Window Wall

by Melanie Rawn

  “Talk to me. I’m scared, please talk to me!” When he listened to Cade’s voice, he didn’t hear the whispering and muttering inside his own head.

  Sighing, Cade settled them both against pillows, and Mieka huddled close. “I’ll remind you of this the next time you tell me I talk too much.”

  How could he be so calm? How could he make a joke out of this? Well, there wasn’t anything inside his head, was there, making him think such vile things about his own wife—

  “What do you want me to talk about? How I spent this afternoon? Drevan and I were in the library again, looking up some old books about theater. He swears he saw them a few months ago, but he hasn’t cataloged them yet and forgot exactly where he put them, so we had a merry old time of it, sneezing our way through stack after stack of paper and leather held together with dust and spiderwebs.”

  He paused, and Mieka, whose muscles had begun to relax, tensed again. “More,” he whispered. “Please, Quill. Just keep talking.”

  “All right. I was looking through a couple of books while Drevan was rummaging through a crate that he’d unpacked and then packed again for the Archduke. And for some reason, I don’t know why, I began wondering what my mother’s been up to these days, whether she sees anything of the Archduchess now that Her Grace has joined Princess Iamina in conspicuous displays of piety. She guested at Threne, of course, but I just can’t see her attending Chapel twice a day and all that. Then, and I really don’t understand this at all, I remembered that time you tried to magick her and I told you about the Hindering, how her magic was locked away. Do you remember how I explained it?”

  “Y-yes … I think so—but tell me again.”

  “Like being inside a room with a huge window looking out onto the world, only you can’t touch or smell or feel or hear anything of what’s happening out there. And that’s when I started thinking that it might make an interesting play—something about a boy who’s been locked inside that room, and he can see out but nobody can see in, because his parents are afraid of magic and there’s magic out in the real world but they want to protect him from it. Sort of like what we did with that Vaustas play at Seekhaven, remember? I thought, What would daily life be like for someone who’d made that bargain, or had that bargain made for him? It might make for some interesting magic, deliberately muffling the audience’s sensations. Anyway, I wondered how he’d get stuck inside the room, and I thought mayhap his parents had done it to him, and died before they could have the spell lifted—”

  “No,” Mieka heard himself say. “They knew they were about to die—they were sick—you could have it be the same thing that killed Blye’s father. That way, they’d have a reason to hate magic.”

  “That’s good. I like that.”

  “They’ve protected him all these years, but now they’re dying, and before they die, they have this spell done to him. To keep him safe.”

  “Excellent!” Cade hugged him briefly. “That works much better than what I’d thought of to begin with. Anyway, at first he’s content to watch but not really experience—but after a while he sees something that makes him wonder what it would be like to—oh, I don’t know, mayhap it rains outside and some people are annoyed at being caught in the wet, and some people turn their faces up to it and smile. He can’t even imagine what it might be like, but he grows more and more curious. Watching as someone bites into an apple, or—”

  “—or a street musician comes by but he can’t hear the music. We could have Alaen play something for us offstage for that.” Mieka had by now loosened his death grip on Cade’s shirt, and had snuggled comfortably against his side, breathing in Cade’s scent: Mistress Mirdley’s sage soap, clean sweat, ink and paper, a faint tang of cinnamon from afternoon tea. To Mieka, whatever Cade wore or drank or had washed in, he always smelled like magic. “There’s all kinds of things to be done with it. But how does he get out? Because he has to get out, Quill. Otherwise, what’s the point of the play?”

  “Well, I’m not terribly sure about that part of it. What do you think? Any ideas?”

  He built the images in his head, the way he did whenever Cade proposed a new play. The familiar practice of one part of his craft soothed him. “No matter how curious he is about life beyond that glass window, he knows he’s safe inside, right? And outside—there’s magic out there, that his parents always told him was wicked and dangerous.”

  “What could motivate him to break the window and go outside and start living life?”

  “‘This life, and none other,’” Mieka quoted softly, and Cade chuckled and hugged him again. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He yawned mightily. “You always do.”

  “Sleepy, are you? Glad to know I’m so fascinating.”

  “Shut up, Quill.”

  He burrowed closer. When Cade made a slight movement, as if to let him go and rise from the nest of pillows, Mieka held him in place with an arm across his chest. He subsided, and Mieka gave a long sigh of contentment, feeling sorry for that boy behind the window wall, looking out at people to whom he was invisible, who had to hide from the world to feel himself safe. All Mieka needed was Cade.

  And all Cade needed …

  Oh, of course. Why hadn’t he understood before? “That boy,” he mumbled. “He is like Vaustas. Books to hide in, not a room with a window.”

  “Hmm? Yes, I suppose he is. But we can’t use the same trick to end the play with, y’know.”

  “You’ll think of something,” he said again, nearly asleep. “’Cause they’re you, Quill.”

  From very far away, he heard Cayden’s voice. “Yes … I suppose they are. Get some rest, Mieka. I’m here.”

  16

  Visibly chastened, Mieka behaved himself perfectly for the remainder of their stay at Castle Eyot. It was perhaps fortunate for him, and for the rest of them, that they were there for only one more day. A quiet, sensible, unadventurous glisker might have been too much for Touchstone’s collective peace of mind. Still, it was a relief to Cade that Mieka confined himself to pursuits less risky than thorn: walking in the gardens and over the bridge to the village, catching up on his sleep, lolling in a hot bath for over an hour, joining the others to hear Cade’s new idea for a play: “Window Wall.” Lord Piercehand was seen at lunching and dinner, and twice took Mieka aside to suggest another foray into exotic thorn. The Elf was polite but firm in his refusals. Cade was proud of him.

  On their last night, Drevan Wordturner suggested a before-bed brandy up on the roof. Piercehand did not join them, but his most trusted ship captain did. Frolian Webstitch had come to Castle Eyot only because he’d had to track His Lordship down following the latter’s hasty departure from Gallantrybanks. There was business to discuss, and Captain Webstitch was annoyed at having to traipse all over the countryside during days he had much rather spend with his wife and family. So he was slightly less discreet than usual after two or three brandies.

  “I’d not say it,” he remarked as they sat under a moonless starry sky, “if Rafcadion here wasn’t Clan-kin. And it goes no farther than us, right?”

  “Sworn eight times,” Rafe agreed, as a good son of the Spider Clan ought. Cade rolled his eyes at him, and he grinned.

  The captain was satisfied. “Well, then. All these voyages His Lordship brags on—” Lowering his voice and leaning forward in his chair, he confided, “In twenty years, he’s never been farther than a cottage on an island beach just t’other side of Yzpaniole.”

  Drevan muffled giggles behind his hand. The others simply stared.

  “Oh, it’s true enough,” Webstitch went on. “We set him down with his personal servants, a goodly supply of whiskey, and a crate full of presents for the local whores. While we’re halfway round the world, dodging pirates and damned unfriendly locals, he’s lazing on velvet cushions in the sand.”

  “But how,” Jeska wanted to know, “does he account for all the things you collect? I mean, this castle is crammed with everything anybody could think of, and then some
!”

  “When we pick him up again, we captains have lists waiting for him. On the way home, he picks out about a dozen of the most interesting bits, finds out where and how they were found, and when we dock, he makes sure those crates are sent to his house at once so he can study them.” Webstitch held out his glass and Drevan refilled it. “Tell me, Master Wordturner, have you ever asked about a particular piece, and had him scrunch up his face as if he’s trying to remember on which of his voyages he found it?”

  “Several times. So that’s why he says what he says!” In a deep voice with an exaggerated highborn accent, he intoned, “‘Well, you know, my boy, it’s shocking, but I’ve been so many places and acquired so many nice things, it’s quite impossible to remember them all!’”

  Rafe snorted. “I always knew the nobility was a fraud—saving your presence, Cayden,” he added with a little bow in Cade’s direction. “But he seems to have diddled the whole country!”

  “No offense taken,” Cade told him, chuckling. “But that’s not the whole of it. You know the story about the origin of the name?”

  Mieka hunched his shoulders like a scolded puppy. “It’s painted on a door someplace. Heroic squire saves king’s life by taking an arrow through the hand. What’s the real story, Quill?”

  “The squire was one of the king’s drinking companions. One night he got very, very drunk and tried to juggle knives—one of which went right through his palm. He was so drunk, he didn’t even notice until the king started laughing and dubbed him Sir Rolon Piercehand.”

  Captain Webstitch gave a mighty guffaw. “That’s one to tell my crew! And afore anyone asks, none of them tattles on him, because he pays very well indeed.”

  “I thought it’d be something like that,” Rafe said. “Forgive my tastelessness, Drevan, but I assume you’re being paid plenty, too?”

  “I wish,” he replied, glum-faced. “I’m still working off the shame of how drunk I was the night of the wedding.”

  Cade remembered very well how Drevan had made a disgusting display of himself, and how frightened poor Miriuzca had been. But in a way he owed the man, for the incident had begun the friendship between the Princess and himself, and eventually all of Touchstone. Drevan, whose real ambition was to be a member of the Horse Guards, had certainly paid for his folly by now, immured with thousands of books here at Castle Eyot or at the Royal Archives or at the Archduke’s residence at Threne.

  Minster chimes across the river reminded them how late it was, and after a last few swallows of brandy, they all started down the stairs to their own bedchambers.

  Webstitch hung back a little, putting a hand on Cade’s arm. “A small word, if you please,” he said.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “You realize why His Lordship is here, and not in Gallybanks?”

  “Directing the pack-up of things for the new Gallery, I’d imagine.”

  “I suppose that would do as an excuse. But listen here, Master Silversun. In tracking His Lordship down, I found he’d spent a night at Threne before traveling at speed here to Eyot. In time to catch you here, I’m thinking.”

  Cade said mildly, “Noblemen pay visits to each other all the time.”

  “’Twasn’t just the usual, or so says my wife’s cousin, His Lordship’s Master of Horse. It seems the pair of them had long and private talk, and His Lordship came away with a locked case made of green leather, kept with him at all times on the way here. Had it tied close to his knee while in the saddle, and at his side while he slept.”

  “That sounds important,” was all Cade could think of to say.

  “That it does. And here’s another oddity as got mentioned to me yesternight by my good girl’s cousin, after word of your glisker’s misadventure. In the courtyard at Threne, the Archduke bade His Lordship farewell, and was heard to say Master Windthistle’s name. Not the names of his brothers, who are doing so much work on the Gallery, nor of his brother’s wife, the glasscrafter. ‘Mieka Windthistle’ was the name the Archduke spoke. His Lordship patted the case at his knee and smiled.”

  Cade wanted to cringe. Everyone in the castle and probably the village and ten miles beyond it must know what had happened to Mieka yesterday. On the other hand, if no one had gossiped about it, Captain Webstitch wouldn’t have been told about the locked case—all too obviously supplied with thorn meant for Mieka. Cade expressed his gratitude to the captain, and on their way downstairs said, “I do wonder, though, that he took the trouble to provide something that must be very expensive. The Archduke, I mean. Demon Teeth, it’s called. Isn’t it from somewhere quite far away?”

  Webstitch nearly lost his footing on the spiral stone stairs. “Is that what it was? By all the Gods in the Briny Deep, that lad’s lucky to be breathing!”

  “It’s like Dragon Tears, isn’t it? Only not dangerous to Elves.” Just stupid, easily bored Elves with overactive imaginations, he reflected sourly.

  “Who told you that? It’s dangerous to anybody and everybody. ’Tis not the first taste, nor the second, that binds a man. But by the third, he’ll sell his own wife and daughters to the nearest whorehouse for money to buy the fourth.”

  “Why would anybody want to prick that sort of thorn even a first time?”

  The answer was so close to what he’d just been thinking that he winced. “Because,” said Captain Webstitch, “not excluding bored young lordlings with more money than sense, stupidity is in my experience the commonest failing of any race—Human, Wizard, Elf, Goblin, Gnome, and all the rest, and any combination of any or all of them.”

  Cade lay awake half the night thinking about it. This was the second time someone connected to the Archduke had provided Mieka with treacherous thorn. The first had been Pirro Spangler of Black Lightning—and Mieka had pricked what Pirro had given him in this very castle. Cade struggled to recall whether the Archduke had already bought and paid for Black Lightning at the time, or whether they had simply been trying to impress him, then decided it didn’t matter. This time it was pretty clear. A locked case, with whatever was inside meant for Mieka Windthistle, and the grim results yesterday—yes, it added up.

  He spent quite a while silently cursing Mieka for being so reckless. The mad little Elf hadn’t the slightest acquaintance with anything resembling caution. But if he had, he wouldn’t be Mieka. Cade had concluded years ago that pushing him to change was an invariably doomed effort. All one could do was work him into a position where he could see for himself, the way Cade had done on the visit to Ginnel House. Left to himself, he might have kept his promise never to hit his wife again, but seeing those terrified, battered women and children at Ginnel House made certain of it.

  And that led him to what Mieka had said about his wife—thorned to the tips of his ears, of course, so it wasn’t entirely to be trusted—but could money and position have motivated her? Had she really been angling to become Prince Ashgar’s mistress? He could have named a dozen kings, princes, grand dukes, and other noblemen whose relationships with their official mistresses had furnished the stories for a dozen plays and twice that number of poems and songs. He just couldn’t see Mieka’s wife casting herself in a similar plotline. For one thing, she did truly love Mieka—

  —which hadn’t prevented her from groping Cade’s crotch at the races.

  Well, she wasn’t his problem, he told himself. Except that she was, because she was Mieka’s wife and Jindra’s mother. Leaving aside the havoc she might wreak on his glisker, Cade was aware of an odd anxiety whenever he thought about Jindra. She seemed happy and healthy, and in all respects was a darling. His unease was probably the aftermath of an Elsewhen, he told himself, accepting at last that he had been a rank fool and a craven coward to have purposely forgotten all of them.

  Of those Elsewhens, there remained what amounted almost to a compulsion to protect Jindra from her own parents. The Gods alone knew what her mother might have in mind, but at least this little episode at Castle Eyot had crossed off the list of Mieka�
��s possible stupidities a potential addiction to Demon Teeth. Not that there weren’t scores of other things he could prick into his arms, and scores more mistakes he could make.

  Someone had said something to him once, long ago, when he’d known Mieka less than two days. The wagon driver who’d taken them all back to Gallybanks … what had he said? “You’d do well to keep him, in spite of the trouble he’ll be to you.” Cade fell asleep cataloging all the separate and distinct sorts of trouble Mieka had caused. But when he met his partners downstairs for breakfast before climbing into the wagon for the drive to Bexmarket, one smile, one burst of laughter, one joke, and Cade realized yet again what he’d known for years now: that Touchstone would never have become Touchstone without their mad little Elf.

  And that was why the Archduke had chosen Mieka. Cade heard someone say in a memory, or a memory of an Elsewhen, he couldn’t be sure: “When Touchstone lost their Elf, they lost their soul.” Cade himself was their brain, thinking up the words. Jeska was their heart, giving voice and feeling to those words. As for Rafe—he was their conscience, ever watchful. And Mieka, dancing behind his glass baskets, weaving Cade’s magic with his own, giving everything of himself night after night—yes, Mieka was their soul.

  Towards morning he had dreamed that he was in the clock room at Castle Eyot. The hour struck on hundreds of clocks at once, ticking, whirring, thumping, chiming, whistling, tapping, ringing—like the pulse beats and the mocking laughter of spiteful beings that scorned all those persons, with magic or without it, who lived in the real world. This life, and none other—not the haughty hidden lives of the Fae, or the despised and shunned Gorgons or grinning bloodthirsty Redcaps or any of the malicious races who begrudged all others the freedom of the light. Cade had woken himself with his own voice—not that what he said made any sense. What he muttered, just as the sun rose, was, “The window is out of time.”

  Lounging in his hammock while the wagon rolled smartly towards Bexmarket, he wondered what his mind was trying to tell him about that dream and the new piece, the one about the boy trapped in the room with a window on one wall. What did clocks have to do with anything, other than telling and tolling the time? Was it a warning that he ought to hurry and write this new play? He knew he had interesting and mayhap even important things to say in it, but was there any reason he should rush to write it? Was he treating an honest dream, one that came while sleeping like the dreams other people had, the way he would have examined an Elsewhen?