by Melanie Rawn
{ He’d looked for Kearney in four of the shim taverns in Gallybanks, with no luck. Finally he tracked him down to a rather elegant establishment three streets off Amberwall Square. A well-dressed crowd danced on polished wooden flooring to the music of two lutes and a drum, and those who were not dancing draped themselves in attractive attitudes on dark blue velvet upholstery at dozens of little round black tables. Still more stood by the room-wide copper bar. All the men were definitely men, and so were all the ladies.
There was a difference, though, between these people and the costumes Mieka got himself up in, or the way Jezael and Tobalt and the others had worn their gowns and shawls that memorable night at the Downstreet. Cade looked around him, puzzled, and at last he realized: it had to do with sincerity. Mieka and the rest had worn women’s clothing as a joke. These men were in earnest.
Kearney, catching sight of him, flushed scarlet with mortification. His embarrassment amused Cade, who joined him at the bar and ordered a drink.
“I thought your tastes ran more to the intellectual, like Drevan Wordturner.”
Kearney mumbled and stammered.
“Or are there noteworthy scholars here amongst the embroidered codpieces and—” He squinted through the gloom. “—leather masks? Ought I to have worn one? Am I well-enough known to want to hide my face like that man over there in the corner?”
“No,” Kearney said incautiously. “He’s nobody famous. He just wants people to think he is.”
“Ah. I see.”
Low-voiced, Kearney asked, “You don’t mind? You’re not shocked?”
“Should I be?” Though in truth he was, a little bit. This annoyed him. Here he was, Master Tregetour for Touchstone, famous throughout Albeyn, leading the wild mad life of a traveling player, with excellent drink and prime thorn and girls aplenty at his fingertips, high living and not quite respectable … he realized that despite what Blye had told him, he was rather ordinary in some respects.
“Did you have some reason for seeking me out?” Kearney asked, gathering up the tattered shreds of his dignity.
Cade’s drink appeared on the beaten copper bar, and instantly half a dozen coins joined it. He glanced around to find four gentlemen and two shims clustering nearby, all of them eager to pay for his drink and his company. He cursed himself for blushing as deeply as Kearney had done, shook his head, and reached into his jacket pocket for coin.
“Much beholden,” he said to his admirers. “But—”
“He’s not available,” Kearney growled bluntly, all at once looking more threateningly Gnomish than Cade had ever seen him. “Be gone!”
Cade blushed anew as the implication provoked (variously) annoyance, regret, disgust, resentment, skepticism, and a resigned sigh. Somehow he managed a smile as he took Kearney’s arm and steered him towards a vacant table. When they were seated, he said, “I wouldn’t have come looking for you if it wasn’t urgent. I don’t care what you do in your private life, Kearney, truly I don’t. But there’s a problem with Derien’s school fees, and—”}
He barely had time to register the panic in Fairwalk’s eyes before the Elsewhen abruptly ended and he was looking at Mieka.
“There’s something about money,” he blurted. “My brother’s school hasn’t been paid—or won’t be paid, I’m not sure how far in the future this is—I went to Kearney to ask him about it, and … and I think there’s something wrong, Mieka.”
“Diddling the accounts? Let’s have Jeska go through all our finances when we get home.” The Elf was seated in a chair beside Cade’s bed, the thorn-roll open on his knees. He toyed with several of the packets, scowling. “That bilge about signatures being copied—that doesn’t listen quite rightly to me.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. And I want to know about Tregrefin Ilesko.”
Mieka finished preparing the glass thorn, warning, “This can be dodgy stuff.”
“Just get on with it.”
If Mieka was surprised, or possibly amused, by Cade’s eagerness to see more Elsewhens, even though he’d spent almost two years denying and rejecting them, he gave no sign of it. Cade, alert for the tiny pinprick, waited for the familiar warmth and then heat to spread up his arm and through his body. He closed his eyes and pictured Miriuzca’s shifty-faced little brother in his mind. He heard Minster chimes as if from very far away, unsure if the sound were part of the burgeoning Elsewhen or part of real life. Suddenly the Elsewhen was real life.
{ “But she told us it would work.”
“She told us, she told us,” the young man mimicked in a high singsong voice. He laid both hands flat on the tavern table before him, glancing once over his shoulder to the tall bearded man who could not have been more obviously an armed guard if he’d been dressed in chain mail and carrying his knives in both hands, rather than a plain shirt and trousers with a light cape of dark green silk concealing the blades. Returning his attention to the pair of robeless Good Brothers opposite him at the table, he spoke again, this time in his own voice, pitched low even though the tavern was nearly empty, and in very good Albeyni. “Whatever she told you, she was wrong. Haven’t you learned yet never to trust a woman? Look at my dear sister! Gone over to the enemy for the chance to become a queen! If you want to help the cause of the Lord and the Lady in this sinful land, you had best come up with something and someone else.”
“We wanted to use magic to destroy the place,” one of the Good Brothers said, rubbing mindlessly at the pale circle of skin at his wrist where the silver bracelet bespeaking him to the Lady had been removed for this encounter. “To show how wicked magic can be.”
The other one, taller and with a mouth too wide for his narrow face, contributed, “The girl stole the withie from Black Lightning’s glisker competently enough. Pity her father wasn’t so competent at bespelling it. However, what’s done is done, my lord, and if this is to succeed, the method must be chosen quickly. It isn’t long until the celebrations.”
The Tregrefin’s fingers slowly curled into fists. “I should think the method would be perfectly obvious.”
The pair of disguised Good Brothers traded looks, and the tall one said, “It’s not as if one can walk into a shop and order up half a hundredweight.”
Ilesko brought his clenched fists down onto the table. “Had it occurred to you that ten times half a hundredweight will be in Gallantrybanks to make the fireworks for King Meredan’s festivities?”
“But how will we—?”
“The how of it is your problem. And I assure you that you will solve it. The Lord and the Lady will inspire you to success.”
The edgy Good Brother abandoned rubbing his wrist and looked at his friend, light dawning in his dark eyes. “Isn’t Sister Audelon related to one of the apprentice Firemasters?”
“As I say,” Ilesko interrupted impatiently, “how you accomplish it is your concern. But accomplish this you must, for the sake of the Only Faith.”}
Cade came awake slowly, conscious of feet and legs, hand and arms, one by one. His eyes opened. Mieka sat waiting with a patience entirely foreign to him. Cade cleared his throat a couple of times, then smiled ruefully.
“I can tell you one thing right off,” he said. “Tregrefin Ilesko speaks Albeyni much better than he let on at lunching.”
“Then he’s behind it.” Mieka nodded his satisfaction.
“The explosion at the Keeps—using black powder, by the way—and what happened at the Gallery.”
Instantly he knew that telling Mieka that last part had been a mistake. Fury flared in those eyes, turning them a bright blue-green that Cade had rarely seen before. “You mean that little shit is responsible for what happened to my brother? I’ll pull his guts out through his throat with my bare hands!”
“He’s got a couple of Good Brothers working with him—being Naughty Brothers, actually. All sorts of stuffabout the Only Faith, and the Lord and the Lady. On second thought, they weren’t anything more than Nominatives. The one kept
rubbing his wrist where his bracelet should’ve been. They can’t take them off after they’re fully accepted into a Minster. They’re sealed with magic, just like wedding jewelry. Neither of these men were wearing theirs, but they did have them, so I’d guess they were Bespoken Nominatives, one step away from being Good Brothers.” He knew he was babbling, but he was trying to distract Mieka from the vengeance glowing in those eyes. When the Elf met his gaze again, he knew that Mieka knew what he’d been about, and that whereas it hadn’t really worked, Mieka was allowing it to work.
“Could you recognize either of them again?”
“Probably not. But it was definitely the Tregrefin. They were talking about how they’d fucked up the explosion at the Gallery, that the magic hadn’t been worked right, and black powder like the kind used in fireworks was the only thing to use at the Keeps. And somebody called Sister Audelon has a cousin or something who’s an apprentice Firemaster.”
Mieka chewed his lip for a minute, then asked, “Do you know when the Elsewhen happened?”
“A little while before the big celebrations for King Meredan and Queen Roshien. I can’t be sure exactly when.”
“Well, by then we’ll have thought something up to stop them. Right now you have to sleep.”
Cade would have said that right now sleep was as far from him as the Vathis River, but, strangely enough, the mere mention of it set his eyelids drooping. Forcing them open, he looked suspiciously at Mieka, who snorted.
“Do you see me holding a withie?” he asked, spreading his arms wide. “I’m not doing anything, Quill. You are tired. Sleep sweet.”
* * *
Cayden woke early the next morning, tired but satisfied. How could he have been so foolish as to have rejected the Elsewhens for so long? Mieka had been right: They were part of what he was, and without them he was a fraction of who he had to be. Not even he was arrogant enough to think that there was a reason for them greater than himself, and if such a reason existed, he didn’t care. He felt real again. No, that wasn’t quite the right word. Lying there on his back, staring at the low beams of the ceiling, he searched for a way to describe it. And at last he had it.
He felt visible.
For almost two years he had done everything he was supposed to do and many things he shouldn’t have done. He had moved into his own lodgings, he had written or rewritten plays, he had primed withies and performed at Seekhaven and on the Royal Circuit and throughout Gallantrybanks, he had dined with friends and visited castles and shared lunchings with the Princess, he had bedded girls and forgotten their names (if he’d ever even known them). All those things had been real enough. Yet it was as if he had closed his eyes to almost everything he was doing, or—no, not closed his eyes but looked away, unwilling to watch. He knew that all these things were happening to him, and that they were real, and that they had consequences—the disaster of “Turn Aback” might have ruined Touchstone if he’d insisted on performing it over and over again, and he was more beholden than he could ever admit that Rafe, Jeska, and Mieka had flatly refused to keep on with it. Himself, he hadn’t been paying attention. If he’d heard the reactions of the audiences, he hadn’t really been listening. If he’d noticed confusion and boredom on their faces, he hadn’t really been seeing. And he certainly hadn’t been watching himself as he sulked for weeks after his partners laid down the law.
The only times he’d felt entirely present in his own life had been onstage. That was where his life meant something; that was what he had been born for. He had this in common with Mieka, that they both felt totally alive only when they were onstage. Theater demanded everything of them, all their resources of mind and magic, rigorous alertness and swift reactions. Cade was too much the professional not to give his all in performance—but his all had not been all of him during those two years of denying the Elsewhens. Seeing them again now, he was seeing himself, whole once more. Visible, not just to himself but also to those around him.
It was no wonder that Jeska and Rafe and Mieka hadn’t noticed the disappearance of the Elsewhens: walling himself off from that unique (as far as he knew) magic had set up a similar wall between him and them. They hadn’t been able to see him. Granted, he resented that none of them had really bothered to look very closely. They had their own lives to contend with, after all. But if they had looked, what would they have seen? Portions of Cade, not the entirety. He had presented more or less what they had come to expect. But that version of Cayden was a man whom not even he had wanted to see.
Derien was the only one who had looked close and hard, and had not liked what he saw. Cade swore to make it up to his brother. To Mistress Mirdley. To all the people he loved.
Derien, whose futures Cade had to go seeking, the way he had sought the Tregrefin Ilesko.
“Hungry?”
He was so startled that he sat halfway up in bed before he realized that it was just Mieka with a tray of tea and toast and scuffled eggs. He plumped pillows behind his back and drew his knees up, watching as Mieka stepped up onto the bed and sank down cross-legged, the tray between them atop the counterpane.
While they ate, the Elf chattered away in his usual fashion—about the chilly wind off the sea that was spoiling New Halt’s summer, and the nice welcoming note sent by the ladies of what Rafe called the Needles and Nosebags Society for whom they would play a private gigging tomorrow afternoon, and which of their many coordinated but not identical outfits Touchstone would wear onstage tonight. Listening, it seemed to Cade that he was seeing Mieka for the first time in a long time. That irresistible grin, full of mischief; that tumble of shaggy black hair; those quick, clever hands; those eyes, brown and green and blue with an elusive glint of gold sparkling when he laughed. All these things were familiar, and unchanged. Yet something had changed. Something was different. A certain tilt of the head, a sidelong glance, a quirk at the corner of the mouth—these combined with an expression in those eyes that wasn’t older, exactly, or more thoughtful, but … more aware.
“Finished?” Mieka asked.
“Umm—yeh. Are we in a hurry to go somewhere?”
“I thought for certain sure you’d want to walk out to the Chalk Dragon again. Last year you couldn’t find the Faerie Vale you keep saying has to be close by. Mayhap you could use Elfen eyes and Elfen ears to help.”
“It’s too far to walk.”
“I am not riding bitch again!”
Cade laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of asking. Maybe they have a little horse-cart we could hire.” He paused. “You really want to come with?”
Mieka shrugged and threw Cayden a shirt. “Got nothin’ else to do.”
Cade almost asked if he hadn’t noticed the barmaid’s giggling regard of last night, then recalled that with the letters had come a tightly wrapped package from Mieka’s wife: a new pair of trousers, dark blue with green and yellow interlocking patterns embroidered down each side seam. Evidently, Cade thought with a snide interior smile, she had decided to go right to the source of his infidelities. He got dressed, watching Mieka from the corner of his eye as the Elf preened in front of the mirror like a lady-in-waiting about to attend a Court ball, fussing with his hair, tightening his belt a notch. These past few years on the Royal Circuit, he picked up weight during the winter months at home that he lost during summers on the road. Cade didn’t know how much of that was due to the quantities of bluethorn he pricked, although he was well aware that his own clothing was getting looser. Not too many days before a nice bit of rest at Castle Eyot, he reminded himself. No performances, no worrying, no travel, nothing to do but sleep and eat and laze about in the warm summer sunshine.
Mieka had told Rafe and Jeska where they were bound. He had also done some asking, and heard about a farmer who came regularly in to New Halt to see the first show of any Royal Circuit. His lands were in the direction of the Chalk Dragon, and if he and Cade waited at a particular crossroads in midafternoon, they were more than likely to get a ride back to the city. They were just in time t
o catch the morning coach out of the Brindled Brach, an inn several streets over from their own, and jumped out when the driver obligingly halted the horses for about half a minute at that same crossroads. It was a long walk up into the hills, made longer by Mieka, who strayed now and then to pick daisies that he wove into a chain to drape about his shoulders, but finally they crested a rise and saw across a narrow valley the Chalk Dragon.
Cade had used up most of his breath in the climb. He stood in silence, staring at the gigantic creature drawn on the side of the hill, white outline against green, as if limned with strokes of a broad and heavy pen. This local point of interest wasn’t worth trying to see in winter, covered as it was with snow. But in summer, as he’d learned last year, it was magnificent. The wings spread from the crown of the hill almost to the row of hedges at the bottom, and the stark white lines of the body from nose to spiked tail reached at least three hundred feet across the hillside.
“Do they know who did this?” Mieka whispered. He had never seen it before, and it was one of those sights, like one’s first view of the Flood or the paintings in the Great Royal Minster, that demanded a hushed voice. Even the stream sparkling through the valley seemed quieted by awe.
“Not sure. It’s tremendously old, of course.”
“Fae, d’you think?”
“Could be. Some sources say they rode dragons, but how would you control one? Can you imagine trying to rein one in? And where would you put a saddle?”
“I’ll have to ask Tavier when we get home,” Mieka said, chuckling. “He’ll know. He knows everything about dragons.” He waded a few paces into the tall grass to pick more flowers. “And that remembers me, I promised Mum that for his Wintering present he can come to a Touchstone performance and we’ll do ‘Dragon’ for him.”
“A pleasure.” He watched the quick, clever fingers begin weaving more daisies: splitting the green stems, interlocking them into a continuous chain of yellow eyes and long white petals. “What in all Hells are you doing?”
He grinned and struck a pose. “I have proclaimed myself a Knight of the Most Excellent Elfen Order of the Daisy. If you’re very nice to me, I’ll invest you the same.”
