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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 wrist; it left a glistening trail of perfume behind.
    “Now to be rubbing wrists together,” the man—suggested, rather than ordered. Lena did, and Mags felt his eyes widen as the rich, dark, subtle scent reached his nose. It reminded him of . . . incense maybe. And honey. And woodsmoke. And . . . well, he understood exactly what the Scentmaster was hinting at, now.
    “Oh—my!” Lena exclaimed, her nostrils flaring. “Oh, this is . . . very . . . intoxicating. . . .” She blushed again.
    “Yes, yes,” the man chuckled. “For married ladies, yes? They will be to having exciting time if wearing, yes?”
    Lena laughed, still blushing. “It’s a good thing I’m married, then!” As the Scentmaster tilted his head inquiringly, she added quickly, “Not to Mags, he’s just a friend. To a Healer.”
    “And he is off hunting herbs and things not so interesting as scent.” The man laughed again. “So, it is my dismal duty, as I am to be having many expenses, to be asking for