Bast picked it up delicately between two fingers and set it down on the ground between them. “What’s this?”
Kostrel stuffed the rest of his belongings into his pocket. “It’s my knife.”
“That’s it?” Bast asked.
The boy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What else could it be?”
Bast brought out his own knife. It was a little larger, and instead of wood, it was carved from a piece of antler, polished and beautiful. Bast opened it, and the bright blade shone in the sun.
He laid his knife next to the boy’s. “Would you trade your knife for mine?”
Kostrel eyed the knife jealously. But even so, there wasn’t a hint of hesitation before he shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s mine,” the boy said, his face clouding over.
“Mine’s better,” Bast said matter-of-factly.
Kostrel reached out and picked up his knife, closing his hand around it possessively. His face was sullen as a storm. “My da gave me this,” he said. “Before he took the king’s coin and went to be a soldier and save us from the rebels.” He looked up at Bast, as if daring him to say a single word contrary to that.
Bast didn’t look away from him, just nodded seriously. “So it’s more than just a knife,” he said. “It’s special to you.”
Still clutching the knife, Kostrel nodded, blinking rapidly.
“For you, it’s the best knife.”
Another nod.
“It’s more important than other knives. And that’s not just a seeming,” Bast said. “It’s something the knife is.”
There was a flicker of understanding in Kostrel’s eyes.
Bast nodded. “That’s grammarie. Now imagine if someone could take a knife and make it be more of what a knife is. Make it into the best knife. Not just for them, but for anyone.” Bast picked up his own knife and closed it. “If they were really skilled, they could do it with something other than a knife. They could make a fire that was more of what a fire is. Hungrier. Hotter. Someone truly powerful could do even more. They could take a shadow …” He trailed off gently, leaving an open space in the empty air.
Kostrel drew a breath and leapt to fill it with a question. “Like Felurian!” he said. “Is that what she did to make Kvothe’s shadow cloak?”
Bast nodded seriously, glad for the question, hating that it had to be that question. “It seems likely to me. What does a shadow do? It conceals, it protects. Kvothe’s cloak of shadows does the same, but more.”
Kostrel was nodding along in understanding, and Bast pushed on quickly, eager to leave this particular subject behind. “Think of Felurian herself …”
The boy grinned, he seemed to have no trouble doing that.
“A woman can be a thing of beauty,” Bast said slowly. “She can be a focus of desire. Felurian is that. Like the knife. The most beautiful. The focus of the most desire. For everyone …” Bast let his statement trail off gently yet again.
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 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.