“Why not? I imagine that General Lee’s sittin’ in the best-protected spot we have.”
“I allow that may be true, but that don’t make it safe for a girl, ‘specially when there’s a big push on. Patrols ain’t permittin’ any civilians up that way without they got themselves a pass.” He stood up and backed away from me, moving toward his detail. They looked like they were getting fidgety and wanted to get going. “I can tell you, honey, no man worth his salt’s gonna give you one. Heartless, that’d be.” He tipped his hat and waved at his men to move out, nudging the captive men ahead of them. “If I find your man, I’ll send word to this here cobbler. It’ll be from Sergeant Wilkes, that’s me. Now that’s there’s all I can do. You take care now.”
The soggy detail marched away, taking my best chance at finding Romulus with them. Watching them trudge east, toward the mounting gunfire, I felt empty. A long sigh left me and I sagged against the pole holding up the shop’s sign. What now? Sit and pray that a busy soldier in the heat of battle remembered a promise to a stranger? And even if I did, what if Tyrell came back? Or worse, Bullies? I recalled the snake that the kindly buzzard had dispatched. It had been following me, spying on me. For who? For how long? What information had it passed along? For all I knew, battalions of Merchantry agents, eager for bounty, were in Richmond already. I needed to get to Lee’s headquarters, spin a sob story, free Romulus, and get to the coast. Sitting in one place was probable suicide.
I need a disguise. Too many enemies are nearby and know me on sight.
“I agree,” said Jasper. “Lovely swan dive into that trough, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I thought to him with an imagined scowl. “Do you have anything helpful to say or are you just lookin’ to gloat at my predicament?”
“Hey! Your predicament is my predicament.”
“Then maybe you’d like to suggest a way outta this mess.”
“You already have.”
“Huh? What?”
“Thought of a way out. You need a disguise, you said. I agree.”
The rain had tapered off to nearly nothing. It hadn’t been much to start with. I shook my short hair and slicked it back out of my eyes. “And I suppose you’re offerin’ to help with that?”
“How could I not? You’re my favorite Stone-Warden.”
I started walking down the street, planning to turn at the first intersection and get onto a side street or alley, where I was less likely to get spotted. “No, thanks. Shape-shiftin’ ain’t my cup o’ tea. Felt like bein’ born and givin’ birth at the same time.”
Jasper made a nauseated sound. “Ooh, there’s an image. You know, livin’ in your mind makes me feel…dirty…sometimes.”
“Hey, who forced this little kid to smoke a cigar the size of her arm? Don’t talk to me about foul.”
“Be that as it may, I can help you with your disguise. You’ll hardly notice it this time. Cross my heart.”
I slunk into a tiny trash-filled alleyway, getting a snotty look from a mutt there. The dog had been sniffing a filthy drunk lying asleep next to a doorway. “No shape-shiftin’, I said.”
“OK, OK, I heard you the first time. This won’t be a shape-change. At least, not a real one. It’ll be a glamour.”
“And that’d be different…how?” I moved past the snoring man, my wonder-nose rebelling at his stench. The rain had done little to wash him off.
“Instead of witchin’ your body into a new form, which is a powerful spell and makes you feel like a sheet of paper somebody’s wadded up---”
“Exactly right.”
“---A glamour puts the image of what you want to be into the minds of observers. Everybody sees you as President Lincoln or whoever, but you haven’t made a physical change at all. If you look in a mirror you see your actual face and body, unless you will yourself to see the false image.”
That sounds too good to be true. I told him as much.
“It’s perfect for what you want, to fool people. Shape-shiftin’ is for when you need the actual attributes of a thing as well. Glamourin’ you into a beaver wouldn’t have helped you swim the river, for instance. You still would’ve been Verity, blubblin’ your way to the bottom of the Potomac.”
“So I just wish to look like somebody else and other folks see me that way? All other folks? Everybody I meet?”
“Yep. Looks and voice. Unless they’re a mage huntin’ for a glamour. Not likely around here at the moment.”
“Anything else I should know about it before I say yes?”
Jasper sniffed. “Your suspicious nature makes me cry, my girl.”
“Yeah, well, I figure developin’ a suspicious nature is gonna to keep me alive in the future.”
Laughing, he said, “Now you’re learnin’, dearie. There are two kinds of glamours, the one you want and the type that reaches into the mind of the observer for the best image.”
I stared at the drunk clutching his half-full whiskey bottle and shivered at the thought of what he might like to see if he happened to wake up right then. “Why would I want that?”
“To create an emotion that you can manipulate. Fear or joy or love. You can make somebody see you as the thing they’re most afraid of, for instance. Harder to control, harder to maintain. Unpredictable, since you won’t necessarily know what they’re seein’ in you.”
“But I don’t want that one anyhow, right?”
“Nope. The simple kind will do for gettin’ through town unnoticed. Plus, a passion glamour needs more energy than a vizard glamour.”
I frowned. “Vizard?”
“Mask. It’s in Shakespeare. I thought we met in a theatre?”
“Pardon me for not knowin’ every antique word in the world. I take it that when you say ‘needs more energy’ that also means ‘costs the girl more to use’?”
“Well, now that you come to it…”
I sighed. Why do I think this’ll be worse than the sorry cigar episode? “Let’s have it.”
My tin cup popped into the shape of a hand, index finger aiming back at the wretched fellow on the ground. Following the pointing digit, I saw that it led to the bottle.
I felt my stomach heave at the thought. “Oh, no,” I moaned aloud.
The hand became a toothy smiling mouth. “Oh, yes,” it said with honeyed glee
23/ How to Glamour a General
I stepped around the corner of the shop and upchucked whiskey into the alley.
“Hey!” Jasper whined, “I wasn’t done with that.”
“I look prettier than Eddie ever managed to be,” I said to myself, gazing in the window of a dry goods store. At least, I hoped it was to myself. That vile whiskey I’d stolen from the poor man in the alley might’ve been fooling with my senses.
The lovely young thing who stared back at me from the shop window looked to be in her mid-twenties. Like mine her hair shined coppery-red. But where mine sat straight and boy-short, hers flowed past shoulder length and had beautiful touchable waves in it. Her shoulders were broad without being mannish and her waist, cinched in by a torture-chamber corset from the look of it, was narrow as a pencil. And I have a bosom! Oboy! Perfectly-proportioned, too. Not too large so as to look silly or cheap. Arms and hands long, slender, and smooth, the vision’s neck matched the rest and led up to a chin with just the slightest point. Miss Cutey-Pie’s face could only be what Ma called a ‘man-melter’. Baby-soft skin, white as a dove’s belly, a delicate nose you just wanted to reach out and tweak a little, and dark blue lamb’s eyes underneath saucy eyebrows. Lord only knew what part of my mind had been hoarding this image. The wishful-thinking part, no doubt.
“Please,” I muttered, looking up, “let this be me in ten or twelve years. Is that too much to ask?”
Jasper spoke up, speech slurred just a little. “Now I know you’re drunk,” he teased. “Who’d want to look like this all her life? What a burden.”
I tried to touch the plush green velvet dress worn by the stranger. It looked a lot like Jean
ie’s, no mystery where it came from. My tiny friend’s skirt hadn’t gone all the way to the ground and her hoop hadn’t been as pronounced, but other than that it was mostly the same dress. Mine had fine gold thread trimmed along the cuffs, in imitation of the ‘scrambled eggs’ that Confederate officers wore on their uniform sleeves. Where Jeanie’s hat had been a giant-brimmed girlie affair, I wore a feminine version of a soldier’s kepi, also with gold accents. An open-weave suggestion of a veil curtained my features but didn’t really hide a thing. Yep, this is surely a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ outfit. When my fingers stroked the top of the skirt I gasped. All I felt was rough dirty denim. Gazing down, I saw that I still wore my soiled overalls and muslin shirt. I raised my head and looked at the shop window once more. Yep, the stunning vision again. That’s scary.
“My voice’ll be different, too?” I asked Jasper out loud, hoping to hear for myself. Sounded the same to me. Two ladies who walked by at that moment looked over at me, but their expressions only said that they wondered why I yakked to myself, not that I sounded odd.
“You’ll have to will your ears to hear it the way you want, just like you did with your appearance,” Jasper told me, giggling. He sounded like the raw whiskey had affected him more than me. Maybe he was just trying on ‘drunk’ for size. I doubted that he could really feel alcohol like a living human.
I sent my voice low into my throat, raised my chin, and said into the window, “Could you get me a nice cold lemonade, sir?” The tones I heard now were rich, warm, sultry. They licked my ear like a cozy fire in mid-winter. Whoa!
“Absolutely, ma’am,” purred a new voice behind me. The glass reflected a handsome short-bearded man of middle years, dressed like a banker or lawyer in a fine black suit. “And any other service I could perform would be a distinct pleasure.” He tipped his hat and smiled.
Well, time for a test run, Verity. Now or never.
The three healthy swigs of rotgut I’d had ten minutes before gave me the courage to turn to him. I almost lost my balance, but he didn’t seem to notice. I could feel the flush of the firewater in my cheeks. Hopefully he’d put it down to coquettishness.
“Why, aren’t you just the sweetest thing!” I cooed, putting on all of the southern charm I could muster. “You know, I was standing here, all a-twitter over this battle I keep hearing about, flustered over what indignities our brave boys must be suffering, and foolish phrases must have positively leaped out of my mouth. Now what might I have said to deserve the attentions of such a charming gentleman as yourself?”
That’s layin’ it on with a trowel. But my admirer ate it all up, so I guess my acting still measured up to Eddie’s standards. In fact, Prince Charming here looked like he wanted to eat me up. I half-expected to hear myself say, ‘Why, Grandma, what big teeth you have!’ Careful, kiddo. Your head’s swimmin’ as it is.
“You expressed a desire for a lemonade, ma’am. Do you still wish it? I’d be more than happy to---”
I waved him off. “A lemonade! Oh, flighty old me! I couldn’t bear to indulge in something so selfish with those guns roaring at our men. Dear me, no!” I touched his sleeve with two delicate fingers and looked at him sideways. “However, if you would be so kind as to direct me toward Nine Mile Road, I will gladly sing the praises of your gallantry till they echo from the clouds above.” I’d heard that line in some dreadful touring production only a month ago. It’d made me roll my eyes and gag then, but it seemed appropriate now. My tummy lurched. And if you don’t get away from this fellow in a heartbeat you’re gonna roll your eyes and gag all over his expensive imported boots.
“Anything for you, ma’am.” In three brief efficient sentences he laid out my route. Ah, a lawyer, then. I gushed as my new character required, thanking him as if he’d just given me a new house, and bid him a fond good-day. No sooner had he lifted his hat and headed off down the street than I stepped around the corner of the shop and upchucked whiskey into the alley.
“Hey!” Jasper whined, “I wasn’t done with that.”
“Yes, you were, bucko,” I whispered, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. Adults drink this stuff? On purpose? They actually pay good money for it? With that kind of judgment small wonder they’d all blundered into this horrible war. “And for the record, that tasted worse than the tobacco.”
“Been on this earth twelve years and you don’t know how to live,” he clucked.
“I want to keep livin’, that’s the thing. Maybe even see age thirteen or fourteen. And where did you ever get the idea that children should drink whiskey, anyhow?”
“Well, if they’d have given me a grown-up I’d have taken her. Rearin’ you is no picnic, believe me.”
“Rearin’ me? We’re the same age, ain’t we? Technically.”
He tried to speak in a ghostly old-man-in-the-mountain voice. “I’ll have you know that I am as ancient as the Seven Seas and as venerable as the---”
“Oh, shush! You may have been in stuck in that sword forever, but you don’t know beans about real life. If you did you wouldn’t be puttin’ me through these foul experiences so you can see and feel. Don’t come at me with that high-and-mighty tone.”
“Hoo! Ain’t we full of ourselves now that we look all mature.”
I groaned, dizzy and sick. “All I’m full of is alcohol.” Looking around, I could see that no one took much notice of me. Good so far, as long as I didn’t attract attention by any drunken foolishness. “We need to get goin’. Find Romulus. A brisk long walk should help clear this poison out of my system.”
“Poison!” Jasper sounded like he thought I’d gone loco. “How can anything that creates such exquisite sensations be called poison? Ah, the aroma!”
“Smells like turpentine.”
“The delicate flavor!”
“Tastes like cough medicine.”
“The silky mouth feel!”
“Burns like Prussic acid.”
“The dreamy impression of floatin’ on air!”
“The miserable impression of my snoot in the mud if you don’t quit goin’ on about it. Help me concentrate until the wooziness passes. You’re sure this glamour will last till we get out to the lines and talk to General Lee? It won’t fade because of the whiskey?”
“No, you should be fine. It’s not time-limited like the shape-shift. It depends on your energy reserves, which you have plenty of at the moment. Whee!”
At least somebody’s happy about my first and last drink. Twelve years old and a tragic victim of demon rum already. Ick.
“You’re welcome,” I thought to him in a surly manner. I crept along the crowded street with mincing steps. People stood in clumps, trying to analyze rumors about the battle and make those agree with the sounds of firing that we could all hear from the east. The artillery booming had been joined by massed musketry, which resembled someone tearing a canvas sheet at this distance. I hoped with all my heart that Romulus hadn’t been trapped in the middle of it all.
Following my admirer’s careful instructions, and stopping once more to fertilize an alley, I made it across Richmond without getting too lost. Everybody I met beamed and said hello. The disguise worked like a charm (an appropriate figure of speech, considering). I suspected Jasper of having added some passion glamour to it, making folks see me as their best friend or favorite relative, but he said no. I’d just overdone the attractiveness of my false image when I’d engaged the spell. A common problem with beginners.
“Truth to tell, this glamour may be worse than stayin’ as yourself,” he nagged. “Nobody pays any never-mind to kids, especially grimy ones on side streets. But now you’re strollin’ down a main avenue of the capital of the Confederate States of America, lookin’ like every man’s notion of a plantation princess and givin’ out signals like a queen bee in heat. Stop grinnin’ at everybody!”
Sure enough, I held a perpetual smile that I’d been sharing with all and sundry. My face ached from flashing my new gorgeous teeth, like I led a grand illumination on a national holid
ay. I forced my face into a more neutral pose. “I can’t help it. Must be the novelty of the whole thing. Most of the time nobody pays me the slightest attention.”
“That’s ‘cause you dress like a plow hand.”
“Hey!”
“Uncle Jasper calls ‘em as he sees ‘em.”
“This is practical. I work backstage a lot.’
“Whatever you say. All I know is that your boyfriend wears a dress more than you do.”
“Boyfriend? Eddie is not my---!” That brought me up short. This’ll bear thinkin’ about, I suppose. But not now. “Dresses are uncomfortable, itchy things. They trip you up with all of their petticoats and skirts. Hoops are ridiculous and corsets are a crime. Only men could’ve invented it all.”
“That’s just the liquor talkin’. I think, deep-down, you love to get all frilly.”
“This from a dumb old boy. What do you know, Mr. ‘ancient as the Seven Seas’?”
He sighed. “Maybe nothin’…yet. But one of these days you’ll need a magick favor and then I’ll get to romp through your brain’s attic. I can hardly wait.”
That made whiskey and cigars sound like a church picnic. Time to change the subject. “Um…This glamour will hold no matter what, right? Even if somebody touches me? Shakes my hand, or kisses it? They like to do that down here.”
“The vizard is solid, don’t you worry. I’m a trained professional. Can’t you still feel it on you?”
I focused my foggy senses on my outsides. Sure enough, the tightness on my skin, like what you’d get from a real long scrub with too-strong soap, still pinched me. A sort of buzz, different than the whiskey thrill, hummed through my bones. It felt like the aftershock of a close lightning strike. Beneath it all lay the faint tang of brimstone and lilies that always hit my nose when Jasper did something special.
“Yep, I feel it, all right. I just hope it works on General Lee.”
Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Page 23