Window Wall (49 page)

I trust that you will communicate any further necessary information, which will reach me more surely and swiftly if your name appears on the outside of the letter.

Cyed Henick, Archduke

Rafe broke the horrified silence. “We’ll refuse, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Jeska.

“Of course?” Mieka exclaimed. “Have you run mad? He’s offering—”

“—to buy us,” Rafe said flatly. “Just like he did before.”

“How is it
buying
us when it’s to pay back the debt he owes Cade?”

“How is it that you’re so stupid that you think he won’t hold this over our heads? Don’t you understand that we’ll be beholden to him?”

“Better just him than all the people we owe money to right now! Fairwalk ruined us, we’re skint, all of us—well, mayhap not
you
,” Mieka sneered at Rafe, “with the bakery to live over free of charge—but what about Jeska and Kazie and their new baby that’s coming? What about Cade, and Derien’s school fees? What about
me
?”

Cade listened to the argument but took no part in it. He was thinking sourly how much it helped to have friends in high places. Fairwalk’s clerks had fiddled with the books of Blye’s glassworks for years; the Princess’s Gift of the Gloves had saved Blye from being investigated and taxed; now the Archduke was prepared to solve all Touchstone’s money problems. Yes, friends in high places … except that the Archduke was no friend, and—Rafe was right—if they accepted his offer, they would owe him and possibly even be owned by him.

“—just the same as if he’d paid for the information, don’t you see?” Mieka was saying. “I’m sure he has a thousand spies all over the place doing the same thing—”

Spies such as your mother-in-law
, Cade didn’t say.

“—somebody not even in his employ who came to him with a valuable piece of information, and gets rewarded for it! We’d be at evens with him, not beholden to him!”

Cade raised his head from the letter. “And what makes you think,” he asked quietly, “that what we owe all over Gallybanks is worth all those lives? He’s getting nothing out of this. I have nothing to threaten him with, except knowledge of possible futures—and I can’t call those up at will, or be specific with them, which is what he’d want of me.”

Mieka shrugged angrily. “You can tell him whatever he wants to hear. What would be better would be to tell him that whatever he’s after, he might as well stop trying, because you haven’t seen it happen.”

“We’ve discussed this before,” Cade pointed out, reminding him of a conversation in the kitchen of Wistly Hall before setting off for Trials. “If I say that I’ve seen Prince Roshlin as King, what would you wager that he’ll do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen? He could plot and plan for years, or he could be more direct and—what did he say in the letter? Ah yes.
Efficient.
How long before the Prince has an ‘accident’ and dies?”

Mieka squirmed slightly in his chair, then got up to pace the brick floor. “If he doesn’t do anything about the Tregrefin, he knows that you’ll know it. That’s threat enough.”

“Really? And whom would I tell? Miriuzca? The King? Unless the Archduke works this so that he gets the credit for stopping that stupid boy, he gains nothing. That’s why the lectern and the black powder and the
Consecreations
were unexpected. It doesn’t get him anything. The next thing I see will be a lot more subtle and a lot more obvious, both of them together. Subtle, because nobody will die—and obvious, so he can be hailed as a hero.”

“
If
you see it,” Mieka snapped. “None of this gets us any closer to paying our bills!”

“Why don’t you buy a carriage or something really big and expensive and then take it to a pledge-broker?” Cade returned nastily.

“I’d get less than half its worth,” Mieka shot back. “Why won’t you listen to reason?”

“Why won’t you admit that if we accept his money, he’s
bought
us?”

“Enough,” Rafe ordered. “We’re not taking his offer. And there’s an end to it.”

“But—”

“End to it!”

Cade pushed himself to his feet and crossed to where Rafe sat at a wobbly old table with paper and pen and ink to make notes. Selecting a fresh sheet, he leaned down and wrote,
Further information will be forthcoming. And though we appreciate your offer, we cannot accept it.
He signed his own name, then held the pen out to Rafe, who scrawled his signature below Cade’s. Jeska appended his name. They all looked at Mieka.

“Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “But it’s a good job that Auntie Brishen doesn’t charge us full price. We’re going to need all the thorn we can get, to make it through a solid autumn and winter of giggings.” He scribbled his name and tossed the pen down. “Even so, we won’t make enough to pay off everybody. So it’s the same constant working into the spring, and anything we can find during the Royal next year. That’s what we’ve set ourselves up for—you realize that, don’t you?”

They did. But it was the only choice they could make.

W
ith only a day left until the celebrations—a parade through most of Gallantrybanks ending at the Palace; free food and drink throughout the Kingdom (High Chapel and Low Chapel had finally coughed up); speeches by Court ministers (but only two; His Majesty was easily bored); performances at Court by the Crystal Sparks and Hawk’s Claw tonight, and the Shadowshapers, Touchstone, and Black Lightning on the night itself; musicians, dancing, bonfires, and fireworks—Mieka wondered if it was entirely wise, putting on this afternoon show for the Princess, her ladies, and whatever children of an appropriate age they could round up. And for free, too. He suspected that Miriuzca would have a nice jingly purse ready for them, so at least they’d be paid something. Cade said they ought to look on it as an investment in the future. Mieka saw it as something to tire them the day before they had to be at their very best, and after working for Master Warringheath at the Kiral Kellari in the morning, too. Word had it that not only would the Crystal Sparks do their wondrous version of “The Glass Glove,” but Hawk’s Claw had worked all the hitches out of Trenal Longbranch’s popular piece, “Mistress Ghost,” so that now it was as deliciously scary as it was sardonic. To complete with them, and get the most giggings this autumn and winter and spring, Touchstone had to be great, and better than great. Which would have knackered them all senseless, if not for bluethorn.

Ah well. Perhaps Cade was right, and this performance would pay off in ways other than money. Miriuzca was as excited as the children—and there was quite a crowd, some of them page boys dressed in the various liveries of the Royal family, some of them the sons and daughters of various nobles and ladies-in-waiting. The Princess had returned to the Palace from the North Keep about a week earlier, still minutely involved in preparations for tomorrow’s festivities. Mieka thought she looked tired, and though her gaiety in front of the children was not an act, there was something strained about her eyes that worried him. She had set up a space for Touchstone’s appearance in the very back of the gardens, with a twelve-foot stone wall as a backdrop between a pair of apple trees, and a stage made of planks that rose about a foot from the ground. Chairs were scattered about for the adults, but the children would sit on the grass (which was why, he supposed, some of the mothers and fathers had brought along blankets so their offspring’s clothes wouldn’t be ruined by grass stains). Tobalt was there with his wife and five-year-old daughter, sitting in a large group that included Chat and Deshananda and their children, Kazie, Jeska’s daughter Airilie, Crisiant, Jinsie, Tavier and Jorie, Blye and Jed, Jez, and Mieka’s wife. Mieka regretted that neither Jindra not Bram were old enough to come to this, their fathers’ first performance of “Bewilderland”—and he still had no idea why that word sounded so familiar. Had he thought it up himself, or had Cade mentioned it at some point?

The day was warm, but with just a breath of autumn in the breeze to keep things pleasant. Miriuzca herself, lithe and lovely in her own forget-me-never blue, approached the stage to greet them, then turned and clapped her hands together twice for silence—and introduced them herself. It was an honor they hadn’t expected.

And then it was time for that wonderfully silly Introduction to Theater that Cade had literally dreamed up. His instincts had been correct. The patter was eagerly received, Tobalt played his part, and Mieka had a lovely time throwing magic at Jeska that included a horse, a sheep, and a four-foot-tall baby dragon (for Tavier, of course). And then they got down to the first performance of “Bewilderland.”

They had all agreed that play would include sights and sounds only. No need to confuse or scare the little ones with tastes on their tongues or sensations on their skin, though Mieka had been voted down on doing a scent here and there.
“Horses and cows and sheep? Smelly!”
Jeska had said, his perfect nose wrinkling. Especially were there no emotions evoked. At fourteen or so, a child would understand that it was magic at work; at seven, it would be weird at best and frightening at worst.

The laughter as Jeska wandered about, plaintively trying to find his pig’s
oink
, drew people from other parts of the garden and the Palace itself. Gardeners and grooms, maids and cooks, secretaries and minor nobles—and at last Queen Roshien herself, tiptoeing to the outskirts of the crowd, giggling and clapping her hands as enthusiastically as the children all around her.

At last all the animals had lined up onstage, with Jeska and his pig in the middle, and as he pointed to the goat and the horse and the squirrel and the lamb and so on, the children roared out whatever sound was appropriate and Mieka echoed it in the animal’s voice. When that was done, Jeska took a step forward.

“I am so very much beholden to all of you for helping me! Now, just one more time, just to make sure—I want all of you to call out the sound made by your favorite animal. Take a moment to think about it. Are you ready? One—two—
three
!”

The noise was deafening and hilarious, like a gigantic barnyard gone utterly mad. Mieka, who was contributing absolutely nothing to it, knew that Tavier would be trying to sound like a dragon—which was not one of the animals included in the search, having been judged too scary even in miniature form. Jeska began to applaud the uproar, took another step forward, tripped, and purposely fell off the stage, did a somersault, and landed on his bum. While everyone was laughing at him, all the magical animals ran off behind the apple trees and vanished. They’d had a time figuring out how to clear the stage without upsetting the children, and it would have been easier with curtains for the animals to disappear behind, but it was managed here without causing alarm.

Miriuzca was on her feet, clapping her hands crimson. All the rest of the audience—quite the crowd by now—joined in.

Triumph. Another triumph to add to Touchstone’s already impressive list. Not much money to be had from this performance, but Mieka felt much better, certain that Cade had been right about this investment in the future.

Afterwards there were refreshments for the children in another section of the gardens while Touchstone packed up lecterns and glass baskets and frames and withies. Miriuzca stepped up onstage as they worked, and Mieka grinned to himself as she turned as if to look out on an imaginary audience.

Turning back, she approached them and said, “Oh, I’m having not one word to tell you how wonderful! Beholden, beholden!”

“Our pleasure,” Cade replied with a smile.

“Were you seeing the Queen? I had no idea she would come! And to be loving every instant of it, too!”

Evidently she lost her grip on Albeyni when she was excited. Mieka finished fastening the glass baskets into their padded nests—the same ones Cade had made for Blye’s work years ago, respelled every now and then by Mieka for protection against bumps—and said, “I’ll be glad when the Prince and Princess are old enough. And my own little girl, of course.”

“I have something for you—a surprising—I mean, a
surprise.
Come! Someone will take all that back to the Palace, don’t worry. Please come! I want for you to see my present for the King!”

They went. The grounds were extensive, and that twelve-foot wall went all around them. Trees, shrubs, elaborate knot-beds of flowers and herbs, little rock grottoes tinkling with waterfalls, vast swaths of grass—everything, in fact, except the hedge sculptures for which Cilka and Petrinka were becoming famous. Mieka reminded himself to remedy that—after all, it was in Miriuzca’s father’s own gardens that he’d first seen them, and brought the idea back to his sisters. Miriuzca chattered gaily with Cayden the whole while they were walking. But again Mieka was concerned, for her merriment seemed a trifle feverish.

At last they entered a back wing of the Palace, down a rather dark hallway to a pair of double glass doors. Mieka inhaled deeply the smell of newly sawn wood, familiar from his brothers’ work. His jaw simply dropped open when the doors slid aside into the walls and Miriuzca proudly flung out a hand to show them what she’d had made as a present for the King.