Window Wall (19 page)

Mallecho propped his fists on his hips, frowning. Then, with a sigh and a shrug, he said, “If that’s all there is to his soul, it’s of no use to me.”

“Nor to anyone, most of all himself,” agreed the Lord. “It isn’t as if any soul, any being, can grow and ripen when so much of it is rejected and denied.”

“But what will We do with him?” the Lady asked anxiously.

“Whatever you like,” Mallecho said, with a final, disgusted glance at Vaustas’s blighted soul. “Nothing in it for me. I bid you good day until next we meet—in more interesting circumstances, I hope, to battle over something worth having!”

He ambled into his fiery preview of Hell and vanished.

There was a brief silence as the Lord and the Lady contemplated the shapeless soul before them. At last the Lady said, “I know what We ought to do, my Lord.”

“I was just thinking the same thing, dearest Lady.”

They smiled at each other. Standing so that Vaustas’s soul was between them, they spread their arms and from their fingertips arced blue and gold and green fire that surrounded and then penetrated the hazy, stunted soul. The light grew brighter and brighter, and the unshapen thing acquired substance, color, identity, and became Vaustas, a young boy again, immobile and silent yet radiant with all the magic that had been his at birth.

“It’s no guarantee,” mused the Lord, “that he’ll do with his gifts that which will keep him from ending up in any or all of the Hells.”

“But he is once again a whole being, and his soul is his own, and complete. To use oneself and all the gifts of intellect and magic and spirit and everything else for good or ill, that is every person’s choice. He must decide.”

“It will be interesting to see if his soul will be worth fighting for.”

Vaustas came to life then, stretching his shoulders, looking at the Lord and at the Lady, and saying, “
Every
soul is worth fighting for.”

Smiling at him, the Lady nodded. “You’ve made a start, then. Every soul
is
worth fighting for. Luck to you, Vaustas, and Our blessings.”

With that, all the magic onstage abruptly winked out, and the four masquers were joined by their gliskers and fettlers and tregetours, linking arms, standing there in silent challenge to the audience. The applause began an instant later and threatened to shake down the walls. Mieka, in between Cade and Sakary, laughed aloud and tossed a withie high into the air, where it shattered into a million tiny shards that rained down in a shimmering curtain behind the players. If this had been a Shadowshapers performance, it had also been Touchstone’s. Cade wondered with a smirk whether Mirko was regretting that Crystal Sparks had no signature move that hallmarked a play as theirs.

His Majesty was grinning broadly. Never the shiniest jewel in the coffers, he nonetheless understood very well what messages his players were … well, to be honest, what they were shoving under everyone’s nose in letters six feet high while beating them over the head with a pickax. Princess Miriuzca was applauding excitedly, and when Cade caught her eye, she winked. Her brother, sitting between her and the Archduke, was seemingly questioning the latter regarding a matter of such importance that both of them forgot to clap their hands. This was noticed by nobody except those immediately around them—and the players onstage, of course.

Backstage they were congratulated by every other player there—including Black Lightning. Thierin Knottinger approached Cayden and said it had been a real treat to watch them disgrace and discredit those Continental quats, and Pirro Spangler clapped Mieka so hard on the back that he nearly fell over. The tumult in the tiring room, being in a more confined space, was even louder than the applause in Fliting Hall, and with a triumph in it that, for all their competition and rivalry, made them all Players of Albeyn together.

Toasts were shouted and drunk, and all the while, Tobalt Fluter, notebook in one hand and pen in the other, was trying to interview anybody he could get close enough to hear. Cade watched his frustrated progress through the crowd, scribbling a word here and a half a sentence there, desperate for just one coherent, attributable quote. Mieka compassionately offered Tobalt a few sips of his own beer, but somebody bumped into them and the drink drenched Tobalt and his notebook. Cade finally broke down laughing when Mieka attempted to wring out the pages like a soggy stocking.

“Come by the Shadowstone later,” he told the anguished reporter. “We’ll tell you all about it.”

“Somebody said Copperboggin argued for including the twining vines, just to show how it ought to be done.”

“Yeh, but we couldn’t figure a way to work it into the piece without doing the whole tedious scene with the knives. Take pity, Tobalt—we only had a couple of days. Couldn’t do
everything
!”

They had also argued about who would play Vaustas, and Jeska lost against Lederris’s point that not only were old men one of his own specialties, but having Jeska wear his own delectable face during the whole of it would let Mieka concentrate on supporting Chat, who had to keep both Vered and Rauel costumed and so on. These two had got into a laughing scrape about which of them would do better as the Lady, centering on who moved more convincingly when fully gowned, until Mirko drawled that it was a shame Mieka wasn’t a masquer, because he was the only one with any experience wearing real skirts instead of those created by magic. Those stories and a few more would keep Tobalt happy, Cade felt, but would scarcely divert him from probing into the other staggerment of the evening: the announcement that Touchstone would be taking First Flight on the Royal Circuit.

On the walk back to the Shadowstone Inn, notable for becoming more raucous and chaotic with every step, it was reasonably easy to avoid Tobalt. Things were a little more tense once they stashed their equipment and invaded Mistress Luta’s taproom in boisterous triumph. Tobalt stood the first round of drinks (for twenty-one: the Shadowshapers, Touchstone, the Crystal Sparks, and Hawk’s Claw, plus their managers, plus himself; considering the sure sales of the Trials issue this year,
The Nayword
could afford it) and when everyone was supplied with a tankard and rose for a toast that Tobalt as benefactor was supposed to give, he looked panicky. The success of the new play? Touchstone, as First Flight? The Shadowshapers, who could be assumed to need a toast to luck now that they were going out on their own?

Mieka solved his problem for him. Leaping up onto a table without spilling a single drop of beer, he yelled, “His Majesty the King!”

The Loyal Toast was drunk. Mieka jumped down—losing nothing but a globule of foam on the way—and settled into a comfortable chair, smiling his blithe delight with the world and all its wonders. Cade snorted, shaking his head, and devoted himself to further avoidance of Tobalt. The poor man couldn’t decide if he was more anxious to get the Shadowshapers’ reactions to being kicked off the circuit by vindictive Stewards, or Touchstone’s feelings at winning First Flight without having actually won it. His readers would be keen for details. There was never much to be had out of Sakary or Chat, though Rauel was always good for a mild joke and Vered could rival Cade in talking the hind leg off a wyvern. But Mieka’s jokes were better than Rauel’s, and if Rafe and Jeska were reticent, Cade the Eminently Quotable always made up for it.

Cade the Eminently Quotable wasn’t the first to leave the celebration, but as soon as he was certain his absence wouldn’t be too much remarked, he mounted the stairs to his and Mieka’s room. Even with the door closed, the noise from the taproom invaded every plank of the floor and every stitch of his blanket. Blockweed beckoned. He was just about to search for it when Mieka arrived, kicking the door shut behind him and holding aloft two beer tankards.

“Thought you might be gettin’ thirsty again,” he said, stepping up onto Cade’s bed and sinking gracefully down cross-legged with his back to the footboard. Thus arranged, he handed over one of the tankards, took a sip from his own, and cocked his head to one side. “Well?”

“Beholden,” Cade muttered, and took a healthy swig of what turned out to be brandy. Choking, coughing, eventually able to breathe again, he glared at his glisker. “You might’ve warned me!”

“Sure, I might have,” Mieka agreed, unrepentant. “But I was thinkin’ that mayhap it would give you a start on bein’ ireful with me, because what I’m about to say ain’t anywhere near bein’ close to what you want to hear.”

“And what might that be?”

“I saw your face when the Flights were announced.”

“So?” He took a defiant swallow of brandy.

“We won, but we didn’t really win.”

“I’d sussed that out for myself.”

“You’d rather beat the Shadowshapers in a fair contest, not because they broke the rules and got kicked out.”

“Well … yeh,” he admitted.

“And now you’re thinkin’ that we’ll never have the chance to beat ’em fair.”

“They’ll never be asked back to Trials.”

“Mm.” Mieka sloshed liquor around in the tankard, frowning thoughtfully. “Is it just at Trials, I wonder, where we compete with them?”

“What do you mean?” Cade asked suspiciously.

“Oh, nothin’.” He drank again, and Cade began to consider reaching over to shake him by his ears. “It’s only … I mean, there’s other ways of measuring success, right?”

“Money.” As he said the word, his lip curled, and Mieka glanced up in time to see it and smile. “Well, it
is
vulgar, isn’t it? To judge someone by his bank account?”

“Wasn’t thinkin’ of that, not at all.”

“What, then? That someday we’ll be in the same town at the same time with performances on the same night? They’d outsell us in tickets, you know they would.”

“No, that’s not it, either.”

“Mieka, if you don’t get to the point—”

“It’s nothin’ much. Just this.” He flashed a look at Cade, then returned his gaze to his drink. “In all the Elsewhens you ever told me about—not that there were that many!—you never once talked about the Shadowshapers.”

“What of it? How could anything I do have any influence on what any of them do?”

“The one I liked best,” Mieka went on, “was the one where we’re old. It’s your forty-fifth Namingday but you forgot, and there was a party just starting, and I had a diamond earring. I know you don’t remember it, because you deliberately got rid of all the Elsewhens, but that
was
a good one, Quill, a future to look forward to.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. But what I’m thinking is this,” he went on, then paused for a swallow of brandy.

Cade noted suddenly that the
g
s were firmly attached to Mieka’s words again and those eyes were brightly alert, though half-screened by heavy lashes. He sounded and looked, in fact, much less drunk than he ought to.

“After a few days of watching Vered and Rauel have it out over this play we did tonight, do you really think that with all their snarking and sniping, they’ll still be playing shows together when
they’re
forty-five?”

O
n the way from Seekhaven—with no stop in Gallantrybanks to celebrate their triumph—the sight of the Tincted Downs was usually an inspirational delight. In spring and summer, the gently folded hills bloomed, seemingly every fortnight, with different flowers: crimson, yellow, blue, orange, pink, purple, as if throngs of drunken Pikseys had danced through the fields flinging gallons of paint across the green carpet of grass. This year a violent wind had blown through, ripping all the petals from the flowers, leaving bare broken stems and not much else. The green undergrowth still clung to the ground, huddling as if hoping the wind wouldn’t notice it, but all other color was gone.

Mieka refused to be depressed by the sight of it, or the bare-naked trees in the orchards, or the villages with the cottages’ bones pitifully exposed now that all the thatching had blown away. Cade and Rafe and Jeska
thought
he was depressed, because he wasn’t saying much. The truth of it was that he was working something out in his head, and before he said anything about it, he wanted to be certain sure he had it right.

In the scant weeks since Cayden’s Namingday, he’d felt by turns stunned, furious, ashamed, and disappointed by this refusal to see the Elsewhens. Stunned, because they were so much a part of Cade—and to Mieka, that deliberate forgetting really was a bit like murder. Furious, because Cade might have seen something that would have prevented what had happened at Lord Piercehand’s Gallery. Ashamed, because he hadn’t even noticed that no descriptions of any Elsewhens had been forthcoming for almost two years. And disappointed because he’d thought Cayden was braver and smarter than anyone else he knew.

These emotions scraped and scratched at him in no particular order at night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Eventually they resolved into simple worry, which lingered, expanded, proposed all sorts of troubling things that struck him anew almost every time he looked at Cade.

Mieka knew that he couldn’t rightly question himself on why he hadn’t noticed—why none of them had noticed. He already knew why. They hadn’t noticed, because it took too much effort to notice. It wasn’t that he didn’t give a damn, nor Rafe nor Jeska, either. It was just so much easier to trundle along on the Royal Circuit, in Gallantrybanks, rehearsing and gigging and saying nothing to overset anyone’s balance. He supposed they had all reasoned that if Cade had seen anything interesting, he would have told them. He’d begun telling them before that terrible night in Shollop, when he’d seen Alaen and Briuly find The Rights of the Fae. And hadn’t that piece of Cade’s that wasn’t really a play, “The Avowal,” come from an Elsewhen? If there’d been something interesting or puzzling to tell about an Elsewhen, he would have told it. Or so they’d all thought, and hadn’t considered it any more deeply than that.