Window Wall (31 page)

“Get some sleep,” said Cayden.

Mieka was relieved to see the back of him as he left the room. Turning onto one side, he stared at the beige and crimson stripes of the wallpaper and thought feverishly.

The only explanation for the torn trousers was his own magic. The maggots hadn’t been real, but the damage was a fact. He had spent years by now onstage directing his magic to affect real things. And when he did, he was in control of it. This had happened without his conscious volition. Though his skin bore no signs of the maggots or the cat, mayhap the shirt he’d been wearing did. With a sick chill in his belly, he wondered if the maggots had left their marks on the walls or the floor or the carpets—and if the sparkling red beads had left smears of blood on the desk. His hands must be clean, or Cade would have said something. As for his shirt … perhaps the pinpricks of sharp claws hadn’t actually torn the fabric.

The Minster across the river had chimed the hour before he got up courage enough to rise, find the shirt, and investigate. No evidence on the shirt, no matter how hard he squinted at it. He picked up the shoes he’d been wearing, looking for slime or scratches or
something
, but they were unmarked as well. He settled back into bed, pulling up the sheet, then gasped aloud. There were blotches of blood on the sky-blue silk. His arm, where Piercehand had pricked him with the silver thorn of Demon Teeth, was openly bleeding. And with the rush of shock came a pounding of his heart and the thorn took him back to itself, screaming.

“Mieka!” Cade was here with him and he clung to thin shoulders, babbling.

“Maggots, Quill—there were maggots and they’re back and one is inside me head—”

“Mieka, no, it’s all right. There aren’t any maggots.”

“Yes, there are! And—and it’s growing, I can hear it—a brainsnake, it’s thinking and I can hear it thinking and it’s
horrible
, what it’s thinking—”

Cade lifted a hand as if to slap him, then shook his head and gathered Mieka tight. “Shush. It’s all right. There’s no brainsnake, Mieka. It’s just the thorn.”

“It got in through my arm,” he whimpered. “I thought I got away from them—they ripped up my trousers and she really did want to be a whore so the Prince would give her everything she ever wanted—” He sobbed once, fingers clenched in Cade’s shirt. “No, it can’t—it’s the brainsnake telling me that, she’d never—she
couldn’t
—help me, Quill, please!”

“Mieka, try to settle down. I don’t know what to do other than wait it out. There’s no brainsnake, it’s just the thorn, I promise it’ll be all right. I’m here, Mieka. I won’t let go.”

“Talk to me. I’m scared, please talk to me!” When he listened to Cade’s voice, he didn’t hear the whispering and muttering inside his own head.

Sighing, Cade settled them both against pillows, and Mieka huddled close. “I’ll remind you of this the next time you tell me I talk too much.”

How could he be so calm? How could he make a joke out of this? Well, there wasn’t anything inside
his
head, was there, making him think such vile things about his own wife—

“What do you want me to talk about? How I spent this afternoon? Drevan and I were in the library again, looking up some old books about theater. He swears he saw them a few months ago, but he hasn’t cataloged them yet and forgot exactly where he put them, so we had a merry old time of it, sneezing our way through stack after stack of paper and leather held together with dust and spiderwebs.”

He paused, and Mieka, whose muscles had begun to relax, tensed again. “More,” he whispered. “Please, Quill. Just keep talking.”

“All right. I was looking through a couple of books while Drevan was rummaging through a crate that he’d unpacked and then packed again for the Archduke. And for some reason, I don’t know why, I began wondering what my mother’s been up to these days, whether she sees anything of the Archduchess now that Her Grace has joined Princess Iamina in conspicuous displays of piety. She guested at Threne, of course, but I just can’t see her attending Chapel twice a day and all that. Then, and I
really
don’t understand this at all, I remembered that time you tried to magick her and I told you about the Hindering, how her magic was locked away. Do you remember how I explained it?”

“Y-yes … I think so—but tell me again.”

“Like being inside a room with a huge window looking out onto the world, only you can’t touch or smell or feel or hear anything of what’s happening out there. And that’s when I started thinking that it might make an interesting play—something about a boy who’s been locked inside that room, and he can see out but nobody can see in, because his parents are afraid of magic and there’s magic out in the real world but they want to protect him from it. Sort of like what we did with that Vaustas play at Seekhaven, remember? I thought, What would daily life be like for someone who’d made that bargain, or had that bargain made for him? It might make for some interesting magic, deliberately muffling the audience’s sensations. Anyway, I wondered how he’d get stuck inside the room, and I thought mayhap his parents had done it to him, and died before they could have the spell lifted—”

“No,” Mieka heard himself say. “They knew they were about to die—they were sick—you could have it be the same thing that killed Blye’s father. That way, they’d have a reason to hate magic.”

“That’s good. I like that.”

“They’ve protected him all these years, but now they’re dying, and before they die, they have this spell done to him. To keep him safe.”

“Excellent!” Cade hugged him briefly. “That works much better than what I’d thought of to begin with. Anyway, at first he’s content to watch but not really experience—but after a while he sees something that makes him wonder what it would be like to—oh, I don’t know, mayhap it rains outside and some people are annoyed at being caught in the wet, and some people turn their faces up to it and smile. He can’t even imagine what it might be like, but he grows more and more curious. Watching as someone bites into an apple, or—”

“—or a street musician comes by but he can’t hear the music. We could have Alaen play something for us offstage for that.” Mieka had by now loosened his death grip on Cade’s shirt, and had snuggled comfortably against his side, breathing in Cade’s scent: Mistress Mirdley’s sage soap, clean sweat, ink and paper, a faint tang of cinnamon from afternoon tea. To Mieka, whatever Cade wore or drank or had washed in, he always smelled like magic. “There’s all kinds of things to be done with it. But how does he get out? Because he
has
to get out, Quill. Otherwise, what’s the point of the play?”

“Well, I’m not terribly sure about that part of it. What do you think? Any ideas?”

He built the images in his head, the way he did whenever Cade proposed a new play. The familiar practice of one part of his craft soothed him. “No matter how curious he is about life beyond that glass window, he knows he’s safe inside, right? And outside—there’s magic out there, that his parents always told him was wicked and dangerous.”

“What could motivate him to break the window and go outside and start living life?”

“‘This life, and none other,’” Mieka quoted softly, and Cade chuckled and hugged him again. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He yawned mightily. “You always do.”

“Sleepy, are you? Glad to know I’m so fascinating.”

“Shut up, Quill.”

He burrowed closer. When Cade made a slight movement, as if to let him go and rise from the nest of pillows, Mieka held him in place with an arm across his chest. He subsided, and Mieka gave a long sigh of contentment, feeling sorry for that boy behind the window wall, looking out at people to whom he was invisible, who had to hide from the world to feel himself safe. All Mieka needed was Cade.

And all Cade needed …

Oh, of course. Why hadn’t he understood before? “That boy,” he mumbled. “He
is
like Vaustas. Books to hide in, not a room with a window.”

“Hmm? Yes, I suppose he is. But we can’t use the same trick to end the play with, y’know.”

“You’ll think of something,” he said again, nearly asleep. “’Cause they’re you, Quill.”

From very far away, he heard Cayden’s voice. “Yes … I suppose they are. Get some rest, Mieka. I’m here.”

V
isibly chastened, Mieka behaved himself perfectly for the remainder of their stay at Castle Eyot. It was perhaps fortunate for him, and for the rest of them, that they were there for only one more day. A quiet, sensible, unadventurous glisker might have been too much for Touchstone’s collective peace of mind. Still, it was a relief to Cade that Mieka confined himself to pursuits less risky than thorn: walking in the gardens and over the bridge to the village, catching up on his sleep, lolling in a hot bath for over an hour, joining the others to hear Cade’s new idea for a play: “Window Wall.” Lord Piercehand was seen at lunching and dinner, and twice took Mieka aside to suggest another foray into exotic thorn. The Elf was polite but firm in his refusals. Cade was proud of him.

On their last night, Drevan Wordturner suggested a before-bed brandy up on the roof. Piercehand did not join them, but his most trusted ship captain did. Frolian Webstitch had come to Castle Eyot only because he’d had to track His Lordship down following the latter’s hasty departure from Gallantrybanks. There was business to discuss, and Captain Webstitch was annoyed at having to traipse all over the countryside during days he had much rather spend with his wife and family. So he was slightly less discreet than usual after two or three brandies.

“I’d not say it,” he remarked as they sat under a moonless starry sky, “if Rafcadion here wasn’t Clan-kin. And it goes no farther than us, right?”

“Sworn eight times,” Rafe agreed, as a good son of the Spider Clan ought. Cade rolled his eyes at him, and he grinned.

The captain was satisfied. “Well, then. All these voyages His Lordship brags on—” Lowering his voice and leaning forward in his chair, he confided, “In twenty years, he’s never been farther than a cottage on an island beach just t’other side of Yzpaniole.”

Drevan muffled giggles behind his hand. The others simply stared.

“Oh, it’s true enough,” Webstitch went on. “We set him down with his personal servants, a goodly supply of whiskey, and a crate full of presents for the local whores. While we’re halfway round the world, dodging pirates and damned unfriendly locals, he’s lazing on velvet cushions in the sand.”

“But how,” Jeska wanted to know, “does he account for all the things you collect? I mean, this castle is
crammed
with everything anybody could think of, and then some!”

“When we pick him up again, we captains have lists waiting for him. On the way home, he picks out about a dozen of the most interesting bits, finds out where and how they were found, and when we dock, he makes sure those crates are sent to his house at once so he can study them.” Webstitch held out his glass and Drevan refilled it. “Tell me, Master Wordturner, have you ever asked about a particular piece, and had him scrunch up his face as if he’s trying to remember on which of his voyages he found it?”

“Several times. So that’s why he says what he says!” In a deep voice with an exaggerated highborn accent, he intoned, “‘Well, you know, my boy, it’s shocking, but I’ve been so many places and acquired so many nice things, it’s quite impossible to remember them all!’”

Rafe snorted. “I always knew the nobility was a fraud—saving your presence, Cayden,” he added with a little bow in Cade’s direction. “But he seems to have diddled the whole country!”

“No offense taken,” Cade told him, chuckling. “But that’s not the whole of it. You know the story about the origin of the name?”

Mieka hunched his shoulders like a scolded puppy. “It’s painted on a door someplace. Heroic squire saves king’s life by taking an arrow through the hand. What’s the real story, Quill?”

“The squire was one of the king’s drinking companions. One night he got very, very drunk and tried to juggle knives—one of which went right through his palm. He was so drunk, he didn’t even notice until the king started laughing and dubbed him Sir Rolon Piercehand.”

Captain Webstitch gave a mighty guffaw. “That’s one to tell my crew! And afore anyone asks, none of them tattles on him, because he pays very well indeed.”

“I thought it’d be something like that,” Rafe said. “Forgive my tastelessness, Drevan, but I assume you’re being paid plenty, too?”

“I wish,” he replied, glum-faced. “I’m still working off the shame of how drunk I was the night of the wedding.”

Cade remembered very well how Drevan had made a disgusting display of himself, and how frightened poor Miriuzca had been. But in a way he owed the man, for the incident had begun the friendship between the Princess and himself, and eventually all of Touchstone. Drevan, whose real ambition was to be a member of the Horse Guards, had certainly paid for his folly by now, immured with thousands of books here at Castle Eyot or at the Royal Archives or at the Archduke’s residence at Threne.

Minster chimes across the river reminded them how late it was, and after a last few swallows of brandy, they all started down the stairs to their own bedchambers.