Window Wall by Melanie Rawn

all his emotions when he was writing—and that outlet had been closed off for a goodly long while, too.
    The Princess awaited them inside a charming white summerhouse, octagonal in shape, with curtains on four sides made of multicolored ribbons. These blew and tangled in the slight breeze, but the table was set far enough from them so that Miriuzca and her guests wouldn’t be constantly picking silk out of the soup. The footman who had escorted Touchstone across the lawns announced them, bowed, and departed, and it was left to the Princess herself to make introductions.
    “My brother, Tregrefin Ilesko,” she said, indicating with a smile and a nod the young man seated beside her. “He’s so eager to meet you—I write much in my letters. Do please sit down and be comfortable, won’t you?”
    Tregrefin Ilesko didn’t look eager. He looked sullen, which suited his narrow features admirably. He shared with his sister the somber dark gray of mourning and a pair of very blue eyes, but that was all. When his sister said
please
to a group of nobodies, his pencil-thin black eyebrows nearly disappeared into an unruly thatch of black hair. He was handsome in a brooding sort of way, and looked to be about eighteen or nineteen years old.
    Commonplace civilities were exchanged as food was set before them—slices of cold roast chicken and three sauces to dip it in, a salad of fruit and walnuts, and mazey-cakes baked with yellow ground meal from some foreign land or other. Wine was poured, the servants effaced themselves, and it became evident that Miriuzca was the eager one, asking questions about Trials designed to acquaint her brother with the whole process of theater that she adored. Jeska provided answers and charming smiles; Mieka contributed several stories of life on the circuits suitable for Royal ears; Rafe explained the functions of masquer, glisker, fettler, and tregetour. Cade said very little, for he was busy disciplining his mind against an Elsewhen that battered and howled at him like a hound frantic to come in from a thunderstorm.
    Ought he to let it in? Despite what Rafe had said about the accident at the Gallery—that unless Cade could have changed something, he wouldn’t have seen anything about it in advance—that day had been enough of a shock to make him question, just a little, his decision to banish all Elsewhens from his mind. Mieka’s words kept coming back to him: “
My brother’s likely crippled, all because you think your Elsewhens are a
bore.”
    “Yes,” the Princess was saying, “I’m only a half-sister, and we look nothing alike except for our eyes—that’s Father, and all of us have his eyes. So do my children. And so will Ilesko’s,” she said, fondly teasing, “if he ever finds a girl who suits him to becoming their mother!”
    “Is that what brings you to Albeyn?” Rafe asked. “Apart from visiting Her Royal Highness, and finding comfort in your mutual grief, that is.”
    “A girl from this place?”
    The young man did not elaborate on his obvious distaste, for Miriuzca swiftly interrupted with, “I’ve warned all my ladies not to lose their hearts to him, Master Threadchaser.”
    Cade watched the Tregrefin’s lip curl before a smile was forced to the corners of his mouth. So: he did not like the ladies of Albeyn. He probably did not like the gentlemen of Albeyn, either, nor Albeyn as a whole. Why, then, was he here? Surely not to console Miriuzca. Anyone less likely to provide solace in her sorrow could not be imagined. Well, her husband, perhaps—but Cade knew himself to be prejudiced.
    The sweet was served. Some whimsical pastry cook had concocted two towers of cake on either side of a river of blue frosting meant to represent the Keeps and the Gally. Windows were picked out in candied fruit, and the green whipped-cream lawns were dotted with yellow and purple sugar sprinkles representing flowers. How they were to eat this elaborate creation was beyond Cade but, perhaps