49.

No More Heroes Tonight

Orbag, Year 194 AGH

Dema put her coat on the chair and stood back to consider the man she meant it to contain.

He was a nuisance already. He had agreed to return the coat, and now he was making arrangements to return it which would prevent its owner from ever receiving it. Dema shifted her weight over one hip, gave the empty collar an encouraging nod, and became the person who was supposed to take it from him.

“I could have it now.”

She changed places with the chair.

“You could. Only then you’d have to carry it.”

Niva had stopped writing. That was something.

Dema was twenty-nine, an orc, and usually paid to enter a room as if everyone in it had been waiting to be rescued. She knew what to do with her shoulders for that. Here she let them fall, pulled the coat into her arms and tried to pass it to a person who had just inconveniently become herself.

There was no space for the turn she wanted. Niva’s table occupied the near corner, and somebody had stacked boards against the other wall. Dema backed toward the second doorway, intending to go out as one person and come in as another.

The doorway contained a cupboard.

A shelf stopped her between the shoulders. She had the coat in front of her, both elbows out, and the door coming back against one arm. For a moment she could neither retreat nor complete the entrance. Niva put down her pen.

Dema looked at the sleeve caught between them.

“You can bring it back yourself, then.”

She pushed the empty sleeve farther into the cupboard and tried to withdraw. It followed her.

Niva laughed. Dema gave the sleeve one last, injured look and got herself out.

The laugh had gone on longer than the difficulty warranted. She wanted to do the movement again, while she still knew where it lived in her back. Instead she laid the coat over the chair and pulled down her shirt, which had ridden up under it.

“That is not the proper entrance,” she said.

“No.” Niva was still smiling. “I should have told you.”

“You might have waited until I was all the way in.”

“I thought you knew.”

Dema looked at the cupboard, then at the rest of the room. A part of her had been imagining benches, lights, the space made useful around the small inconvenience of her chair. Now she saw the boards again, and the marks where damp had reached the lower wall.

“There would be three people,” she said. “In the whole piece. I wouldn’t keep doing all of them.”

“Have you written it?”

“Enough to know it can be done.”

Niva reached for the paper Dema had brought. It was a short proposal, folded once, with a smudge beside the word contemporary where Dema had changed what came after it.

“I can keep this,” Niva said. “I can’t commission it today.”

“I wasn’t asking you to put an audience in tomorrow.”

“I have to pay people before I can put an audience in at all.” Niva shifted a second paper away from the damp mark on the table. “The room is leased. The work on it is still work we have to buy.”

Dema wanted to say that she would be cheap. She had almost said it before she looked down at her coat. Its cuff had been repaired once already, and one of the buttons was newer than the others.

“Keep the proposal,” she said.

Niva laid it beside her other papers, where it would stay dry.

Dema put on the coat. The sleeve came willingly this time. At the door she looked back, not at the table but at the gap beside the cupboard, and took two small steps through the movement without the chair. Niva waited for her to finish.

Orbag, Year 199 AGH

The new door shut properly. Dema disliked having to admire it while a man offered to pay for plays she did not want to write.

He had put his terms on the table between them. Niva’s larger sheet lay beside them, with the proposed program and the costs of the work still to be done. Dema had brought a drawing of three stage doors. The drawing was under her hand, folded along a line which was beginning to split.

“It needn’t all be solemn,” the sponsor’s representative said. “There are lighter episodes.”

“Within memorial programming,” Niva said.

“Yes. That is what the offer supports.”

“Every performance?”

“Every commissioned work. Exclusivity is part of the value to us.”

Dema pressed the fold flat with her thumb.

“I have written a play about a borrowed coat.”

“I understand.”

“It isn’t a coat anyone famous wore.”

He glanced at the drawing. “Could that be changed?”

“No.”

Niva moved the terms a little toward him.

“We’re keeping a contemporary program,” she said. “We can’t take the offer on that condition.”

For a moment Dema felt wonderfully accompanied. Niva said it without looking to her for support. The man asked whether a separate program could be arranged under another name. Niva asked whether the exclusive condition would still cover the association’s commissions. It would. He gathered his papers, wished them success with the opening, and went out through the sound new door.

Dema waited until it had shut.

“Well,” she said.

Niva drew a line through a commission on the larger sheet.

Dema’s hand went still on the drawing.

“That one goes?”

“We can’t commission both.”

“And this?”

Niva turned a smaller sheet toward her. Dema read the reduced allowance twice. The second reading did not restore the money for the door unit.

“That is almost the whole build.”

“The screen we have is available. The stage entrances are usable.”

“They aren’t where the doors in the play are.”

“I know.”

“You said you wanted this piece.”

“I do.”

Dema could hear her own voice getting louder. Beyond the wall someone was testing a fitting, turning it and turning it back. The small regular knock made her want to knock on the wall in return.

“There’s exchange money.”

“For the exchanges.”

“Some of it.”

Niva brought over the page with the travel and receiving costs. “Which?”

Dema looked. There was carriage, there were beds, there was work at the other end which somebody had agreed to pay for. She had imagined a sum waiting under a name, not this succession of people expecting it.

“I’m asking whether we can move anything.”

“We can talk about the production allowance. We can’t spend the Rainhill room money and still buy the Rainhill room.”

Dema pushed the paper back. She did not want the man called in again. She did want her doors.

She folded the drawing. One of its drawn hinges disappeared into the split.

“Perhaps it isn’t the piece to do now.”

Niva did not immediately contradict her. She picked up her pen, then set it down again.

“Will the screen do it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

It could do the hiding. It could do more than one hiding if she moved it. She would lose the fast return through the other door, and Serren would have to learn a different crossing. At thirty-four she was very tired of being told that an orc could simply fill a room by standing in it. There were three people in this play. They needed somewhere to go.

“How much rehearsal is left?”

Niva showed her the calls. Dema counted them, then asked about crew help and the time for setting the screen before the room was needed for something else. Niva checked the booking beneath her sheet. The answer was shorter than Dema wanted, but it was an answer.

“And the actors are paid for those calls?”

“Yes.”

Dema opened the drawing once more. She put a finger over one door, then another. Niva watched without assisting.

“I’ll need to turn the screen.”

“Check the route with the stage worker.”

“I will.”

She signed the smaller contract. Afterward Niva needed the chair Dema had pulled up to the table; somebody was coming to discuss an advance rental. Dema moved it back to its place and took her drawing with her.

The screen stood in the hall with a cloth over its rail. The rail came just below her chin. She lifted off the cloth and turned it a little. It moved more easily than she had expected. She turned it again, too far, and had to catch the end with both hands.

“All right,” she said to it.

There was nobody there to hear.

*   *   *

Serren came in before Dema had got the coat onto the screen.

She stopped.

He stopped too. They had been a couple. He was a tall human man, narrow through the shoulders, with a little softness at the waist which the old heroic costumes had never known what to do with. This morning he had pushed the longer part of his dark blond hair back until it was standing up at the front.

“On the turn,” Dema said.

“I thought you meant the line.”

“The line comes before the turn.”

“Yes, I understand.”

She had not finished showing him.

Dema put the coat down and made the movement again. Serren went back to the entrance. The actor playing Bela, who had already taken off her outdoor shoes, stood beside her chair waiting to be told whether they were going from the beginning.

They went from the beginning.

Serren made the correct entrance this time. Dema handed him the coat, took it back, and spoke the line which had seemed funny at her table. He waited. There was space after it which neither of them occupied.

“Don’t just wait,” she said.

“I’m waiting for you to finish.”

“You’ve decided you know what I’m saying already.”

He looked at her.

She meant Marn. She could make it mean Marn.

“Say you understand,” she said. “Before I finish. Then Iri has to make you hear it.”

Serren rubbed the back of his neck. “All right.”

He tried it. She cut across him. The actor playing Bela made a small movement toward the coat and stopped when Dema spoke again. Dema gave Iri a new line, then another. Marn agreed with both. Each agreement made it easier to show that he had not understood.

For a few exchanges she liked it very much.

Then Serren tried to take the coat to Bela.

“No,” Dema said. “You can’t leave yet.”

“I’m giving it back.”

“She hasn’t finished with you.”

He held the coat against his chest. Its sleeves hung a little short of his wrists.

“Should I hide it?”

“That’s just another way of not listening.”

The other actor lowered the hand she had been holding out.

“When do I get it?” she asked.

“In a moment.”

“I’ve been asking for it for a while.”

Dema looked at her pages. There were three new lines in the margin. The last was something she had wanted to say to Serren, made shorter.

Serren put the coat on the chair.

“What does Marn want here?”

“He needs to understand that Iri can tell when he’s agreed just to stop her talking.”

“I can hear that.” He waited. “What am I doing until I understand it?”

She began to answer, stopped, and read the line again.

“Try it once more.”

“From where?”

She could not find a place which would make a difference.

The actor playing Bela went to her bag and took out a cloth-wrapped meal. “Are we stopping for a bit?”

“Yes,” Dema said. “I need to work on it.”

Serren stood beside the chair while Dema gathered the pages. He was twenty-nine. She knew the small inward movement of his mouth when he was deciding not to say something, and wished for a moment that she did not.

“I’ll let you know about the next call,” she said.

“All right.”

The stage worker came to ask whether the screen could be put away. There was still paid rehearsal time left. Dema said yes, helped turn it clear, and found the cloth for its rail. Serren put on his own coat. Bela’s actor ate standing up while she waited for enough room to get to her shoes.

Dema went out last with a coat under one arm and pages which kept trying to slide out of the other.

*   *   *

At home she laid the coat inside out across her table.

The lining was sound. The repair at the cuff was beginning to fade into the rest of it, and there was a place near the hem where she had mended the same small opening twice. She ran a finger along the inner fold and turned the cloth back. Two layers. If she caught both, the stitch would hold.

She had a length of yellow ribbon which was too good to throw away and too short for most of the things she had thought of doing with it. She put it across the lining, shifted it, and sewed its middle down through the fold. Both ends remained free.

Then she tried to remove it in a hurry.

The cloth puckered. She stopped before it tore.

“Yes,” she said.

Iri had put it there for Marn. She had seen him wearing the coat and assumed it was his. He would find the ribbon the next time he put it on, and then perhaps he would do something about it. But it was not his coat.

Dema picked up a clean sheet.

Marn had borrowed the coat from Bela. Bela had taken a deposit, a day’s pay, and Marn wanted it back. The coat had to be intact. He would watch anybody who approached it with a needle.

She wrote until the bread beside her elbow had gone hard at the cut edge. Then she ate it anyway, holding the paper at a distance so she would not get crumbs in the wet ink.

The next paid call began with Serren reading the new page while Dema reset the stitches she had unpicked at her table. Bela’s actor sat with her shoes on this time. There was no point taking them off until they knew where she would be moving.

“A whole day’s pay?” Serren said.

“You wanted the coat.”

“Marn wanted the coat.”

“Yes.”

He read farther. “When is she coming?”

“Later than she actually comes.”

“How much later?”

“Long enough for Iri to think she can get the ribbon out.”

He looked at the coat, then at Bela’s actor. “I can do that.”

Dema finished the last stitch and held up the inside. “It goes through the folded lining. If I pull, it tears. I need you to leave it alone for a minute.”

“I’m not leaving it alone if you’re tearing it.”

“Exactly.”

They began with Iri finishing the gift. Dema sat on the chair, took a small stitch and smiled to herself. She disliked the smile at first. It felt too exposed in front of two people who were waiting to work. She tried again, letting Iri consider what Marn would do when he found the ribbon.

Serren came for the coat.

“You’ve got it ready?”

“Nearly.”

“Bela wants it back before supper.”

Dema looked down at the collar.

“Bela?”

“Her coat. My money. I’d like to exchange them again.”

“You borrowed it.”

Serren reached for the sleeve. Dema kept it just beyond his hand.

“I have to mend something.”

“What have you done to it?”

The speed with which he asked made her glance up. He was already looking for damage. She pulled the coat around, hiding the inside against herself.

“Nothing.”

“Then give it here.”

She got it onto the peg on the back of the screen and put herself between him and it. The needle was still in her hand. If he would go away, she could lift the stitches. If he would even turn around.

Bela’s actor came through the entrance.

“I’m early,” she said.

“You are,” Dema said, with sufficient feeling to make Serren look at her.

He caught the edge of the screen and turned it.

“Here it is.”

The coat moved out of Dema’s shelter and arrived, displayed, in front of its owner. Dema found herself standing beside an empty patch of air with the needle held behind her leg.

Bela’s actor reached for the collar. Dema caught the sleeve.

“It needs cleaning.”

Serren took the other sleeve. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Inside.”

He turned the coat inside out to show Bela.

The ribbon hung yellow against the lining.

All three looked at it.

“I’ll clean it myself,” Bela’s actor said, and took the collar firmly.

Dema caught one end of the ribbon. Serren caught the other.

“Don’t pull,” he said.

Bela’s actor stopped moving. Dema had been ready for a tug and was left with the smallest tension between her fingers, the coat and Serren’s hand.

“I’m not pulling,” she said.

“Then let go.”

Neither of them did.

Bela’s actor looked from one to the other. “Would it help if I left you my coat for another night?”

“No,” Serren said at once.

Dema laughed and lost Iri. Serren grinned, still holding the ribbon.

“Keep that,” she said to Bela’s actor.

“I was asking.”

“I know. Keep it.”

They reset. Dema lifted the trial stitches with her needle, then restitched the ribbon while Serren held the lining flat. She put his hands farther apart. He moved them too far. She moved one back.

“There.”

“You could have told me where.”

“I thought I was.”

He made a small sound, not quite a laugh, and she found herself smiling down at the cloth.

On the next run they stayed in the predicament long enough for Iri to exhaust her last attempt to make the ribbon somebody else’s concern.

“It was for you,” Dema said.

Serren looked at the end in his hand. He let it lie across his palm.

“This?”

“Yes.”

Bela’s actor loosened her hold on the collar, then tightened it again when neither of them moved.

“May I have the rest?”

Serren held the lining still. Dema brought out the needle and lifted the first stitch. For a moment his helpful hands were so close to the sewing that she could not get at it. She lowered one. He followed her eyes and lowered the other without waiting to be instructed.

The last stitch came free. Dema put the needle into its folded scrap of cloth, gathered the loose thread and gave the coat to Bela. Serren kept the ribbon. Bela’s actor took the deposit from her pocket and put it into his free hand.

He started to thank her, but she was already leaving with the coat.

Dema went behind the screen. It had become the place where Iri hid things; she went there before thinking. Serren approached the opposite side, still looking at the ribbon. They waited for each other to appear.

Bela’s actor, from the doorway, said, “You could go around it.”

“Don’t help us,” Dema said.

She went around one end as Serren went around the other. They arrived where the other had been. Dema looked at the empty place, then met his eyes above the screen.

He began to laugh. She had the last scrap of yellow thread stuck to one finger and shook her hand, trying to lose it without losing the moment. That made him worse.

“Once,” she said. “They only do that once.”

“Once is plenty,” Bela’s actor said.

They did it once more anyway, to find out where to stop.

*   *   *

At dress rehearsal the stage worker moved the screen before Dema had taken off her coat.

“That’s its place,” she said.

“Its foot crosses the route when it turns.”

He showed her. The end of the foot made a shallow arc through the space people needed to use. Dema put her bag down and made the turn herself. It crossed.

“If it starts farther over, I lose room behind it.”

“You still need the route clear.”

She moved it with him. Serren came through the entrance, stopped a little short, and waited while she tried the coat on the peg. She would have to stand closer to him for the first exchange and get behind the screen later.

“From the top?” he asked.

“From Bela.”

They tried that, then the beginning. When they finished, the worker walked through the route carrying the cloth they used to cover the screen. Nothing touched him.

Dema ate bread and cheese on the far side of the hall, where she could not drop anything on the coat. Bela’s actor sat beside her. She had brought a little jar of something sharp to eat with the cheese and offered it without interrupting her reading.

Dema dipped a corner of bread in it. Her eyes watered.

“You should have said.”

“I thought you’d smell it.”

She took a smaller piece the next time.

Serren held the coat while Dema tried drawing the needle cloth from her pocket. Her knuckles caught at the opening. She changed pockets and tried again, then put the cloth away. Bela’s actor turned a page. The stage worker called for help with the chairs. Dema wiped her hands and went.

When the audience began arriving, she stood just inside the hall with the coat over her arm. People were finding the pegs, changing their minds and taking their coats to their seats. A man stopped Niva to ask which part concerned the Valiants.

“Tonight’s piece is a comedy,” Niva said. “A new one.”

“Yes, but which episode?”

“It’s about a coat.”

He looked at the coat Dema held. She had an unreasonable urge to hide it.

Niva showed him where he could sit. He took a place near the front, arranged his belongings carefully and waited with an expression of attention so solemn that Dema could feel it from the side of the room.

Then they had to begin.

There was a good light on the chair. Dema sat, bent over the lining and made the last small movement of sewing. Beyond it were faces, coughs, a person trying to find room for a knee. She let Iri imagine the ribbon being found.

Serren came in at the right moment.

They reached Bela’s early arrival. Dema concealed the coat; Serren turned the screen with a little flourish of relief at having found it. A few people laughed. Somebody near the back shifted a bench.

The pause after the small laugh felt larger from the stage.

Dema knew a heroic face she could make which would get recognition. She had made it before, in worse rooms than this one. She could look at the coat as though it held the future of Orbag, and they would know her.

Bela’s hand was coming toward the collar.

Dema caught the sleeve.

“It needs cleaning.”

Serren’s look of dismay was so immediate that she almost smiled. Marn could see his day’s pay going away. He turned the coat inside out with both hands, determined to establish its innocence.

The ribbon swung out.

There was a brief silence, then a laugh from somewhere she could not see. The man in the front row opened his mouth, shut it, and laughed too. Dema kept her hand hovering just short of the exposed ribbon. She had somewhere to put it, and no way of doing so unobserved.

Bela took the collar. Dema and Serren caught their ends. The coat stopped.

“Would it help if I left you my coat for another night?”

Serren had to wait for the room before he could say no.

Dema could feel the ribbon between her fingers. She loosened her grip so the lining did not take the strain. Serren made the smallest corresponding movement. Bela waited, owning the coat more completely than either of them had ever owned anything.

“It was for you,” Dema said.

The words went into a quieter room.

Serren looked down, then at her. She brought out the needle. He held the coat, leaving her enough space this time, and she began to unpick the stitches.

It took as long as it took. Bela looked at the ceiling. Somebody in the audience began laughing again before anything else happened. Dema lifted the last stitch, put the needle away and returned the intact coat. The deposit passed back to Marn. He closed his hand around it while the ribbon lay over his other wrist.

They made their foolish journey around opposite ends of the screen. Dema stopped at the empty place where he should have been. She looked up.

For once she was in no hurry to leave the stage.

Afterward she had to take the ribbon out of Serren’s pocket, where he had put it with his own handkerchief. He insisted she had it. She insisted he had it. Bela’s actor went to the pocket herself and brought it out.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Dema began to laugh. Serren bowed his head over the handkerchief and laughed with her. The stage worker, waiting with the screen cloth, asked whether someone could move the chair.

They moved it.

*   *   *

A wrapped costume occupied Dema’s chair at Niva’s table when she came for the Rainhill papers. She lifted it, found a travel bag underneath, and put both on the floor beside their owner.

“Careful of the buttons,” the returning performer said. “They’ve already survived Fenwraek.”

“Were the buttons the difficult part?”

“No. The company there decided my entrance wanted to be later.”

“Did it?”

“By the time we performed it, yes.”

Niva was comparing the returned room bill with the amount already paid. The performance date was past. Dema could see the receiving company’s name above it and a separate charge for the crew work. Niva asked one question about the remaining payment, received an answer and put the bill aside.

The performer took the travel money, checked it and bent to recover the bags.

“Was there a good audience?” Dema asked.

“Yes. I went on too soon after a laugh and had to say the line again.”

The costume bundle slipped. Dema caught it under the buttons and helped get it across the performer’s arm.

“You’ll have to tell me properly,” she said.

“When neither of us is carrying this.”

Niva gave Dema the Rainhill arrangements. Their carriage was paid for. Their lodgings were booked separately, as requested. The receiving company had its room time and people to pay.

“Vela has the pages,” Niva said. “She’s been rehearsing.”

Dema put the papers in the pocket of the coat.

Rainhill, Year 199 AGH

Vela had crossed out a line before Dema took off her hat.

It was the line about finding an empty coat peg at the Orbag hall. It had got a laugh. Not the largest laugh, but a useful one while Marn moved to the screen.

“They won’t know it,” Vela said.

“They have coat pegs.”

“They haven’t been looking for one at your hall.”

She held the pages in a substantial brown hand, her finger keeping the place while she answered someone behind Dema. The receiving actor wanted to know whether they were starting before the entrance or on it. Vela told him to begin before it, then returned to Dema.

“I’ve changed Bela’s entrance.”

Dema set her hat down very carefully.

Vela Quist was a gnome of forty-six, short and compact, with her black curls cut clear around her ears. She was standing beside a table which had already acquired everybody’s spare pages. She moved one stack aside to give Dema room for the hat and went to show her the doors.

The room was not arranged like the Orbag hall. There were two usable entrances, but the one corresponding to Bela’s old entrance opened almost against the side where Iri hid the coat. The other gave a longer approach from across the playing space.

“She comes in here now,” Vela said.

“Then Marn has to wait for her.”

“For a little.”

“He turns it as soon as he sees her.”

“He will.”

Dema walked the distance. It felt too long. The first turn would lose its suddenness. She could hear the quiet place opening before it, the place in which an audience remembered it was sitting on a bench.

Serren had put their travelling bag by the wall. He was taking the coat out carefully, so the newly set stitches would not catch on the other things inside. He looked up when Dema came back.

“We can start her closer,” he said.

Vela shook her head. “Then she has nowhere to come from.”

“The old entrance works if Iri is quick,” Dema said.

The receiving actor playing Iri was listening. She looked at the near doorway, then at the screen.

“I can be quick,” she said.

Vela looked at the time allowed on her room sheet.

“Let’s do the old way first.”

Dema was grateful, and then annoyed with herself for being grateful. It was her play. She moved to the side where she could see both the hidden coat and Bela’s approach.

The receiving Marn began. He did not speak like Serren. He let the request for the coat come easily, as if Iri could have no reason not to hand it over. Dema liked that. She moved her hand a little at her side when the place for the cut line came, but the actor continued without it.

Bela entered at the near door.

Iri had moved quickly. She got the coat behind the screen just as Bela came through. Bela could plainly see where it had gone. The actor hesitated, turned to look out of the doorway and waited there while Marn began his cheerful discovery.

Dema frowned.

“Don’t wait,” she said. “Come straight in.”

They reset. Bela came straight in, looking ahead. Iri put the coat away. Bela’s eyes followed it, because it was her coat and it was moving almost beside her.

Marn turned the screen to show her something she had just watched being hidden.

The actors stopped.

“I could look at Marn,” Bela’s actor said.

“You can see the coat behind him,” Vela said.

“I could choose not to.”

The actor was offering to make it work. Dema looked at the distance from the doorway to the peg. It was very little.

“Once more from farther back?” she asked.

Vela pointed through the opening. A wall limited the approach outside it. There was nowhere useful to put the extra distance.

“We can try the other entrance,” Dema said.

They put the coat back into Iri’s hands. Vela sent Bela to the farther door and asked Marn not to help the timing by watching for her before he could see her.

This time Iri heard the early arrival and got the coat away while Bela was still crossing the room. Marn moved to meet its owner. For a moment he stood between Bela and the screen, speaking with the pleasure of a man whose money was almost in his pocket. Iri, behind him, made an urgent silent request which he did not see.

Then he turned the screen.

Bela stopped. Iri’s hand, extended toward the coat, withdrew into a gesture of welcome so belated that the receiving Marn turned to see what she was doing.

Serren laughed.

Dema looked at him, then back at the actors. They had continued. Iri was asking to clean the sleeve. Marn was defending the condition of the property. Nothing had been hurried to recover the lost distance. The distance had given Iri something else to fail at.

Vela let them reach the exposed ribbon before stopping.

“Can you do that hand again?” she asked Iri’s actor.

The actor considered. “If he doesn’t turn early.”

“I won’t,” Marn said.

They went back to the arrival and did it again. This time Dema watched Bela. The actor had time to arrive with an expectation of getting her coat, and to be pleased when Marn seemed ready to produce it. When Iri interfered, it cost her something small and quite ordinary. She had come for her property. She wanted to go.

“All right,” Dema said.

Vela looked over.

“The entrance,” Dema said. “And the line. Keep the stitch showing when he turns it inside out. If they think she can just slip the ribbon out, the rest doesn’t work.”

“We’ve kept it.” Vela showed her the coat. “You can see both layers.”

Dema ran her thumb over the fold. Serren had set the stitches neatly. The receiving Iri was waiting with the needle cloth in her hand.

“Can I try the unpicking once?” she asked. “Before we go on.”

Dema held the lining for her.

At the table they wrote the changed entrance and the cut into the working copy. Dema initialled the changes. Vela put that copy with the company’s pages and asked the actors to continue from the revealed ribbon. There was still another part of the evening to rehearse after this one.

Dema put on her hat, took it off again and sat down.

*   *   *

From her seat, she could see the small place on the coat where the repaired cuff did not quite match.

She had never intended an audience to examine it. Now she found herself hoping nobody would. Then the receiving Iri bent over the lining, considering the gift, and Dema stopped looking at the cuff.

The first entrance came at Vela’s distance. Dema’s muscles made a useless preparation for her own old crossing. Onstage, another body went somewhere else. Marn turned the screen. Iri’s hand became a welcome too late.

The laugh was different from the Orbag laugh. It began near Dema and spread across in a wave of recognition she could hear people joining. She missed the beginning of Marn’s next movement because she was looking at Iri’s face. Iri seemed to be thinking of what else she could possibly say.

Dema leaned forward.

By the time the coat turned inside out, she had stopped anticipating where Serren’s voice would rise. This Marn looked almost offended by the ribbon, as if somebody had introduced an uncontracted difficulty into a straightforward return. Iri reached for it. Bela took the coat. Three people stopped with their hands extended.

The admission came quietly.

During the unpicking Bela put a hand into her pocket, took out the deposit, looked at the coat which had still not been returned, and put the money away again.

Dema laughed with her mouth full of the breath she had been holding.

She had not written that. The movement was over before she could decide whether she ought to have.

The ribbon came free. The deposit came out again. Bela reclaimed the coat and left the two people with their newly difficult freedom to stand beside each other. They contrived to lose one another around the screen.

Beside Dema, somebody put a hand on the bench and made a small helpless noise. She looked up at the two faces appearing above the screen and was still laughing when the players came out of their roles.

Serren found her afterward while she was waiting for the coat to be brought back.

“Supper?” he asked.

“Where?”

“With the cast. Vela says there’s food before everyone scatters.”

“I’d like that.”

He stayed beside her. The receiving Iri brought the coat and the needle cloth, with the ribbon folded separately.

“I got the last stitch wrong,” she said. “It took longer.”

“I didn’t notice,” Dema said.

“I noticed.”

“You kept going.”

“I wanted her coat out of there.”

Serren laughed. “So did we.”

The actor handed Dema the ribbon. Dema put it into a pocket, checked the other pocket for the needle, and found that both actors were watching her.

“I’m allowed to keep it now,” she said.

At supper there were more dishes than places to put them. Someone moved a jug, someone else moved it back, and Dema held a bowl while the table briefly reorganized itself. Vela wanted to know whether the arrival had been audible from Dema’s seat. The receiving Marn wanted the bread before anybody used it to wipe up the last sauce.

Dema gave him the bread.

Serren sat across from her. He was telling Bela’s actor about the rehearsal in which he and Dema had gone around the screen twice. Dema corrected him about who had gone the wrong way first.

“We both went the right way,” he said.

“To get away from each other.”

He smiled, and she heard the line she had accidentally made. She reached for the jug. He took it before she could and filled her cup, then passed it to someone farther down the table who had been waiting.

The meal went on. Bela’s actor described the pocket business with the deposit as though it had been an obvious thing to do. Dema asked when she had thought of it.

“While I was waiting.”

“Tonight?”

“I’ve had plenty of waiting.”

Vela laughed and asked who had left pages on the rehearsal table. Two people answered at once. They argued mildly about which pages. Dema ate the last piece of something crisp while it was still crisp and listened.

When they left, Serren took the street toward his lodging. He had an early arrangement with the carrier and wanted to check the travelling bag before bed.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Bring the ribbon.”

She patted her pocket. “I have it.”

He raised a hand and went. Dema walked the other way to her own lodging with one of the Orbag crew, who was still trying to finish an account of a play he wanted to make about a man who had hired himself for two jobs on the same afternoon.

“Does he do either of them?” she asked.

“He does both. That’s the difficulty.”

Inside, the common room was still warm. Dema took off her coat and laid it over the back of a chair. The crewman fetched water, put the cups down and moved one to show her where the first employer sat. He put the other cup farther away.

“He thinks he can get between them,” he said.

Dema sat. “Show me.”