Thornlost (Book 3) (43 page)

“He’ll be here or I’ll kill him,” Rafe muttered.

“Fuck you!” Rauel shouted, and everybody flinched. He stalked off to the drinks table, leaving Needler behind to plead with the equally furious Vered. Sakary and Chat, standing nearby with large beers in their hands, simply looked resigned.

By the time Crystal Sparks had finished “The Glass Glove” to rousing applause—nobody did the old standards better—Mieka still hadn’t shown up. Alaen and Briuly Blackpath went out in front of the closed curtains to entertain while the Sparks removed their glass baskets and lecterns and Touchstone set up. Music was its own magic, and the two lutenists wove spells with notes and their voices while Rafe, Jeska, and Cade did what Mieka ought to have been doing.

“I’ll kill him,” Rafe kept saying under his breath. “I will
kill
him.”

“Queue forms on the right,” Jeska told him.

Cade was beginning to worry that he’d been mistaken, and that even though Black Lightning wasn’t actually present, they
had done something in defiance of the Archduke’s orders, when Alaen and Briuly broke off in the middle of a song, laughing.

“What the—?” Jeska hurried to the curtain, twitched aside a fold, and half a moment later was doubled over in silent giggles. By now the whole audience was laughing, hooting, whistling, calling out raucous and obscene suggestions. Cade and Rafe joined Jeska at the curtain and peered through the gap.

Flouncing down the aisle was a preposterous vision in bright pink silk ruffles and gold brocade swagged over purple petticoats. Small hands in red lace gloves waved enthusiastic greeting to the audience; a head topped by what looked like a green velvet pancake decorated with an eruption of downy white feathers nodded gracious acknowledgment of the cheers and applause.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rafe whispered. “I really
will
kill him!”

Mieka’s progress was about to be interrupted by a pair of constables—faithfully posted by the local station because the Shadowshapers were playing tonight—and how he’d got by them in the first place didn’t bear contemplation. They were advancing down the aisle after Mieka, who was almost to the front row.

Cade didn’t need an Elsewhen to show him what was about to happen. Mieka would be seized by the constables, and yell something like
“Unhand me, you fritlags!”
in the best tradition of Uncle Breedbate, and escape them somehow, and race through the theater, and some people would aid him and some people would try to catch him, and there’d be a bloody riot and not only would Touchstone never work the lovely new theater at the Downstreet but they’d have to pay for the damages, too.

Cade stepped out from behind the curtain. Part of him was cursing the mad little Elf—he had to choose
tonight
to make his point?—and part of him was writhing at the total unprofessionalism of what he was about to do, but most of him was cheering Mieka on and perfectly willing to help. Planting his fists on his hips, he roared, “What’s all this, then? Mieka, you’re late!”

Mieka came to a halt in a flurry of pink and gold and purple and green, with feathers. “Goodest of good evenings to you, dear old thing! Excessively sorry, sincerely I am!”

Knowing themselves to be superfluous, Alaen and Briuly and their lutes departed for the wings. The audience quieted—more or less—to take in this unscheduled show.

The constables paused, suspicious and confused. One of them said, “See here, now! There’s not to be no ladies in no theaters!”

“That’s no lady,” Cade told him. “That’s my glisker.”

“But he’s not—that’s to say, he don’t look—”

Cade sighed a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose it’s his notion of an educational demonstration.”

“A what?”

But his fellow constable had had enough. “There’s laws about women bein’ in places like this here,” he said firmly. “And whatever anyone says, that’s women’s clothes.”

Abruptly Cade saw before him a letter that had not yet been written.
“As for the events at the Downstreet, I think you will agree that Silversun’s cleverness in outwitting the constables—”

Not much cleverness needed, come to it. “Ah, but a
man
wearing them!” Cade said. “Are there laws against
that
?”

“If there were,” somebody yelled from the upper tier of benches, “there’s a noble lord or three would be in quod!”

“As it happens,” Cade went on, “there
aren’t
any laws about that. And since he really is a man under all that tawdry frippering—”

“Tawdry?” Mieka wailed. “I paid heaps for all this!”

“One can only wonder why!” Rafe yelled from behind the curtains.

Cade went on, “As I was saying, there’s no law against a man wearing whatever he pleases—”

“But—” The constable was choking on outrage. “But if that’s true—”

Beaming, Mieka finished for him. “Then any man could wear what he likes, and come right on in and sit himself down and watch the show. And it’s brilliant we’ll be tonight, no mistaking.”

“Talking of which,” Cade said pointedly, “I really do need my glisker to give this performance, so won’t you please excuse us?” To Mieka: “Get your scrawny ass onstage, Windthistle!”

Mieka scampered over to the steps, bounded up onstage, and sank into a deep curtsy. Applause thundered, even from the more straitlaced of the nobility sitting in the front rows. Proof positive, as if any could be necessary, that Mieka was as irresistible as the tide, a thunderstorm, or a brain seizure.

“You can’t work in all that lot!” Cade exclaimed, and had an instant of sheer panic. Surely the clothes were real. Surely he wore something beneath them.

“Oh—frightfully sorry, just give me a moment.” He peeled off the red lace gloves and smiled brightly at Cade. “Ready!”

“Mieka!”
And if you’re dressed in nothing but magic, Rafe can hold my coat while
I
kill you.

Next went the hat, sailing to the side of the stage, where Alaen caught it. Cade folded his arms across his chest and glowered.

“Oh, very well. Bloody great bully! You
never
let me have any fun!”

Fingers scrabbled at his waist, strings were untied, and after a suggestive and ultimately undignified wriggle, the gold brocade skirt and purple petticoats dropped to the stage. Revealed—and here Cade paused to be monumentally grateful—were black trousers and boots. The billowing pink blouse stayed.

With a masquer’s sense of timing, Jeska reached from behind the curtain and yanked Mieka by an arm. As he vanished with a yelp, Cade bowed to the audience, then slipped between the folds of velvet to find Mieka already halfway to the glisker’s bench. Somebody cried out, “Touchstone!” and he and Rafe lunged for their lecterns while Jeska scooted hastily to center stage. With a
muttered curse, he nipped back out in front just as the curtains parted, and kicked the abandoned skirts towards the wings. Alaen scurried out to grab them.

“Have a care, mate!” Mieka hollered. “Those go to me mother-in-law tomorrow!”

Rafe shook his head. “Gods pity the poor woman. May we start now, or are
you
the show tonight?”

Mieka stretched elaborately, cracked his knuckles, bounced on his toes a few times, twirled a withie between his fingers, then rapped the withie against a glass basket. “Pray silence for His Fettlership!”

“Enough!” Cayden bellowed. “My Lords and Gentlemen, we present for you tonight ‘Feather-head’—”

Mieka wailed a protest.

“—I mean, ‘Feather
beds
.’ ” And praise be to whatever deities watched over theater folk that they’d planned a comedy for this performance. What it might take to settle an audience for something serious after the pre-show farce, he didn’t like to think.

I
t hadn’t been in Mieka’s plan to get arrested, and he knew full well that Cade would rescue him if things got risky. But he hadn’t expected Cade to understand almost instantly what he was about, nor to aid and abet with such enthusiasm and to such excellent effect. The expression on the constables’ faces, the reactions of the crowd—he really must stop underestimating the man.

“Featherbeds” (the rude version) was a rollicking success. Mieka clothed Jeska as the Bewildered Bride in gold brocade and purple petticoats to match what he’d worn during his grand entrance into the Downstreet, and even the constables (standing way at the back; the owner had offered them a free show to make up for the trouble) laughed themselves breathless. Mieka was again reminded that wielding his withies was problematic with wrist-ruffles.

Touchstone was called back for two extra bows. Splendid for them; not so great for the Shadowshapers, but not because they now had to follow a triumph. The trouble came because they had additional time to fight over what they’d perform.

When the curtains closed and Alaen and Briuly traded expert notes that ran each string of their Hadden Windthistle lutes, Touchstone began moving equipment and the Shadowshapers
began setting up. Rauel and Vered seemed to be continuing a fight that had started a few minutes ago—or mayhap it was just one more episode in a fight that had started the day they met.

“I keep telling you it’s not ready!” Rauel snapped at Vered as he helped Chat carry their glass baskets to the glisker’s bench. “The middle part doesn’t make any sense, there’s no bridge to the final section—”

Vered hurled back, “You’re just too stupid to understand them!”

Mieka traded startled looks with Jeska and worked faster at packing baskets into their padded crates. The two tregetours had never been shy about expressing their grievances to each other, but rarely did they take their quarrels public like this. All that separated them from an audience was some velvet and gold fringe, and two lutenists playing old songs.

“What’s
stupid
is the whole concept!”

“And how would Your Lordship be writing it, then? All pathetic farewell embraces between childhood friends, and flooding the audience with tears by the fifth line? You never did have a clue about pacing, did you?”

“At least my audiences
feel
something! You’re all words, words, words, no real heart to them, never a laugh or a cry or an honest emotion—”

“If you ever put a genuine idea into one of your scribblings, it would die of shock and loneliness! Ask them!” Vered pointed at Mieka and Jeska.

Mieka almost dropped a withie. Quickly shoving it into the velvet pouch, he thrust the whole of it at Jeska and looked round for Rafe and Cade to come help carry the baskets. Kearney Fairwalk had taken charge of Cade’s lectern, staggering a bit beneath the weight of rosewood inlaid with polished dragon bone. The lute music still trilled from the other side of the curtains.

“
Ask
them!” Vered insisted. “C’mon, what d’you think of
Rauel’s little muddles? Any of them ever manage to make you think a single thought?”

Mieka tried to smile. “Oh, me poor overworked brain’s too busy with working out all those deep thoughts of Cade’s that I—”

“Deep as a puddle of piss from a parched horse!”

Straightening, Mieka began, “Now, wait just a tick—”

“Partridge,” Cade drawled from behind him. “Puddle of piss from a parched partridge. It’s not like you, Vered, to miss a word-trick like that.”

“Doesn’t miss many, does he?” Rauel asked with a silken smile. “When you get right down to it, in spite of what Bexan thinks, they’re all he really has.”

Vered lunged for him. Romuald Needler appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Vered. “Stop it! Everyone will hear you!”

“I don’t fuckin’ care!”

Alaen and Briuly seemed to be playing and singing very loudly all of a sudden.

“I know you wanted to introduce the new play tonight,” the manager soothed, skeletal hands still holding on like grim death to Vered’s shoulders. “But you have to give them something light, something cheerful. You owe them a good, stirring story, a play to have them—”

“To have them sleek and self-satisfied at the end?” Vered interrupted. “You mean like ‘Doorways’? Have them go home all cozy-minded and happy with their rotten little lives, and—”

“Vered!”

“Oh, Cade knows what I’m talking of, right enough! Angels forfend that anybody should leave the theater discontented after ‘Doorways’ shows them their lives are just perfect! Protect them from wanting anything more, anything better—”

“Shut it!” Mieka roared. “You smug sniveler—always moaning about how the greatness of your ideas gets lost in—”

“Boys, please!” begged Fairwalk.

Cade had hold of Mieka’s elbow. “Don’t, it’s all right, he doesn’t mean—”

“Yeh, he does! The only one who
really
knows how to do theater, ain’t he? That’s enough to make a cat laugh! Compared to
you
, he doesn’t know which end of the pen to write with!”

Vered laughed a short, sneering bark of a laugh. “Oh, and he’s the eminent arbiter now, is he? Tell me, Tinwhistle, do they have to explain the whole story to you every time, or can you actually, y’know,
read
?”

Cade growled, and now it was Mieka holding him back from giving Vered the thrashing he so obviously courted.

“I think that’s enough,” Chat said mildly. “Unless you have it in mind, Vered old man, for the Shadowshapers to copy Touchstone.” As Vered spluttered his outrage, Chat lifted one of his own glass baskets. His eyes were as cold as a wintry sea. “Because if you don’t shut up, I’ll shatter this right over your head.”