Hesta Quill led her two shaggy mares up the muddy cart track to the hill fort half an hour after Senior Deputy Bardon nailed the black-wax revocation across her touring patent.
She still wore the pieced-together funeral curtains of Doctor Quack-Salve’s robe, though she had tucked the tall paper quarantine hat under one elbow to keep the sleet from melting the paste, and the three-legged wooden stool from the market square rode upside down on the wagon tailboard beside her big brass kettle-drum. Behind her walked her three players—the young tumbler in his paper tabard, the cross-eyed horn-player who doubled as stage-carpenter, and the girl who worked the painted cloth drop-curtains.
Noll Vey watched them cross the stone threshold into the outer courtyard, and for five seconds he forgot that he was a Bastion-rank dungeon core with a royal auditor breathing down his neck. He only remembered how Hesta used to walk into a chilly coaching inn after a rained-out matinee in the south marches: chin up, mud on her hem, counting the coppers in her apron pocket before she ordered small-beer for the crew.
“Mind the ruts by the well-curb, Hesta!” Noll called out through the gatehouse mortar seam, unable to keep the old stage-partner warmth from thickening his baritone. “Your near mare still drops her left hip when the trace-leather gets wet, and I don’t have a farrier on the payroll yet!”
