Thornlost (Book 3) (6 page)

“It’s late, so I will be brief,” she said. “At this point in your life, your father and I had expected that you would be decently established in a profession, perhaps even advantageously married to a young woman of rank and distinction. We—”

“I hadn’t expected to still be living at home, either.”

“You will have the courtesy to let me finish, Cayden. We had thought that by this time we would be turning our entire efforts to Derien, to his education and future prospects. As it happens, he has developed a curiosity about foreign lands—very much due to your travels last year, and I am grateful to you for sparking this
interest. The favor shown you by the Princess is another thing I had not expected, but is also gratifying. And you have made other contacts among the nobility which I know
you
do not care to use, but which will be essential to your brother. With the proper training and connections, Derien may well become a Royal envoy. But such things come expensive.” She sipped at her brandy and set the glass aside. “He will be nine years old this summer. By this autumn I hope to see him enrolled in the King’s College rather than the littleschool he now attends. There, he will receive the best education, and make the friends necessary for his advancement.” She paused again. “We must wait, of course, for the particular style of his magic to appear. But in anticipation of that day, your father and I wish to see him placed as favorably as possible.”

He drank brandy and waited for her to go on.

“Your father’s father was under the impression, as was I, that you would be my only offspring. Cadriel Silversun died years before Derien was born. Thus no provision was made for another son or daughter. The whole of his legacy, while not vast by certain standards, is now yours.” She looked him directly in the eyes. Hers were dark and determined, and he saw that there were a few tiny dry lines at their corners. “I am certain you understand what I am asking of you now.”

He had the irrelevant thought that Derien was lucky to have been born a boy. What their mother would have done with a daughter didn’t bear contemplating. Married off as young as decently possible to some rich, well-connected lord—if she turned out “prettily enough.” If not… if he’d had a sister who looked like
him
…

“Cayden. I desire to know what you intend to do.”

She wanted something from him. Something only he could give her. She was actually
asking
him rather than demanding, ordering, insisting, informing him of a decision already made. This was unprecedented. He wished he weren’t so tired; he could
have enjoyed it more. He finished off his brandy in one gulp—disgraceful, not to savor a fine liquor, but he wanted to get this over with.

“Share the money with Derien? Of course. On one condition.”

He watched triumph blaze in her eyes, and the quick flare of angry outrage that followed it. Interesting, to see her struggle between elation that he would do as she wanted, and fury that he dared demand anything in return.

“Once the paperwork is done and the money is officially mine, it goes into a fund with two names on it, and two names only: mine and Lord Fairwalk’s.”

The implication sent an ugly flush into her cheeks. Once more she fought rage, and the effort shook her voice. “That is unworthy of you.”

“But prudent. Be as insulted as you please, Mother. You’ve got what you wanted—for Derien, for his education and support.” He laid a light emphasis on the name. “And as for still living here, I’ll be gone at Trials soon, and then on the Ducal or Royal Circuit all summer and into the autumn, and then I’ll be gone for good.”

“You’ve found rooms?”

“Not yet.” And he would have to make drastic alterations in his searchings, now that he wouldn’t have his grandfather’s money to spend. Lord Oakapple’s purse would go only so far. Touchstone was still owed for the trip to the Continent last year, there being some contention regarding a shattered row of windows at the Princess’s father’s palace, but Kearney was working on that. In any event, the rooms he’d end up with would no doubt horrify her if she ever saw them, which he had every confidence she never would. “After I come back from the Circuit. Then you and Father can concentrate
every
effort on Dery.” He started for the door, then swung back round. “One other stipulation. He never
knows where the money came from. As far as he’s concerned, you’ve spent years scrimping for this. Agreed?”

Through rigid lips she said, “Agreed.”

With a nod, he left her and climbed the wrought-iron stairs up to the fifth floor. His bedchamber was despicably tidy. He had the urge to rip everything to shreds, smash the windows, splinter the furniture. Instead, he undressed, and before he crawled into bed gave himself a Namingday present: a night’s dreamless sleep with the application of a thornful of blockweed.

* * *

“
A
mazing, wasn’t it?” Blye remarked the next afternoon. She had returned that rainy morning to Gallantrybanks with her in-laws, though Jed had stayed behind in Hilldrop to supervise the final fittings on Mieka’s refurbished barn. “Lady Jaspiela Highcollar, mixing with the common folk at a country party!”

“Did she ‘mix’? I never saw her ‘mixing’—in fact, she told me flat out that she hadn’t even spoken to any of Mieka’s neighbors.”

Cade handed her another glass plate from the set she was preparing for display. Forbidden by Guild rules to make anything hollow, Blye satisfied the inspectors who came round by having all manner of acceptable things for sale in the shop. Plates and platters, candleflats and windowpanes, anything that would legally justify her prosperity. Her real money was in making withies for Touchstone and the Shadowshapers—but the glass twigs were hollow, and thus officially prohibited to her. So these she made in secret. Usually Rikka Ashbottle, Blye’s not-apprentice—because of course only a master crafter could have an apprentice—would be doing this polishing work, but Rikka was out running errands.

“I imagine Mieka’s neighbors were too overawed to talk to Her Ladyship, but she was there, wasn’t she?” Blye slanted him a smile, dark eyes gleaming beneath a fringe of white-blond hair. She held the plate over a little device made long ago by her father: a glass beaker with a cork to stopper the place where one poured in the water and a thin spout for steam to escape. She could just as easily have used a teakettle, but the beaker was prettier, all swirled about with orange and yellow. Cade had obliged her by calling up a bit of Wizardfire beneath the beaker where it rested atop a steel ring. The steam fogged the glass plate, which she handed to Cade for polishing. This worked on wineglasses, too, but of course she wasn’t allowed to make those. Not officially, anyway.

“It was a real treat,” Blye continued, “seeing her amongst farmers, blacksmiths, brewers, and such in their go-to-Chapel best.”

“The working class. It’s escaped her notice that
I’m
working class.”

She made big, mocking eyes at him. “With all Touchstone’s acclaim? Lord Oakapple’s patronage? Lord Fairwalk? Talks with the Princess? The Highcollar and Blackswan and Mistbind in your blood?”

“We’re all of us just ordinary working-class gits, Touchstone,” he stated firmly. “Common everyday Gallybankers. What we have is what we earned, not what we inherited.”

Which had made it remarkably painless to share the inheritance from his grandfather. And that was odd, because he’d been looking forward to it, counting on it, ever since he found out about it years and years ago. Yet here he was, keeping the bulk of it in the bank to provide for his little brother. That it was for Derien made it easy, but while thinking about it this morning, he’d realized that he felt
free
. This was even odder. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way round?
Money
was supposed to be liberating. Not having to worry about how to pay for this and that, being able to afford a fine place to live, servants, good food and excellent drink—wasn’t that supposed to free up one’s time and mind for nobler things? But it also would have set him apart from his partners. And he couldn’t really think of that money as
his, no matter what his grandfather had intended. No, better to live off what he made through his own work.

He opened his mouth to say something of the sort to Blye—not about transferring the inheritance to Dery, for only he and his mother and Kearney, and possibly his father, would ever know about that—but whatever he’d meant to say vanished when he saw she was scowling at him.

“
Ordinary?
When have you ever been
ordinary
?”

Cade had no idea what had prompted the scowl or the sharp tone of voice. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. D’you think that what you are and what you can do is
ordinary
? I just wish to all the Gods that you’d stop wasting your time telling yourself and everybody else that
ordinary
is what you ought to be or want to be. Pretending you want it is even worse, because you don’t.” She set down a plate and folded her arms, glaring up at him.

“How would you know?” he flared. “Why can’t I—” He broke off as Blye’s cat, Bompstable, reacting to their raised voices, leaped onto the counter and began pacing between them as if on guard duty, ready to come to Blye’s defense if needed. Cade dragged his gaze from the cat’s narrowed green eyes and in a calmer tone asked, “Why can’t I have a regular kind of life? Rafe does. And Mieka—”

“Oh, yeh, his home is just a dream come true, innit? With that Harpy of a mother-in-law nagging him to give up theater and find a place at Court because the new Princess is
so
fond of Touchstone and she’d be just the person to get him a cushy living and maybe even some kind of title—”

“What?”

“You didn’t know? Jez overheard her one afternoon while he was out there working on the barn. And very eloquent she was, too!”

Mieka Windthistle, Court flunky. If it hadn’t be so
horrifying—and so close to what his mother had always wanted for
him
—he would have laughed.

Blye was still scowling, but not so fiercely. She stroked Bompstable, who had settled down in a furry white lump beside her to purr. “Rafe and Crisiant are happy, but that’s because she
knows
. She understands it all because she grew up with him, she knows what’s inside him and that if she tried to change it, he’d be less than what he ought to be. You don’t think Mieka’s wife knows him the way Crisiant knows Rafe, do you? She hasn’t the first notion of why or how he does what he does, leave alone that he
has
to do it or become a splintered shard of himself. She loves him, that’s not in question. But she wants to change him, make him into what she thinks he ought to be. She’s pulling him in one direction and Touchstone is yanking him in another, and one of these days he’s going to come apart and it won’t be pretty to watch. He isn’t
ordinary
any more than you are.”

It took him a few moments to recover from all that. At length, he said, “Do you know how Jed figures out what needs doing to a building and puts it to rights? Does Mishia Windthistle understand how Hadden makes a lute?” He snorted a bitter laugh. “Does my mother know what my father’s work for Prince Ashgar really is? And if she does, does she care?”

“Oh, please!” She rolled her big brown eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. How do you put your magic inside the withies? I couldn’t tell you, and I
make
the damned things! But I know
you
, Cayden, how you think and what you’re like inside. I know Mieka, too. And it’s been obvious from the start that his wife doesn’t have the slightest idea who he really is or what he needs.”

“They’re happy,” he observed. Eventually they wouldn’t be, but for now…

“Are they?” She gave an irritated shrug of one shoulder and pulled Bompstable into her lap. “Rafe and Crisiant are a success
because she knows him down to his marrow. She understands. It’s the same with Jed and me. I don’t have to work anymore, did you know that? He and Jez are making enough to keep us very nicely. But I still work.”

“Because you want to.”

“I
need
to,” she corrected. “And if that makes me a freak, so be it. I married a man who understands that I love what I do. And that I wouldn’t be who I am, who he loves, if I didn’t have work that I need to do. Mostly we get defined by words like daughter, sister, wife, niece—all of them words that depend on other people. It’s how we define
ourselves
that’s the truth of what we are. Mieka is Mishia and Hadden’s son, Jindra’s father, his wife’s husband, and brother to that whole tribe of Windthistles, but what he truly is—that’s a glisker, a player. Part of Touchstone.”

“Part of something worth being part of,” Cade murmured. “He’s said that.” And hadn’t Cade himself realized last summer that Mieka truly
needed
to be onstage, performing for hundreds of people—and eventually thousands, if his Elsewhen was to be trusted?

“If he wasn’t Touchstone’s glisker, he’d be with some other group. Just the way you’d be writing plays and priming withies whether it’s with Touchstone or somebody else. It’s the way you define yourself. Through your work.” She smiled a little. “What you earned, not what you inherited.”

“I don’t know why you think Mieka isn’t happy,” said Cade, frowning. “The girl is everything a man could want.” He heard himself saying it and couldn’t believe the words were coming out of his mouth. “Beautiful, sweet, modest—she didn’t bring any money to the marriage, but who cares when a girl’s that lovely?” It was all true, though, wasn’t it? “She adores him, a blind man could see that. She’s made a perfect home for him, given him a child—”

He broke off as Blye’s face went blank as a pane of glass. Oh Gods, was that it? The one word she hadn’t mentioned in her
definitions was
mother
. He knew she and Jedris had been trying, thus far without success. It happened that way sometimes: the mix of races was too complex, and there’d be too much of one thing and not enough of another to make pregnancy possible. Blye was mostly Goblin, though with enough Human so she didn’t look it. The Windthistles were mostly Elfen, with dollops of Piksey, Human, Wizard, Sprite, and possibly Fae. Cade had never even considered that conceiving and bearing a child might not be possible for her and Jed.