by Melanie Rawn
He was still thinking about it as he carried nested glass baskets into the crowded little hallway leading to the tiring room. He smiled at the Shadowshapers as they went past, a bit tardy in setting up their own equipment. Mieka was just ahead of him, counting withies because he hadn’t had time when gathering them up onstage. All at once he stopped, and Cade bumped into him.
“What the fuck is this?” Mieka exclaimed, pulling a withie from the velvet pouch. “This isn’t one of ours, Quill—”
Cade set the crate on a side table, pushing aside a huge ceramic bowl of roses, and took the withie in his hand. No, not one of theirs—it was of a pale apple-green color Blye didn’t use. He squinted at the crimp end, but it was blank.
“It was Pirro, it had to be,” Mieka spat. “We were all together out there, them gathering their things and us setting up—stupid git! Can’t even keep track of his own withies! And twice with the same fucking trick!”
“This isn’t one of theirs, Mieka. No hallmark. They use Splithook.”
He looked at Mieka, and Mieka looked at him, and in that instant, they both knew the danger they were in.
Cade’s eye lit on the bowl of roses. Still holding the withie in one hand, he dumped the bowl over, spilling flowers and water. He was about to put the withie on the table and cover it with the bowl—it was all he could think of to contain a nasty spell, realizing the stupidity of it all along—when the sound of breaking glass made him flinch. Mieka had upended a crate. The largest of Blye’s beautiful glass baskets had cracked onto the floor.
“In here!” Mieka cried.
He almost made it. The withie was inside the magically cushioned crate and his hand was almost clear when the glass twig shattered to splinters.
27
“… only if he wakes and there’s pain,” someone said. The low, masculine voice had a ring of authority. “The salve on his hand should take care of most of it, but a little more of this won’t hurt him.”
“I understand.”
What was Miriuzca doing here?
Where was here?
“Are you quite, quite certain there’s no other damage?”
And—Megs?
“His hand is still attached to the rest of him,” the physicker said. “I’ll know more in a few days. But mostly it’s cuts and burns, nothing very deep. All the splinters have been removed. No, I’d say he’ll be just fine, Your Ladyship.”
“But it was done with magic.”
Well, of course it had been done with magic. He could have told her that. Pirro’s magic, Thierin’s magic—they’d finally got him, the grimy bastards—pretending admiration, pretending to be Mieka’s friend—
“Mieka!”
“Hush now, Cayden, it’s all right.” Miriuzca again, a rustle of silk and a scent of lilies. She’d changed her perfume. “Mieka is just fine. No glass touched him at all.”
He managed to get his eyes open. To his right were two elegantly gowned women—the Princess and Lady Megs—and down at the foot of the bed was a green-robed physicker packing up his case. The bedchamber had blue forget-me-nevers painted on the white windowframes, and for a single shocked moment he thought he was lying on Princess Miriuzca’s own bed. But then he saw the hangings, turquoise silk decorated with quiverfuls of black arrows, and realized he was in the bedchamber and the bed belonging to Lady Megs.
“Now, don’t you dare try to get up, you silly man.”
This woman’s voice came from his left, and he turned his head to find Lady Vrennerie standing there, and her husband right beside her.
Lord Eastkeeping smiled at him. “I had a singularly hellish time getting you up here—whoever gave you permission to grow your legs so long?—so do us all a favor and stay here a while, won’t you?”
“Sorry,” Cade mumbled.
“Well, you were in shock, I should think. But I really do wish you hadn’t fought me quite so hard.” He rubbed his chin.
“Don’t be such a baby,” his wife chided. “You should learn to duck faster, like Rafe did. Now, Cade, I know you’re full of thorn right now, but do try to listen and understand. Everyone else is just fine. The physicker says that your hand is scratched and scraped, but none of the cuts were deep enough to damage the muscles or anything. You’ll be all wrapped up for a fortnight or so, but you’ll heal very nicely.”
“Jeska,” said Kellin Eastkeeping, “commanded a carriage from the Royal stables. He should be back soon with your Mistress Mirdley. She’ll tell you exactly what Vren just told you, so don’t worry.”
He nodded because it seemed the thing to do. Whatever thorn he was full of, it wasn’t the few drops of bluethorn he’d used before the performance. This was something floaty and misty that made his eyes want to cross. But there was no pain, and considering the state his hand must be in, he was very grateful.
“Hells,” he muttered. “That’s two Shabbyshappers—I mean, Shadowshapies—shows I’ve missed in one day.”
Megs laughed and patted his good hand. “I’ll tell them you said so.”
“Are you sure he’ll be all right?” Miriuzca asked the physicker.
“Perfectly sure, and perfectly all right. Some scarring. But nothing that will impede the use of his hand.”
His right hand. The one he wrote with. Should it be damaged after all … should the physicker be wrong, or lying to make him feel better before somebody broke the bad news in a day or two … He turned his face away and closed his eyes, wishing that this thorn, whatever it was, would have the decency to do something about his fear. The others present in the room had the decency to withdraw a little and leave him to what they must be assuming was sleep. Only Megs was still beside him. He could smell her perfume, something that made him picture a forest glen full of flowers and berry bushes.
When Mistress Mirdley arrived, she reassured him that the physicker had been right. With her came Mieka, Rafe, and Jeska, none of them reassured about his condition until they saw him for themselves. Cade wondered idly how they’d been kept out of the room thus far, then reflected that command of the Palace Guard might be useful. Rafe searched his eyes, then nodded curtly before his expression settled into seething rage; Jeska’s worry became simple relief. But Mieka came in looking both angry and guilty, and stayed that way, and Cade knew why.
“Wasn’t your fault,” he managed to say. The thorn was well and truly in his veins by now, and it was difficult to stay awake. “Don’t even think it.”
“I shoulda known, Quill.”
“Me, too.” Rousing himself once more, he said, “Who knew they’d try the same thing twice on the same day?”
“Who tried what?” Miriuzca asked.
“Nothing. Nobody,” Mieka said, and from what Cade could see of her face as his eyes tried to cross again, she knew the Elf was lying.
“All right, then,” Mistress Mirdley said as she rewrapped Cade’s hand after applying a salve of her own. “That’s enough. Out, all of you.” Spoken as peremptorily as if they were all in her kitchen at Redpebble. “It’s time for this clumsy idiot to get some sleep.”
The physicker was already gone, ushered out earlier by Lady Megs. Clever girl; he would only have bristled at Mistress Mirdley’s presence, and she would have bristled right back, and they would have argued over him just for the sake of asserting authority. Jeska left, and then Rafe, with Lord and Lady Eastkeeping. Mistress Mirdley inspected the paper twist of thorn left by the physicker, grunted reluctant agreement with the choice, and ended by saying, “A fine lot of trouble you’ll go to, only to skive off helping with the dishes.”
Miriuzca stared and giggled. Lady Megs grinned. Cade was rather put out. Wasn’t there a single woman in the world who cared about him enough to keep on worrying even when worry was deemed unnecessary?
When the Trollwife had gone, escorted by Mieka, Miriuzca stayed a few minutes longer before trading glances with Megs and saying, “I’d best return to the banquet. You’re in excellent care here, Cayden. Sleep well.”
; “But—” He squinted up at Megs. “You don’t have to stay.” This struck him as silly; it was her room. “I mean, you stay, I can go home—”
“Not a bit of it,” she said briskly. “Lie back, close your eyes, and sleep.”
He did.
The next thing he knew, someone was groaning softly. Him. His head hurt and his hand felt as if it were on fire.
“Hush,” she said.
She had lit a candle, and by its light was very competently preparing a glass thorn.
“Works funny … on me,” he slurred. “Auntie Brishen says so.”
“Whoever she is, she’s not here. And this will work just fine. Both the physicker and your Mistress Mirdley said so.”
She set the glass aside. She pulled back the counterpane but didn’t roll up his sleeve. Instead, she unbuttoned his collar and then his shirt and slid it off his shoulders. He had no strength to protest or to push her away, and he blushed, but she was so matter-of-fact about it that he was ashamed of himself for thinking what he wasn’t even really certain he’d been thinking. He was naught but a player on a stage, despite some noble names in his ancestry, and she was rich and important, and Mindrising was a very old name, one of the oldest, like Eastkeeping, indicating someone trusted to hold secure the borders of the Kingdom, and she was undoubtedly destined for some rich and handsome and wellborn man, not the likes of him—naught but a skint, scrawny-chested, big-nosed, thorn-pricking tregetour—
As he felt the little sting of thorn on his neck, he heard himself ask, “D’you still wanna be Steward?”
She smiled and rubbed some sort of cream into his neck, and then into the marks on his arms. “Of course. I’ve been working at it. Not lessons, exactly, but advice and a tip here and there from the ones who’re so old that they’re grateful for any attention from a young woman, pretty or not.”
“You’re pretty,” he said dreamily. This was truly excellent thorn. He’d have to find out exactly what it was. “It’d help if you’d stop wearing turquoise. Not your color.”
“No? Mayhap not.” She sat back, looking him over. “You’re feeling that, I take it.”
“Mmm. Good thorn.” He wriggled luxuriously into the pillows. “Glad you’re not dead. You an’ Rosish … Roshlish …”
“Oh, yes, it’s good thorn, all right.” There was laughter in her voice. “And I’m glad I’m not dead, too. Whatever you’re talking about. Go back to sleep.”
“Mmm … not yet.”
Auntie Brishen was right. Thorn didn’t do to him what it did for other people. All at once he was wide awake. Neither his hand nor his head hurt. He was very glad she was alive, and very glad he was alive, too.
Yes, alive in a pretty girl’s bed, and the girl herself was sitting next to him on that bed, and it was late at night in the soft glow of a candle that put flashes of gold into her deep green eyes, and he wouldn’t have been mortal if he hadn’t coaxed her into his arms and kissed her.
Oh yes, very much alive, and very grateful that one hand was still in perfect working order. Within a very few minutes, she was grateful, too.
* * *
“What joy you must feel, to have kept Cayden Silversun happy!”
“Am I to understand that you don’t approve?”
“Your Grace will, or perhaps will not, forgive me for saying that this was an opportunity that was … how shall I phrase it? Bungled.”
“You appear to be drunk.”
“I have been toasting His Majesty’s twenty-five years on the throne. It’s the duty of everyone in Albeyn over the age of twelve to get at least a little drunk tonight. How could you have allowed Cayden to—?”
“To what? Tell me, great Sagemaster! Should I have said I didn’t believe him? We know what he is—”
“Yes, and now that’s out in the open. We know, and it is acknowledged that we know—and he will be a thousand times more alert to any hint of interference. Speaking of which, those imbecilic young men await us at Great Welkin.”
“Let them wait.”
“Of all the monumental stupidities—slipping that charged withie into Touchstone’s—may I ask why Your Grace is laughing?”
“There were two withies. One at their display for the King, and one tonight. Neither had anything to do with Black Lightning.”
“And this amuses you?”
“You don’t honestly think they’d disobey my orders about interfering with Touchstone again? They have too much to gain tonight to indulge in such foolishness. Knottinger and Seamark are far from being fools. Oh, they’re greedy, and very young, but Spangler is a thorn-thrall who does what they tell him, and the fettler—I can never recall his name—”
“Crowkeeper.”
“He knows where his advantage lies. No, it wasn’t Black Lightning.”
“Then who?”
“My dear Master Emmot, I cannot describe how gratifying it is to know something that you do not. Great crushes of people in both locations, yes? No telling who might be there, sliding a withie into an unguarded velvet pouch. The first was of the sort that garbles magic. Had it gone undetected, the other withies would have produced effects that were not exactly intended.”
“Which would be blamed on the Elf and his drink and his thorn. Yes, I see. But there was never any chance that Cayden wouldn’t recognize something not of Blye Windthistle’s making.”
“And that ought to tell you something about the intellectual powers of the person who arranged it.”
“What of the second withie? The one that shattered in Cayden’s hand tonight?”
“Ah. Now we get to the amusing part. Deeply as she now despises magic, or purports to, my cousin the Princess Iamina is not above using it. And—”
“Iamina?”
“She really is quite monumentally stupid, you know. Never notices the faces around her unless they belong to handsome young men. A boy dressed in her livery could be anyone in Albeyn, employed by anyone in Albeyn.”
“I know that you have her watched, but I never thought—I mean, her connection with Tregrefin Ilesko was obvious, but—”
“Who do you think told him about the Good Brother who bespelled the withie tossed into Piercehand’s Gallery? I don’t know why she chose Touchstone for another little demonstration of how dangerous magic is. Perhaps there’s a private grievance. It was a puny spell, the Good Brother having little talent to begin with and, it seems, no desire to slaughter everyone in the King’s Play house.”
“So it harmed nothing but Cayden’s hand.”
“The Brother lacks the true spirit of the thing—which reminds me it might be that Iamina targeted Touchstone because it was Silversun’s grandmother who first proposed using withies in that way. Now, there was a woman who understood magic.”
“How did you know that neither withie would be any real danger?”
“I counted on them to discover it as they discovered the first. But, as I say—little talent, and undoubtedly a rather shaky command of what he does know. But all that is beside the point. I want to know what you think I ought to have done about Silversun’s vision. Allowed things to go forward to the deaths of Miriuzca and her children? He lied to me about the children. When a man looks you straight in the eyes, it is because he is confident that he can control the expression in his eyes and doesn’t want you to notice the rest of his face.”
“A lesson of mine that you learned and he evidently did not.”
“And what lesson of yours would have taught me how to take the best advantage of what he told me that was true? For one thing, it offends me greatly that this strutting little Tregrefin sought to bring his notions of proper religious devotion to Albeyn in the first place. Let him preach in his own country. This one is mine.”
“Not yet. Your Grace will forgive me for pointing that out.”
“You’re lucky I’m in a forgiving mood. No, I could do nothing but what I did. We both know what it must have cost Silversun to conclude that I was the only person he could go to. The only pers
on with access and power who would believe what he had to say. He no more wanted to admit that he knows that I know than I wanted to admit it to him myself. I tested him, you know. Setting up a plan, commissioning the lectern—and damned if he didn’t know within a day!”
“It happens like that sometimes. Where’s that wine bottle? Ah. He was probably surprised that you didn’t think up something that would devolve all credit onto yourself.”
“Probably.”
“Did you cause things to happen as they did to earn credit with him? If so, you will be disappointed.”
“In gathering power, it is best to persuade others that those who are their enemies are also your enemies, for the simple fact that they are other. Killing these enemies is not murder but merely ridding the world of vermin. If your enemies are seen as not quite Human, then they may be slaughtered in the way men slaughter deer or elk or any other prey.”
“That much I understand, beholden to Your Grace. The Tregrefin was Cayden’s enemy because he was a threat to the Princess and her children. He was your enemy because—why? His religion offended you?”
“He would have overset some very important plans, as you well know, had he succeeded. By not killing him, I have shown Silversun what he will believe is mercy—”
“He will see it for what it is: self-interest.”
“Yet he will also see that whereas he had no power to retaliate against me if I had ordered the Tregrefin’s death, I honored our agreement. It is vital to convince the people you will rule that you yourself are a cut above the merely Human. That you have qualities of wisdom and strength, of cunning and leadership, beyond those of the ordinary man.”
“Don’t refer to him as ordinary. He’s not. He never could be.”
“That’s one of his weaknesses. He wants to be, in many ways, and knows he is not, and the pull of those against each other is a constant torment to him. As for his other weaknesses … you never did tell me how your conversation with the Elf went.”
“Not much of a conversation. I had a little fun with him, that’s all. He was thorned, of course. I gather he is thorned from almost the moment he wakes up until he pricks the red variety so that he can sleep at night. He’s a pretty thing, certainly, with those eyes and that face. But that won’t last.”
