“Kostrel!” Bast said happily. “How’s the road to Tinuë?”
“Seems sunny enough to me today,” the boy said as he came to the top of the hill. “And I found a lovely secret by the roadside. Something I thought you might be interested in.”
“Ah,” Bast said. “Come have a seat, then. What sort of secret did you stumble on?”
Kostrel sat cross-legged on the grass nearby. “I know where Emberlee takes her bath.”
Bast raised a half-interested eyebrow. “Is that so?”
Kostrel grinned. “You faker. Don’t pretend you don’t care.”
“Of course I care,” Bast said. “She’s the sixth prettiest girl in town, after all.”
“Sixth?” the boy said, indignant. “She’s the second prettiest and you know it.”
“Perhaps fourth,” Bast conceded. “After Ania.”
“Ania’s legs are skinny as a chicken’s,” Kostrel observed calmly.
Bast smiled at the boy. “To each his own. But yes. I am interested. What would you like in trade? An answer, a favor, a secret?”
“I want a favor and information,” the boy said with a small smirk. His dark eyes were sharp in his lean face. “I want good answers to three questions. And it’s worth it. Because Emberlee is the third prettiest girl in town.”
Bast opened his mouth as if he were going to protest, then shrugged and smiled. “No favor. But I’ll give you three answers on a subject named beforehand,” he countered. “Any subject except that of my employer, whose trust in me I cannot in good conscience betray.”
Kostrel nodded in agreement. “Three full answers,” he said. “With no equivocating or bullshittery.”
Bast nodded. “So long as the questions are focused and specific. No ‘tell me everything you know about’ nonsense.”
“That wouldn’t be a question,” Kostrel pointed out.
“Exactly,” Bast said. “And you agree not to tell anyone else where Emberlee is having her bath?” Kostrel scowled at that, and Bast laughed. “You little cocker, you would have sold it twenty times, wouldn’t you?”
The boy shrugged easily, not denying it, and not embarrassed either. “It’s valuable information.”
Bast chuckled. “Three full, earnest answers on a single subject with the understanding that I’m the only one you’ve told.”
“You are,” the boy said sullenly. “I came here first.”
“And with the understanding that you won’t tell Emberlee anyone knows.” Kostrel looked so offended at this that Bast didn’t bother waiting for him to agree. “And with the understanding that you won’t show up yourself.”
The dark-eyed boy spat a couple words that surprised Bast more than his earlier use of “equivocating.”
“Fine,” Kostrel growled. “But if you don’t know the answer to my question, I get to ask another.”
Bast thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
“And if I pick a subject you don’t know much about, I get to choose another.”
Another nod. “That’s fair.”
“And you loan me another book,” the boy said, his dark eyes glaring. “And a copper penny. And you have to describe her breasts to me.”
Bast threw back his head and laughed. “Done.”
They shook on the deal, the boy’s thin hand as delicate as a bird’s wing.
Bast leaned against the lightning tree, yawning and rubbing the back of his neck. “So. What’s your subject?”
Kostrel’s grim look lifted a little then, and he grinned excitedly. “I want to know about the Fae.”
It says a great deal that Bast finished his great yawp of a yawn as if nothing were the matter. It is quite hard to yawn and stretch when your belly feels like you’ve swallowed a lump of bitter iron and your mouth has gone suddenly dry.
But Bast was something of a professional dissembler, so he yawned and stretched, and even went so far as to scratch himself under one arm lazily.
“Well?” the boy asked impatiently. “Do you know enough about them?”
“A fair amount,” Bast said, doing a much better job of looking modest this time. “More than most folk, I imagine.”
Kostrel leaned forward, his thin face intent. “I thought you might. You aren’t from around here. You know things. You’ve seen what’s really out there in the world.”
“Some of it,” Bast admitted. He looked up at the sun. “Ask your questions, then. I have to be somewhere come noon.”
The boy nodded seriously, then looked down at the grass in front of himself for a moment, thinking. “What are they like?”
Bast blinked for a moment, taken aback. Then he laughed helplessly and threw up his hands. “Merciful Tehlu. Do you have any idea how crazy that question is? They’re not like anything. They’re like themselves.”
Kostrel looked indignant. “Don’t you try to shim me!” he said, leveling a finger at Bast. “I said no bullshittery!”
“I’m not. Honest I’m not.” Bast raised his hands defensively. “It’s just an impossible question to answer is all. What would you say if I asked you what people were like? How could you answer that? There are so many kinds of people, and they’re all different.”
“So it’s a big question,” Kostrel said. “Give me a big answer.”
“It’s not just big,” Bast said. “It would fill a book.”
The boy gave a profoundly unsympathetic shrug.
Bast scowled. “It could be argued that your question is neither focused nor specific.”
Kostrel raised an eyebrow. “So we’re arguing now? I thought we were trading information? Fully and freely. If you asked me where Emberlee was going for her bath, and I said, ‘In a stream’ you’d feel like I’d measured you some pretty short corn, wouldn’t you?”
Bast sighed. “Fair enough. But if I told you every rumor and snippet I’d ever heard, this would take a span of days. Most of it would be useless, and some probably wouldn’t even be true because it’s just from stories that I’ve heard.”
Kostrel frowned, but before he could protest, Bast held up a hand. “Here’s what I’ll do. Despite the unfocused nature of your question, I’ll give you an answer that covers the rough shape of things and …” Bast hesitated. “… one true secret on the subject. Okay?”
“Two secrets,” Kostrel said, his dark eyes glittering with excitement.
“Fair enough.” Bast took a deep breath. “When you say fae, you’re talking about anything that lives in the Fae. That includes a lot of things that are … just creatures. Like animals. Here you have dogs and squirrels and bears. In the Fae, they have raum and dennerlings and …”
“And trow?”
Bast nodded. “And trow. They’re real.”
“And dragons?”
Bast shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever heard. Not anymore …”
Kostrel looked disappointed. “What about the fair folk? Like faerie tinkers and such?” The boy narrowed his eyes. “Mind you, this isn’t a new question, merely an attempt to focus your ongoing answer.”
Bast laughed helplessly. “Lord and lady. Ongoing? Was your mother scared by an azzie when she was pregnant? Where do you get that kind of talk?”
“I stay awake in church.” Kostrel shrugged. “And sometimes Abbe Leodin lets me read his books. What do they look like?”
“Like regular people,” Bast said.
“Like you and me?” the boy asked.
Bast fought back a smile. “Just like you or me. You wouldn’t hardly notice if they passed you on the street. But there are others. Some of them are … They’re different. More powerful.”
“Like Varsa never-dead?”
“Some,” Bast conceded. “But some are powerful in other ways. Like the mayor is powerful. Or like a moneylender.” Bast’s expression went sour. “Many of those … they’re not good to be around. They like to trick people. Play with them. Hurt them.”