Bastion

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