43

The Vice Steward gave you directions last night to the workroom where the company would meet for morning rehearsal. You enter the castle and follow his mostly-remembered directions as best you can, your footsteps becoming more halting with each new turn.

At one particularly challenging intersection, a voice pipes up behind you: "Joining the company, then?"

A short man and a woman with sandy hair are watching you. He carries an ornate cherry wood lute and she a curved cornett, much better-fashioned than the homespun instruments the pipers blow during festive times in Billingsley.

"Indeed I am…How'd you know?"

She looks you up and down with a smirk. "Something about your habit there, 'at's all."

"What, this old thing?" you say lamely, fingering the cuff of your tunic.

Onward