Thornlost (Book 3) (49 page)

“A favor, if you would, darlin’,” Cade purred. “Bring us a fresh bottle and two glasses over to that corner right there, would you? Much beholden, and here’s something for your trouble.” He tucked a few coins into her bodice, gave her a wink, and clamped long fingers round Mieka’s arm.

“Ow!”

He was dragged to the indicated corner and loomed over.

“How. Did. You. Know. Because I know that you
did
know, I just don’t know how you were knowing it.”

“You want to untangle that for me?”

“Mieka! Stop stalling!”

“I didn’t know about Herself, if that’s what you mean. Gods, I thought I’d swallow me own teeth at the sight! Where d’you think she got the cheek to come out on her own to a play?”

“Probably from the person she came to the play with. What the unholy fuck was Megs doing here with her?”

“Now, that’s a tale.” The arrival of the girl, the bottle, and the glasses gave him a few moments’ reprieve. “To the Princess!” he said, and gulped down golden bubbles. “All right, then, here’s how it happened. She was the one what gave the Gift of the Gloves to Blye, because she’s Lady Megueris Mindrising and a lady-in-waiting, and she really was at Coldkettle for the wedding, only she was a guest and not a servant, and then after the wedding she went to Lilyleaf on holiday because she knows Croodle from
a long time ago, and that night at the Keymarker she was with the son and daughter of her father’s friends who were at a Court banquet that night, which is a lot of work so she didn’t really lie.”

Cade’s eyes were as wide and round as the rim of his glass. He seemed incapable of saying anything. Mieka knew from experience that this wouldn’t last. After draining the glass down his throat and pouring more wine for them both, Cade finally said, “She’s Lord Mindrising’s daughter?”

“Yeh. But she still wants to be a Steward.”

The second glass of wine followed the first. “Please,” Cade muttered, “
please
tell me that this will all make sense when I’m sober.”

“This will all make sense when you’re sober,” Mieka repeated obligingly.

Again Cade poured wine. “Do you promise?”

“More or less. The sense, not the promise. I kept me word about the no magic with the clothes, didn’t I?” He paused to savor the wine. “How’s Dery these days?”

Cade recognized the real question. “She’s never said anything directly—she hasn’t spoken to me at all, in fact—but I’m still allowed to stay at Redpebble. So I guess Crisiant was right and she really is trying to keep an eye on me for the Archduchess, which of course means the Archduke.”

“Of course. Still not clear on what he wants, though.” He sipped bubbles and felt them explode delicately on his tongue. A thought struck him and he laughed. “Do you know how much money we’re about to make because of him? And him all unknowing!” Then, as another thought struck, and quite a bit harder: “You didn’t—I mean, there hasn’t been any change, has there? The baby will be born tonight?”

“Tomorrow morning we collect.”

They toasted each other gleefully.

“When His Grace approached the Shadowshapers,” Mieka
said, “Chat thought it was because he wanted to buy his own theater group like they do sometimes on the Continent. For the brag of it. But I don’t think that’s his reason.”

“Nor more do I. Did you see where Black Lightning has returned from their little outing to Vathis?”

“Yeh. I read
The Nayword
yesterday mornin’. Rousing success and suchlike rubbish. Tobalt will have something
much
more interesting to write about in the next issue.”

“He did look a fright, didn’t he?” Then he frowned and said, “She’s
really
Lord Mindrising’s daughter?”

* * *

H
e was still muttering much the same thing a fortnight later at Trials.

“For fuck’s sake, Quill, give it a rest!” Mieka exclaimed on their second night in Seekhaven. “Yes, she’s Lord Mindrising’s daughter! Yes, she’s unspeakably rich! Yes, she’s a lady-in-waiting to the Princess! Yes, she wants to be a Steward! And yes, she stayed in Gallybanks with the Princess because the Prince is too young to travel.” He’d learned this last only that afternoon, when the invitation to perform at the Pavilion came from Lady Torren, who complained comically that the recent uproar caused by the Shadowshapers and Touchstone had taken all the fun out of pretending to sneak about at midnight.

Cade seemed embarrassed. “I only wanted—I mean, I haven’t seen her to talk to since that night, and didn’t even have the chance to be introduced then, and—and I’ve never seen her all frustled up in Court clothes, so I guess I can’t really believe it, y’know?”

They started downstairs, where dinner was waiting for them out in the back garden. The inn had renamed itself this year—not that Mieka remembered what its previous name had been—partly for their favorite group and partly for the group who had
got round the nominally random voucher system and demanded to stay there from now on. Touchstone and the Shadowshapers had taken over the whole of the Shadowstone Inn for Trials. Mistress Luta had made gruff apology that her boys hadn’t got first place in the naming, but Jeska had assured her that
Touchshapers
made no sense,
Stoneshapers
sounded like a school for sculptors,
Stoneshadow
was a bit creepy, as if something might fall over on you, and
Touchshadow
would simply look weird on a sign. But Shadowstone, he soothed, was something to sit beside on a hot sunny day with a cold beer; a nice, sheltering name.

Vered had brought Bexan Quickstride along on the trip. His partners were studiously neutral about this development. Less convivial than usual, he’d so far kept to his bedchamber. Mieka thought it was for the usual reasons when one’s woman was readily available, especially after the journey from Gallantrybanks in their wagon—which must have been an ordeal for all concerned. Cade considered it a result of nerves over the new play.

The second night in Seekhaven, right after the obligatory appearance at High Chapel, Vered displayed no discernible nervousness.

“Bit of a bore, innit?” he was saying when Mieka and Cade walked into the taproom. “Trials.”

“For you, mayhap,” Jeska observed wryly. “You know where you’ll end up. Us, we’ve got the Sparks and Black fucking Lightning to worry about.”

“Sparks, possibly,” Rauel told him. “Black Lightning—oy, here you are, Mieka, Cade. Mistress Luta has a rack of lamb going for us tonight. Sit down and snap your napkins so we can eat.”

Mieka settled at the table next to Chat and whispered, “Where’s Bexan, then?”

“Dining alone upstairs.”

The careful lack of inflection in his voice confirmed Mieka’s opinion: the Shadowshapers were not markedly fond of Vered’s
new love, but didn’t like to say so where he might be listening. It must have been a fun trip to Seekhaven, he didn’t think.

At least Vered and Rauel weren’t at each other’s throats anymore. Mieka took this to mean that the new play was done and dusted, and everyone was happy. Well, as happy as Vered ever was, and as happy as Rauel could be when the play wasn’t strictly his own. Two tregetour-masquers in one group; madness, simply madness.

“What’s Black Lightning got this year?” Rafe wanted to know.

Rauel smirked. “A fettler still seasick from the trip to Vathis, and a masquer who caught some sort of pox.”

“Not at their best,” Vered confirmed.

Mieka waved this away. “As if we couldn’t beat them on the best day they ever had!”

“Modest,” Sakary commented.

“It’s what we all love about him,” Rafe confided.

“Among the thousands of other things,” Mieka shot back. “I’d made note that Black Lightning didn’t do much gigging before Trials.”

“Do much what?” Rauel asked.

“
G-i-g-g
—‘Get in, get gone,’ ” Jeska translated. “Thinks he’s clever, he does.”

Dinner arrived. Talk meandered away from Black Lightning to speculation about the differences between theater on the Continent and theater with magic.

“Wish we’d gone to see one of their plays while we were over there,” Mieka said. “It’s one thing to know we’re better than anything they’ve got, but it’d be nice to know what they’ve got that we’re so much better than.”

Cade eyed him askance. “Y’know, I worry when you say things like that and I understand them. I think I’ve a few scripts someplace, or at least the old versions that came over here and got changed up when somebody had the bright idea
of using magic for the masks and suchlike.”

“What was his name?” Mieka asked. When Cade blinked at him, he grinned. “There’ll be a person and a name behind the changes, count on it.”

“Well, yeh. Naught but a basic education, which in those days wasn’t much. He either went traveling on the Continent or read every book he could get his hands on, nobody’s really sure. But he was the first to use magic onstage. His name was Shuddershaft. No, seriously!” He smiled as they hooted at the name. “What’s worse, he came from a village called Snitterfield. Is it any wonder that in all the official histories of theater they give Lord Bullbeck all the credit?”

Mistress Luta came in with the sweet—gorgeous mounds of brandy-soaked cake layered with fresh berries, heavy cream, and four sorts of drizzles, including burned-sugar and mocah. They were in the midst of ecstatic devouring when she returned with a sealed and beribboned parchment on a silver plate.

“That’ll be for us, then,” Vered said complacently.

And it was: the coveted invitation to perform on the last night of Trials for the lords and gentlemen of the Court at Fliting Hall. Mieka knew it had to go to the Shadowshapers and not Touchstone. There were too many rumors about what Vered had been working on, and Romuald Needler had been promoting the mysterious piece with placards all over Gallantrybanks for more than a month. He also had his suspicions that the more conservative Stewards were taking the opportunity to spank Touchstone’s collective bottoms for the stunt Mieka had pulled at the Downstreet. It couldn’t actually be laid to the Shadowshapers’ account, and somebody had to be reprimanded somehow. Still, at least the summons hadn’t gone to Black fucking Lightning.

Cade, of course, had already had all these thoughts and more. It was a right pain, Mieka told himself glumly, being friends with someone whose brain not only kept nattering to itself pretty
much constantly but never even paused for breath.

“It wouldn’t’ve been us anyway,” Cade said as they settled into bed for the night. “Though it ought to’ve been the Sparks this year. We had the invitation three years ago, and then the Shadowshapers, last year Black Lightning—” He gestured and the little blue Wizardfire winked out from the candle. “And they’re not really punishing us because of what happened at the Downstreet, if that’s what you’re thinking. If it was, then it wouldn’t’ve been the Shadowshapers on the last night, either. Needler’s good at bigging up his group, but Kearney has more connections.”

“Then why—?”

“Because somebody’s caught wind of Vered’s disgust with Trials and they want to keep him happy. Or at least performing in the regular way.”

“What’s he thinking of? I mean, I know he hates having to come here and play one of the poxy old Thirteen just to get on the Royal when everybody knows it’s just going through the motions.”

“What I think he’s moving towards is playing whatever the Shadowshapers feel like playing at Trials. And after that…”

Mieka waited.

“He’s hinted once or twice that they won’t be coming to Trials at all.”

“But—but how would they get onto the Royal?”

“That’s the whole idea.”

“
What
idea?”

“No Trials, no Royal Circuit. So then what? Go out on their own, of course. They have the stature, the following. They have their own wagon. They’ve played every town and city in Albeyn for years, and for most of the nobility at their country houses and in Gallybanks as well.”

Mieka thought this over. “Sounds like Vered,” he admitted. “A lot of work for Rommy Needler, though. Not just the winter
giggings, but all summer to organize as well. And what if they turn up at the same place and at the same time we do when we’re First Flight?”

“We finally go into head-to-head competition with them for money instead of a place on the Royal. And we probably lose.”

“No, we don’t! Damn it, Quill, we’re
Touchstone
!”

“Yeh, and they’re the Shadowshapers. But they’re good enough friends of ours that it won’t come to that. I hope.” There was a rustling of covers from the other bed, and after a moment Cade said, “You haven’t asked why I didn’t have an Elsewhen about what you did at the Downstreet.”

Mieka shrugged in the darkness. “No decisions for you to make, were there?”

“And I have no influence on
your
decisions at all, Gods help me.” But there was a smile in his voice as he said it. “Dream sweet, Mieka.”

L
eaving their inn just in time to hurry over to the castle for the Shadowshapers’ last-night performance, Touchstone arrived to find they had been assigned excellent seats—so good, in fact, that they earned nasty glances. Cade wasn’t as amazed as his partners were to find Thierin Knottinger installed a few rows back and to the side. If Cade was right about the direction this play would be taking, Vered would want Black Lightning’s tregetour right where Chat could aim the withies directly at him.