When the party arrives in Halamshiral, Bastien sets his bag down somewhere in the east wing of Baroness de Martigny's sprawling home, takes a deep breath, gives himself a head-to-knee muscle-loosening shake — for the momentary entertainment of any Riftwatchers loitering nearby, mostly — and steps out into a rushing river of people he knows and places he needs to be. For the remainder of the week he's difficult to catch for any length of time. But there are moments:
i. inside.
Sitting crooked in front of a mirror in the wing Riftwatch is occupying with one leg bent beneath him, he's putting the finishing touches on his face. He's not an artist by any means, but he's better with his fingers than he would be with a pen or a brush. And he's done this hundreds and hundreds of times. The simple shape blended onto his face in green, reminiscent of a half-mask that fades into skin, is respectably neat. He's humming to himself; he isn't actually checking his work in the mirror.
To a colleague with a bare face and no mask in hand, he wiggles his fingers in invitation: he could do theirs, too. Or to one looking a bit more impressively embellished than he is, those fingers wiggle at this own face: could they do his?
— or, maybe an hour later, he can be found or followed down a set of stairs and around the corner from a still-audible murmur of discussion, where he's dabbing delicately at his face with a cloth. Trying to mop up the remnants of a glass of sherry that fêted shoemaker Gillot Gardet has just thrown into his face. (Je le merité, Bastien admitted in good humor before his exit.) The paint will need repair work either way, and he needs to change his shirt, but not starting from scratch would be nice —
Whoever has caught him, he catches them back. His mouth is behind the rag, but a smile is apparent around his eyes. "I suppose it means he missed me," he says.
ii. high quarter.
Around the edges of the dances and dinners, he doesn't disappear as entirely as he could if he tried harder. Not with Riftwatch's colors on his face and Riftwatch's pin on his shoulder and all the fascinating anecdotes about wars and rifters and griffons that implies. But he demonstrates a particular knack for taking the people caught in that net and passing them along to other members of the company, like a matchmaker, with a conversation starter before he goes and — only if no one else will see — a ha ha, have fun with that glance back at whoever has now been saddled with this or that marquis in his place.
There is no other discernible sign that he isn't having a nice time.
But downstairs — if someone secures their own invitation, or stumbles in lost — while he plays a game of cards with the servants who are done for the day or being kept in reserve for the post-party clean-up, he sits backwards on a chair and laughs for real. His teeth show and everything.
He turns to look when a Riftwatcher enters, grins wide, and points with his thumb to a moving lump in the front of his vest. The top of the lump, poking out of the V of his collar, has wiry, scraggly fur and ears like a bat.
"Look what I won," he says.
"You lost," corrects a valet, in Orlesian. "You lost, so you have to take the damn thing."
"Right," Bastien says to him, and issues the correction to the new arrival: "I lost. There are four more in the litter, if you want to come lose, too."
ota
i. inside.
Sitting crooked in front of a mirror in the wing Riftwatch is occupying with one leg bent beneath him, he's putting the finishing touches on his face. He's not an artist by any means, but he's better with his fingers than he would be with a pen or a brush. And he's done this hundreds and hundreds of times. The simple shape blended onto his face in green, reminiscent of a half-mask that fades into skin, is respectably neat. He's humming to himself; he isn't actually checking his work in the mirror.
To a colleague with a bare face and no mask in hand, he wiggles his fingers in invitation: he could do theirs, too. Or to one looking a bit more impressively embellished than he is, those fingers wiggle at this own face: could they do his?
— or, maybe an hour later, he can be found or followed down a set of stairs and around the corner from a still-audible murmur of discussion, where he's dabbing delicately at his face with a cloth. Trying to mop up the remnants of a glass of sherry that fêted shoemaker Gillot Gardet has just thrown into his face. (Je le merité, Bastien admitted in good humor before his exit.) The paint will need repair work either way, and he needs to change his shirt, but not starting from scratch would be nice —
Whoever has caught him, he catches them back. His mouth is behind the rag, but a smile is apparent around his eyes. "I suppose it means he missed me," he says.
ii. high quarter.
Around the edges of the dances and dinners, he doesn't disappear as entirely as he could if he tried harder. Not with Riftwatch's colors on his face and Riftwatch's pin on his shoulder and all the fascinating anecdotes about wars and rifters and griffons that implies. But he demonstrates a particular knack for taking the people caught in that net and passing them along to other members of the company, like a matchmaker, with a conversation starter before he goes and — only if no one else will see — a ha ha, have fun with that glance back at whoever has now been saddled with this or that marquis in his place.
There is no other discernible sign that he isn't having a nice time.
But downstairs — if someone secures their own invitation, or stumbles in lost — while he plays a game of cards with the servants who are done for the day or being kept in reserve for the post-party clean-up, he sits backwards on a chair and laughs for real. His teeth show and everything.
He turns to look when a Riftwatcher enters, grins wide, and points with his thumb to a moving lump in the front of his vest. The top of the lump, poking out of the V of his collar, has wiry, scraggly fur and ears like a bat.
"Look what I won," he says.
"You lost," corrects a valet, in Orlesian. "You lost, so you have to take the damn thing."
"Right," Bastien says to him, and issues the correction to the new arrival: "I lost. There are four more in the litter, if you want to come lose, too."