Thornlost (Book 3) (14 page)

Mieka wanted to ask a sudden inappropriate question: How had all these races got mixed up together in the first place? But he knew Cade would only look down his long nose and say something like,
“Why, how very prurient of you, Master Windthistle!”
And Rafe would give a derisive snort, and Jeska would snigger and say,
“If you have to ask, it’s a wonder you ever became a father!”
So he kept quiet. But he couldn’t help wondering, all the same.

“How could this magic know what I am?” Jeska paused. “And why did
you
never say anything?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.” Cade stood, kicking back his chair. “It doesn’t fucking
matter
!”

Mistress Luta glanced up from sorting herbs on a table, startled. Cade righted his chair and sat down again, managing a smile of apology in her direction.

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeated more quietly. “All the Wizardly Clans—Falcon and Spider and Elk and so forth, all the ways Elfenkind describe themselves with Water and Air and so on, whether a Troll family comes from the mountains or the flatlands or has tended the same bridge for generations—none of it matters. It isn’t a man’s abilities that count. It’s what he does with them, what he makes of himself and the world around him. It just doesn’t
matter
what someone’s born—but now I think it’s going to. And I don’t know why.”

Mieka pushed his glass away, for probably the first time in his life. “Great-great-great-grandmother, the Clinquant House Horror, says there’s sounds only purebred Elves can hear. She might be right. If she is, then that’s like this, innit? Some things only Goblins can sense, or Gnomes, or Fae—only it’s magic, not a sound or smell. Something that says to them,
This is what you are
. Does it talk back?”

“Magic heritage responding to the seeking magic? Interesting thought,” Cade mused. “Why would they do such a thing, though? What’s the point? It’s magic I’ve never heard of before.”

“Pity you’re not in contact with your Sagemaster Emmot anymore to ask him,” Rafe said. “According to you, he knew everything there was to know about magic.”

“Liked to pretend he did.” Cade shrugged. “I’ll take a look in some books when we get home. But right now I have to decide what to say when Tobalt asks me for an interview. And he will, y’know. Rafe was right, earlier on.”

“Well, you can’t tell him this!” Mieka exclaimed.

“And I can’t tell him what I really think, either.” He traced the rim of his glass with one finger. “The Crystal Sparks turn the traditional inside out, but they don’t make much that’s original. They’re for those who want to play at being rebels, for the unruly who don’t really want to defy the world, just sneer at it. The Shadowshapers, they innovate. Style, substance, performance—they’re artists who make the art understandable.”

“But it’s safe,” Mieka blurted. “I don’t mean the feelings, sometimes those aren’t comfortable at all. But you always know they’re in perfect control of what they do.”

Cade nodded. “With Black Lightning, it’s the chance that things
could
get out of control that brings people to see them. It’s the danger. The feeling that you’re on the edge. You heard what that man said—nobody goes to see them only once. You can go to them over and over again for that same thrill. Like dragon tears. They’re a group for addicts.”

“And us?” Jeska asked. “What about us?”

“We’re as good with the conventional things as anyone. We don’t do what the Sparks do, turning everything inside out. We come at the old plays from a different direction. New perspectives, so audiences see things a new way. As for the original plays—”

“You make them
want
to think, Quill,” Mieka interrupted. “It’s not just offering it up, like Vered does, throwing it out there for them to do as they like. He lets everybody know what
he
thinks, but he doesn’t much care if they understand it. If they
do, fine—doesn’t matter to him one way or the other. But you—you’re daring them to understand, to work it out for themselves.”

Rafe said, “We showed them the whole story of ‘Treasure,’ but putting in the words that condemned the Archduke’s father—that makes for a different sort of resonance. Both in emotions and in thoughts. It’s there every time we perform it.”

Cade gave a self-conscious little shrug. “It seemed right to do it that way.”

“It was brilliant and you know it,” Mieka told him.

“Whether it was or not, you’re right that it
is
different from the way Vered works. I want them to understand. To think about what they’ve experienced.”

“Changing the world?” Rafe asked softly.

“I was drunk when I said that. Tobalt never should’ve printed it.”

Jeska glanced over to the door as it opened and let in a burst of vehement conversation. “Talking of whom—and I mean not just Tobalt but also the Shadowshapers and the Sparks—”

As the new arrivals piled into the taproom, calling for drinks and food, Cade looked almost panicky. Mieka patted his arm. “No worrying. I’ll get Tobalt so drunk, he won’t be able to hold a pen nor remember a single word you say.”

A
lthough Tobalt Fluter hadn’t even brought a pen that evening, and didn’t get quite drunk enough to forget all he heard, whatever was said featured not at all in the long article he wrote for
The Nayword
. The pages (two and a half of them) of his report about Trials detailed each performance according to its eventual importance (the Shadowshapers, as First Flight on the Royal, got the most space, but Touchstone wasn’t far behind). There was a stark description of Black Lightning’s new piece, but no commentary. This didn’t surprise Cayden. That last night in Seekhaven, Tobalt had said quite frankly that he didn’t know what to make of the thing and would have to see it again before he could form an opinion. That this was a tacit invitation to make his own opinion known did not escape Cade, but all he did was smile and say he looked forward to reading the broadsheet once Tobalt had made up his mind and written a review of “The Lost Ones.”

Cade had an opinion, of course. He didn’t intend to share it with Tobalt. And though most of the talk that night was about Black Lightning, he didn’t share his thoughts with anyone else, either. Just Touchstone; just the people he completely trusted. Looked at sidewise, that meant that he did trust Mieka with the truth of his thoughts, in spite of what the Elf revealed to his wife about the Elsewhens. Mieka hadn’t meant to do that, and even if he had meant it, Cade would have forgiven him. Chances were that he’d forgive Mieka anything, and he considered himself mature enough at twenty-one to realize that this probably wasn’t good for either of them.

Reconsidering the Elsewhen where the old woman snarled about how drunk and angry Mieka had been when he’d betrayed Cade’s secret, Cade understood something else: that if Mieka felt himself to be included in Cade’s confidence, there would be no more similar episodes. Treat him like a child, and he behaved like a child. Trust him, and he was trustworthy.

Or so Cayden had to believe.

If he accepted that Mieka was Mieka, and trying to change him was doomed to failure, then perhaps he’d never become angry enough to batter that beautiful Elfen face to a bloody ruin. The Archduke could believe about the Elsewhens or not; that didn’t matter much to Cade. What did matter, what he feared, was the violence that could come of fury.

It wasn’t the actual coming to blows that frightened him. He’d slugged enough other people in his life—and been clobbered in turn for it—that he knew whatever scrapes and bruises or even broken bones that ensued would heal, given time and a good physicker. (Or, he thought with a reminiscent smile, Mistress Mirdley, who had patched him up when one of the local boys needed lessoning about keeping his slurs about Goblins to himself. Not that Cade had done the teaching; it was Blye who’d got in a good swift kick where it mattered most after the boy had blacked Cade’s eye. They’d been six years old.) No, it wasn’t physical damage he feared. It was what losing control would mean inside, in his heart and in his mind. It would mean that he’d given up. And that, he would never do.

But Mieka wasn’t his main worry on the drive back to Gallantrybanks. The subject occupying his mind was something
he’d overheard in a Fliting Hall corridor just after their performance of “Treasure” at Trials. He was fully aware of the hypocrisy of keeping this to himself while deciding he ought to share everything with Mieka and Jeska and Rafe. Still, he wanted to think it through before he spoke—something he would never as long as he lived expect Mieka to do. But that was simply the way Mieka was.

What Cade overheard had startled him at the time. Later, once he had the chance to ponder a bit, it made him furious.

“Do you s’pose that’s the true way of it?”

“Was that meant for a joke? How could he possibly know what really happened?”

“There was a lot of detail, and it felt true.”

“They’re players! It’s
meant
to feel true! And Cayden Silversun, he’s a writer, isn’t he? Makes up stories all day and half the night. All of them do. It’s what they’re paid for.”

“But—”

“But bollocks! It all came out of his head. He imagined the whole thing. It’s no more real than the so-called Rights of the Fae. Dreamshine, that’s all it is.”

Once he’d thought about it, and got beyond anger, he realized something that he finally shared with his partners the morning after they left Seekhaven.

“Nobody really believes us, you know. About the Treasure.”

Mieka and Rafe glanced up from their card game. Jeska came out of a half-doze in his hammock, mumbling, “What? Are we there?”

“There’s no proof,” Cade went on. “They think it’s naught but a story I made up.” He set aside the book he’d been pretending to read. “We didn’t identify the exact place with a name. We never called it Nackerty Close. We’ve never been there in person, so we couldn’t show them anything they could recognize through visual clues. We didn’t put in a damned thing that makes it believable, that convinces people that it’s a real place and those were real events and that it all really happened the way we showed them it did.”

Mieka was scowling. “Briuly and Alaen—”

“—can’t be bothered,” Rafe finished for him. “The one’s too busy being an Artist, and the other’s too busy being forlorn over Chirene.”

“So let’s go find it ourselves! That’d show everybody!”

Jeska said, “We’ve been through this before. It doesn’t belong to us. We can’t be the ones to find it.”

Cade shocked them all by saying, “We may have to.”

“Just to prove you’re right?” Rafe slapped his cards onto the table and leaned back in the low, soft chair. “You’d diddle two friends and their families out of whatever the King would pay to have the Rights in his own hands, just to bloat your reputation?”

He felt his face burn crimson. “I didn’t say we had to keep it.”

“Why not?” Mieka demanded. “If we’re the ones to find it, then why not?”

“Because it isn’t ours,” Jeska said again.

“Ooh, and isn’t it just the most upright honorable little subject of His Majesty!” Mieka sneered. “We’ll split your share, then, if you’ve such scruples!”

Cade ought to have known any attempt to talk about this would degenerate into a verbal brawl. He sat there listening to them squabble, looking only at Rafe, whose disapproval stung.

Jeska and Mieka shut up only when Yazz roared from the coachman’s bench. “By Gods, have done!”

Mieka unhooked his hammock, fastened it into place, and didn’t bother with the mattress. “Wake me when we’re home,” he growled, and turned his back on them.

Nothing was said for another hour or so, not until Yazz stopped to give the horses a breather. Cade descended the wagon
steps, stretched, and walked a few paces down the road. Rafe was right behind him.

“So you want to show everybody, like Mieka said.”

“I want them to know it’s the truth.”

“Why?”

“Because it is. Because the truth is important.”

“You already gave the Archduke one in the eye, quoting those words at the end of the play. What is it you’re really after?”

“Just what I said. That everybody knows it’s real.”

“What does that get you, besides a swelled head?”

He turned to confront his old friend. “If the truth doesn’t matter to you, fine. I’m not made that way.”

“Oh, and which part of you will you credit with this devotion to what’s real and true? Is it something in your Elfenblood—which, thanks to Black fucking Lightning, we all know now that I’ve none of? Or mayhap the Troll? The Fae? That must be it. Going to claim the Rights for yourself, are you? By reason of exalted heritage?”

“Damn it, Rafe, you know that’s not it!”

“Then tell me what it is.”

Jeska said behind them, “He wants everyone to know he’s right. It’s that simple, Rafe. He wants to find the carkenet and crown, with independent witnesses to confirm how and where he found them, and then he wants to hear it proclaimed the length and breadth of Albeyn that he was
right
.”

“And what does that gain him? Not the money.”