Window Wall (2 page)

“Exactly. Because if what we’ve been having is good luck in the theater, I’ll risk it. Me Mum calls it
un
sympathetic magic.”

“Do the opposite of what you really want to happen? That’s a little crazy, y’know.”

“My specialty.”

Not that anything truly awful had happened onstage—unless one counted Cade’s last new play. That had been over a year ago now, and the reactions had been … regrettable. Nobody, including the rest of Touchstone, really understood what he’d meant to do. Mieka’s analysis was that whereas theater patrons didn’t mind thinking a bit, both during and after a play, they didn’t much enjoy thinking as a grim hour-long slog through far too many ideas.

“Turn Aback” was in Cade’s hands an exercise in stupefying boredom. Boy and girl in love. Girl dies in tragic accident. Boy tries to broker a deal with the Lady to go get her; Lady is moved by True True Love and says fine, but on your way out, you mustn’t look back. Boy girds himself to travel into whichever Hell girl inhabits (though why she deserves any of them is left unclear), journeys through various unsavory provinces of punishment, increasingly nasty but not gruesome or bloody or even scary. At least Mieka could have had some good old gory fun with that sort of thing, been creative with the dragons that feasted on flesh that healed in an hour, or that poor stupid pillicock forever putting sand into a leaky hourglass, or the one about somebody standing lip-deep in a lake of shit.

Cade’s Hells were all intellectual (which didn’t surprise Mieka one bit, but made for a colossally dull play). Boy is distracted from search for girl by philosophical conversations with the tenants of each Hell, blither blather blether. Boy finally remembers what he’s there for, finds girl, fingers burned and bleeding as she spins molten gold into straw. Boy leads girl back to the entrance gates. She trips on a rock (silly cow). He looks back to make sure she’s all right, and just as their Eyes Meet with Longing and then with Sudden Horror, she vanishes. The End.

Tobalt had tried to put an interesting interpretation on it—something about how Cayden Silversun had woven scholarly moral speculation into a heartbreaking love story—but even he knew it was a bad play. Touchstone had performed it exactly three times. Then Mieka, Rafe, and Jeska all rebelled, and the script was mercifully scrapped.

But the fact remained: Cayden Silversun had failed.

He hadn’t liked it much.

Derien subsided into a corner of the hack, and Mieka read
The Nayword
during the rest of the drive to Cade’s place. The broadsheet had grown in recent years from one very large page folded in half to three very large pages folded in quarters—more the size of a book, really, than the standard broadsheet. It wasn’t the same old
Nayword
anymore, as its front page trumpeted.

THE NAYWORD

W
HAT TO READ
—W
HAT TO SEE
—W
HAT TO WEAR
—W
HAT TO AVOID
!

In this issue:

Special reports from our correspondents at Court, throughout the Kingdom, and on the Continent PRINCE ASHGAR and PRINCESS MIRIUZCA welcome a daughter

Exclusive interview with VERED GOLDBRAIDER Complete coverage of this year’s Trials hopefuls Student unrest at Stiddolfe after a rise in fees

With: ideas and advice from our regular columnists on all the latest in theater, books, dress, food, wine, gardening, and interior design

Mieka felt rather smug about the theater and fashion sections, considering that Touchstone (with the Shadowshapers) constantly innovated in the former and were known (with the Shadowshapers) as exemplars of the latter. He was even more smug about the gardening, because one of the regular columnists was his sister Cilka. Just fourteen, still in school, and already an authority (under a pseudonym, of course) in her field. Their mother, Mishia, wasn’t terribly surprised; her own sister Brishen had started up a little herb shop at the age of fifteen. The Greenseed Elfen line obviously dominated in them both. Cilka and Petrinka were already doing a brisk business in sculpted hedges, as prompted by Mieka’s description of such at Princess Miriuzca’s home castle on the Continent, and would someday take over Grandfather Staindrop’s gardening business.

As for “design”—for certes, Cade never paid any attention to advice columns about interior design, or exterior either. Rather than the grand town house Mieka had once envisioned for him, he had taken a corner room on the top floor of a building near the Keymarker, one of the old abandoned manufactories refitted as blocks of flats. The view was spectacular—from his windows one could see the Keeps in one direction and the Plume in the other, with the rooftops of Gallantrybanks spreading between, though these rather blocked any sight of the Gally River—but the hike up four flights kept most people from visiting very often. Mieka knew that was precisely why Cade had chosen it.

The staircase was stone to the second floor, then wood—nice and sturdy, according to Jed and Jez, who had insisted on examining the place before Cade signed the lease. Originally the top floor had been fitted out as a dormitory for the workers. Mieka shuddered, as he did every time he visited, at the idea of waking before dawn, working all day, and trudging back upstairs for food and sleep without ever once having breathed fresh air or seen the sun. A great many manufactories had moved out of the main sections of Gallantrybanks as the city expanded and the demand for urban housing increased, and there was no reason to believe that conditions were any better for workers even if the places were now in the countryside.

A knock on Cade’s door elicited an annoyed, “What?” Derien grimaced, tried the handle, found it unlocked, and traded scowls with Mieka.

“On the other hand,” the boy murmured as he opened the door, “except for the books, what’s he got worth stealing?”

“I heard that,” Cade said from the depths of his big, soft, overstuffed chair. “The brass is bespelled to recognize you. I’ve forgotten her name, but she was rather good at useful little tricks.”

Mieka resisted the urge to roll his eyes. There were lots of girls whose names Cade had forgotten. That there wasn’t one at the moment was obvious; the place was a mess. Clothes, glassware, paper, books, broadsheets, spent candles, towels, pillows, empty bags that must have contained food at some point because there was nowhere to cook—all manner of clutter was spread about the room.

Jez had built Cade a platform bed that was seven feet long, four feet wide, and six feet off the floor. The little cavern beneath was where he huddled at a desk to write. In the winter there was a firepocket to keep his feet warm, and in summer all the windows were left open to cooling breezes, but it was dark under there when the lamps weren’t lighted and there was nothing to look at but bricks and the bed’s wooden scaffolding. The other features of the flat were Cade’s big black upholstered chair, some uncushioned wooden chairs that did not encourage visitors to linger, a huge standing wardrobe to hold Cade’s vast collection of clothes (nearly as impressive as Mieka’s), a massive carpet given him by Lord Kearney Fairwalk, a small table that seated four, a cabinet for the glass dinner service made for him by Blye, another cabinet behind a latticework willow screen for the piss-pot, and bookshelves—also built by Jez—almost to the twelve-foot ceiling.

Of decoration there was very little. No placards advertising Touchstone, no tapestries, no paintings, no imagings. His Trials medals—two Winterly, three Royal—were in glass boxes on the bookshelves, and Mieka had the feeling whenever he saw them that the only reason they weren’t stashed in a drawer somewhere was that Blye had made the boxes. The counterpane made by Mieka’s wife and mother-in-law was crumpled at the foot of the bed. The only color in the room was the rug, its greens and blues like a forest pond in the middle of the city. The peacock feathers, fanning out in a jar or vase, would be an improvement.

Derien ignored Cade’s mood, putting on a smile and wishing his brother a happy Namingday. Cade expressed his gratitude indifferently. Mieka busied himself clearing off the table and setting out Mistress Mirdley’s tea. The search for a kettle took some time, and he kept his expression carefully neutral as Dery tried to engage Cade in conversation. Mieka went out to the landing where the spigot was, and encountered Rumble coming up the stairs.

“Anything to report?” he asked the cat, who curled around his ankles a few times before stepping lightly into the flat. “Big help you are,” he muttered, and hoped that Dery could coax Cade into some semblance of good manners.

No such luck.

When he got back, Dery was reading bits from
The Nayword
. “There’s something in here about Briuly, too.” Before Cade could say he didn’t care, Dery read out, “‘Still no word on the whereabouts of Master Lutenist Briuly Blackpath. His family is initiating legal proceedings to have him declared dead so that his estate can be sold to pay his debts.’”

“You’d think,” Cade mused, one finger scratching idly at his pathetic excuse for a beard, “that Lord Oakapple, his esteemed cousin or whatever he is, would pay up Briuly’s debts just to keep the family out of the law courts. But I never did get exactly how they were related, so perhaps it doesn’t signify.” He turned to Mieka. “How was Lilyleaf?”

“Fine. Croodle sends her best.”

Nodding to the new silver bracelet on Mieka’s wrist, he said, “Very nice. What did you give your lovely lady?”

“She saw a pink pearl in a shop. I had it made into a pendant.” It had cost a bloody fortune, too, but that was a small price for peace in his household.

Derien was the one who conjured up Wizardfire to heat the water. There was an iron ring for the kettle above a small iron cauldron, and the glances the boy gave his brother told Mieka that this was a new skill. Cade didn’t comment on it at all. In fact, nobody said anything while the water had boiled and the tea was brewed. The three of them sat there like polite strangers who have exhausted every topic of conversation and could find no reason to keep up any pretense of being interested in one other. As Cayden bestirred himself to pour out, Mieka considered various methods of shocking a reaction out of him—any reaction at all. But he’d been trying that, hadn’t he, for going on two years now, and with what results? Rarely, a response of the
Do that again, and I’ll feed you your own balls marinated in plum sauce
variety. Mostly, a look of mild contempt for his childishness. It was infuriating.

“Uncle Dennet died.”

Cade looked up from pouring out. “I hadn’t realized he was still alive.”

“Well, he was,” Derien went on. “And now he’s not. First we learned of it was when the Shelter sent his ashes to Redpebble.”

Mieka searched his knowledge of Cade’s family tree, and came up with Dennet Silversun, elder brother of Cade’s father Zekien, mad as a sack of snakes.

“Wasn’t he the one wounded in the war?” Mieka asked.

“What a refined way of phrasing it,” Cade observed. “He was seventeen and got in the path of somebody’s spell. He’s been in a puzzle house ever since.”

“Almost forty years,” Derien added. “It’s called the Shelter and it’s supposed to be very nice, very clean and kindly—”

“—as insane asylums go,” Cade interrupted. Then, with a nasty little smile, he said, “That’s our fate in the theater, Mieka. Forty years surrounded by madmen.”

Mieka eyed him thoughtfully. “Y’know,” he said at last, “you’re being a right pain in the ass. You’ve
been
being a right pain in the ass for a long time, and everybody’s tired of it. Write yourself some new lines, why don’t you?”

Cade’s smile spread fractionally. “I prefer to improvise.”

Mieka paid no heed to the pleading look on Derien’s face. He’d had enough. Long ago, he’d had enough. Setting down his cup, he snatched up a slice of carrot bread and made for the door. “Rehearsal tomorrow at the Kiral Kellari,” he said by way of farewell, and took the stairs three at a time.

Emerging into the thin spring sunshine, he found himself in luck at last: a hire-hack was just pulling up at the building’s front door, which meant he wouldn’t have to go searching. He signaled the driver with a raised hand, but the man shook his head.

“Hired to return,” he said, just as a boy of about ten jumped out and, on seeing Mieka, demanded, “Cayden Silversun?”

“Top floor. What’s the worry?”

“There’s been an accident. Mistress Windthistle sent me to fetch him at once.” He yanked open the front door.

“Wait—
which
Mistress Windthistle?”

But the boy had vanished.

Mieka’s mother, his sisters, his wife, Blye—all of them and plenty of others besides were Mistress Windthistle. He dithered in place for a moment, then asked the hack driver, “Where’d you come from?”

“Originally? Ambage Road. In this case, Lord Piercehand’s new gallery.”

“The woman who hired you—was she little and blond?”

“That she was. Bit of the Goblin about her, mayhap, but nothing to notice outright.”

Blye. Something had happened to Jed or Jez. “Cayden!” he shouted.
“Cayden!”

* * *

I
t took forever before he and Cade and Dery were in the hire-hack driving towards the river. The traffic leading to the bridge was maddening. Even if a gallop had been legal, carts and riders and other hacks were so thick that only a walk was possible—and even so, their progress was in fits and starts. The boy Blye had sent was up top with the driver, yelling, “Make way! Make way!” every so often, which had no effect except to infuriate everyone else, all of them going nowhere in a hurry.

The interior of the hack was silent with the tension of ignorance. Cade had explained tersely that on the walk downstairs he questioned the lad, who knew nothing except that there had been an accident and Mistress Windthistle had sent him with orders to bring Master Silversun.

Finally, with the Gally River in sight, Mieka could stand no more. “Get out,” he ordered Cade and Dery. “We’ll hire a boat. It can’t help but be faster.”