Bastion (5 page)

Bear’s expression lightened. “We promised we’d collect Amily about now. She’s having breakfast with Lydia; Lydia wants some stuff particularly from the Fair if we can find it, but the Princess can’t actually be seen wandering about like you or me.”

“So Amily’s gonna get it for her.” Mags nodded. “I don’ mind that, ’specially if you an’ me can find things t’look at in the same places.” He had no doubt that they would; didn’t they both have ladies to buy nice things for?

Bear made a face. “Shopping,” he said in tones of resignation. Lena elbowed him.

“I could say the same thing when you get into the herbs,” she teased.

Mags was just happy to see them so settled and yet still like themselves. Somewhere in the back of his mind had been the fear that being married would change them. Instead, they were still themselves. Closer to each other than anyone else, but still themselves.

He didn’t want to lose himself; he’d come far too close to that already. If Lena and Bear hadn’t, then why should he and Amily?

“Plan,” he reminded Bear. “I’m the only one with a Companion.”

“There’re wagons going down to the Fair and coming back, regular,” Bear told him. “So, the plan is to get Amily, get a ride on the wagon, and do the shopping first. Then we reckon a bite of lunch, then we go see the entertainers that aren’t like what we got up here. Like jugglers, rope dancers—”

Mags nodded.
:Sounds like you’re bein’ left behind today, horse,:
he teased Dallen.

:Fine. Leave me behind. See if I care,:
Dallen teased back.
:Actually I’d be dreadfully awkward down there in all that crush. A couple of the others said it got pretty hot and uncomfortable at times. I have a plan to eat to the bottom of a bucket of windfall apples, then have a long nap, then another bucket of apples, then, well, give me some privacy.:

Mags chuckled.
:I can do that,:
he promised. “There might be contests,” he said out loud. “We might want to watch some of those.” If there was a Master Archery contest, for instance, that would be very exciting. He
would like to see wrestling, but he didn’t think the girls would. Horse races—everyone would like those . . . foot races too. Spear throwing. He could think of a lot of things that would be fun to watch.

“I forgot about the contests, but Amily is all sorts of organized. She says she’ll have a list of everything and where it is,” Lena said, tucking her hand into the crook of Bear’s arm.

“Well, then, let’s collect her and see what’s what.” Knowing that his friends were perfectly capable of sitting there and discussing what they might want to do for another candlemark, rather than actually doing it, Mags got himself out from the table and bench, picked up all their dishes, and took them to the hatch into the kitchen. By the time he turned around, Lena and Bear were waiting for him at the door.

Herald’s Collegium was actually stuck at the end of the Herald’s Wing of the Palace, so they didn’t even have to go outside. Amily was ready and waiting at the door to the Heralds’ Wing, where every Herald that hadn’t made some other arrangement had quarters. Amily shared a suite there with her father—which made him wonder, would she be willing to live in his stable room with him? There was just about the same amount of space as she had to herself in the suite, but the level of creature comforts probably wasn’t as high . . .

He hadn’t quite made up his mind whether or not to kiss her, but she took care of the situation by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing
him.
He was not in the least unwilling to kiss her back and was just a little bit disappointed when she broke it off.

“Here’s the list of what’s going on and a map of the Fair,” she said, handing two pieces of reused paper to Lena. “I made two copies.” Mags got just a glimpse of what was on the other side; it looked like some sort of very dull document. That was the norm up here at the Palace; there were a lot of things that stopped having relevance after a while, and the backs of them got used for writing-practice, after-lessons work, and anything else that didn’t need pristine paper. He’d once written an entire series of assignments on the backs of harvest reports from decades gone by.

The wagon left from one of the small gates in the wall around the Palace-Collegium complex, the one that usually admitted the supply wagons. In fact, this actually
was
a supply wagon, with high, slat sides; low on comfort but very capacious. The four of them squeezed themselves into spots along one side on the plain wooden wagon bed. No one had thought about how they’d rattle and jounce all the way down to the Fair, but, then, most of them were too excited to care. There was just enough room that Bear and Lena, and Mags and Amily, could put their heads together over their lists and the map and make some rough plans.

“Lydia is even more organized than me,” Amily said, pointing out the merchants in the list that she had underlined and the rough area of the Fair each would be in. “Then again, she’s the Princess—she probably sent someone down to hunt things out for her. She wants a perfume from here, some tinctures from here, some specially good pens and ink from this man.”

Mags started to ask why Lydia hadn’t just had that same footman pick the things up for her—then he realized why. First, a Royal Footman wouldn’t bargain. Second, a Royal Footman would be cheated, probably by being sold inferior goods for an inflated price. And third, a Royal Footman would not have the knowledge that Lydia’s friends did. Bear could make sure the perfume was pure and not adulterated and vouch for the quality of the tinctures, while Lena, as a Bardic Trainee, was something of an expert in pens and inks, and might just try out as many as a dozen of the former before she picked out the ones that Lydia would want.

They had to be some sort of special pen, though, to be superior to the ones supplied to the Palace. He wondered just what on earth that was all about.

As he glanced over the list of contests, he didn’t see much he was terribly interested in. For one thing, at least so far as he was concerned, he had to actually know at least some of the contestants to have any interest in the outcome. For another, things like “grain-sack hurling” and “pig catching” didn’t exactly sound . . . exciting.

“I think the contests today are a wash,” Bear said, craning his neck around.

“The good contests are all on the last three days, Lydia says,” put in Amily. “And we’ll all be back at lessons.”

“Look, if I wanta see archery that’ll make m’ eyes bulge, I’ll just ask Weaponsmaster for a demonstration,” Mags pointed out. “Now, look here, there’s a whole
tent
full of jugglers and tumblers and rope dancers, and the like! What’s that about?”

“You pay your penny, go in, and stay as long as you like,” Amily told him. “They have seats, and they change performers and acts. Kind of like if the performers at the wedding had come to us instead of us going ’round to them. This sort of thing only happens at the really big Fairs.”

“I like that idea,” Mags declared. “What about the rest of you?”

“I’m game,” Bear nodded. And the girls agreed.

There was a music tent too, but no one suggested going to it. After all, when you lived at the Collegia, you had the music from Bardic all around you all the time. It would be very difficult to find any sort of music that was a novelty.

The wagon dropped them all off at the edge of the Fair, very near the first of the booths marked on Amily’s map. This was where the commons started, at the edge of the city itself—mostly “waste” ground that people used to graze beasts they could keep in their tiny back yards, like goats or geese, or their donkeys if they had them. People were free to harvest the grass here to feed rabbits as well. Otherwise, anyone could use it for almost any reason as it was land held in common for anyone living in the city. Sometimes travelers or trading caravans camped here, and always the Fairs and Markets were held here. It looked as if a second city of tents had sprung up outside the first one.

Merchants generally lived in these tents as well as sold their wares or displayed their skills in them. Some were scarcely large enough to have room for a collapsible counter and a bedroll. Some were enormous, big enough to contain a hundred or more people at a time. All were laid out in a gridwork pattern, like houses with small spaces behind them. This had been the custom for hundreds of years, and was the business of a man called the Master of the Fairs, whose entire job was to make sure that each Fair and Market was put together in a sensible fashion, with proper care taken for sanitation and cleanliness.

Here, the tents were all small; a few were quite sumptuous, with canvas painted and even ornamented with touches of gold or silver. Some were small and plain. There was a faint hint of sweet and spice on the breeze, as if the very canvas of the tents had over the years soaked in the redolent aromas of the owners’ wares. Since this was the area designated for herbalists, perfumers, chymists, and the like, it was highly likely that this was exactly what had happened. A well-made tent could serve several generations of merchant, after all.

Well, both Bear and Lydia wanted things here. This was as good a place as any to start.

Bear went with Amily to find Lydia’s tinctures and Bear’s herbs, leaving Lena with Mags to seek out the perfumer.

The tents had been placed in no particular order. Some quite plain ones selling dried herbs were right next to tents beautifully painted with flowers or geometric designs that sold expensive scents. The herbalists’ wares were mostly packed away in sealed jars or airtight boxes, although they advertised by having bunches of fragrant things like rosemary and lavender hanging from their front “doors.” The most expensive perfumers only needed their exquisite, tiny glass bottles, each one cut, and sparkling, like a gem.

The lesser lights of this profession sold their fragrances in bottles of stone or tiny pots; they didn’t confine their fragrances to perfume, though, but also dispensed oils, creams, soaps, and pomades. There were even a few chandlers, which surprised Mags, until he saw that their candles were of scented wax that was molded or carved and colored like works of art. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could bear to burn something like that, though he supposed that was the point. If you were wealthy enough to want to be ostentatious, this was the epitome of “burning money.”

The perfumer they sought was one of the middling ones. His glass bottles were all plain dark amber in color and all the same shape. He dispensed not only perfume but other scented products as well. He was a tall, thin man, very pale, with hair so pale a color it was almost white.

His clothing was very different from anything that Mags had seen before. He wore a red linen shirt with huge sleeves ending in tight embroidered cuffs and a high neck, also embroidered, with an embroidered placket, not centered on his chest, but off to one side. He wore a broad leather belt and very full black trews tucked into high boots.

He smiled at them as they entered his tent. “Ah, young Herald and his friend, yes? How may I being to serve you?”

“Lydia of the House of Soren asked us to—” Mags began, as Lydia’s note had coached him to say. The man clapped his hands together once, with an even broader smile.

“Lydia, of flaming hair, yes? She is being my customer since she is so high—” he measured a height barely up to the bottom of his rib cage with one hand. “I am already to be having package made up, knowing she will either come or send.” He bent down behind his counter and came back up again with a basket that was almost as much a work of art as those expensive candles were. It had been made, as near as Mags could tell, of fine coils of pine needles sewn together. They still held a faint scent of pine.

And if Lydia was an old customer of this merchant, there was very little chance he would try to cheat her by passing off an inferior product. Mags relaxed.

“You are being have list, yes?” the man continued, unpacking the basket. “You will to be telling me if I am to be leaving anything out, yes?”

Mags fumbled out his list. “She says here, the scent is Forest
.
” He’d always wondered how it was that sometimes Lydia would smell . . . well, like a forest. It seemed he had found the answer.

“Yes, yes. I am to be the only Scentmaster to be making this scent,” the man said proudly. “I am to being Efan Sevanol, Scentmaster. Which, you are to being know already, as you saw sign. Now, of Forest scent. Four bars soap. Two jars cream for hands. Two pots cream perfume. One bottle essential oil. One bottle perfume. Is right, yes?” He beamed at them. Mags just had to smile back, the man’s good humor was that infectious.

“’Xactly right, Scentmaster,” he said, and was rewarded with a rich chuckle.

“Good, good. I am to being hear she is to being married yes?” the Scentmaster continued, as he packed the basket up again, carefully cushioning the glass bottles of oil and perfume in tiny, form-fitting pine-needle sheaths of their own before repacking them. “As wedding present, I am to being add this, yes?” He held up a third bottle. “Is to being scent I am to be thinking she will like and will please husband. Is to being Ambar
.
Men are to being—” He waggled his eyebrows at them, and Lena giggled and blushed. “Yes, yes, young lady understands!” He crooked a finger at Lena, who came closer, and he opened a bottle fastened to the counter with wax so it wouldn’t tip over and spill. The cork had something like a glass needle with a blunt point sticking in it. “Please to be giving me wrist, yes?”

Lena obliged; he gently ran the point of the needle over her wrist; it left a glistening trail of perfume behind.

“Now to be rubbing wrists together,” the man—suggested, rather than ordered. Lena did, and Mags felt his eyes widen as the rich, dark, subtle scent reached his nose. It reminded him of . . . incense maybe. And honey. And woodsmoke. And . . . well, he understood exactly what the Scentmaster was hinting at, now.

“Oh—my!” Lena exclaimed, her nostrils flaring. “Oh, this is . . . very . . . intoxicating. . . .” She blushed again.