NOON: OBLIGATION
Rike needed a moment to collect himself, or at least that’s what Bast assumed. What the boy had actually said was that he needed to see a man about a horse, before dashing off into the shrubbery.
Bast sighed like a child in church and peered up at the sun. The turning wheels of his desire did not come grinding to a halt because some farmer drank too much. He already had enough to do today. Emberlee would be taking her bath soon. He needed carrots for the stew…
But his unresolved debt to the boy was like a thorn straight through his tongue. And that was when Rike was elsewhere. Close at hand, it was more like a razor, freshly stropped and pressed against his throat. The fact that the boy didn’t know his hand was on the handle wasn’t at all reassuring.
And as if the situation wasn’t tangled tight enough, the boy had broken faith with Bast before. That was no little thing.
Before coming to this place with his master, Bast would have reveled in the boy’s betrayal. Revenge was such a simple, raw desire. Satisfying, clean as fire. There was a sort of dark, hard joy that came from settling a score so solidly it burned some mortal’s life straight down to ash.
Instead, for the first time, Bast found he wasn’t free to do such things. Or rather, he was free to choose between desires. To take the sweet and terrible revenge that he was due…or continue to assist his master. To keep their masks intact and stay here tucked away inside the new-built inn, all hidden in this quiet little town.
And so, last summer, Bast chose to thwart his own desire, an act as natural as pulling out his tongue. And yes, he had still paid Rike back for his betrayal. And yes, he’d wrought revenge all cunning, coy, and cruel. But still, for Bast it was like craving steak and getting gruel. It was like slaking want of wine by licking at its shadow on a wall.
And this, apparently, was Bast’s reward for showing such remarkable restraint and moving counter to his natural desires: the boy he’d spared now had him on a leash.
But the favor Rike was asking for…it might be a bit of hidden luck. If Bast stepped quickly enough, there was a chance he could slip loose before disaster struck. It had been a near thing in the woods just now.
Sighing again, Bast looked around aimlessly until Rike came out of the brush lacing up his pants. Wordlessly, he turned and led the boy out of the wood, into the clearing, back toward the hill.
Bast walked as far as the greystone. There were no children waiting, so he stopped and turned to Rike. “Tell me exactly what you want,” he said, leaning against the side of the great sun-warmed stone. “Do you want to kill him? Or do you just want to have him gone?”
Eyes still red around the edges, Rike hunched under the question, putting his hands in his pockets. “He went gone a whole two span about a year ago.” The faint ghost of a smile flickered on the boy’s smudged face. “That was a good time, just me and Ma and Tess. It was like my birthday every day when I woke up and he weren’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.” The smile was gone now. Rike rubbed his eyes, then spat into the grass. “Turns out he’d just traded off a mess of furs for drinking money. He’d been off in his trapping shack, all stupor-drunk for half a month.”
Rike took his hands out of his pockets, then didn’t seem to know what to do with them and put them back. He shook his head. “No. If he was just gone, I’d never sleep again for worry he’d come back.” Rike was quiet for a bit. “No,” he said, more firmly this time. “No. If he goes I know that he won’t stay away.”
“I can figure out the how,” Bast said. “You need to tell me what you really want.”
“It needs done soon,” Rike said, a thread of bone-deep panic underneath his voice. “How much a difference does that make?”
Looking up at the sun, Bast sighed. Some things could not be easily ignored.
And yet, some things could not be easily forgot.
Turned against himself, Bast brought out the leather sack and pulled an embril. Holding it in his fist, he wordlessly tilted the open sack toward the boy.
Rike looked puzzled, but after a brief rummage, he brought out his hand and showed the piece of slate etched with a chain. There was no gold this time, only the silver-grey of iron.
Bast opened his hand, revealing a rough disk of obsidian. Its surface had no image at all. But one edge was chipped, and as they both looked down, they saw the blood well up all of a sudden in a bright red line where it had cut Bast’s palm.
Scowling, Bast gave a disgusted snort and rolled his eyes as if the world had just told him a long-winded, unfunny joke. He held out the sack ungraciously, then shook it impatiently after half a moment when Rike failed to immediately drop the piece of slate inside.
After Rike did, Bast returned the embrils to his pocket and looked the boy in the eye. “What’s your father’s name?”
“Jessom,” Rike said, his face looking like he was tasting something bitter.
“Assuming we can come to an agreement. Assuming soon. Which is it? You want him dead or gone?”
Rike stood there 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.”
“I can do it,” Bast said calmly.
Rike looked at Bast, then back down at his hands. “Gone then,” he said at last. “I’d kill him. But that sort of thing en’t right. I don’t want to be that sort of man. A fellow shouldn’t ought to kill his da.”
“I could do it for you,” Bast said easily, as if they were trading chores. “No blood on your hands then.”
Rike sat for a while, then shook his head. “It’s the same thing, innit? Either way it’s me. And if it were me, it would be more honest if I did it with my hands, rather than do it with my mouth.”
Bast shrugged easily. “Right then. Gone forever?”
“Gone forever,” Rike said, then swallowed hard. “And what’s this going to cost?”
“A lot,” Bast said. “It won’t be buns and buttons, either. Think how much you want this. Think how big it is.” He met the lean boy’s eyes and didn’t look away. “That much three times over. That’s what you’ll owe. Plus some on top for soon.” He stared at the boy. “Think hard on that.”
Rike was a little paler now, but his eyes were flint, and his mouth made a line. “Anything,” he said. “But nothin of Ma’s. She en’t got much left that Da hasn’t drank away.”
Bast looked the boy up and down. “You’re mine until I say we’re square. Secrets. Favors. Anything.” Bast gave him a hard look. “That’s the deal.”
Rike had gone even paler than before, but he nodded. “So long as it’s only me. None of Ma’s or anything that touches her. And it has to be soon,” Rike said. “He’s getting worse. I can run off, but Ma can’t. And little Bip can’t neither. And…”
“Fine fine,” Bast cut him off testily, waving his hands. “And yes, soon.”
Bast turned, circled round the greystone, then started to make his way up the side of the hill, motioning for Rike to follow. They climbed for a minute in silence. The sun went behind a cloud, making the mild summer day turn suddenly chill and grey.
Bast crested the hill with Rike in tow for the first time in more than a year. Together they moved to stand beside the stark white trunk of the lightning tree. The wind kicked up a bit, tossing Bast’s black hair as the sun came out from behind the cloud, making everything glow warm with the buttery light.
Bast held up his hand, palm bright with blood. He pressed it hard against the barkless trunk. Underhand, he tossed the piece of chipped obsidian to Rike.
Rike caught the embril easily, and without hesitation cut a line beneath his four fingers. The blood welled up and Rike stepped closer, pressing his hand against the warm, smooth wood.
The two of them stood there, one tall, one short. Each standing on their own side with their arms outstretched, it looked like they were holding up the broken tree.
Bast met the boy’s eyes. “You want to strike a deal with me?”
Rike nodded.
“Say it then,” Bast said.
Rike said, “I want to make a deal.”
Bast gave the barest shake of his head. “Say: ‘Bast, I want you to make a deal with me.’ ”
Rike drew a breath before he continued. “Bast,” he said, with such deadly earnest solemnity that a priest would envy it. “Please make a deal with me.”
Rike watched as Bast bowed his head slightly. The tall man’s body shuddered slightly, as if suddenly shouldering some impossibly heavy weight.
Bast drew a breath and straightened. His careful steps described a circle round the tree, but somehow he still stayed right where he stood. Rike blinked, as if he wasn’t sure what he had seen.
Bast spun, the motion like a dancer’s leaping twirl, but somehow he still stood and kept one hand against the broken trunk beside him. Rike blinked, then blinked again. The place where Bast was standing wavered, rippling like a flat road on a blazing summer day.
Bast carefully did not make a gentle circle with his hand and fought the urge to grin. Every day he made this place his own. He wove it strong. He wore it thin.
Bast drew a deep, unfettered breath and felt the edges of the world begin to slip and fold. There was the smell of torn and burning wood. The sun flickered in the sky. The shadow underneath the vast and spreading branches of the oak was dark as night. The stars were out.
Bast smiled as underneath the weight of his desire, time began to shift and break. The air was still. His eyes were dark and terrible. Then, graceful as a dancer, he lifted up his leg to take a step…
…and Bast came to the top of the hill with Rike for the first time that day. Again. They came there for the first time and again. And together they walked to stand beside the bare trunk of the lightning tree. The sun was warm as honey. The wind bent the tall grass to lick against their legs.
Bast turned to look Rike in the eye and nodded seriously.
“Help me get my da to go away,” Rike said. “Forever. So my ma don’t ever have to see him even once again.”
Bast pressed his bloody palm against the pristine whiteness of the tree. “Gone forever,” he agreed. “And soon.”
“You do this favor for me,” Rike said. “I’ll owe you. I’ll work f—”
“No.” Bast’s voice was like a bar of lead. He tossed the piece of sharp obsidian to Rike, red sunset glittering like blood along its broken edge. “I do this and you’re mine ’til I say otherwise.”
Rike swallowed hard. “I swear it.” He sliced his palm below the thumb. The white trunk of the lightning tree was shaded red with sunset as he pressed his bloody hand against it. “You make him go so far away his shadow never lays across a road where my ma has to set her feet.”
Bast led Rike to take their places by the lightning tree, for the first time and again. The wind brushed cool against them, drying the sweat from their foreheads. Bast’s skin seemed paler in the fading light, as if reflecting the light of the hanging crescent moon.
Rike staggered slightly, catching himself with one hand against the side of the lightning tree. He could feel the wetness there tug slightly as the cool, dry wood soaked up his blood.
Bast pressed his hand against the pale side of the tree. “I do this, and I own you to the middle of your bones.” His eyes were the same perfect purple of the fading twilight sky behind him. “I ask you for your thumb? You run to find a boning knife. You have a sweet dream late at night, you wrap it in a bow and bring it right to me.”
“I swear it.” Rike shivered in the chill night air. He cut his hand. His hand was pressed against the tree. Bast handed him the embril, and he caught it. “Make it so he goes and won’t come back.” Rike licked his lips. “But leave him living, even though my heart wants him to die.”
Rike crested the hill for the first time in more than a year to find Bast waiting for him, standing in the dark beside the lightning tree. The wind was sharp, the embril that he held felt colder than a chip of ice. The moon hung straight above them, sharp and bright.
Rike pricked his fingers one at a time. His hand seemed impossibly white in the moonlight. Each drop of blood was perfectly black.
“She never has to look at him again,” Rike said. “Tess never has to hide when she hears boots outside the door. Little Bip will never have to learn his name. Gone until every one of us forgets his face forever, even when we dream.” He touched his fingers to the tree and felt them freeze and stick and burn, like when he touched the pump handle on the coldest days in winter.
“I do this, and I will never owe you any other thing,” Bast said, his empty eyes glittering like the stars scattered across the perfect blackness of the sky above. “Any debt or obligation will be squared. Any gifting that you’ve made to me is all unbound and now instead becomes a freely given gift, offered without obligation, let, or lien.”
“You do this and we’re square,” Rike said. “Anything you say I do. But nothing against my ma, or Tess, or little Bip. I only owe what’s mine, and that’s the deal.”
Bast reached up and gently ran his palm along the sharp white knife edge of the moon and pressed it to the nearby tree. “Gone forever, still alive, and soon. I swear it on my blood and name. I swear it by the ever-moving moon.” Bast’s skin seemed almost to shine in the dark. “Here in this place, between the stone and sky, I swear to you three times and done.”
Rike pulled away from the tree. He held out a hand as if trying to catch his balance, but his body didn’t sway unsteadily. He didn’t feel dizzy either, though he did close his eyes and take a deep breath while resting his hands on the warm surface of the greystone where he sat.
Bast licked the blood from his palm, watching Rike like a cat. The sun came out from behind a cloud, warming both of them while the wind made waves whisper through the tall grass.
Rike swung his feet a couple times idly, then made the short hop down from sitting on the greystone to land lightly on the grassy ground. “So. Where do we start?”
“First, let me see your hands,” Bast said.
“Why?” Rike asked, puzzled.
Bast tilted his head the barest fraction of an inch and gave the boy a look of perfect, pure, impassive calm.
Rike blanched and stepped forward instantly, holding out both hands. Bast reached out gingerly, first touching the back of the boy’s hand with a single finger. Nothing. He took gentle hold of Rike’s wrist next. Then seeming to gain confidence, Bast took hold of both hands and turned them palm-side up. They were smudged as if the boy had been climbing rocks or trees. There were a few scuffs and old scars, but that was all.
Seeming satisfied, Bast let go of the boy’s hands and they fell loose back to his sides. Bast fought the urge to wipe his own hands on his pants. “Second, find Kostrel,” he said instead. “Tell him I have some of what I owe him.”
For half a second, it seemed like Rike might say something. Then he simply bobbed his head once.
Bast gave a wicked smile at this and nodded his approval. “Third time is the charm,” Bast pointed at the stream. “Go find a river stone with a hole clean through it. Then bring it here to me.”
“A faerie stone?” Rike blurted.
Bast needed to nip that in the bud. “Faerie stone?” he said in a tone so scathing Rike flushed red. “You’re too old for nonsense.” Bast gave the boy a look. “Do you want my help or not?” he asked.
“I do,” Rike said in a small voice.
“Then bring me a river stone.” Bast pointed imperiously off in the direction of the nearby stream. “You have to be the one to find it, too,” he improvised. “Can’t be anyone else. Can’t be traded for. And you need to gather it the proper way so we can use it for the charm: dry on the bank where the sun has touched it, hole pointed up at the sky.”
Rike nodded.
Bast struck his hands together sharply once. It sounded like a tiny thunderclap. Rike went racing like a hound after a hare.
Laying back in the grass, Bast plucked a stem of grass and chewed it. He rubbed his chest idly, delighting in the lightness there. True, he had a bargain he was bound to honor. And Rike had been insistent upon ‘soon,’ and Bast had sworn, so it needed tending to today. And yes, he already had plans, and this was going to complicate them…
But who didn’t enjoy a bit of a challenge every now and then? And if he had a little extra on his plate, what better day than Midsummer for fitting extra in? Bast would have paid ten times the price to be out from under the boy’s thumb. Fifty times. He smiled like a cat who knows which window in the creamery is loose. There was still work ahead, but as an artist, Bast felt a certain satisfaction with what he’d begun.