George Martin - Rogues

Kostrel’s eyes were far away, obviously giving the matter his full deliberation. Bast gave him time for it, and after a moment another question bubbled out of the boy. “Couldn’t it be merely glammourie?” he asked.

“Ah,” said Bast, smiling. “But what is the difference between being beautiful and seeming beautiful?”

“Well …” Kostrel stalled for a moment, then rallied. “One is real and the other isn’t.” He sounded certain, but it wasn’t reflected in his expression. “One would be fake. You could tell the difference, couldn’t you?”

Bast let the question sail by. It was close, but not quite. “What’s the difference between a shirt that looks white and a shirt that is white?” he countered.

“A woman isn’t the same as a shirt,” Kostrel said with vast disdain. “You’d know if you touched her. If she looked all soft and rosy like Emberlee, but her hair felt like a horse’s tail, you’d know it wasn’t real.”

“Glammourie isn’t just for fooling eyes,” Bast said. “It’s for everything. Faerie gold feels heavy. And a glamoured pig would smell like roses when you kissed it.”

Kostrel reeled visibly at that. The shift from Emberlee to a glamoured pig obviously left him feeling more than slightly appalled. Bast waited a moment for him to recover.

“Wouldn’t it be harder to glamour a pig?” he asked at last.

“You’re clever,” Bast said encouragingly. “You’re exactly right. And glamouring a pretty girl to be more pretty wouldn’t be much work at all. It’s like putting icing on a cake.”

Kostrel rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “Can you use glammourie and grammarie at the same time?”

Bast was more genuinely impressed this time. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

Kostrel nodded to himself. “That’s what Felurian must do,” he said. “Like cream on icing on cake.”

“I think so,” Bast said. “The one I met …” He stopped abruptly, his mouth snapped shut.

“You’ve met one of the Fae?”

Bast grinned like a beartrap. “Yes.”

This time Kostrel felt the hook and line both. But it was too late. “You bastard!”

“I am,” Bast admitted happily.

“You tricked me into asking that.”

“I did,” Bast said. “It was a question related to this subject, and I answered it fully and without equivocation.”

Kostrel got to his feet and stormed off, only to come back a moment later. “Give me my penny,” he demanded.

Bast reached into his pocket and pulled out a copper penny. “Where’s does Emberlee take her bath?”

Kostrel glowered furiously, then said, “Out past Oldstone bridge, up toward the hills about half a mile. There’s a little hollow with an elm tree.”

“And when?”

“After lunch on the Boggan farm. After she finishes the washing up and hangs the laundry.”

Bast tossed him the penny, still grinning like mad.

“I hope your dick falls off,” the boy said venomously before stomping back down the hill.

Bast couldn’t help but laugh. He tried to do it quietly to spare the boy’s feelings but didn’t meet with much success.

Kostrel turned at the bottom of the hill, and shouted, “And you still owe me a book!”

Bast stopped laughing then as something jogged loose in his memory. He panicked for a moment when he realized Celum Tinture wasn’t in its usual spot.

Then he remembered leaving the book in the tree on top of the bluff and relaxed. The clear sky showed no sign of rain. It was safe enough. Besides, it was nearly noon, perhaps a little past. So he turned and hurried down the hill, not wanting to be late.

Bast sprinted most of the way to the little dell, and by the time he arrived he was sweating like a hard-run horse. His shirt stuck to him unpleasantly, so as he walked down the sloping bank to the water, he pulled it off and used it to mop the sweat from his face.

A long, flat jut of stone pushed out into Littlecreek there, forming one side of a calm pool where the stream turned back on itself. A stand of willow trees overhung the water, making it private and shady. The shoreline was overgrown with thick bushes, and the water was smooth and calm and clear.

Bare-chested, Bast walked out onto the rough jut of stone. Dressed, his face and hands made him look rather lean, but shirtless his wide shoulders were surprising, more what you might expect to see on a field hand, rather than a shiftless sort that did little more than lounge around an empty inn all day.

Once he was out of the shadow of the willows, Bast knelt to dunk his shirt in the pool. Then he wrung it over his head, shivering a bit at the chill of it. He rubbed his chest and arms briskly, shaking drops of water from his face.

He set the shirt aside, grabbed the lip of stone at the edge of the pool, then took a deep breath and dunked his head. The motion made the muscles across his back and shoulders flex. A moment later he pulled his head out, gasping slightly and shaking water from his hair.

Bast stood then, slicking back his hair with both hands. Water streamed down his chest, making runnels in the dark hair, trailing down across the flat plane of his stomach.

He shook himself off a bit, then stepped over to dark niche made by a jagged shelf of overhanging rock. He felt around for a moment before pulling out a knob of butter-colored soap.

He knelt at the edge of the water again, dunking his shirt several times, then scrubbing it with the soap. It took a while, as he had no washing board, and he obviously didn’t want to chafe his shirt against the rough stones. He soaped and rinsed the shirt several times, wringing it out with his hands, making the muscles in his arms and shoulders tense and twine. He did a thorough job, though by the time he was finished, he was completely soaked and spattered with lather.

Bast spread his shirt out on a sunny stone to dry. He started to undo his pants, then stopped and tipped his head on one side, trying to jog loose water from his ear.

It might be because of the water in his ear that Bast didn’t hear the excited twittering coming from the bushes that grew along the shore. A sound that could, conceivably, be sparrows chattering among the branches. A flock of sparrows. Several flocks, perhaps.

And if Bast didn’t see the bushes moving either? Or note that in among the hanging foliage of the willow branches there were colors normally not found in trees? Sometimes a pale pink, sometimes blushing red. Sometimes an ill-considered yellow or a cornflower blue. And while it’s true that dresses might come in those colors … well … so did birds. Finches and jays. And besides, it was fairly common knowledge among the young women of the town that the dark young man who worked at the inn was woefully nearsighted.

The sparrows twittered in the bushes as Bast worked at the drawstring of his pants again. The knot apparently giving him some trouble. He fumbled with it for a while, then grew frustrated and gave a great, catlike stretch, arms arching over his head, his body bending like a bow.

Finally he managed to work the knot loose and shuck free of his pants. He wore nothing underneath. He tossed them aside and from the willow came a squawk of the sort that could have come from a larger bird. A heron perhaps. Or a crow. And if a branch shook violently at the same time, well, perhaps a bird had leaned too far from its branch and nearly fell. It certainly stood to reason that some birds were more clumsy than others. And besides, at the time Bast was looking the other way.

Bast dove into the water then, splashing like a boy and gasping at the cold. After a few minutes he moved to a shallower portion of the pool where the water rose to barely reach his narrow waist.