George Martin - Rogues

The little girl thought about it for a long minute, petting her kitten absentmindedly with one hand. Finally she nodded, “Okay.” She turned to go.

“Hold on now!” Bast said quickly. “I gave you what you wanted. You owe me now.”

The little girl turned around, her expression an odd mix of surprise and anxious embarrassment. “I didn’t bring any money,” she said, not meeting his eye.

“Not money,” Bast said. “I gave you two answers and a way to get your kitten. You owe me three things. You pay with gifts and favors. You pay in secrets …”

She thought for a moment. “Daddy hides his strongbox key inside the mantel clock.”

Bast nodded approvingly. “That’s one.”

The little girl looked up into the sky, still petting her kitten. “I saw mama kissing the maid once.”

Bast raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s two …”

The girl put her finger in her ear and wiggled it. “That’s all, I think.”

“How about a favor, then?” Bast said. “I need you to fetch me two dozen daisies with long stems. And a blue ribbon. And two armfuls of gemlings.”

Viette’s face puckered in confusion. “What’s a gemling?”

“Flowers,” Bast said, looking puzzled himself. “Maybe you call them balsams? They grow wild all over around here,” he said, making a wide gesture with both hands.

“Do you mean geraniums?” she asked.

Bast shook his head. “No. They’ve got loose petals, and they’re about this big.” he made a circle with his thumb and middle finger. “They’re yellow and orange and red …”

The girl stared at him blankly.

“Widow Creel keeps them in her window box,” Bast continued. “When you touch the seedpods, they pop …”

Viette’s face lit up. “Oh! You mean touch-me-nots, ” she said, her tone more than slightly patronizing. “I can bring you a bunch of those. That’s easy. ” She turned to run down the hill.

Bast called out before she’d taken six steps. “Wait!” When she spun around, he asked her. “What do you say if somebody asks you who you’re picking flowers for?”

She rolled her eyes again. “I tell them it’s none of their tupping business,” she said. “Because my daddy is the mayor.”

After Viette left, a high whistle made Bast look down the hill toward the greystone. There were no children waiting there.

The whistle came again, and Bast stood, stretching long and hard. It would have surprised most of the young women in town how easily he spotted the figure standing in the shadow of the trees at the edge of the clearing nearly two hundred feet away.

Bast sauntered down the hill, across the grassy field, and into the shadow of the trees. There was an older boy there with smudgy face and a pug nose. He was perhaps twelve and his shirt and pants were both too small for him, showing too much dirty wrist at the cuff and bare ankle below. He was barefoot and had a slightly sour smell about him.

“Rike.” Bast’s voice held none of the friendly, bantering tone he’d used with the town’s other children. “How’s the road to Tinuë?”

“It’s a long damn way,” the boy said bitterly, not meeting Bast’s eye. “We live in the ass of nowhere.”

“I see you have my book,” Bast said.

The boy held it out. “I wann’t tryin’ to steal it,” he muttered quickly. “I just needed to talk to you.”

Bast took the book silently.

“I didn’t break the rules,” the boy said. “I didn’t even come into the clearing. But I need help. I’ll pay for it.”

“You lied to me, Rike,” Bast said, his voice grim.

“And din’t I pay for that?” the boy demanded angrily, looking up for the first time. “Din’t I pay for it ten times over? Ent my life shit enough without having more shit piled on top of it?”

“And it’s all beside the point because you’re too old now,” Bast said flatly.

“I aren’t either!” the boy stomped a foot. Then struggled and took a deep breath, visibly forcing his temper back under control. “Tam is older’n me and he can still come to the tree! I’m just taller’n him!”

“Those are the rules,” Bast said.

“It’s a shite rule!” the boy shouted, his hands making angry fists. “And you’re a shite little bastard who deserves more of the belt than he gets!”

There was a silence then, broken only by the boy’s ragged breathing. Rike’s eyes were on the ground, fists clenched at his sides, he was shaking.

Bast’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

The boy’s voice was rough. “Just one,” Rike said. “Just one favor just this once. It’s a big one. But I’ll pay. I’ll pay triple.”

Bast drew a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “Rike, I—”

“Please, Bast?” He was still shaking, but Bast realized the boy’s voice wasn’t angry anymore. “Please?” Eyes still on the ground, he took a hesitant step forward. “Just … please?” His hand reached out and just hung there aimlessly, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Finally he caught hold of Bast’s shirtsleeve and tugged it once, feebly, before letting his hand fall back to his side.

“I just can’t fix this on my own.” Rike looked up, eyes full of tears. His face was twisted in a knot of anger and fear. A boy too young to keep from crying, but still old enough so that he couldn’t help but hate himself for doing it.

“I need you to get rid of my da,” he said in a broken voice. “I can’t figure a way. I could stick him while he’s asleep, but my ma would find out. He drinks and hits at her. And she cries all the time and then he hits her more.”

Rike was looking at the ground again, the words pouring out of him in a gush. “I could get him when he’s drunk somewhere, but he’s so big. I couldn’t move him. They’d find the body and then the azzie would get me. I couldn’t look my ma in the eye then. Not if she knew. I can’t think what that would do to her, if she knew I was the sort of person that would kill his own da.”

He looked up then, his face furious, eyes red with weeping. “I would though. I’d kill him. You just got to tell me how.”

There was a moment of quiet.

“Okay,” Bast said.

They went down to the stream where they could have a drink and Rike could wash his face and collect himself a little bit. When the boy’s face was cleaner, Bast noted not all the smudginess was dirt. It was easy to make the mistake, as the summer sun had tanned him a rich nut brown. Even after he was clean it was hard to tell they were the faint remains of bruises.

But rumor or no, Bast’s eyes were sharp. Cheek and jaw. A darkness all around one skinny wrist. And when he bent to take a drink from the stream, Bast glimpsed the boy’s back …

“So,” Bast said as they sat beside the stream. “What exactly do you want? Do you want to kill him, or do you just want to have him gone?”

“If he was just gone, I’d never sleep again for worry he’d come slouching back.” Rike said, then was quiet for a bit. “He went gone two span once.” He gave a faint smile. “That was a good time, just me and my ma. It was like my birthday every day when I woke up and he wasn’t there. I never knew my ma could sing …”

The boy went quiet again. “I thought he’d fallen somewhere drunk and finally broke his neck. But he’d just traded off a year of furs for drinking money. He’d just been in his trapping shack, all stupor-drunk for half a month, not hardly more than a mile away.”

The boy shook his head, more firmly this time. “No, if he goes, he won’t stay away.”

“I can figure out the how,” Bast said. “That’s what I do. But you need to tell me what you really want.”

Rike sat for a long while, jaw clenching and unclenching. “Gone,” he said at last. The word seemed to catch in his throat. “So long as he stays gone forever. If you can really do it.”