Mercedes Lackey - The Wizard of Karres

"Still nothing," she complained.

"Cheer up. After this show, we lift—and even if they've been reporting to someone in person, they won't be able to do that anymore." They now had the third of their plays, the Scottish Play, in production, and Sir Richard had elected to put off beginning rehearsal for the fourth until they were back in space.

The new man was working out well enough. True to his word, Vonard Kleesp was awake and ready for first rehearsal and he never showed the least bit of unsteadiness from that moment until final curtain. Though, as Vezzarn said with reluctant admiration, "what he drinks in a night would kill five men." Presumably he'd gotten to that stage of alcoholism where the alcoholic could not function without liquor in his system.

Besides, Pausert had overheard Cravan saying to Ethulassia one night they only needed Vonard Kleesp until Ken Kanchen was all healed up.

"You won't fire him?" Ethulassia had asked anxiously. "He's a superb actor, whatever else." Her voice seemed to get a little dreamy. "Quite a charming and handsome man, too, for that matter. And he doesn't really drink as much as people think. With my personal intervention . . ."

"No, I certainly won't fire him," Cravan had replied. "He'll be useful if Pausert leaves us. He can take those roles; for that matter, he could double and stand-in on just about every male lead we do. But he won't be indispensable, and when something happens to him, it won't leave us short."

When . . .

Well, Cravan was right to use that word. Drinking like that, a man's liver would only last so long and his heart would probably go even sooner. Medics could give you artificial organs, but if you collapsed with heart or liver failure out in space or some backwater world in the middle of nowhere, you might not live to make it to a place where they could install one.

"Well, little Wisdom," Pausert said teasingly, "time to go be a Witch."

"Very well, Your Majesty," she mocked him back.

Oh, good. A story I haven't seen!

It was a good thing that Pausert's time on stage as King Duncan was limited; the vatch was full of questions. Some of them Pausert couldn't answer, such as the very reasonable question of, if the Witches were so powerful, why didn't Macbeth keep them around to show him the future all the time? "I don't know; I guess it's just the way the story-maker wanted it," was all he could say. The vatch didn't seem to mind that he didn't know, and best of all, it behaved like a mannerly child at a grown-up party.

But as the play hurtled towards its conclusion, he began to get a prickling at the back of his neck. Then Vonard Kleesp appeared at his side, coming from the direction of the dressing rooms.

"Something's amiss, I think," he whispered into Pausert's ear. "I was just coming out of my dressing room and saw a man I don't recognize going into yours. I don't believe he was alone, either. I notified some of the stagehands, but you might want to look into it yourself."

Trouble!said the vatch suddenly, and with great glee. This'll be fun!

And it vanished.

Standing backstage as he was, Pausert could hear the vatch's "fun" as a series of crashes and muffled shouts. Things were falling over—or being knocked over—onto several people who had been, he suspected, trying to sneak around backstage. The vatch had put paid to that particular plan, though. And now, even as the shouts got louder, Pausert saw several burly stagehands converging on the area.

Fortunately, by that point, the final sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff was in full swing. You could probably have staged a barfight backstage without anyone in the audience noticing.

The noises stopped at the point where Macduff killed Macbeth, and the stagehands returned, dusting their hands in satisfaction.

So did the vatch.

The altercation had not escaped the notice of Sir Richard, however. As soon as the last of the curtain calls was over, he came striding backstage with fire in his eye. The first thing his eye lit on was Pausert. "What was the meaning of that ruckus?" he began, but the chief rigger interrupted him.

"He didn't have nothing to do with it, boss," the rigger said. "We caught those four new guys trying to sneak into the dressing rooms. Kleesp gave us the warning."

"Sneak!" Sir Richard snorted. "That didn't sound like sneaking to me!"

One of the lighting techs sniggered. "They had some bad luck, boss," the old man told Sir Richard gleefully. "Bad luck and lots of it, and if I find out what they was smoking before they got here, I'm buyin' a pound. Swore up and down that the props and stuff was getting thrown at 'em and jumpin on 'em. That's what most of the noise was."

"Huh." Sir Richard lost most of his wrath. "And the rest of the noise?"

"Oh," said the chief rigger, attempting to look innocent and failing utterly, "that was them falling down a lot while we was helping 'em find their way out."

"Helping who find their way out?" Himbo Petey asked, having arrived with the rest of the cast. The rigger helpfully explained, while the techs snickered.

"Trying to get into the dressing rooms, hmm?" asked Petey, his jaw tightening. " Which dressing rooms?"

"Well," the rigger said, with a shake of his head. "I almost feel sorry for 'em. Normally fans try to get to the leading lady's room, and thieves too. These guys were such losers they were trying his." He pointed at Pausert.

Cravan blinked. "Have you got something in there you're not telling us about, Aron?"

Pausert shook his head. "Not that I can think of." He'd have to think quickly here and just hope the girls could ad-lib along with whatever story he came up with.

"Unless . . ." He rubbed his jaw. "Well, someone might have been prepared to pay someone to take my older niece back to her stepfather. There's a pretty large family estate involved and nothing much Dani or anyone can do about it until she's of age to sign the documents. Tregger—that's her stepfather—would undoubtedly like to have her back under his eye. I'm the girls' guardian—and I have the papers to prove it. But if I had an accident . . . then they'd go back to Tregger. Ask the girls how they'd like that."

"Please don't let the captain get hurt," said the Leewit, sniffing. "Tregger's mean. He used to beat us. And momma. She died and the captain took us away."

"Huh," said Goth. "The captain'd have dealt with them just like he did with the last one."

It was a superb piece of acting.

"What did these guys tell you?" growled Petey to the riggers.

"Some cock-and-bull story about being friends from way back, and wanting to give the new show-folk a surprise," the rigger said. "We didn't buy it. You don't need a pry-bar for that. Or a cosh and forcecuffs. That was why they fell down a lot on the way out."

Petey turned to Goth and the Leewit, who were wide-eyed. "Just for the record, do you and your sister know any of the new people? Any sausage sellers from way back?"

They both shook their heads vigorously. "Only people I'm friends with outside of the company and my uncle's crew are the fellows in Clown Alley," the Leewit said, in a very small voice.

Goth shook her head. "Don't even know what the new guys look like, sir."

"I don't tolerate people interfering with my thespians!" said Cravan stormily.

"You get no argument from me, Sir Richard. They're working members of the Petey B 's company. We look after own, girls." Petey's face was flushed. He looked to the techs. "You can identify them, of course?"

"Huh. We marked 'em good," said the rigger with satisfaction. "Uh, that is, they got marked pretty good falling down a lot."

Petey reached inside the huge sleeve of his doublet, and pulled out a wrist-com. He tapped out a sequence, and spoke into it. " Hey, rube! Backstage. Theater."