination, and see what resulted. Still, this was different. It had shown up whole. No randomly occurring bits and pieces to be scrawled out after a frantic search for paper and pen. No glaring in fury at a blank page and wanting to slam his fist into a wall when the words wouldn’t come. No writing down and crossing out, writing down and crossing out, over and over until he gave up and got drunk as an antidote for dejection. No finishing a sequence one night and then waking the next morning to find it pointless, senseless, graceless, dead on the page.

It was two afternoons following Tobalt’s dinner that it occurred to him, with the impact of a glass basket cracked over his head: What if he really could Elsewhen his work?

What if
all
of his work—even the maddening erratic stops and starts, the discarded pages—was in truth a series of Elsewhens? Wasn’t that what imagination was? The ability to visualize things that hadn’t happened, project them into a possible future—and to make the vision real?

Further—

“Cayden!”

Mistress Mirdley’s bellow from downstairs told him two things. First, it must be the footmen’s day off and Derien wasn’t yet home from school, or she would have sent one of them up to Cade’s room. Second, Lady Jaspiela was not in the house or no bellowing would have taken place at all. Sighing, he went out to the landing and bellowed back.

“What? I’m working!”

There was no response. He trudged down five flights and found a folded note waiting for him, rather pointedly, on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh, shit.” He’d had an appointment today with a leasing agent. He had his eye on a very nice three-room flat on the third floor of a building one street away from Stillwater. Even though it wasn’t strictly within that upper-class ambit, the flat was a bit pricey and wouldn’t be available until late summer, when the current occupant returned to Scatterseed to marry his bespoken and run the family firm. For most provincial young men with a business to inherit, a year in Gallantrybanks was considered necessary for establishing contacts, learning how the capital functioned, getting to know the various tradesmen with whom one would be working, and acquiring a little polish to one’s manners. And of course no one begrudged a little fun in the meantime, so long as he didn’t spend
all
the money his father had provided. The flat’s present dweller was the scion of a spice merchant. The place smelled delicious—a definite advantage in a flat with bedroom windows overlooking the local stables. Now, however, having missed his appointment with the agent, he’d probably lost the place. Muttering nonspecific imprecations, he started back up the stairs.

“Cayden!”

Oh, splendid. Mieka frolicked in from the kitchen, waving a broadsheet.

“What?” Cade snapped.

“Temper, temper,” the Elf chided. “You don’t even know what I’ve brought you.”

The Nayword
, of course. It wasn’t anything to do with the dinner; Tobalt had said he’d time that issue to coincide with Trials for maximum interest and sales.

“What?” he said again, more calmly this time.

“Pour me a brandy and find out.”

“A little early, isn’t it?”

“We’ll call it ‘tea.’ ”

They went into the parlor, where Cade got out the good brandy from its hiding place in the back of a cupboard. Mieka sulked at the sight of the two small—very small—bell-shaped snifters and the scant finger of liquor Cade poured into each.

“Talk. Or, more to the point, read.”

“First tell me about Tobalt’s dinner. Though I s’pose it couldn’t’ve been much fun. After all, I wasn’t there to keep things lively.”

“Not your kind of fun, I think.” And then, ashamed of himself, because Mieka had had insights into Cade’s work that had often astonished him, he smiled and shrugged. “No girls to flirt with.” Bexan was not the sort of woman one flirted with.

“What you mean is that you all sat there being intense and profound for hours on end, and I would’ve been bored out of me tiny little mind.” He shook out the broadsheet with an important rustle and clearing of his throat. “We begin. ‘The Shadowshapers are no strangers to controversy—’ ”

Cade groaned softly. “Couldn’t Tobalt think up anything more original?”

“You want to hear this or not?”

“I take it I have no choice?”

Mieka made a face at him to acknowledge the reference to his Elsewhens. “Funny man. Where was I? ‘—no strangers to controversy, but last night at the Kiral Kellari the contentious turned scandalous when it was discovered a few minutes before their show that there were women in the audience.’ ”

Cade clasped a hand to his chest. “The shame! The disgrace! The total hypocrisy!”

“ ‘Three unidentified females were hastily and somewhat noisily escorted from the premises. Dressed in men’s clothing, they
wore voluni—volmin’ ”—Mieka swore and tried again—“ ‘
vol-u-min-ous
cloaks and concealing hats to disguise themselves, but were found out when one of them sought in her reticule to pay for their drinks.’ ”

“And just how deliberate was
that
little farce?”

“Oh, very. It goes on—‘The Shadowshapers delayed their performance by some minutes while the women were removed, and immediately after the show left the establishment themselves, giving rise to unsubstantiated rumors that the women were in fact known to them personally.’ ”

“Well, Chirene wasn’t there, I’d take oath on that,” Cade mused. “Nor Deshananda, neither. They could be muffled to the eyebrows, but one look at them walking across a room and—any ideas who the ladies were?”

“Vered’s new friend, for one.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised. She sort of invaded the dinner the other night.”

“Did she?” Mieka laughed. “So that’s why you said ‘no girls to flirt with’! Vered would have a conniption fit. Anyways, let’s see—here it is. ‘Constables will be present outside the Kiral Kellari to discourage any further affronts to propriety.’ Can’t you just see Vered, once he hears the law will be guarding the place at their next show?”

“I’m surprised he didn’t use a withie to spell out
Fuck You
on their way out the door.”

“There’s more. Says in here that it’s being nosed about that Persons of Exalted Rank”—his voice gave the words their capitals—“are shocked and dismayed by the incident. And you know who
that
means.”

Cade thought for a moment. “Not the Royals. They’re always ‘sources close to the first rank.’ ”

“Really? Hmm. I didn’t know that. But it says ‘a certain gracious lady’—must be Her Grace the Archduchess, don’t you
think? Anyways, she was overheard to remark that ‘the very notion of women attending in a theater is shocking and openly flouting conventions to the furthest degree possible, also.’ ”

Cade winced. There was no mistaking the sentence structure—or lack of it. He could amost hear her voice. “I wonder who gave him the tip.”

“Does it matter?”

“Probably not. Just curious. Easy enough to find out, though. Where she was, who she was with—” He broke off, eyeing Mieka. “You’re plotting something.”

“Me?”

“No magic.”

“Why, Cayden, whatever are you talking about?”

“Clothes. Women’s clothes. No skirts, no blouses, no gowns, no dresses. Not with magic. And you can quit with The Eyes. I’m immune.”

“You’re no fun anymore.”

“I mean it, Mieka.”