Thornlost (Book 3) Read online

  One day he’d make the choice that led to that future of the wineglasses and the diamond earring. It was all his to decide. He wouldn’t have foreseen it, otherwise, because every Elsewhen he experienced was a direct result of his own actions. The futures that he could not affect, those were the ones he never saw in advance.

  The visions had changed over the years—not just their content, but the manner of their occurrence. It used to be that he’d hear a few words, glimpse a scene. As he’d got older, some of the Elsewhens became longer, more elaborate, with greater detail. The turn he’d reviewed just a little while ago, for instance: at fifteen or sixteen, there would have been just the woman and her nasty laughter. Sagemaster Emmot had told him that as the years passed and his brain matured, the visions would mature as well.

  “When first this began, your mind didn’t quite know what to do with it. As age and experience increase, your mind will recognize that it needs to respond in certain ways. The first time someone who will become a musician hears music, his brain hasn’t yet learned how to organize the sounds, much less reproduce them. Eventually there is enough music stored in his mind that the response becomes intuitive—but it also requires the application of learned knowledge in order to manage the sounds, arrange them into comprehensible patterns. By the twenty-third year, or thereabouts, the brain has matured through a combination of instinct, experience, and education. When the visions come, you’ll know precisely what they are, how to view them, how to understand them. It may even be that you will be able to control the timing of these visions.”

  Gods, how he hoped so. He’d almost stopped being afraid that a turn would take him when he was someplace dangerous—on the stairs, on horseback—because there seemed to be a portion of his brain that took care of his body in the here and now while the Elsewhens were sending his thoughts into the someplace and whenever. Again, the example was the way the vision of Mistress Caitiffer had first taken him: during the time it took to unfold inside his mind, he’d walked from the back door of his parents’ house almost to Blye’s glassworks on Criddow Close. He supposed it was a bit like Mieka’s ability to comport himself with near-perfect normalcy even though the look in those eyes proclaimed that he was thorned to the tips of his delicately pointed ears.

  To be sure, in the scant weeks since Touchstone’s first performance of “Treasure,” there had been more Elsewhens than just the one featuring Mieka’s mother-in-law. But that one had been the most satisfying. He’d smiled as he made his threat, and although he wasn’t sure what knowledge he had of her—or would have—that frightened her into compliance, that smile had felt very good. One of the frustrating things about an Elsewhen was that when they occurred he rarely knew what he would know in the future. During the one about his forty-fifth Namingday, for instance, there hadn’t been a thought in his head about why he and Mieka shared a house. He knew that portions of it were his, and portions of it were Mieka’s, but how this had come about was a mystery. Cade had gone over that one several times, trying to glean a hint or two, but he no more understood the reasons for their living arrangement than he knew what Mieka’s upstairs “studio” was for. He knew it existed, because the word had been in his mind, but—would Mieka take up painting? Sculpting? Music? Studio implied art, but if the Elf had any talent other than glisking, Cade had never seen any sign of it. An odd little mystery, and one he looked forward to solving.

  The various thorn he’d indulged in during the afternoon had all faded by now. The feasting was over, the dancing had begun, and Cade laughed quietly into his glass as his little brother, Derien, partnered two girls at a time: Cilka and Petrinka Windthistle. He was almost nine, the twins were almost fourteen, and he was already taller than they, already growing the long bones that were his Wizardly heritage. Just as there was the promise of a tall and elegant body in him, there was also the promise of a handsome face, with a singular sweetness about his clear brown eyes. He bowed and flourished in all the right places, and stepped lively around the two laughing white-blond Elfen girls in the movements of the dance, but didn’t dare what their elder brother Jedris did. Cade nearly spluttered his drink as Jed tossed his wife in the air and caught her in strong arms, holding her high off the ground. Blye shrieked and pretended to box his ears. This party was for her, as well; five days ago she, too, had turned twenty-one. She and Jed had celebrated quietly in their home above the glassworks on Criddow Close, enjoying a scrumptious feast sent by Touchstone. Blye was growing truly pretty, Cade decided with a fond smile. Marriage agreed with her. She looked so happy, swinging high in her adoring husband’s arms.

  But then she was yelling in earnest, in astonishment, and pointed to the main road.

  That was how Cayden discovered his Namingday present.

  Not strictly just his, of course. It was for all four of them, for Touchstone.

  The wagon came rumbling down the lane, pulled by two huge dun-colored horses, driven by Yazz with Robel at his side. It was a beauty. (And so, he noted, was Robel: masses of flaming red hair piled atop her head to make her even taller, a face as sternly perfect as the faces of archaic queens on well-worn coins, and a body made of just the right proportions of sturdy bones, supple muscles, and firmly rounded flesh. Scant wonder Yazz had trudged multiple times through heavy snows to win her.)

  All excitement centered on the massive white wagon as it looped round the bonfire and pulled to a stop in the cobbled courtyard. Kearney Fairwalk had promised the absolute latest by way of springs and wheels and lanterns and interior comforts, and Cade supposed that all those things and more were present in abundance, but what made his heart swell to bursting was the way it had been painted. Although the bold red TOUCHSTONE on either side, down below the windows, was good advertising and a point of pride, and the symbols in black below each window made him smile (a spider, a drawn bow, a thistle, and a hawk), it was the painting between the two windows that made his jaw clench and his fists tighten. He knew who had worked it. A map of the Kingdom of Albeyn: green land, brown delineating the main highways, blue for the lakes and rivers and surrounding Ocean Sea, purple jags for the Pennynine Mountains, tiny red dots for all the stops on the Circuits, and gold for Gallantrybanks. Way down at the bottom corner was a little silver hawk with arching wings. The maker’s mark.

  “Do you like it? Do you?”

  He looked down at his little brother’s flushed, eager face. “It’s—yes.” He swallowed hard, and bit his lip, and smiled. “Yes, I like it.”

  All at once the back door opened, stairs unfolded, and Lord Fairwalk stepped cautiously down. After him, less decorous—or perhaps thirstier—leaped Vered Goldbraider and Chattim Czillag. Cade had wondered sporadically through the afternoon whether any of the Shadowshapers would accept the invitation, eventually deciding that they felt it was too much of a drive from Gallantrybanks. Well, evidently not, when Auntie Brishen’s whiskey was on offer.

  Cade greeted his friends, accepted their good wishes and the apologies relayed from Rauel Kevelock and Sakary Grainer, saw them provided with brimming cups of whiskey, and prepared to hear all about the marvels of the wagon. He was a trifle miffed that Touchstone wouldn’t be the first to ride in it.

  “Well? Waiting for an invite, are you?” Vered demanded. “Go in, have a look!”

  Mieka and Jeschenar had already swarmed past and were laughing their delight. Rafcadion ambled over to make a slow, contemplative tour around the wagon while Yazz unhitched the horses. Cade could only stand there, his drink in his hand, still staring at the map.

  He knew, in the abstract, that he’d been to all those places and more besides. There was the strange old mansion outside New Halt, for instance, where they’d twice played to an audience of one, and been spectacularly well paid for it. Neither was Lord Rolon Piercehand’s residence, Castle Eyot, picked out on the map, the place where each group on the Royal, Ducal, and Winterly had a few days of rest between the northern and southern portions of the Circuits. It occurred to him that from now on
they’d know exactly where they were at all times. What was it Mieka had said once? Something about not always being sure he knew where he was or where he was going, but nice to know where he’d been. With this map, they’d always know the place they’d just been, the place they were at, and the place they soon would be. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, and couldn’t have explained why. Mayhap it was because one could never tell what might happen in between.

  “I agree,” Chat’s voice said at his side, and for a moment he wondered if he’d spoken aloud. The Shadowshapers’ glisker went on, “Better to have a look inside after everyone else has poked through it. A marvel and a wonder it is, no doubt. But me, I’d like a peek at the baby.”

  Cade glanced round for someone to act as escort, and decided he himself would do. The crowd thinned considerably ten steps from the wagon, and it was almost quiet when they went into the house by the kitchen door. Mistress Mirdley was there, tidying up by means of an Affinity spell. Once the first plate had been cleared by hand into a rubbish bucket, the others were easy. Dirty plates were held up one by one, and what food remained on them slipped smartly off to join meat, veg, and bread already binned. The trick was to focus the spell narrowly enough so that the usable leftovers on the table and counters didn’t whisk themselves into the bucket as well.

  Chat greeted the Trollwife with a bow and a smile, reported that his wife and family were all well, and begged to be allowed a glimpse of the newest Windthistle. Mistress Mirdley gestured towards the hearth, where a large and ornately painted cradle stood just far enough back to provide the baby with warmth but not heat. Leaving the last few plates on the sink counter, she shuffled over to the cradle and twitched back the coverlet.

  Jindra had her father’s hands, with the ring and smallest fingers almost the same length, his elegant Elfen ears—and his thick black eyebrows, poor little thing, Cade thought, peering into the cradle. She had been born at Wintering. After Touchstone’s return from the Winterly Circuit, he’d done the polite thing by calling at Wistly Hall with a squashy stuffed toy for the baby and flowers for her mother, but both had been sleeping, so the irises had gone into a vase and the pink bunny had gone into a basket full of other presents. Cade had had a brief glimpse of Jindra’s face: closed long-lashed eyelids, a wisp of black hair straying from beneath a knitted cap—then went into the parlor for a drink, and then departed. In the intervening weeks, there had been rehearsals and performances, and once Mieka had reclaimed his house and moved his family, there’d been no convenient opportunity to come out to Hilldrop for a visit. Nice, reasonable excuses for what Cade admitted to no one but himself: that he avoided Mieka’s wife with the devotion of a Nominative Brother to study of The Consecreations.

  “Lovely!” said Chat. “A real heartbreaker!”

  There was very little of her mother to be seen in Jindra’s face. The nose, perhaps, and the fullness of the pursed lips, but that was all. Any doubts anyone might have had—well, that Cayden had, and never spoke about—regarding the child’s paternity were obviously ludicrous. Jindra was Mieka’s daughter right enough. She even had those eyes, Cade thought helplessly, as for the very first time in his presence the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at him. Big, bright, changeable eyes, blue-green-brown-gray all at once—but surely it was only imagination that made him see the same sparkle of mischief, the same golden glint of laughter.

  What happened then was a thing he had heard about from besotted fathers and read about in sappy poems and seen enacted in sentimental plays. Nonsense, he’d always reckoned it, to think that there could be any sort of fundamental contact between a full-grown adult and a months-old baby.

  He’d reckoned wrongly.

  Mistress Mirdley stood beside him, nudged him with a shoulder. “You can touch her, you know. She won’t break.”

  He saw his own hand reach towards Jindra’s, saw her fist close around one of his fingers. She was still staring up at him. She cooed.

  He’d seen her eyes before, of course. He’d seen her, snarling at her own daughter. He didn’t want to remember it, but remember it he did.

  {“Your grandsir was a selfish, spoiled, heartless bastard who cared about drinking, fucking, and thorn. He never gave a damn about your grandmother nor me. He did whatever he pleased with whomever it pleased him to do it with, without a thought to anyone else—”}

  Jindra grasped his finger and blinked her extravagant lashes at him. Mistress Mirdley said, “Prettiest little thing, isn’t she? Scant wonder, her parents being such beauties.”

  {The little girl watched with solemn eyes as her father staggered into the house, clutching a huge stuffed toy under one arm. He caught sight of her, laughed, tossed the brown velvet puppy at her. “F’r you, sweetest sweeting!” She made no move towards it, mistrusting of his uncertain limbs. His grin became a scowl. “Well, then? G’on! It’s yours, you silly girl!” When she stayed where she was, warily silent, he kicked the toy into a corner on his way to the bottles on the sideboard and muttered, “A bitch for a bitch—just like y’r mum!”}

  The turn didn’t surprise him, exactly. But something else followed instantly; something happened to him that was really very simple. He would do anything to keep this baby from becoming that mute, mistrustful little girl, that damaged woman. He would fight for her. Protect her. Keep her safe.

  Jindra latched on to his thumb with her other fist. She smiled at him, all toothless pink gums and rosebud mouth, plump cheeks and beguiling eyes. He tried to tell himself that everybody went all gooey about babies. Hardened criminals became mush at the sight of helpless infants. Babies were tiny and fragile and defenseless and vulnerable and—and good Gods, she wasn’t even his.

  {“Cade! They accepted me, I’m in!”

  “Of course you are.” He set aside his book and looked over the rims of his spectacles, smiling at the whirlwind of long black hair and colorful fringed shawls that danced through the drawing room. “Your father and I always said you’d be accepted, didn’t we?”

  “Oh, but Fa is forever telling me I can do anything—”

  “—and do it perfectly the first time you try it, yes, I know.” He pretended a dramatic sigh. “The regrettable incident with the carriage proves he’s not completely objective about these things. But when are you going to learn that I am always right?”}

  And he would have to be, wouldn’t he? As the second turn vanished and he again felt Jindra’s hands clinging to him, he realized he would have to make the right decision every single time.

  The reminder was like a last lingering tweak of thorn in his veins: she wasn’t even his. And, like thorn, it mocked reality.

  But he knew the difference between what he dreamed and what was real. Jindra was real. All else was might-be or could-be or must-never-be.

  She was one more thing to fight for, was Jindra Windthistle.

  2

  “Oy!” yelled Mieka from the kitchen doorway, disturbing the touching little scene by the cradle. “C’mon out here, Cade, you’ll miss it!”

  The baby began to cry. Mieka was astonished when Cade rounded on him furiously, looking ready to throttle him. “Now see what you’ve done!”

  “Mistress Mirdley will take care of her,” Mieka replied with a shrug. Somebody always took care of the baby. That was what wives and sisters and mothers-in-law and all suchlike family were for. He never worried his head about it. “Hurry! Vered says—”

  Chat swore and pushed past him. Mieka grabbed Cade’s elbow and hauled him out into the torchlit courtyard.

  “And here he is! Cayden Silversun!” bellowed Vered with a bow and a flourish. He stood on the top step of the wagon, smoothly in command of all attention. “Somebody sit him down—yeh, right there will do—” He pointed, and Mieka dragged Cade to a bench near the horse trough. “And here we all are, celebrating his twenty-first Namingday—though it’s to be doubted, make no mistake. I never question a lady’s word, of course, so I must accept that the lady over there is ind
eed his mother. But judging by the looks of her, if she truly is his mother, Cade can’t be older than thirteen!”

  Mieka sniggered under his breath. Lady Jaspiela had condescended to attend the festivities as a dutiful mother ought on a son’s twenty-first, but only after Mieka begged his very prettiest. Zekien Silversun’s duties at the Palace took precedence over any duty to his elder son; no surprises there. Mieka had never even met the man, and had often wondered if he felt anything for Cade or Derien at all. Lady Jaspiela looked torn between pleasure at the compliment and the indignity of being singled out in this distinctly downmarket crowd. Her expression became one of frozen graciousness. Mieka held his breath, waiting for the tregetour’s infamously sharp tongue to slice her to ribbons. But Vered was on his best behavior tonight. When he wished, he could charm the scales off a wyvern and have the beast begging him to take its teeth and talons, too.

  “Be that as being may be,” Vered went on, “me and me mates, we puzzled long and longer still how to celebrate this important occasion.” He conjured a withie from one vermilion velvet sleeve. “Something appropriate, we decided.” A second withie appeared from the other sleeve. “In keeping with our mutual profession, as it were.” He paused, made a shocked face, and looked down at himself. His body twitched, first the shoulders, then the hips, and finally he kicked out a leg and shook a third glass twig from his trousers. Chat, below him on the bottom step, caught it as it fell and handed it up to him with an eloquent rolling of his eyes.

  “Is that all he keeps in there?” a woman’s voice called out, and with a cheerful leer Vered yelled back, “Wouldn’t you like to find out, sweet cheeks?”