owards a meditation upon the perfidy and unreasonableness of women.
As embodied, specifically, by Catriana d'Astibar these past two weeks.
He calculated that he had enough time before the late-afternoon rehearsal, the last before their opening engagement at the city home of a small wine-estate owner tomorrow, to muse his way through most of a bottle and still show up sober. He was the experienced trouper anyhow, he thought indignantly. He was a partner. He knew the performance routines like a hand knew a glove. The extra rehearsals had been laid on by Menico for the benefit of the three new people in the troupe.
Including impossible Catriana. Who happened to be the reason he had stormed out of the morning rehearsal a short while before he knew that Menico planned to call the session to a halt. How, in the name of Adaon, was he supposed to react when an inexperienced new female who thought she could sing, and to whom he'd been genuinely friendly since she'd joined them a fortnight ago, said what she'd said in front of everyone that morning?
Cursed with memory, Devin saw the nine of them rehearsing again in the rented back room on the ground floor of their inn. Four musicians, the two dancers, Menico, Catriana, and himself singing up front. They were doing Rauder's "Song of Love," a piece rather predictably requested by the wine-merchant's wife, a piece Devin had been singing for nearly six years, a song he could manage in a stupor, a coma, sound asleep.
And so perhaps, yes, he'd been a little bored, a little distracted, had been leaning a little closer than absolutely necessary to their newest, red-headed female singer, putting perhaps the merest shading of a message into his expression and voice, but still, even so ...
"Devin, in the name of the Triad," had snapped Catriana d'Astibar, breaking up the rehearsal entirely, "do you think you can get your mind away from your groin for long enough to do a decent harmony? This is not a difficult song!"
The affliction of a fair complexion had hurtled Devin's face all the way to bright red. Menico, he saw, Menico who should have been sharply reprimanding the girl for her presumption, was laughing helplessly, even more flushed than Devin was. So were the others, all of them.
Unable to think of a reply, unwilling to compromise the tattered shreds of his dignity by yielding to his initial impulse to reach up and whack the girl across the back of her head, Devin had simply spun on his heels and left.
He'd thrown one reproachful glance at Menico as he went but was not assuaged: the troupe-leader's ample paunch was quivering with laughter as he wiped tears from his round, bearded face.
So Devin had gone looking for a bottle of Senzio green and a dark place to drink it in on a brilliant autumn morning in Astibar. Having finally found the wine and the tenuous comfort of shadows he fully expected to figure out, about half a bottle from now, what he should have said to that arrogant red-maned creature back in the rehearsal room.
If only she wasn't so depressingly tall, he thought. Morosely he filled his glass again. Looking up at the blackened crossbeams of the ceiling he briefly contemplated hanging himself from one of them: by the heels of course. For old time's sake.
"Shall I buy you a drink?" someone said.ΘΘ文Θ檔Θ共Θ享Θ與Θ在Θ線Θ閱Θ讀Θ
With a sigh Devin turned to cope with one of the more predictable aspects of being small and looking very young while drinking alone in a sailor's bar.
What he saw was somewhat reassuring. His questioner was a soberly dressed man of middle years with greying hair and lines of worry or laughter radiating at his temples. Even so:
"Thank you," Devin said, "but I've most of my own bottle left and I prefer having a woman to being one for sailors. I'm also older than I look."
The other man laughed aloud. "In that case," he chuckled, genuinely amused, "you can give me a drink if you like while I tell you about my two marriageable daughters and the other two who are on their way to