What did I say? Oh, something completely absurd; I’d be ashamed to remember it. Something on the order of, “Know me next time, hey?” or, “Where I come from, staring at a person that long means you’ll have to get married.” Something that stupid, or worse—it doesn’t matter, because I wasn’t finished saying it when he simply toppled right off his horse’s back. Just began listing, as you might say, listing quietly to one side, and kept on listing and listing until he was on the ground. I managed to break his fall and to brace him up against the rain barrel and splash some water on his face. Nothing unusual about that—such of my time as hasn’t been spent on some road or other, rehearsing some play or other, has gone on getting some man or other to sit up and wipe his mouth. Disgusting waste, when you let yourself think about it.
Not that this one wasn’t a nice enough mouth, and a nice face, too. A country face, or it had been once—I was born on a farm myself, somewhere near Cape Dylee, they used to tell me. We moved on the next day, so I can’t be sure, of course. He opened dark country eyes after a bit, looking right into mine, and said, “Lukassa.” Perfectly calmly, quite as though he hadn’t just fainted from hunger and exhaustion. Real people are too much for me sometimes.
Well, by now that was one name I knew as well as my own, and a good deal better than I wanted to, let me tell you. I am quite old enough to have no shame in saying that I have spent as many nights as the next fool listening to someone mumbling and crying someone else’s name until morning. But the choice was my own, ridiculous or not, and that is considerably different from being wakened every night, without exception, for almost two weeks, by that boy Rosseth tossing in the stall next to mine, crooning, “Nyateneri… Lukassa, sweet Lukassa… oh, Lal… oh, Lal … !” Discussing the matter with him had no more effect than kicking him awake—he still bounced up singing in the morning, while the rest of us came to look more and more as though we’d spent all night doing what he was dreaming about. There was talk of murder. I was opposed, but wavering.
“Lukassa has ridden out with her friends,” I said. “They may return tonight, tomorrow, I have no idea. Sit there and I’ll bring you something to eat. Don’t move, stay right where you are—do you understand me?” Because I couldn’t be sure, do you see? I couldn’t be sure whether those unbearable dark eyes saw me at all. “Stay there,” I said, and then I ran to find Rosseth.
He isn’t a bad lad, you know, apart from that obsession of his, which I’m sure he’s grown out of by now, if he’s alive. He went straightaway to filch some scraps of last night’s dinner (which was to be our dinner tonight—the Karsh system of feeding his stable guests), and even managed a cup of rather flat red ale. Meanwhile I appropriated some grain for the horse and a tunic from our wardrobe trunk: the one I wear myself in Lady Vigga’s Two Daughters, where I’m disguised as a man for half the play. We don’t do that one much anymore, unless someone requests it, so the front was practically clean, for a wonder.
When I returned, Rosseth was already spooning soup into our long-legged waif, and a few of the company were lounging about asking questions. He paid none of them any heed, but spoke to me as soon as he saw me, saying, “Friends. How many?”
“As many as you have,” I said, a bit shortly. I must be getting old, when an ordinary “thank you” begins to matter more to me than epic quests after some mislaid princess or other, even when the hero does have the most charming pair of legs for twenty years in any direction. “A black woman”—he was nodding impatiently—“and a tall brown creature, a warrior sort.” Petty of me, I suppose, but there was Rosseth already turning puppy-eyed at the mere thought of them, and now this one, and it was all suddenly irritating. Comes of playing this same story far too many times, doubtless. I said, “My name is Lisonje, and the person feeding you is Rosseth. Can you tell us your name?”
“Tikat,” he said, and went to sleep again. Trygvalin, our juvenile, began giving him brandy, but I made him stop. He makes the stuff himself, and there are towns and entire provinces we can’t return to because of his openhandedness. I said to Rosseth, “He can stay in the loft with you. The landlord won’t know.”
Rosseth just looked at me. He said, “Karsh always knows.” Tikat woke up and announced, “I am from—” and he named a place I couldn’t repeat to save myself. “I have come for Lukassa,” simple as that. All the time we were getting him into the stable, easing his clothes off— there were deep scratches and open sores all over his poor body, and some of those rags were stuck to him by his own caked blood—and washing him as well as we could, he kept saying it, “Tell Lukassa I have come for her.” He’d certainly come the long way around, that country child.
Rosseth said, “We will have to tell Karsh.”
“The boy has no money,” I said. “He hasn’t got anything but his horse and a bit of flesh. Do you think that will be enough for your master?” Time out of mind, we’ve played Corcorua and lodged in this same stable, and I still despise that slouching fat man. He’s no thief—which is absolutely the only reason we stay here—but his virtues end right there, as far as I know. There’s no imagination in him, no generosity, and certainly no charity. He’d give his best room to a family of scorpions—if they could pay—before he lodged one penniless wanderer under his leakiest outhouse roof. Everybody knows Karsh.
“He needs another pair of hands just now,” Rosseth said. “We’ve three separate parties coming to market and likely to be with us for a week, maybe two. It will be more than Marinesha can handle alone, and I’ll be too busy myself to help her. If he can work, even a bit, I think I could talk to Karsh.”
Tikat said, “I can work.” He tried to stand up, and very nearly made it. “But only until Lukassa comes back, because then we will go home together.” Simple and clear as that.
Dardis came up to me then to grunt, “Run-through in five minutes,” and away out of range before I could get in amongst his ribs and tell him what I thought of that. Twenty years leading the company, playing the Wicked Lord Hassidanya at every crossroads between Grannach Harbor and the Durli Hills, and he’s still terrified of drying up in the last act, the way it happened that one time in Limsatty. Which means that we are condemned, if you please, to rehearse and rehearse that wretched old masque at every free moment, probably for the rest of our lives. Still, it did give me a decent excuse to stop sleeping with him—better Rosseth’s dreams, better horses breaking wind, than those lines in my ear in the middle of the night—and we’ve been much better friends ever since, I do believe. Odd, the way these matters work out.
Rosseth pulled the tunic over Tikat’s head and nodded me away, saying, “Go on, it’s all right—I’ll let him rest awhile, and then we’ll go and see Karsh. It’s all right.” When I looked back from the stable door, the boy was sitting up, trying again to stand and getting tangled up in those blessed legs, like a newborn marsh-goat that already knows it has to walk right now or die. In my own experience, there’s not a soul in the world, male or female, worth that kind of devotion—but there, as I told you, all I know is my lines, so there you are.