Touchstone (40 page)

His way back to the inn lit by a full moon, he had no trouble locating the squat little structure close by the old castle walls. Fairwalk, who seemed determined to educate them about each stop on the Winterly, had related how Dolven Wold had started life as a fortress, expanded into a fair-sized town with the fortunes of its owners, become a royal residence when Princess Veddie married the foreign Archduke Guriel and took a fancy to the place, and had somehow survived the ravages of the war that had seen the castle itself largely destroyed. The present Archduke never visited here, the place where he’d been born. The citizenry usually shrugged at the mention of his name. But even now players on all Circuits were ordered to include at least one of the Thirteen at every show they gave—just as a reminder.

Mieka crept up the back stairs and slipped into the hallway. No creaky floorboards here; the whole inn was built from solid rock taken from the demolished red sandstone castle walls. Letting himself into the room he shared with Cayden, he leaned back against the door and grinned to himself as he began peeling off his gloves. The girls truly had been delightful. Just what he needed.

The shutters shafted thin strips of moonlight across the floor, not touching either bed. What guided him to Cade was the sound of shifting blankets and a whimper of his own name.

Several times on the journey he’d come half-awake in the middle of the night, vaguely aware that Cade was looking at him. Once the man had been standing next to his bed. Mieka had always gone back to sleep and the next day Cade had been fine. But this time the whole damned bed was shuddering. As Mieka approached, the covers twisted around the long body as Cade fought whatever was going on inside his head.

Mieka froze. Ought he to let this play out, so Cade would wake and see him and know that whatever he’d dreamed, Mieka was all right? Or ought he to wake him up? Blye had never said anything to the purpose. She had never seen Cade during one of the sleeping visions.

As he stood there, unsure and beginning to be as frightened as Cade, a violent movement knocked Cade’s arm into the cabinet between the beds. The pain woke him, and he cried out.

“Quill? It’s all right, everything’s fine, you were just—”

“Mieka?”

That thin, splintered plea shook him. “It’s all right,” he repeated, knowing very well that it wasn’t. “You were sleeping,” he said stupidly, then flinched as bluish fire glared from the candle on the little cabinet. “Gods, you look awful,” he blurted.

The gray eyes caught at him. In the next instant, with an effort that tightened every muscle in his face, Cade looked away and said, “Sorry. Get some sleep. Early start tomorrow for—for—”

“Sidlowe,” he murmured.

“Yes. Of course.” Another struggle produced something resembling a smile. “Nice evening?”

Yes, very—but not worth this,
was what he wanted to say. “Bit of an exertion. She had a sister.”

“No mother lurking about?”

So casually spoke that Mieka was certain the answer was important to Cade. “No, they’re on their own.” He tried to ignore the wince back from him as he gathered up blankets and sheets. “Here, it’s cold. You’ll turn into six feet three inches of ice.”

“Six feet two,” Cade corrected, huddling gratefully into the covers.

“Not according to those tatty old brown trousers of yours.” When Cade blinked up at him, he smiled. “The ones you bought before we left are still long enough, but those brown ones—honest to all the Gods, Quill, it’s an embarrassment to be seen with you every time they come untucked from your boots.” When he still looked bewildered, Mieka chuckled. “You’ve grown about an inch taller since they were made. All leg.”

“Oh.”

“That’s me Quill,” he teased, “eloquent at any hour of the day or night! Close the light and go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”

Mieka stripped in the darkness and got into bed. He stayed awake quite a while, listening as the rhythm of Cade’s breathing become slow and even with sleep, wondering why he hadn’t asked to be told about the dream. Just a gentle query about why Cade had said his name might have done it. Just a friendly commiseration over the spiciness of the stew they’d had for lunching being cause enough for a nightmare … anything,
anything
to give Cade an opening to tell him about how and why he dreamed.

How long was Mieka supposed to pretend he didn’t know?

He couldn’t ask. He couldn’t force Cade’s confidence. Cade had to choose the time and the place and the reason for telling him. Mieka would just have to wait. That this would require patience—not a conspicuous feature of his character—afforded him a wry amusement as he finally drifted off to sleep. Clever and mad, those he could manage without inconveniencing himself at all. Patience … that was another thing entirely.

The next day was one long test of his forbearance. Short on sleep, rousted out of bed at some loathsome hour of the morning, curled once again into a corner of the coach so Rafe could stretch out his long legs to the opposite seat, Mieka tried to distract himself with ideas about breaking the rest of the Rules. Drunkenness he could manage without even thinking about it; no fun there. The trick was to avoid angering the coachman. The man seemed to like him, but who knew what punishments he might think fit if Mieka broke any of the Rules in a way that pushed him too far?

He figured he had a way to cross off
incivility
without too much risk. Likewise property damage. He’d have to see what sort of opportunities presented themselves, though, for the ones about disobedience and endangerment.

If
Do not snore loudly
had been on the list proper, he would have turned over Rafe to the coachman’s tender mercies anytime since they’d left Gallantrybanks. Unfortunately, the coachman wasn’t in a position to mind. The fettler snored like a trumpet announcing the imminent arrival of the most august of personages. No one below royal rank would merit such a thundering great noise. Jeska didn’t so much snore as snort, in sharp little gasps like a cat trying not to sneeze. Lord Kearney Fairwalk could only be said to snore
delicately
. A soft buzzing sound would escape his open mouth, and then, as if even in sleep he was afraid of giving the slightest offense, he would clear his throat and subside into silence.

Cade didn’t snore at all. With that nose, it was unnatural that he didn’t. But he didn’t. There were times when Mieka found this even more annoying than Rafe’s trumpet blasts, Jeska’s sniffly little snorts, and Fairwalk’s dainty whirrs combined.

Mieka, of course, had never snored in his life. So it was a good thing it wasn’t on the list. He’d never be able to accomplish it.

A nice tankard of strong brown ale at lunching was just about to put him to sleep when he heard a noise somewhere between a honk and a rasp, and Rafe growled something that sounded like
For the love of all the Angels, will somebody shut him up?
Knowing he must be referring to someone else, and rather indignant that Rafe of all people should complain about snoring, Mieka snuggled more deeply into the carriage rug and kept his eyes closed.

All at once he couldn’t breathe.

He woke with a splutter, jerking away from the fingers that had pinched his nostrils shut, and bumped his head against the window.

“
Much
beholden,” Rafe said feelingly.

“Don’t mention it,” replied Jeska.

“What—why—how come you did that for?” Mieka demanded.

“You were snoring.”

“I was not!”

“Were so.”

“I
don’t
snore!” Mieka insisted.

The rest of Touchstone traded eye-rolls. Fairwalk looked embarrassed, and looked out the nearest window.

“The windows rattled and the horses nearly took fright,” Cade said solemnly. But his eyes were dancing with laughter.

“Why d’you think we make him take the same room as you, when we’ve two rooms instead of just one?” Rafe asked.

Jeska answered before Mieka could open his mouth. “Because
he
doesn’t need eight hours of sleep. Have to be at me best for every show, don’t I?”

Mieka retorted, “Since when have
you
ever been in a bed for eight hours at a stretch if there wasn’t a girl in it with you?”

“A touch, old son,” Cade told Jeska. “You’re in the local hayloft half the night most nights, no denying.”

Jeska waved it all away. “Fact is, Mieka snores like grinding papers on a thousand withies, and there’s an end to it.”

“He does, that,” Cade said. “Though it’s rather more like a tortured goose, don’t you think?”

“Gosling,” Rafe corrected. “He can’t be full-grown yet, can he? I mean, look at him. Scrawny little thing.”

“Cullions,” Mieka muttered, hunching himself into his corner. A few minutes later, he said, “I do
not
snore.”

Whether he did or not had nothing to do with where any of them slept that night. Though Gallantrybanks’ reach might extend far into the countryside, for a hundred and more miles around Dolven Wold memories stretched even farther. Part of the kingdom now, to be sure, not the Archduke’s domains; but there was no mistaking their loyalties during the late war.

“Nubboddy say’d nuddin’ ’bout no Elferbludded,” drawled the innkeeper, placing his considerable self in the main doorway of the only lodging within twenty miles.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Fairwalk said, stubby little fingers gripping the itinerary page. “This is the specified accommodation on the Winterly Circuit, is it not?”

“Not fer his like.”

Touchstone stood shivering in the gloom and mud of the stable yard, exhausted after dawn-to-dusk in the coach. They were cold, hungry, thirsty, and cramped, and the day had been bearable only because of the hot meal and warm beds supposedly waiting for them here in this lonely roadside inn.

When the proprietor eyed him ears to boots, for the first time in his life Mieka knew what humiliation meant. He was an Elf, and he was unwelcome here. Elfenkind had declared for neither King nor Archduke; thus they were considered to have dishonorably eluded all responsibility. Sometimes in Gallantrybanks someone obviously Elfen would get stared at, and Uncle Barsabian claimed to have been spat upon. This innkeeper was regarding Mieka as if he were more foul than the shit decent folk scraped from their shoes. Mieka felt his cheeks burn. Then pride stiffened his bones and he deliberately shook his hair back from his face, giving the man an even better view of his ears. The man’s lip curled, and he looked away as if the sight of those pointed ears was too disgusting to contemplate.

Rafe’s spine cracked as he drew himself to his full height. “You’ve had theater groups here before, on the Circuits. You’ve seen Elves. What’s your problem?”

The innkeeper was thoroughly unintimidated. “New contract, innit? Shifted from the old Lamb ’n’ Lark t’me this year.”

“We’ll go there, then.”

“Try, if’n ye like. Burned down, the place did. Was Elferbludded what diddit, so it’s said, when a room got denied him. Fired it to the floorboards with his stinkin’ magic. No welcome fer such most places ’round here, now.”

“But surely,” Lord Fairwalk protested, “
surely
you know that all gliskers are substantially of Elfen stock! I mean to say, there’s not a group of players in the kingdom without an Elf—have you never been to a performance?”

He sniffed and spat. “Wuddint catch me in reach of that sort.”

“How in all hells did you get this contract?” Rafe demanded.

The coachman spoke up for the first time. “His will be the only beds between Dolven Wold and Vasty Moor, now. I hadn’t heard about the Lamb. And it’s not true that Squimmie didn’t let Elves under his roof. Been drivin’ the king’s coaches these fifteen years, haven’t I, and there was never a breath of a word spoken—”

“Squimmie died this summer past,” said the innkeeper, with a certain degree of relish. “Him as inherited was a right-thinker, same as me, and paid fer it with the loss of his ’stablishment.” Then, looking at Mieka again, he warned, “Don’t
you
be thinkin’ nothin’ at all, Elferboy.”

There would be no blithely assuring the man that
“Thinking only gets in the way! Me, I never allow a thought to linger longer than I can recognize it and throw it right out me brain!”
There would be no charming his way into food, drink, and a bed tonight. There would be no deployment of what his mother called The Eyes, no winsome smiles, nothing of his usual tricks for getting what he wanted. This wasn’t the first time his wiles had failed him, but it was certainly the most important. It wasn’t just him disconvenienced, was it? Because of him, his friends would suffer.

The coachman shrugged, surveying the place from the dark, narrow upper windows to the cresset torches set at intervals along the inn-yard walls. “Never been here before. I didn’t know. Sorry, lads.”

“Not your fault, not at all,” said Fairwalk. Then he reached for his purse. “Perhaps we might come to an arrangement with this good man, don’t you think?”

Cade grasped his wrist. “No.”

Mieka began to back away. “It’s all right, I’ll sleep in the hayloft tonight, it doesn’t matter—”

“No,” Cade said, even more forcefully. Using the clipped highborn accent Mieka had last heard in Blye’s glassworks, he went on, “Suppose we address a few words to the Master of the King’s Revelries.”

“You’re a long ways from Court here, case you hadn’t noticed,” the innkeeper sneered. “Ain’t never been an Elferbludded under this roof and never will. I’ve rights as owner and freeholder and if that boy wants a bed he can make himself one in the sty, where the likes of him belong.”

Jeska started forward, fists clenched. Rafe put a cautioning hand on his arm. “Not
yet,
” he murmured, and the innkeeper turned brick-red.

The coachman glanced over his shoulder, squinting at his horses, then shook his head. “I’d say drive on and find another place, but there’s another five miles in them, and that’s all.”

“Stable them,” Cade said suddenly. “And get yourself to a bed. This is our matter to resolve. Perhaps a bit of illumination?” he suggested—and suddenly every torch ringing the yard blazed to life with brilliant blue flames three feet high. “You’ll note,” he said pleasantly, “the color. That’s not Elf-light, that’s Wizardfire. It’s rather uncommon, and I’m rather good at it.”