Touchstone (6 page)

She unlocked the door of the glassworks and gestured him inside. “P’rhaps I will,” she allowed.

“I wish you’d let me spell that for you,” he said suddenly, gesturing to the lock. “So nobody but you and your father can get in.”

She shook her head. The silvery hair, loose from its band and neatly combed, shifted around her cheeks. “Beholden, Cade, but I can always feel additional magic, and it distracts me when I work.” She led him through to the little shop, and he made a casual gesture that lit the overhead lamp with a mellow bluish light: Wizardfire in its gentlest form. Shelf on shelf of vases, goblets, bowls, and baskets gleamed the full spectrum of colors. In a special display case atop a wooden plinth was a sampling of a full suite of tableware, plate to chalice to eggcup. Cade walked over to investigate.

“This is new,” he remarked. “Yours, right?”

“Some of it,” she admitted. “As much of each piece as the Guild allows, so we can legally sell it with Da’s hallmark. But it’s my design.”

“It looks like you,” he said. When he saw her brows arch, he smiled. “Silver and gold round the edges, dark accents. Unpretentious. And threatening to become elegant any moment now.”

“Elegant!” Blye snorted. “Lady forefend! Open the bottle and tell me about the glisker.” From the assortment on the shelves she selected a pair of round-bellied snifters swirled with green, eyeing him sidelong as she appended shrewdly, “Or maybe I should say, tell me the dream you had today that was about the glisker.”

He supposed it was a measure of how much he’d learned while bargaining with tavern keepers that not a flicker of reaction crossed his face. As Blye held out the glasses, he was ashamed of himself. Of all the people in his life—including Rafe and Jeska and even Mistress Mirdley—he trusted Blye alone with most of himself. Most; not all.

“I know you remember it,” she went on sympathetically. “Sage Emmot taught you how to remember every single detail. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. But you
did
dream today.”

He poured brandy, set the bottle aside, and cradled the glass in his hands to warm the liquor. “I’m not sure I want to talk about it yet. But wait till you hear what happened in Gowerion.”

He talked, she listened, and they got through half the bottle. Yet even as he described what Mieka had done, and how the audiences had reacted, the boundary line separating his waking mind from the insistent dreaming began to smudge. Yes, he remembered it; all of it; Sage Emmot had taught him so well that he could never
not
remember.

{Perhaps the tavern had once been fashionable and popular. Not anymore. The chairs were rickety, the tables stained and scarred. Instead of fragrant wood in the huge hearth, finances compelled the burning of turfs, and not very good ones at that. The stink was unmistakable.

Over in a back corner two men sat opposite each other, leather tankards between them. One man stared into his ale; the other stared with calculating intent, paper and pen and ink at the ready.

The first man spoke, his voice raspy, one hand suddenly raking lank brown hair from his face, fingers shaking a little. “I must’ve written a dozen pieces about them through the years. I don’t think anybody ever realized how good they really were.” He drained his ale down his throat, coughed, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and glanced at his companion.

The hint was not taken. The second man smiled blandly and rendered ink onto paper with a delicacy unsuspected in such thick fingers. “You said you first met them after their rather sensational appearance at Trials.”

“I didn’t see the performance, but I knew somebody who did, and he tipped me that they might be something very special. They were, of course. But no one ever really understood until he was gone.”

“Did they ever admit to it?”

“Rafcadion came closest, two or three years ago. Said he missed him.” He reached over and appropriated the other man’s ale, took a swig. “But a week or two later, he gave another interview saying he didn’t miss him at all, when it came to the performing. As a friend, yes. Not as an artist, a partner onstage.”

“He was lying,” the other man suggested.

“Oh, yes. Jeschenar’s never said anything about him at all, but I’ve spoken with Cayden a few times since it happened.”

“And—?”

“Full of himself, he is. The meaning of this and the significance of that, what art must do and artists must be in society, all sorts of bilge. But he’s a cold unfeeling bastard and it’s no wonder his wife finally left him.”

“Unfeeling? Forgive me, Tobalt, but—”

“I know. He emotes all over everything, doesn’t he, in his work. But the only feelings that matter are his, you see. It’s only important if
he
feels it—and he expects unconditional compassion that he’s feeling that way. Not that he expects understanding, because nobody could possibly understand him, he’s unique, and an artist, and all that rot. And he’d never let anyone help him find his way out of whatever mood he happens to be wallowing in.” Tobalt leaned forward. “What isn’t readily obvious in the work is that although he does feel these things right enough, he also stands apart from them so he can slice them up like feast-day mutton and then use them. His mind’s cold, but his heart’s colder.”

“He wasn’t always like that, was he?”

The rest of the ale was swallowed, the tankard slammed down onto the table. “He has to be that way, now. Got no choice, has he? He’d go mad, otherwise. Because he knows. He’ll never admit it, but he knows. When the Cornerstones lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”}

“Cade.”

The snifter almost dropped from his hand. Blye was looking at him as if she’d been looking at him for quite some time—waiting for him to rouse from whatever vision was playing itself out inside his head. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Stop apologizing! I’m not your mother.” She held out her near-empty glass. “Might as well finish it.”

He thoroughly agreed. They sat quietly for a time, sipping fine liquor that tasted of oak and golden apples. At last he made an effort. “How’s your da? You haven’t said.”

“No better, no worse. He got in a few hours of work today, actually.”

“Anything usable?” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. Her dark eyes flashed angrily, and then her face became a mask quite as good as any he’d ever worn himself, or magicked into a withie for Jeska to wear. But he knew better than to apologize again; she’d only snap at him again. Instead, he asked, “Want something to eat? Mistress Mirdley was making dumplings earlier.”

“No, I’m fine. I know better than to drink on an empty stomach—which is more than can be said for you.”

“I’ve had practice. Say you’ll come tomorrow night.”

“So I can meet him and adore him?”

The image of the Elf came into his head. He flinched. Their soul, the man had said, he had been their soul, and when they’d lost him—

“That bad, was it?” Blye murmured. “I think it’ll take more than half a bottle of brandy to get you to sleep tonight.”

“I slept fine in Gowerion,” he heard himself say.

“Was she pretty?”

“Was who pretty?” Then he tumbled to what she was saying, and saw the teasing glint in her eyes, and groaned. “Don’t, Blye! You know Jeska always has first pick—and in Gowerion, there wasn’t a second pick, nor a third.”

“We need to find you a girl, Cade.” She swallowed the remaining brandy and set the glass on the counter. “Somebody to warm your bed and keep her mouth shut—oh, except when you
want
her to open it, that is!”

“Blye!” he exclaimed, scandalized.

“You’re always so intimidated by Jeska’s looks,” she went on, shaking her head with disapproval. “Rafe has a nice, smooth line of chatter when he takes the trouble, and when Crisiant isn’t around to hear, and
that
daunts you, too. As for this Elf—Lord and Lady save us, he’s gorgeous even when he’s passed out. Or pretending to be passed out, now that I think on it,” she finished broodingly. “So he’ll be yet another excuse for you not to try, even if a girl does look thrice at you.” All at once she made a face at him. “I know, I know!” In the high-pitched, die-away tones of the upper classes, she said, “The most they evah mahnage is twice—just to make sure they’ve seen what they’ve seen, dontchaknow.”

“Now you do sound like my mother.” Then something occurred to him, and he asked, “Blye, is there anything wrong with my clothes?”

He ought to have guessed that she’d make the connection. She knew him very well indeed. She laughed at him as she took the two glasses into the back room for a wash.

“The Elf thinks so, is that it? He’ll be turning you into a prancing peacock inside of a month, I see it now! A shirt first, a tunic thereafter, and then a coat with embroidered sleeves—you’ll be frustling your pretty new feathers every chance you get!”

Picking up a clean towel from the stack beside the sink, he agreed amiably, “So now we really
do
have to find me a girl—preferably one who can sew!”

Blye started listing the girls they’d known at school and the girls who worked in various nearby shops, but when she got to the daughters of his mother’s friends, he growled a playful warning.

“And how would you know any of those useless little twitchies, anyway?” he demanded.

“They come in and break the glassware, don’t they? And say it jumped off the shelves all by itself, and leave me to explain to Da why a set of eight goblets now has to be sold as a set of six. But all’s not lost, oh not a bit of it, for we can send out the seventh as a sample.”

The seven could not be made eight again, because her father wasn’t capable of making a new glass to match the old anymore. It was one reason custom had fallen off at the shop lately: no one really wanted to buy a suite of highly breakable objects if replacements were out of the question.

“But we’ll be wanting scores of withies,” he burst out, “and once people learn that it’s you as made them for us—”

“Sweet Angels of Mercy, don’t even whisper it!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know what the Guild would do to me if they found out?”

“It’s not fair. Why should it matter that you’re a girl?”

“Same reason it matters if I try to walk openly into a tavern where you’re working, or board the public coach on my own, or attempt any profession but weaver or seamstress. No good reason at all.” She returned to the shop front to replace the snifters.

Following her, he said, “You know I don’t think that way.”

“That and a penny and my hair hidden under a hat will get me a drink tomorrow night at the Downstreet to watch you perform. Get the light, won’t you? I don’t want to come down tomorrow morning and have to clean up after your magic.”

He waited until she had gone back into the glassworks, and doused the lamp with a tired gesture. She was waiting for him by the door, arms folded, fingers drumming.

“Blye—Mieka says we’ll make you rich, and he’s right. It
will
happen—Guild or no Guild. We’re using only your withies from now on, and when everyone else wants to know where we got them—”

“Just so long as you don’t mention who made them,” she muttered. Then: “Wait a moment—did you say Mieka? The Windthistle boy?”

“Yes. Didn’t I say his name before? He’s my glisker.”

“Everybody’s glisker, you sapskull! He’s worked with more players than you’ve got teeth—for all of a week at the most! I heard last year that he even approached the Shadowshapers and asked if he could join them!
He’s
your new glisker?”

So that was how he knew Vered and Rauel, Cade thought. “Yes,” he repeated. “My new glisker.” He heard the voice again, from his dream of that morning:
“You said you first met them after their rather sensational appearance at Trials.”
Mieka would be with them through Trials at least—three months from now. But then that other voice echoed in his head, the bleak and bitter one:
“When the Cornerstones lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”

Blye touched his arm lightly, hesitantly. “Cade?”

“Mine he is, and mine he’ll stay,” he said without thinking, heard his own words, and amended swiftly, “
Ours
, I mean. He’s
our
glisker now.”

{Mieka was laughing, young laughter in an older face: lines framing his mouth and crossing his forehead and his black hair going silvery, but those eyes were bright with the joy unique to him, and he was still the mad little Elf of all those years ago, gazing up at Cade and laughing—}

He blinked, and saw Blye’s frown. Before she could voice the worry in her eyes, he nodded a good night and headed for his parents’ back door, and the warmth of Mistress Mirdley’s kitchen, where no dreams had ever touched him, not since the dreaming began. It was the only place in the world, including his own private bedchamber, where he felt truly safe.

Chapter 4

Eventually Mieka showed up for rehearsal, and blamed his lateness on Cade.

“Didn’t tell me where Rafe lives, now, did you? I’ve been wandering like a stray breeze, asking after anyone who knows anything about anybody in the fettling way.” He stripped off a pair of very fine and very flash gold-embroidered gloves, shoving them into a pocket of his cloak. This, too, was eye-catching, woven with a dark green warp and a black weft, with crosswise threads of blue and gold, so that every time he moved, the material seemed to change colors. Cade, wearing old brown wool trousers, a plain white shirt, and a black tunic with a frayed hem, began to understand what he’d meant about the clothes. “I’d still be drifting round Beekbacks if I hadn’t bethought me of the delightful Mistress Blye, who not only gave me directions but the pleasure of her company.”

He stepped lightly from the vestibule doorway, removing the cloak with a flourish as if drawing aside a stage curtain, to reveal Blye hanging up a shabby gray coat. It was the ankle-length one she always borrowed from her father when she didn’t want to be bothered with the jeers and insults that always assaulted any girl past age twelve who wore trousers. She half-turned, startled, and shrugged as she recognized the annoyance in Cade’s eyes. Not that he entirely understood why he was annoyed, but it had something to do with the pair of them walking over here, talking about only they knew what.