One pale brow arched. “You’d prefer to fight your way in?”
“I’d prefer more than half a shirt!” I said, tugging at the handkerchief hem, trying to get it to meet the skirt. Which would have been easier if said skirt had started higher than my hips. And if the tugging wasn’t threatening the shirt’s already low neckline. And that was despite me picking out the most modest of the costumes.
“Isn’t this going to get them looking at me more, not less?” I demanded.
“But not at your face,” Pritkin replied, and ducked when I threw a pillow at him.
The little wagon we were in was full of them, probably because the thing didn’t have springs. Just costumes, masks, rolls of canvas backdrops, and a large, stuffed dragon’s head on a stick. We’d had no choice but to join the players, who had rumbled into town during the chaos, because there were anti-glamourie charms on the castle. Pritkin’s abilities wouldn’t help us there, even if he rested up. Which was why I’d slapped on a face full of makeup to go with the bright crimson outfit.
Of course, that wouldn’t help, either, if somebody ratted us out.
“Are you sure you can trust them?” I asked as the wooden box we were in swayed and shook, partly because of the road, but also because the girls up top kept leaning over.
Tonight they played for the court, tomorrow for the townspeople, and they were busy drumming up business. Which meant that, instead of furtively sneaking in through a back door like I’d hoped, we were heading for the main city gate on the medieval version of a party bus. A bright red, blue, and green party bus, with a bunch of waving, shimmying, half-naked girls on top. One word to a guard . . .
But Pritkin didn’t seem worried.
“I arranged the job for them,” he told me. “They’ll help us.”
“There are other jobs.”
“Not as many as you’d think.” He was trying on different wigs, because he was better known at court than I was, and the current one did him no favors. Of course, that would have been true of anyone except Ronald McDonald.
I pulled it off, substituting a tasteful, forgettable brown.
“They started in Constantinople, playing to large audiences,” he said as I tried to stuff his cowlick underneath the wig. “But once the emperor closed all the theaters, they had to take to the road. Their fortunes have been mixed ever since.”
“He closed the theaters?”
Pritkin nodded, looking up at me with a grin. “Ironic, when you consider that his own wife was an actress before they met. Theodora was famous for dancing in nothing but a single ribbon. And then there was that business about Leda and the swan—”
“A swan?” I frowned.
“More like a goose and some strategically placed grain. They say she—”
“I don’t want to know,” I said quickly.
He grinned some more. “But he needed the church on his side, and they don’t like the theater.”
“Why?”
“We’re all licentious fiends,” he said, steadying me with hands on my hips as we hit a pothole.
Considering that it was something like the ninetieth one, that didn’t seem strictly necessary. And then I looked down, to find that his eyes were especially green next to the new, dark hair. And open and clear . . . and inviting. No strings, no agenda. Just the promise of pleasure, shared and given.
I swallowed and picked up a comb. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I tackled the bird’s nest on one side of the wig, where it had been crush
ed in a trunk. “So, so many reasons.”
“Name one.”
“You first.”
“Ah, but I don’t have any reasons,” he said while the thumbs began to move in slow circles on my hip bones.