Window Wall (24 page)

So Mieka kept a wary eye on him, when he remembered to. Generally he was occupied on this, their very first Royal Circuit as First Flight, with tending his withies, performing, getting some sleep, liberally sampling the best liquors that the inns and taverns could offer (and Auntie Brishen’s barrel of whiskey while on the road), and making sure his thorn-roll was replenished at convenient intervals. Auntie Brishen had obliged in this, too; packages had been waiting for him at Sidlowe and Scatterseed, the latter with a note saying she’d send the next on to Bexmarket. Dear Auntie Brishen; she didn’t even question the increase in his use of bluethorn. In any event, it wasn’t really his own use of it, it was Cade’s and Rafe’s and even Jeska’s. Though the masquer usually shook his head when offered a thornful, he had recently taken to not shaking his head. And who could blame him? Because King Meredan wanted all his best players back in Gallantrybanks to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ascending to the throne, the schedule of performances and travel was punishing, sleep was a precious commodity, and Touchstone was determined that no audience would suffer through a lackluster show because Touchstone had the bad taste to be exhausted.

The problem was that with such determination came tension. Cade might deplore his constant clowning, but Mieka felt he had no choice other than to do his best to relax everyone before a performance with jokes and capers.
Clever and mad
was even more necessary now. Still, the only thing that reliably worked was reenacting his grand entrance into the Downstreet of two years ago. With Jinsie’s help he had gathered up a motley assemblage of ladies’ clothing from Wistly Hall, and from time to time scorned the artists entrance in favor of flouncing in by the main doors.

Swanning down the aisle, he would call out, “Open the curtains! Start the show! I have arrived!” Jeska would peek out from between the swagged curtains, snort a laugh, and haul the heavy velvet aside himself to reveal Cade on one side of the stage and Rafe on the other, glass baskets snug in their wooden frames at the back. Cade would roll his eyes and they’d go into the routine of
You’re late!
and
What is that awful thing you’ve got on?
and
Play nice, Cayden—I borrowed it from me mother-in-law!
and
You just try and start without me sometime!
Cade always went along with it, but after the first few times he tended to get a look on his face as if wishing Mieka would behave like every other glisker and just do his job. What he would never understand was that such things were part of Mieka’s job—as he saw it, anyway. And when had he ever been anything like every other glisker?

It was also part of his job to do what he’d done all his life for family and friends and schoolmates: keep everybody entertained, lighten the mood, ease the tension with laughter. To that end, he’d invented a game. Each player had to come up with a clue to the name of a tavern or inn, and the others had to guess which was meant. They’d all been in so many such places by now that there was a practically endless list to work with. Points were scored for and against, the winner of each round had to begin the next, and the ultimate loser had to buy the drinks at the next stop.

Two days out of Scatterseed, on an afternoon of broiling heat remarkable in the Pennynines, Mieka judged that it was time to begin the entertainment or they’d all be snapping at each other. After explaining the rules, he started it off with, “Top of me mother-in-law.”

Various increasingly obscene suggestions led them to guess
Nag’s Head
, and Jeska won the point. In between guessing, there was a great deal of silence while brains worked furiously, but as little as Mieka admired quiet, this part of the exercise was his gift to Yazz. There was nothing the Giant liked better than a nice, quiet spell of guiding the horses and appreciating the scenery.

It took Jeska a while, but he finally came up with, “One for the bonce, one for the bum.” This time it was Rafe who eventually got
Crown and Cushion.
He was ready for the next round, promptly offering, “Three-and-a-half cold men.” Then he sat back in his chair, folded his arms, and to all appearances composed himself for a nap.

After a long silence, many frowns, and no guesses at all, they yielded. Rafe refused to tell, claiming the point and the right to use the clue again in future. After some grumbling, Cade volunteered the next round.

“Where a married man should never be again after his wedding night.”

Mieka stuck out his tongue at him, then replied, “
Maiden’s Arms.
You’d think a great whirring powerful brain like yours could think up something better!”

“I’m saving my best efforts for later,” Cade said haughtily, gray eyes dancing. “Your point, and back to you.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Jeska complained. “He’s the one who thought this up. For all we know, he’s been inventing them for weeks.”

Cade snorted. “You’re assuming he has the mental capacity to remember anything other than a play. Come on, Mieka. Your turn.”

“Mine,” he announced, “needs a very big mouth.”

After a time, Jeska asked, “We’ve been to all these places, right? You’re not tossing in some tavern we’ve never seen?”

Before Mieka could reply, Cade teased, “Oh, just look at those big innocent eyes! Would anybody with those eyes cheat?”

Rafe answered, “Every chance he gets. And it’s
Cock in the Bottle
, by the way.”

“How did you guess?” Mieka complained.

“As well as being exceedingly handsome, I’m exceedingly brilliant. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Cade smiled his sweetest. “Seven Blue Balls.”

“Huh?” Jeska looked from one to the other of them, confused.

“Three-and-a-half cold men.
Seven Blue Balls
. My point, I think.”

And so it went until they arrived at a place they’d never been before and never even heard of. Just outside Scatterseed they’d been compelled to take a detour by a ferocious spring storm that had loosened a hillside onto a section of the usual road through the Pennynine Mountains. The obstacle had not yet been removed. The alternate route was longer and more difficult for the horses. Thus it was necessary to rest them for a full day at an inn on the outskirts of Wooldridge—the sources of its name evident in the living fleeces covering the hills. It was a town of perhaps a thousand souls, most of whom had never seen theater performed. To show their gratitude for the hospitality of the Fleece and Froth tavern, Jeska proposed an outdoor gigging, for free. Polite interest was expressed, but the general attitude was a collective shrug. There was nothing much else to do in Wooldridge of a summer night, so why not see a play?

The general attitude changed to wild applause once they’d seen “Dragon.” After a swift consultation among themselves, and some quick replenishment of the withies, Touchstone then gave them one of the oldest and silliest of the Master Fondlewife comedies. It wasn’t their fault that someone in the audience had been suspecting his own wife of being fondled by someone who was not himself this past fortnight and longer. Neither could they be blamed for the fight that broke out in the middle of the throng and spread in all directions. And it certainly wasn’t their fault that the local physicker was up to his hairline in bruised jaws, black eyes, and cracked ribs for the next two days.

The sooner Touchstone got out of town, the better. The wagon rolled out a little past midnight. At midmorning, after a rotten night’s sleep jouncing over rutted roads—Mieka had forgotten to renew the spell his mother taught him that smoothed the road—they mumbled awake when Yazz stopped the wagon.

“Where the fuck are we?” Rafe demanded.

“How the fuck should I know?” Mieka countered, and then forgot that rolling over to go back to sleep was a much trickier maneuver in a hammock than in a bed. By the time he had uncocooned himself, swearing, from netting and mattress and sheets, Yazz had opened the back door and was smiling with each and every one of his large white teeth.

Mieka, still upside down but no longer strangling, squinted at him and moaned. He knew that smile. It was the one Yazz wore when a visit with his kin was in the offing. Mieka had never been able to understand it; liberally supplied, and one might say oversupplied, with relatives himself, the prospect of seeing more did not thrill him. He supposed it was different for Giants and part-Giants, there being so recognizably few of them these days. Look at what Prickspur had said about Cade’s height arguing for Giant blood. Well, yes, he was indeed tall, but how anybody could mistake those long bones and narrow ribs for anything but Wizard was beyond Mieka’s comprehension. Still, Prickspur hadn’t exactly proved himself the shiniest withie in the basket.

“Who is it this time?” he asked, extricating himself from the hammock.

“Cousin on Mam’s side,” Yazz said happily. “Only an afternoon, Miek.”

“Yeh, yeh, all right.” He explained to his partners that Yazz rarely ran across his kin, and surely they could spare a few hours for a reunion.

“You had only to say so,” Cade told Yazz. “Take the afternoon, and the evening as well, if you like.”

Yazz shook his head. “Back before sundown toasting. Beholden!” He slammed the back door shut and went away whistling happily.

“What happens at sundown toasting?” Jeska asked Mieka.

“More Giant-brewed mead than you could drink in a year. More than even I could drink in a year. It’s a real sacrifice, believe me, and shows his devotion to us, for him to miss it. So what’ll we do for the afternoon?”

“If we are where I think we are,” Cade said, a slow smile on his lips, “then this ought to be fun.”

“So where are we?”

“Boggering.”

Mieka scorned the obvious punning question, merely raised his brows. Cayden acknowledged the restraint with an eye-roll.

Yazz had taken care of the horses—unhitched, provided with nosebags—and the wagon was neatly parked in the corner of an inn yard. A few questions asked of the stableboy—a dark, stumpy youth with Gnome written all over him but for the incongruity of Elfen ears—and they were heading up a side street that went from rough cobbles to plain packed dirt within twenty paces.

“Boggering,” Cade announced as they climbed a gentle rise towards a low building lacking any sign at all, “has something not even Lilyleaf can boast.”

“And that might be?” Jeska asked.

Their tregetour grinned broadly. “Mud.”

“Mud?” Mieka frankly stared at Cade. “You want to spend the afternoon looking at mud?”

“Not looking at it, you quat. Bathing in it.”

“Bathe. In mud.” Rafe sighed mournfully. “Tragic, it is, seeing a fine brain go all aflunters.”

“No, really,” Cade told him. “The waters at Lilyleaf are supposed to be healthful, right? Minerals and suchlike.”

“Yes, but one bathes in them and drinks them. I do hope you’re not suggesting—”

“Try not to be a bigger fool than the Lord and the Lady made you. There’s a whole chapter in a book my grandsire bequeathed me—”

Mieka looked over his shoulder at Rafe. “You’ve known him since childhood, right? Well, then, it’s all your fault. You should never have let him learn how to read.”

Cade decided to ignore them for the rest of the walk in favor of searching his pockets for appropriate coin. Once inside the building, its weathered wooden door clicking shut behind them, Mieka blinked to see a rather good painting of a curvaceous young lady clad in nothing but a scanty green towel and her own long black hair, laughing as she dipped a dainty toe into what looked like a bog of bluish dung.

And damned if what looked to be the original of the painting didn’t walk out from behind an inner door—wearing, unfortunately, a perfectly respectable skirt and shirt with a colorful scarf draped around her shoulders. She smiled up at Cade.

“Been seein’ your wagon, I have, down to the town,” she said. “Touchstone! An honor it is for us, and no mistake!”

Mieka was astounded that she’d heard of them in this tiny village at the back end of nowhere. Cade played the gallant, introducing them and complimenting her on the facilities, of which he had read much, and so forth and so on through the paying of the fee and the distribution of towels and the entry into a side room where the vat of the painting, set deep into the wooden floor, bubbled and steamed. A wary, experimental sniff told Mieka that the mud smelled of herbs he couldn’t identify, with a mildly metallic tang.

“I don’t know why this place isn’t more popular,” Cade was saying after the girl left and they were exchanging their clothes for towels. “Look at Lilyleaf.”

“In Lilyleaf, you end up
clean
,” Rafe pointed out. “That’s the whole purpose of a bath.”

“Oh, but we’ll be getting clean, too,” Cade told him. “There’s oil you slather on before the mud bath, and that way it all washes off. You saw how beautiful that girl’s skin is. The locals come here after work. And think how warm it must be in winter, instead of washing in a barely heated tub! But I guess this place is just too remote to become fashionable.”

Rafe had selected the oils, with the girl’s assistance. After generous application, Touchstone—renowned throughout Albeyn, esteemed by the Princess, revered by all, and cooped up in their wagon for days on end—shed half their years along with their clothes and promptly engaged in a mud fight. It started when Mieka plopped a double handful of the stuff on Cade’s head, and ended quite some time later with what seemed like half the contents of the vat on them, on the walls, on the floor, and even on the ceiling.

Submersed to their necks in the vat, they relaxed and agreed that this had been a wonderful idea. Mieka wriggled deeper, then packed a pound or so of mud on his face, closing his eyes to enjoy the tingling sensation all over his body. The mud was surprisingly soothing to the thornpricks inside his elbows. All he lacked was a nice flagon of ale, or mayhap a pricking of some interesting sort of thorn, to make him perfectly happy.

He didn’t know how long it was before Rafe, seated beside him in the vat, moved suddenly and violently. Mieka opened his eyes to find that Cade, opposite them, had slid to his chin in the mud and looked to be sliding deeper. Rafe got a slippery grip on his shoulders and pulled him upright again, but said nothing. Mieka knew why. The large gray eyes had gone blank and blind, the way they always did during an Elsewhen.