Touchstone (26 page)

The physicker settled his robes about him, smiling an insufferable smile. As he did so, from the clouds flew the white raven, and a voice called softly from thin air:

“But what if the malady is blindness? What if the sick man is blind? What if he cannot see hope and healing perched beside his bed? Tell me that, good scholarly man—tell me what happens then!”

“Blind? That’s not in the story. What’s all this rubbish about being blind?”

Control your temper,
Cade told himself. This would be good practice. He glanced a warning at Rafe, felt him clamp down on the flow of magic from the glisker’s bench—where Mieka was seething, those eyes nearly black. Jeska, having just enough magic of his own to nudge a working if needs must, stripped himself of the old physicker’s countenance, stood, and looked down his perfect nose at the place where the princess sat.

“Certain sources,” he told her—intimately, confidingly, as if they were alone in all the world, “mention that the white raven actually
can
cure blindness.”

“Really,” she sniffed. “And how does it do that, masquer?”

“Oh, very simply.” He smiled his sweetest smile, like an Angel in a High Chapel window, and said slowly and distinctly: “Eat its shit.”

Lady Redhead suddenly jumped to her feet and began to applaud. The rest of the ladies did likewise. Cade went over to Mieka’s glass baskets, collecting Rafe and Jeska with a look. When they were all together—the Elf still with murder in his face—Cade whispered, “Let’s not give them ‘Purloin.’ She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Who the fuck
is
that?” Mieka demanded. Anger whitened his face, making the livid bruise on his cheekbone uglier even beneath the makeup.

“Princess Iamina,” Jeska said. “Or somebody just as rude who stole her flower. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it. I thought everybody knew.”

While Mieka was squinting to get a look at the jewel, Rafe said, “How about ‘Troll and Trull’? She deserves that one, if anybody does.”

Cade mentally ran through their folio, wanting something pointed but not lethal. There was magic enough in the withies he’d already primed—more or less specific to “Purloin” but with a few tweaks he could adapt them. But to which piece?

“We’ll give ’em ‘The Dragon,’” Mieka snapped. “And send the firebreath right up her skirts. Everybody else has been there, why not us?”

“Oh Gods,” Jeska moaned softly as Cade turned to do some fast work on the glass twigs. “Did you
have
to put that image in my head?”

*   *   *

As it happened, Cade didn’t make it back to the lodgings that night.

Waking just at dawn, he lazed against lavender-scented pillows and traced with his gaze the graceful flow of red hair across Lady Torren’s naked shoulders. Not losing his temper, he reflected with satisfaction, had unexpected rewards. Torren had been deeply impressed that he had only shrugged off Iamina’s rudeness—but in truth she had been furious enough for both of them. She’d waited until they were safely hidden in a luxurious little grotto seemingly constructed of ferns and mosses before giving vent to her outrage. That night he learned an interesting aspect of anger that he’d never encountered before: that passionate feeling was passionate feeling, and could be expressed in ways infinitely more pleasant than punching a fist through a window.

Or exploding a glass withie.

He knew the ladies felt cheated that they hadn’t seen Touchstone’s trademark. Cade hoped that meant there would be another invitation to a “secret” late-night performance, but it didn’t really matter to him one way or another. It hadn’t been until halfway through “The Dragon” that he realized that Mieka Windthistle in a rage was dangerous. The flames were fiercer, the Dragon bigger and nastier, and Cade could sense Rafe working harder to temper the emotions surging on waves of magic. Tonight the Prince wasn’t just troubled by the prospect of having to live up to his ancestors’ exploits: he was also resentful, and rebellious, and angry.

Jeska adapted, as he always did. But tonight he kept hold of the spent withie Mieka had thrown to him as his “sword,” refusing to toss it back at the end of the piece. To shatter one of the withies still in the baskets, one that still contained even a trace of magic, would be a colossal stupidity even Mieka wouldn’t risk—though when he leaped off the glisker’s bench and joined them to take their bows, he was furious at being deprived of his flash. Rafe’s elbow in his ribs and nod to the audience mollified him a little, for Princess Iamina was still white-faced and shaking. Mieka had sent the Dragon’s fiery breath right at her.

Gazing up at daybreak through the screen of green leaves, Cayden stretched on the bed of pillows and blankets and reflected that whatever the Elf had done with the residue of his rage, he didn’t want to know. Lady Torren had approached him while he was packing the crates, and he’d lost track of everyone else at that point. A woman could do that to a man, he mused. Girls were one thing; women were quite another. And Torren was definitely a woman. He suspected that this wasn’t the most profound insight of his life, but it was certainly the most recent.

He hadn’t lied when he told Mieka he was fifteen, his first time. What he hadn’t said, and what he wouldn’t have admitted if someone set him alight with real fire, was that the first time had been a disaster. The second had been much worse. But because at fifteen a boy could be randy and scared or randy and determined, but randy above all else, the third time had been rather wonderful. It had remained warm in his memory until he discovered the girl was spreading word amongst her friends that the legendary correlation of the length of a boy’s nose to the length of other appendages in the predominantly Wizard male was in fact no legend, and she could attest to it of her own experience.

After that, he’d decided that he was willing to be as emotionally shallow as any girl ever born, because the good Lord and Lady knew no girl was ever going to want him for his looks. If they closed their eyes, their minds, and their hearts while they were with him, so much the better. It meant that he didn’t have to see, think, or feel, either.

Done often enough, of course,
shallow
became very easy. By his eighteenth year, this began to worry him. Not worried enough to puzzle out what to do about it, but concerned nonetheless. He began to wonder what it might be like to have what Rafe and Crisiant had together. It would be nice, just once, to find out what it was to be with a girl and have his eyes and mind and heart wide open.

Not that this was apt to happen. The beard he’d been struggling to grow—which, on Mieka’s wise advice, he had shaved off—had done nothing to hide or improve the rest of his face. At nineteen he was still getting taller, and ever more awkward in the arrangement of arms and legs and hands and feet that seemed to have no correlation to each other. He remained what his mother had always said he was: someone’s horrid joke on his handsome parents.

But Lady Torren hadn’t seemed to think so. And he’d seen, by the light of a trio of tiny lamps she asked him to ignite so she could look at him, that she kept her eyes open the whole time.

And this time—well, both times, actually—had been better than wonderful.

He stretched again, and reached a finger to stroke the smooth line of her back. His touch woke her. She blinked drowsily up at him, and smiled, and in the golden dapples of early morning sunshine he saw the freckles scattered across her nose, and the flecks of brown in her green eyes, and that even without lip rouge her mouth was a lovely shade of peach.

“What most ladies say at such a moment,” she mused, “is ‘I must look a fright.’”

“You don’t,” he replied. “And you’re not ‘most ladies.’”

“As it happens, I’m not,” she agreed.

Cade laughed silently. He was about to suggest that, since he wasn’t “most men” either, they might find a way to prove their uniqueness to each other again. But then she said something that left him blank-brained with shock.

With a fingertip she traced the line of his jaw from ear to chin, scratching gently at his morning stubble, and murmured, “You’re nothing like your father, you know.”

After a moment he heard himself say, “I know.” But he didn’t want to hear a catalog of the differences. He most particularly didn’t want to know if his father had auditioned her for Prince Ashgar. Giving her a smile that was nothing more than a stretching of his lips from his teeth, he sat up and reached for his clothes. The new gray-blue jacket was hopelessly wrinkled, as was his shirt; he’d have to beg the Trollwife at their lodgings to steam the creases out before the performance tonight. Ah, yes—the performance. The perfect excuse. The performance before the King and his nobles … and Prince Ashgar and his attendants … including the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber.

“I really ought to be going,” he said.

{“Oughta be goin’,” he mumbled as he struggled into his shirt. “Workin’ t’morrow.”

“There’s no hurry.”

He shook his head and gulped half a glass of brandy, not wanting to look at her. He buttoned his shirt up wrong, and had to redo it.

“You’re very drunk.”

He waved away her concern. “Been drunker’n this an’ played ‘Windows’ from start to finish. Great reviews the next day, too.”

“Oh, top score tonight, if that’s what you’re asking. Both times.”

His jacket was around here someplace. Ah—here on the floor, sprawled atop a garish bright rug, black-bordered shapes like a demented stained-glass window. “You should come to our next show,” he managed.

“I don’t think so.”

He looked up. “Why the fuck not?”

She raked long dark-blond hair from her eyes and regarded him with something that wasn’t quite contempt. “Who do you think you are?”

He swept her a sardonic bow that nearly toppled him. “Cayden Silversun, Master Tregetour of Touchstone.”

“You wear that like the scars on your hands. And speaking of your hands—that ring. It’s like a tag pinned to your shirt so people know where to return you, when you go lost.”

Don’t worry about going too lost, Quill, I’ll always come find you
.}

“You needn’t leave so soon.”

He looked at his hands. No scars. And no parchment, either, with scribbled directions and that promise to come find him. He blinked down at the girl, confused. None of the colors were right—her hair was red, not blond, and the blue curtains were green leaves, and the gaudy rug was nowhere to be seen. And everything, including him, reeked of lavender. He supposed that was better than stinking of brandy.

“It’s just dawn,” she coaxed. “Surely you can stay a little longer.”

He shook his head to clear it. “We’ve another show tonight. For the King.” He concentrated, and envisioned the colors of the sea-green and silver ribbons, the brown wax seal on the invitation. The parchment that didn’t promise that Mieka would come find him. “And—and we still haven’t decided what we’ll do. I have work, priming the withies for my glisker. I’m beholden for last night, Lady, forgive me for hurrying off.”

The path back through the castle grounds was long and frustrating, and rather sweaty, for the softer mornings of spring had given way to the full sun of summer. Before he reached the gates into town he was longing for that huge bathtub in the garderobe of their lodgings, and was half-tempted to plunge into the moat, or maybe the river, except that he couldn’t swim. He checked his pockets for coin enough to have the servants carry up water to fill the tub. But it turned out that his wish had been anticipated.

Mieka was sitting in the kitchen, making himself useful with knives and whetstone while he gossiped with the Trollwife. He smiled when he saw Cayden, and broke off a conversation about Prince Ashgar’s dreary matrimonial prospects to say, “Mistress Luta made muffins! They’re in the warming oven, ready for when you finish your bath.”

“My—?”

“You’re in rather fragrant need of one, Quill. Though I must say, the lavender perfume is rather intriguing. The little redhead, I take it?”

The Trollwife shooed Cade out of the kitchen. “Go on with ye, laddie! Take that jacket and shirt off first, they’re wrinkled as a raisin.”

Half an hour later, it was Cade’s skin that had started to wrinkle. He was just about to pull the plug that let the water drain down to the elm trees when Mieka strolled into the garderobe.

“Oh, that’s much better,” he announced after taking a deep, experimental breath. “I don’t know what Mistress Mirdley puts into that white soap of hers, but it’s much nicer than the lavender stink you were wearing when you came in.” Cocking his head, he watched Cade’s eyes for a moment before asking, “So you’re feeling better, now you’ve washed the scent of her off you?”

There may have been possible replies to this; Cade couldn’t think of any at the moment. So he shrugged and said, “Tell me what I owe you for the bath.”

Mieka waved it away. “’Twas for me own comfort, not yours. How could I work tonight with you over there by the curtains, whiff as the Royal Gardens? Want something to eat? I brought tea and muffins.”

“You mean you didn’t eat them all on the way upstairs?”

“I thought about it,” he replied seriously. Then, gaze roaming down Cade’s chest, he added, “But Mistress Mirdley will string me up by me poor fragile little ears if you come home even skinnier than when you left.” He caught up a towel and tossed it to Cade. “Rafe has a mind to do ‘Feather-heart’ tonight, so you’ve some adjusting to do on the withies—” All at once, he snapped his fingers and cursed, digging into a back pocket. “This came for you this morning, early. Lord Coldkettle’s office, looks like, by the seal and ribbons.”

“But we already received the Court invitation. Do they want us to do a second show?”

“This is for
you
, not Touchstone. Open it!”

He did, not caring if he dripped bathwater onto it, because he recognized the handwriting. “It’s from my father.”

“Really?” He half-turned from examining his fading bruise in the mirror. “That’s right nice of him, to congratulate you on First Flight of the Winterly.”