Act II, Chapter 8: The Mousetrap — Aldric's Play within the Play

The players arrived on a Tuesday, which was the least suspicious day of the week.

Aldric had arranged this with some care. Monday arrivals suggested premeditation. Wednesday arrivals suggested a man who had thought better of Monday and reconsidered, which was almost worse. But Tuesday — a Tuesday troupe stumbling through Castle Morren's service gate with a broken wheel on their costume wagon and a leading man whose voice had been impaired by the autumn damp — this was merely the ordinary chaos of the travelling theatrical profession, which no one in any court since the founding of courts had ever thought worthy of systematic suspicion.

He had found them in the market town of Vellast, three weeks prior, during a supply errand he had invented with the specific purpose of leaving the castle without his assigned escort. The escort — a quiet young soldier named Dorian whose assignment to Aldric's proximity was courteous in its presentation and transparent in its function — had been maneuvered into remaining behind through the mechanism of a loose saddle strap and Aldric's insistence that he could not bear, in his current delicate state, to delay for repairs and would take only his groom. The delicate state had been performed with particular care that morning: breakfast untouched, wine cup turned in both hands without drinking, three separate instances of beginning sentences and abandoning them, eyes that tracked the fire rather than any human face in the room.