players. And no wonder they grew restive in hard times, when (heir lives were already so hard! If she ever regained her throne she would have all her courtiers join her in building sheepfolds in the dampest, most chill pasture she could find.
She laughed out loud, startling huge, kind Dowan Birch.
"Blood of the Three, boy!" he swore. "I thought I dropped a stone on you and crushed you, a noise like that."
"I'll try to find a different way to laugh when I've been crushed, so you'll know," she said.
"Hark to him," Birch called to Feival, the principal boy. "Our Tim has a tongue as sharp as Hewney's."
"Let us hope for the child's sake his tongue has not been in as many foul spots as Master Nevin's has," said Feival tartly. "Nor uttered half so many blasphemies."
"Did the child live six lifetimes," Hewney shouted, "he could not curse as much in all of them together as I do each morning when I wake up with my head and bladder both swollen misery-full of last night's ale and realize I am still a part of this wretched troop of thieves, blockheads, and he-whores."
"He-whore? He-whore? Do I hear an ass braying?" Finn Teodoros, who with the excuse of his age and portly figure, seemed to spend more time resting than working, pushed himself away from the wall. "Ah, no, it is only our beloved Nevin kicking at the door of his stall again. But were we to throw the door open, would he run away or fling himself at our feet and beg to be put back in harness?"
"It is an inexact metaphor," Hewney grumped. "No one keeps an ass in a stall. Unless he is so rich that he is able to act the ass himself."
"Besides," said Feival, "no one will ever get a harness on Hewney until he's dead, which will be too late to get any good out of him."
"Unless someday a man is needed who can drink a river of ale dry and save a city, as Hiliometes drained the flood," said Pedder Makewell.
"Too much talking, not enough working," his sister complained. "The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go claim our meal and some dry lodgings."
"Which will be a stable," Feival said. "Leaving none happy but our lead donkey, Master Hee-haw Hewney."
"Quiet, you, or you will find out what a kick truly is," Hewney said, glowering.
Briony worked on, amused and, for the moment, cold but content.
"Here," she said to the red-faced young player Pilney. "Try again. Re-member, this stick is a sword now, not a stick. You don't beat someone with it, you use it as an extension of your arm." She scraped an empty place in the straw to make better footing, then lifted her own stick. "And if you're going to hack at someone like that, they're going to do this! She flicked his weapon aside, sidestepped his crude charge, and poked him in the ribs.
"Where did you learn that?" he asked, breathless.
"My… my old master. He was gifted at swordplay."
"Gather around me, children," Finn Teodoros called. "You may beat each other to death later."
Most of the company was already seated in the comfortable straw of the large stable, quite willing to ignore the smell of the horses and cows, since the presence of so many animals kept the place as warm as a fire would have.
"I have been thinking," said Teodoros, "that we will be in Tessis in less than a tennight, and if we are to impress the Syannese in that venerable capitol, we will have to show them something new. They have enough players of their own, after all, and the audiences are a hardened lot. Tessis has more theaters east of the river than exist in all the north of Eion put together. So we must bring them a spectacle."
"My Karal is spectacle enough," growled Hewney. "Even Makewell can¬not help but make a royal impression in it."
"Never have a drunkard's words had such fair speaking before," Make-well said. "I refer to my playing of Hewney s work, of course. But he is right-the Tessians love The Death of Karal, since it is their own beloved king whose life we play. And we have other historicals and a comedy that we can give them."
"Yes, they loved Karal when we brought it to them four years ago," Teodoros agreed. "And it has remained in good enough favor that several Tessian companies have mounted it, too. But that does not mean the groundlings will come to see it again."
"Even with the playwright himself upon the stage?" Hewney was so outraged that he spilled some of his ale on his sleeve, which he then lifted to his mouth and sucked dry.
"What are you saying, Finn?" Estir Makewell demanded. "That we must buy some Tessian court play, some bit of froth done up for the Revels? We cannot afford it. We shall barely be able to feed ourselves until we get to
Tessis, even with the money we had from…" She trailed off as Teodoros gave her a harsh look.
"Less speaking, more listening," he growled. Something had just hap¬pened, although Briony could not recognize what it was. "A loose tongue is an unbecoming ornament to anyone, but especially to a woman. I do not speak of buying anything. I have written a play-you have all heard it. Zona, 'Tragedy of a Virgin Goddess is its name."
"Heard it?" Makewell put his hand on Feival Ulosian's knee, but the boy removed it. "We have rehearsed it for most of a year, and even performed it a few times in Silverside. What is new about that?"
"If nothing else, it would be new to the Tessians," Teodoros said with an air of great patience. "But I have changed it-rewritten much of the play. Also, I have made a larger part for you, Pedder, as great Perin, and for you, Hewney, as the fearsome dark god Zmeos, despoiler of a thousand maid¬enheads." He smiled. "I know it will test you to play so against your own character, but I feel certain you will give it your best."
"Sounds like rubbish," said Hewney. "But if it's good rubbish, it won't chap me to mount it in Tessis."
"And I suppose you feel certain that I will let you clap a hundredweight of new speeches on me as the beleaguered virgin?" said young Feival. "I won't have it, Finn. Already I have twice the lines of anyone."
"Ah, but now we come to my idea," said Teodoros. "I sympathize with your plight, Feival, and so I have written you a new part instead-shorter, but with a great deal of verve and bite, so that the eyes of the audience will be rapt upon you whenever you enter."
"What does that mean? What part?"
"I have made the goddess Zuriyal an important part of this new play- the wife of Zmeos and Khors' sister-in-law. Although darkly beautiful, my Zuriyal is jealous and fierce and murderous, and it is she whose cruelties most threaten pure Zoria."
"Darkly beautiful is not beyond my skills," Feival said lazily, "but surely in a play called after Zoria the virgin goddess, somebody must play the vir¬gin herself? I would be happy to carry a lesser load, but is not Waterman here a jot too thickset and whiskery to play the divine mistress of all the pure virtues?"
"Doubtless-so why not let Tim play the part?" Teodoros spread his hands and gestured toward Briony like an envoy delivering a gift to a jaded monarch. "He is younger than you, even, and fair enough in his way to pass
for a girl, if not viewed from too closely?" He turned and gave Briony a pleased smile that made her want to take a stick to him.