Thornlost (Book 3) (28 page)

Cade had run out of patience about halfway through this story, but was hiding it as best he could. This was Vered Goldbraider of the Shadowshapers; one didn’t interrupt Vered Goldbraider in the middle of a story, no matter how little that story had to do with anything relevant to the topic at hand.

But even in the dark and off a stage, Vered could sense the mood of his audience. “Now, you’re asking yourself, ‘Why the fuck is he telling me this boring old fable?’ The point, mate, is that there are people out there who can mess with your magic whether you will or no. Most of ’em refrain. They’re not professionals, and they
know it, and when they come to a tavern or theater, they’ve come for the show just like anybody else. This particular yobbo, he did it apurpose. Who knows where he got the magic from, or what he did with it—probably nothing, not in everyday life, though in his younger day he might’ve been an amateur player of some sort. There’s hundreds like him. But it’s like when you sing along under your breath whilst a minstrel’s playing—there’s people as don’t realize they’re doing it until somebody gives ’em an elbow and says ‘Shut it!’ So it’s possible that somebody in your audience was like that, using fettling magic without the full knowing of it.”

“No,” Cade said firmly. “This was too definite. Too deliberate.”

“All right, then. That’s why I told that story. Clear in your own mind now, yeh? There’s more to the tale, though. Whilst I was staring like a fool, I got a taste of the magic he was using. Bitter, it was, and sharp like an unripe plum.”

“Magic has a taste to you?” Cade asked, bemused. He’d recognized Mieka’s magic on their little foray to the
Lilyleaves
offices, but he’d thought it was because he was so used to working with the Elf.

“Sakary will tell you that we couldn’t work that well with Mieka because nobody can control him—nobody except Rafe, evidently. But you ask a little deeper, and he’ll admit that the taste of it wasn’t right for us. Rauel, he describes it in sounds, how things are in tune or not in tune. Can’t understand that, meself, because I’m like Sakary that way, I s’pose. I
taste
other people’s magic.”

All Cade could say was, “How?”

“What got taught in this swagger-and-strut Academy of yours, eh?” He nudged Cade with a shoulder. “How you do it—you just
know
. It might be that we all perceive it different, but the fact of it is that with some practice, you can identify the person using the magic.” He paused, taking Cade by the arm and turning him so he could peer into his face. “You didn’t know? Nobody ever told you this?”

Cade shook his head. Then, in a rush: “That first night Mieka played with us—Rafe said that he just
fit
.”

“Maybe he understands it in shapes. There’s them as knows it by the feel—rough, smooth, silk, wool carpet—and I know a girl who describes it as temperatures. She and me, we do conjure up some heat,” he added with a self-satisfied sigh.

Uninterested in tales of conquest, Cade said, “What’s mine like?”

“Not a clue.”

“But you’ve been to our shows!”

“Have I? Hmm. Don’t really recall.”

Outrage competed with sudden panic. The Shadowshapers had never seen Touchstone onstage? It was a warning about the abrasion of his nerves that it took him a moment to hear the wicked grin in the man’s voice. And, too, the stupidity of thinking that the Shadowshapers hadn’t seen them perform many, many times: Touchstone was, after all, the Shadowshapers’ only real rival, and the Shadowshapers knew it. Grateful for the darkness that he fervently hoped had hidden his reaction, Cade managed a casual, “Well, then, you must stay another day and watch us tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll learn something.”

“Winding you up is a lot of fun—no wonder Mieka enjoys it so much!” Then his voice changed, and he said seriously, “Understand, Cade, it’s your magic inside withies used by Mieka and adjusted by Rafe. I don’t know the taste of your magic, because it’s never just your magic, if you follow. I’d recognize Mieka’s. I worked with him once. See?”

“Yeh. Were you at Black Lightning’s Seekhaven show? Did you sense what they were doing?”

“No, and no. Heard about the play, but—”

“They’ve got some way to direct specific magic at people. Whether you’re a Wizard or Elf or Goblin or whatever—” He explained how, at the climax of the piece, everyone in the
audience who had a glimmering of anything but Wizard or Elf had felt dirty and ashamed.

“Gods damn,” Vered breathed when he’d finished. Then, seeming to shake himself, he continued briskly, “You know what comes next, don’t you?”

“Next?” Cade felt stupid. Vered was one of the few people who could do that to him. Their minds worked differently, even though they were both tregetours; Cade often had the sensation that Vered was at least one step ahead of him, sometimes half a dozen. He’d never liked it much.

“Pinpointing what someone is, through magic—next comes magic directed right at those aspects of each man.”

Belatedly, Cade caught him up. “If somebody’s part Goblin, magic specific to Goblins can—do what?”

“Whatever. Give him a thirst for more beer, drive him gibbering into the night, make him piss himself in public. And it would be
only
those with a particular sort of background, y’see. Magic directed at specific—”

Cade interrupted. “Can you tell
what
someone is by the taste of their magic?”

“Not generally. Sometimes.”

“Teach me how.”

Vered laughed, startlingly loud in the darkness. “Are you always this gracious? D’you show your partners this level of refined manners? And you a sprig of the nobility!”

“Please,” he added, face burning with mortification.

“Teach you how to do it, add something new to your stash of tricks and skills—and you our biggest rival.” He snorted.

Cade ought to have preened himself over this open admission. He couldn’t be bothered right now. “I have to know. I have to find out who’s doing this to us.” Calming himself, he glanced sidelong at the white-headed shadow that was Vered. “Teach me how, or no books.”

“You already agreed—”

“And you said you’d owe me. Well, this is how you pay me back.”

“What’ll you do if you find the cullion and put a name to him?”

“Ask who he’s working for.”

“And then beat the shit out of him. All right, when we’re back in Gallybanks, I’ll have a go at showing you how to identify somebody else’s magic. But you may sense it different-wise than me, y’know.”

“Doesn’t matter. I just need to know how to do it.”

“Some people can’t. Chat, f’r instance. You might not be able to, either.”

“If not me, then Rafe or Jeska or Mieka.” But he was sure he could do it. He’d learned how to do so much—and abruptly he wondered why Sagemaster Emmot had never taught him how to do this. How to recognize an individual by his magic.

And then he wondered what else Emmot had never taught him.

He’d learned so much at the Sagemaster’s Academy. How to work spells appropriate to his gifts as Wizard and Elf. How to survive and organize the Elsewhens. How to structure a play, words and magic both, even going so far as to hire a retired tregetour for a few months to teach him the formalities and the techniques. How to ride a horse and flourish a cloak and prime a withie and the basics of glisking and which fork to use with the fish. But not this.

“I’ll learn,” he said. “I
will
learn.”

O
nly he
didn’t
learn.

To him, a specific individual’s magic had no distinguishing taste, color, shape, smell, temperature, texture, noise, or other characteristic of any kind. It simply
was
. He knew Mieka’s magic, and Rafe’s, and probably Jeska’s (though he’d never actually thought about it and Jeska didn’t use his own magic all that often). After an aggravating morning in his company, he knew Vered Goldbraider’s. But he couldn’t have said exactly how he knew, except for the fact that he did know. This was an offense to a mind that had been taught to analyze and categorize.

Mieka had said during the first week or so of their acquaintance that he and Cade saw magic in the same colors, and that would make organizing the withies easy. Evidently, Cade told himself in frustration, he saw magic itself in colors but couldn’t apply the theory to an individual’s magic.

“Instinct, mate,” was Vered’s conclusion. “Beholden for the books.”

Would he recognize the source of the hindering magic if it happened again? He had no means of knowing. The muffling barrier had not made an appearance since Lilyleaf. Which was just as well, because the rest of the Royal Circuit had been a
soggy, rain-soaked wretchedness, except for the second night at the University in Stiddolfe when a cluster of admiring students took him out for a drink following the show. After the first few beers, it seemed that he had expounded on a variety of topics in a manner suited to a hundred-year-old retired tregetour lecturing aspiring stagecrafters and playwrights. The resulting article in the next day’s University broadsheet ran to four solid pages, and had Mieka in whoops of laughter.

Cade admitted, privately and ruefully, that it was good to have something to laugh about again, even if it was himself for being pompous. After Lilyleaf, and the subsequent tensions of every performance for the rest of the circuit, grins were few and far between.

For one thing, it rained. Nothing torrential, just slow, steady, monotonous, incessant rain that revealed the wagon roof to be not quite watertight. The
drip-drip-drop-oh-Gods-damn-it!
was maddening. Every so often Yazz rerigged some sort of covering that kept out most of the water, wrapped himself in a hooded cloak that could have served as a mainsail on the average cargo ship, hunkered down, and drove.

For another thing, Mieka became nauseatingly sentimental when they got to Frimham. If he had roamed the byways of the Castle Biding Summer Fair to revisit the exact spot where he first clapped eyes on his wife, Cade knew nothing of it. But in this town of his courtship, he was forever wandering off to some spot that held special memories, returning just in time for their shows with a sighing slump of an attitude that really was most annoying. Rafe finally snarled at him about it. Mieka’s reply was another sigh, and then a momentary kindling of those eyes as he replied, “You just wait. We still owe you about the towels.”

But nobody had the heart or the energy to do anything about that. Cade agreed, their fettler was definitely due a little something in retaliation for the bathhouse stunt. He had relied
on Mieka to dream up a scathingly brilliant revenge, but Mieka’s dreams were concentrated on past delights and future pleasures, and he couldn’t wait to get back to Hilldrop Crescent—where, Cade was certain, he would exile his mother-in-law and the baby to Wistly for a week while he renewed intimate acquaintance with his wife.

Cade proved to be correct, except in judging the time span. After the Royal finally came to an end, it was almost a fortnight before Mieka showed up again in Gallantrybanks, sleek and complacent. He returned only because Touchstone was booked at the Keymarker for five nights, and his brothers Jed and Jez had gone out to Hilldrop to remind him of this and drag him back by the ears if necessary.

As usual after a circuit, Cade slept for a few days, couldn’t find anything to do with himself for a few more, and finally got back into his city routine of writing. He knew he ought to be out during the day, trying to find a new place to live, but he just couldn’t. Derien, who had started at his grand new school, needed him too much.

Things weren’t as bad at the King’s College as the boy had feared. He had even made some tentative friends. Two of these turned out to be infinitely more interested in Derien’s brother, the famous Master Tregetour, than in Derien. It was their misfortune to show up at Redpebble Square on one of Cade’s go-away-and-leave-me-the-fuck-alone days. Dery and Mistress Mirdley were at the glassworks and Lady Jaspiela was paying afternoon calls, so the footman climbed upstairs to ask Cade what he was to do with Their Young Lordships. Cade clattered down the wrought-iron stairs from the fifth floor, curious in spite of his foul mood about what sort of friends his brother was making. He summed up the pair instantly as being just old enough—about fourteen—to get into a theater. A tavern, no. (He conveniently forgot his own forays into both sorts of establishment at that age.) Derien was
the most wonderful nine-year-old in the world, but he
was
only nine years old. Boys of fourteen didn’t cultivate friendships with nine-year-olds.

Giving them a toothy smile that hid his anger, he told them to stand very, very still. They did so, awestruck at being in his actual presence. After a very long minute, he expressed his gratitude for their cooperation in providing him with the perfect portraits of arrogant little quats deeply infatuated with their own struggles to rise above abject privilege. He’d be using them as characters in his next play.

“And by the bye,” he finished as he showed them to the door, “I have, as the ancient Wizardly saying goes, ‘the knowing of you’ now.” He gave them another smile: fewer teeth, more menace. “So it might be that you’ll want to behave yourselves. I trust you understand. Good afternoon.”