Window Wall

by Melanie Rawn

  Cade was over by the drinks table, and standing beside him was someone whose name Mieka was sure had not been on the guest list: Lady Megueris Mindrising. Cade was describing to her the various wines, beers, cordials, brandies, and Brishen Staindrop’s whiskey—the only whiskey ever served at a Windthistle party.

  “You seem terribly well informed about liquor,” Megs said mildly.

  “I worked for a while at a wine shop.”

  “And,” Mieka said at his shoulder, “has been devotedly adding to his knowledge ever since. Welcome, my Lady!”

  “Beholden to you, and especially to your mother for so kindly allowing me to intrude,” she replied smoothly.

  “Is there news from the Palace?” He reckoned it was just as well to be direct about things.

  “Nothing we haven’t already heard,” Cade said. He reached up to brush a lock of black hair from Jindra’s cheek. “How are you today, Jinnie?”

  “Who is her?”

  “This is Lady Megs. And this is Mistress Jindra Windthistle.”

  Megs gave the child a short curtsy, which made her giggle. “Honored to meet you. Do you like the party?”

  “Mine is better. Granfa says a pony next time!”

  “He does, does he?” Mieka craned his neck around, trying to look into his daughter’s face. She was smiling sunnily—an expression he immediately found suspect, knowing what it meant when he wore it.

  “Don’t tell me,” Cade said, amused, “that she’s going to throw family tradition to the winds and learn how to ride?” To Megs: “There’s not a Windthistle born, as far as I can tell, who can keep his hind end in a saddle for more than two minutes.”

  Mieka gave an elaborate shudder, which caused Jindra to yelp and grasp his hair for balance. He yelped in his turn. “Off, you pesky pest! Let go of me!”

  Cade lifted her off Mieka’s shoulders and settled her on one hip. “I want an ice,” he announced. “How about you? What sort shall we have? Lemon or cherry? How about both together?” They departed, merrily debating the merits of each.

  “I really didn’t mean to invade your party,” Megs told Mieka. “The Princess asked me to come by and tell you, first, that she’s very grateful for this afternoon, and second, she hopes it didn’t tire you too much for tomorrow evening.”

  “Not a thing to be worrying about,” Mieka assured her.

  “Not when there’s enough thorn?” she asked pointedly.

  He shrugged and smiled.

  “Third,” Megs went on, “except it’s really first, I suppose, because it’s my personal reason for coming here—” Her green eyes looked anywhere but at him. “—I’ve only just heard that you’re … embarrassed for funds. Cade already told me no. But I do wish you’d persuade him otherwise, and let me help. My father always says what’s the use of money if you don’t use it to help your friends? I like to think we’re friends. Won’t you let me—?”

  “Cade speaks for us all,” Mieka said with no small regret. Indebtedness to the Archduke was one thing; Megs really was a friend.

  “Well, if you change his mind …” She sighed. “There is a third from Princess Miriuzca. Before her brother left—” A raised brow asked; he answered with a slight grimace to tell her that, yes, they knew all about the Tregrefin. “Anyway, he said that she ought to have a care, because not everyone in the Kingdom was so adoring as she would like to think. When pressed, he told her he’d heard that disruption of the celebrations was possible. He wouldn’t say by whom, only that he’d heard rumors. But I think we can all guess where he heard such things, considering some of the company he kept whilst he was here.”

  “Rotten little cullion, wasn’t he?” Mieka remarked. “I don’t think she has anything to worry about. Princess Iamina and the Archduchess will be in the procession, and they’re both known to sympathize with … certain people. Nobody’d dare harm them.”

  “That’s what I told her. But she wanted to warn you, all the same. They especially detest theater, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.” He made his voice a high-pitched whine. “One of those filthy, disgusting plays will fill a theater faster than the Consecreations can fill High Chapel! Shocking! Simply shocking!”

  The smile didn’t reach her worried eyes. “Do you know there are people demanding that all the theaters, new and old, and any tavern that presents plays should be closed?”

  He waved that away negligently. “There’ve always been people like that. Plays are disgusting, people who go to see plays are even more disgusting, and as for the players—! Misfits! Vagrants! Corruptors of public morals! Bores me witless, frankly, especially when you consider that theater got its start acting out stories from the Consecreations.”

  “Did Cayden tell you that?” She smiled again, and this time it was genuine.

  Why was it that people always assumed that anything he knew, he’d learned from Cayden? It really was quite annoying. “My glisking master. Couldn’t lace up his own boots without tying knots in his fingers, but he was fantastic if he had a withie in his hand. He droned on about theater history so much that I couldn’t help but remember some of it.”

  “Why,” she wanted to know, “would anyone think that ‘Bewilderland’ could corrupt anybody? I thought it was charming. The children all loved it. And it’s something that parents can enjoy with their children, and surely that’s to be encouraged.”

  “His Noble Tregrefin-ness would probably say that the reason the animals got their voices all switched around was because of the magic of an evil Wizard.”

  Megs nodded slowly. “But, you know, there’s something going on inside that play—something other than the obvious of having fun, I mean. What you’re saying to these children is that everybody has a particular thing to say and a voice to say it in. Further, that no one’s unique voice ought to be silenced.”

  Now she sounded like Cade. Meant for each other, he told himself with an interior grin. The magic-wielding tregetour and the girl with the fettling skills who wanted to be a Steward—and didn’t Stewards rein in any extremes of magic? Cade was an idiot not to see it.

  What he said aloud was, “I think Himself would’ve objected to that, too.”

  “Enjoyment of diversity isn’t one of his accomplishments,” Megs agreed. “But why does he have to hate us for it? And his superstitions—Mieka, you have no idea! It started when he got up in the morning, or so the servants said. Not just daily devotions to the Lord and the Lady, but all sorts of nonsensical things. Protection in this nasty land of magic.” Her nose wrinkled rather attractively. “For instance, he had to make sure he was wearing a bit of steel someplace—anything from a button on his trousers to the eyes for the shoelaces on his boots!”

  “Against Fae, yeh?” He kept his face blandly pleasant, thinking about a certain old iron coin. “It worked, didn’t it?” he teased.

  “Oh, very funny. All of us live together without wearing talismans to protect us from each other, or—or—spouting off little rhymes to scare off Pikseys or making gestures with our hands under the table to ward off a spell from an Elf.”

  “What’s the point of all that?” he asked. “I mean, we’re all here, aren’t we—Elves and Wizards and Goblins, and people with Fae ancestry, and Giants, and all the rest—what’s to be done except live with it?”

  “That’s what worries me,” she replied, her voice low and earnest. “What might be done. Albeyni folk aren’t superstitious, not just because it’s silly and wouldn’t have much effect anyway, but because we all know each other. We all live together. It’s people like the Tregrefin, who don’t know and can’t understand that we’re all the same when it gets right down to it—they think they have to make everybody the same in all things by having them believe exactly what everyone else believes, and—and guard themselves because they’re afraid of what’s unfamiliar, when if they’d only take a little time to understand, they wouldn’t have to be afraid!”

  There was more to her somewhat incoherent passion than mere disgust
at senseless superstitions. Mieka eyed her, noting that the flash of her eyes and the color in her cheeks made her quite appealing.

  As for those gestures and rhymes and so forth—there really were things that worked as protection against the Fae, and nobody knew that better than he, so it was only logical that there had to be things just as potent against every other sort of magical folk, or where had the superstitions come from?—as he became aware that he was getting rather incoherent himself and it was making his head ache and his nerves wriggle inside his skin, he put a smile onto his face and refused to think about any of it at all.

  And because it wasn’t his job to investigate other people’s passions—except when caused by and directed at him, in a bedroom far away from his wife—he said, “He could’ve done without all the iron and steel for the Fae, y’know. All it takes is a daisy.”

  Megs stared back at him for a moment herself, then laughed. “Oh, of course it does.”

  “No, really.”

  “Oh, I believe you.”

  She didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

  “To return to something we both know about,” she said, “I heard or read that the latest objection has to do with indecent attractions. The theater being a moral middens in the first place—” She laughed at his expression of outrage. “Well, look at all the naughty puns that the Mother Loosebuckle and Master Fondlewife plays depend on! And all the cross-dressing!”

  “But it’s all for a laugh!”

  “You know, I think that’s what I object to more than anything else. This new piety has a horrid effect on the sense of humor. To hear them tell it, if the girl onstage is really a man—”

  “—then a man attracted to the girl might really be attracted to the man playing her,” he finished. “Yeh, heard that one before.”

  “What’s worse, a spectator might be attracted both to the female character and the man beneath the magic, which is a double corruption. And now with women in the audience, is it the man playing the girl they’re attracted to, or the girl the man is playing? I wonder which they think more scandalous!”

  Mieka rolled his eyes. “Is there any limit to this? Personally, I think there’s something squirmy-slimy about people who’re so interested in other people’s bedroom lives. As for onstage, with all these attractions straying about, confusing everybody, the poor masquer is fu—the masquer can’t win for losing,” he amended hastily.

  She grinned. “Oh, I think you were right the first time. Girl or man, there’s always somebody in the audience who wants to fuck the masquer.”

  A sharply indrawn breath behind him made him turn. His wife stood there, wide-eyed with shock. “Uh,” Mieka said intelligently, “Lady Megs, this is my wife.”

  “Her Ladyship and I have met. I hope Your Ladyship is well?”

  They exchanged pleasantries. Iris-blue eyes met bottle-green eyes, and Mieka wanted to giggle when his wife linked her arm with his and leaned against his shoulder. In her sweetly smiling face was wariness that her husband was having such a good time with another girl, but also disbelief that this rather plain and badly-dressed woman (who used such dreadful words) could be any sort of competition whatever. Moreover, in Megs’s face—just as sweet and just as smiling—was full knowledge of this reassertion of possession and full knowledge that she was being condescended to because of the way she looked. Mieka scarcely knew which of them to look at; he had rarely seen anything so funny.

  “Mieka, dearest, Rafe and Crisiant are taking Bram home. Something about half a bowl of buttercream icing,” she confided to Megs, “meant to go fresh onto the cakes that ended up in him, the clever little imp!”

  Both women laughed. They were so friendly, so delighted with each other, so insincerely sincere—Mieka wished Jeska were around to make notes on some really good acting.

  26

  Happily for Touchstone, they were not part of the parade through Gallantrybanks. Neither would they be part of the cheering populace, not in the streets and certainly not at any of the three services of gratitude the Royals and nobles were due to take part in at three different Minsters. Touchstone had in fact been hired by Master Warringheath, owner of the Kiral Kellari, to craft a display that took up the whole exterior of his building on Amberwall Square. When the Royals and ministers and officials drove past, the magical scene was to animate itself into a spectacle worthy of Warringheath’s loyalty (and the money he was paying Touchstone). Other groups were putting up similar presentations all over the city, the most anticipated being the one that the Shadowshapers were doing that stretched from one bank of the Gally to the other across the main bridge, which this year had been named the Meredan Bridge in His Majesty’s honor. Cade was a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to see it, and perfectly thrilled that he wouldn’t have to go through even one of the long ceremonies before the Flame and the Fountain. Religion was leaving a bad taste in his mouth these days.

  He was just as glad to occupy himself with their display. He’d eventually been able to talk Master Warringheath (and Mieka) out of a dragon. Prince Roshlin and Princess Levenie would be riding in their parents’ carriage, and the day would be stressful enough for such young children without the sudden appearance of a fifty-foot-high dragon erupting from the wall of a building. This was not even considering the children who would be in the crowd, brought along so they could say in their dotage that they had waved to the King. No dragon, Cade kept saying, and eventually Master Warringheath (and Mieka) sighed and agreed.

  It was easy enough, after talking of children, for Jeska to suggest, with the finest appearance of spontaneity Cade had ever seen off a stage, that it would be fun for the little ones in the crowd to show all the animals from “Bewilderland” bowing to His Majesty. Mieka took up this idea with enthusiasm, for of course it meant he could include a pig. Rafe, pretending mild interest, remarked that nobody else would think of this sort of tribute: that every living thing in Albeyn was grateful for King Meredan’s rule. Master Warringheath thought that over and liked it, and thus here they were on the great day, withies primed to embellish the pastoral scene of grass and flowers, trees and river, broad sky and distant mountains, with a parade of animals to begin when the first carriage entered Amberwall Square.

  That this would be splendid advertisement for themselves was only a secondary consideration, of course.

  Despite what they were being paid, Cayden would much rather be doing this for the Downstreet, where Touchstone had got their start. But the procession would go nowhere near there. And Master Warringheath was paying very well for this salute to the King. Mayhap things would be so successful that he’d stop blaming Mieka (half seriously, half in jest) for the expense of having to repaint his walls yet again; women coming to performances really didn’t want to be greeted with a mural of other women stark naked. “All your fault!” he’d accused the Elf more than once, until Mieka had finally given an unanswerable reply: that the next time he saw Princess Miriuzca, he’d be sure to tell her so.

  There had been a slight hint of autumn in the air early this morning, warmed away by brilliant sunshine. On his way to the Kiral Kellari, Cade was amazed by the sight of Gallybanks dressed in every color of the rainbow. Hanging from windows on every street, even those where the King would not be passing, were printed congratulatory banners, bolts of bright cloth, luxurious carpets. Other windows were decorated with pasteboard shields of every size and description, glowingly painted with the symbols and devices of every noble family and every guild and every city and town in Albeyn. When the King drove by, the windows would be filled with people waving and cheering. Even now, standing in a second-floor window opposite the empty Kiral Kellari, with the basics of Touchstone’s magical mural already established on the wall across the square, he could hear the distant trumpets and drums of the procession. Soon the crowd would start making their own noise, and Touchstone would add to it, and the golden stones of Amberwall Square would tremble with jubilant uproar.

  Mieka tugged
at his sleeve. “I’ve had an idea.”

  “You know how I feel about your ideas.”

  “No, really. Listen, Quill. Why don’t we include people along with the animals?”

  Cade sighed. “I assume you’re not talking about fishermen, farmers, and farriers.”

  “Of course not. Wizards and Goblins and Elves and Trolls—it would be wonderful!”

  “It would be provocative. Princess Iamina and the Archduchess are riding in this procession, you know. And who can say, of all the Good Brothers and Good Sisters trailing along, which of them aren’t—?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “For myself? Not at all. But we said we’d do the animals from ‘Bewilderland,’ and that’s what we’re going to do. And don’t be thinking I’ll give you enough stray bits of magic to work the thing yourself,” he warned. “In fact, we’d best get ready. Hand me those withies.”

  Mieka sulked, then did as told. He was flushed with more than excitement; whitethorn or bluethorn, Cade couldn’t tell which and it didn’t matter anyway. Still, it was rather early in the day for Mieka, and they had a performance tonight at the new theater at the Palace. Cade wondered briefly if the Elf would require a second or mayhap a third pricking of thorn, and if he did, whether Cade himself would have to adjust the magic in the withies to account for all that surplus energy—and then the worry fled his mind as a bellowing noise announced the arrival of the procession.

  Mieka and Rafe were doing the work of this, once Cade had supplied magic in the withies. He looked across to the Kiral Kellari’s window, smiling to recall that once he’d stood there and wondered why all those girls were down in the square, eager to see the players even though, or perhaps because, they weren’t allowed to see a play. Today people were hanging off the streetlamps and packed ten and twelve deep along the streets and in the central square behind stiffly watchful King’s Guards. A score of trumpeters in tabards of sea green over brown trousers stepped smartly from the side street into the square, blasting away. Their instruments were no less bright than the gilding on the open carriages that followed. King Meredan and Queen Roshien, wearing golden crowns studded with twinkling gems, smiled and waved. Behind them rode the city dignitaries of Gallantrybanks: the Lord Mayor and his wife, the Lord Director of All Guilds and his wife. Next came Miriuzca and Ashgar, holding their children. Beside each carriage were boys dressed in the colors of every guild, connected by chains of flowers.