Touchstone (36 page)

The Goblin Guildmaster met Her Ladyship’s look with a sneer that almost matched her own. Almost; not quite. His colleague made the sort of bow one gives to a societal equal, which earned him the eloquent arching of two pairs of aristocratic eyebrows.

Mieka didn’t catch the next exchange. Jez had poked him in the ribs and bent down to whisper, “Did you stash the withies?”

Horror hollowed his chest. Lady Jaspiela was standing half a foot away from Jinsie’s shoulder bag, where Mieka had shoved it under the worktable. He kept his gaze strictly on the spread of her blue silk skirts until he could be reasonably confident that he could control his expression. Then he looked at the Goblin, who was still regarding Her Ladyship with resentful scorn.

“And so for some reason best understood by yourselves,” she was saying, “you considered it necessary to overrun these premises, disturbing everyone else at their homes and occupations in the meantime, and block Criddow Close with your rig. It is my wish that you conclude your business here as rapidly as possible and then be gone—within, I suggest, the next five minutes.”

Before his companion could speak, the Goblin snapped, “Impossible.”

“Indeed?” asked Cade in a silky tone Mieka had never heard him use before, and wouldn’t care to have used on him. “Why might that be?”

The other Guildmaster hastened to explain. “There are still questions to be answered, and an inspection of the shop and any back rooms, and the apprentice quarters—”

“What apprentices?” Blye asked, very nearly keeping the cynicism from her voice. “Who’d apprentice to a
woman
?”

“All the same—”

Lady Jaspiela interrupted, “It is
not
‘all the same’ to
me
.”

“Or,” Cayden put in, “to the people on this street who look to my lady mother for their welfare.”

This told Mieka how he’d got his mother into this. Oh, he was cunning, was Cayden Silversun. Lady of the manor was a part she’d adore to play, even if the manor was naught but a block of shops and homes in back of her mansion.

The Guildmaster was stubborn. “And there is the matter of the flint glass.”

Before anyone could ask, the Goblin snapped his fingers and the boy handed him a thin strip of what looked like heavy rag paper tincted dark green. “Lead,” he announced, and slid the paper into the wine on the platter.

Everybody was drawn towards the table, everybody but Blye, whose cheeks had drained of all color. So had the slip of paper.

“I’m most dreadfully sorry,” the tall Guildmaster said, looking it but not sounding it. “But until every other piece of flint glass here can be similarly tested, we must order this shop closed.”

“Nonsense!” snapped Lady Jaspiela. “What can you mean?”

“It’s the lead content,” Blye managed in a faltering voice. “What makes flint glass sparkle can leach into acidic liquids.”

“Causing all manner of insalubrious results,” finished the Guildmaster.

“But—but it takes
hours
to happen, and the caution is for storage, not for goblets and things—and anyway the melt I used for this platter—it’s the same as my father used, and there was never any problem—”

“Perhaps my predecessor in this position was not as diligent as he ought to have been,” was the smooth reply.

“Twenty-four parts out of a hundred,” Blye was insisting, with more vigor now, “and the Guild allows up to forty in drinking vessels—”

“The policy has come under review. Were you a member of the Guild, you would know that.”

“She’s a
woman,
remember?” snarled Jinsie.

“Uh, just a thought,” Mieka said, holding up a hand. “But was anyone really contemplating taking a drink off that platter? Looks a rather awkward gulp to me.”

“That’s not the issue.”

Cade addressed Blye. “When was this platter made?”

“Just now,” Jedris reported. “We watched the whole process.”

“And the materials were taken from where?” When Blye pointed, Cade asked the Guildmaster, “Is there a test for the lead content of that sand?”

“Irrelevant,” said the Goblin.

Cade looked down on him. “Perform it.”

This involved weighing and measuring and other things Mieka found uninteresting compared to watching Cade. For it had occurred to him that it must be something exceptional, to know that a brain and a heart like that were always there to defend you.

Jinsie’s voice caught his attention, something about moving out of the Guildmasters’ way, and she paused to sketch a brief curtsy to Lady Jaspiela while on her way past. At the main workbench, she casually crouched down to retrieve her bag, rising with no indication that it was much heavier than it ought to have been. Settling the bag at her hip, she joined Mieka.

“Nice curtsy,” he whispered.

“She’s a one, isn’t she?”

“You’ve no idea.”

“Twenty-four,” the Goblin announced suddenly.

“We’ve no guarantee,” the other Guildmaster stated, “that the melt used for the platter is the same as—”

Jezael took a step towards him. “Are you calling my brother a liar?”

Lady Jaspiela held up a manicured hand. “Surely not—isn’t that right?” she inquired of the Guildmaster, who pursed his lips but said nothing else. Her voice was a dousing of pure venom as she went on, “Then there must be something amiss with your little papers, mustn’t there? Perhaps you’re not as diligent as you ought to be.” With a magnificent sweep of silken skirts, she turned to the door. “Your five minutes are now two. Cayden, see them to their conveyance.” With a nod to Mieka and a definitive clicking of her heels, she left the glassworks.

Her elder son drew himself to his full height. “You’re finished here. Next time, bring a smaller carriage—and don’t park in the middle of the road.” Something resembling a smile stretched his lips. “My lady mother dislikes it when anyone inconveniences the neighborhood.”

Mieka waited until both doors had shut behind Cade and the Guildmasters and the boy. Then he demanded of Blye, “How close was that?”

“Close enough,” she answered grimly. “They can inspect anybody anytime they like, of course. But I didn’t expect the bit about the flint glass. You’re not supposed to sell decanters without a caution label against storing wine in them.”

“But plates and platters are all right, aren’t they?” Jedris asked. “And goblets?”

“Food or liquid doesn’t stay in contact long enough to absorb any lead. Even so, Da always used the least possible to get the shine. But that paper—it turned as if that platter were made from forty-of-a-hundred melt.”

“So Lady Jaspiela was right,” Mieka mused. “There
was
something dodgy about—”

The crash of an opening door announced Cayden’s return—and in full voice, too. “Bastards! Cullions! Do you know what I saw when they got into their rig? You know who was in there waiting for them?”

“Somebody wearing the Archduke’s livery?” Blye’s tone was mild, but her dark eyes blazed brighter than her kiln. “C’mon, Cade, it’s obvious, innit? He couldn’t buy the glassworks, so he’s punishing us by trying to shut it down.”

“Nice bit of fakery on those testing papers, then,” Jinsie remarked. “Or the wine.”

Mieka shook his head. “It was corked and waxed, and opened right in front of us.”

“Trust you to notice everything about the alcohol and nothing about anything else!”

“You wait till Kearney learns of this,” Cade said. “You just wait till I tell him!”

Jinsie approached him, put a hand on his arm. “Do you really want to pit him and the Archduke against each other so soon?” she asked quietly. “Out in the open before anybody’s even sure what’s really going on?”

“Don’t do it, Cade,” Blye said. “A blunt challenge wouldn’t be at all wise.”

“Why not? Why not expose him for a liar and a cheat and—”

“And what?” Mieka asked pointedly. “It’s just mischief. He’s the fuckin’ Archduke—your pardon, ladies—who could possibly pin anything onto his splendid silk coat? If he likes, he could have us kicked off the Winterly, Quill, you know he could. We don’t know what he wants,” he insisted as Cade looked mutinous. “A glassworks, a theater group of his very own—from the things Chat was saying, it’s not for the prestige, or even the money, once the tours of the Continent are put through. It’s something else he’s after and we don’t know what, and until we do…” He finished with a shrug.

After one stinging glare, Cade turned on his heel and swept out of the glassworks in a manner that reminded everyone whose son he was.

“Such an affable young man,” Jinsie remarked. “Polite, personable, and all the winsome charm of a nest of angry wasps.”

“Oh, shut it,” Mieka told her. “There’s a lot on his mind.”

There were things on Mieka’s mind, as well, and about a week later he decided he’d had enough of Cade’s tantrums, and went once more to see Blye.

He brought along Chattim Czillag. This was in advance of the appointment with all the Shadowshapers. Reasoning that Blye wouldn’t have the chance to get nervous (fluttery, to use Cade’s word), would appreciate having a friend there with her (once she stopped being furious at the surprise, of course), and would like Chat anyway, he’d chosen a day when the wind off the river blew some freshness through the summer heat. Persuading Chat to a little excursion was easy; getting Blye to open the door was much harder. But he prevailed, as he always did, and they sat in the cool, glittering dimness of the shop, drinking the iced fruit juice Mieka had brought along and talking of anything but glass for at least an hour.

At length, Chat helped wash up the goblets and said, “So I’m told that withies can be made that actually allow this pillock here to be mistook for a real glisker.”

Before Mieka could do more than pull a face at him, Blye laughed. “I can’t wait to find out what they’d be like in the hands of somebody who knows how to use them.”

Aim, draw, and clap i’ the clout o’ the target,
Mieka told himself, perfectly happy to be maligned to his face if it got him what he wanted, and left them to it. He’d scented delicious things cooking in the Silversun kitchen on his way past earlier, and intended to whine his way into an ample share of them.

Cade and Dery had escorted their mother to the horse races on the grounds of the Palace, and wouldn’t be back until nightfall. Thus the two footmen and the maid were taking their ease in the kitchen while Mistress Mirdley worked her own magic on sausage pies and a salad that took superb advantage of the farm carts that glutted the city with ripe fruit. It was with the greatest reluctance that Mieka declined a third helping of everything and went to see how Blye and Chattim were getting along.

He found her alone, and rather stunned.

“Three dozen to start,” she said. “He didn’t even wait to have me meet the others. He wants three dozen. And he offered three-quarters what he was paying Master Splithook. I know, because I asked round. He says the joys of not having to compensate for rutilations are worth having to lie about who makes the withies for him—”

“Three-quarters times three dozen?” He didn’t bother to attempt the calculation; he was hopeless with numbers. “That’s a tidy little sum, Blye.”

“I didn’t take it. Oh, pick your jaw back up! I told him half, until I get to know them all well enough to fit the withies to them like I do you and Cade.”

“I hope you told him that when that happens, it’ll be Splithook’s full price!”

She snorted with laughter. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” Then, suddenly and most unexpectedly, she gave him a frown. “Except not as much, lately. Especially around Cade.”

Not knowing how to respond to this, he shrugged.

“He said so, the other day. Wanted to know what was wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“But you’re not as—forgive me—unmanageable as you used to be.”

“Maybe I’m growing up. About time, innit?” He gifted her with his most disarming smile. “After all, I’m comin’ up on me eighteenth Namingday this summer.” Realizing what he’d revealed, he almost slammed a frustrated fist onto the counter and remembered just in time that he’d probably overset every glass on the shelves above.

“I knew it! I knew you were still underage!” Blye laughed at him again. “Don’t worry, I won’t let on. Besides, you’re the type who’ll look about eighteen until you’re eighty.”

“And then it’ll all catch up with me,” he finished with a shudder.

“Cade says your great-great granny is still alive. What is she, something over a hundred?”

“A hundred and four, with bonelock in every finger and wens all over her face, and a lucid thought p’rhaps once a year,” he retorted. “I’d slice me own throat first.”

“Is that the only thing that scares you, then?” she asked, her voice and her eyes very much softer. “Is it growing old, or growing old so sudden, the way Elves do?”

“The sudden of it,” he admitted. Then, because he avoided this sort of conversation devotedly, he countered, “And what is it
you’re
most affrighted of? I told you, so you have to tell me. It’s only fair.”

“Not of growing old,” she replied quietly. “Growing old alone.”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” he announced. “You’ve us, haven’t you?”

She eyed him thoughtfully. “Anybody else would’ve said something about getting married and having lots of children and grandchildren.”

“If you want to, I’m willing.” His reward for this was a smack on the arm. With any other girl, he would have followed with a long, affronted tirade about those who’d leap through fire at the chance, and didn’t she think he was good enough for her, and he was crushed that she didn’t like him after all, and similar outrageous nonsense. But this was Blye. “Marriage is the usual extent of a girl’s ambitions. Nothing ‘usual’ about you, Blye.” Then, in a further flush of awkward sincerity that startled even him, he added, “And it’s not the only thing I’m afraid of. For one, those withies of Cade’s. There’s fear in
those,
I can feel it every time I touch them. If it’s not betraying him, can you tell me what he’s so scared of?”

She took a while to answer. “He hasn’t told you. He should have, before this. I don’t know if I ought—but I think you deserve to know. I think you’ve earned the right.”