Thornlost (Book 3) (44 page)

With a final snarl, Vered pointed at Rauel. “Here, we do it your way. Your withies, your play. At Trials, we do it
mine
.”

Mieka was dragged to the wings by Cade, with Rafe and Jeska carrying baskets and Fairwalk helping out with Rafe’s lectern. Safely in the tiring room, they heard the somewhat desperate call of, “The Shadowshapers!” and Rauel saying, “ ‘Piksey Ride,’ ” but Sakary was much too expert a fettler to allow even a tendril of the magic to go anyplace but out into the audience. So Touchstone sat, and gratefully drank, and listened to the laughing crowd.

At length, Briuly Blackpath observed, “Well, that was pleasant.”

Mieka nodded. “Wasn’t it just.” Restless, he rose and went looking for his brocade skirt and purple petticoats. Cade joined him after a brief consultation with Alaen.

“He’s got the hat,” Cade said, “but the rest is over in the wings other side of the stage. Beholden for the defense with Vered, but
you were about to clout him a good one, and that wouldn’t be nice.”

Mieka snagged a wineglass from a passing servant girl and took a few swallows. “I owed you, for the help with the constables.”

“When did you and me start keeping score?”

A little snort of laughter escaped him. “We were good, weren’t we? Oughta work it up as an opening act!”

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look in that blouse?”

Batting his eyelashes, he cooed, “But I thought you liked me in pink!”

Cade pretended to look him over. “Well, at least it’s real, and not magic.”

“I’m a good boy, I am. I follows me orders.”

Cade’s turn to snort. “Oh, always. Everybody knows that.” His expression changed subtly before he said, “Don’t be too hard on Vered. He’s been pricking a lot of thorn lately. His wife’s sent in the legal papers. She wants a divorce.”

“And what does Vered want?”

“His wife and children in one house, his ladylove in another up the road, with him drifting between as the mood takes him. A settled home,
and
the freedom to do as he pleases. An ordinary life,
and
the life of a traveling player.” Cade gave a little shrug. “He wants what the rest of us want, I suppose. And, like the rest of us, being denied it makes him angry.”

“Vered ought to be growing up a bit, I think.”

“This from somebody who frisked in here wearing purple petticoats?”

Mieka refused to take the bait or succumb to the laughter in Cade’s eyes. “He didn’t have to take his temper out on you.”

A second shrug, both shoulders this time. “Doesn’t matter.” He paused, then said, “I only met her that one time… what do
you
think of her?”

Mieka considered. “I can tell you this. Her eyes look right
through you, but not because she’s looking
into
you, if you get what I mean.”

“As if you’re not even there?”

“More like she knows you’re there but you’re of absolutely no importance so why should she waste her time and energy seeing you? I think the only person she bothers to see is Vered.”

Alaen approached, the green pancake hat in hand. “Where’d you find this thing, anyways?” he asked, grinning as he arranged it atop Mieka’s head. “Your lovely lady wife didn’t sew it, that’s for certain sure. A woman of taste and discretion—not to mention a sense of color!”

“Bought it off one of the girls on Chaffer Stroll. Had six different sorts of Hell convincing her that was
all
I wanted! How’s the lute been treating you? Fa has a couple new ones he’d be pleased to show you and Briuly.”

“We meant to come by around Wintering, but we had other things to do—thanks to Cayden, here.”

“So you went after the Rights.” Cade nodded approval.

“Sought, but didn’t find. Skipped a good-paying job at the Palace to do it, too.” He shook his head, reddish-brown curls bobbing. “There we were, right time, right place, freezing our balls off, and not a sliver of sunlight to be had all day long.”

“Well, that was the trouble, then,” Mieka said. “Next year, mayhap—”

“Next year?” Alaen laughed. “Never again! You’re mistaken, Cade, and there’s an end to it.”

“No, I’m not mistaken,” Cade said, voice very soft. All at once Mieka saw the satisfaction of a good performance and the fun of the little farce they’d enacted beforehand vanish from Cade’s gray eyes. Mieka knew what the trouble was. Cade wanted Alaen and Briuly, not the staggeringly rich Lord Oakapple, to have the Treasure, but more than that he wanted everyone to know how clever he was to have figured out the truth of it.

“
You
go look for it, then,” Alaen muttered. “Haring off to the provinces in the dead of winter, chasing after some delusion—”

Mieka was annoyed, or he wouldn’t have said it. “You’d know all about that sort of thing, wouldn’t you?”

Alaen turned crimson, then white to the lips. His fist clenched dangerously around the neck of his lute until his thumb slipped and a string thwanged. He realized what he was doing and, with a sharp curse, turned on his heel and stalked off.

Cade nudged Mieka with an elbow. “You’re making friends right and left tonight, aren’t you? What’s got you in a temper?”

“He’s got a nerve, talking of delusions. The times he’s shown up drunk or thorned to the tips of his ears at Hilldrop, whining over Chirene—it’s no great astonishment that his favorite of your plays is ‘Doorways.’ For that little while at the end, he can believe that she’s his.”

“And that’s what Vered objects to,” Cade said softly. “Give people what they want, if only for a moment. It’s not what I meant with that play, not at all.”

“I know.” All at once it was as if they were alone in Cade’s room high over Redpebble Square, or in his own little lair in the tower at Wistly Hall. “It’s about choosing. About being aware of the choices as you’re making them.”

“How much trouble would we be in, I wonder, if we changed it up a bit, and rather than give them the satisfaction of what they most desire, we—”

“—slap them with the exact opposite? ‘This life, and none other’ as their worst nightmare instead of their sweetest dream?” Mieka shook his head. “Save that for something else, Quill. ‘Doorways’ makes one point. Use another play to make a different one.”

Thin shoulders twisted his discomfort, and before Mieka could say anything more Cade called to Briuly, halfway across the tiring room. Alaen’s cousin sauntered over, all spindly limbs
and extravagant ears, fingers twiddling idly at his lute strings.

Cade wasted no time. “I hear you looked for the Rights at Wintering.”

“Still scraping the mud and cow shit off me boots to prove it!” He laughed the type of loud, strident laugh typical of a little too much greenthorn. And his eyes held something reckless and wild that made even Mieka want to take a step back. Then, voice lowering conspiratorially, he went on, “Been there
twice
, I have. Once with Alaen, and I just got back from a trip on me own.”

Cade was frowning his bewilderment. “But it’s the wrong time of year—”

“Quarterday.” He winked and played a few cascading triplets on his lute. “You think on it a bit of a while, eh? I’m off!”

“Quarterday?” Mieka echoed as he walked away. “What’s he mean by that?”

“Damned if I know. Come on, they’re finished out there and we’ll be asked to join them and the Sparks for some final bows.”

* * *

M
ieka was still trying to think through the puzzle of Quarterdays a week later on the walk over to Redpebble Square. It was a hike from Wistly, but he wanted the fresh air, the exercise, and the chance to hang about the streets of Gallantrybanks. All the months Touchstone spent on the Circuit, the nights onstage, the days going back and forth to Hilldrop, the time he spent there with his wife and daughter (and mother-in-law,
still
), meant that he had few opportunities to wander the city. He missed the noise and the colors, the bustle and the scurry. But he couldn’t stroll about the way he used to. He wasn’t anonymous anymore, not with Touchstone’s placards up all over. Every other block someone called out from loading a wagon or frustling a display of goods.

“Great show t’other night, Mieka!”

“Laughed fit to split me guts at the ‘Sweetheart’!”

“I’m takin’ the country cousins to the Downstreet next week, special treat. Do the ‘Dragon’, whyn’t ya?”

He spent time with them all, trading quips, delighted to be famous. The walk to Redpebble thus took even longer than usual, and it was almost time for tea when he walked down Criddow Close to the glassworks.

Quarterdays
, he kept repeating to himself when not otherwise distracted. There was one in Spring and one in Autumn, with Midsummer precisely in between. Together with Wintering, they marked off the four quarters of the year. Why Briuly would want to visit the place on either Quarterday was a mystery. And none of it could have anything to do with Midsummer, because the setting sun would be in the wrong place to hit the fallen stones hiding the Rights. He couldn’t understand it. He was hoping that Quill had worked it all out by now.

He was also hoping that Blye could oblige him with a glasscrafting that was perfectly legal for her to do. Weary of being half-strangled by a neck cloth, frustrated by having to tie the elaborate knots dictated by fashion, and strictly forbidden by his wife to loosen an already tied one just enough to be able to slip it on and off as required, he intended to ask Blye if she could make him a glass ring.

The notion captured her interest at once. “Not plain, of course—knowing you,” she chuckled. “A simple glass ring in any color you like—but what if I make it like a real ring for the fingers, with a decoration to set off whatever color you’re wearing? I could even make a flat face for it and glue in a gemstone, or something made of glass or porcelain. Would that suit?”

“Down to the ground,” he said happily. “You’re a darling to indulge me.”

“I’m a practical businesswoman,” she retorted. “When you’re at Trials, every noble in Albeyn will see you wearing something new and bright and stylish. I’ll make a small fortune.”

“Do I get a cut of the profits?”

“No.” She grinned.

“But it was my idea! And me doing the publicity!”

“Half a percent.”

“Blye! Who was it gave you the notion for the pottinger? And talking of that, any words of appreciation from the Princess?”

“Not yet. She has better things to do than paw through baby gifts. Two percent, and that’s my final offer.”

“That’s no offer, that’s an insult,” he groused.

“Two and a half.”

“Forty-five.”

“Forty-five?” she asked blankly.

Where had that number come from? He covered with a mysterious smile while chasing things in his mind. Forty-five… not the number of plays in Touchstone’s portfolio, not the address of anyone he knew… his mother had just turned forty-six—

An Elsewhen, a good one, about Cade’s Namingday surprise party. Not that Cade had ever told him much by way of specifics. Touchstone had just played a show, Cade had forgot that it was his Namingday, Mieka had a diamond earring and gray hair, and they’d had bubbledy wine in a pair of new crystal goblets. Blye’s work, Mieka’s gift.

So that must be how it all connected, he told himself. Blye, glass, mention of the gift for little Prince Roshlin. With a mental shrug—it was as good an explanation as he ever expected his brain to provide about its own peculiar workings—he smiled wider at Blye.

“Forty-five. Twenty for the idea, twenty for the promoting of it, and five percent because you argued with me!”

“All right,” she said at once. “But you realize that whatever I end up charging everyone else for them, I’ll have to charge you triple.”

“Splendid! I’ll collect my forty-five percent of triple the price!”

Blye gave up and laughed. Almost the next instant, though, she made a worried face and said, “But, Mieka—is it legal for me to make them? They’d be hollow, after all.”

“When has that ever stopped you?” He pointed to the dinner service she was making for Vered Goldbraider, that lacked only one more platter and a couple of serving bowls.

“If I’m to make this fortune, and give you forty-five percent of it, then I have to be sure it’s all right for me to craft them. If not, I’d have to give the idea to someone else, someone with a hallmark.”

Mieka chewed his lip. “Not hollow,” he stated. “Empty. There’s a difference.” Then he saw that her dark eyes were laughing at him. “Blye! That’s a nasty trick to play on the man who just gave you the fashion idea of the year!”

“My father used to say that the Glasscrafters Guild gave him the authority to make a nothingness for other people to fill. ‘I create emptiness,’ he called it.”

“Withies aren’t emptiness or nothingness. They’re
possibilities
.”

“How poetic of you, Master Windthistle! And talking of withies, let me show you the new ones. I’ve put a little notch at the crimp end so just a touch will tell you who made them.”

“And hide them if the Stewards inspect us. Not that they ever have,” he mused. “I wonder why that is?”

“You still have the old ones my father made, and bought a dozen or so from Master Splithook.”

“And never use them.”

“I s’pose they keep track with the glasscrafters regarding who buys how many. But one of these days somebody’s going to figure out that there’s a discrepancy in numbers between what you’ve actually bought and how many you use. If you keep on shattering the poor things—”

“Getting rid of the evidence, just in case. And it shatters me heart as well every time I do it. Blye, I can always tell your
withies the instant I touch them. I don’t have to check. They feel like
you
.”

She regarded him pensively. “Y’know, sometimes I quite like having you for a brother-in-law.”

The bell above the shop door rang out. Mieka whisked the illegal glass twigs into a wrapping cloth and stashed them in a drawer while she went through to the shop. Before he could hide more than a few wineglasses and bowls of Vered’s new dinnerware, Blye called out in a half-strangled voice, “Mieka!”

He ran into the shop, careful to shut the connecting door firmly behind him. Standing there amidst the bright displays of plates and candleflats was the fettler girl, Megs. At least he thought it was Megs. The messy dark-blond braid had become a pile of intricate plaits atop her head. The well-worn clothing had given way to a black skirt and a smart bottle-green jacket with thin black twists of embroidery on hem and cuffs. The color matched her eyes, and it was by her eyes that he finally knew her for sure.