Thornlost (Book 3) (54 page)

“I don’t see her that often, and never alone, but I love her, I want her—oh Gods, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen—”

“Is that the criterion, then?”

“Wh-what d’you mean?”

“The most beautiful thing, you said. Like she’s a tapestry or a lute you can possess—”

The words stuck in his head, repeating over and over. That was what Mieka had said about
her
, too. The most beautiful
thing
. An item to be admired, adored. A fine carriage, gold embroidery on a velvet tunic, a thick carpet on the polished floor of an elegant house. A thing to be proudly possessed. The way she wanted to possess Mieka, down to his soul. Take him, tame him, break him, own him.

“When Touchstone lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”

Ownership, he mused as he lay in the darkness, implied purchase. What was the price of a heart? Even if an amount could be set and paid, it must be paid again and again—for the heart changed, the price went up—

—or plummeted, like the price of grain or venison, depending on supply and demand.

It wasn’t his problem, he told himself again and again. It wasn’t his to decide.

Except for Jindra.

And Mieka.

“My glisker you are, and mine you stay.”

And didn’t that mean that he was just as bad, wanting to own someone who couldn’t be bought?

W
aiting for them in Shollop were Jinsie and Jezael Windthistle. The latter had come to investigate the chances of bidding on some new buildings the University was planning to construct, and the former had decided to meet with her scholarly contacts about ideas for theater for the deaf. She would be taking Cayden to these discussions for his professional perspective.

The trip from Shellery House had been gloomy. Another summer squall had washed out sections of the coastal road, so rather than follow it for a bit and then turn due west for Shollop, Yazz had been compelled to backtrack for a good forty miles to another connecting road. They were almost a whole day late in arriving and their first show was the following afternoon. And it turned out a very good thing that Jez had come along, for Yazz muttered the whole journey to Shollop about his poor wagon having to slog through all that mud. He and Jez went to work on the wagon, and Touchstone took the only two rooms left at the inn where Jez and Jinsie were staying.

“Ridiculous,” Jinsie announced at lunching the day after Touchstone arrived. “Fa insisted on Jez coming as escort—at my age!”

“That would be almost twenty-one, wouldn’t it?” Rafe asked
mildly, from the exalted perspective of almost twenty-three.

“I’m perfectly capable of sitting on a public coach by myself—”

“For two days and nights?” Jez said with a weariness that meant they’d had this conversation many, many times. “With who knows who as your fellow passengers?”

“And with who knows what intimidating little spells that Mum taught me?” she countered. “All right, all right, I know you and Jed finished the wooden stands for their precious glass baskets and had to deliver them. Enough said on the subject? Good.” She turned to Cade. “How was Shellery? Did you see Megs?”

They told her all about the estate and the performance, and how pretty it was to watch the boats sailing out to sea and back each day, and exactly nothing about Mieka’s appalling question to Jeska. Mieka, it seemed, had forgotten all about it. He might not even remember saying it. Cade worried that he was actually becoming used to that. It was convenient at times—for all of them—but who could tell what he’d forget next?

Jinsie was looking especially lovely, excited by the talk she’d had yesterday with one of her correspondents, looking forward to a larger gathering with Cade in attendance for expert opinions. When lunching was over at the inn she and Jez had chosen, and Touchstone walked to Players Hall, where they would perform in a few hours, Mieka told Cade to keep an eye on which of the young men she favored most.

“Have to get a look at me first brother-in-law,” he said.

Amused, Cade said, “I take it that in your world, men and women can’t possibly have conversations and be friends without that sort of thing entering into it.” Too late he realized he probably shouldn’t have said that, remembering Mieka’s quick irrational jealousy of the young farmer and the resulting bruise on his jaw.

But Mieka only laughed and replied, “In any world, Quill. In
any
world!”

For the first time in their experience of Shollop, women were openly in the audience that night. The few females who attended the University—not officially, of course, but allowed to sit in on classes—had usually shown up in male clothing. Now they were here in skirts and summery dresses. So were quite a few faculty wives and daughters. The next night at least a third of the audience was composed of women. And for this reason all the groups on all the circuits from now on would be playing at least one and sometimes two additional shows at each stop to accommodate the increased demand for tickets. It was part of Vered’s resentment against the system that none of the players would have a share of the money. The contracts for Royal, Ducal, and Winterly had been signed before the schedules were altered, and the Master of the King’s Revelries would be raking in the coin for the Royal coffers. Cade wasn’t pleased, either, but he had every faith that by next year, Kearney Fairwalk, Romuald Needler, and other managers would have righted the situation—with a bit extra, he hoped, to compensate for the swindle of this year.

On their third day in Shollop, Rafe headed out before lunching to meet with some art students regarding his idea of a children’s play and ancillary book. Mieka and Jeska tagged along. Jinsie dragged Cade round to a tavern where six young men awaited with huge pitchers of beer and dozens of bright ideas. Though all of them admired Jinsie’s looks, Jinsie didn’t particularly look back at any of them. Mieka, Cade thought with amusement, was wrong. His future brother-in-law wasn’t among this group.

Theater for the deaf. Theater for the blind. Cade realized that in a way, Touchstone had already done the former. The plays performed on the Continent had relied perforce on the conjurings of the withies and Jeska’s physical presentations, for their audiences had understood perhaps one word in ten of the scripts. But to work a play without any sounds at all… that intrigued him.

About excising all the visuals he was less convinced. One of the young scholars suggested that they surprise the audience by giving it a try at the performance for the Marching Society in what had been the old greenhouse, yet Cade resisted this as unprofessional. These men were roughly his own age, but suddenly they all seemed very young—which was absurd because his first time in Shollop he’d been intimidated by everyone he’d met, and what was the difference except for two Winterly Circuits, one Royal, a trip to the Continent, friendship with a Princess, artistic acclaim and financial success, and now their second Royal… well, all right, he’d done quite a lot. But at twenty-two, had so many experiences crowded his life that he should feel so much older?

“We’ll try it,” he said impulsively. “Only you’ll have to let everybody know beforetime. And if they want a refund after, we’ll be glad to oblige them.”

“Oh, good Gods, Cade!” Jinsie exclaimed, laughing. “Don’t say that! Poverty-stricken students? They could love it up one side and down the other and
still
ask for their money back!”

Now all he had to do was convince his partners. And what fun
that
would be, he reflected gloomily, wondering why he hadn’t just kept his mouth shut.

“What you and the Shadowshapers did at the Downstreet,” one of the young men said suddenly. “That was brilliant. The first step in the revolution.”

“And we’ve all read that article about you in
The Nayword
,” another said. “The one where you talked about theater changing the world.”

“There’s no more articulate spokesman for innovation and transformation,” confirmed another.

“Oh,” he said, inadequately, flummoxed that they were treating him as if he actually knew things. As if he had become Somebody.

Well, he rather supposed he had.

Walking back to the inn, he asked Jinsie, “What revolution?”

“In theater, in the crafts, in society,” Jinsie said firmly. “There’s nothing men can do that women can’t.”

“Fathering a child might be a little beyond a woman’s capabilities,” he responded dryly.

“I don’t see you becoming a mother anytime soon,” she retorted. “And who’s more important to a child’s raising, the mother or the father?”

“Whoever’s there the most,” he said at once.

“Which is always the mother.”

“Why couldn’t it be the father? There are plenty of men who lose their wives and are left with children to raise—”

“And a whole family to provide for, and how many of them stay at home to take care of the children? They just marry another woman to manage the household.”

“What a romantic you are!”

She ignored the teasing. “My father works in our home. He’s always there. He was at least as important as Mum when it came to the raising of us.”

“It sounds,” he said gently, “as if you might be criticizing your brother.”

She looked up at him sidelong. “Where,” she inquired acidly, “shall I start?”

“He’s learning, Jinsie. He really is. It’s just taking him awhile to grow up.”

“Wish Mum had a spell for it,” she muttered.

He wanted very much to ask what form Jinsie’s own magic took, but didn’t. He’d never seen her work any spellcrafting, never heard Mieka or anyone else mention what her talents were. Elfen though her looks were, it didn’t necessarily follow that she had Elfen sorts of magic in her—or indeed much magic at all. It would be rude of him to ask.

They paused to browse in a bookshop, but there wasn’t a
lot besides secondhand texts—nothing for him and nothing for Jorie’s new passion for books. They kept looking, though, and in the quiet and relative privacy of the back shelves, Jinsie said, “He does send money and sometimes supplies to Ginnel House, when he remembers. Usually when he’s just back from Hilldrop. Right before the Royal started he left an envelope and directions, and asked me to take it for him.”

“But not because he—because anything happened.”

“No. It’s because he feels guilty, as well he might! Mum and Fa keep wanting to tell you somehow that they’re grateful, but they can’t think up anything that wouldn’t embarrass everybody.” She smiled up at him. “You see? Just me mentioning it has made you uncomfortable.”

He stopped trying to pretend interest in a hefty text on the history of the King’s Council. “It had to be done,” he said flatly. For Mieka’s sake, and for Jindra’s. He knew what he’d seen in those Elsewhens.

“Nobody else could have managed it. You’re the only one he ever listens to.”

“Not that often.”

“More than anybody else.” She started for the shop door and he followed. When they were outside on the street again, she went on, “Years ago, Jed and Jez would take him along to a tavern to watch a show, and he’d come back and talk about it for hours—what he’d do different, mistakes the group made. But one night they went to see you and Rafe and Jeska and whoever your glisker was at the time, and never said a word after. Oh, except to disparage the glisker as a talentless fribbler who didn’t know a glass withie from a wooden spoon and couldn’t use either if he thought about it with both hands for a fortnight. I went with them a few nights later, dressed as a boy, of course.”

“And found out for yourself how dreadful we really were!”

“You were pretty rotten,” she agreed. “But Mieka was right.
The glisker had no idea what to do with the magic you gave him. Jeska and Rafe always made the most of it, because they’re brilliant. But even I could sense the potential. And
that
was due to you.”

“I’m embarrassed again, had you noticed?”

She laughed at him. “I don’t care—had you noticed? What’s important is that Mieka respected you first as a tregetour, and now as a man, as a friend. He couldn’t be everything he is without your magic to work with, and he knows it.” Suddenly she whirled round on her toes with the exuberance Cade associated with her brother. “The lovely part is that now I get to see all of you at the theater any night I choose, and so can any other woman in Gallybanks!”

“Pleased to have been of service,” he told her with a bow. “I’ve been trying to work out exactly why he did what he did at the Shadowshapers’ show. Just for the fun of breaking the rules?”

“Oh, Cayden! D’you think he doesn’t pay attention when you talk? It was partly for the excitement, of course. This is Mieka, after all! But you made him think about something he never thought about before—and there’s not many people can make him think at all. What’s he always saying? That thinking only gets in the way? He doesn’t believe that anymore, not really. And that’s due to you.”

Now he really
was
uncomfortable.

“As for where his own thinking will take him,” she went on as they left the bookshop, “Fa just rolls his eyes and says we’ll all have to wait and see.”