Touchstone (44 page)

They were all on civil if not friendly terms by the second night. Even had they not been, it was only good manners to make the effort. The designated stop in Cloffin Crossriver was run by an elderly couple who had gone to a great deal of bother to make them welcome, astonished that they’d forgotten the date.

Thus it was that Touchstone spent Wintering in a weather-beaten old inn. The holiday was strictly family-friends-and-home; no one was interested in the theater on Wintering Night, even if there’d been a place in town suitable. For a group of players on the Circuit far from their homes, it could have been a lonely evening of increasingly morose drinking, but it would have been churlish not to join in the songs and feasting laid on for them by the kindly old man and his fussing, smiling wife. The childless couple treated their four young guests and the coachman as family—which only emphasized for Mieka how much he missed his own home, especially at Wintering. Knowing it was ungrateful of him, he was just as glad to have the excuses of a black eye and a stubborn cold, and as early as possible went up to bed.

The other three lingered downstairs a while longer. Mieka could hear them, and the festivities at the Minster down the road, as he lay there in the half-moon darkness waiting in vain to get warm. The thick, heavy quilt ought to have been adequate. By the time Cade finally came in, Mieka was still shivering.

He pretended to be asleep. He even managed a snore, which prompted a stifled snigger. Eventually he could stand it no longer. Teeth chattering, stuffy nose still stinging from the sharp scent of the pine boughs decorating the bar downstairs, he gave in and gave up and got out of bed.

“I’m freezing, Quill.”

He could practically hear Cade think about refusing, but only for a moment. Wordlessly he twitched back the blankets, and Mieka plunged between them.

“Don’t worry, I won’t steal the covers.” His back to Cade, he curled around himself to conserve whatever warmth there might be.

“I’d only steal them back. I think it’s colder here than it was in Scatterseed.”

There was a brief silence. Then, because it was dark and Cade had been sympathetic, he said softly, “I’m sorry. About Pirro, and Black Lightning, and especially for not being more careful of that withie.”

“And for the thorn.”

“And for the thorn,” he echoed dutifully.

“I know Jeska’s sorry for throwing your little hoard into the fire. He’ll probably never say it, but…”

“Any more than you’ll ever say sorry for screaming at me?”

Another period of quiet. But he didn’t regret having said it.

“All right. Sorry.”

Mieka couldn’t help wriggling a bit, like a puppy under a head-pat. Then he settled more deeply into the pillow and whispered, “Dream sweet, Quill.”

“You, too.”

Tired and unwell, he was no more aware of finally being warm than he was aware of falling asleep. But he woke fully alert an unknown amount of time later, scared without knowing why until he heard Cayden whimper. He could only speculate that the all-night celebrations at the Minster were loud enough to disturb Cade’s sleeping mind. He didn’t understand why. The same chants, the same songs, the same laughter, the same night of the year when people gathered for what was supposed to be gentle frivolling fun but sometimes turned to drunken carousing worthy of sailors in port after months at sea—it was only Wintering, and it happened every year, and he didn’t know why Cade should be shuddering with a dream.

Yet he was, and Mieka saw that he only knew he’d been dreaming when he felt hands on his shoulders, holding him down against the mattress. The fear within his dream became stark panic, and he cried out.

“Cade! It’s all right, settle down! It’s just me, you’re safe—”

The last light of the sinking moon was enough to show him Cade’s white, frightened face. Then he slumped back into the pillows and turned his head away.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Mieka said all at once. “You can’t control what you dream. Nobody can do that, not even you.”

“I should be able to. I should’ve learned by now.” A brief hesitation, and then: “I don’t have the sort of dreams most people have.”

Mieka watched, holding his breath, convinced that the truth was about to be admitted at last. Gray eyes studied the cracks in the wall plaster, the decaying lathe slats beneath. A chill seeped through them into the room.

“Look at me. Please, Cade.”

He turned his head unwillingly.

“I know I said your dreams are important, but not this kind.” He waited a while longer, silently urging,
Please, please—

The sigh might have signaled defeat. “It was about something that happened a long time ago.”

“You’re only nineteen years old—how long ago can ‘long ago’ be?”

He smiled a little. “All right, then, how about this: I try very hard to
make
it be a long time ago.”

Mieka met his gaze steadily. “Tell me?”

“You don’t want to hear it.”

“Haven’t you learned yet not to tell me what I want and don’t want?” He settled into the covers, tugged them up to Cade’s chin. “Tell me,” he repeated. “You have to, Quill.”

He didn’t, not really. They both knew it. But whereas Cade didn’t lie to him, neither did he reveal what Mieka already knew to be the truth about his dreamings.

He was an accomplished teller of tales, was Cayden Silversun. Mieka could see and hear and feel all of it. Eloquent words, yet impersonal, as if detailing the proposed plotline of a new and original playlet. Mieka had been wrong about the defeat in Cade’s sigh; it was Mieka who had lost, yet again.

But he listened. He would always listen.

On the night after thirteen-year-old Cade spilled a pot of ink all over the workroom floor—it was supposed to go into the printing press, but his hand “accidentally” slipped—Number Eight, Redpebble Square, was graced by the presence of a very distinguished dinner guest.

Sagemaster Emmot had spent many years with the stern brethren of Culch Minster, and it showed. Just what he had done for the Archduke during the war was unclear, but whatever it was, he had served his sentence, the brethren had pronounced him cleansed, the Crown had forgiven him, and by the summer evening of his visit to the Silversun home, he had been teaching young Wizards for ten years. It escaped no one who saw him, however, whether they knew his name or not, that he had indeed been detained at the pleasure of the Crown, and for offenses relating to misuse of magic. For it had also pleased the Crown to lop off his thumbs.

Neither did anyone know why Emmot was allowed to teach. Most people assumed it was because he had proven convincingly that he had rethought his position on various issues, and was being given a second chance. The brethren at Culch Minster vouched for him. Some suspected a wealthy and influential but anonymous patron. There had been rumors at one time that he had been permitted an audience with the King, before whom he had promised on his knees and on pain of instant death that he would teach nothing that might ever be used in war. (This was discounted as absurd; Emmot had never been important enough in the Archduke’s forces to merit personal royal attention.) A few considered it part of the amnesty granted those who had fought on the losing side, a demonstration—cynical or not—of the Crown’s generosity.

Whatever the circumstances or the reasons, Sagemaster Emmot had been freed, had become a teacher, had established his own academy in a tiny seaside village, and had arrived at Number Eight, Redpebble Square, for dinner.

Cade was never permitted to come downstairs when there were guests. So he was caught unawares when Mistress Mirdley called up from two floors below that he was to get dressed in something clean and present himself in the drawing room at once, and don’t forget to comb your impossible hair! Scrambling off the bed, where he’d been reading an old copy of
Twenty-two Troll Tales,
he skittered into the drawing room just as his mother was pouring wine for a tall, skeletal, bald old man who took the stem of the glass between the first and second fingers of his right hand.

“Master Emmot,” said his mother, catching sight of Cade in the doorway, “this is my son. Come in and make your bow, Cayden.”

He did, unable to keep his eyes from the maimed hands. Master Emmot seemed not to notice his rudeness, and nodded kindly when Cayden gave a gawky version of the Court bow his father could perform with such effortless grace.

“Done service at Wintering, have you?” the old man asked.

“Once,” said Lady Jaspiela. “He was eleven.”

Cade felt every muscle in his body constrict, as if instinct ordered him to make himself as small as possible. He remembered that night.

“His looks, of course,” she continued, apologetically. “His father had to plead with the Good Sister, and even then he was only allowed in the back hallways. We had thought to set him on the path to the Minster, or at least a place at a Chapel somewhere, but…” She ended with a shrug.

“Ah.”

The silence lingered, and Cade stole a glance at his mother. She seemed caught between attitudes, she who was always perfectly secure in whatever pose she selected. Honored, but also nervous, as if she didn’t quite know how to behave to this formerly caged Wizard. But there was also something of excitement in her eyes, and Cade didn’t understand it at all.

“My husband sends his regrets,” Lady Jaspiela said at last. “He’s detained at Court tonight.”

“I’m sorry to have missed him.” He kept looking at Cade with eyes so dark a blue they were almost purple, like irises.

“Prince Ashgar often keeps Zekien with him for those long, involved conversations men so adore—”

“Your pardon, Lady,” the Wizard interrupted, “but I was given to understand you’ve another son?”

“Why, yes. A year old. His name is Derien.”

“Then you don’t really need this one.”

Cade could have told him that.

“The point being,” Master Emmot went on, when it became obvious that Lady Jaspiela was having trouble finding words, “that
he
needs
me
. I’ve established an academy. I think he might do very well there.”

Cade held his breath. To leave here, to escape, to learn magic more resonant and complex than the simple spells of the local Wizarding school—

—but to leave here, the only home he knew, to leave Mistress Mirdley and Blye and Rafe—

—but …
magic
—

“Tuition will be waived, of course,” Master Emmot said. “And I’m certain we can settle on a reasonable charge for room and board.”

“I’m certain we can,” said Lady Jaspiela.

“In a year’s time, then.”

“No!” Cade exclaimed. “I want to go now!”

“Cayden! Be silent!”

“Why do I have to wait? Why don’t you want me now?”

Master Emmot arched a brow at him, then turned to Cade’s mother. “He’s only thirteen.”

“I’m tall for my age—and I know things, I can work spells other boys can’t—please, let me go now, Mother—”

Careful of the fine glass, Master Emmot set down his wine. “With your parents’ permission, boy, and if you truly want to—”

“Please, Mother—” As she hesitated, he warned recklessly, “I will if you say I can or not!”

“Don’t dictate to me, boy,” she snapped. “Get to your room. Now!”

He did. He packed. Huddling in a shadow by the ridiculous rose-filled urns that marked the entrance to the house next door, he waited until a hire-hack drew up outside his own front door, hoping Master Emmot would be a gentleman and discourage Lady Jaspiela from escorting him outside. When he heard the door open and shut, he peered between the roses and saw the old man making his way alone to the hack. Straightening to his full height, he stepped from behind the urn and presented himself in silence.

“Said your farewells, have you?”

He nodded. A glance in his baby brother’s room, a quick hug for Mistress Mirdley—who swept everything edible she could find into a knotted string bag and thrust it onto his arms—that was all. He felt bad about Blye and Rafe, but he’d asked Mistress Mirdley to explain.

Sagemaster Emmot gestured with a maimed hand to the door of the hack. “Climb in.”

They were well on their way north to the seacoast before the old Wizard spoke again. “You’ll be wondering why, of course. I’ve seen you. Not in the way most people see, or mayhap I ought to say ‘look’ because so few people really see anything at all. Once I was sure, I came to find you. But the decision had to be yours. You’d either make the break yourself, as you did tonight, or stay and never learn, never develop. Never become what you most truly are. Tonight you overcame whatever fear you have of leaving familiar surroundings, of parting from the people you love and who love you. You also overcame your fear of the depth of magic you know very well you’ll be learning. Tonight was, in fact, your first lesson. It’s in your power to shape the future. To make it happen.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off the old man, the crags and furrows of his face emphasized by the light of candles within glass chimneys mounted either side of the door.

“For example, I saw you coming out of Master Honeycoil’s shop, and looking very pleased with yourself, I might add.” For the first time, Cade saw a smile twitch the gnarled face. “What exactly was it you did to earn his wrath?”

“Mixed up an order on purpose.”

“I waited a while, to make sure it wasn’t a quirk, but a few weeks later I saw you again, and a few weeks after that as well. Time was required to make arrangements—I’m not a wealthy man, but recently I received a most agreeable donation. And now here you are. And of your own choosing, which is the most important part.”