“Meg, if you could have seen your face,” he said, lowering the sword and offering me his arm. “Did you really think someone was trying to hurt you?”
“It’s a fan convention, Chris, remember?” I said, ignoring his attempts at chivalry. “Half the women in the hotel wish I didn’t exist, and odds are at least one of them is crazy enough to do something about it.”
“Never fear!” he said, with a flourish. “I will defend you with all the skill at my command!”
“Never mind defending me,” I said. “If you don’t get your sword peace-bonded, security’s going to take it away from you, and I just might help them.”
“All right, all right,” Chris said. “I’ll put it back on your table in a minute.”
“Chris,” I said, and then stopped, and counted to ten. Chris knew the rules about weapons at a fan convention. Attendees could wear weapons as part of their costumes, but convention security would confiscate any weapon not peace-bonded—secured in its sheath, scabbard, or holster with an electric-orange plastic binding that the guards could spot from across the ballroom. Chris’s own weapon was neatly secured, so he’d picked up one of the swords I was selling—I recognized it now.
“Chris, the point is to sell my swords, not let security babysit them till the end of the convention,” I said.
“Mercy!” he said, falling on his knees. “I come to beg you to lend your sword to my cause. Seriously,” he added, in his normal voice. “I need a favor from someone who’s reasonably good with a sword.”
“What kind of a favor?” I asked, trying not to let the flattery sway me. Chris Blair was the show’s blademaster, in charge of drilling the cast in fencing and stage combat and choreographing all the fights. I’d been learning as much as possible about sword fighting since I’d started making weapons, and fancied I was making progress, but to have Chris call me reasonably good was heady stuff.
“Can you fill in for Andrea? We’re giving a stage combat demonstration at noon, and Andrea can’t make it.”
“Will you spell me for when I need to get away from the booth?”
“No problem,” he said.
“It’s a deal,” I said. “What’s up with Andrea?”
“Long story,” he said, which, knowing Chris, meant that regardless of how long or short the story might be, it was none of my business. Not a good sign. In addition to being a member of his demonstration troupe, Andrea had been Chris’s girlfriend for the last year or so. If Andrea had been sick or had a schedule conflict, Chris would have said so. I hoped there wasn’t trouble between the two of them, but I knew better than to push it any further.
“Come on, then,” he said. “We need to rehearse.”
“Just let me touch base with Alaric Steele,” I said. “Have you seen him?”
“Alaric Steele?” Chris said. “Why do you need to check with him?”
“We’re splitting the booth, remember?” I said.
“Damn, and here I thought maybe you were getting ready to dump actor-boy and find a man who knows how to handle a weapon,” Chris said.
“I thought you said Michael was the best swordsman on the show,” I countered.
“He’s not bad for an actor,” Chris said, shrugging. “But if you get tired of watching him fight off all his groupies—”
“I’ll come and watch you fight off yours,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” Chris said. But I knew from tales of past conventions that Chris had more than his share of female attention, even though his appearances on camera were limited to long-shots as a stunt double for Michael’s old friend Walker, who couldn’t be trusted not to injure himself with a pencil, much less a sword. I wondered, briefly, if the fans had anything to do with Andrea’s absence.
“I’ll make sure Alaric’s okay with holding down the booth for a while and join you,” I said.
“The Ruritanian Room, as soon as possible, then,” Chris said, with a deep bow. Then he flung his black cloak dramatically over his shoulder and strode off, drawing admiring glances from all he passed. I shook my head. Loyalty to Michael didn’t prevent me from noticing that Chris looked better than ever in the Van Dyke beard he’d grown. Especially when he was wearing his black hair long and flowing over his Amblyopian guard uniform—which, conveniently for the costume shop, looked remarkably like a French musketeer’s uniform. I had to admit that if I didn’t have Michael, Chris would be just the sort of temptation I’d have a hard time resisting.
Though the dramatically named Alaric Steele could give him competition. At least he could the last time I’d seen him, twelve years ago. And when I reached the booth, I saw he’d held up well. I noticed a few streaks of gray in the long brown ponytail, and his face was a bit more weathered—he was probably well into his forties by now. But he was still blessed with the kind of lean, angular body, high cheekbones, and deep-set, brooding eyes that would keep him in the Attractive Older Man category for another twenty years.
Hell, I thought, when he smiled briefly in greeting. Forget the older bit. Just plain attractive.
“You bring an outfit?” he asked, looking at my T-shirt and jeans.
“Is that required?” I asked, glancing around the dealers’ room. Most of the people behind counters wore costumes, although they favored generic fantasy/Renaissance Faire gear over costumes specific to Porfiria’s universe.
“Pumps up sales, or so the ones who’ve done this before tell me,” Steele said. He had donned a well-worn leather jerkin over a loose-fitting white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. On him, it didn’t look like a costume. It looked lived in. Not dirty, just familiar and comfortable.
“Your first time at a bash like this, then?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’ve done a lot of Ren Faires,” he said. “But this…”
He looked a little taken aback by the whole thing. Not encouraging. When I’d seen Steele’s name on the vendor list—an established blacksmith I knew slightly—I’d assumed that the fan convention would be a reasonably profitable venue. It would have been nice if he’d mentioned that he’d never been to a fan convention before and had no idea if they were worth doing. Ah, well.
“I’m going to change in a bit,” I said. “But right now, Chris Blair needs me to fill in at his noon performance —do you mind? I’ll put in my share of booth time, don’t worry, but I think he needs me to rehearse right now.”
“No problem,” Steele said. “Should help with business if people see you on stage. I’ll catch you later.”
I left him chasing a curious monkey away from some sharpened swords, struggled through the crowd to the exit, and then asked a passing bellhop for directions to the Ruritanian Room. Which to the best of his knowledge was in another wing of the hotel, so I decided to drop by our room on the way and get my costume.
Yes, I’d brought a costume, just in case. But not an Amblyopian costume. Just the all-purpose wench costume I used for Renaissance Faires.
I was startled to see a small knot of people huddled in the hallway outside our room. All wearing blue convention volunteer ribbons, which made me feel a little better. But still, disconcerting.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Sorry,” one of them said. “We were just getting up our nerve to invite Ms. Wynncliffe-Jones down for the VIP reception.”
“It’s your turn,” another one said. They all looked at a tall, middle-aged woman sensibly dressed, I noted with approval, in the robes of an Amblyopian high priestess. Then I momentarily wondered what had happened to my frame of reference when I considered a lavender velvet robe trimmed with pink fur sensible, merely because it didn’t expose several acres of flesh.
At any rate, the faux priestess planted herself in front of the QB’s room. They’d put the QB in the last room in the corridor, with us beside her and the other celebrity guests nearby. This was supposed to give us greater privacy, but I’d already figured out that being at the end of a cul-de-sac made it hard to elude eager fans. Unless we wanted to flee through the emergency exit, we had no choice but to wade through the crowds that gathered along the one exit route.
The priestess took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and knocked on the door.
“Miss Wynncliffe-Jones?” she called. “We’re here to escort you to the VIP reception.”
“Go away!” the QB shouted, through the door. “I need my rest! Go away! Leave me alone!”
The priestess’s face fell, and she returned with a defeated look on her face.
“I suppose we’ll have to apologize to the fans,” she said.
I was tempted to suggest the ostensible star’s absence wouldn’t upset all that many fans. Not as many as if Michael or Walker missed one of their appearances. But I decided that in addition to being unkind, that would be a
