In Which Theo Remembers

Blades clashed again, and slid away. Theo stepped back to come on again, matching steel with the strong, dark eyed opponent who sneered into his face. Another crash and the audience cheered. Theo smiled inwardly at the sound; it bouyed him. He added a little flourish to his sweep. Ippolio was supposed to be the inferior fighter, lacking the finesse of the noble trained Lucien, but Theo felt he could be permitted one twirl. Rodrin, though, struck out again, and caught him a heavy blow on his arm. Theo didn't need to perform the pain. He steadied himself, but Rodrin was already coming on again with a series more blows. The blades were thick and heavily blunted, little more than rod clubs, but they could still hurt, or even break bones. Theo caught Rodrin's eye, to signal him to slow his pace. Then he chilled. When he saw Rodrin's eyes, he knew the part of the jealous suitor was not an act for the surly player. He saw the jealousy, and the hate at having to hide that jealousy. 'Poor fool,' he thought. Theo was close to Lena, the company's bewitching female performer. For sure, he cared about her, but he didn't want romantic entanglements. That was a half truth, a little voice pointed out. Of course he wanted it, but he knew it was never going to happen. He wouldn't be right for her even if she was open to it. Rodrin had nothing to fear.
There was something else, though, Theo saw. Rodrin and Lena weren't involved, not explicitly. But there was an implicit bond between the two of them. Rodrin was angry with Theo not so much for what he'd done, but for the suggestion that maybe, if the youth had turned Lena's head, what Rodrin thought that bond had meant had only ever been in his head.

Well damn it, Theo thought. He was the better swordsman anyway; Rodrin was a lumbering incompetent. Theo slammed away the blunt strikes. Rodrin's eyes flared with anger. Theo felt his legs rise into a proper fighting tense. But then Lena hit her cue:
"Hold, gentlemen! For I am not worth such blows! Neither am I worth to die for nor to kill for! And to be sure whoever should kill the other would be the friend of Gaoler Snatch before morning, and I would never know them. Part your blades, for the love you say you hold me."
Theo backed off, lowering his point cautiously, the apprehension on his face quite real as he watched to see what Rodrin did next. But the larger man dropped his blade, held him in a look of noble contempt, and spat his line:
"I'll spare the welp. It is befitting my class to do charity, just as it is not worthy to spill such low blood on my shirts."
Theo relaxed.

They finished the play with a steely rigidity. Nobody sat around the campfire that night. Tomo the company master sat alone, staring glumly into the flames and toying with his fingers. After a while he walked over to Theo, who was leaning on a low stone wall at the roadside, reading by the light of an oil lamp he'd perched beside him.
"The," he said. His voice had a sympathetic note, but a pleading one too. "The... I've got to talk to you about something."
Theo looked up and smiled at the little man. Tomo was older than he and Lena, and wiser than all three of them, but he was diminutive and weedy.
"What's up, Tomo?"
He paused.
"You know we only hired you to do this play?"
"Ah. I thought this might come up."
"Yeah. I'm sorry, The. But we really can't afford to keep a fourth actor on full time. It would stretch our takes too thin. I know there was some unspoken suggestion that we would take you with us, but I've been doing the numbers. I looked at the books, and we just can't manage it. I'm sorry, The."
The player shook his head amicably.
"No, that's fine. Like you said, you only hired me for this one. And of course, Rodrin's seeing love triangles outside his scriptbook. I get that problem."
Tomo bowed his head at that.
"Sorry, The. You're right, of course. I'm sorry about that. But it's true anyway; we really can't afford to work as a four. I'm sorry about the way it's been handled. Wasn't your fault."
He'd lingered a moment longer in awkward silence, then stumbled back to his fire and his books. Theo had finished his chapter, finished the bottle of wine he'd been drinking, and walked back past the fire, throwing Tomo a goodbye as he went. He looked in at Lena's tent as he passed. She gave him an unhappy look that he couldn't quite read. 'Is that scorn?' queried the voice at the back of his mind.
"Hey Lena, I'm going now," he whispered. She nodded.
"G'night."
"Night," Theo said, and dropped the canvas. Then he walked back into the city and tried to think of anything else.

* * *

Theo swallowed a poor whiskey. That had been nearly a year ago, and Theo hadn't really performed since. He'd spent some of the time playing for change on street corners and most of the rest taking whatever scratty jobs were offering scant silver. Eventually he'd taken a courier job running a coach from Salrissa to Verne for a modest sum and afterwards had stayed in the city, finding it marginally kinder to paupers.

He had a lot to thank Mrs Hannon for, he thought; he might have been on the streets were it not for her room. She offered it him for whatever cost he could pay and he was dearly thankful for that. He suspected the woman mostly appreciated having some company; from what he had ascertained she had been alone most of her life. In the back of his mind he felt a bit like he was taking advantage of her, she'd probably let him live for free if he asked, but in truth he really couldn't afford to pay more. And it was true that Mrs Hannon could afford to be generous. She had inherited or somehow acquired a sizable fortune for a lower-class woman, and this, along with her steady income from a laundering business, kept her quite comfortably with two properties, the lodging house and the laundry. Theo thought he probably ought to see her a bit more often, rather than spending all his time in his room reading by dim lamplight.

Wearily he drained his glass of the tasteless liquor. It was cheap, and still too expensive. He hadn't had a job for weeks. The problem was, what could he do? As an entertainer you picked up a secondary skill set and in the stretches between gigs, you put it to work doing odd jobs. That was how it worked, but what were Theo's skills? He could do physical labour, but there were plenty of dumb oxes in the city who could lift a cart and were too stupid to think or talk to their employers, so why would they want Theo? He was competent with a blade and really rather talented at the vicious knife-fighting of the streets, but there were better bodyguards, and that was rarely a part-time job. He was intelligent and well read; conspicuously so for someone on the bottom rung. That was more a hindrance than a help, though. People were suspicious of smart guys and treated them with contempt. Theo sighed. He was the exemplary jack of all trades, master of none.

He thought dimly of visiting the Strangled Cat. He hadn't been there in weeks. He'd fetched up there his first week in Verne, not realising it was little more than a base of operations for the working folk of the alleys. His naivety had brought great amusement from the bartender and a girl at the next stool who it transpired was a prostitute. After a short while Theo had begun to suspect the joke, and he was becoming uncomfortable when the bartender had banged down a drink on the house.
"It's horse piss, mind," he'd cautioned, and Bird and Annie had been his close friends ever since. He missed them now. He'd neglected them recently, and everyone else. When had he become such a hermit? He decided to take a walk that evening.

"Whilst someone is trying to kill you," reminded a voice in his head.