Window Wall
Authors: Melanie Rawn
Contents
Also Available from Titan Books
TOUCHSTONE
ELSEWHENS
THORNLOST
WINDOW WALL
Print edition ISBN: 9781781166666
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781166673
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: April 2015
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Melanie Rawn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Rawn. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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In memory of
Marian C. Kelly
R
eal Mieka Windthistle arrived at the kitchen door of Number Eight, Redpebble Square, with a frown on his face. It was not an expression that suited him. Yet with the exception of the hours he spent onstage, these days it seemed all his face could do was frown.
He conjured up a smile for Mistress Mirdley and for Derien Silversun, but the frown returned when the Trollwife, busily slicing carrot bread, told him why a huge basket was being filled with baked goods.
“Tea. It’s his Namingday. He won’t come here, so Derien’s taking it to him.”
Cayden’s Namingday.
Thoroughly ashamed of himself, Mieka didn’t bother to pretend that he hadn’t forgotten. Dery, seeing the expression on his face, only shrugged and said, “I don’t think he wants to remember, himself. Which is stupid, of course. It’s not as if he’s turning fifty or sixty—he’s only twenty-four. But I’m sure he has nothing planned.”
Mieka slouched on a stool by the worktable and felt his frown grow even deeper as he regarded his tregetour’s little brother—who admittedly wasn’t so little anymore. Not that Mieka had been around to notice. Redpebble Square hadn’t seen much of him these last two years. He was no longer welcome when Lady Jaspiela was at home; indeed, she hadn’t spoken to him or even acknowledged his continuing existence since he’d attempted a bit of softening magic on her. How she’d been able to sense it, what with the Hindering put on her long ago, he’d no idea. But sense it she had.
Today Mieka had arrived just after lunching, confident that he wouldn’t be running into Lady Jaspiela. This was her day, every fortnight, for visiting the Archduchess whenever the latter was in Gallantrybanks. Mieka made it his day for visiting his brother and sister-in-law at the glassworks. Sometimes—well, rarely—he called in at the kitchen door of Redpebble Square, where Mistress Mirdley provided tea and Derien provided conversation. Cade no longer lived there. He had taken his own flat just after Touchstone’s third Royal Circuit. And even though Mieka saw him every single day when they were traveling and at least twice a week for performances in Gallantrybanks during winter, he had to go to other people to find out what Cade was thinking.
Not that either Mistress Mirdley or Derien knew. That was made clear when the boy slumped down in a chair beside Mieka and said, “He hasn’t been round to see us in almost a month. And it’s not that long until Trials, and then he’ll be gone on the Royal again, and—and I miss him.”
So do I
, Mieka thought glumly.
“There’s an item about him in the latest
Nayword
—did you see it?” Dery made a long arm to snag the broadsheet from a pile by the kitchen fire. “Not that he talked to Tobalt Fluter, either.”
Mieka had read the piece, just a few lines about how Cade would doubtless have new and startling plays to be performed in Gallantrybanks and at Trials. The tone of it had been just slightly sardonic, as if Tobalt was annoyed that he could no longer get an interview from the eminently quotable Cayden Silversun.
Mistress Mirdley had finished wrapping the carrot bread. “Here, and take some of this honeycomb along with you. He always liked it when he was a little boy.”
Mieka was appalled to see sudden fierce tears in her eyes. He leaped to his feet and threw his arms around her. “I’ll bring him back here soon, I promise I will—and with three pages of apologies in rhymed couplets set to music for being so horrid to you!”
She shook her head and extricated herself from his hug. “He’ll come round when he comes round. And it’s a few dozen more turnings he’ll be doing before that happens. Is that basket full? Tuck a cloth in, then, and get along with you.”
“Did you put in something for Rumble?” Dery asked.
“Of course. A nice bit of fish. Go!”
Cayden’s only companion in his flat—well, his only steady companion; there were plenty of girls, all of them transitory—was a ginger-striped cat named Rumble, inexplicably brought home as a kitten by Blye’s cat, Bompstable. It was as if, Jedris had remarked, Bompstable knew Cade required some sort of company, and went out to find a suitable candidate.
In the hire-hack, with a hamper of food between them, Mieka looked at Dery and asked, “Could we stop off someplace maybe? I really ought to bring a gift.”
“Well … can you make it quick? Mistress Mirdley will be furious if I’m out after dark. And I want to spend some time with my brother,” he finished in a voice much too grim for someone not quite twelve years old.
Mieka directed the driver to take them through a convenient shopping district. For a full quarter of an hour, he turned from side to side in the hack, peering through the windows, desperate for a shop that caught his imagination.
“You’re giving me a neck ache,” Dery complained. “He won’t mind if you don’t bring him anything. I’m sure he’d rather nobody remembered at all.”
Especially after what happened last year
, hung unspoken between them.
When Cayden turned nineteen, Dery had given him a silver hawk pin and Mieka had taken him to see the Shadowshapers at the Kiral Kellari. On his twentieth Namingday, he’d been at Fairwalk Manor, giving Mieka no opportunity to celebrate. To make up for that, Mieka had thrown a lavish party at Hilldrop Crescent for Cade’s twenty-first. His twenty-second had been another Shadowshapers show—the one where Princess Miriuzca had shown up with Lady Megueris Mindrising, both of them dressed as young men. And a grand lark that had been; an exploit Mieka wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to surpass … though Cade had once had an Elsewhen about his forty-fifth, something about bubbly wine and a surprise party and a diamond in Mieka’s ear. Forty-five; Mieka couldn’t imagine it. But Cade had seen it, and by his scant telling, it had been a wonderful evening.
Last year they’d all gathered at Blye’s glassworks, ostensibly to watch her make their new withies but in reality to present Cade with the complete table service for eight she had spent weeks making. She had forbidden them to transport the plates, bowls, cups, goblets, and platters to Cade’s flat that evening, relenting only when Mieka promised a doubling and tripling of the cushioning spell his mother had taught him. Problem was, he’d had quite a lot to drink—although so had everyone else, raising the new wine goblets again and again, then deciding that the brandy snifters also deserved a try-out, and of course there were those bottles of Auntie Brishen’s whiskey that needed sampling in the cut-crystal glasses, and … the conclusion being that Blye had had to spend another week replacing the broken items. Mieka still winced with the memory of the crashing and splintering of two inadequately cushioned crates down four flights of stairs. And one couldn’t mend glass with an Affinity spell, not and have it hold water ever again.
There were plenty of things that needed mending after these last two years. Nothing that was permanently broken, or at least so Mieka told himself with grim resolve—well, except in Alaen Blackpath’s case. The loss of his cousin Briuly two years ago this Midsummer dawn had shattered him. A month later, he’d shown up at Sakary Grainer’s house in Gallantrybanks with a glass thorn in one hand and a little gold velvet pouch of dragon tears in the other, and announced to Chirene, Sakary’s wife, that if she didn’t run away with him that very night, he’d begin using and wouldn’t stop until she was his or he was dead. Romuald Needler, the Shadowshapers’ manager, had succeeded in hushing up most of the scandal. But the fact remained that Chirene had taken her children and gone to live with Chattim Czillag’s wife, Deshenanda, until the Shadowshapers returned that autumn from the Royal Circuit. Alaen wasn’t dead. Yet.
“Here, stop,” Mieka said suddenly, and hopped out of the hire-hack before it had come to a full stop. “Won’t be a ticktock!” he called over his shoulder to Derien, and hurried inside.
The shop featured all manner of decorative collectibles. Mirrors, figurines, clocks, imagings, paintings, exotic flowers from faraway lands preserved under glass or with magic. But Mieka knew exactly what he wanted, having seen it displayed in the window, and a few moments later emerged with a wrapped package almost as tall as Derien.
“What is it?” the boy wanted to know as the hack started up again.
“Not
it
,” Mieka said. “
Them
.” He teased a corner of the paper wrapping to show a glint of iridescent blue.
“Peacock feathers?”
“A round dozen of ’em.”
“But, Mieka, aren’t they horrid bad luck for theater folk?” An instant later, he understood. “Whistling past the urn-plot?”