Exile's Valor

of those—it was, to be honest, too cold for anything but unaccompanied singers to be performing out-of-doors, and as for the sort of acrobats and dancers that plied their trade at Fairs, they’d be risking their skins to bounce about in their usual skimpy attire. This set of players, however, usually performed several times in a week at one of the bigger inns off the Trade Road; they’d moved to this venue just for the Festival, and as Alberich neared the canvas walls that held their makeshift theater, he saw that the move must have been very profitable for them. He joined the end of a longish line just forming up for the afternoon performance with some interest.

Well, “tent” was something of a misnomer, he discovered, as he got to the entrance, paid his entry fee, and filed inside with the rest. Only the area over the back half of the stage was roofed over and curtained, the rest was simply canvas walls to prevent the show from being viewed by those who had not paid, with an overhead scaffolding of rigging for stage effects and nighttime lighting reaching out into the area of the audience. Crude benches in rows fronting the stage were supplied to the public, and the show must have been popular, for the tent was half full when Alberich arrived, and by the time of the show, the benches were packed and so was the standing-room area along the walls.

The drama was called—or so the banners outside proclaimed—“The Unknown Heir.” The banners could have fit any one of a hundred standard stories, and probably served for every play these actors ever put on. They looked superficially new, but Alberich could tell that they’d been freshly touched up just for the Festival.

The audience was ready to be entertained, and when the back curtains finally parted and a single actor took the stage, they erupted in cheers that must have gladdened his heart.

Alberich sat back on his bench, arms folded under his cloak, and prepared to see just what it was that had “corrupted” two Trainees.

First came the declamation of the Prologue. The plot, what there was of it, concerned a highborn child, stolen from his cradle and sold to slavers, subsequently bought or rescued (the prologue was rather unclear on the subject) by a troupe of poor but noble actors, and raised by them to adulthood. All of this was laid out in a spirited fashion by that single actor before any of the real action took place.

Alberich had to admit that the fellow knew what he was doing; he had the right mix of flamboyance and humor to keep the audience’s attention. He finished his piece, gave an elaborate bow, and retired to great applause.

Then the curtains parted on “A Sylvan Glade,” represented by two rather sad little trees in pots, and a painted backdrop, against which marched the troupe, portraying the actors on their way from one town to the next. The real action opened immediately with the Unknown Heir and his adoptive family being attacked by bandits, and the Heir proceeding to single-handedly, acrobatically, drive the bandits off. But not before the bandits had managed to mortally wound the Heir’s adoptive father—though how they got a knife blade through the four or five layers of costume he was wearing was beyond Alberich’s comprehension. This worthy managed an amazingly long set-piece while dying in his “son’s” arms. He explained the young man’s circumstances, presumed highborn heritage, and handed over the medallion the child had inexplicably still been wearing (even though it was solid gold) when taken from the hands of his kidnappers. It was an astonishing monologue, especially from the lips of someone stabbed through the heart quite some time ago.

None of this evidently stretched the credulity of most of the audience.

With tears and histrionics, the Heir proclaimed that he would regain his rightful place, and wreak revenge for his father’s death.

Riotous applause called up many bows from the actors before the action resumed.

The rest of the play consisted of one improbable fight scene after another, taking advantage of the acrobatic abilities of—Alberich guessed—roughly four of the actors in question. And there was no doubt in his mind before the first act was over that this was, indeed, where the two miscreants had gotten their misguided ideas, and given the wild applause that these bizarre fights managed to garner, he was a lot less surprised that the boys had become enamored of the idea of fighting like that.

As the Heir and his Best Friend—both in love with the same girl, of course—battled their way through throngs of evil henchmen attempting to keep them from claiming the Heir’s rightful place as the Duke of Dorking, Alberich had to admire their stamina, if not their style. In the conclusion to the first act, the Heir plummeted off the top of a “cliff” to flatten half a dozen evildoers, then engaged four at once, sword-to-sword, and after being disarmed, defeated his enemies with a bucket. In the second act, the Heir and the Friend, ambushed in a Peasant Hovel, made the most creative use of a ladder, a table, and a stool that Alberich had ever seen. In fact, what they most closely resembled was not a pair of fighters at all, but a pair of ferrets trying not to be caught. In the third act, the Best Friend met the end that Alberich had expected from the first, after yet another acrobatic exhibition, dying in the arms of the Heir and bravely commending the Heir and the Girl to one another, with the Heir vowing revenge once again—

:You know,: Kantor commented, :I’d steer clear of that man. People trying to kill him seem to keep missing and hitting his friends instead.:

But it was in the fourth act that something entirely unexpected happened, and it had nothing to do with the script.

Now, Alberich had noticed something a bit odd just before the play began. In the front benches, just off to one side, was a group of young men in clothing far finer than anyone else here was wearing. When the action started, he quite expected them to begin jeering and catcalling, but to his surprise, they did nothing of the sort. In fact, they were quiet and attentive to a degree all out of keeping with the quality of the drama unfolding. And it wasn’t as if they weren’t used to better fare, either; he recognized two of them from having seen them moving in the fringes of Selenay’s Court.

Now, that was odd. So odd, in fact, that he felt a tingle of warning and kept his eye on them all during the