Window Wall

by Melanie Rawn

  “He’s sleeping. Tomorrow, love.” Blye linked her arm with his. “Come to bed.”

  Good-nights were said. Cade went to the sink and began rinsing out Dery’s clothes. Mieka searched a few drawers and found some cord to string up as a drying line. The practical magic of household chores wasn’t something either of them had ever taken the trouble to learn. Finally he broke the silence, twisting the loose end of the cord in his hands.

  “Not a glimmering, I take it?” Mieka asked softly. “Not a hint of an Elsewhen about any of this?”

  Not turning from the sink, Cade shook his head. “Blye’s right—how could I possibly affect what happened this afternoon?”

  There was something else, though. Something Mieka sensed but couldn’t quite identify. Waiting Cade out was occasionally effective, and much the kindest method of finding out what he wanted to hide; bullying him into telling wasn’t very nice, but prevented a great deal of frustrating boredom.

  “Nothing at all?” Mieka pressed.

  “No.” Cade wrung out his brother’s trousers and put them on the draining board, then reached for the undershirt. “Not anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  A shrug of thin shoulders. “I don’t anymore.”

  “You don’t what?” He couldn’t possibly be saying what Mieka was suddenly, sickeningly sure he was saying.

  “The Elsewhens. They were a bit of a bore. So I stopped having them.”

  A bore? Visions of disasters that, forewarned, he could seek to avoid? What about the one where Thierin Knottinger of Black fucking Lightning had given Mieka some sort of horrid thorn that destroyed an important performance? What if he hadn’t seen that in advance? And The Rights of the Fae—there’d have been no triumph with Touchstone’s version of “Treasure” if he hadn’t seen—

  —and if he hadn’t seen, Briuly would still be alive.

  Thinking he understood, Mieka said, “They don’t all have to hurt, y’know.”

  At last Cade turned to face him. “Who said anything about ‘hurt’?” His voice was casual enough, but his eyes—Mieka always knew when Cade was lying. Those large, fine gray eyes always gave him away.

  “Your Namingday,” Mieka said desperately. “When you’ll be forty-five. That was a good one, wasn’t it?”

  Cade only shrugged once more.

  “But why? Did they just stop?”

  “Did I outgrow them, like you outgrew your yearly head cold? No. I decided I didn’t like them. So I don’t have them anymore.”

  “Not even when you’re asleep?”

  Long fingers twisted the undershirt viciously. “You don’t understand. You could never understand. I’m afraid to sleep. Not because of the dreams, the Elsewhen dreams. I don’t have those anymore. I have nightmares instead. The kind other people have. Distortions, and running in place and never getting anywhere, and endless falling, and yelling but no one can hear me, and being helpless—but even if there weren’t any nightmares, I’d be afraid to sleep because after I sleep I have to wake up, and there’s another Gods-be-damned day to be faced and dealt with and slogged through somehow, and—even if I’ve pricked blockweed the night before, and have no dreams or nightmares at all, I still have to wake up. And sometimes the waking day is worse than the sleeping nightmare.”

  Mieka watched in mute dismay as Cade draped the undershirt on the makeshift clothesline. He’d never heard Cade’s voice like this: quick, brittle, with an undercurrent of vicious mockery.

  “And besides that,” Cade went on, “I’ve got rid of all the Elsewhens I had before. I don’t remember them. They’re gone. You say there was a good one—I’ll have to take your word for it, because I don’t remember them anymore. I don’t want them. I want to live the way normal people live. Without knowing what’s coming.”

  “But—but—” Mieka was so shocked, he could hardly get the words out. “You can’t do that, Quill!”

  “Can’t I? People think things, do things, decide things, without knowing what will come of them—”

  “But we’re just fumbling about in the dark. You know for certain sure!”

  “I know what might happen. Used to, anyways. It’s been interesting, actually. Not having all that lot rattling round in my head, confusing me all the time. Liberating.”

  “Blind,” Mieka said softly. “You’re blind, just like everyone else.”

  “What I saw, or thought I saw, it’s all gone. I won’t see anything else. Not waking nor sleeping. I won’t do it.” He hesitated, then said, “I just want … to be normal, I guess.”

  Mieka had gone to Redpebble Square this afternoon—Gods, had it only been this afternoon?—thinking to ask Mistress Mirdley if she felt the same changes in Cade that he did. He’d been unable to define just why Cade was different. He didn’t have the words. The work was as good as ever (with that one mortifying exception), and he gave Mieka everything he needed inside the withies for each performance, but the magic had felt different for quite some time. The sense of Cade-ness that had always been in the withies along with Cade’s magic had changed.

  Now he knew why.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve talked about it.”

  “And what would you have said? That at the very least I have advance warning of what might happen? Precious pile of good that did for Briuly and Alaen!” He wrung out his brother’s shirt as if he had his hands round someone’s neck. “You know what the funny part of it is? You didn’t even notice. Not you nor Jeska nor Rafe—we all but live in each other’s pockets for months at a time, and none of you noticed.”

  Mieka opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again. Cade was right. Gods in glory, did the man never tire of being right? Although Mieka had noticed and worried about differences in Cade, he hadn’t asked.

  “It never occurred to you that I’d started telling you about the Elsewhens, and then just stopped?” Cade shot him a sardonic glance. “Did you just assume that there wasn’t anything horrid, so I kept them to myself?”

  Mieka gave a helpless, shamed little nod. “You should’ve told me what you’d done, all the same.”

  “Oh, and of course you would’ve believed me. Just like you would’ve believed me if I’d told you the Elsewhens about your wife.”

  Mieka took an involuntary step back from the sneer. “But it—it’s like murder. All those memories—”

  “They weren’t memories.”

  “They were part of you!”

  “Not anymore. And you’re forgetting something. The Archduke knows.” Cade gave him a thin smile. “Credit where it’s due, Mieka. He knows.”

  He felt his cheeks heat up, but he had no time for awkwardness and apologies. Because once more he thought that he understood. It took no foreseeing to know that eventually the Archduke would come round, wanting Cade to see the futures for him. “If the Elsewhens are gone, you’re no longer valuable to him.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You actually think he’ll believe you when you say it doesn’t happen anymore?”

  A spiteful grin spread across the thin face. “I know—I’ll make something up! Let’s find paper and pen and get started on prophecies—you’re good at jokes and pranks, you can help. I’ll have to have a dozen or so ready for him—”

  “Stop it, Cade!”

  “As you wish.” He turned back to the sink and started in on Derien’s stockings.

  Mieka was just as glad of it. He hated it when he and Cayden fought, though he considered that he ought to be grateful that Cade had at least shown some honest emotion for a change. He watched the long bony fingers rub soap into the stockings—sea green, to match the piping on the white shirts worn by students at the King’s College. The full rig included brown trousers and jacket; as a boy progressed in school, the plain horn buttons were replaced, one by one, with silver. With discovery of part of his magic, Dery would be receiving another silver button, and instead of classes in magical theory, he would start attending classes in practical magi
c.

  And then it hit Mieka, all at once: that in finding his magic, Derien had saved two lives, but in rejecting his magic, Cade had killed part of who he was.

  But there was something worse. Never mind all that drivel about not seeing what he could have no hand in influencing; Mieka knew for a fact that Cade had seen things where that connection was so obscure that nobody could have figured it out.

  “You might have seen this,” he heard himself say. “You might have, and changed it. My brother’s likely crippled, all because you think your Elsewhens are a bore.”

  Cade swung around in a fury. “It’s not my fault. I won’t have it be my fault!”

  Mieka fled the kitchen and didn’t stop until he was at what used to be the entrance to his little tower lair. The doorway was boarded up now, the tower having at long last crashed down into the river below. It had taken with it, among other things, one of the three candle-flats that had been his eighteenth Namingday present (he’d given Jinsie one, and the other was at his house in Hilldrop), all the various blankets and pillows he’d nested there, his collection of Touchstone’s placards, and his spare thorn-roll.

  Now that Touchstone was on the Royal Circuit, Mieka had taken to dividing his time during the winter between Wistly Hall and the house where his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law lived. But Wistly wasn’t home anymore, not really, and for all that he’d owned the place for several years now, Hilldrop wasn’t home, either. In both places he always felt one step away from being a stranger. The Mieka who had grown up here didn’t exist any longer, and he hadn’t quite grown into being a Mieka who, between Royal Circuits, could be content with a quiet life in the country being a husband and father. The only time he felt truly real—alive, and happy, and right, and exactly where he’d been meant to be—was onstage. Yet even that feeling sometimes eluded him. Now he knew why.

  Cade’s fault. Deny it as he might, this was all Cade’s fault. A flickering of humor curled his mouth in a bitter little smile, for hadn’t Cade always felt guiltily responsible over his Elsewhens, and hadn’t Mieka tried to persuade him that he couldn’t be held to account for what other people decided to do? Now there were no Elsewhens to feel guilty about, but Cade was absolutely responsible not only for rejecting sight of things he might have changed for the better, but also for killing parts of himself that Mieka needed.

  No wonder the withies had felt different.

  He turned from the boarded-up doorway to seek a bed—there must be an unoccupied one somewhere in this house—and his fingers sought the little bit of glass in his shirt pocket. He wouldn’t have to ask Blye what kind of glass it was. He knew very well, as Jinsie had known very well, that it was the crimped end of a withie. And the hallmark on it—a thing forbidden to Blye—was that of Master Splithook, who made withies for, among others, Black Lightning.

  4

  It so happened that Trials would be held early at Seekhaven this year, for King Meredan and Queen Roshien were going on progress throughout Albeyn to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of their reign. It would take them all summer to visit the most important cities, towns, castles, and country houses on a schedule almost as brutal as any of the circuits. Prince Ashgar was set to join them here and there; Princess Miriuzca, having just been delivered of a daughter, would stay at Seekhaven with her children until early autumn, when grand celebrations would be held in Gallantrybanks.

  Thus it wasn’t even a week after the accident at Lord Piercehand’s Gallery that Touchstone set off in their wagon for Seekhaven. They wouldn’t be returning to the capital until autumn, for the circuit schedules had been moved up as well, and the Royal would begin the day after Trials was over. The King wanted all the best groups in Gallantrybanks for the official festivities. And since the King paid room and board, transportation, and performance fees, all the best groups would do as they were told.

  Three days before Touchstone’s departure for Seekhaven, their wagon rolled in from its off-duty home at Hilldrop. Yazz, their driver, occupied the coachman’s bench, but the reins were in the hands of Mieka’s daughter, Jindra, perched on the half Giant’s massive knee. She took her job very seriously. Mieka bit both lips together in the effort not to laugh as she pulled on the reins to stop the horses just outside Wistly Hall, her face screwed up with the effort. Yazz grinned down at Mieka, who scrambled up to lift Jindra down.

  “Well done, sweeting! When Yazz gets tired of us, we’ll hire you to be our driver!”

  She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. At almost three and a half years old, she was adorably Elfen, with Mieka’s changeable eyes (and thick eyebrows, poor darling), Mieka’s elegantly pointed ears, Mieka’s hands (the ring and smallest fingers of almost the same length), and Mieka’s black hair. Only the full, soft, sweet curve of her mouth was her mother’s.

  Her mother emerged from the wagon’s back door, wilting in the unseasonable heat and looking rather greenish; riding in an enclosed vehicle made her queasy. She smiled wanly at Mieka and accepted Petrinka’s escort upstairs to sleep off the drive from Hilldrop.

  Back when Wistly Hall was built, and the Windthistles had been able to afford their own coaches, carriages, and horses, a splendid mews had graced the mansion’s western side. That time was long past, and these days the mews served mostly as storage and a home for the cats that kept the mouse population in check. The stalls had been cleared and cleaned, and Yazz occupied himself in unhitching and stabling the horses while Mieka stood with Jindra on one hip, listening to her prattle on about her friends, the birds she’d saved from her mother’s pet fox, and the present she’d helped make for Uncle Jez.

  “And what would that be, Jinnie?”

  “Pillow. Down, Dadda!”

  When he set her on the cobbles, she ran for the wagon and clambered up the steps. Yazz had finished with the horses, and came to Mieka’s side to impart his own news.

  “Fanna will be brothered by Wintering,” he said with shy satisfaction.

  “Good work!” Mieka clapped him on the elbow. “How’s Robel?”

  “Glad she’ll be to have me home for the birthing. Not like last time.”

  “How d’you know it’s a boy?”

  Yazz looked pityingly down at him. “How did we know Fanna to be a girl? We just know.”

  The ways and knowings of Giants were as impenetrable to the other races as the ways of the Old Gods. Two months into her first pregnancy, Robel had announced she would have a girl; now she was certain she’d have a boy.

  “Takes all the surprise out of it, if you ask me.”

  Yazz peered around the mews, frowning. “Who asked?”

  Mieka laughed with him, and caught Jindra up in his arms again as she raced towards him holding a package half as big as she was. “And what’s this, then?”

  “I said, Dadda,” she reminded him. “Pillow. I helped sew!”

  “Yes, you did tell me. Sorry I didn’t pay attention. Let’s go see Jez, shall we?”

  The pillow proved to be a beautifully worked creation of dark green silk embroidered in the center with a pale green thistle and scented with cinnamon and sage. Grandmother and aunts exclaimed over how pretty it was, and Jezael gave her a bow rendered no less elegant for his being propped up in bed. Jindra fussed over the placement of his injured leg on the pillow.

  “Beholden, Jinnie. It feels much better already!”

  She insisted on staying in his room that night, sharing a cot with Mishia, and when Mieka came in the next morning, he found her curled up beside Jez like a drowsing puppy.

  His mother, who sat at the window sorting Mistress Mirdley’s doses of medicine, smiled. “I keep wondering,” she said softly, so as not to wake them, “how you ever managed to produce anything so sweet as that child.”

  “Mum! I was just as adorable at her age!”

  “Actually,” she mused, “you were. What in all Hells happened?”

  He grinned and betook himself downstairs, intending to take breakfast up to his wife. They’d spent
the night in separate rooms so she could recover from the drive. Only two more nights with her, he reminded himself, before several long months of separation. And this time, he thought with a wince, he really would have to behave himself. Month after month of celibacy … it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The spring sojourn in Lilyleaf came about because Mieka had been a very, very, very bad boy. From last year’s Royal Circuit he had brought home toys for Jindra, a beautiful fur capelet for his mother-in-law, and, among other things, a case of the pox for his wife. Auntie Brishen had been applied to when his own affliction manifested itself most unpleasantly during Touchstone’s giggings at Castle Biding. The cure had come by special courier (with a hefty bill and an admonition to keep his pants buttoned), and he’d thought he was over it by the time he got home. That he wasn’t had become clear that autumn in ways equally unpleasant for his wife. Again Auntie Brishen was consulted, and again she had provided (for an even heftier fee, and with her solemn promise to tell his mother if it ever happened again).

  Having broken one of his own rules—that it mattered for naught what a man did when he was away from his wife so long as he didn’t bring home anything nasty—he made up for it the only way he knew how. They’d never had a real wedding trip, so in early spring when the roads were passable, he borrowed Lord Kearney Fairwalk’s second-best carriage (complete with groom to drive and look after the horses) and took his wife to Lilyleaf for a month of pampering. He did whatever she wanted and bought her anything she fancied. He accompanied her to shops and escorted her to public balls—and private ones, too, for once it was known that the most outrageous member of Touchstone was taking a holiday in Lilyleaf, the rich or titled or both were eager for the now-legendary diversions of Mieka’s presence. That he had a beautiful wife was almost consolation for the fact that he behaved himself perfectly. On mild days he took her for long drives in the countryside or partnered her at bowls on a green with only a few really muddy patches. He found something harmless and boring to do while she went to the baths. He didn’t drink more than a single ale or glass of wine each day. He left his thorn-roll at home. They stayed at Croodle’s inn, and every so often he caught a sardonic glint in her black eyes for the impeccable picture of sober husbandly virtue he presented. He had the feeling she knew the reason for it.