by Melanie Rawn
Mieka scorned the obvious punning question, merely raised his brows. Cayden acknowledged the restraint with an eye-roll.
Yazz had taken care of the horses—unhitched, provided with nosebags—and the wagon was neatly parked in the corner of an inn yard. A few questions asked of the stableboy—a dark, stumpy youth with Gnome written all over him but for the incongruity of Elfen ears—and they were heading up a side street that went from rough cobbles to plain packed dirt within twenty paces.
“Boggering,” Cade announced as they climbed a gentle rise towards a low building lacking any sign at all, “has something not even Lilyleaf can boast.”
“And that might be?” Jeska asked.
Their tregetour grinned broadly. “Mud.”
“Mud?” Mieka frankly stared at Cade. “You want to spend the afternoon looking at mud?”
“Not looking at it, you quat. Bathing in it.”
“Bathe. In mud.” Rafe sighed mournfully. “Tragic, it is, seeing a fine brain go all aflunters.”
“No, really,” Cade told him. “The waters at Lilyleaf are supposed to be healthful, right? Minerals and suchlike.”
“Yes, but one bathes in them and drinks them. I do hope you’re not suggesting—”
“Try not to be a bigger fool than the Lord and the Lady made you. There’s a whole chapter in a book my grandsire bequeathed me—”
Mieka looked over his shoulder at Rafe. “You’ve known him since childhood, right? Well, then, it’s all your fault. You should never have let him learn how to read.”
Cade decided to ignore them for the rest of the walk in favor of searching his pockets for appropriate coin. Once inside the building, its weathered wooden door clicking shut behind them, Mieka blinked to see a rather good painting of a curvaceous young lady clad in nothing but a scanty green towel and her own long black hair, laughing as she dipped a dainty toe into what looked like a bog of bluish dung.
And damned if what looked to be the original of the painting didn’t walk out from behind an inner door—wearing, unfortunately, a perfectly respectable skirt and shirt with a colorful scarf draped around her shoulders. She smiled up at Cade.
“Been seein’ your wagon, I have, down to the town,” she said. “Touchstone! An honor it is for us, and no mistake!”
Mieka was astounded that she’d heard of them in this tiny village at the back end of nowhere. Cade played the gallant, introducing them and complimenting her on the facilities, of which he had read much, and so forth and so on through the paying of the fee and the distribution of towels and the entry into a side room where the vat of the painting, set deep into the wooden floor, bubbled and steamed. A wary, experimental sniff told Mieka that the mud smelled of herbs he couldn’t identify, with a mildly metallic tang.
“I don’t know why this place isn’t more popular,” Cade was saying after the girl left and they were exchanging their clothes for towels. “Look at Lilyleaf.”
“In Lilyleaf, you end up clean,” Rafe pointed out. “That’s the whole purpose of a bath.”
“Oh, but we’ll be getting clean, too,” Cade told him. “There’s oil you slather on before the mud bath, and that way it all washes off. You saw how beautiful that girl’s skin is. The locals come here after work. And think how warm it must be in winter, instead of washing in a barely heated tub! But I guess this place is just too remote to become fashionable.”
Rafe had selected the oils, with the girl’s assistance. After generous application, Touchstone—renowned throughout Albeyn, esteemed by the Princess, revered by all, and cooped up in their wagon for days on end—shed half their years along with their clothes and promptly engaged in a mud fight. It started when Mieka plopped a double handful of the stuff on Cade’s head, and ended quite some time later with what seemed like half the contents of the vat on them, on the walls, on the floor, and even on the ceiling.
Submersed to their necks in the vat, they relaxed and agreed that this had been a wonderful idea. Mieka wriggled deeper, then packed a pound or so of mud on his face, closing his eyes to enjoy the tingling sensation all over his body. The mud was surprisingly soothing to the thornpricks inside his elbows. All he lacked was a nice flagon of ale, or mayhap a pricking of some interesting sort of thorn, to make him perfectly happy.
He didn’t know how long it was before Rafe, seated beside him in the vat, moved suddenly and violently. Mieka opened his eyes to find that Cade, opposite them, had slid to his chin in the mud and looked to be sliding deeper. Rafe got a slippery grip on his shoulders and pulled him upright again, but said nothing. Mieka knew why. The large gray eyes had gone blank and blind, the way they always did during an Elsewhen.
The three of them waited it out. Eventually he shivered slightly, looked around, and realized what had just happened. But instead of shrugging it off and refusing to tell, the way he’d done before, he drew a breath and said, “This was a nasty one.”
“Are all of us safe?” Jeska demanded. “Us and ours?”
Cade nodded, and Jeska relaxed. “It was just me—no, nothing happened to me, I was just there to see it.”
He told them of sitting with the Princess in a river garden at the North Keep, her favorite of the two, drinking tea and nibbling on cakes. Then there was an explosion, and fire and flying glass and smoke, and the grind and shatter of tumbling stones. Not a hundred feet away from them, the Keep began slowly to collapse. He grabbed the Princess and carried her bodily down the riverwalk towards safety.
“There were people everywhere, some of them screaming, some of them bleeding, guards running all over the place, boatmen coming in to shore to help. I carried her along, and there was a little cottage for the man who takes care of the Royal barge or whatever. Her brother was standing nearby, with the oddest look on his face as he watched the North Keep fall—as if he was surprised, but—I don’t know, a sort of gratified surprise, as if he hadn’t expected things to turn out that well.”
Mieka chewed his lip for a moment, then asked, “You didn’t get anything when we had lunching with them at Seekhaven, did you? Looking at him didn’t trigger an Elsewhen?”
Cade looked startled. “When … when you were cutting up that cake—you remember, the one shaped like the Keeps, there was a twinge—No,” he said, interrupting himself, “it’s not possible. He wouldn’t dare. Not his sister’s own kingdom!”
“Hers, not his,” Rafe growled. “I didn’t like that little ferret the instant I clapped eyes on him.”
“But why would he—?” Jeska slapped the surface of the mud bath. “You remember all that shit he spewed about religion? They don’t much like us over on the Continent, you know. We scare them, with our magic.” Then, eyeing Cade narrowly: “How much did this explosion at the Keep remind you of what happened at the Gallery?”
Cade didn’t answer. The girl had returned, ushering three gray-haired ladies (who admittedly had perfect complexions, not a wrinkle on their faces) through to another vat in the adjoining room. By the time they had bowed and smiled their way past, and the door had shut behind them, Mieka was shaking his head. The mud clinging to his long, shaggy hair annoyed him.
“That was done with magic,” he said, low-voiced. “A withie. We found the crimp end, remember? And anyway, if the little git wanted to blow something up in the name of religion, why not one of the Minsters?”
The girl came back and gestured that it was time for them to be moving on to the other room. “Elsewise it’s mortared you’ll be, and chipped at with a chisel!”
They obliged her with a laugh, and extricated themselves from the thick, sucking mud. They’d left on their underdrawers for modesty’s sake—the girl’s, not their own—and followed her into a large warm room paneled in fragrant wood. She indicated that they were to stand in the middle, then hauled away at a wheel over in the corner—and suddenly they were standing under a veritable waterfall, as if they’d been fools enough to swim underneath the Plume.
But for some reason, the mud didn’t wash off Mieka the way it did the
other three. It caked all over his face and most of his body. He stood beneath the deluge twice as long as the others. He scrubbed, he scraped, he picked.
The girl began to frown. “Of the oils, which did you use?”
“I don’t know! It smelled nice.” He pried a dollop of mud off his arm, and yelped as hair came off with it. “A green bottle, I think.”
And then he looked over at Rafe, who had handed him the green bottle of oil and helped to spread it down his back. Rafe, for whom he’d performed the same service, wincing a little at the thin scars of a willow switch used on him by a cruel teacher in littleschool, against whom he’d had his vengeance. Rafe, who was thoughtfully stroking his thick, luxuriant beard.
“You!” he bellowed. “This is your fault!”
“Mine?” But the blue-gray eyes were dancing and he could barely keep his lips from twitching.
“Green?” The girl shook her head. “That is for after.”
Cade and Jeska were trying to look sympathetic as Mieka stood there, pummeled by the waterfall, sopped as a clumsy puppy, and still bedecked in bluish mud. But when Rafe said, “Oh, was it? Sorry, Mieka,” his sincerity was so overplayed that they doubled up in laughter.
They weren’t laughing when the girl began stripping off her clothes, right down to a pair of short pink pants and a loosely laced corset that barely contained her breasts. She tied back her long black hair, kicked off her shoes, and joined Mieka under the cascade. Together they spent many long minutes working mud off him, and when most of it was gone, she stood back and eyed him.
“Luck it was, that you kept on your smallclothing.”
Mieka, who had been congratulating himself (between moans of pain as mud and hair and even some skin came loose) on all the attention, felt himself turn pale at the thought of having to—having to—oh, he was going to murder Rafcadion Threadchaser.
At length the water was turned off and she led him to a private room, where she smoothed the green oil all over him while the other three had to fend for themselves. Mieka would have enjoyed it more if it all hadn’t stung so much.
Three days later, as the wagon rolled the last few miles to New Halt, Yazz was still chuckling, Rafe was still grinning, and Cade and Jeska were still picking odd bits of dried mud off Mieka, like plaster from a decaying wall.
They were also still discussing Cade’s Elsewhen.
Mieka had his own thoughts about that, keeping them to himself until the wagon had been secured and the horses stabled, and Touchstone was upstairs at their usual inn at New Halt. He shared with Cade, as always, and when they had organized their shaving gear and stage clothes, he brought out his thorn-roll and tossed it onto his bed. Cade looked round from hanging up the shirt he would wear for tomorrow’s performance.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mieka said, “about that time you saw me with the diamond earring. Remember? If you think about what you want to see just as you start feeling the thorn—and I’ll be here the whole time, I won’t let you—” He shut his teeth over the rest of it. He’d been about to say “I won’t let you get too lost, I’ll always come find you,” but that brought up the memory of Cade sneering, “How do you like what you’ve found?”
Cade had the decency to remember it, as well, and to look embarrassed. He said nothing about it, replying only, “But it wasn’t a real Elsewhen. I don’t think so, anyways. It could have been just the thorn.”
“How can you tell the difference?” Mieka asked shrewdly.
Cade opened his mouth, shut it, and scowled.
“Do you want to try? I’ve got some. Auntie Brishen was thorough, as usual.”
“Maybe tomorrow night.”
“We’ve shows every night here but this one. You’ll be too tired.” He held up one hand. “I know what you’re about to say, but after the bluethorn you’ll probably have tomorrow night, you won’t want to try anything else. And you know you hardly ever react the way everyone else does, whichever thorn you use.”
Cade pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Mieka….”
“C’mon, Quill.” He risked saying, “I’ll be here.”
“All right, then,” Cade conceded. “Tonight.”
13
Yazz joined them at dinner downstairs, giving his customary report about the health of the horses and the state of the wagon. Except for a loose strut in the retractable steps, everything was fine. Repairs would be the work of a morning, after which he’d be free to do as he liked until it came time to leave New Halt for Castle Eyot and three days of rest.
Cade wondered sometimes whether or not Yazz got bored, sitting around waiting with nothing much to do but tend the wagon and horses. Or did he find other things to do? Visiting friends and relatives happened quite seldom. He’d never stuck Cade as a great reader. He drank, of course, but despite Mieka’s frequent efforts to prove the opposite, it really wasn’t possible to spend all one’s time sloshing back whiskey or wine or ale. Yazz seemed perfectly happy in his duties and life on the road, and if anyone in any of the towns they passed through or the cities they lingered in had a problem with Giants, Cade never knew about it. Which was only logical, of course. It was easy to have a prejudice against Elves or Wizards or Goblins or Gnomes. They were all Human-sized or smaller. Even so, Cade had the feeling that even if someone directed insults at Yazz, he’d only shrug and look pityingly at the offender. Such intolerance was entirely beneath Yazz’s notice.
Except when it came to Mieka. When they’d returned from their little jaunt to Prickspur’s, once they’d told their tale and received Jeska’s and Rafe’s congratulations, Yazz chided Mieka using more words than Cade had ever heard him utter at one time. The gist of it was that Mieka was an idiot; he should have taken Yazz with him; Cade, Wizard or not, was no protection; what would Yazz have said to his wife and his mother and his father, leave alone to Cade’s parents and brother and Mistress Mirdley, if anything had happened?
Mieka took all this in a submissive silence that startled Cade almost as much as the scold. Later, once the wagon was on the move again, Mieka had said, “You’d think I was still eight years old, and he’d just caught me stowing away on the whiskey wagon halfway to Auntie Brishen’s. Of course, it was halfway to Auntie Brishen’s, so maybe having taken me all that way without noticing was what made him angry.” After a moment’s thought and a stifled chuckle, he added, “Y’know, of all those people he mentioned just now, I think Mistress Mirdley scares him the most!”
Sitting opposite Yazz at the dinner table, Cade wondered idly what the Giant actually thought about all this. He liked to watch them perform, but surely he was bored beyond tears with their folio by now. Cade tried to think of all the others he knew with Giant blood—a very short list—and realized that none of them mixed very much with the rest of Albeyni society. They kept to their homes in the hills and mountains. Every so often they appeared in Gallybanks for purposes of trade or amusement, or to petition the King for one thing or another. But ever since the end of the Archduke’s War, they had mostly stayed put. It might very well be that Yazz had been born with greater curiosity than most Giants, and was with Touchstone purely for the constant change of scenery.
The innkeeper, whom they knew by now on this, their fourth Royal Circuit, had waited until they were bathed, rested, fed, and watered before presenting them with the letters that had arrived over the last few days. The most important was the one from Lord Kearney Fairwalk to Mieka. The Elf read the relevant portion aloud, a frown on his face.
I am most dreadfully sorry about the difficulty your sister encountered at the Emberward Bank. This past winter I directed that no money should be paid out to anyone without my own written permission, and further that all tradesmen’s bills be sent to me for settlement. This was done to protect Touchstone, for, in conversation with Romuald Needler, I learned that several times persons unknown have attempted to draw on the Shadowshapers’ various accounts using forged signatures. Unhappily, this custom of signing placards, while excellent advertisin
g and doubtless delightful for admirers, has produced hundreds of copies of their signatures, and now, of course, of yours. I have satisfied myself that no unauthorized persons have been able to steal from you in this manner, but it seemed prudent to take precautions. Please know that I have apologized to your sister and spoken to the Bank, where her future requests will be promptly honored.
Mieka glanced round the table. “Well?”
“It never even occurred to me,” Cade admitted. “We’re lucky he had that talk with Rommy Needler.”
Jeska’s frown had started out deeper than Mieka’s and stayed that way. “I’m thinking that this might be the reason my accounts don’t tally every so often. But I’m also wondering why he didn’t tell us all this before.”
“With all the other things he has to do for us?” Cade asked. “He probably just left it to one of his clerks and forgot about it. Pass the chicken.”
That night, upstairs in their room, he donned his nightshirt and got into bed, relaxing back with a sigh into the soft mattress. He was lying on more than forty pounds of feathers, grateful that it wasn’t yet high summer, when the feathers would begin to stink. In his career thus far, he’d slept on mattresses filled with everything from down to wool to sea moss to sawdust, and more blankets-over-bare-straw than he cared to recall. All of these were heaven to bedbugs, fleas, mice, rats, and moths, but the herbs Mistress Mirdley packed into his clothes kept him safe. At this inn, one of the finest in New Halt, he doubted there’d be so much as a wayward spider to scurry off once it got a sniff of protective herbs. Did spiders have noses? He laughed softly to himself at the absurd direction of his thoughts, knowing it covered apprehension. It had been a long time since he’d tried this particular thorn.
Schooling his brain to consideration of what little he’d seen of the explosion at the Keep, he waited for Mieka to prepare the thorn. His brain, however, did not seem disposed to take the lesson, and before Mieka had even touched his arm, an Elsewhen came.
