Thornlost (Book 3) (16 page)

There were people sounds, too: Workers calling to each other, laughing, singing. Steady hammering that meant a new house or barn, hacking axes that felled a tree, the clack of bricks being piled into small burnt-red mountains, the clanging of blacksmiths at the forge, the creak and groan of a grinding mill.

The stillness and silence of winter had its match, though, in the lazy quiet of a country road at late twilight. All the workers were at their dinners; all the day’s outdoor toil was done. Cade envied these people nothing about their lives except the scant hour of twilight hush, when all the world was drowsing.

Except for the insects. Hum, whine, buzz, click-snick, drone—in winter there were spiders and bedbugs, ground-bound and silent. In summer things flew all over the place, flies and bees and wasps and gnats and other things he didn’t recognize but
instinctively didn’t like. Was it better, he wondered, to get bitten by something you never heard coming, or to have the warning of whirring wings so you could make a fool of yourself trying to slap away something you couldn’t hardly see?

The Royal Circuit was different from the Winterly in other ways. Without snow and mud to slog through, travel time was cut by about a quarter. And because travel was easier for everyone, there were more shows at each venue. Farmers could bring their families into town for a little overnight holiday, leaving the crops to the hired hands, and the next day give their fieldmen a treat in town likewise. The Royal and Ducal Circuits were timed to coincide where possible with local fairs and festivals—from something as simple as a local lord’s Namingday to the annual celebration at New Halt of the Miraculous Mending of the Sails by some Angel or other. (Nobody had ever made a play on the subject, which was odd, so Cade really didn’t know much about it.) There were also more opportunities for private shows, because during the summer the nobility went on progress to their estates or traveled to visit friends and relations. This year, for example, Lord Coldkettle’s nephew was being married; the Shadowshapers would perform on the first day of the festivities, Touchstone on the last.

There wasn’t much overlap among the three groups on the Royal. A few times the Shadowshapers’ wagon would be rolling out of an innyard just as Touchstone’s wagon was rolling in. They crossed paths with the Crystal Sparks only once. Third Flight on each circuit went in the opposite direction from the first two, so rather than heading north on the route from Shollop to Dolven Wold to Sidlowe and so forth, the Crystal Sparks began in Stiddolfe and went to Frimham, Castle Biding, Lilyleaf, and north from there. Cade had to admire the logician who planned this out for all three Circuits. The whole of Albeyn loved a play, but there had to be enough time between performances to whet the appetite again.

Taken all in all, Cayden was highly satisfied with the Royal. Touchstone was a proficient, creative entity now; each man enjoyed his work more than ever; audiences were large and approving; the wagon was nigh on perfect; Cade had no complaints. There was even a set of Rules, framed and nailed to the inside of the wagon door.

• Abstinence from liquor is discouraged.

• No unsanctioned plays are permitted. This includes unfunny farces, mawkish melodramas, pointless poetry, and anything featuring the deflowering of a giggling moronic virgin.

• At all stops, refrain from the use of rough fingernails in the presence of ladies and children.

• Hammocks are provided for your comfort. Do not abuse the privilege by hogging all the pillows. The offender will be tied up inside his hammock for the duration of the journey.

• Do not snore
at all
. Do not accuse your Master Glisker of snoring. He never snores.
Never
.

• In the event of runaway horses, remain calm. Leaping from the wagon in panic will result in being laughed at by your fellow passengers.

• Should the driver (who is taller than you by half a mile and outweighs you by half a ton) judge a passenger guilty of any of the following offenses, that person shall receive chastisement as the driver determines.

1. Foul farting

2. Sobriety

3. Good manners

4. Inaccuracy in aiming at the pisspot

5. Unwarranted celibacy

6. Endangering the sanity of fellow passengers

• The Rules are brought to you by Mieka Windthistle. Obey them or suffer.

“Suffer what?” Rafe wanted to know when first he read through them.

“Dire things,” Mieka promised.

“Such as?”

“Dire, dreadful things.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Dire, dreadful, disgusting, damaging—”

“Good Gods!” Cade exclaimed. “He swallowed a dictionary!”

“—distasteful, deplorable, despicable—”

“And is yarking it up out of order,” Cade went on. “—damnable, despoiling—”

“Enough!” Rafe begged.

Mieka cocked an eyebrow at him. “Am I to understand that the Rules will be obeyed?”

Rafe drew himself to his full six feet two inches and stared down at the Elf. “Or what?”

“Hideous, horrible—”

“All right, all right!”

“Especially the part about snoring.”

L
ooking back, Cade found it extraordinary that no one had asked Mieka how he would amuse himself now that he’d rewritten all the Rules for his own convenience.

They really ought to have known.

He behaved himself, more or less, from Shollop all the way to Scatterseed. But on the road up the Pennynines, either boredom or the unwonted burden of being good became too much for him.

They really truly ought to have known.

The first thing he did was to complain that everyone was getting a bit whiff, so he suggested they take advantage of the brook running alongside the road. The water was chilly, but the sun was out and the air was warm, and he further suggested that it might be a good idea to rinse out some of their clothes. He even darted back to the wagon—twice—to gather armfuls of laundry. Yazz was enlisted to rig up drying lines inside the wagon. Negotiating the flapping criss-cross of shirts and underthings was a bit tricky for the rest of the day, but Mieka solved that problem by hanging all their damp underclothes out the windows. Though daytime in the mountains was pleasantly warm, nights could grow very cold indeed until high summer, and by morning they had the choice of wearing what they’d been wearing for three days or waiting for their linen to unfreeze.

Taken to task for this, Mieka seized a blanket and went to sit up on the coachman’s bench with Yazz. After a few desultory games of cards, Cade, Jeska, and Rafe climbed back into their hammocks for a nap, listening as the Giant and the Elf sang a series of intricate roundelays. The sound of Yazz’s deep, gravelly voice paired with Mieka’s light and surprisingly sweet singing was no stranger than the friendship between them, and Cade smiled.

And then the firepocket began to smoke.

Putridly.

Windows were opened. Fragrant candles were lighted. It was discovered that just beneath the steel bracings of the firepocket, where it could be heated to a nice smoky glow, was a lump of pasture coal—otherwise known as cow shit.

Even when the smoke had cleared, the interior of the wagon stank. With the windows open to the breezes in hopes of airing the place out, the three of them huddled in their hammocks, wrapped in blankets. Cade buried his nose in a sachet of herbs Mistress Mirdley had packed in with his clothes, and cursed the mad little Elf for a full hour.

The following afternoon they happened upon a long, narrow lake tucked prettily into a fold of the mountains. The Master of the King’s Roads and Byways had been inspired by the scenery to build a little projecting platform halfway across the bridge so travelers could pause to admire the view. At Cade’s request, Yazz halted the wagon at this convenient balcony. They used it to introduce Mieka to the lake, kicking and yelling and fully clothed. While he spluttered and shivered and flailed back to shore, they debated whether or not to leave him there.

“Dunno,” Rafe mused. “Gliskers might be pretty thin on the ground at New Halt.”

“Cade can do the work until we send to one of the Gallybanks
agencies for somebody else,” Jeska pointed out.

Rafe was looking over the bridge’s low parapet at the infuriated Elf. “Not much of a swimmer, is he?”

“Puppy-paddler,” was Jeska’s scorning verdict. “Not much use, taken all in all. Can’t swim, can’t ride, can’t drive a carriage—”

Mieka had reached shallow water and was slogging through reeds and muck, cussing the whole while.

“Now we know why he changed the Rules,” Rafe remarked. “That one about foul language—fluent little bugger.”

“Done yet?” Yazz rumbled from his bench.

“Almost,” Cade called back. “I don’t think we can sack him, Jeska. What would we tell his mother?”

“All she’d say is that it’s a wonder we didn’t do it sooner.”

“I—hate—you—
all
!” Mieka bellowed.
“Forever!”

Every so often on the rest of the drive to New Halt he rather ostentatiously unfurled a white silk pocket square, with which he gently and tenderly dried his ears.

The weird old place outside New Halt was a different experience than it had been on the Winterly. Reassuring, to have their own safe and snug wagon waiting for them in the courtyard rather than someone else’s carriage; bizarre, to find it was just as cold in the cellar as it had been in winter; startling, to see that there was a second member of the audience this time, also wrapped head to boots in furs and woolen blankets. Seated side by side in cushiony chairs placed in the exact center of the vaulted undercroft, they said nothing and reacted not at all as Touchstone set up glass baskets and lecterns. They didn’t even move. It was like playing to corpses. Cade had raised the subject of this yearly engagement with Vered at Trials and found out that the Shadowshapers dreaded it just as much as Touchstone was learning to. It paid magnificently, but to Vered’s mind it wasn’t worth it—and he was just as glad that he and Rauel and Chat and Sakary could charge enough for their other private shows
that they’d be returning a polite regret to this year’s invitation.

It was with real perplexity that Cade had found out in a gloating letter from Kearney Fairwalk that the Shadowshapers had not received an invitation this year at all. Crystal Sparks, Black Lightning, and Touchstone would be playing here, but not the best group in the Kingdom. Most curious, and completely unexplained.

As they set up, Cade wished that Touchstone could afford to turn down this performance and say they were busy—polishing their withies, trimming their toenails, anything to avoid this. The chill, damp cellar with its gloomy stone vaulting was eerie enough, especially after driving through a bright summer afternoon, but their audience of two, shrouded and muffled and absolutely silent, was downright unsettling when one was accustomed to playing to hundreds. Still, the money was necessary, and it would come to them personally in little bags full of coin, rather than being deposited in their bank accounts. So here they were.

“Treasure” had been requested, and thus “Treasure” they would perform, but scaled back and toned down. For one thing, they were coming off five exhausting shows in New Halt. Two of those audiences had been composed of sailors off fortyered ships, rowdy and drunk and contentious. Tomorrow night they would appear before at least four hundred men from ships belonging to the new Duchess of Downymede—Princess Miriuzca—who had specially arranged this treat for her sailors. A kindness, Rafe observed when Kearney sent them notice of the engagement, and a very smart move on her part; perhaps, he suggested, she wasn’t so ingenuous as she seemed. Mieka had given a snort and replied, “Marriage to Prince Ashgar would make for rather a swift growing-up, don’t you think?”

On this night, which should have been their time off to rest and relax, they were instead playing yet another show. The magic would be narrowly focused, and not so powerful as needed for
a large audience. Jeska wouldn’t have to work his voice so hard. Rafe wouldn’t have to monitor the distribution of magic through a vast hall. Cade had primed the withies with just enough and no more. Mieka had to produce only minimal effects. Still, when the Elf offered bluethorn all round, they took him up on it.

In the play, the cloaked and hooded Fae had scarcely reached the wall, intent on hiding the Rights, when with senses heightened by thorn, Cade felt it begin: a twitching, a quivering, not of weariness in Mieka or Rafe or Jeska, but of eagerness. It wasn’t of his making; he had put nothing of that into the withies. Fear and defiance, rage and resolve—these things, yes, as the Fae heard the crashing hoofbeats and the resonant belling hounds of his pursuers, and toppled the stones onto the bright gleaming carkenet and crown. But Cade had not primed the magic to produce this fervent expectancy, this
hunger
. Tending to the general surrounds as he always did, as any good tregetour must do, he was aware of ripples in the ancient stone cellar, things that had nothing to do with what was happening in the play. Eager anticipation became growing need, and then blatant demand.