Touchstone (2 page)

And if that was indeed the case, he wondered if, like his own parents, they expected him to fail.

The claim to “purebred” he dismissed as absurd. How many centuries since the last truebloods of
any
race had died? He could trace his own ancestry back seven generations in his father’s line, and fully twelve in his mother’s. In their long, long history had been some genuine oddities, but his mother considered him the oddest of all. “Something must not be quite right on your father’s side,” she’d mused more than once. “
My
people never threw such a mongrel as you.” He knew by the names alone that he had Wizard and Elf (two Water, one Fire), Piksey and Sprite, and even that rarest of all bloods, Fae, in him. And Troll, he’d heard his mad great-granny say, because where else could he have got a face like this? Hook-beak nose and long jaw, cheekbones that could cut glass, wide mouth—granted, he was tall and gangly, not short and stout, but the byword for ugliness had stuck to him like pine sap, and every nickname he’d ever been inflicted with and every insult ever flung his way incorporated
troll
amongst its syllables. Never mind that his eyes were the fundamental truth about him: a clear, luminous gray, like the moonstones in Queen Roshien’s crown. They were Elfen eyes, inheritance of Mistbind and Watersmith, just as his long bones and thin, strong hands proclaimed Wizard, and his straight white teeth were entirely Human.

But it was the gift he never spoke about that was proof positive he was Fae. How all these things had combined to create him, he neither knew nor cared. He was what he was, and he knew what he could someday be. He’d seen it.

But … trueblood Elf? Not damned likely. Usually the bit remaining showed only in the coloring—the very dark, the very pale. Black hair, and eyes brown as tree bark or green like a forest pool, and skin the golden brown of fallen leaves. White-blond hair, with eyes blue as ice or gray as snow clouds, and translucent milky skin. The other features—delicate little hands and feet, sharp teeth, pointed ears—those things seemed to have faded first from the bloodlines.

If they reappeared, they were quite often hidden somehow. There were chirurgeons who did a brisk business in mutilating a newborn’s ears (as had been done to Jeska at the orders of a grandfather frantic to be thought entirely Human), and grinding down or knocking out and replacing any suspect teeth. Hands could not be hidden, but feet could be broken at the instep to flatten the telltale high arch. There were dyes for the hair and cosmetics for the skin, and specialists who retrained the lilting voice—or broke the willful spirit.

Nothing had been done to disguise this boy. Nothing. He was Elfen from his thick hair to his small, high-arched feet. Moreover, he had inherited the most attractive aspects of both major Kins. No Dark Elf would have skin as purely white as his, with no brown freckles or brick-red mottling, and no Light Elf would have hair that black. Those eyes confirmed it: neither gray nor blue, neither green nor brown, but an almost opalescent combination of all those colors, with an elusive golden spark in the iris of the left eye. It just wasn’t right that anything male, even Elfen male, should have eyes that beautiful, with such long, thick lashes. The teeth were small and regular and entirely Human; the ears, peeking shyly from the heavy silk hair, were entirely Elfen. It was a quick, wickedly nimble little body, and the fine bones were long enough to give him Human height. His voice was soft and lively, deeper than a young Elf’s treble. And his spirit was untamed—and, Cayden suspected, completely untamable.

He was the most beautiful thing Cayden had ever seen in his life. And he was asking to be given a chance.

So: should Cade give him something simple, as the Giant had suggested, something to ease him into it, give him the opportunity to succeed? Or something complex, difficult, to challenge the arrogance in those eyes? For Cayden realized that Mieka Windthistle wasn’t
asking
for anything, any more than Cayden had ever
asked
his parents’ permission to become a player. He was
demanding
control of Cayden’s glass withies, and Jeschenar’s absolute trust, and the entirety of Rafcadion’s supportive skill. Arrogant little Elf.

Cayden crouched down beside the glass baskets, his lips softening in a smile. Woven of ropes made of clear glass, there were two sets of four baskets each, the smooth curved rims tincted in sequential rainbow colors. Within were distributed almost three dozen hollow glass twigs varying in length from half a foot to nearly thrice that, crimped at one end and stamped there with the glasscrafter’s hallmark, their colors more delicate. The withies trembled with random sparks, reacting to the proximity of the one who had imbued them with magic.

He and Rafe and Jeska had thought to do another classic tonight, a cloying sentimental piece about a sailor coming home rich from his voyages to find his girl bespoken to another man. It was simple enough, requiring a masquer to shift only twice, from the sailor to the girl and back to the sailor again. There was magic and more than enough in the withies already primed. Simple magic for a simple story. Had he been forced to do the glisking, as he would have had to after the departure of the talentless idiot if Mieka Windthistle hadn’t shown up, these withies would have been sufficient. He had enough Elfenblood for the work, but a restrained magic was all he could handle on his own. It wasn’t that he was incapable, he told himself, it was just that he was so much better at the creating than the working. But he had to be honest inside his own head: He was clumsy at best, his hands too big and his fingers too long for the delicate manipulations required. With a quick glance at Mieka, who was over in a corner sharing a laugh with his Giant and Troll friends, he decided that the magic inside the slender glass twigs was
too
simple. On impulse he grasped a handful from the far basket, the indigo one. A few moments’ concentration imbued them with fresh spells. A second basket, and a third, and he breathed deeply before rising to his feet again. Let the snooty little Elf give
this
a try, he told himself, and went to talk to Jeschenar and Rafcadion.

“You really want to?” Jeska asked, frowning all over his gorgeous golden face. “I’m game, of course I am, but—”

“You’ve Elf enough in you to supplement whatever he can’t do. I’ve watched you work this one when you’re so drunk, you can’t hardly see straight.” To Rafe, he added, “I’ll tell him he’ll have more than the usual to work with on this piece, but if you catch him messing about, slap him back down.”

The fettler shrugged powerful shoulders and nodded. “I’ll keep him in line. No flourishes.”

“Oh, you can tease him a bit. Just don’t let him get away with anything silly.”

Ten minutes later, watching from his hiding place beneath the stairs—hiding not to avoid seeing the audience’s reactions but to avoid their seeing him—he clenched his jaw and his fists and prayed to the good Lord and Lady to protect his friends if this new glisker should prove not just arrogant but dangerous. Still, their long search for the right glisker had taught them to deal swiftly with the inconsistent and the incompetent, the nervous and the confused. Jeschenar was strong, with great instincts; Rafcadion was capable of throttling any flawed or frantic magic. And if needs must, Cayden could summon up his own skills and help his friends.

Expecting the boy to wait politely beside the glass baskets while Jeska readied himself and Rafe took a position at far stage left, Cade was startled when the glisker charmingly persuaded a couple of patrons out of their chairs and dragged the furniture to the back of the stage. Then he began rearranging baskets. Quick hands switched green with blue, yellow with violet, perched the black and white onto chair seats and balanced the orange on their slick rims. Then he seemed to be looking for something. Not finding it, he shrugged—and picked out two withies from the red basket to balance across the blue. It was a configuration that made no sense to Cade at all, who always used the classic prism pattern. Then, rather than seat himself on the glisker’s bench within easy reach of all the baskets, he remained standing. When Jeska nodded to Rafe that he was ready, and Rafe began the foundation work—steady and solid as always, the best fettler Cade had ever encountered—the glisker bounced a few times on his heels, laughing soundlessly to himself.

Magic began to radiate through the tavern. Usually Cade spent a few moments watching the audience, marking those who resisted and those who instinctively fought, just in case his help might be needed. It never was. Rafe was too good at control. But vigilance was another duty a tregetour owed his group. Tonight, though, he completely forgot. The Elf did something he’d never seen a glisker do before, not even the Winterly or Ducal or Royal Circuit professionals.

He made his work into a dance.

Instead of sitting where he could reach for one withie at a time to have it ready in the left hand for the switch to the right when needed, he twisted and curled his whole body, swaying from one basket to another, grabbing up glass twigs in both hands and waving them like a Good Brother censing parishioners at High Chapel. Cayden bit back a despairing moan. If the boy was this wild just setting up the scene, who knew what he’d do with the piece itself?

Mieka played it straight for the Sailor’s homecoming. A mast and a white backdrop sail, and a wooden deck below Jeska’s feet: all these things were usual. The hint of salt air, the touch of a breeze, even the dim ring of ship’s bells calling the hour—all were subtle touches usually found only on the Circuits. But when the Sailor set foot on land and caught sight of his beloved in the company of another man, instead of the outrage and pain and betrayal the piece called for, Mieka projected shocked amazement without letting the audience—or poor Jeska—in on why.

What he had in mind became apparent when Jeska made his shift to the persona of the Sweetheart. At first she was as the Sailor had remembered and described her: a lovely, dainty little thing with blond curls and a winsome smile. But quickly the demure blue gown deepened to a vile purple; the shawl turning from leaf to livid green; the gold hair brassy; and the petal-pink lips blood-crimson as the glisker conjured the painted face and blowsy figure of a seasoned whore. She lamented how hard she had to work, how difficult her life was—all with Jeska behaving physically as if he wore the usual pretty face and graceful form. The audience howled with laughter and pounded tables with fists and flagons. As she bemoaned the fact that she’d had to accept the other man’s proposal because it just wasn’t possible for her to go on any longer alone and unprotected, Jeska did what he always did at this point—what, by tradition, every masquer did at this point: sank to his knees. A pitiable gesture for a young girl, it now looked as if she was kneeling to perform certain services.

Jeska held the pose, then got to his feet almost as if pulled upright by powerful, unseen hands on his shoulders. By the time he was standing, the shift back to the Sailor had been made. Cayden swallowed a gasp of shock at the glisker’s skill—and nearly strangled on an exclamation when he sensed Rafe loosen his stringent hold on the flux of magic. The Sailor told his former girlfriend that it was breaking his heart but he understood, he’d been gone a long time, it was only natural that she’d grown tired of waiting—and all the while the Elf emanated waves of gleeful relief at this lucky escape that washed over the eagerly receptive audience. At the end, the Sailor was supposed to slump into a tavern to drown his sorrows, dejection in every line of him as he dropped coins on the bar and bought drinks all round so he’d have company in his despair. By now Jeska had adapted—oh, had he ever adapted. Jaunty and carefree, whistling in between his lines, he dug deep in pockets and flung coins high in the air as he invited everyone to toast his freedom. The imaginary coins were one of Cade’s best feats of magic, something very few tregetours his age could do; their cheery chiming was all Mieka, and something no other glisker had ever managed to do for Cade before.

It was funny, it was brilliant, it was completely outrageous, and it had the patrons flinging real coins onto the stage.

The Elf had one more trick. As Jeska bent to retrieve the money, he suddenly wore once again the Sweetheart’s garish gown and brassy curls. Startled, he nearly tripped on his own feet. Cayden heard Mieka chortling behind the glass baskets. Jeska again reacted swiftly, changing the crouches to curtseys, blowing kisses to the audience. And the trimmings piled up in his swift, snatching hands.

It was a while before Cayden felt ready to leave the darkness beneath the stairs and shoulder his way through the crowd to the bar. The whole village was congratulating the Elf, buying him and Rafe and Jeska drinks, roaring out the stale old lines that Mieka had turned from histrionic to hilarious. When Cade at last ventured out, he was swept up in the general celebration of the glisker’s triumph.

He had never been so furious in his life.

He wasn’t so furious that he turned down the chance to get drunk for free.

Neither was he so drunk by the end of the night that he neglected his duty to himself and his friends by making it easy for the tavern keeper to hire them for another night. Guessing that the coins would keep coming from the audience, Cade demanded not money but decent beds—
including
tonight—and three meals tomorrow instead of one, plus a full supper before they went to bed tonight and breakfast on the day they left. By the time he got what he wanted, the minster chimes had rung curfew and the place was nearly empty. Both he and the landlord knew that tomorrow night, from opening bell until closing, there would scarcely be room in the tavern to stand. He spread his hands wide open in the Wizardly gesture that meant
You may trust my word, I use no magic
and concluded the deal, then returned to the bar.

Rafe was superbly drunk, lids drooping over his blue-gray eyes, a silly smile curving his lips beneath the heavy beard he was very proud of being able to grow at the ripe old age of nineteen. Jeska was a little more sober, but only a little; the tavern keeper’s daughter might or might not get the full benefits of his attention later on. Cade wondered whether he ought to mention they’d be in real beds tonight, not in the hayloft, then shrugged to himself. Jeska always found a way.