“I’ll try to find a different way to laugh when I’ve been crushed, so you’ll know,” she said.

“Hark to him,” Birch called to Feival, the principal boy. “Our Tim has a tongue as sharp as Hewney’s.”

“Let us hope for the child’s sake his tongue has not been in as many foul spots as Master Nevin’s has,” said Feival tartly. “Nor uttered half so many blasphemies.”

“Did the child live six lifetimes,” Hewney shouted, “he could not curse as much in all of them together as I do each morning when I wake up with my head and bladder both swollen misery-full of last night’s ale and realize I am still a part of this wretched troop of thieves, blockheads, and he-whores.”

“He-whore? He-whore? Do I hear an ass braying?” Finn Teodoros, who with the excuse of his age and portly figure, seemed to spend more time resting than working, pushed himself away from the wall. “Ah, no, it is only our beloved Nevin kicking at the door of his stall again. But were we to throw the door open, would he run away or fling himself at our feet and beg to be put back in harness?”

“It is an inexact metaphor,” Hewney grumped. “No one keeps an ass in a stall. Unless he is so rich that he is able to act the ass himself.”

“Besides,” said Feival, “no one will ever get a harness on Hewney until he’s dead, which will be too late to get any good out of him.”

“Unless someday a man is needed who can drink a river of ale dry and save a city, as Hiliometes drained the flood,” said Pedder Makewell.

“Too much talking, not enough working,” his sister complained. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go claim our meal and some dry lodgings.”

“Which will be a stable,” Feival said. “Leaving none happy but our lead donkey, Master Hee-haw Hewney.”

“Quiet, you, or you will find out what a kick truly is,” Hewney said, glowering.

Briony worked on, amused and, for the moment, cold but content.

“Here,” she said to the red-faced young player Pilney. “Try again. Remember, this stick is a sword now, not a stick. You don’t beat someone with it, you use it as an extension of your arm.” She scraped an empty place in the straw to make better footing, then lifted her own stick. “And if you’re going to hack at someone like that, they’re going to do this.” She flicked his weapon aside, sidestepped his crude charge, and poked him in the ribs.

“Where did you learn that?” he asked, breathless.

“My…my old master. He was gifted at swordplay.”

“Gather around me, children,” Finn Teodoros called. “You may beat each other to death later.”

Most of the company was already seated in the comfortable straw of the large stable, quite willing to ignore the smell of the horses and cows, since the presence of so many animals kept the place as warm as a fire would have.