Chapter Four
Dainley
Windemere's thirty-third show was called Verifiable Deceptions, and it was about a smith whose wife believes him to be having an affair and tries to catch him in the act, only to learn he's a spy working to stop an attack by cave elf assassins.
Windemere knocked out a lot within the first few rehearsals.
The first rehearsal was usually the cast getting to know each other, involving movement exercises, dance tests, and vocal drills.
There were a lot of regulars who were in Windemere's shows for several years at a time, and with each new cast there were always a few new ones who had to find their place in the weird theatre family.
Tonight's rehearsal was the cast's first full read through of the play.
Typically Dainley would join for the read through to hear the whole story (without Windemere's constant commentary) and get an idea of what everyone would need for shoes.
The theatre owned a few hundred pairs, in all different sizes and styles.
Dainley was often hired to source everyone's shoes from the theatre's collection and repair or modify them as needed.
Dainley swung the door open to the main performance space and was greeted with about fifty people chanting in a winding music-adjacent rhythm:
"Row by row, the crows all know
How hellions harried the hamlet of Harrow.
Luckily the lackadaisical lord loved the Lady of Luggers
Who bartered with Billy the Bear to batter the buggers."
This was normal.
What was not normal was the tall minotaur with swirling skirts and bells on her horns.
Dainley halted in his tracks when he saw her.
Her hooves made dull clop-clops on the stage as she was…
measuring it? She was pacing the length of the stage with knotted cord, turning to write her notes in a notebook that lay open in the very center of the stage.
As Windemere's cast continued their exercises and rituals that could only be understood by actors, Dainley set his things down and joined the towering minotaur on the stage. "Aw, Miss Lucy, Windemere roped you into this? What are you doing?"
She spun. "Dainley! Hi!" Her face split in a beam brighter than the stage lights lining the front edge. "I'm measuring the stage. Windemere hired me to do a big rebuild. Are you in the show?"
"Hell no!" He was taken aback by the question, and laughed. "I just do the shoes. Are you staying for the read through?"
"Of course!" Lucy chuckled. "Windemere got me hooked.
He invited me to The Jackdaw after he asked me about building a giant revolving stage.
He made a pretty compelling case." Lucy sat on the stage and pulled her notebook into her lap.
Her skirts fanned around her legs and Dainley imagined what her shapely thigh might feel like under there.
Dainley harrumphed, "He can be hard to tell no. Aren't you busy with your shop? This is a big job."
Lucy shrugged, "It's temporary. I have the time, for now. And…well, Windemere said, that is, I was hoping I could talk you into giving me a hand for some of it." She winced, as if expecting a hard refusal.
"He said I'd help you, huh?" Dainley had to keep from rolling his eyes at Win's obvious setup.
That bard was playing them both like cheap kazoos and Lucy didn't even see it.
Still, even if Windemere had nothing to do with this, Dainley wasn't about to refuse this tall, beefy beauty with the hands of a crafter.
He'd be lying if he said he wasn't interested in watching her work.
With a resolute nod, he answered, "Well, you got me. "
Lucy's broad shoulders slumped with relief, "Oh, thank you.
I didn't want to impose. I like a new challenge, but I told Windemere this was a big job for one person.
" She turned a flat carpenter's pencil round and round in her fingers.
If Dainley didn't know better, he'd think she was blushing.
With the short fur covering her face, he couldn't see if her cheeks were reddening, but the way her ears turned downward was as good a sign as any.
He always did think people with moving ears were cute.
Patting his bag of shoe tools and tossing his head toward the actors, Dainley said, "I gotta look at those yappers' feet and do some measuring of my own. Then I'll come sit with you to listen to the read through." He added quickly, "If that's all right."
"Of course," Lucy tilted her head, making her tiny horn bells jingle.
Somewhere in the middle of introducing himself to the newcomers and clapping shoulders with regular players, Dainley caught Windemere and yanked him down to his level to hiss in his ear, "I know what you're doing!"
In classic Windemere fashion, the elf-draki-human patted Dainley's cheek with a smug, "You're welcome."
Dainley's beard and mustache bunched around his lips as he quietly snarled the oldest curses in the Dwarvish language.
Later, when he was finished taking notes on the cast's shoe needs (the trickiest was the halfling playing the wife.
Her character needed thigh-high boots with tall heels that she'd have to be able to dance and fight in), Dainley took a seat on the stage beside Lucy.
They listened to the read through, enjoying the actors getting a feel for their characters.
For the spots that had songs, which the cast hadn't gotten to learn yet, Windemere himself sang.
Dainley had always enjoyed the full performances, but there was something about the read throughs that he had come to prefer.
Maybe it was the relaxed setting and low lighting, maybe it was that the audience was so much smaller, or even the sense of newness about the first few rehearsals of a new show.
In any case, Dainley stole many glances at Lucy and something in his chest turned light and fluttery when he caught her looking back at him.
When it looked like she was taking a break from sketching, he whispered, "Have you ever been part of a show?"
"No!" she said, louder than she meant to and ducked her head. Her eyes were bright when she added more softly, "I've seen a few, but never sat in on a rehearsal like this before."
"It's nice, isn't it?"
She nodded so vigorously that the jingling bells drew a few looks from the actors. Wincing, she grabbed most of the bells to still them. Her big doe eyes and earnest excitement made a warm grin spread over his face. The next few weeks were going to be fun, as long as he didn't mess it up.