Assassin's Quest

I found a corner table near the hearth and had the serving boy bring me a pot of tea and a loaf of morning bread. This last proved to be a Farrow concoction full of seeds and nuts and bits of fruit. I ate slowly, waiting for Starling to descend. I was both impatient to be out to meet these smugglers, and reluctant to put myself in Starling's power. As the morning hours dragged by, I caught the serving boy looking oddly at me twice. The third time I caught his stare, I returned it until he blushed suddenly and looked aside. I divined then the reason for his interest. I'd spent the night in Starling's room, and no doubt he wondered what would possess her to share quarters with such a vagabond. But it was still enough to make me uncomfortable. The day was more than halfway to noon anyway. I rose and went up the stairs to Starling's door.

I knocked quietly and waited. But it took a second round of louder knocking before I heard a sleepy reply. After a bit she came to the door, opened it a crack, then yawned at me and motioned me in. She wore only her leggings and a recently donned oversized tunic. Her curly dark hair was tousled all about her face. She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed, blinking her eyes as I closed and fastened the door behind me. "Oh, you took a bath," she greeted me, and yawned again.

"Is it that noticeable?" I asked her testily.

She nodded at me affably. "I woke up once and thought you'd just left me here. I wasn't worried about it, though. I knew you couldn't find them without me." She rubbed her eyes, and then looked at me more critically. "What happened to your beard?"

"I tried to trim it. Without much success."

She nodded in agreement. "But it was a good idea," she said comfortingly. "It might make you look a bit less wild. And it might prevent Creece or Tassin or anyone else from our caravan from recognizing you. Here. I'll help you. Go sit on that chair. Oh, and open the shutters, let some light in here."

I did as she suggested, without much enthusiasm. She arose from the bed, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. She took a few moments to splash some water on her face, then worried her own hair back into order and fastened it with a couple of small combs. She belted the tunic to give it a shape, then slipped on her boots and laced them up. In a remarkably short time she was presentable. Then she came to me, and taking hold of my chin turned my face back and forth in the light with no shyness at all: I could not be as nonchalant as she was.

"Do you always blush so easily?" she asked me with a laugh. "It's rare to see a Buck man able to flush so red. I suppose your mother must have been fair-skinned."

I could think of nothing to say to that, so I sat silently as she rummaged in her pack and came up with a small pair of shears. She worked quickly and deftly. "I used to cut my brothers' hair," she told me as she worked. "And my father's hair and beard, after my mother died. You've a nice shape to your jaw, under all this brush. What have you been doing with it, just letting it grow out any way it pleased?"

"I suppose," I muttered nervously. The scissors were flashing away right under my nose. She paused and brushed briskly at my face. A substantial amount of curly black hair fell to the floor. "I don't want my scar to be visible," I warned her.

"It won't," she said calmly. "But you will have lips and a mouth instead of a gap in your mustache. Tilt your chin up. There. Do you have a shaving blade?"

"Only my knife," I admitted nervously.

"We'll make do then," she said comfortingly. She walked to the door, flung it open, and used the power of a minstrel's lungs to bellow for the serving boy to bring her hot water. And tea. And bread and some rashers of bacon. When she came back into the room, she cocked her head and looked at me critically. "Let's cut your hair, too," she proposed. "Take it down."

I moved too slowly to satisfy her. She stepped behind me, tugged off my kerchief, and freed my hair from the leather thong. Unbound, it fell to my shoulders. She took up her comb and curried my hair roughly forward. "Let's see," she muttered as I gritted my teeth to her rough combing.

"What do you propose?" I asked her, but hanks of hair were already falling to the floor. Whatever she had decided was rapidly becoming a reality. She pulled hair forward over my face, then cut it off square above my eyebrows, tugged her comb through the rest of it a few times, then cut it off at jaw length. "Now," she told me, "you look a bit more like Farrow merchant stock. Before you were obviously a Buckman. Your coloring is still Buck, but now your hair and clothes are Farrow. As long as you don't talk, folk won't be certain where you're from." She considered a moment, then went to work again on the hair above my brow. After a moment she rummaged around and gave me a mirror. "The white will be a lot less noticeable now."