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  “I never looked at it like that before, but you’re right!” He laughed—it felt good and genuine to laugh. “We escaped our teachers and ran up and down the halls and stairways—the Keeps have a lot of stairways!—battling horrible monsters who had a beautiful princess captive high in the tower. Twigs broken from bushes in the garden made lovely swords. We made it almost to the top before some guards caught us. But seeing as how we were only ten or eleven at the time, we weren’t clapped in irons and tossed into the dungeons.”

  “So your kind of theater is a pastime for children?” asked the Tregrefin.

  Cade considered being insulted, but then realized that the boy hadn’t the wit to disguise this rudeness in a seemingly innocent request for information. So he smiled amiably and replied, “Only now that we’re all grown up, we use withies instead of swords, and the monsters are made of magic as well as imagination.”

  “Though of course,” Jeska put in, “they couldn’t have imagined a princess so beautiful as the one Albeyn was lucky enough to welcome four years ago.”

  Miriuzca laughed. “If I am needing rescue from monsters, I know who to call on!”

  Later, on the walk back to the Shadowstone Inn, Rafe muttered, “Our sort of theater is for children—bah! I’d like to see him call it that once he sees our ‘Dragon’! Adorable little naffter, isn’t he?”

  Cade shrugged. “Well, you know what they say. The firstborn son gets everything the father owns, and the only thing the others get is a choice of clothing.”

  “Clothing?” Jeska asked. “What would clothes have to do with it?”

  “A bright, pretty uniform with gold braid, a gray cassock with a pair of bracelets, or plain trousers knee-deep in cow shit.”

  “Soldier, Good Brother, or farmer,” Rafe explained further.

  “You might have said so,” Jeska complained.

  “State it plain, like?” Mieka snorted. “A tregetour?” When Cade turned down the wrong street for the Shadowstone, he called out, “Oy! Where are you off to?”

  “Same place as you. Unless you think we worked out all the rusty lines and creaky transitions after only one rehearsal.” Cade laughed as the three of them moaned. “I signed us up for teatime to dinnertime. Nobody else wanted the hours at the rehearsal hall. Mistress Luta is bringing our folios and a bagful of withies, bless her.”

  “I hate you.” Mieka stalked past, scowling.

  “You’ll get over it.”

  6

  Baltryn Knolltread, an apprentice Steward about thirty years old, smiled all over his broad freckled face as he welcomed them to the rehearsal hall.

  “When I saw that Touchstone were asking for more time here, I says to meself, ‘Touchstone might be putting together something new,’ I says. Now, I won’t be telling a soul, but I couldn’t be passing up the chance to see it first!”

  “Sorry, nothing special happening,” Mieka told him. They’d got to know Baltryn last year, when Touchstone’s unquestioned excellence had brought the invitation from the Stewards: Help us train up the new ones by giving them a challenge. Rafe and Mieka had had a fine old time throwing all sorts of wild and weird magic at the man, who handled it all with aplomb. Baltryn and others like him were in charge of the keys to the rehearsal hall, and sometimes stayed to watch—either from interest, friendship, or caution, if a group was new and inexperienced and needed monitoring.

  Rafe greeted him with a genial smile. “How’s the family?”

  “The bigger and happier this year by a wee girlie. The wife’s dark skin, praise be, but my ears!”

  Mieka laughed. “Are you sure she didn’t get your freckles and they just merged all together?”

  “To keep each other company, like?” Knolltread grinned and shook his head. “You do have the oddest notions sometimes.”

  “Well, if she has your ears, then mayhap she’ll have your gift as well, and grow up to be a Steward, just like her father.”

  Baltryn looked round to make sure no one else was in the hall. Empty of all but himself and Touchstone—still, his voice was low and soft as he said, “I’m thinking that it might not be impossible, y’know. Women in theater audiences—how long before they’re trained as Stewards, or even onstage?”

  Thinking of Lady Megs’s ambitions, Mieka smiled. “Give it time.”

  “He means,” said Rafe, “give him time and he’ll work something out.”

  “I’ve every faith in it!” Baltryn looked up, startled, as someone knocked at the side door. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  “Our inn’s Trollwife,” Cade said.

  A few minutes later, Mistress Luta was seated composedly in a chair by the far wall, work-roughened hands clasped neatly in her lap and a huge hamper of food at her feet. Her lovely lavender eyes had acquired a sparkle at the sight of “her boys,” but she was deaf to their pleas for the contents of that hamper now instead of later.

  “The Princess fed you on naught but smiles and talk, did she?”

  “Lunching was very nice,” Mieka said, “but it would be a crime and a shame to call it ‘cooking’ in your presence.”

  She snorted. “Tea when you earn it.”

  He tried his best pout, knowing in advance it wouldn’t work. So he sighed a tragic sigh, accepted the velvet bag of withies from her, hopped up onto the stage, and settled into a chair. “Right. What shall we do first?”

  Cade said, low-voiced, “We’ll do nothing until Baltryn is out the door.”

  Jeska’s blue eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “Why not let him watch and listen?”

  “For all I know, he’s a spy for Black fucking Lightning.”

  “Baltryn?” Mieka started to laugh. Cade glowered at him. “You’re not serious!”

  “I am perfectly serious.”

  Rafe caught his eye and frowned slightly in warning. “Baltryn,” he called, deep voice carrying easily from the stage to the back door, “we really aren’t doing anything new and spectacular. You can skive off if you like.”

  “Well … there’s a bit of botherment going on over some new boys—they can’t agree on what to call themselves!” He laughed. “I saw them at rehearsal yestere’en, and it’s not likely that anybody will want to remember them, whatever their name is.”

  “Go get them sorted, the poor silly sods,” Rafe said. “We’re fine here.”

  When he was gone, with a genial wave for Touchstone and a bow for Mistress Luta, Cade finally sat down, sprawling long legs, and said, “Let’s run through the first five Perils, shall we?”

  “Mightn’t we do something for Mistress Luta?” Jeska asked. “She was kind enough to bring the withies and our tea.”

  Mieka thought for a moment, then said, “How about the dear old ‘Dragon’? Haven’t done that one in half of forever.”

  Jeska stood, and Mieka used the magic in a withie to clothe him in the Prince’s velvet tabard and tall leather boots. They went rather quickly through the play, though Mieka gave the dragon most of the usual flourishes and a particularly piercing roar.

  At the end, Mistress Luta applauded politely, then heaved herself to her feet. “If it’s dinner you’re wanting tonight, I’d best go cook it. Remember to fetch the hamper home.” And with that, she was gone.

  Touchstone stared at itself in bewilderment. Rafe said hesitantly, “Well, it’s only a rehearsal. Not as if we played it full-on.”

  “I held back on everything except the dragon,” Mieka said. “But still, she should’ve—”

  “—should’ve leaped to her feet and worn out her hands clapping, just because it’s us?” Cade smiled a crooked, sardonic smile. “For one thing, if I were a Troll—or at least more Troll than I actually am, so it showed, I mean—if I were, I’d find it a bit difficult to care much about the problems of a Human Prince fool enough to go out and fight a dragon.”

  “But now that you say it,” Jeska mused, “we don’t see many Trolls at our giggings. Not obvious ones, anyways, like Mistress Luta and Mistress Mirdley. I wonder why that is?�
��

  Cade shrugged. “Mayhap Troll magic is just that much different from Wizard or Elf or Piksey or any other that they’re not affected.”

  Mieka chewed that one over for a time, then shook his head. “That horrid play Black Lightning does—‘The Lost Ones’—where everybody feels just exactly what they are—”

  “And if it’s not Wizard or Elf, they’re ashamed,” Jeska added grimly.

  “Yeh. Point being that you felt it, Cade.”

  “I did,” he affirmed. “But magic that picks out Troll blood and magic that actually affects a Troll might be two different things.”

  They went on to quick run-throughs of the Thirteen Perils, wondering idly which they’d draw in competition this year. Mieka was bored by the time they reached the Eighth. Cade snarled at him for sloppiness in the Tenth. When the Thirteenth was, praise be to all the Old Gods, finished, Mieka said, “Now can we do something interesting? Rafe has an idea about that grand statement thing of yours, Cade.”

  “Yeh?” he asked warily, turning to the fettler. “What?”

  “Well, when you talk about the emotions that it’s safe to feel in the theater, we could give them a flash of each. Just a tickle, nothing more.”

  “There and gone in an eyeblink,” Jeska said, nodding. “Just to remind them what we can do.”

  Cade eyed the three of them. “That makes it into rather a braggarty piece, doesn’t it? ‘See what we can do, and how good we are at doing it!’”

  “We can do it,” Rafe said. “That’s the point. You say so yourself at the end of it. ‘We will provide.’”

  Mieka studied Cade’s expression. “You’re thinking about what His High Tregrefin-ness said, aren’t you? Using naught but words in a play. No magic at all.” As guilt quirked the long mouth into a reluctant smile, Mieka went on, “Next you’ll be saying something about how the words ought to make a magic of their own. Fine, then—you go onstage and recite the whole of it, and we’ll be off drinking the Shadowstone dry!”

  “My throat’s a bit gravelly, now that you mention it,” Jeska said. “And doesn’t that poor hamper look desperate lonely all by itself over there?”

  It was part of Mistress Luta’s magic that when water was poured from the jug in the hamper over a strainer of tea leaves into pottery mugs, the liquid heated to the perfect temperature. Which was bespelled: the water, the strainer, or the mugs? None of them knew.

  “Troll magic?” Rafe speculated.

  “I’ve never seen Mistress Mirdley do it,” Cade said. “But she’s never shown me much by way of her own magic. Hedge-witchery, mainly, with herbs and things. Medicine.”

  “There’s more to Troll magic than that.” Mieka contemplated a baked sugar-crisp, studded with raisins, giving it full artistic appreciation before taking a large bite. After swallowing, he said, “Bridges and cookery. All the Trolls I’ve ever met or heard of specialize in one or the other.”

  “Mistress Tola at the markets?” Cade reminded him.

  For an instant, he couldn’t think of anything to say. This was the first time Cade had ever referred to that awful day two years ago when they’d visited the market and then Ginnel House after Mieka had struck his wife—for the first and last and only time, he vowed again. He’d been back several times to Ginnel House, delivering supplies or just money, but never since went beyond the front hall. Once was enough, to have seen all those women and children looking at him with terrified eyes, simply because he was male. While he was away on the Royal Circuit, he delegated Jinsie to make the contributions for him. And this reminded him that in the worry surrounding Jez’s injury, he’d forgotten to write out a note to the bank authorizing Jinsie to withdraw funds.

  Aware that Cade was looking at him expectantly, he gathered his wits back together and said, “Deals in foodstuffs, doesn’t she?”

  “Hmm. Good point.”

  “They’re secretive, though, aren’t they?” Jeska mused. “Trolls. As secretive as the Fae. The only difference is that the Trolls chose to stay in this world, and the Fae removed themselves to the Brightlands. Ever been back to that dell where you met your great-whatever-grandmama?”

  “Every time we’re near the place for a day or two,” Cade said. “Time’s not the same to the Fae as it is to the rest of us. I mean, there I was in snowy winter, and there she was in a field of summer flowers.”

  They arrived back at the Shadowstone Inn—hamper duly emptied and remembered—to find an uproar in progress. There were only five people in the taproom, but it sounded more like twenty-five, all shouting. Rauel and Sakary flanked Vered, holding him back from a tall hollow-chested man of about sixty. His dark skin and white-blond hair were proof enough of kinship to Vered even if he hadn’t been yelling, “You be keeping a civil tongue in your head when you be talking to your father, boy!”

  “Father!” Vered snarled it as the foulest word he knew. “I told you last time that if I ever saw your ugly face again, I’d be peeling it off your bones with a rusted razor—all the Gods damn you, Rauel, be letting me at him!”

  Chat leaped between them as the older man surged forward with fists clenched. “Stand back now, just stand back and you won’t get hurt.” He caught the man by the shoulders, struggling to hold him.

  “Hurt, is it? I could take all four of you poofters with one hand!”

  “Ah,” Cade said softly behind him, “but could you take on eight of us?”

  Vered’s whole body winced with humiliation. Cade glanced quickly at Mieka, and at the velvet bag of withies in Mieka’s arms. The Elf’s expression changed from bewilderment to understanding in an instant.

  Vered’s father had shaken off Chat’s restraining hands, backed up a pace, and righted his rumpled jacket. “I made you, boy!” he sneered at Vered in the broad accents of their hometown. “I put you in your mother’s belly! You’ll be showing your father some respect or I’ll be teaching you some, now, won’t I?”

  “Mm, no, I rather think not,” Cade went on. In the voice that always reminded Mieka of Lady Jaspiela, he added, “In fact, I very much believe you’re about to vacate the premises.”

  “Who’re these shit-wits?”

  Mieka had by now got a hand on one of the withies. He’d never tried this when the glass was wrapped in velvet, but that shouldn’t make much difference. A moment’s concentration, the withie aimed at the old man, and—

  “Oh, we’re just a few friends looking for an ale before dinner,” Cade was saying. “And here, in excellent time, is Mistress Luta to draw the pints,” he finished with a smile.

  She didn’t look at him. Fists on hips, she snapped, “Leave! Now! Or I’ll have the constables on you and the King’s Guard as well! There’s no such fighting and bellowing will go on in my establishment!”

  Mieka blinked a bit at this; he’d always thought that the entirely Human couple who’d first welcomed Touchstone here six years ago were the owners of the place. Vered’s father, who had subsided with a blank look in his eyes, roused again, and Mieka gripped the withie a little harder, pulling the last shards of magic from it.

  “Well, I—that’s to be saying, I want … no trouble … no, no trouble at all.” He looked vaguely puzzled to hear such words coming out of his mouth.

  The others looked even more baffled. Rafe took the opportunity to assist Chat in coaxing the man out the door. “That’s right, come right along now, everything’s fine.”

  “What the—?” Vered demanded of Cade. “What’d you let him go for?”

  “I’m thirsty. So must you be. Mistress Luta, if you would?”

  “Hells with it!” Vered exclaimed. “Hells with you all!” And he swung round, striding for the stairs with much clatter and many curses and, eventually, an emphatically slammed door.

  Rauel sighed. “I’ll go look after him.” He hadn’t taken more than two steps before they heard something smash upstairs. “One of those little night-tables, I think. Be sure to put it on our bill, Mistress Luta. I’d better calm him down before we have
to pay for a few windows as well.”

  The Trollwife arched a heavy brow, hitched an unconcerned shoulder, and set pints of ale on the bar. Mieka put the bag of withies on a nearby chair and went to drink his reward for understanding what Cade’s glances had meant.

  “His father?” Jeska asked Chat, who rolled his eyes and groaned.

  “Last time he tried this, Vered nearly killed him. He left Vered’s mother, y’see, about two days after he learned she was pregnant. Wants money, of course.”

  Sakary gulped down half his ale. “He’s got ambitions, I’ll give him that. This time it’s also a house of his own over to the western coast where the fishing’s good, and a boat complete with crew to do all the work while he lolls about with a bottle in one hand and a whore in the other.”

  Mistress Luta growled a little, low in her throat, and departed for the kitchen. Rafe nodded agreement. “Sounds a real charmer.”

  “You didn’t hear me say this,” Sakary murmured, “but it’s a pity Bexan isn’t here to calm Vered down.”

  “How often does he have an attack of paternal enthusiasm?” Cade asked.

  “Every few years.” Chat sighed. “I’m thinking mayhap it’s more often than that, but he goes to Rommy Needler instead of Vered.”

  “Better that way,” Sakary mused. “After one of his visits, the power Vered puts into the withies that Chat and me have to control—Lord and Lady, it doesn’t bear thinking of.”

  Time to change the subject, Mieka told himself. “I’m glad Mistress Luta got rid of him. Any more of his muck would spoil our dinner.”

  “Doubtless that’s why she was so … emphatic. Nobody faces down a Trollwife!” Cade said. Mieka hid a smile. They did work well together, he reflected; always had.

  Talk turned to the news that the theater group from the Continent would be performing for the Court at Fliting Hall the very next evening. Chat, on an afternoon stroll, had encountered a few of them. Being from the Continent himself, he could speak with them in their own language.