by Melanie Rawn
“Just another tick,” Rafe murmured to Mieka, and Cade turned to look at his fettler and glisker. “Not yet … they’re not quite there … ready … now!”
Everyone in the square gasped and cheered to see the wall of the Kiral Kellari come alive with dancing animals and soaring birds and leaping fish. A minute or two of this rioting movement and noise—Mieka was gripping each successive withie tightly, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead—and then, just as the King came round the corner of the central square and was on the street right in front of the building, all the creatures would stop and bow. Just exactly how Mieka planned to make a fish bow was something Cade had wisely not asked.
A further gasp and a few startled shrieks told him the moment had come. Perfect timing; he saw the King down below, half-rising from his seat in the carriage to gape at the display. The Queen, tiny beneath a towering crown of diamonds and sea green beryls, was madly clapping her plump little hands. Two carriages behind them, Miriuzca was pointing out the wonder to her son, laughing. Ashgar seemed not to notice what was going on at all.
And then the procession passed, and it was all over. Mieka tossed the last withie aside and ran both hands over his face, then looked up at Cade with a grin. Rafe, carefully letting the magic fade, turned at last from the window and gave a tired, satisfied sigh.
Master Warringheath was first up the stairs. He burst in, wreathed in smiles and calling for drinks all round—until he realized that this was a lawyer’s office, not a bar, at which point he abandoned the idea of refreshment in favor of expressing his ecstasies.
“Brilliant!” he cried. “Gorgeous! No one else will have anything like it! Not even the Shadowshapers will do so well!”
Jeska was close behind him, a more professional assessment evident in his broadsmile. “Absolutely perfect. Nary a hitch nor a twitch all the way to the roof.”
Behind Jeska were the lawyer, his family, everybody who worked in his office and their families, a random selection of admiring citizenry—all in their go-to-Chapel best—and, interestingly enough, Pirro Spangler and Thierin Knottinger of Black Lightning.
“It was wonderful, Miek,” said one glisker to the other. “I brought all my little brothers. However did you manage it?”
Cade watched a brief interior battle play out on Mieka’s expressive face. Pirro was a friend from student days, but he was also a member of much-loathed Black Lightning and he had once given Mieka some thorn that had had frightening effects. Triumph, however, had put Mieka in an expansive and forgiving mood. He smiled at Pirro and they discussed the execution of the display.
Cade turned his attention to Thierin. He expected some snide observation accompanied by one of Knottinger’s snaky smiles. But the man was all admiration that looked and sounded sincere. Cade accepted the praise with a nod and a few pleasantries, then asked if Black Lightning was ready for tonight—and before Thierin could reply, said, “You’ll have seen the new theater, of course.”
A blank expression was followed by a flash of anger, quickly smothered by a look of startled interest. “New theater?”
“At the Palace. The Princess’s surprise gift to His Majesty. Though I’m hoping there’s a page or a footman to show us where it is, because I’m not at all sure I could find it again!”
“A well-kept secret,” Thierin remarked. “Anything to notice about the construction?”
“Well, Mieka’s brothers did the building of it, so it’s structurally and acoustically excellent. Please excuse me, I ought to be helping pack up.”
It annoyed him that Knottinger followed him to where two glass baskets rested on chairs. Mieka was holding the velvet bag of withies, fingers toying with the tassled ties as he talked to Pirro. Cade noted that however much bluethorn Pirro was pricking, it certainly wasn’t doing anything for his figure. How he ever could have aspired to the kind of quick, limber dance that was Mieka’s way of glisking, Cade couldn’t imagine. He didn’t have the build for it to begin with, and quite frankly he looked as if he’d eaten his way through every town on the circuit.
“Well?” Thierin asked his glisker. “Did you get him to spill his secrets?”
Mieka crowed with laughter. “It’d take more than a few compliments! Are we ready to leave, Cade? Things to do before we head over to the Palace.”
Cade was pleased to note that whereas Pirro might have been forgiven, more or less, Mieka wasn’t falling on his neck and swearing undying friendship. He smiled down at his glisker and opened his mouth to reply.
“Oy!” Mieka exclaimed suddenly. “We’ll take care of those.”
Cade felt a snarl come to his lips as he saw Thierin run a finger round the lip of a glass basket. He damned near slapped the man’s hand away.
“Sorry. Such beautiful work. Blye Cindercliff, yeh? From before she married whichever of you Windthistles?” He looked up, dark eyes shining oddly. “Or did her father make them?”
“His hallmark is on them,” Cade lied. He picked up the basket and cradled it in his arms, the way he used to before he’d made the cushioning crates for them. Rafe was holding the other one as if it were his second child.
“Oh, of course. Of course. Well, see you over at the Palace!” Collecting Pirro with a glance, Thierin waved gaily and departed.
Master Warringheath’s raptures were marred by a slight frown as he watched them descend the stairs. “I cannot like that boy,” he muttered.
“You don’t mean to say that you actually tried?” asked Mieka, withies wrapped protectively to his chest.
“Huh! Very good, Master Windthistle, very good! No, I’ve had them at my place naught but the one night, and some of my customers complain of it, for it seems they’re very popular—but even though they were warned off, they performed that poisonous piece of theirs about the Lord and the Lady and their children.”
“We’ve seen it,” Cade said tersely. “And poisonous is exactly the word.”
“You don’t suppose they’ll do it at the Palace, do you? Plenty of folk there with other than pure blood in them.” His broad, amiable face screwed up with disgust.
Rafe shrugged a shoulder. “Who can say?”
“They really wouldn’t, would they?” Jeska asked on the way downstairs. “I mean, if it’s a splash they’re looking to make at Court, that play that could end up drowning them.”
“They performed it at Seekhaven,” Cade reminded him.
“But not tonight. Not before all the officials that will be there. The people who run the country and haven’t time or leisure to attend Trials.” He paused, frowning. “I know for a fact that the Lord High Magistrate is partly Gnome with Piksey and Elf in him as well. His wife must be the same sort of mix, because they had two sets of twins—that’s the Piksey—and one set had Elfen ears.” To Cade’s silent question, he replied, “Mum used to work for him, back before he was on the High Bench. He asked her one morning for the name of the man who’d kagged my ears, and she set down her polishing cloths, closed the door tight, and gave him a lecture on how dreadful it was, to do that to a tiny baby. She hadn’t any say in the matter, you see, when my grandsir was alive.”
“So the Lord High Magistrate’s children were spared a kagging?”
“Mum always said it didn’t compensate for not standing up to my grandsir when it was done to me, but at least there were two children in the world who’d grow up looking exactly as the Lord and the Lady intended, ears and all.”
“One official out of dozens won’t keep Black fucking Lightning from doing that play,” Mieka remarked glumly. “I wish we could muck about with them the way they did with us!”
“That was never really proved,” Cade reminded him. “But I know what you mean. And talking of that, if Thierin had kept his finger on that basket one more instant, I’d’ve mucked his face to a bloody pulp!”
“We’d best check it, and the withies,” Rafe said.
“Of course,” Mieka agreed. “You know the saying about not trusting anybody as far as you
can see ’em? Well, I was looking right at Pirro the whole time, and I still don’t trust him!”
As it turned out, Mieka had good cause. Cade found the rogue withie while he was priming magic into the lot for the night’s performance. Had Pirro thought that Cade wouldn’t be able to tell the feel of Blye’s work from this thing? It was a childish and ridiculous attempt to interfere with Touchstone, and it set Cade to wondering what had made Black Lightning so desperate as to try once again to mess with them.
He had the greatest satisfaction at the Palace that evening, in the antechamber being used as a tiring room before the performances, of handing the glass twig to Knottinger with a viciously sweet smile and the words, “Lost one of your withies, I think.”
“Oh, did we?” Thierin glanced at the withie, then snagged a glass of wine from a passing footman.
“You still use Splithook, don’t you? It’s his hallmark on the crimp. Take more care of your equipment, there’s a good lad.” He walked off to the corner where Vered and Rauel were holding their customary argument, and Romuald Needler was, as usual, trying to calm them down.
“Vered,” Cade said, interrupting Rauel without a by-your-leave, “I have to talk to you. Now.” To make sure of it, he took the man’s elbow and almost bodily hauled him off.
“Oy! Have a care to the jacket, mate!”
“Shut up and listen.” The room was small, which was bad, and packed with people, which was good: the chatter of so many players in stage clothes and servants in various liveries crushed into a confined space meant that nobody was really hearing anybody else. Cade leaned close to Vered’s face and said, “Drevan Wordturner works in Lord Piercehand’s library—you know him? Good. He told me to tell you two things. First, there’s a book in translation at the Archives that will tell you everything you need to know about a certain subject.” When black eyes lit with excitement, Cade shook his arm. “I said listen! Don’t go for it yourself. Find somebody you trust, who’s not directly connected to you, and have him look into it. The Archduke knows what you’ve been researching. The archivists keep him informed. You’re a tregetour, write yourself a plot where you can get the information in a roundabout way without anyone being suspicious.”
Vered nodded, white-blond hair gleaming in the light of a candle-branch overhead. “And the other thing?”
He hated having to say it. The words went against everything he believed about Art and the artist’s right to create what needed creating. And just look at the trouble he’d caused by writing what he’d felt he had to write: Briuly Blackpath, wandering aimlessly about the Brightlands, nothing to him now but pointless songs…. “What you’re writing is too dangerous to write at all. It shouldn’t be finished, leave alone performed.”
As Cade had known it would, this caution served only to increase Vered’s desire to complete his second play about the Balaur Tsepesh. He’d promised Drevan that he’d deliver both messages, and he’d done so. But now he felt compelled to add something of his own, something Drevan had told him and had perhaps forgotten to warn him to keep secret.
“Vered … there’s one more thing.”
“That’s three.”
“This one’s from me.” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “One of the Knights was a Henick. The Archduke’s own family.”
Vered flinched like a startled horse. “For certes?”
“It’s why he doesn’t want anybody looking into—the subject.”
A look of gleeful cunning appeared on the dark face. “Much beholden for the information, Cade. Especially as now I know whose features to put on Rauel when he plays the Knight!”
Not a wary bone in his body, had Vered Goldbraider. Not a single instinct of self-preservation. They had much in common, the pair of them. But at least Vered would be forewarned—and that, too, was something they had in common, Cade reflected sourly, even if his own forewarnings came as Elsewhens. “He doesn’t look like a Knight of anything. He’s too fat, and he’s got heart trouble.”
Rather than laugh, Vered looked down, bit his lip, then said, “That’s something else about them, y’know. They have no heartbeat—because they have no hearts.”
Little as he knew of even basic anatomy, Cade was aware that this was impossible. “Anything living has to have a heart to pump blood.”
“Who said they were alive?” Vered stepped back and bumped into a wall. “Beholden, mate. Now it’s time to go let Rauel win, like I intended all along.” With a wink, he added, “He’d be so disappointed if I didn’t fight!”
Cade watched him thread his way through the crowd to his partner. Yes, Vered would fight. But against the Archduke, how could he win?
Cade had won. He had told Cyed Henick what to do, and what not to do, and been … obeyed wasn’t the word for it, and it didn’t really feel like winning, but he reckoned that it was probably as close as he’d ever get.
And anyway, he told himself, what was the risk to the Shadowshapers if Vered finished his play and the Archduke didn’t like it? Drevan Wordturner, whose life was under the man’s direct control, was a coward, a quailer, and a quakebuttock. Pleased with the alliteration, he grinned and sipped a glass of bubbly white wine.
Romuald Needler was coming towards Cade, looking both grateful and worried. “Beholden to you for separating them. It’s been a nervous few weeks, I can tell you.”
“Things not going well out on their own?”
“Oh, no, not that. It’s been most gratifying. And I’ve been there to keep them from each other’s throats.” He shook his head. “Ludicrous, that two people who care for each other that much can fight like wyvern and dragon over a sheep carcass. One day, one or the other of them will say something unforgivable, though, and I won’t be there to settle them down, and I don’t know what will happen after.”
“They work together too well to let things get that far,” Cade soothed. “I’ve been hearing all afternoon and evening about the show on the bridge. Through a bower of trees, was it? All of them dripping jewels and filled with songbirds?”
“And bells. Tuned precisely by Alaen Blackpath—and I don’t like to think about what a time Sakary had keeping him sober long enough to do it.” Needler looked more depressed than ever. After a moment, though, he seemed to rouse himself to a cheerier reply. “While everyone applauded, the King was heard to say to the Queen that he hadn’t known people liked him so much.” He looked up as a single warning note sounded from a horn. “That’s the start. You’ll be following Black Lightning, and the Shadowshapers will follow you.” A smile tried to work free of his gloom. “It’s not a position they relish, having come so very close to it at the last Trials.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know? A few scant points separated you. Next year I feel it might well have been a tie, or perhaps you would have won outright. I’m not saying that simply because there won’t be any more Trials performances for them, and my surmise can’t be tested. It’s the truth.”
“Beholden,” Cade managed.
Needler glanced out over the packed tiring room—easy enough for him, topping every man there, even Cade, by a head. “There’s Chattim waving at me. I’d best go. Luck to Touchstone.”
“And to the Shadowshapers.”
Black Lightning performed their “Open Things” or whatever it was called, with the naughty bits excised. No opening a virgin girl’s legs, for instance. Cade hadn’t really thought they’d have the balls to do “The Lost Ones.” He’d heard they were working on something new, something to do with a staircase, with every step an advancement towards knowledge and righteousness. He presumed it involved kicking Gnomes and Trolls and Pikseys and Goblins out of the way during the climb.
Touchstone worked free of the tiring room and into a side hall, dodging a sudden influx of servants bearing fresh food and drinks, then stepped onto the stage behind the curtains to set up while Black Lightning was still packing their gear. Cade helped Mieka with the glass baskets and frames, then lugged his lectern to
its proper place onstage. They would do the good old “Dragon” tonight because the flunky who’d brought the formal command, sealed and beribboned like a Trials invitation, had said flat-out that the King wanted to see it. By now they could have done it in their sleep.
It went well. Mieka’s dragon wasn’t the biggest he’d ever done, but it was big enough in the high-ceilinged theater, snarling and growling and breathing fire. Rafe was the master of subtlety, as ever. Jeska’s Prince, wearing the Royal colors tonight, was elegantly weary as he said, “Let them sing not that I was mindlessly brave, but that I was frightened and overcame my fear. That is the legacy I leave them, the same, I see now, that my fathers left to me. The overcoming is what fashions a man into a prince, and a prince into a king.” And because he was playing to a king, he paused at this point and bowed deeply to the man in the center of the front row.
When it was over, and the magic had faded, Mieka and Rafe shattered a couple of withies (well out of range of the audience). Touchstone met center stage to bow. Evidently it was the King’s favorite play; he actually got to his feet to applaud. Cade wondered idly what fears Meredan had had to overcome—a renewal of the war, perhaps, that his father had fought? Or maybe, he thought, maybe the peace after a brutal war presented difficulties all its own. A war was, after all, fairly direct, and with a sure ending: You won or you lost. But what to do after, even if you won? Politics and governance bored Cayden witless, but he began to think that there was something courageous that he’d never before considered in the management and preservation of something so delicate and complex as peace.
