[Nerwen]

Asta had, in fact, taken refuge in the wagon. She kept Smaug and her other mechanical charges in good order, but there were always last minute repairs and adjustments to be made. Besides, it was calming to lose herself in the painstaking work of her hands. Just the company of her beloved puppets was calming, too. Demanding they might be in their own way, but she understood their needs, their innermost workings.

"What's wrong with people, Smaug?" she asked the dragon-puppet aloud, as she polished the great fangs that fringed his gaping mouth. One of Smaug's huge rolling crimson eyes had slipped a little in its socket. It gave him an unfocussed look that seemed oddly gentle. Asta rather liked that, but she knew her duty, and had the errant orb back in place with a few deft twists of one of her special tools, a long blade-like implement with a hooked end.

It was at that moment that she heard Rollan's knock. She did not feel ready to talk to anyone yet, and had to resist a childish impulse to keep silent and hope he would go away.

She opened the door. "What is it?"

"I just wanted to see how you were getting on, Asta... thought you'd still be rehearsing. With Coldan."

"Oh no," Asta said quickly. "We're– we're finished."

Rollan was looking at her in such a curious way that Asta wondered if he could tell she had been crying. Her complexion always did tend to stay blotchy after tears.

"Asta, has something–" he broke off, startled as she was by the roar of anger that had erupted from the direction of the Common Room.

Asta clambered out of the cart as fast as she could and dashed inside, not waiting to see what Rollan would do. That had been Aldarion's voice; then Coldan's had followed it, equally enraged. They were murdering each other! Or, at least, her sense of realism corrected her, Aldarion was murdering Coldan, anyway.

The noise had partly subsided by the time she reached the hall, where she almost ran into Branor. The actor was a trifle unsteady on his feet and showed other signs of having partaken a little too well of Ingold's hospitality.

"Not to worry your pretty little head about it," he told her in his most lordly fashion. "Coldan and Aldarion had words– over you, and who can blame 'em," he winked roguishly, "who can blame 'em, indeed? But not to worry, I took care of it. Not a peep out of 'em now."

His words might have been more convincing if Coldan's voice had not at that moment shouted,
"Do you really zink I am too daft to see vat's going on here?"

Asta paused on the Common Room threshold. Coldan, she saw, was now bent over Aldarion's chair, in a way that, to her raging imagination, looked positively sinister, as did the expression on the playwrights upturned face.

She darted into the room, weaving between tables until she reached them, "Stop it," she cried. "Stop it now, you fools! What do you think you're doing?" They both jumped and stared at her. It was only then that she realised she had brought the hooked blade with her and was now holding it before her like a weapon.