Player's Ruse (13 page)

All in all ’twas a merry meal, and eventually even Rudy Foster and I were coaxed from our sulks. So ’twas even more alarming when Barker rode right into the camp, not leaving his horse at the picket line. “Hector, we’ve got a problem.”

“What now?” Makejoye sounded more harassed then fearful.

“There’s another troupe in town,” said Barker grimly. “The Skydancers. They’re working the market right now, drumming up business. If we don’t do something—”

“They’ll steal all our contracts!” Makejoye leapt to his feet and began spouting orders. Within moments all the men, including Fisk and me, were ahorse and riding for town to protect our territory from invasion. I didn’t look at Fisk. I was having trouble enough controlling my laughter.

“It’s serious, for them,” said Fisk, watching a brightly clad dwarf somersault between his partner’s legs. “If Makejoye has to stay here, with no contracts and the day-to-day expenses eating up his profits, it could cost him high.”

We’d been sent to the market square to scout the competition, and it didn’t look good. The Skydancers had no magica viol, at least none we’d seen, and they were no more skilled than Makejoye’s troupe. But there were more of them, their costumes and props were newer and brighter, and with the lure of acts the crowd hadn’t seen . . .

We wandered over to a woman clad in many shawls and scarves. Her face would have been ordinary if not for the fanciful butterfly wings painted round her eyes.

“Madam Mara has the Gift,” she chanted. “Madam Mara can See. Guess your age; guess your weight within half a stone, by your own town’s grain scale, right over there; or guess the month of your birth. If you fool Madam Mara, you pick the prize.” Here she gestured to a chest full of bright crockery, jumping jacks, and other trumpery. “Only one silver roundel, and you pick the question! But I warn you, Madam Mara has the Gift to See. Guess your age; guess your weight within just half a stone . . .”

A plumpish matron took her up on it, giggling, and asked for weight. “You’re right!” she exclaimed, her eyes widening in amazement. “A teeny bit low but within half a stone, for I sat in the grain scale just last week!”

I thought that Mistress Mara’s estimate was as low as it could be to keep within the half-stone limit. Fisk was smiling.

“All right,” I said. “I know there’s a trick to it. Weight I understand; I might do it myself with a bit of practice. Age too leaves its mark, though ’tis harder to judge. But how can she guess the month of birth? That leaves no sign, and ’tis a one-in-twelve chance.”

“Wait and see,” said Fisk.

We lingered, and soon two boys, brothers by the way they quarreled, approached the woman.

“He wants to give you his money,” said the older, pushing the younger—about age nine—forward. “I think he’s a simp.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“My friends, my friends,” Madam intervened. “I charge a silver roundel for a guess, young sir, and only if I guess wrong do you get a prize. I warn you, Madam Mara can See.”

“Sure you can,” said the urchin cheekily. “I want you to guess the month I was born.”

He handed her a silver roundel and sneered at his brother.

“Hmm, let me see.” She walked around him, and he stiffened with pleased self-consciousness. “That hair . . . the shape of the jaw . . . the length of the middle finger . . . I believe you were born in . . . Hollyon!”

“No!” The child hopped in excitement. “You’re wrong, I was born in Wheaten! I win! I get a prize!”

“You were?” said Madam with artful astonishment. “Then you have defeated Madam Mara, and there aren’t many who can say that! Choose your prize, young sir.”

He chose a bright-painted whistle and tooted it happily. His brother dragged him off, muttering, “You nit, you can buy one just like it for fracts! It costs only half what you paid for it.”

My startled gaze shot to the chest; all the prizes in it cost less than a silver roundel in the open market. The trick was that simple. I closed my sagging jaw and turned to face Fisk’s laughter.

That night around the campfire the players held a council of war. Or mayhap ’twas a council of defeat.

“They have a contract,” said Makejoye, “so we can’t go to the guild. Though that’s the strange part. It’s written in Simon Potter’s hand and bears his signature, but he swears he didn’t write it. And when Lord Fabian accused him of trying to beat him out for the townsfolk’s favor, Potter replied that the townsfolk were too smart to be bought by ‘a handful of sparkling glass and a dancing bear.’ Then they went at it tooth and claw and forgot about us.”

He fell silent, his brooding gaze lost in the campfire.

“Well, don’t nod off,” said Gwen Makejoye tartly. “If Potter denies hiring them, how will they get paid?”

“Easily.” Makejoye snorted. “Lord Fabian’s booked a performance already, and Potter can’t be far behind even if he is telling the truth about that letter being forged. Then everyone else will follow suit and hire the
new
players. If we hadn’t a written contract with Burke, we’d not see another fract from anyone in this town. ‘Since you’ve other players here,’ I said to his lordship, ‘perhaps we could go on to our next contract?’ But no, we’re important witnesses in a criminal case. By which he means, the poxy toad, that he won’t give up his chance to tweak Baron Sevenson, and be hanged to what it may cost us.”

“You could go on,” said Rose. She was sitting on one of the fallen logs the players had dragged in to make benches around the fire. Rudy’s arm tightened around her shoulders in protest, but she went on, “Michael and Fisk are his witnesses, and if I stayed with them, ’twould forestall all his objections.”

“If you stay, I stay,” said Rudy.

Makejoye smiled at her. “That’s a generous offer, lass. But I already put that suggestion to his lordship and he said no. Handed me some drivel about proper chaperones. Ha! I’m about that far”—he held up two fingers, not far apart at all—“from packing up and sneaking out. Our contract with Burke’s not for six days, and he’d just hire the Skydancers to take our place. We could be into the next fief by midday tomorrow, and that”—his fingers snapped sharply—“for Lord Fabian.”

“Which is fine,” said Gwen Makejoye, “till Burke shows the guild a broken contract and they renounce us. Then we get no contracts at all.”

Makejoye’s sigh should have put the fire out.

“Maybe that’s what someone wanted,” said Fisk thoughtfully. “To drive you out of Lord Fabian’s fief so that Master Quidge, say, could have another chance at Rosa. That letter would have been sent before his death, whoever is behind it.”

I eyed my squire with respect. Whatever his ethical lapses, Fisk’s wits are exceeding sharp.

“How could he have known where the Skydancers were?” Rose asked. “I mean, he sent the letter to them.”

“He could have asked at any guild office,” said Makejoye. “Or gotten the news from a peddler, or another player—we traveling folk keep track of each other. That’s how I knew the Red Mask had changed their route to miss this part of the coast. In fact, I know the Skydancers’ regular route—the only reason Dancer was available was that two of his smaller towns canceled on him, right in the midst of his circuit. That’s why he’s so determined to stay—this fills a gap in his schedule. Master Quidge might have heard about that and seen a chance.”

But he didn’t sound convinced and neither was I. Quidge was a clever man, but that kind of twisted scheming didn’t seem to fit what I’d seen of him. He was beyond our questioning now, but tomorrow I would take the next step in my search for his killer.

I
n the morning Michael took the next step in his plan—reaching a new level of lunacy, even for him.

“But she said he usually comes when there’s trouble with magica,” he said. “And he doesn’t come when summoned. So the only way to get him to come is to disturb some magica thing.”

“Suppose he doesn’t come anyway,” I said, standing well back as Michael reached for the small lacy plant he could so easily identify as magica. “Or doesn’t come in time.”

Michael reached down and picked the plant with a single quick tug. “Then I’ll take the consequences.” He shredded the roots and leaves with the nervous determination of a man pulling splinters from his own flesh. “The Green God doesn’t exact life for destruction of a plant—not even serious injury for a quick-growing thing like mouse-foot.”

“If you say so.” I waited till Michael had seated himself before I chose a place to wait; eight feet wasn’t too far off for conversation, though Michael was amused by my precautions.

He was less amused when the first warrior ant sank its teeth, or pincers, or whatever ants use to bite with. He stripped off his clothes, dancing and swearing, and I brushed the bugs out of them while he slapped them off his skin. Then he ruefully examined the hard red bumps.

By the time we reached camp, he was limping, and he kept grabbing folds of his shirt when the fabric tickled him, crushing them between his fingers. I made the supreme sacrifice and didn’t say I’d told him so. And if he mistook my intention when I said he’d made a better deal than I realized choosing magica itching salve over money, well, that was hardly my fault.

Actually, the salve worked all too well; by mid-afternoon he was ready to try again.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him as he eyed a small, harmless-looking plant the way most men look at a tooth-drawer’s tongs. “I’ve got the medicine chest right here.” Along with bandages, a pail of water, a blanket, some sandwiches for dinner, and Michael’s sword, just in case. My knife is always in my boot, but I was more aware of its presence than usual.

My noble employer cast me a wry glance. “You’re prepared for a siege.” He pulled the plant and shredded it.

“Never hurts to be prepared,” I told him.

Conversation at twelve feet was harder than at eight, but we managed fairly well as the afternoon passed into dusk. I was beginning to wonder if the plant he’d chosen wasn’t magica, or if the Green God was asleep when he destroyed it. Also whether I should return to camp and fetch our bedrolls.

As it happened, I didn’t have to—the black-and-white skunk that trundled out of the dusk and lifted its tail answered all my questions. Twelve feet was barely far enough, but nothing could save me from helping Michael deal with the consequences.

The stuff was too oily for water alone, so I went back to camp for soap and clean clothes. Then I went to fetch a melon from a nearby farm field, for Michael said his father’s master of hounds used it when his dogs encountered this particular misfortune.

At least Trouble wasn’t with us—if Michael’s problem had been magnified by two, we wouldn’t have been allowed back into camp for days. The way the Barkers spoiled the mutt, I wondered if they couldn’t be persuaded to take him off our hands, but my luck never seems to run that way.

I helped Michael work the crushed melon into his hair, though it made my hands stink. I must admit I was grateful to leave him, rubbing his skin with melon rind and swearing, while I buried his clothes. Clothing that I lifted with the shovel’s handle and carried as far from me as I could get it.

Both moons were high when we finally returned to camp, and the players had gone to bed. The scent, though unpleasant, was no longer intolerable. And, as I helpfully pointed out, the nights were mild—there was no way either Trouble or I would share an enclosed wagon with him.

At this point I hoped he’d give up, but I should have known better. Michael endured the players’ jests with his usual good humor, and midmorning found us once again sitting beside a pile of shredded magica plant. At least, Michael sat beside it. I was standing twenty feet off, prepared to run at a moment’s notice. It made conversation difficult, but there was a subject I’d been wanting to bring up for some time.

“What are you going to do about Rudy?”

It isn’t in Michael to prevaricate, even with himself, which was why watching him ignore the matter was beginning to alarm me. If I could have gotten Lucy back by turning the butcher’s boy over to the law, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Or . . . maybe not. Despite my furious anguish, even at the time I’d known that the choice had to be hers. And I wasn’t her choice. Whether Jack had paid her off or not.

“I don’t know.” If there’d been any wind, the distance between us would have eaten Michael’s words, but the day was still and hot, with only the whir of an insect to break the silence.

“He’s wanted for murder,” Michael went on. “ ’Tis my duty to report him to the sheriff of the fief where he’s accused, so he can try for a Liege’s warrant. Or hire some bounty hunter to haul him back. Or appeal to Lord Fabian for assistance.”

“That’s your duty,” I agreed pleasantly. “But he was only a boy, fleeing a savage master. He probably didn’t mean to strike hard enough to slay.”

“Probably not,” I agreed. Though if that bastard had been my master, I’d have struck to kill the first moment I thought I could get away with it.

“Even if he was brought to trial, the judicars would almost certainly let him off lightly, considering the circumstances.”

“Almost certainly.” He’d get to the point that mattered eventually.

“He’s in love with Rosamund.”

Almost there. “Yes, he is.”

“Fisk?”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t stop humoring me, I’m going to go over there and do something about that smirk you’re wearing.”

A stranger’s scratchy voice said, “Now why’d you want to do that? Sounds to me like you’re winning.”

We both jumped and spun. All male Savants are bearded—well, the only other one I’ve seen was—but this man’s hair stuck out in patchy clumps, with a wildness I’d never seen equaled. His elderly coat and britches were neatly patched at the elbows and knees, but none of the patches matched his garments or each other. He was scrupulously clean, from his springing hair to his worn boots.

“I’m not winning,” Michael told him. “It only looks that way.”

“Huh!” He snorted, stepping into the small clearing between us. “She said you were a foolish lot and I see that plain enough. But she also said you’d not give up till you’d seen me, and I should go and get it over with before you tore up all the magica in the wood. Now you’re seeing me. Satisfied?” He turned to go.

“Wait, sir, please. We’ve some questions for you if you’ll spare us the time.”

Only Michael could call a lunatic “sir” and mean it. Though so far the fiery old man seemed no more mad than any Savant. I hoped Michael remembered our agreement that it wasn’t smart to blurt out your suspicions to the people you suspect. He should remember—we’d spent half an hour arguing about it.

“Oh, she told me you thought I’d killed some poor fool, putting magica rabbits in his snare.” So much for precautions. But Nutter snorted again and went on, “What’s one fool’s death to me? Compared to the slaughter to come, one death is nothing—a puff of wind before a hurricane. The earth and sea will weep blood when the slaughter comes. But no one cares about that.”

“We do care,” said Michael. “But no man can undo the past. ’Tis the present—”

“No, it’s the future.” He turned his angry eyes to us, for we’d left our places to draw near him and now stood side by side. In a Savant’s presence we were safe from the Green God—even a Savant as strange as this one. “All the voices of the earth,” he went on, “they call it out. Earth isn’t like that lying water—it speaks true. It speaks in the voices of the dying, their fear, their pain. And it will come!”

He shook his fist. It should have looked absurdly theatrical, but it didn’t.

“It will come, and all folk do is laugh at my warnings.”

“Maybe the earth doesn’t understand about time,” I said. “Maybe it changes so slowly, sees so much, that the past and the future are one to it.”

The light, mad eyes fixed on me curiously. “He said you wouldn’t care. Huh! Makes you wonder what else he was wrong about. But you sail in ships, don’t you?”

“Who’s ‘he’?” I asked.

“Aye, you travel in ships, the both of you. As unnatural as a frog sprouting wings and taking to air. You know what happens to a flying frog? Snap!” He clapped his fingertips together. “The hawks get ’em. But they still take to the sea in ships, they do.”

“Mayhap,” said Michael gently. “But neither Fisk nor I can keep men from the sea. And Quidge’s death is a matter we might do something about, if you’d help us.”

“Aye, they pay no heed to my warnings, either,” said the Savant, sounding suddenly weary. “I tell them it’s going to storm, and they say, ‘Thankee, sir’. But then I say that man and magica are going to die, and they laugh. Laugh!” But the fire was going out of him. He turned to leave.

“They laugh at me, too,” Michael said urgently. “Come back, please. We can speak together as men who’ve been laughed at.”

The old man stalked into the trees and away.

Michael and I gazed at each other. The sudden absence of so much passion was as shocking as its appearance.

“Do you think he did it?” I asked.

A frown creased Michael’s brow. “He didn’t deny it.”

“He didn’t confirm it, either.”

We stared at each other again—then Michael sighed and bent to gather up my supplies. “If he did do it, ’twas not for gain or fear, for I see he is beyond such things. But think how useful ’twould be for the wreckers to know when a great storm approached.”

“True.” I picked up the basket that held our medicines and bandages. “But they don’t have to work with Nutter for that—he evidently tells the whole town his weather visions. Remember Simon Potter telling us about the last storm?”

“Yet he must have helped them with the rabbit,” Michael persisted as we started back toward camp. “And what was he talking about, ‘He said you wouldn’t care’? Who’s ‘he’?”

I snorted. “A voice from the earth, probably. Or no, it was that lying water.”

“I care too,” said Michael. “ ’Tis piteous to see a man so troubled. He might even have helped the wreckers and then forgotten it.”

He’d forgotten something else as well, and neither Michael nor I remembered it until Michael—with a most uncharacteristic clumsiness—tripped, and fell on a rotten log where a tribe of hornets nested.

I was standing right beside him. I really should know better.

“I take it all back—magica medicine is a great investment. We should buy it before we buy food. As long as you persist in doing this kind of thing.”

It had taken several applications of salve—even magica salve—to ease the burning stings. But it was finally working, and I thought soon I might sleep. It was a bit warm and smelly in the wagon, but tonight Michael and I were . . . tired of the out of doors.

“I’ve no more need to summon up Savants,” said Michael wearily. “I’ve spoken to both of them, for all the good it did.”

He sounded depressed anyway, so I might as well make it worse. We still hadn’t finished our discussion.

“Michael, you remember what we were talking about? About Rudy? You never—”

The rap on the door was soft but clear, and we both sat up and looked at each other—not that we could see much in the small amount of moonlight leaking through the windows.

“Come in,” said Michael, and the door opened.

“I won’t come in.” Moonlight flowed over Callista’s skin, washing out the gold so she glowed lily-white. Her dress exposed a lot of lily-white. “I was on my way out and I thought I’d stop and let you know. You’ve had a bad-enough day without having to follow me.”

Several comments flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t find one that wasn’t risqué. Even the simple “good night” was fraught with peril. She waited a moment to see if we’d be foolish enough to try, then shrugged and closed the door.

There was a long moment of silence. Michael broke it. “Well, I’m embarrassed. How about you?”

“She’s good, isn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I choked on a laugh. It seemed Michael too was thinking in double entendres. The wagon rocked as he lay down.

“But you see what I mean?” I persisted. “She’s made it impossible for us to ask questions—much less get in her way.”

“There’s no reason we should wish to do either.”

“I suppose not. And it does explain her dress.”

“If you thought that dress needed an explanation, squire, you’re more naive than I’d imagined.”

I laughed again. “I’m corrupting you, Noble Sir. I meant the fabric. It’s expensive.”

“You noticed the
fabric
? And you priced it? You amaze me, Fisk.”

“Yes, but Michael . . .”

“Um?”

“Never mind.”

The time for that conversation had passed, but I’d have to bring it up again. He still hadn’t decided what to do about Rudy Foster, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, until he faced the real problem. The real problem wasn’t that Rudy was accused of murder, and was probably innocent. Or even that he loved Rosamund.

The real problem was that she loved him.

We both rose late for once—hornet stings are tiring. Climbing out of the wagon behind Michael, I perched on the step for a moment to enjoy the sunlit freshness. Gwen Makejoye was tending the porridge pot, while her husband sat on their wagon seat, frowning over what appeared to be a new script. The inkpot was open beside him, and his fingers were marred with black stains. The Barkers were playing with the dogs, and they’d included Trouble in the game. Falon had put up a backstop against one of the wagons and was flipping knives at Gloria. She was yawning, which she didn’t do when they performed. But sleepy as she looked, she took care not to move. Callista was nowhere to be seen. I guessed she hadn’t risen yet and fought back a grin.

As for the rest of the company . . . Rudy and Rosamund had obviously been gathering firewood; they were just coming out of the forest, and he carried a load of dry branches under one arm and a bundle of neatly cut logs, bound with string, on his shoulder. Rosamund carried an armful of flowers and looked, no surprise, beautiful.