Thornlost (Book 3) (3 page)

“Well? Waiting for an invite, are you?” Vered demanded. “Go in, have a look!”

Mieka and Jeschenar had already swarmed past and were laughing their delight. Rafcadion ambled over to make a slow, contemplative tour around the wagon while Yazz unhitched the horses. Cade could only stand there, his drink in his hand, still staring at the map.

He knew, in the abstract, that he’d been to all those places and more besides. There was the strange old mansion outside New
Halt, for instance, where they’d twice played to an audience of one, and been spectacularly well paid for it. Neither was Lord Rolon Piercehand’s residence, Castle Eyot, picked out on the map, the place where each group on the Royal, Ducal, and Winterly had a few days of rest between the northern and southern portions of the Circuits. It occurred to him that from now on they’d know exactly where they were at all times. What was it Mieka had said once? Something about not always being sure he knew where he was or where he was going, but nice to know where he’d been. With this map, they’d always know the place they’d just been, the place they were at, and the place they soon would be. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, and couldn’t have explained why. Mayhap it was because one could never tell what might happen in between.

“I agree,” Chat’s voice said at his side, and for a moment he wondered if he’d spoken aloud. The Shadowshapers’ glisker went on, “Better to have a look inside after everyone else has poked through it. A marvel and a wonder it is, no doubt. But me, I’d like a peek at the baby.”

Cade glanced round for someone to act as escort, and decided he himself would do. The crowd thinned considerably ten steps from the wagon, and it was almost quiet when they went into the house by the kitchen door. Mistress Mirdley was there, tidying up by means of an Affinity spell. Once the first plate had been cleared by hand into a rubbish bucket, the others were easy. Dirty plates were held up one by one, and what food remained on them slipped smartly off to join meat, veg, and bread already binned. The trick was to focus the spell narrowly enough so that the usable leftovers on the table and counters didn’t whisk themselves into the bucket as well.

Chat greeted the Trollwife with a bow and a smile, reported that his wife and family were all well, and begged to be allowed a glimpse of the newest Windthistle. Mistress Mirdley gestured towards the hearth, where a large and ornately painted cradle
stood just far enough back to provide the baby with warmth but not heat. Leaving the last few plates on the sink counter, she shuffled over to the cradle and twitched back the coverlet.

Jindra had her father’s hands, with the ring and smallest fingers almost the same length, his elegant Elfen ears—and his thick black eyebrows, poor little thing, Cade thought, peering into the cradle. She had been born at Wintering. After Touchstone’s return from the Winterly Circuit, he’d done the polite thing by calling at Wistly Hall with a squashy stuffed toy for the baby and flowers for her mother, but both had been sleeping, so the irises had gone into a vase and the pink bunny had gone into a basket full of other presents. Cade had had a brief glimpse of Jindra’s face: closed long-lashed eyelids, a wisp of black hair straying from beneath a knitted cap—then went into the parlor for a drink, and then departed. In the intervening weeks, there had been rehearsals and performances, and once Mieka had reclaimed his house and moved his family, there’d been no convenient opportunity to come out to Hilldrop for a visit. Nice, reasonable excuses for what Cade admitted to no one but himself: that he avoided Mieka’s wife with the devotion of a Nominative Brother to study of
The Consecreations
.

“Lovely!” said Chat. “A real heartbreaker!”

There was very little of her mother to be seen in Jindra’s face. The nose, perhaps, and the fullness of the pursed lips, but that was all. Any doubts anyone might have had—well, that Cayden had, and never spoke about—regarding the child’s paternity were obviously ludicrous. Jindra was Mieka’s daughter right enough. She even had those eyes, Cade thought helplessly, as for the very first time in his presence the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at him. Big, bright, changeable eyes, blue-green-brown-gray all at once—but surely it was only imagination that made him see the same sparkle of mischief, the same golden glint of laughter.

What happened then was a thing he had heard about from besotted fathers and read about in sappy poems and seen enacted
in sentimental plays. Nonsense, he’d always reckoned it, to think that there could be any sort of fundamental contact between a full-grown adult and a months-old baby.

He’d reckoned wrongly.

Mistress Mirdley stood beside him, nudged him with a shoulder. “You can touch her, you know. She won’t break.”

He saw his own hand reach towards Jindra’s, saw her fist close around one of his fingers. She was still staring up at him. She cooed.

He’d seen her eyes before, of course. He’d seen her, snarling at her own daughter. He didn’t want to remember it, but remember it he did.

{“Your grandsir was a selfish, spoiled, heartless bastard who cared about drinking, fucking, and thorn. He never gave a damn about your grandmother nor me. He did whatever he pleased with whomever it pleased him to do it with, without a thought to anyone else—”}

Jindra grasped his finger and blinked her extravagant lashes at him. Mistress Mirdley said, “Prettiest little thing, isn’t she? Scant wonder, her parents being such beauties.”

{The little girl watched with solemn eyes as her father staggered into the house, clutching a huge stuffed toy under one arm. He caught sight of her, laughed, tossed the brown velvet puppy at her. “F’r you, sweetest sweeting!” She made no move towards it, mistrusting of his uncertain limbs. His grin became a scowl. “Well, then? G’on! It’s yours, you silly girl!” When she stayed where she was, warily silent, he kicked the toy into a corner on his way to the bottles on the sideboard and muttered, “A bitch for a bitch—just like y’r mum!”}

The turn didn’t surprise him, exactly. But something else followed instantly; something happened to him that was really very simple. He would do anything to keep this baby from becoming that mute, mistrustful little girl, that damaged woman. He would fight for her. Protect her. Keep her safe.

Jindra latched on to his thumb with her other fist. She smiled at him, all toothless pink gums and rosebud mouth, plump cheeks and beguiling eyes. He tried to tell himself that everybody went all gooey about babies. Hardened criminals became mush at the sight of helpless infants. Babies were tiny and fragile and defenseless and vulnerable and—and good Gods, she wasn’t even
his
.

{“Cade! They accepted me, I’m in!”

“Of course you are.” He set aside his book and looked over the rims of his spectacles, smiling at the whirlwind of long black hair and colorful fringed shawls that danced through the drawing room. “Your father and I always said you’d be accepted, didn’t we?”

“Oh, but Fa is forever telling me I can do anything—”

“—and do it perfectly the first time you try it, yes, I know.” He pretended a dramatic sigh. “The regrettable incident with the carriage proves he’s not completely objective about these things. But when are you going to learn that
I
am
always
right?”}

And he would have to be, wouldn’t he? As the second turn vanished and he again felt Jindra’s hands clinging to him, he realized he would have to make the right decision every single time.

The reminder was like a last lingering tweak of thorn in his veins: she wasn’t even
his
. And, like thorn, it mocked reality.

But he knew the difference between what he dreamed and what was real. Jindra was real. All else was might-be or could-be or must-never-be.

She was one more thing to fight for, was Jindra Windthistle.

“
O
y!” yelled Mieka from the kitchen doorway, disturbing the touching little scene by the cradle. “C’mon out here, Cade, you’ll miss it!”

The baby began to cry. Mieka was astonished when Cade rounded on him furiously, looking ready to throttle him. “Now see what you’ve done!”

“Mistress Mirdley will take care of her,” Mieka replied with a shrug. Somebody always took care of the baby. That was what wives and sisters and mothers-in-law and all suchlike family were for. He never worried his head about it. “Hurry! Vered says—”

Chat swore and pushed past him. Mieka grabbed Cade’s elbow and hauled him out into the torchlit courtyard.

“And here he is! Cayden Silversun!” bellowed Vered with a bow and a flourish. He stood on the top step of the wagon, smoothly in command of all attention. “Somebody sit him down—yeh, right there will do—” He pointed, and Mieka dragged Cade to a bench near the horse trough. “And here we all are, celebrating his twenty-first Namingday—though it’s to be doubted, make no mistake. I never question a lady’s word, of course, so I must accept that the lady over there is indeed his mother. But judging by the looks of her, if she truly is his mother, Cade can’t be older than thirteen!”

Mieka sniggered under his breath. Lady Jaspiela had condescended to attend the festivities as a dutiful mother ought on a son’s twenty-first, but only after Mieka begged his very prettiest. Zekien Silversun’s duties at the Palace took precedence over any duty to his elder son; no surprises there. Mieka had never even met the man, and had often wondered if he felt anything for Cade or Derien at all. Lady Jaspiela looked torn between pleasure at the compliment and the indignity of being singled out in this distinctly downmarket crowd. Her expression became one of frozen graciousness. Mieka held his breath, waiting for the tregetour’s infamously sharp tongue to slice her to ribbons. But Vered was on his best behavior tonight. When he wished, he could charm the scales off a wyvern and have the beast begging him to take its teeth and talons, too.

“Be that as being may be,” Vered went on, “me and me mates, we puzzled long and longer still how to celebrate this important occasion.” He conjured a withie from one vermilion velvet sleeve. “Something appropriate, we decided.” A second withie appeared from the other sleeve. “In keeping with our mutual profession, as it were.” He paused, made a shocked face, and looked down at himself. His body twitched, first the shoulders, then the hips, and finally he kicked out a leg and shook a third glass twig from his trousers. Chat, below him on the bottom step, caught it as it fell and handed it up to him with an eloquent rolling of his eyes.

“Is that all he keeps in there?” a woman’s voice called out, and with a cheerful leer Vered yelled back, “Wouldn’t you like to find out, sweet cheeks?”

“Get on with it!” Chat admonished.

Vered bowed, then leaped from the steps and tossed him a withie. Chat had barely sent it back to him when Vered threw another one. The new wagon had been placed almost in the middle of the little courtyard, and as the pair juggled the glass
back and forth, they gradually positioned themselves on either side of it until they could no longer see each other. With each throw, the withies flew high over the wagon, caught and sent back with a skill that had the crowd gasping, until all three were in the air at the same time. Chat pulled a fourth withie from his jacket, and then a fifth. He and Vered flung them so fast now that they looked a single glittering arch over the wagon, shattering all at once into a million shards that brought a few screams from the audience, especially when all the splinters caught fire.

That would have been quite enough of a show, Mieka thought, impressed in spite of himself. But Chat and Vered weren’t finished. The arc of flames turned silver and began to writhe, scrawling two words between the courtyard and the stars: HAPPY NAMINGDAY.

Tregetour and glisker met at the wagon steps again to accept the applause, looking thoroughly pleased with themselves. Mieka understood the feeling. This was how magic was supposed to be done: with joy and skill, with easy grace, with suppleness and creativity. Some people (Cade, for one) treated theater so seriously, so earnestly, that the joy of the magic could go missing. Not tonight. There was indeed a reason they called it a
play
.

Mieka poured out a pair of whiskeys and approached his friends, clinking the pewter tankards as a substitute for clapping his hands.

“Beholden, mate,” Chat said, and drank deeply. He wiped his mouth and his forehead, giving a gusting sigh. “Bit tricky, that last thing. Vered can’t spell, y’see.”

His tregetour made a face at him and grabbed the other tankard. “It innit that so much as the right amount of magic for the fire and the letters. Been trying it out with shorter stuff—”

“Just think,” Chat interrupted, “only three days ago, ‘Sod off’ was his limit!”

“—but I’ve got it now so I can do ‘Shadowshapers’ in any
color I please.” He took a pull at his drink. “Now all I need do is figure out how not to set the stage curtains afire.”

“It was brilliant,” Cade said from nearby. “If you ever lose your place on the Royal, you can hire yourselves out as advert specialists.” He grinned and toasted them with his drink. “ ‘Haymaker’s Helpful Housewares’ and the like.”