Window Wall (40 page)

“If she wants us there next week, we can show her the whole play,” Rafe said, “if we bring along a withie or two. Though I’m thinking that the invitation included Blye and Jed as well, don’t you?”

Mieka had the unworthy, if accurate, thought that his wife would be in tears of sheer frustration that Jindra’s illness kept her from claiming a seat at the Princess’s lunching table. The child was on the mend, but not yet well enough to do without her mother’s care. He had hired a messenger—finances be damned—to deliver the stuffed animal he’d bought for Jindra in … well, wherever he’d bought it; he wasn’t terribly clear on a lot of where he’d been the past month or two. Or, rather, he knew where he’d been, but wasn’t entirely sure when he’d been there. At any rate, he had included a note to his wife, saying he missed her, would see her soon, and please don’t let the fuzzy brown velvet doggie anywhere near the pet fox. Something regrettable had happened last winter to a stuffed toy Cade gave Jindra, and she’d been inconsolable for days.

They were all at Wistly on the afternoon the Princess’s note arrived, taking tea out on the river lawn before resuming rehearsal, when Cade brought up a new idea. It had to do with making money, of course.

“You’re wanting to do a picture book to go along with this play, right?” he asked Rafe, who nodded. “Are the drawings done? Have you talked to a publisher?”

“No to the drawings. I thought it’d be best to wait until we know what we’ll be doing onstage, and then get some artwork done to match it. As for publishers—just Tobalt. He’s the only person I know who knows anything about printing and suchlike.”

“What do you think he’d say to publishing pamphlets? Our own original plays in script form. None of our notes on performance or anything,” he went on hastily when Mieka scowled, “so we wouldn’t be giving away any secrets. The idea is that if people can’t go to see a play, at least they can read one.”

“We couldn’t use ‘Dragon’ or ‘Treasure,’ could we?” Jeska asked. “Our versions are very different from the traditional scripts, but the stories themselves aren’t ours to make money from, if you see what I mean.”

“Hadn’t thought about that,” Cade admitted. “But until we can figure it out, we can publish our original stuff.”

“Which is to say
your
original stuff,” Rafe observed. “You wrote the things. The bulk of the money would go to you.”

Mieka was, quite simply, gobsmacked by Cade’s reply.

“The plays are by
Touchstone.
”

“Well, yes,” Rafe said. “But—”

Cade interrupted him. “How many days have we spent just like today, thrashing things out, making changes and working in new ideas? Ideas that
you
three have. Look at ‘Doorways’—every time we do it, it’s different. Glisker’s choice.” He winked at them over his teacup. “There’s times when I stand there knocked all agroof because I actually heard one of my original lines!”

“But ‘Doorways’ is mostly visual,” Jeska argued. “Unless we made it into a picture book as well, it wouldn’t make any sense.”

Mieka paid little attention as they ran through Touchstone’s folio of original plays, trying to find two or three that wouldn’t need illustrations. He was still wrapping his brain around the fact that possessive, snobbishly intellectual, controlling, arrogant, my-work-is-Art Cayden Silversun had actually said that authorship of Touchstone’s plays belonged to all four members of Touchstone.

He thought perhaps this might have something to do with what Fairwalk had said a few days ago. The staggering revelation that their first audiences had been paid to go see them still burned in his gut like a bellyful of stinging nettles. He suspected it always would. Not that anybody had to be paid nowadays; Touchstone was hailed as second only to the Shadowshapers in creativity and skill. And maybe that had something to do with sharing the credit as well, he mused—they were
second
place, no matter that they’d been First Flight on the Royal this year. They’d earned the position, he knew they had, but they’d got it only by default.

Mieka studied Cade’s face as the conversation went on around him. It wasn’t just that he’d voluntarily divided authorship with his partners, it was also that he had tacitly acknowledged that their contributions made his work better. Cade wrote for Jeska’s prodigious abilities; he wrote for Mieka’s distinctive style of glisking; he wrote for Rafe’s steady, unfaltering control of magic. Cade’s words were brilliant (well, with that one mortifying exception, Mieka reminded himself, wondering if Cade would ever go back and tweak “Turn Aback” for performance and rather hoping he would not). Would those plays be as good if someone else performed them? If his glisker or masquer or fettler were different people? Cade had admitted without actually saying it that as fine as his work was, Mieka and Jeska and Rafe made it superlative. Touchstone was greater than the sum of its parts—it was a thing worth being part of.

Mieka felt pleased that Cayden had finally remembered that. All that time spent denying and rejecting his Elsewhens had separated him not only from that crucial portion of his magic but from his partners as well. Nobody had noticed, not because nobody cared, but because they’d been doing quite well (except for “Turn Aback”) and couldn’t be bothered to be better. Now that imperative had awakened again. Fairwalk’s horrid words, and getting First Flight only because the Shadowshapers removed themselves from the scene, had kicked all of them into that need to make the work the best it could possibly be.

Well, those things, plus another overwhelming need: money.

Last night they’d played the Keymarker to huge applause. Tomorrow night they’d be at the Kiral Kellari. And there was a brand-new theater—a real one, with rows of seats instead of tables and chairs, and the bar in the entrance hall—opening soon south of the Plume. Added to whatever private performances they (or, more properly, Jinsie) could schedule, there were venues enough to keep them busy all winter. They would need everything in their folio, including several of their least-loathed Thirteen, to keep people coming back for more. This new play for children, though, that would ignite chavishing from here to Scatterseed, and that would be a very good thing—

“Mieka? You haven’t said what you think.”

He shook himself free of his ponderings and looked at Rafe. “Whatever you like.”

“I thought Cayden was the only one who went all blank-eyed and otherwhere,” said Jinsie, and Mieka was stunned to find her seated just beside him on the grass.

“Elsewhen,” he corrected. “And why should he be the only one to Think Great Thoughts?”

His voice supplied the capital letters. Jinsie elbowed him a good one. “Fool! Do you have a clean shirt to go to lunching in?”

“Someplace or other. What did we decide about the pamphlets?”

“Not much. We’re all just sitting about, waiting for Jez.” Cade picked up the last of the fruitcake. “New recipe, Rafe?”

“Chopped plums. Huge crop this year, so they’re cheap. What’s Jez got to do with anything?”

“He went to see Black Lightning last night with his new girlfriend.” Jinsie glanced towards the house and waved. “And here, in happy hour, he is.”

“His limp isn’t bad at all,” Mieka observed gratefully.

“Oh, it’s always worse when Ardyssian is around.”

“The better for leaning on her?” Cade asked. “Or to turn her all sympathetic and solicitous?”

“Well, you can’t expect somebody his size to conjure up the mothering instinct without some help,” Jinsie observed. “She doesn’t coo over him, I’ll give her that. In fact, I like her quite a lot.”

Jezael greeted everyone, complained over the total lack of anything to eat or drink, and sat down on the grass. Mieka offered him his own plate—naught but crumbs—and Jez playfully threatened him with his cane.

“I hear you’ve been—well, not consorting with the enemy,” Cade said, “but going to see them perform.”

“And a good thing, too.” He stretched out his bad leg and placed the cane beside his knee. “Their new piece is a rework of something called ‘Winglets.’ Ever heard of it?”

“It’s pretty old,” said Cade. “Nobody’s done it in a long while, but I remember reading about it in
Lost Withies.
One day a couple’s new baby is seen to have sprouted wings. They’re astonished—can’t figure out what happened, because they can account for the Elfen ears but not for wings. Husband suspects wife of indecent colluding with a Fae.”

Jez nodded. “Turns out the Fae baby was substituted for the couple’s own child, only the Fae forgot to do something about the wings. And the Human baby turns out to be a real screamer, which annoys the Fae so much that he gets stashed in the hayloft and abandoned. The couple raises both children, emphasis on the Fae child who in spite of his wings can’t fly until he comes into his magic.”

“The wings are just for show,” Cade said. “It’s magic that lets the Fae soar about as they please.”

“Remember the wings on that one we met, Cade?” Mieka asked. “All leafy-like, not enough heft in them to lift a daisy off the ground.”

Cade snorted a laugh that told Mieka he remembered becoming a Knight of the Most Noble Elfen Order of the Daisy.

Jinsie looked from one to the other of them, frowning. “You’re serious? You met a Fae?”

“Long story,” Mieka assured her. “Tell you some other time.”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “You will.”

Cade grinned. “Better you than me! Anyway, as for ‘Winglets’—the lesson is that sometimes you have to wait to do the things you’re meant to do until you’ve the wherewithal to do them. One version adds the idea that everybody has wings of some kind, and you just have to figure out exactly how you were meant to fly. A bit sicky-sweet in the wrong hands, but I’d imagine there would be some interesting visuals.”

“’Twasn’t the visuals last night,” Jez said grimly. “’Twas the words. Right at the beginning—and believe it or not, it got worse and worse all the way through—when the husband is told that his son now has wings, he plays out the bewilderment and says, ‘Wings? Whatever shall we do with a baby that has
wings
?’” He drew in a long breath. “And someone in the audience yells out, ‘It’s Fae-born! Kill it!’”

The shocked silence was eventually broken by Mieka, who indeed had some trouble kicking his brain back into action. But it was his job to lighten dark moods, ease tense situations, and go as far as he had to for a laugh. So he said, “It’s a right shame, it is, that Princess Miriuzca’s brother wasn’t there. Sounds like the sort of thing that would suit him down to the ground.” He waited a moment, then sat up straight as if something horrible had just occurred to him—which, in a way, it had. “Good Gods—you don’t think he’ll be at lunching again, do you?”

* * *

H
e wasn’t, though not for lack of his sister’s invitation.

“He went to the horse fair today,” she explained when Rafe made a polite inquiry about her brother’s health in this wretched summer heat. “He’ll be taking back a dozen yearlings for the stables at home.” She fanned herself with what looked like a huge clamshell made out of painted sticks and lace. “How he can rush about in this weather, I truly do not know. I have been hoping this part of the garden would be cooler, but the shade is making very little difference, don’t you think? And the cook wanted to be serving hot soup! Anyway, if my brother had been here, we would have been fourteen at table, rather than lucky thirteen.”

These thirteen—the four members of Touchstone, Derien, Crisiant, Kazie, Blye, Jedris, Jinsie, Jezael, the Princess, and Lady Megs—were seated at a large, square table in a garden retreat walled on three sides by blue-flowering hedges. The fourth side was a long expanse of grass to the river. The table was just the right size for everyone to join in the same conversation without raising their voices or straining to hear. Lunching consisted of cold meats and cheeses, chopped vegetable salad, iced drinks, flatbread, and bowls of berries dusted with mocah powder. A very casual meal, and very casual talk round the table—but Miriuzca was chattering away as if she’d just pricked bluethorn mixed with whitethorn and a little something else on the side. Ridiculous to think she would ever do such a thing, but Mieka was at a loss to understand her somewhat fevered vivaciousness.

It was a relief not to have to carry the conversation all by himself. In fact, it hadn’t been necessary for him to say much at all. That left him free to observe Cayden and Megs, who were deeply engrossed in not looking at each other. Mieka found this infinitely entertaining, but he knew better than to tease Cade about it in front of the others. Truth be told, he also had a healthy respect for Lady Megs’s equally sharp tongue. And besides all that, Jinsie was here, and any breach of manners would be reported to their mother. One would think, he mused as he speared another bite of carrot with a golden fork, that Mishia Windthistle would have given over scolding him—or simply given up—by now. He was almost twenty-three, and she had four children much younger than he to lesson as she saw fit. He had a moment of shock when he realized that Cilka and Petrinka were fourteen and Tavier and Jorie were nearly seven. How had the time gone by so fast? This Wintering, his own Jindra would be four years old. Astounding.

“Mieka!”

His twin sister’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. Jinsie had turned to the Princess, saying, “He’s taken to doing that. Must be premature old age setting in.” Then, to Mieka once more: “Her Royal Highness had the kindness to ask about your wife and daughter. Are you back from wherever it was you went, or should I be a good elder sister and make a reply for you?”

“Elder?” He made a face at her. “By a scant half minute, and only because I kicked you out first so I could finally have some room! How was I to know the birthing-wife would yank me out by the ears just as I got comfortable?”

Jedris shook his head at the foolery of his younger siblings and told the laughing Princess, “Not a word of it true, of course. What really happened was that our poor long-suffering mother called in the birthing-wife and told her that she absolutely refused to be burdened with those two for one more day. Little did she know they’d be even more trouble to her once they were born!” When Mieka and Jinsie both began to complain, he said, “Hush up. I was there.”