Tomjon joined him at the window, and pointed down the length of the street.

'See all those tavern signs?' he said.

'Yes. Gosh. There's hundreds.'

'Right. See the one at the end, with the blue and white sign?'

'Yes. I think so.'

'Well, as far as I know, that's the only one around here that's ever closed.'

'Then pray allow me to treat you to a drink. It's the least I can do,' said the Fool nervously. 'And I'm sure the little fellow would like something to quaff.'

Hwel gripped the edge of the table and opened his mouth to roar.

And stopped.

He stared at the two figures. His mouth stayed open.

It closed again with a snap.

'Something the matter?' said Tomjon.

Hwel looked away. It had been a long night. 'Trick of the light,' he muttered. 'And I could do with a drink,' he added. 'A bloody good quaff.'

In fact, he thought, why fight it? 'I'll even put up with the singing,' he said.

'Was' the nex' wor'?'

'S'gold. I think.'

'Ah.'

Hwel looked unsteadily into his mug. Drunkenness had this to be said for it, it stopped the flow of inspirations.

'And you left out the “gold”,' he said.

'Where?' said Tomjon. He was wearing the Fool's hat.

Hwel considered this. 'I reckon,' he said, concentrating, 'it was between the “gold” and the “gold”. An' I reckon,' he peered again into the mug. It was. empty, a horrifying sight. 'I reckon,' he tried again, and finally gave up, and substituted, 'I reckon I could do with another drink.'

'My shout this time,' said the Fool. 'Hahaha. My squeak. Hahaha.' He tried to stand up, and banged his head.

In the gloom of the bar a dozen axes were gripped more firmly. The part of Hwel that was sober, and was horrified to see the rest of him being drunk, urged him to wave his hand at the beetling brows glaring at them through the gloom.

'S'all right,' he said, to the bar at large. 'He don't mean it, he ver' funny wossname, idiot. Fool. Ver' funny Fool, all way from wassisplace.'

'Lancre,' said the Fool, and sat down heavily on the bar.

'S'right. Long way away from wossname, sounds like foot disease. Don't know how to behave. Don't know many dwarfs.'

'Hahaha,' said the Fool, clutching his head. 'Bit short of them where I come from.'

Someone tapped Hwel on the shoulder. He turned and looked into a craggy, hairy face under an iron helmet. The dwarf in question was tossing a throwing axe up and down in a meaningful way.

'You ought to tell your friend to be a bit less funny,' he suggested. 'Otherwise he will be amusing the demons in Hell!'

Hwel squinted at him through the alcoholic haze.

'Who're you?' he said.

'Grabpot Thundergust,' said the dwarf, striking his chain-mailed torso. 'And I say—'

Hwel peered closer.

'Here, I know you,' he said. 'You got a cosmetics mill down Hobfast Street. I bought a lot of greasepaint off you last week—'

A look of panic crossed Thundergust's face. He leaned forward in panic. 'Shutup, shutup,' he whispered.

'That's right, it said the Halls of Elven Perfume and Rouge Co.,' said Hwel happily.

'Ver' good stuff,' said Tomjon, who was trying to stop himself from sliding off the tiny bench. 'Especially your No. 19, Corpse Green, my father swears it's the best. First class.'

The dwarf hefted-his axe uneasily. 'Well, er,' he said. 'Oh. But. Yes. Well, thank you. Only the finest ingredients, mark you.'

'Chop them up with that, do you?' said Hwel innocently, pointing to the axe. 'Or is it your night off?'

Thundergust's brows beetled again like a cockroach convention.

'Here, you're not with the theatre?'

'Tha's us,' said Tomjon. 'Strolling players.' He corrected himself. 'Standing-still players now. Haha. Slidin'-down players now.'

The dwarf dropped his axe and sat down on the bench, his face suddenly softened with enthusiasm.

'I went last week,' he said. 'Bloody good, it was. There was this girl and this fellow, but she was married to this old man, and there was this other fellow, and they said he'd died, and she pined away and took poison, but then it turned out this man was the other man really, only he couldn't tell her on account of—' Thundergust stopped, and blew his nose. 'Everyone died in the end,' he said. 'Very tragic. I cried all the way home, I don't mind telling you. She was so pale.'

'No. 19 and a layer of powder,' said Tomjon cheerfully. 'Plus a bit of brown eyeshadow.'

'Eh?'

'And a couple of hankies in the vest,' he added.

'What's he saying?' said the dwarf to the company at, for want of a better word, large.

Hwel smiled into his tankard.

'Give 'em a bit of Gretalina's soliloquy, boy,' he said.

'Right.'

Tomjon stood up, hit his head, sat down and then knelt on the floor as a compromise. He clasped his hands to what would have been, but for a few chance chromosomes, his bosom.

'You lie who call it Summer . . .' he began.

The assembled dwarfs listened in silence for several minutes. One of them dropped his axe, and was noisily hushed by the rest of them.

'. . . and melting snow. Farewell,' Tomjon finished. 'Drinks phial, collapses behind battlements, down ladder, out of dress and into tabard for Comic Guard No.2, wait one, entrance left. What ho, good—'

'That's about enough,' said Hwel quietly.

Several of the dwarfs were crying into their helmets. There was a chorus of blown noses.

Thundergust dabbed at his eyes with a chain-mail handkerchief.

'That was the most saddest thing I've ever heard,' he said. He glared at Tomjon. 'Hang on,' he said, as realisation dawned. 'He's a man. I bloody fell in love with that girl on stage.' He nudged Hwel. 'He's not a bit of an elf, is he?'

'Absolutely human,' said Hwel. 'I know his father.'

Once again he stared hard at the Fool, who was watching them with his mouth open, and looked back at Tomjon.

Nah, he thought. Coincidence.

'S'acting,' he said. 'A good actor can be anything, right?'

He could feel the Fool's eye boring into the back of his short neck.

'Yes, but dressing up as women, it's a bit—' said Thundergust doubtfully.

Tomjon slipped off his shoes and knelt down on them, bringing his face level with the dwarfs. He gave him a calculating stare for a few seconds, and then adjusted his features.

And there were two Thundergusts. True, one of them was kneeling and had apparently been shaved.

'What ho, what ho,' said Tomjon in the dwarf's voice.

This was by way of being a hilarious gag to the rest of the dwarfs, who had an uncomplicated sense of humour. As they gathered round the pair Hwel felt a gentle touch on the shoulder.

'You two are with a theatre?' said the Fool, now almost sober.

'S'right.'

'Then I've come five hundred miles to find you.'

It was, as Hwel would have noted in his stage directions, Later the Same Day. The sounds of hammering as the Dysk theatre rose from its cradle of scaffolding thumped through Hwel's head and out the other side.

He could remember the drinking, he was certain. And the dwarfs bought lots more rounds when Tomjon did his impersonations. Then they had all gone to another bar Thundergust knew, and then they'd gone to a Klatchian takeaway, and after that it was just a blur . . .

He wasn't very good at quaffing. Too much of the drink actually landed in his mouth.

Judging by the taste in it, some incontinent creature of the night had also scored a direct hit.

'Can you do it?' said Vitoller.

Hwel smacked his lips to get rid of the taste.

'I expect,' said Tomjon. 'It sounded interesting, the way he told it. Wicked king ruling with the help of evil witches. Storms. Ghastly forests. True Heir to Throne in Life-and-Death Struggle. Flash of Dagger. Screams, alarums. Evil king dies. Good triumphs. Bells ring out.'

'Showers of rose petals could be arranged,' said Vitoller. 'I know a man who can get them at practically cost.'

They both looked at Hwel, who was drumming his fingers on his stool. All three found their attention drawn to the bag of silver the Fool had given Hwel. Even by itself it represented enough money to complete the Dysk. And there had been talk of more to follow. Patronage, that was the thing.

'You'll do it then, will you?' said Vitoller.

'It's got a certain something,' Hwel conceded. 'But . . . I don't know . . .'

Tm not trying to pressure you,' said Vitoller. All three pairs of eyes swivelled back to the money bag.

'It seems a bit fishy,' Tomjon conceded. 'I mean, the Fool is decent enough. But the way he tells it . . . it's very odd. His mouth says the words, and his eyes say something else. And I got the impression he'd much rather we believed his eyes.'

'On the other hand,' said Vitoller hurriedly, 'what harm could it do? The pay's the thing.'

Hwel raised his head.

'What?' he said muzzily.

'I said, the play's the thing,' said Vitoller.

There was silence again, except for the drumming of Hwel's fingertips. The bag of silver seemed to have grown larger. In fact, it seemed to fill the room.

'The thing is—' Vitoller began, unnecessarily loudly.

'The way I see it—' Hwel began.

They both stopped.

'After you. Sorry.'

'It wasn't important. Go ahead.'

'I was going to say, we could afford to build the Dysk anyway,' said Hwel.

'Just the shell and the stage,' said Vitoller. 'But not all the other things. Not the trapdoor mechanism, or the machine for lowering gods out of heaven. Or the big turntable, or the wind fans.'

'We used to manage without all that stuff,' said Hwel. 'Remember the old days? All we had was a few planks and a bit of painted sacking. But we had a lot of spirit. If we wanted wind we had to make it ourselves.' He drummed his fingers for a while. 'Of course,' he added quietly, 'we should be able to afford a wave machine. A small one. I've got this idea about this ship wrecked on an island, where there's this—'

'Sorry.' Vitoller shook his head. '

'But we've had some huge audiences!' said Tomjon.

'Sure, lad. Sure. But they pay in ha'pennies. The artificers want silver. If we wanted to be rich men – people,' he corrected hurriedly, 'we should have been born carpenters.' Vitoller shifted uneasily. 'I already owe Chrystophrase the Troll more than I should.'

The other two stared.

'He's the one that has people's limbs torn off!' said Tomjon.

'How much do you owe him?' said Hwel.

'It's all right,' said Vitoller hurriedly, Tm keeping up the interest payments. More or less.'

'Yes, but how much does he want?'

'An arm and a leg.'

The dwarf and boy stared at him in horror. 'How could you have been so—'

'I did it for you two! Tomjon deserves a better stage, he doesn't want to go ruining his health sleeping in lattys and never knowing a home, and you, my man, you need somewhere settled, with all the proper things you ought to have, like trapdoors and . . . wave machines and so forth. You talked me into it, and I thought, they're right. It's no life out on the road, giving two performances a day to a bunch of farmers and going round with a hat afterwards, what sort of future is that? I thought, we've got to get a place somewhere, with comfortable seats for the gentry, people who don't throw potatoes at the stage. I said, blow the cost. I just wanted you to—'

'All right, all right!' shouted Hwel. 'I'll write it!'

'I'll act it,' said Tomjon.

'I'm not forcing you, mind,' said Vitoller. 'It's your own choice.'

Hwel frowned at the table. There were, he had to admit, some nice touches. Three witches was good. Two wouldn't be enough, four would be too many. They could be meddling with the destinies of mankind, and everything. Lots of smoke and green light. You could do a lot with three witches. It was surprising no-one had thought of it before.