Thornlost (Book 3) by Melanie Rawn

fell over laughing. Mieka grabbed the nearest pillow and pummeled him with it.
    Just like old times.
    Better. Wherever they went now in Seekhaven, they were recognized. Lord Fairwalk had ordered new placards made, and their own faces greeted them from shop windows and lampposts. TOUCHSTONE , the text read, and that was all. A master of understatement, Kearney Fairwalk had turned out to be.
    “Romuald Needler, now,” His Lordship had said, vastly pleased with himself, “had
he
been in charge, he would have put a dragon up top and a crown and necklet below, just to make certain, don’t you see. Shocking lack of subtlety.”
    Needler was to the Shadowshapers what Fairwalk was to Touchstone: manager of their bookings, their travels, their publicity, and their money. That last was getting to be rather a sore point with Mieka. After the trip to the Continent last year and their triumph with “Treasure,” he ought to be wallowing in coin. He’d really no idea where it all went. True, his house had been pricey, and the wagon had cost a small fortune, and hire of the horses to haul it would be a drain until Needler could be persuaded to sell a few of his special breed. And that wasn’t to forget those windows he and Rafe had shattered while performing for the Princess’s father’s court. Fairwalk was still trying to resolve that little problem, and bully their full fee from the Crown for the journey abroad. One of the best things about being sure ofthe Royal Circuit this year was that they’d not be hanging about Gallantrybanks this summer working six nights out of eight to keep themselves from going skint until the Winterly began.
    Adding to the lack of surprises was the approach made by one of the Stewards just before their performance of “Treasure” on the Fliting Hall stage. While Touchstone stood about in a back hallway, waiting to go on, a grim old man whose straggly gray beard kept catching on his gold chain of office tapped a finger on one of Cade’s glass baskets to get his attention. What he got was a growl and a glare.
    “Word to the wise,” the Steward muttered. “One or two changes. Just a few lines. Nothing major. Better for all concerned.”
    Before Cade could explode, Rafe made wide eyes at the man. “Really? What lines might those be?”
    Jeska piped up with, “Oh, I think he means the speech at the end—you know, the one that’s the same as was said to the Archduke—I mean, the Archduke’s
father
—before they executed him? That one?”
    “That one,” the man echoed stiffly.
    “Oh no!” Jeska protested. “Memorized me lines, I have, and if he changes even one word—”
    “Stickler for precision, that’s our masquer,” Mieka contributed.
    “It’s the poetry of the thing,” Rafe agreed. “Rhythm and meter, all the syllables in the right places—”
    Mieka nodded emphasis. “But as a Steward, you’d know all about that. Part of the judging, innit?”
    “And Master Silversun works so very hard to get it all absolutely completely right,” finished Rafe. Then, helpful enough to make his mother proud, he delicately plucked straying strands of gray beard from the gold chain and smoothed them down onto the man’s chest. “How long did it take you to knit this?”
    “Rafcadion!” Jeska exclaimed, shocked. “His
wife
knitted it!”
    Mieka giggled as the defeated Steward jerked away and huffed himself off. “She knitted
him
!”
    Rafe lost his smile. “They’ll try again, be sure of it, once we’re on the road. All those people hearing the real version for the first time—” He shook his head.
    “They’ll have no luck getting us to change it!” Mieka vowed. “It’s brilliant and everybody knows it!”
    “That’s as may be,” Cade said with a shrug. “But there’s something else. Tobalt Fluter wrote it all up in
The Nayword
, didn’t he? A nice long review, with all the details. So our version is what they’ll be expecting, out on the road. If we don’t give it to