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  “In fact,” he told the others over dinner, “they’re from the country as sent the Princess’s mother to be the bride of the Princess’s father.” He grinned his endearingly lopsided grin. “Shall I amaze and astound you by my ability to pronounce the name of the place?”

  Mieka pulled a face. “Not impressed. It’s naught but a gargle and a grunt, with mayhap a whine or two thrown in.”

  His fellow glisker pretended to be insulted. “I’ll not have you talking down my dear old homeland! Or as close to it as makes small difference.”

  “Miss it much, do you?” Mieka asked with wide-eyed innocence. “Weep into your pillows by night?”

  Chat made a face at him. “There’s enough in common, speech-wise, that we understood each other.”

  “Ah, but how will we understand them?” Sakary asked. “There’s the trouble.”

  “We managed, over on the Continent,” Rafe said.

  “Took everything I knew to do it, though,” Jeska reminded him. “Gesture and expression, tone of voice—with Mieka working the emotions to emphasize what I was doing.”

  “It’ll be interesting to see if they can manage anything a tenth as good,” Cade remarked.

  “If sheer numbers could do it, they might have a chance.” Chat poured himself more ale. “Go on, have a guess at how many there are in this company of players.”

  “Five,” Jeska said promptly.

  “Masquers,” Rafe reminded him.

  “Total?” Cade sipped ale, then said, “They have to do everything we do without the means by which we do it. I’d say at least twenty, not counting those onstage.”

  “Not a bad guess,” Chat admitted. “There’s those as sets up the scenery and takes it all down again, and those in charge of the stuff onstage—swords and lamps and chairs and pretend fireplaces and the like. Three costumers who dress the masquers as needed, plus an assistant to clean all the clothes after every performance.”

  “Poor sods,” Rafe said. “When I think of some of the things you and Mieka come up with, Cade, with all the silks and laces and leathers and feathers—”

  “Plus the decorations,” Chat added. “Jewelry, belts, shoes, crowns for royal heads—and that reminds me that there’s two who do nothing but hair. Real and wigs. Then there’s a worrier to keep track of all the scripts. He was one of those I met today. Can’t be much older than me, but with lines carved into his forehead as if a sculptor had scratched them there at birth. There’s those what takes care of sound effects, and five for the lighting—which is as dangerous as you’d ever imagine it to be.”

  “Are you saying they work with real fire?” Mieka shuddered. “It’s a wonder and a marveling that they haven’t burned down half the Continent!”

  “Three for the actual work of lighting and positioning the lamps,” Chat laughed, “and two with buckets of water near to hand!”

  “It all sounds a bloody nightmare,” Jeska said.

  “I’m not done yet. There’s a manager who’s in charge of everything and everybody, and sees to it that nothing and nobody are permitted to lose themselves.” He paused for a drink. “And—you’ll love this—somebody called an invigilator.”

  “A what?”

  “He tells the masquers what to do and when to do it onstage.”

  Jeska was as unimpressed as Mieka had been. “How’s that different from what Cade or Vered or Rauel do?”

  “Once the thing is planned out and rehearsed to his satisfaction,” Chat said, “he does nothing but sit there.”

  “Again,” Jeska persisted, “how’s it different?” He laughed and ducked as Cade aimed a playful fist at him.

  Sakary said, with entirely spurious sincerity, “But our lads sit there so decoratively.”

  “That they do, that they do,” Mieka replied. “But what about the writer, then?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  Mieka sniggered as Cade expressed his outrage with a single vehement curse. Everyone in a group—tregetour, glisker, fettler, masquer—always considered himself the most essential part of the performance. Without the tregetour’s words and his magic in the withies; without the glisker’s ability to use that magic; without the fettler’s strength and judgment in dispersing and controlling the magic; without the masquer’s skills of interpretation and expression … Though, truth be told, Mieka knew very well that Touchstone could never have been Touchstone without his own charming self.

  “All the plays are about a thousand years old, y’see,” Chat explained. “If they mucked about with so much as a sentence, they’d be hauled off the stage and quodded for a month. You, Cayden old son, would never have got away with changing ‘Dragon’ like you did at your first Trials. And as for what you did with ‘Treasure’—”

  Mieka spoke up hastily, knowing that any mention of “Treasure” put Cade into a horrible mood. “But what if the masquers forget a line, or change the words about?”

  “They don’t,” Chat said flatly.

  “So how many in all?” Rafe asked.

  “Forty-two.”

  They all crowed their disbelief, and Mieka shook his head in amazement. “Imagine what it’d cost the King to trot that many people round Albeyn every year!”

  “Forty-two times nine,” Jeska corrected. “All three circuits, three groups each.”

  “It’d cost much more than just multiplying what’s spent on each circuit,” Chat said. “They’re used to the best beds at whatever castle they’re sent to visit. That’s why they’re stopping at Seekhaven Castle, and not locally inned like the rest of us. And at home, the lord or princeling who owns them makes sure they’re kept happy. Otherwise, somebody richer than he might do a bit of pilfering. Skirmishes have been known over things like that, and grudgings that last three generations.”

  Mieka frowned. “So these cullions make much more money than we do for doing much less?”

  “More to share it out amongst,” Sakary said.

  Cade was frowning, too. “You mean they actually fight over who gets to own a group?”

  “Yeh. But once that group goes out of fashion—like Kelife and the Candlelights two years since—they’re cast off and through. It isn’t as if they’re not immune to the sort of fighting we do, either.” Chat grinned and speared a chunk of succulent roast goose on his fork. “F’r instance. There’s the tale of a man in charge of the sounds—anything from running water to hunting dogs belling in the distance. He had a fine new way of doing a rainstorm, and hid himself behind more screens than usual when his players were onstage, so nobody could suss out how he did it. One evening as he was going into the theater, he saw a ragged little orphan boy begging in the street. The sounder, who was known as a kind man, had pity on him, took him inside, gave him some food, and said he could watch the performance from the wings. After the show, he went looking for the boy but couldn’t find him. He searched all round the theater. Not a glint of luck. So he went to pack up his various contrivances—and the sheet of metal and soft hammer he used to make the thunder was gone! In its place was a note from a rival group’s sounder, grateful for looking after his son for the evening, apologizing sweet as you please for stealing his thunder.”

  “Mieka, make a note,” Rafe said, chuckling. “All withies to be kept in a locked box from now on, with only you and Cade knowing how to open it.”

  “Better would be a way to make the withies unusable for anybody but those they were made for,” said Chat. “Shall we put the idea to our darlin’ Blye?”

  The clock above the fireplace chimed the hour, followed a moment or two later by the local Minster. Sakary glanced at the staircase, shaking his head. “We’d better take them something to eat, Chat. Vered furious is bad enough, but Vered hungry and furious isn’t to be contemplated.”

  “We’d best go up, too,” Rafe said. “The draw’s tomorrow morning, earlier than usual.”

  They all bade each other a good night. Upstairs in the room he always shared with Cade, Mieka said, “Well, it has been a day,
hasn’t it? Now we know where the charm doesn’t come from in Vered’s bloodlines. Gods, what a scene!”

  “Anything that makes the rest of them long for Bexan’s presence …” Cade rolled his eyes and grimaced.

  “Yeh. I give his horrible old sire full marks for cheek, anyways. Remind me to send me own sweet Fa a present to show him how much I appreciate him.”

  Cade’s head reappeared from the snowy folds of his nightshirt. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I might do the same for my own father, for gratitude that he hasn’t so much as spoken to me in about five years.”

  Mieka waited until the room was dark and they were both in bed before asking, “What did you think of what Miriuzca’s brother said? About everybody being born with a sin already inside them?”

  “I thought he meant that everybody is born with a propensity to a certain sin.”

  “Whicheverway, it’s all rot,” Mieka stated. “How could anybody look into Jindra’s eyes and believe there’s the least little thing wrong in her heart?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Cade admitted. “As we get older, and get to know how the world is, and how it works, and everything—” The sheets rustled as he shifted in bed. “—I think we learn how to be nasty. I don’t think it’s inborn.”

  “Things we pick up from other people, you mean? Can’t help learning that sort of thing while learning all the rest of it, I s’pose. Some people being good examples, and others—”

  “Exactly. But he seems to think that we’re all born with wickedness or corruption inside us. I wish he had more of our language so I knew if that’s what he really meant.”

  “Oh, I think it was clear enough.” Mieka shoved a fist into his pillow to rearrange the feathers. “But I never heard anything so sad and so hopeless.”

  “Actually, it’s in some of the staggeringly old plays, from before Albeyn had more than a smattering of magic folk living here. Everybody’s born flawed—sinful, if you like—and it’s only belief in the Lord and the Lady keeps us reasonably clean.”

  Mieka stared up at the slatted shadows on the ceiling. The breeze shifted the leaves of the oak tree outside the window, throwing patterns from the streetlamp down below. “The only time I ever felt dirty because of what I am, what I was born, I mean, was—”

  “—during Black Lightning’s play. I know. Me, too.”

  “Well, that, of course. But on the Continent, when they kept staring at my ears …” He turned onto his side, squinting in the darkness, but he couldn’t see Cayden’s face. “D’you think that’s what His Whateverness was really saying? That it’s those of us with magic, who aren’t Human down to our last hangnail, who’re born wicked?”

  “Seems so. I hope he betakes himself and his religion home soon.”

  “Me, too.”

  As Mieka punched the pillow again and settled down for the night, he smiled; no matter Cade’s absurd notion about refusing his Elsewhens (something Mieka would have to talk him out of somehow), and no matter how different they were as people, their thoughts chimed together. Always had. Always would.

  7

  Usually there were one or two new groups at each Trials, young men eager to prove themselves worthy of any of the circuits. This year, however, there were four. Gone were most of the old familiar names—the Spintales, the Enticements, the Cobbald Close Players, the Shorelines. Redprong and Trinder had finally given up the annual audition for their masquer and fettler; Kelife and the Candlelights had retired as well. There were now, by common consent, five truly important groups: the Shadowshapers, Touchstone, the Crystal Sparks, Black Lightning, and Hawk’s Claw. Considerably behind in talents and accomplishments were the Wishcallers, the Smokecatchers, and the Nightrunners. As for the new groups, those invited to Trials for the first time … Tobalt Fluter had written up a terse analysis for The Nayword. The masquer of the Kindlesmiths hadn’t much vocal range, and all the characters sounded pretty much alike. The Flashcrafters lived up to their name: good with the big, loud, showy pieces, but rather awful at quieter and more thoughtful plays. Keeping with the theme of fire, popular these days with young theater groups, the Torchwrights tried to make up in passion what they lacked in subtlety. Lastly, the Blazing Hornets—named after their tregetour’s family crest—had mastered the art of the quick, concise playlet, but longer pieces revealed a lack of training, for glisker and masquer were visibly exhausted after only half an hour. A little more practice and a lot less alcohol would serve them well, was Tobalt’s scathing conclusion, adding, With time and experience, any or all of these four groups might well surprise us, but this year’s Trials hold scant promise of startlements such as were given by the Shadowshapers and Touchstone in their initial performances at Seekhaven. Reading that, Cade had wondered if anyone else besides him would notice that Tobalt rather pointedly didn’t mention Black Lightning.

  Thus there were thirteen groups gathered at Seekhaven Castle for the drawing of tokens that decided who would be doing which playlet. The new young ones clustered over in a corner, pallid and sweating, to the amusement of the old hands (who conveniently forgot that they had done their fair share of sweating their first time out, too). With the departure of Kelife and the like, old these days meant about thirty years of age. Yes, it truly was a young man’s game, though Cade did retain just a fragment of that Elsewhen of his forty-fifth Namingday, and its promise that Touchstone would still be performing to huge, enthusiastic crowds. He’d lied to Mieka about that. He hadn’t been able to let that one go completely. Not that one; not completely.

  He knew Mieka was worried that they’d draw “Treasure” again, worried that Cade would react badly to yet another performance of the play he had rewritten to such horrible results for Briuly and Alaen Blackpath. But it wasn’t “Treasure” this time, nor “Dragon.” Once more, Touchstone managed to avoid the lethally dull Second Peril. That one went to the Shadowshapers, who proved themselves accomplished masquers all by revealing not a hint of dismay. Touchstone drew the Third. Not their favorite amongst the Thirteen, but better than the Second.

  On their way back to the Shadowstone Inn, Mieka put forth his opinion that they had rehearsed the Third often enough in the last five years that they had no need to go through it yet again. Rafe disagreed. Jeska didn’t care much one way or the other. Cade startled them all by siding with Mieka.

  “What?” Rafe exclaimed. “You’re not going to make us change up half the play to suit your ideas of how it really happened?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” Cade said. “Everybody knows that the Shadowshapers will be First Flight on the Royal. Even with a performance of the dreaded Second, they’ll be better than anybody else. Our only real competition is the Sparks and Black Lightning. And they drew the Fifth and Thirteenth.”

  In the Fifth, the heir to Albeyn’s throne went a-wooing a foreign princess. The “peril” part of it happened when three other suitors tried to kill him in various ways. He survived. The princess, captivated by his courage and cunning as well as his matchless good looks and exquisite manners, fell wildly in love, as princesses were obliged to do. In the right hands it could be a fun piece, but there was nothing of either flash or subtlety about it. The Sparks would do it just fine, but not fine enough to unseat Touchstone from Second Flight. As for the Thirteenth—that one dealt with a clever diplomatic victory that prevented a war. Lots of talk, and some interesting costume choices if the tregetour had done the research (needless to say, Cayden had), but no opportunity in it for an exhibition of Black Lightning’s signature brute force.

  The Third Peril was just the sort of thing that Mieka delighted in. Cade had long since investigated the playlet and discovered that it wasn’t a Giant that the king defeated at a tournament; it was just a regular knight. Nothing he could rework with fresh meaning, so they stuck to the usual script—and Jeska did love stomping about and roaring in his deepest voice as he played the Giant. Mieka had come up with an entertaining twist when first they’d discussed the Third:
rather than cloak their masquer in magic that made him ceiling-tall as the Giant, why not shrink everything else? Horses, lances, pennants, spectators in the stands, all dwindled down to the size of a child’s toys—it came very close to being a comedy of skewed proportions, and Mieka enjoyed making visual jokes. The Giant would, for example, pluck up a miniature sword from the King and use it to clean his fingernails. There wasn’t much else to be done with the straightforward plot, but at least doing it from the Giant’s perspective was more interesting than having the King walk onto the tourney field with magic providing only the Giant’s massive legs and feet, which was the way everybody else always did it.

  Rafe frowned as he thought it over. “We’ve never done it for an audience, but our Third is better than anybody else’s I’ve ever seen—and different, too, which at Trials seems to be the main thing.”

  “How outrageous can I get?” Mieka wanted to know.

  “Well,” Cade said, considering, “we don’t want it to be a full-on howler. Just some giggles here and there. This is purportedly King Meredan’s ancestor we’re portraying, after all.”

  Jeska gave an inelegant snort. “Since when has that stopped us?”

  They spent the rest of the morning on a long stroll around Seekhaven, shopping, greeting the citizens, and idly trading other ideas on how they’d do the Third. Then they repaired to the Shadowstone Inn for lunching. Waiting for them, and for the Shadowshapers, were invitations to Fliting Hall that night for a performance by the theater group from the Continent.

  “Here’s betting that they take more than an hour to do what we can in a half,” said Vered, who seemed to have forgot all about his father’s visit. Everyone else was more than willing to forget about it, too.

  “Now, now,” Rafe teased. “Play nice.”

  “We can’t really judge them by our standards, can we?” Jeska asked, frowning earnestly. “And who knows but that in their circumstances, we’d be terrible.”