Free Touchstone by Melanie Rawn Page B

compliment.” Her blush told him all he needed to know. “Leave off, Blye, he’s just a puppy, all excited and wriggly over joining us, wanting to show off a bit. It’s the player in him.”
    “That remembers me, Cade—on the walk over, when he wasn’t asking questions about you, he was trying to figure a name for the group. I’m hopeless, I’ve no imagination to speak of, but he wasn’t doing much better.”
    “Something will occur to us,” he replied. “What kind of questions?”
    “Oh, just things,” she evaded. “He’s not very subtle. That last walnut, for instance—it was on purpose. Didn’t you notice?”
    “He did it to get a laugh? What’s wrong with that?”
    “As I said. Look at him—a clown.”
    “He was really good with ‘Silver Mine,’ y’know,” Cade told her quietly. “There’s thought in him, and honesty. He’s more than a clown. You’ll see that tonight.”
    “P’rhaps. But the ‘Princess’ isn’t exactly grand tragedy, is it? And are you sure he won’t make that into a farce, the way you say he does the ‘Sailor’?”
    “He wouldn’t dare.”
    She arched her brows eloquently, but said nothing more.
    “Cade!” Mieka had danced back towards them, his moss-green cap stowed in his pocket where Rafe couldn’t get at it again. “We still need a name. There’s a group over the North End goes by Wishcallers, and somebody else that thinks if they’re lucky they’ll get mistaken for the Shadowshapers by naming themselves the Smokecatchers.” His nose wrinkled with disdain. “We need a contrast, I think, don’t you?”
    “Good idea,” Blye said. “So that nobody thinks you’re trying to imitate anybody. Something solid. Rock, brick, stone—”
    “Brickballs,” Mieka offered, grinning.
    “Brickbrains,” she tossed back at him.
    Rafe had paused to let them catch him up, and contributed dryly, “Pebblebrains, more like.”
    “What about ‘stone’ something, or something ‘stone’?” Blye asked. “Keystones?”
    “Not bad,” Rafe allowed. “Nice imagery—a bit nervy, implying we’re the ones holding everything together—”
    “—when it’s really only you, O Great Fettler?” Mieka scampered ahead, then turned and walked backwards so he could talk to them. “Lodestones. Nobody can resist us, we’ll draw them in like magnets!”
    Cade wanted to join in their banter, but a slither of a chill down his backbone caught him unawares.
    “Lodestars? No,” Blye decided at once. “You’re none of you Fire Clan, and they’re touchy about who thinks to associate with them.”
    Mieka was scowling. “Stone … Stonesmiths—I hate it. Stoneciphers? Hewstones? Whetstones? Even worse. Come on, Quill, you’re the wordsmith!”
    “Headstones—everybody needs one eventually,” Rafe said.
    Mieka began a mocking singsong. “Limestones, Sandstones, Gemstones, Cornerstones—”
    “No!”
    The protest burst out of his mouth before he could remember why it was the worst word in the lexicon. As they stared at him, he lost track of where he was and even who he was, and he was back in the dim, run-down tavern listening to someone called Tobalt say, “When the Cornerstones lost their Elf, they lost their soul.”
    “Quill?”
    Soft voice, worried and even a little frightened. Gentle touch on his shoulder. He looked down into those eyes and if the glass baskets hadn’t been cradled in his arms, he would have grasped Mieka with both hands, to keep him here and safe and alive—
    “Cade, what is it?” Rafe’s deep voice, raspy with concern.
    “Back away,” said Blye. “Let him breathe.”
    She knew. Of course she knew. But he couldn’t look away from the Elf, the Elf he would one day lose, and with him his soul, and he would go cold inside and heartless and cruel, he knew it, he knew those things were inside him and if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t do everything exactly right, if he made even one wrong choice—Sagemaster Emmot had told him that