Window Wall (35 page)

They all met for dinner—Touchstone, Jinsie, and Jez—on that second night (or mayhap third), and when Jinsie asked Cayden if he’d be willing to meet with her friends, he rolled his eyes and said, “Only if nothing even remotely resembling the philosophy of
anything
is discussed.”

“Snob,” Rafe commented, helping himself to more lamb stew.

“Not a bit of it,” said Mieka. “He’ll talk enough if there’s a reporter there to note down his every golden utterance and publish it all in the next day’s broadsheet.”

“Quat,” Cade said.

“So will you or won’t you?” Jinsie asked impatiently.

Before Cade could reply, Mieka said, “He’s been thinking great thoughts for weeks now—a new play, don’t you know. Angels forfend that anything or anyone should interrupt him while he’s being matchlessly brilliant!”

Cade heard the note of resentment and frowned. It was true that he was working on the two plays that “Window Wall” had become, and not having more than a couple of hours a day to himself for writing annoyed him. But he knew what Mieka referred to: an incident at Castle Biding. Mieka had burst in on his solitude, wild-eyed, a polishing cloth bunched in one hand and a withie held by the crimp end in the other, babbling about how the withies had all grown thorns. The only thorn in question, of course, was whatever Mieka had pricked that afternoon. Cade told him so. In a fury, Mieka threw the foot-long glass twig at him. He caught it, wrapped his fingers round it, then set it on the table and held up his palm to show Mieka that there was no injury and thus there were no thorns. Mieka insisted that he was wrong. Losing patience, Cade told him to get out and stop bothering him with such nonsense. Mieka swore at him and stalked from the room, and didn’t speak to him for two days.

Mieka was glaring at him now, renewed hostility in those eyes. Cade opened his mouth to snarl at him, but all at once he couldn’t seem to get any air. His heartbeats thundered irregularly in his ears. He felt cold all over, as if his skin had acquired a riming of frost that thickened with every passing moment. He heard someone say his name and could not reply. Blearily, his vision swirling with wisps of fog, he saw Mieka race from the taproom. And wasn’t that just like that fucking little Elf, running out on him, vanishing just when he was needed? What he could be needed for was unclear to Cade and he couldn’t track down the thought, because his brain was slowly revolving inside his skull and his heartbeats had subsided to one thump and a long pause, one thump and a longer pause, and of all the times for an Elsewhen to slide into his head, this was undoubtedly the worst—but it wasn’t just one Elsewhen, it was four, a dozen, a score, he couldn’t tell how many, because they all overlapped, versions of himself at various ages all moving within his vision, uncounted numbers of Archdukes and Rafes and Blyes and Jeskas and Miekas and Princesses and different rooms and an exploding tower and the burying ground at Clinquant House but how could he know that because he’d never been to the Windthistles’ Clinquant House and what was Megs doing there, and there, and there again, and if only he could get some air into his lungs he’d be able to sort all these cascading Elsewhens—

—and suddenly he
could
breathe, in great greedy whoops that filled his lungs and spread precious air all through his body. The frost sloughed from his skin, his heart beat strongly and regularly, and the distant roaring in his ears faded.

“—all right now, Jinsie, he’s breathing just fine.”

Jeska’s voice. He turned his head and saw Rafe standing over him.

“Wh-what happened?”

At least that was what he thought he’d said. Whether it came out as he intended was problematical. Either Rafe understood the mumble, or he guessed what Cade wanted to know—an obvious query, after all.

“Lost track, didn’t you?” the fettler said. “Blue, white, blockweed, who knows what all, with dinner and two pints of beer on top—and only you and Brishen Staindrop know what she cooks up for you special. That was thorn-shock, and if you ever scare us like that again, I’ll break your skull open and wash out your brains with lye soap.”

“He should be upstairs,” Jezael said calmly. “Shall we call Yazz to carry him? I don’t think he can walk.”

The Giant was duly found, and within ten minutes Cayden was in a soft, scented bed. He lay back and closed his eyes, and asked, “Mieka?”

“He’s the one gave you the thorn that got you breathing again.” Rafe picked up Cade’s left arm and pushed back the shirtsleeve. “See? The fresh one. Right here.”

He heard Rafe’s disgust at the number of tiny scabs and reddened marks on his arm. The humiliation was even worse than what he’d felt when Megs had had the same note in her voice. A feeble quiver of pride made him say, “You do it, too.”

“I have,” Rafe agreed. “To get through a performance or to get some sleep. But this—this is insane, Cayden. It’s dangerous. I never would’ve thought you could be this stupid. Or—no, you
are
that stupid, now that I come to think on it. What I don’t believe is that you of all people could be so pathetically unoriginal.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, it was true. He’d thought himself trite when he realized that refusing to feel was a thing thousands had done before him. This was worse. Using thorn and liquor so foolishly—wasn’t it precisely what he deplored in Mieka? And hadn’t he seen what thorn-thrall was doing to Pirro Spangler of Black Lightning? He suspected the same of Thierin Knottinger and perhaps Mirko Challender and Lederris Daggering of the Sparks. He knew for a fact that Vered Goldbraider, who reacted badly to more than one or two drinks, substituted thorn for alcohol and sometimes indulged quite lavishly. And here was Cade, so intellectually superior, so wise, so prudent—he was just like any other man who thought himself smarter than everyone else when it came to thorn.

But he needed it. There was no conceivable way he could have got through this Royal Circuit without it. Thorn gave him energy, it helped him sleep.

It made Mieka see the withies grow thorns.

It had stimulated his mind to a score and more Elsewhens, all at the same time.

It had nearly stopped his heart.

When he opened his eyes at last, the feel of the bedchamber had changed. Rafe was long gone. Instead: Mieka, white-faced by the light of a single candle. He sat on the floor, knees hugged to his chest, staring at Cade.

It took a moment for him to realize how terrified Mieka had been, how scared he still was. Cade knew that kind of fear. Shame warred with anger and a contempt that included both of them.

“Now you know how it feels,” he said.

Mieka flinched as if Cade really had hit him this time. Cade promised himself that if Mieka said anything, anything at all, any words of regret or apology or blame or any damned bloody thing at all, Cade really would hit him this time.

Mieka said nothing. He got to his feet and doused the candle and closed the door quietly behind him.

A
fter what happened in Stiddolfe, nobody talked to anybody else more than was strictly necessary for their performances’ sake. Rafe was angry; Cade was angry and humiliated; Mieka was angry, humiliated, and hurt; Jeska, who felt none of these things and wanted only to get home to his pregnant wife, decided that the wisest course was to keep his mouth shut.

The atmosphere in the wagon, those last long miles to Gallantrybanks, became so intolerable that their second-to-last night on the road, Jeska went to the nearest posting inn and hired a horse and rode the rest of the way home by himself. Though Cade considered doing the same thing, he’d spent almost all the coin allotted to him for the circuit. The few private shows they’d had time to do had paid well, but the money had gone into the local branches of their bank to be credited to their Gallybanks accounts. For the first time he regretted not having played the weird old mansion outside New Halt. Payment for that had always come in the form of individual purses fairly bursting with coin.

So he gritted it out those last two days, and when the wagon finally arrived at Wistly Hall, he slung a satchel of his personal belongings over his shoulder and went looking at once for a hire-hack. He knew Mishia and Hadden Windthistle would be puzzled and disappointed, mayhap even insulted, that he hadn’t joined in the welcome—hadn’t even stopped long enough for more greeting than a nod and a wave—but he simply couldn’t face several hours of the merry story telling that would be expected of him. Even less did he want to watch Mieka effortlessly fulfilling the role of family clown.

It was getting on for dusk when he arrived at his flat. He had enough in his pockets to pay for the hack, with some left over to spend on two meat pasties and a bottle of beer sold by a street vendor. Had he gone to Redpebble Square, there would have been a hot dinner and clean sheets, and he couldn’t face Mistress Mirdley or Derien, either. So he trudged up the many flights of stairs, jerked down the door handle, and went inside.

Empty.

Not just empty of people other than himself. All his furniture and clothes and books and the glass dinnerware Blye had made for him and his Trials medals and those silly peacock feathers Mieka had given him on his last Namingday and everything else he owned was
gone.

He stood in the center of the room, stupid with shock, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, feeling the need of bluethorn as a quick insistent demand, he turned slowly round.
Empty.

Footfalls and gasps announced a new arrival through the open door. His landlord: red-faced with the climb, scowling, sucking in a great wheeze of air and using it to provide an explanation.

“A fortnight and a fortnight again I waited to be paid, my fine young sir, and could I get in to my own property—my own property, sir!—what with that illegal lock you put onto the door? Yes, illegal, and well you know it, but that’s in the past, and so is your time here! All your belongings went to your mother’s house, and it’s lucky you are, young sir, that the Trollwife came along just a day or two before I would have found someone to un-bespell the lock and sold off the lot! She took on herself the packing and the moving of it all, and the cost of it, though I ought to’ve charged for those weeks and weeks of storage here, which deprived me of any income on the place at all! And what she’s done with your things I neither know nor care, and even less do I care what you do with yourself, sir, once you’re away from my premises! Great and grand tregetour famous throughout Albeyn, my ass! Naught but a bully-rook, a cheat, a lying young cogger! Away with you, now, and good riddance!”

Cayden surveyed the room again. Rent unpaid. All his things back at Redpebble. He looked down at the landlord, wondering suddenly what had become of the cat. No, that was foolish; Rumble was at Redpebble Square, where Derien had taken care of him during the circuit. And Redpebble Square was the only place Cade could go. He didn’t question how this had happened. It didn’t matter. It was a fact. He had best get home before dark, because he’d run out of funds and would have to walk the whole way.

“Well?” the landlord snapped. “Anything to say for yourself? Well, sir?”

A thoroughly hilarious notion seized him to answer that one day, people would use that
sir
in earnest, for real and true, in Royal recognition of honor and accomplishment. He started back down the stairs, munching on the cold meat pasties, and paused at the food vendor’s to ask him to pull the cork from the beer. His corkscrew was of course gone along with everything else to Redpebble Square. His big comfortable chair, the bed-and-desk Jed had made for him, his books—a shudder went through him as he realized how close he’d come to losing his grandfather’s books. He drained the beer down his throat, tossed the bottle and the remains of the food into the gutter, and started walking.

It was full dark in Criddow Close when he knocked on the kitchen door of his mother’s house. Mistress Mirdley let him in without a word, but with eloquent eyes. Jeska was waiting for him, and soup and bread and wine. Derien must have been listening for the slam of the back door, because he flew into the kitchen, threw his arms around Cade, and hugged hard.

He clasped his not-so-little brother close, meeting Jeska’s limpid blue eyes. All he could think of to say was, “Kazie’s well?”

Jeska nodded. Derien drew away and looked up at him—not nearly so far up as when Cade had left in the spring, and how had he grown so much and so quickly?

“All your things are in your old room, or down in the undercroft,” Dery said in a rush. “You mustn’t worry. That awful man didn’t steal anything. He couldn’t, because he couldn’t get into the flat until I came. And he was so horrible while we were getting your things downstairs that I shut the door again while the magic was still working so he couldn’t get in even after everything was out of there.”

“I suppose he found somebody to bespell it open,” Cade said.

There was an awkward pause. “You and Jeska have to talk, I know. I’ll get out of your way now.”

“You’re never in my way.” He wrapped his arms around the boy and held tight. But only for a moment, for he was disgusted with himself: his defense against whatever was in Jeska’s eyes was a boy scarcely twelve years old. Letting go, he managed a smile. “But I’ll wager you’ve lessons to be done, yeh?”