Free Touchstone by Melanie Rawn Page A

’em can bring to a boil. Not that it’s so unusual in our family—not much Fire Elf, we’re none of us very good at that sort of thing. But the Air and Earth and Water, my younger sisters got those and those only. They look like the Greenseed line, mostly—or so Fa says. For a while they were hoping they’d top five feet, but that’s not gonna happen, not in this lifetime. White hair at twelve years old, eyes almost black, and a set of teeth on each of them that’d gnaw through a tree trunk in a twitch of a wyvern’s tail. Ears like the sails on a schooner, too,” he added, and Cade could hear the smirk. “Mum found a chirurgeon—a good, careful one, mind—to refine them just a bit, and take care of the teeth. Me an’ Jinsie, though, we got the best of the Elf and the best of the Human, with a bit of Wizard and a dash of Sprite for spice.”
    Blye asked, “She’s your twin sister, and that much alike?”
    “Mirror image, almost. She’s not quite as pretty as me, though! Twins aren’t usual with Elfenfolk, of course, but it’s the clue we’ve some Piksey knockin’ about somewhere, and makin’ quite a racket with it, too. They whelp twins as an iron-bound rule. The new little mites, they’re only two years old, a boy and a girl—and it looks as if the one’s pretty much Water Elf from the Staindrop and Stormchill lines, and the other’s anybody’s guess, ’cept he’s determined to grow up to be a dragon!”
    As Mieka paused for breath and the ladies laughed, Cade knocked again. Invited to enter, he found the coziest imaginable domestic scene: Mistress Threadchaser in a big cushioned chair by the blazing hearth, Blye in the matching armchair opposite her, and Mieka hunched on a low wooden stool between, two pottery bowls at his feet and one in his lap as he shelled walnuts. He looked up as Cade entered, and his hair shifted around his pointed Elfen ears, and a wide smile revealed white, square, very Human teeth.
    “Quill! There you are! Hunger finally got the best of you, then?”
    “Oh, good Lady have mercy on us,” Mistress Threadchaser cried with a quick glance at the clicking clock on the sideboard. “It’s gone five and you poor things must be starved! Here, I’ll take care of those later,” she said to Mieka, who shook his head.
    “I finish what I begin.” He twirled a finger above the bowl on his knees, and a little whirlwind surged upwards, emitting a series of sharp cracks. Then the blur split in two and descended neatly to the bowl of nuts and the bowl of shells. Beaming, Mieka looked about for approval—just as a last walnut hurtled from the bowl in his lap and struck him right in the nose.
    Cade laughed at him. Mistress Threadchaser asked anxiously if he was all right. Blye, however, sat back in her chair and frowned.
    Cade asked her about that later, after they’d devoured the usual lavish and excellent tea and were carrying his crated glass baskets to the Downstreet.
    “Bit of a jester, isn’t he?” she murmured. “I mean, look at him.”
    Mieka was loping along beside Rafe, who had livened up considerably after his mother’s cakes, fruit breads, and sausage salad. Usually he was quietly self-possessed before a performance; Cade had expected him to be completely silent, in fact, on their way to this oh-so-important booking. But Rafe was trading quips with Mieka, laughing, even snatching the cap off his head and holding it high out of the Elf’s reach to tease him.
    “Why didn’t he crack the walnuts by magic in the first place?” Blye went on. “If he’d got finished faster, maybe Mistress Threadchaser had something else she wanted done.”
    Cade eyed her sidelong. “You don’t like him, do you.”
    “I like him fine. He’s funny, he’s a charmer, and he’s no chore to look at, that’s for certain sure.”
    “P’rhaps a little too much the charmer?” he guessed. “Did he pay you a compliment you didn’t believe? Not that you ever believe a