Player's Ruse by Hilari Bell

exactly.”
    “Well, you’ll do. There’s room in the script for the hero to have a best friend—not so many soliloquies that way—and in the end he could bring the sheriff’s men to the rescue . . . or . . . No, that’ll work. As for you, my dear . . .” He threw a fatherly arm around Rosamund’s shoulders. “No, don’t cry, you looked lovely, and I’ll show you a trick or two that’ll have your voice traveling all the way to Huckerston! We’ve all day tomorrow to work together, you and Rudy and I.”
    Rosamund straightened her shoulders and blinked her eyes dry. “I’ll work hard, Master Makejoye. I’ll do anything to stay here.”
    “That’s a good lass. And as for you, Sir—”
    “Just Michael, please.” His voice was full of resignation. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    Makejoye laughed. “So you did. And you’re right, it’s crowds for you, lad. Or at least . . . Can you fence?”
    Falon brought out the stage swords, which looked real but to my considerable relief had edges blunter than a butter knife’s. They stood me up against Michael, despite my protests, and told me to try, so I lifted the awkward thing and blocked Michael’s first, lazy-looking slash.
    His sword whipped around mine, knocking it out of my hand with a force that made my wrist tingle. I made a great show of shaking my fingers and the others laughed. Michael went, good-naturedly, to fetch my sword.
    Then they matched Rudy against Michael, saying he was the best swordsman among them. Rosamund clapped her hands in excitement, and both fencers looked at her and assumed identical, fatuous smiles.
    Rudy took up a stance that looked better than Michael’s to my untrained eye, and Michael’s first blow was faster than the one he’d aimed at me. The resounding clang as Rudy parried made me glad the swords’ edges were dull.
    Rudy had obviously picked up a bit of training somewhere, but noblemen’s sons are taught the sword in earnest. Rudy lasted all of twenty seconds before his sword followed mine into the bushes, and I thought he suppressed a wince as he tried to work the numbness out of his hand.
    “Not bad,” Makejoye commented. “In a choreographed fight, you’d do well together. I wonder if I could work in a brigand to attack the heroine’s coach.
    Then young Lord Gaspar could . . .”
    Makejoye spent the rest of the day revising his scripts and I helped recopy them—not a massive task, since he rewrote only the pages he made changes on and then bound them in with the others, using an awl to pierce the paper.
    It was a rather silly story, about a heroic young lord (whose name, by pure coincidence, bore some resemblance to that of the man who was paying for the piece) who falls in love with a beautiful peasant girl and is forbidden by his horrified parents to wed her. After many silly plots to separate them, which now included a brigand’s attack . . .
    “Let me guess—the girl is revealed to be noble, rich, and Gifted, and was being raised by the poor farmer for some tremendously silly reason?”
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    “Don’t be so cynical, Master Fisk.” Makejoye wagged an ink-stained finger. “If it was a tragedy, no one would watch. Her father was accused of conspiring to overthrow the High Liege and died in a flooding river trying to escape, so all his property was forfeit. Evidence turns up to prove he was innocent and it’s really me—that is, the girl’s villainous uncle—who was guilty. The father usually dies at sea fighting pirates, but with what’s going on around here . . .” He shook his head sadly.
    The copying got me out of helping with dinner preparation, and Edith Barker was an even better camp cook than Michael. I was amused to see Rosamund don an apron and chop vegetables, which she’d never done for Michael and me. She really was trying. It made me nervous for the meal.
    But dinner, a leg of roast pig cooked up with vegetables, and soft fluffy biscuits, was as good as any inn might