Touchstone (48 page)

Kearney Fairwalk had been waiting for them at Lilyleaf. It was his custom to take the waters there every winter. Indeed, much of the nobility could be found lolling in the baths or sprawling in the assembly rooms this time of year. The town had two venues: Lilyleaf Theater, a gorgeous place barely a decade old built by subscription and filled to capacity every night, and Old Bath Hall, a cramped structure with terrifyingly steep tiers of stone seats, with the players down at what felt like the bottom of a well. Those unfeared of heights preferred Old Bath Hall, for the intimacy of the place and the solidity of the stone made for an intense experience, especially if the players were less than cautious with their magic. Cade, surveying it the afternoon before their first performance there, wondered if this was where Black Lightning had made their reputation.

Kearney brought with him two young men, one of them familiar. Tobalt Fluter had been meaning to go to Castle Biding for the great annual late-winter fair; His Lordship’s invitation to tag along to Lilyleaf had been gratefully accepted.
The Nayword
was doing very well, but circulation and advertising revenues were not yet so large that its editors would turn down a free ride.

“Not that he’ll be soft on you, not at all,” Kearney warned them the first morning of their stay. “This will be your first big interview—please do keep civil tongues between your teeth, won’t you?”

Mieka bared his teeth in a grin, his tongue gently clenched between them.

“Do try, Mieka,” His Lordship urged. “It’s important.”

“Who’s the other one?” Rafe wanted to know. They’d all seen a wispy youth follow Tobalt up the stairs, carrying a leather-bound folio half as tall as he was.

“The imager. I’ve brought new things for you to wear—he’ll want several poses—”

“They’re going to print our imaging in the broadsheet?” Cade felt his stomach begin to ache. Apart from a single instance when he’d sat still for a small fraction of forever while his schoolmate Arley Breakbriar had practiced on him, he’d never had an imaging done. What that excruciatingly accurate rendition of his face had shown him was even worse than what he shaved in the looking-glass every morning.

Mieka angled a look at him, and Jeska was about to say something soothing, he knew it. Rafe’s laughter distracted them all.

“You honestly think you’re going to get Mieka to hold frozen for more than the space betwixt two breaths?”

“I’ll practice, shall I?” the Elf said at once. He stuck his tongue out, lifted one hand in an obscene gesture, and held the pose as Rafe began a mocking count. He was up to twenty when Mieka collapsed in giggles.

“Case settled in my favor, damages and court costs to be determined,” Rafe announced.

“I coulda done it if you hadn’t been making faces at me.”

“You’ll have to do it,” Kearney said severely. “This is
important,
Mieka.”

The new clothing was … interesting. Kearney had decided to dress them in black, white, and two shades of gray. They met downstairs the afternoon of the interview and laughed at one another for a good ten minutes.

The shirts, trousers, and sleeveless jackets were of more or less the same cut, but in differing combinations of colors. Rafe was in black with a charcoal jacket; Jeska in pale gray with black; Mieka in white with light gray; Cade in charcoal with white. All four of them flatly refused to wear the neckbands. Rafe said the pleats looked like pie-frills and Jeska decreed that the white lace edging was absolutely outside the limit.

Kearney was frantic when they wouldn’t even try the things on. “But it’s the latest fashion, and it will soften all the stark lines of black and white—”

“It’s dead hideous, and I won’t wear it,” Mieka said, tossing the neckband to the table where Tobalt waited with a grin on his face. “What’re
you
lookin’ at?” he demanded in a growl. “You like it, it’s yours!”

“My wife would love it. Beholden.” He bunched it up with scant reverence for the pleated frill and shoved it in a pocket. “Now, if you’re all frustled to your satisfaction, if not Lord Fairwalk’s, shall we get started?”

“Not just yet.” Mieka raised his head and his voice, and shouted, “Croodle! Four ales, my darlin’, from the goodness of your heart!”

Mistress Ringdove was their hostess here in Lilyleaf. No one dared term her an alewife; her husband had been a sailor who brought her home from the Islands, took over his father’s old tavern in the seacoast town of Frimham, and promptly died. She sold up, moved to Lilyleaf, and on the strength of her home brew—said to be as beneficial to the health as drinking the rather smelly waters here, and tasting infinitely better—had within a few years purchased this inn all on her own. She was nearly as tall as Cade, her skin was as black as the soot that wouldn’t dare come within miles of her pots and pans (from which came the most delicious food), and when annoyed she planted her fists on her hips and roared like a guards captain, but with an even more shocking vocabulary. This was why everyone called her Croodle
,
the cooing of a dove being the very last thing she sounded like.

“Only four ales?” Tobalt asked a bit forlornly. “But I’m thirsty, too!”

“You’ll stay sober and write what we speak.” Mieka grinned at him. “Now. What are they saying about us back in Gallytown?”

“Not much—yet.”

Rafe gave his usual taciturn answers to the reporter’s questions about life on the Winterly Circuit, then sat back with his ale and listened while Jeska elaborated. Not only did he have something complimentary to say about each locale but each compliment was different. Cade was frankly amazed until he recalled an evening up in Scatterseed when the masquer had been debating the attractions of six different girls, trying to decide whose bed to embellish with his presence that night. The astonishment of it was that he’d conducted this discussion with a seventh girl—the one he’d intended to and in fact did end up with—and hadn’t had an unkind word to say about any of them. She thought him the sweetest, dearest man in the world. Quite the line of patter, had Jeska, adaptable to any occasion.

Mieka told several very funny tales of their travels. Some of it was even true. Then it was Cayden’s turn.

Tobalt asked a single, simple question: “Why is it, do you think, that men go to the theater?” Mieka groaned and signaled for another round. Cade glared at him, and then began his answer.

“I’ve thought a lot about this—”

“And talked even more about it,” Mieka interrupted.

“—and it seems to be that it’s the same reason they go to bear-baitings, musical concerts, and Chapel. They can be part of a group, all experiencing the same thing. They feel connected to each other—not just for the duration of the show, but in the future, when they meet up with someone who was there and they say, ‘Oy, remember that night we went to see Touchstone?’ There’s a sense of belonging, a connection to the rest of the audience that comes during a performance, and this is given back to the players through energy and applause—”

“And money?” Tobalt said with a grin.

Cade forced a smile and took a swig of his ale. Beside him, Mieka was chortling quietly. Rafe looked amused; Jeska looked bored. But this was important, it addressed the whole concept of why there were players and plays and theater to begin with, and—

“So no matter what the composition of the audience,” Tobalt was saying, “whatever their ages and station in life, their work, their other experiences, at the theater that night they have this one experience in common?”

“Yes. And that’s another reason why it’s so unfair that women aren’t allowed to attend the theater. It deprives them of that chance to feel that connection with other people. To have those kinds of experiences in common with the rest of society. They’re part of society, a hugely important part. They cook our food and sew our clothes, they take care of our families, clean and organize and—and make sure everybody gets to Chapel on time!” He smiled, thinking of Mistress Mirdley. And then he thought of Blye. “They do other things, too, things that it used to be only men were allowed to do. Even what’s tolerated these days, and it’s
barely
tolerated in most cases, it’s not officially approved. There are women who are crafters and run businesses and shops, but they can’t join the guilds who’re supposed to represent them and have a care to their rights—as far as the guilds are concerned, they
have
no rights. I think it’s unjust, that they’re excluded from so much, and I’d like to see them
included
in the theater experience.”

“Onstage?”

Cade blinked.

Mieka laughed aloud. “Never thought about that one, eh, Quill? Give him another couple of months to talk it out with himself—and any poor lout within hearing range!—and he’ll have an answer for you. But he’ll need some time to—”

“Yes,” Cade said suddenly. “Absolutely. Onstage.”

Now Mieka looked awestruck. “Oh, they’ll be talking about us and nothing else back home after this is printed, and no mistake. What a scandal-maker you are, Cade Silversun!”

“I think I’ve got what I need,” Tobalt agreed. “Just one thing, if you would, Cade. You talk about the communal experience of Chapel or theater—what about executions? There’s always an awfully big crowd at a hanging.”

While Cade was flailing about for something to say, he saw a look of wicked glee cross Mieka’s face, a look he had grown to dread. But before he could open his mouth, the Elf spoke.

“And lots of women there, too. Isn’t that right, Cade?”

Goaded, he retorted, “And there’s the contradiction! How is it that society forbids women to watch a play, to protect them from I don’t know what, and yet doesn’t bat an eyelash when they come to watch a man gasp his life out at the end of a rope?”

Tobalt’s pen scratched so quickly it nearly tore the paper he was writing on. Mieka succumbed to a fit of giggles, mischief accomplished beyond his wildest hopes. Cade wanted to wrap his arms around his head and moan. Instead he smiled as the reporter got to his feet, and said, “You’ll owe me a drink for the increase in sales.”

“I’ll owe you half a wine shop. See you at Castle Biding, then. And I think the imager’s ready for you now.”

Lord Fairwalk, who had been hovering in the taproom doorway this whole time, now came forward and fussed over their clothes and their hair. Then he led them to the front parlor—Croodle ran a classy inn—where the two lecterns and a glass basket of withies waited for them, along with the imager—who looked rather ill. The watery greenish eyes were as unfocused as Mieka’s could be on thorn, he was pale as a corpse, and he kept mumbling to himself as if in a fever. He stood, swaying a little, behind a wide table on which the huge portfolio had been opened. At least a dozen short, colorless withies lay to his right, and a large glass of whiskey to his left.

“Here’s what I want,” said Kearney, and proceeded to pose them much as they arranged themselves onstage. Cade and Rafe behind their lecterns, Mieka in back, a withie in each hand, Jeska in front. It was so utterly uninspired that the four of them traded eye-rolls and grimaces.

“This will be the first one,” His Lordship said, standing back to survey the effect. “Nothing behind them—I don’t want anything to distract. We’ll see how this one comes out before we try the next.”

“It’s only for a bleedin’ broadsheet,” Jeska muttered, “not to hang on a wall at the Palace!”

“Shush! Hold still! He’s about to start!”

They became petrified as the imager gave a sudden whimper. It was the oddest damned thing, watching him work: the vagueness and torpor turning to a crisp precision (though he kept mumbling). It didn’t take as long as Cade thought it would, not nearly as long as Arley’s agonized process. From a corner of his eye he could see Mieka, frozen in place but clearly desperate to break free. No imaging could come close to portraying him unless that imaging moved and danced and flung withies into the air and shattered them as he laughed behind the glisker’s bench. And Jeska—how did a motionless picture in a broadsheet capture the subtleties of voice and face and movement that were his artistry? The brief show they’d done at Castle Eyot, with Cade able to provide perhaps half of what Mieka did, had nonetheless been a success, and because of Jeska. Ever since then Cade had been toying with the notion of doing a playlet without any magic transforming his masquer at all, using nothing but that expressive face and voice to draw the audience in, to move them. It would relegate Mieka and Rafe to providing and controlling the backdrop and physical effects, but Cade didn’t think they’d mind very much. In point of fact, he didn’t care if they minded at all. It was an idea that excited him, not just because it was different but because it would be a challenge. Art was about challenging oneself: to do better, to be better. Sagemaster Emmot would have said,
“So is life, boy,”
but Sagemaster Emmot’s voice was figuring less and less in Cade’s contemplations these days.

Lord and Lady and Angels, when would this man finish? Cade knew the cramp threatening his shoulders was merely nervous tension: the annoyance of having to hold absolutely still was starting to make him twitchy. He didn’t see the need for any of this anyway. There would have to be placards to advertise their performances in Gallantrybanks before and after Trials, but imaging was expensive and wouldn’t give anyone a real idea of what Touchstone looked like. Rafe, whom he could just see beyond Jeska, was the only one that an imaging could fairly portray—but only if it caught him with that glint in his blue-gray eyes and that sardonic turn to his lips. As for himself … he’d rather not think about it, beholden all the same.

Finally the fourth withie dropped to the table and the imager drew in a wheezing breath before groping for the whiskey. Mieka took that as a signal to howl his release. He hurtled for the taproom door, yelling for Croodle to save his life by pouring him a drink.

“Excellent, excellent,” Kearney murmured, standing at the exhausted imager’s shoulder. “For the next—and take your time recovering, dear boy, there’s no rush—I want something rather different. But we can discuss that once you’ve rested a bit.”