46.

The Wall That Stole the Joke

Rainhill, Year 198 AGH

The wall came through the door on its edge. Romal Dren, a human scenic carpenter, had his hands under the nearer end, where he could feel the weight beginning to turn, and Garn Tell stood inside the hall with room to step backward.

“Mine down a little,” Garn said.

Romal lowered his end. The wrapped corner cleared the lintel. They carried the wall past the first stack of benches and set it on the two blocks Garn had put ready. When Romal straightened, the relief in his arms ran pleasantly all the way into his hands.

“That is the largest thing,” he said.

Garn looked toward the door.

“In your load.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The other Handwheel players were bringing in the chair, the plain doorway, their clothes and the rest of the furniture. Garn went to help with a bench whose carriers had reached the same narrow turn from different ideas of which end should lead. He was one of the Rainhill workers hired for their engagement, a tall orc with long arms and small lower tusks that showed when he spoke. He had already shifted the receiving table out of the carrying route. Romal unfastened the wall’s straps and wound each one around itself instead of leaving it where a foot would find it.

Nothing had rubbed through the wrapping. He followed the corners with his palm. The little folded leaf lay exactly where he had put it, within the width of the larger faces.

Hedda Vinn, a dwarf, came up carrying the low stool under one arm and her paint box under the other.

“Which side?”

He pointed to the stage. “The doorway nearer the middle than we had it in Tavren. There’s less width here.”

She put the stool down and stood on it to look over the stacked benches. Her eyes went from one end of the hall to the other.

“Leave me enough room for the table.”

“I have.”

“You have left room for a table. I mean ours.”

He fetched the table with her. It was wider than he remembered, though he had packed it himself. Hedda waited while he measured the proposed space with his feet, then put her paint box where he had first intended the doorway to stand.

“There,” he said. “Keep that there until we’ve set it.”

She opened the box and began work on the stool’s worn edge.

By the time they raised the wall, the hall’s side windows had put broad strips of light across the floor. Garn steadied the plain frame while Romal set its brace. The hinged section spread beside it. One broad painted face opened, then another, and at the last pull the small end leaf emerged from a space that seemed too narrow to have contained it. It came round square and completed the corner of a room.

Garn bent to look behind it.

“Where did that one go?”

Romal reached for the small leaf. “It turns in before this face comes across. There’s a space behind the edge, if you look from here.”

“Show me when we pack. We’ll have to close it then.” Garn took the brace Romal had offered him. “They need the floor now.”

Their half-elf actor, Ilye Voss, was waiting with the chair. She had gathered her dark chestnut hair out of her face, and held the chair by one curved arm while an actor at the other side kept its feet above Hedda’s wet paint box.

“Where am I to be magnificent?” she asked.

Romal showed her.

She looked at the opened wall, then through the doorway. “Oh, I like that.”

She passed into the room it made and came out with her shoulders settled into the proud host’s expensive ease. Her ordinary rehearsal clothes did not prevent it. The chair followed, broad seated, with arms that invited a person to remain longer than they had intended. A pale patch marked the curve where hands had worn the finish. Everything else in the room was a bench or a stool.

“I keep this chair for particular friends,” Ilye said.

The actor playing her first guest removed a hat and started to sit.

Ilye held out a hand.

“And you are, of course, a particular friend.”

“I was beginning to wonder.”

“I wished to say it before you sat down.”

The guest waited, with bent knees.

“I have said it.”

The guest sat. Ilye admired the result as if the sitting were a further achievement of her hospitality.

Romal smiled. Behind the wall, the young stage worker who had traveled with them put a hand on the operating rail. At Ilye’s next line, the broad face would close off the first room. The guest would rise to follow the host out for a promised view of the garden, leaving the hat on the chair. The actor playing the household companion would move the chair along the passage hidden behind the flats. Another face would open, and there would be the chair in what appeared to be a different room.

No one had to hurry dangerously. The leaves did most of the traveling.

“From the garden,” Hedda said, putting her brush down. “I need to see whether the cushion gets here in time.”

They took it from the garden.

The first guest departed through the plain opening. Ilye turned to greet the second, who carried a cushion against her stomach.

“You did bring it. Excellent. I have kept the comfortable chair for you.”

“By the window?”

“Where you asked.”

The broad face swung away. The narrow leaf turned and lay neatly against its stop. The chair appeared below a painted window, with the first guest’s hat in its seat.

Ilye’s smile held. Her eyes dropped to the hat. She took it up delicately, examined its inside as though looking for instructions, and put it behind her back.

“There was a little dust.”

“Is that what you keep it in?” the guest asked.

Hedda laughed with the brush between her fingers.

The third guest came for the chair at the table. Ilye had promised him that seat too, although she now claimed that a place at the head of a table was chiefly a state of mind. They ran the chair behind the wall again. The first guest returned from the garden looking for the hat, and the second went to find the household companion, whose cushion she had apparently been sent to collect without their having heard of the arrangement. The actors met in the little passage, waited for one another to clear it, and came out precisely where they were meant to.

Romal watched the last leaf finish its turn. He loved the way it ceased to look like a moving piece and became, in an instant, the edge of a room.

During the lean years from 186 to 190, the exhibition commission they had expected had disappeared before it became work they could rely on. He and the other scenic workers had turned to smaller things that could travel. At first he had kept thinking of the space they would not have. Now he could make this much room come out of a load that fitted through the door they had just used.

They had paid to bring it here. The company had rented the hall, booked the local calls and found beds for the nights of the engagement. There was enough time to rehearse and enough room to open the wall. Romal went to the far end of the benches to see it from there.

Ilye, who had reached the last scene, sat on the low stool and announced that she had chosen the best view in the house. She had to lean a considerable distance to see round the seated guests.

“That stool is still wet,” Hedda said.

Ilye rose without changing the host’s expression.

“I prefer to admire it standing.”

Hedda caught her by the loose back of the rehearsal coat and checked for paint. There was none. She released her, and they began again from the third arrival.

*   *   *

For the first performance Romal took an end place halfway back. He could see the wall well and leave without crossing anyone if the operator needed him, although there was no reason the operator should. The braces had been checked. The working rail was clear. He put his folded coat on his knees and made himself sit against the back of the bench.

Ilye entered wearing the host’s coat, its front falling smoothly over her full body. Her hair had been dressed differently, and her broad face wore a look of patient expectation that made the audience quiet before she spoke. She inspected the room, moved the low stool a little farther from the good chair, and opened the door for her first guest.

“My dear friend. You must be tired.”

“Very.”

“Then you must tell me everything.”

The guest looked at the chair.

“Sitting down?”

Ilye appeared pleasantly surprised by the suggestion. She offered the chair with a sweeping hand.

The first invitation went well. Someone in front of Romal laughed at the guest waiting above the seat for permission to finish sitting. Ilye brought a cup, set it just beyond the guest’s reach and asked a question that required an answer before the cup could be rescued. The guest answered, reached, and had to answer again. Finally the cup arrived in the guest’s hand because the household companion put it there while passing with a basket.

“Thank you,” the guest said.

Ilye accepted the thanks.

Romal had seen it often enough to know the next line, but he still liked the gracious inclination of her head.

Then came the garden. The guest rose, leaving the hat in the chair, and followed Ilye through the doorway. The wall closed that room. Romal heard the companion’s soft steps in the passage behind it. The broad face moved, the narrow one folded back, and the chair appeared beneath the painted window just as Ilye ushered in the second guest.

The response traveled across the hall in a pleased burst. A man near the front leaned toward his neighbor and pointed. Romal let his hands relax on his coat.

The chair looked as though it had stayed still while the house changed around it.

Ilye saw the hat. Her eyes went down, her mouth began to prepare an explanation, and the last leaf settled with a small wooden knock.

The man at the front pointed again. Two people near Romal were looking at the joint where the leaf had vanished against the larger face. The guest’s question about the hat brought their attention back. By then Ilye was putting it behind her back.

“There was a little dust.”

“Is that what you keep it in?”

A few people laughed. Ilye moved into the next line without waiting for more.

Romal rubbed one thumb along the edge of his coat. The knock had been audible farther back than he had expected. In rehearsal he had been close enough for it to seem part of the handling. Out here it announced the final movement.

The third guest arrived, wanting the place at the table. The second had gone to ask the companion about the cushion, and the chair made its concealed journey again. Before the face opened, a child two benches ahead leaned sideways to see what the small leaf would do. The adult beside the child leaned too.

“I have always thought,” Ilye was saying, “that the head of a table should be wherever my guest chooses to sit.”

The chair appeared. The third guest took one look at it and sat before the host could finish the gesture of invitation. The audience applauded the change of room.

Ilye waited for the noise to pass. Then she extended the uncompleted hand toward the seated guest, turned it over and found a use for it in adjusting her cuff.

Romal liked that. He had never seen her do it before. The people looking toward the little leaf seemed not to notice.

The first guest returned for the hat and found it in the host’s hand. The second came back carrying the cushion, followed by the companion, who wanted it for the bench by the work basket. All three claims on the chair were at last in the same room. The host attempted to demonstrate that no two of them had ever been made at the same time.

“You told me it was mine for the evening,” said the first guest.

“An evening contains many occasions.”

“I have only brought one.”

This received a good laugh. Ilye looked over the guest’s shoulder, toward a more promising listener, and began again.

The last arrangement took some moving. The chair stayed at the table, the bench came forward, and the host’s effort to keep the guests apart ended with all three discussing the garden. The companion carried the reclaimed cushion to the work basket. Ilye found the low stool and lowered herself onto it with the dignity of someone accepting a throne chosen for its historical significance.

“This is the best view in the house.”

She craned round the chair. The corner of the opened wall hid her from the end benches until she leaned farther. A laugh came from the middle. Romal shifted his own head to see her face, then realized that he had done it.

The show finished. People clapped; the actors came out together. Ilye’s long fine nose and broad cheeks were bright under the stage light when she bowed. The wall stood behind them, its painted rooms apparently more spacious than the hall that contained them.

Romal went round to thank the operator. The young worker had been pleased with the first change and had heard the knock too.

“It’s the stop,” Romal said. “I can soften that.”

“Do you want it now?”

“Tomorrow. Go and eat.”

The worker took off the work apron and went.

Ilye was sitting on a packing box by the dressing screen, pulling off the host’s shoes. Hedda had the coat over her arm. A little row of pins lay on the box beside Ilye.

“Did you see the hat?” Ilye asked Romal.

“Yes.”

“Not the hat itself. The bit before I pick it up.”

He tried to recover her face at that instant. He remembered the narrow leaf, the knock, the man pointing.

“The movement takes their eyes over,” he said. “The last little sound tells them to look. I can get rid of that.”

“I’ve finished the smile by the time they come back.” She put one shoe inside the other. “Then I’m holding a hat and saying a line. There’s no room left for finding it.”

“If the last leaf comes round with the broad face, instead of just after it, they’ll have the whole room at once. And I can pad the stop.”

Hedda turned the coat to look at a loose fastening. “We’ve got the hall and Garn’s morning call. How long?”

“Not long. It’s a change of pickup.”

“We can try it before we put the benches back,” Ilye said. She gathered the pins into a little paper fold. “I don’t want to keep doing the line louder.”

Hedda asked whether either of them had eaten. Ilye said she had eaten before the show and was hungry again. Romal had forgotten the food he had left beside his bag. He went to fetch it while they put the coat away.

*   *   *

The new stop made a sound Romal could feel through the rail but scarcely hear. He ran the broad face through its movement twice, then changed the pickup of the narrow leaf. On the third try the two finished together.

Garn, carrying a bench past the front of the stage, stopped to watch.

“That’s good.”

“Try it.”

Garn set down the bench and came up. Romal showed him how far to draw the rail. The broad face swept across; the small leaf came round at the same time, and both settled without the separate knock.

Garn did it again, more slowly, looking toward the hinges.

“You don’t feel the little one arrive.”

“No. That’s the point.”

Romal wanted to do it once more himself. Instead he called to the actors, who were laying out the cushion, hat and cups. Ilye drank the last of her tea and put the cup on the floor behind the dressing screen, away from the stage properties.

They started with the garden departure. The chair moved behind the closed wall. Ilye brought in the guest with the cushion. Romal gave the cue its new pickup.

The room opened in one clean movement.

“Oh,” Hedda said, from a bench.

It was better than he had thought it would be. The chair and painted window arrived together. There was no little final motion to explain what had happened. He looked from the finished leaf to Ilye.

She already had the hat behind her back.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“Here.”

“I mean looking.”

He took his hand off the rail.

She came forward. “Sit down for this one. Let him do it.” She indicated the young operator, who was waiting beside the stage. “I want to show you the bit that’s gone.”

Romal went to the bench Hedda had occupied. She moved her cup to make room, but he sat at the end instead. From there he could see both bays and nearly all the plain doorway.

Garn had reached the back with his bench. “I keep looking at the other hole,” he said.

Ilye turned toward him.

“When one shuts,” Garn said, “I’m waiting for the next one. Even if you’re down there talking. I want to see how the chair’s going to turn up.”

“Yes,” Ilye said. “Can you watch from there while we do it?”

He sat. They ran it again.

Romal kept his attention on Ilye until the face of the wall began to move. Then he caught himself looking past her shoulder. He knew exactly what was going to happen. It made no difference. The appearance of the chair was too satisfying to leave unwatched.

Ilye let the hat remain in the seat.

“That’s where I am,” she said. She held the host’s smile for another moment. “That much time.”

Romal could see it now: the mouth maintaining an invitation while the eyes encountered a hat that should have been in another room. The effort was small. It needed him to be there when it happened.

Hedda got up and took the cushion from the guest.

“Can we do it without putting the chair behind anything?” she asked.

The companion’s actor leaned round the plain doorway. “I can carry it across.”

“You wanted it at the table. Take it to the table. Ilye, keep him here.” Hedda indicated the third guest. “Give him the assurance about no other invitations.”

“From which line?” Ilye asked.

“‘I have made no arrangement that could inconvenience you.’”

“That one always cheers me up.”

They put the first guest in the chair. The host sent that guest to admire the garden; the guest got up and went. The companion took the vacant chair and came out in full view, carrying it toward the table while Ilye assured the third guest that there was no competing arrangement.

From Romal’s seat the chair’s high back passed in front of her face.

“Wait,” he said.

The actor stopped, holding the chair.

“Put it down. We’ll move that whole section out.” Romal went up to the stage and pointed to the hinged faces. “Keep the doorway. If it stands farther in, you can come through and across without going in front of Ilye.”

Hedda looked at the plain frame. “Do we need another flat on this side?”

“No. We’ve got the room behind. We need to move the brace, that’s all.”

“Can I still get out by the basket?” the companion’s actor asked.

Romal walked the route with him. They could. The other guest could wait behind the opening without standing in anyone’s path.

Ilye set the hat on the table. “Let’s try.”

The operator helped Romal disengage the hinged section. Garn held it while Romal released the last fixing, and the two of them carried it to the side where the wrapping lay. Opened partway, it stood securely on its own. Romal put the fixings in their pocket inside the wrapping. His hand passed over the new pad on the stop, still clean.

He moved the plain opening with Garn. The actors shifted their furniture. Hedda walked through with the cushion to see what remained visible, then handed it back and took Romal’s former end seat.

The stage looked unexpectedly bare. Romal could see an old patch in the rear curtain that had been concealed by his painted corner. He considered moving a cloth to cover it, then went to the other end of the hall first.

“A little toward the table,” he called. “The doorway. Just enough that I can see his hand on the chair.”

They shifted it. He could see the chair emerge, the companion carrying it toward the table, and Ilye standing clear on the other side. Neither the chair nor her face hid the other.

“From the assurance,” Hedda said.

Ilye took the guest’s hand in both of hers.

“I have made no arrangement that could inconvenience you.”

The chair crossed the open space beside her. She continued to look at the guest, with a confidence that had almost become tender. The companion put the chair by the table. Only then did her eyes follow it.

Her hands were still holding the guest’s hand.

The guest looked down at them. Ilye let go of one hand, as though that were the part of the arrangement requiring immediate correction.

Romal had opened his mouth to say the doorway could stay there. What came out was a laugh, abrupt enough that Hedda looked round at him.

Ilye kept looking at the guest. “You see?” she said in the host’s voice. “Plenty of room.”

“For one of us,” the guest said.

She glanced at the chair again.

Romal sat on the end of a bench. He was still laughing, and wanted them to go on.

But Ilye released the guest and shook out her hands.

“Once more. I went after it too soon.”

“You went after it when it had stopped,” Hedda said.

“I know. I think I can leave it there longer.”

The companion returned the chair. They tried again. This time Ilye finished the reassurance, gave the guest a little pressure of the hand and then seemed to hear, belatedly, the ordinary sound of the chair being set down.

Romal waited for her to look. The waiting itself made him smile.

“That,” Ilye said, dropping the role when the exchange had finished. “I want that.”

The companion asked whether he should still take the cushion back in the last scene. Hedda said yes, he needed it at the basket and had been promised it back. They went through the end without the folding faces. The first guest moved the bench to join the conversation at the table. The third guest offered to shift, the second said there was room if he would stop defending his elbow, and Ilye was left holding the low stool in both hands.

“I can come forward here,” she said.

Romal tried the end seat again. “A little. There. You’re clear.”

She sat. Her first attempt to see round the chair brought her face into the same view as the people ignoring the host.

Hedda asked them to hold while she marked the stool’s place. Garn rose from the rear bench and began resetting the audience rows. The call still had time in it. Romal helped him with two benches before going back to fasten the doorway in its new position.

At the meal break he sat beside the wall’s folded section with his food on his knees. The little leaf was partly open. From that angle he could see the narrow clearance that let the two broad faces close flat, and how well the new stop sat against the timber. He pushed it once with a finger, watching it arrive silently.

Ilye passed on her way outside.

“Are you eating that?” she asked.

He looked at the food. “Yes.”

“It’s getting away from you.”

A piece had slid to the edge of the wrapping. He caught it before it fell. She went out into the light, and he ate before tightening the last fastening.

*   *   *

The next evening Romal did not take his former place. He sat farther back, where the empty part of the stage looked larger and the plain opening seemed scarcely enough to promise a house.

Ilye came through it and changed that. She inspected the chair, moved the low stool away from it and opened the door to her first guest.

“My dear friend. You must be tired.”

“Very.”

“Then you must tell me everything.”

The guest looked at the chair, and Romal heard someone near him laugh before the question about sitting down. He settled farther back on the bench.

The guest’s descent stopped for the host’s declaration of particular friendship. Ilye let the pause go long enough for bent knees to become a practical objection, then gave her permission with such generosity that the guest seemed obliged to be grateful for finally reaching the seat. When the cup was placed beyond reach, the guest looked at it for a moment before answering the next question.

The companion crossed to put the cup in the waiting hand.

“Thank you.”

Ilye inclined her head.

The companion, already on the way back to the work basket, stopped and looked at her. Ilye’s head stayed inclined. A laugh ran through the nearer benches, and the companion continued with the basket.

The garden invitation came. The guest rose, put the hat in the seat and followed the host through the plain opening. While they were out, the companion took the chair toward the window side, stopping to remove the hat and put it on the table. The audience could see the whole journey. Romal felt a brief urge to fill the space with something, a turned face, a changed angle of wall. Then Ilye returned with the second guest and the cushion.

“I have kept the comfortable chair for you.”

“By the window?”

“Where you asked.”

“You did remember.”

“I forget nothing that concerns the comfort of a guest.”

From beyond the opening, the first guest asked whether anyone had seen a hat.

Ilye’s hand went to the empty place behind her back where she had concealed it in the earlier staging. She discovered nothing there, found the hat on the table and smiled at it with the welcome due to an unexpected ally.

“Here. Exactly where I put it.”

The first guest returned and looked at the chair.

“I thought it was over there.”

“Your hat?”

“The chair.”

“You were looking at the garden. Come, you haven’t seen the other end.”

“Is there a chair at that end?”

Ilye took a moment over the answer.

“There is a view.”

The second guest put the cushion in the chair and began to sit, but the companion came through with the empty work basket.

“Did you bring my cushion?”

“He said I was to.”

The companion looked at the host. The host was showing the first guest the way out with both hands and a great deal of attention.

“I’ll want it when I come back,” the companion said.

“Of course,” said the second guest, sitting on it.

The companion looked from the occupied cushion to the empty basket, put the basket by the bench and went to fetch the work that belonged in it.

The third guest arrived to be shown the place at the table. Ilye welcomed him with relief so visible that he checked behind himself for the person she might actually be pleased to see.

“You have come at exactly the right time.”

“You said this time.”

“And here you are.”

He looked toward the table. “Am I to sit?”

“Certainly.”

“There?”

“A little nearer.”

There was no chair there yet. Ilye turned to the second guest and asked whether the window was not rather bright for her eyes.

“No, thank you.”

“I had thought the other side might be more comfortable.”

The guest shifted the cushion, settled farther back and said it was very comfortable here.

Ilye turned to the waiting guest. Her mouth formed the beginning of an assurance, but he was looking past her at the seated woman. She let the unspoken assurance subside.

The first guest returned from the garden and reported that there were no seats at the other end either.

The second rose to see what she had missed. She left the cushion on the chair. The companion came back, found it there and took it to the bench by the work basket. Then, at the host’s quick gesture, he picked up the vacant chair and carried it toward the table.

Ilye was already giving her assurance.

“I have made no arrangement that could inconvenience you.”

The chair traveled across the open space beyond her extended arm. The third guest watched it come. Ilye kept her whole attention on him, holding his hand, her confidence perfectly sufficient for the room she had been in a moment before.

The chair was set down.

She continued looking at the guest.

Romal found himself leaning forward, although he could see very well.

Ilye’s eyes moved toward the chair. She stopped with her face halfway turned, as if perhaps it would go away if she did not quite acknowledge it. The guest began to withdraw his hand. She looked back, released one of her two hands and said, with enormous reassurance, “Plenty of room.”

“For one of us.”

The laugh arrived while she was still considering which one. Romal felt it in his own breath. When the guest finally took the chair, she had to step away from the place she had intended to occupy while explaining the arrangement.

The first guest returned for the cup. The second followed, wanting to know who now had the cushion. The companion was sitting on it at the work basket, comfortably occupied, and pointed to the bench beside him without offering to get up.

“There’s room here.”

The second guest sat beside the basket. The first brought the cup over. Their talk began with the garden, which one of them had now seen twice and the other not at all.

The host tried to answer a question that had not been addressed to him.

“I have always said the far end is particularly fine.”

“Have you?” said the first guest. “I couldn’t see it for the hedge.”

The third guest turned the comfortable chair to join them.

“You have to go round the hedge.”

“That wasn’t mentioned.”

“I can show you after tea.”

Ilye took the low stool. She carried it toward the little group, found the place she meant to use occupied by the work basket, and brought it round to the other side. She sat down with a careful adjustment of the coat.

“This is the best view in the house.”

The third guest’s chair was in front of her. She leaned round it. He leaned forward to hear the first guest’s description of the garden and blocked her again. Ilye sat upright, waited, then moved the stool by a small, dignified amount.

The companion shifted the basket out of the way of her feet. She accepted this accommodation with a gracious nod.

Then the second guest turned toward the table and blocked the new view.

Romal was ready for the look Ilye gave the back of that guest’s head. He had still not expected how long she would wait before moving the stool again.

The curtain drew across while she was lifting it, coat gathered with one hand, dignity traveling with her in the other. Romal clapped with the people around him. When the actors came out, Ilye was smiling in her own way, her eyes going along the rows rather than inspecting the comfortable arrangement of an imaginary household.

Afterward he found Hedda putting the cushion in its bag.

“That second move of the stool,” he said.

“I know.”

“She left it so late.”

Hedda folded the bag’s flap. “You should tell her. She was still deciding before we went on.”

He did. Ilye asked which move he meant, and when he showed her, she began to explain what she had been listening for in the guests’ conversation. He stood with her while the others cleared the stage and heard how she had waited for the question about going round the hedge. Then she had to get out of the host’s coat, and he went to help with the table.

*   *   *

During the paid packing call, the chair proved more awkward than the wall.

It had traveled with its back against a broad case. Put there now, it would leave the stool and the work basket buried behind it. Romal wanted those where they could be reached without opening half the load. Garn turned the chair onto its side on the wrapping and looked through the space under its arms.

“Stool in here?”

They tried it. The legs fitted between the chair’s rails, but the stool’s seat pressed against the pale worn arm.

“Other way,” Romal said.

Garn lifted it out. Romal turned the stool and eased it in again. This time there was room for a folded pad between the two polished surfaces. The work basket could sit beside the chair, with the cushion bag inside it.

Ilye came over carrying the host’s shoes in a cloth bag. Her hair was loose again, falling in waves against the collar of her traveling coat.

“May I?” she asked, pointing to the chair.

Garn lifted out the stool, and they brought the chair upright. She sat down, shifted once to test it on the uneven floorboards, and looked from Romal to Garn.

“I keep this chair for particular friends.”

Garn held up the stool.

“We’ve found room for another.”

Ilye looked at it with the host’s patient disappointment. Romal laughed and steadied the chair while she got up. She picked up the shoes and went back to her own bag. Hedda called her to help roll the cloth that had dressed the table.

They secured the chair and carried it to the waiting load. Lodging bags were already there, with the company’s other cases. Garn checked the carrying path, then came back for the wall.

Romal drew the broad faces together. The little leaf remained outside them.

“Now,” Garn said. “Before you shut it.”

“This is the bit you couldn’t see.” Romal opened the faces enough to put his hand between them. “The narrow one goes in first. Not against that edge. Past it.”

He turned the little leaf inward. It entered the space behind the broader face, its hinge traveling just clear of the neighboring timber. Then the broad face closed over it, leaving the packed edge flat.

Garn crouched to look along the bottom.

“I thought you had another piece tucked in there.”

“There’s room because this hinge sits farther back. Look.”

Romal opened it again. He showed Garn the clearance before turning the small leaf inward a second time. Slowly, so the relation stayed visible, he brought the broad one over it. The last little gap disappeared.

“Do it,” he said.

Garn opened the faces. He held the broad one with his knee while he took the small leaf through its turn. For a moment he had the angle wrong; he moved his hand, and the narrow piece slid into its allotted space.

“There.”

“Yes.”

Garn closed the broad face and ran his palm down the packed edge. He looked up at Romal with a pleased, slightly incredulous smile.

“I like that.”

“So do I.”

Romal held the wrapping clear while Garn brought it over the corners. The chair was already secured outside. Garn passed the travel strap around the closed wall, and Romal caught the end as it came under.