Some hours after dancing her last jig, Rosabella sat in a private dining room of the inn, hungrily devouring the food set before her.  Perhaps it was ancestral memory more than anything else, but the plate of sausage and hearth bread the innkeeper served was more satisfying than any meal she could remember eating in the past year at least.  But then again, the food she was most familiar with was that which could travel well; jerked meat, hard cheese, dried fruit.  A plate of anything hot and fresh would have made her feel like she was being feted at the castle.  And besides her hunger, which made of the meal a fine sauce, the black beer really was quite good.<br/><br/>With her in the room were the members of her troupe.  Thorne and Willam, Ellistra and Robillard.  The five of them had been together for the past two seasons, since Thorne had joined as a replacement dancer that had absconded with Willam’s cashbox and anything in the wagons that fit the criterion of being small and valuable.   Husband and wife, Willam and Ellistra were proverbially night and day.  He was fat, she was slender as a willow reed.  He had brash manners and a domineering personality; she was subtle and easygoing.  The fact that they got along so well, had been through more lean years than plentiful ones, and still remained devoted to each other without so much as a harsh word, Rose took as a hopeful sign for herself.  How they managed certain things given the obscene differences in their statures was something she did not allow her imagination to linger upon.  Between the two of them they played every instrument the troupe carried, which was a wide variety indeed.<br/><br/>The last member was Robillard, a man of thitry, who, if ever were an engraving done of him without a caption beneath it, most people would have mentally suggested the words “handsome prince” without thought.  Blonde, tall, with piercing blue eyes and broad shoulders, he had both a winning smile and charming manners.  But he had merely to open his mouth and speak before shattering the illusion of debonair masculinity, for the vocal tone that emanated from the man was an uniquely soft, high pitched tone, more akin to that of a young boy or a woman than that of a man.  In that soprano tone, he sang songs to Willam and Ellistra’s playing that Rose thought akin to those angels sang, but the price for his beautiful voice was a high one; when he had been a boy, his master, a musician of a cosmopolitan city called Mulace, far to the east, had castrated him to protect his youthful sound from the ravages of puberty.<br/><br/>The addition of Thorne to the troupe and her subsequent discovery of this fact told the story about Robillard’s attitude towards his “alteration.”  It would have been more surprising to Rose if the graceful dancer had<em>not</em>set her sights on the handsome singer shortly after joining the group. About a week after they had left Leekin with Thorne in their group, she emerged from his wagon with what were for her pale cheeks.  She confessed to Rose that Robillard’s reaction to her horrified questioning following his revelation was blasé more than anything else.  “It happened a long time ago; I was so drunk on wine that it didn’t hurt, and as for sex…I don’t miss what I never had.”<br/><br/>“I’ve spoken to the master of the house,” Willam said, apropos of nothing.  Rose turned away from Thorne, who had been telling her about an invitation a local boy had whispered into her ear as she was easing off stage.  Rose nudged Thorne’s foot, as if to say,<em>here it comes</em>.<br/><br/>“And?” Robillard asked in a half-aware voice.  His bright blues were on his plate, where he had been using his knife to dissect his sausages and investigate their contents.<br/><br/>“Well,” Willam began, letting it hang in the air as he took a long, slow drink of beer.  “It seems that the merchant caravan left just as we came in is thought to be the last of the season.  Before the first of the winter snows.”<br/><br/><em>Told you so</em>Rose told Thorn with a sideways look, and received an elbow in her ribs for her foresight.<br/><br/>“Fortunately,” Willam continued.  “The innkeep has been so kind as to extend us the invitation to make use of his rooms, with board provided, for our services for two performances daily, with Queensday off each week.”<br/><br/>“Is there no hope of beating the snow?” Ellistra asked.<br/><br/>Willam gestured grandly.  “If we were to leave now, tonight, we might be out of the mountains before they came.  If the gods were kind, and the storms slow, and the oxen spry.  I’d not chance it.”<br/><br/>“Does Arges not agree with you?” Thorne asked.<br/><br/>Ellistra frowned, drawing her shawl around herself as if a cold draft had invaded the room.  “The stories they tell about the Queen…” she said, softly, in a whisper.  “Even if half of them were born in the bottom of a cup, they’d shiver the marrow from my bones.”<br/><br/>“A witch is no different from any woman,” Robillard said, taking a small bite of sausage, apparently finding nothing in it he identified as objectionable.<br/><br/>“And how would you would either?” Rose prodded.  Thorne gasped at the bluntness, but Robillard just chuckled.<br/><br/>“Oh yes, you would know women better than I would, little bloom,” he said, using the nickname she’d had from his mouth for six years.  “I’m certain you could tell us all about witches…what is the truth of Her Majesty Arges the First, may she rule a hundred years, and so on?”<br/><br/>Rose shook her head, wilting in the face of four pairs of eyes on her.  A confidence that was rock-solid on stage evaporated like dew on flower petals at dawn when she was not on stage.<br/><br/>“Regardless,” Willam said.  “We’ll stay the winter, keep our heads down, earn our keep, and send the hat around every show.  If the people’s generosity holds, we should be in fine shape come spring.”<br/>