Window Wall (6 page)

Mieka winced. He was fairly certain he knew what Blye would say next.

Sure enough: “Tell me, Cade, have you figured out a way yet to present your plays without Jeska and Rafe and Mieka?”

He also knew what Cade would say. He found a corkscrew, opened the bottle, and took a swig. Not his usual tipple, but still good and perfectly suited to the purpose. As Cade answered Blye’s question, Mieka took another swallow, wishing it were something stronger. There was no comfort in being right.

“Not quite yet. But I’m working on it.”

Derien, with desperation in his voice, broke in. “It was the gold. That one man had a gold bracelet, and the other had gold buttons. But Jez doesn’t wear any gold jewelry. His wedding necklet is silver.”

“Now you know why it has to be kept quiet,” Cade said.

Mieka wiped the cloying sweetness of the wine from his lips and returned to the kitchen. “Derien, old son, now that you’re of an age for it, you’d best come up with some other sort of magic to tell people about, because telling anybody about
this
would be as much as your life’s worth.” When Cade scowled horribly at him, he merely shrugged. “He’s not stupid. He knows what this could mean. I think we’d all rather he stayed put in Albeyn, not get himself hauled off on somebody-or-other’s ship to the back of the bleedin’ beyond, just so other people can get rich on the gold he can find for them.”

Cade and Blye both looked shocked—not by what he’d said, because they had to have been thinking the same thing, but by the fact that he’d said it to the boy. Well, it was time they stopped treating Dery like a child. If twelve (or almost) was old enough to come into his magic, it was old enough to be told the truth.

“Here,” Mieka said, handing the bottle of mead to Blye. “This should suit.” To Cade: “You’ll be staying here tonight, yeh? Let’s find some blankets and things.”

“You’d do better to find us all something to eat,” Blye said. “Bread and cheese and beer will do.”

It would have to, because what Mieka, Cade, and Derien amongst them didn’t know about cooking would sink one of Lord Piercehand’s ships. Mieka wasn’t sure who else was living at Wistly these days, and was grateful that none of them showed up to complain about dinner or the lack of it.

At ten by the nearby Minster chimes everyone had been fed and put into order. Jez was asleep under his mother’s watchful eye. Hadden and Blye took the younger children up to bed. Blye came back down to inform them that Mistress Mirdley had settled in a chair for a nap and would take over watching Jez in a few hours so Mishia could get a little sleep.

“Jed should be back by now,” she fretted as Mieka poured her a tot of whiskey.

“Sit down,” Cade said, “and tell us what happened.”

“I don’t know any more about that than I did the first time you asked.”

“My brothers,” Mieka stated, “are too careful and too good at their work for it to’ve been a structural failure.”

“Much beholden for the endorsement,” came Jed’s voice from the drawing room doorway. “How’s Jez?”

“Sleeping.” Blye was at his side instantly. “No, don’t sit here, come into the kitchen and eat.” She pulled him out into the hall. Though she was a foot and a half shorter than he, her determination overwhelmed his exhaustion.

Jinsie crossed to where Mieka was sitting, appropriated the glass right out of his hand, and took a long swallow of whiskey. “You’ll appreciate this,” she said, and dropped a piece of something glittering into his hand.

“What is it?” Derien demanded.

“Glass,” he said. “It’s—” He thought better of what he’d been about to say, and tucked the shard into his shirt pocket. “It’s just a bit of glass.”

Jinsie gave him back his whiskey and looked narrowly into his eyes. He met his twin’s gaze levelly. “Probably bottle glass,” she said, taking his meaning, for she knew as well as he did what it was. “No windows in the place yet for an accident to shatter.”

If she put the slightest emphasis on the word
accident
, only Mieka heard it. “I’ll ask Blye tomorrow. She’ll know what sort it is. It might even be a chunk from one of those rings she makes for neck-cloths. And that remembers me—she owes me my percentage from sales of the things. They were my idea, after all.”

Jinsie wrinkled her nose at him. “Money, money—it’s all you think about. Me, all I can think of right now is sleep.”

“Hint taken,” Cade said, and looked pointedly at his brother.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” Derien warned. “Will you?”

“You’ve school tomorrow,” Cade reminded him.

“And we have a rehearsal.” Mieka finished off the scant swallow of whiskey Jinsie had left him, and set down his glass. “You take my room, Dery.” He’d long since switched bedchambers with Jinsie, not wanting to spend any more nights in the place where he’d struck his wife for the first—and, he swore, last and only—time. When they were upstairs and Mieka turned left down the hall instead of right, a glance at Cayden showed him that the change had been noted. He was briefly shocked that Cade hadn’t been to Wistly for an overnight in such a long time that he didn’t know.

Despite his protests, Derien was yawning before his head hit the pillow. Cade collected the boy’s discarded clothes while Mieka doused the candles, and once the door was shut said, “I ought to wash these for tomorrow.”

Mieka hadn’t a clue where the laundry was done. The only good-sized sink he knew of was in the kitchen. So to the kitchen they went. Jed was gulping hot tea; on the worktable before him was a plate emptied of all but bread crumbs and cheese rind.

“—possibly be your fault,” Blye was saying as Mieka and Cade entered.

“But it happened, and I have to know why. Everything was just as we always do it. All the braces, the struts, the pulleys, the ladders—and all the workers are experienced men. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He finished his tea. “I have to be up early tomorrow. I want to go look everything over in the daylight. I s’pose it’s no good looking in on Jez?”

“He’s sleeping. Tomorrow, love.” Blye linked her arm with his. “Come to bed.”

Good-nights were said. Cade went to the sink and began rinsing out Dery’s clothes. Mieka searched a few drawers and found some cord to string up as a drying line. The practical magic of household chores wasn’t something either of them had ever taken the trouble to learn. Finally he broke the silence, twisting the loose end of the cord in his hands.

“Not a glimmering, I take it?” Mieka asked softly. “Not a hint of an Elsewhen about any of this?”

Not turning from the sink, Cade shook his head. “Blye’s right—how could I possibly affect what happened this afternoon?”

There was something else, though. Something Mieka sensed but couldn’t quite identify. Waiting Cade out was occasionally effective, and much the kindest method of finding out what he wanted to hide; bullying him into telling wasn’t very nice, but prevented a great deal of frustrating boredom.

“Nothing at all?” Mieka pressed.

“No.” Cade wrung out his brother’s trousers and put them on the draining board, then reached for the undershirt. “Not anymore.”

“What does
that
mean?”

A shrug of thin shoulders. “I don’t anymore.”

“You don’t what?” He couldn’t possibly be saying what Mieka was suddenly, sickeningly sure he was saying.

“The Elsewhens. They were a bit of a bore. So I stopped having them.”

A
bore
? Visions of disasters that, forewarned, he could seek to avoid? What about the one where Thierin Knottinger of Black fucking Lightning had given Mieka some sort of horrid thorn that destroyed an important performance? What if he hadn’t seen that in advance? And The Rights of the Fae—there’d have been no triumph with Touchstone’s version of “Treasure” if he hadn’t seen—

—and if he
hadn’t
seen, Briuly would still be alive.

Thinking he understood, Mieka said, “They don’t all have to hurt, y’know.”

At last Cade turned to face him. “Who said anything about ‘hurt’?” His voice was casual enough, but his eyes—Mieka always knew when Cade was lying. Those large, fine gray eyes always gave him away.

“Your Namingday,” Mieka said desperately. “When you’ll be forty-five. That was a good one, wasn’t it?”

Cade only shrugged once more.

“But why? Did they just stop?”

“Did I outgrow them, like you outgrew your yearly head cold? No. I decided I didn’t like them. So I don’t have them anymore.”

“Not even when you’re asleep?”

Long fingers twisted the undershirt viciously. “You don’t understand. You could never understand. I’m afraid to sleep. Not because of the dreams, the Elsewhen dreams. I don’t have those anymore. I have nightmares instead. The kind other people have. Distortions, and running in place and never getting anywhere, and endless falling, and yelling but no one can hear me, and being helpless—but even if there weren’t any nightmares, I’d be afraid to sleep because after I sleep I have to wake up, and there’s another Gods-be-damned day to be faced and dealt with and slogged through somehow, and—even if I’ve pricked blockweed the night before, and have no dreams or nightmares at all, I still have to wake up. And sometimes the waking day is worse than the sleeping nightmare.”

Mieka watched in mute dismay as Cade draped the undershirt on the makeshift clothesline. He’d never heard Cade’s voice like this: quick, brittle, with an undercurrent of vicious mockery.

“And besides
that
,” Cade went on, “I’ve got rid of all the Elsewhens I had before. I don’t remember them. They’re gone. You say there was a good one—I’ll have to take your word for it, because I don’t remember them anymore. I don’t want them. I want to live the way normal people live. Without knowing what’s coming.”

“But—but—” Mieka was so shocked, he could hardly get the words out. “You can’t do that, Quill!”

“Can’t I? People think things, do things, decide things, without knowing what will come of them—”

“But we’re just fumbling about in the dark.
You
know for certain sure!”

“I know what
might
happen. Used to, anyways. It’s been interesting, actually. Not having all that lot rattling round in my head, confusing me all the time. Liberating.”

“Blind,” Mieka said softly. “You’re blind, just like everyone else.”

“What I saw, or thought I saw, it’s all gone. I won’t see anything else. Not waking nor sleeping. I won’t do it.” He hesitated, then said, “I just want … to be normal, I guess.”

Mieka had gone to Redpebble Square this afternoon—Gods, had it only been this afternoon?—thinking to ask Mistress Mirdley if she felt the same changes in Cade that he did. He’d been unable to define just why Cade was different. He didn’t have the words. The work was as good as ever (with that one mortifying exception), and he gave Mieka everything he needed inside the withies for each performance, but the magic had felt different for quite some time. The sense of
Cade
-ness that had always been in the withies along with Cade’s magic had changed.

Now he knew why.

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve talked about it.”

“And what would you have said? That at the very least I have advance warning of what might happen? Precious pile of good that did for Briuly and Alaen!” He wrung out his brother’s shirt as if he had his hands round someone’s neck. “You know what the funny part of it is? You didn’t even notice. Not you nor Jeska nor Rafe—we all but live in each other’s pockets for months at a time, and none of you noticed.”

Mieka opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again. Cade was right. Gods in glory, did the man never tire of being
right
? Although Mieka had noticed and worried about differences in Cade, he hadn’t asked.

“It never occurred to you that I’d started telling you about the Elsewhens, and then just stopped?” Cade shot him a sardonic glance. “Did you just assume that there wasn’t anything horrid, so I kept them to myself?”

Mieka gave a helpless, shamed little nod. “You should’ve told me what you’d done, all the same.”

“Oh, and of course you would’ve believed me. Just like you would’ve believed me if I’d told you the Elsewhens about your wife.”

Mieka took an involuntary step back from the sneer. “But it—it’s like
murder.
All those memories—”

“They weren’t memories.”

“They were part of you!”

“Not anymore. And you’re forgetting something. The Archduke knows.” Cade gave him a thin smile. “Credit where it’s due, Mieka. He
knows.
”

He felt his cheeks heat up, but he had no time for awkwardness and apologies. Because once more he thought that he understood. It took no foreseeing to know that eventually the Archduke would come round, wanting Cade to see the futures for him. “If the Elsewhens are gone, you’re no longer valuable to him.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You actually think he’ll believe you when you say it doesn’t happen anymore?”

A spiteful grin spread across the thin face. “I know—I’ll make something up! Let’s find paper and pen and get started on prophecies—you’re good at jokes and pranks, you can help. I’ll have to have a dozen or so ready for him—”

“Stop it, Cade!”

“As you wish.” He turned back to the sink and started in on Derien’s stockings.

Mieka was just as glad of it. He hated it when he and Cayden fought, though he considered that he ought to be grateful that Cade had at least shown some honest emotion for a change. He watched the long bony fingers rub soap into the stockings—sea green, to match the piping on the white shirts worn by students at the King’s College. The full rig included brown trousers and jacket; as a boy progressed in school, the plain horn buttons were replaced, one by one, with silver. With discovery of part of his magic, Dery would be receiving another silver button, and instead of classes in magical theory, he would start attending classes in practical magic.

And then it hit Mieka, all at once: that in finding his magic, Derien had saved two lives, but in rejecting his magic, Cade had killed part of who he was.

But there was something worse. Never mind all that drivel about not seeing what he could have no hand in influencing; Mieka knew for a fact that Cade had seen things where that connection was so obscure that nobody could have figured it out.