The lure of the forbidden can be very strong, and even though the boy knew better he still approached his mother's lover with every intention of telling the man off. It was a brave act, or it would be if he managed to carry it through. The wizard was known as a formidable man, despite his lack of ironwood guns or commonly accepted honors. If the truth were to be told he terrified the boy, but the wizard's presence and courting of the gunslinger's wife angered the boy as well. Thus the intended confrontation of the day, although when he first entered the wizard's study the man was nowhere to be found.

The boy slumped in the room, wondering what he was going to do with all the courage he'd saved up for this moment.

"Did you want something?"

He jerked, spun around. There didn't seem to be anyone there, and yet that was one of the magician's usual tricks, his usual glams. The boy was careful, and starting to be a little bit afraid. "Show yourself, bondsman."

"Why, I'm right here." And now that the boy had blinked and looked again he did see the man, although he was sure he'd been looking properly before. He'd never had any taste for magic; it required too much of thinking around corners, which he was never good at, and too much of lying and deceit, which he intrinsically loathed.

"So you are." The boy wanted to make an accusation. A thousand words were prepared in his mind to fling at the wizard, all of which were sharp and cutting as long as they remained locked in his ever swelling throat. They never made it out past his lips, though. "And what are you doing here?"

"Why, thanks be to your father's kindness, I live here." Thin, sexless lips pulled back from pointed teeth pointed? No, they weren't pointed, they were normal, albeit a bit cleaner than most. But I saw… "And what are you doing here, young Roland?"

There was something of an insult in his tone, as though it was a crime or a slight to be young. "Making sure," Roland said, putting more bravery into his voice than he felt.

"Making sure of what?"

"Your honesty." He had the distinct feeling the older man was laughing at him. Roland liked being laughed at almost less than he liked magicians. The fact that his father's sorcerer always seemed to be both was galling in the extreme, and not a little bit frightening as well. "I don't trust you, magician."

"Well and good," came the surprising answer. Roland hadn't seen him move, but the man was behind him now, still using that purring voice. "All well and good, to be sure of the honesty of your household. But then, it isn't your household is it?" The implied insult was double, that his father should need to depend on a boy to keep house for him, and that Roland was so much in his father's shadow, so much his father's pup. Roland didn't know how to answer to it.

"I don't trust you," he repeated uselessly, and felt the breath of the terrifying man on the back of his neck. "Come out where I can see you. I don't trust any of your kin nor kind."

"I have no kin," the dark man murmured, "Nor have I kind. I am alone in the world, as are you. As you always will be, I think." Even as he said it Roland felt the cold loneliness seep into his bones. He wanted to reach out to someone's warmth, any warmth, just to banish the chill. He found himself backing up directly into the man standing behind him.

"You…" he began, and then stuttered to a halt as the sorcerer's fingers caressed the back of his neck. "Stop…"

"Are you not cold, child?" he whispered, a voice that knew what it was to be alone and to feel that emptiness. "Does your blood not freeze when your friends leave you, as they must one day, for the last time. You know what you are to be, and you know that you are to be the last of your kind. It will be a lonely existence, gunslinger's brat. You should take your solace where you find it."

The dark man's hands, lineless flesh caressed Roland's skin. He could feel the slender fingers, tapered for magic's use, slipping under the cloth of his trousers. "Stop…" he whispered, even as he felt his young body stirring. Warmth spread out, and dampness where he had never felt before. Thin lips smiled against the back of his neck.

"Would you rather the cold, the dark and alone?" It wasn't a question that deserved an answer, but Roland gave one anyway.

"No…" He didn't know which he was denying. "No…"

He felt the sorcerer's body, feverishly hot, line up against his back. The heat pervaded his own tiny frame, causing the liquid fire in the pit of his stomach, in his groin, to bubble up with a fury. All too soon he found himself gasping, panting even as he felt the dark man push, and the feelings he didn't have words for yet took him, shook him, and released him. He cried out, spending himself into his trousers and leaving the sticky fluids in a shameful patch over his groin.

"And then again…" his father's bondsman laughed as he withdrew his inhumanly smooth fingers. "Perhaps you're not ready."

Roland's legs buckled and sent him crashing to his knees as Marten Broadcloak laughed, withdrawing from the room in a whirl of dark and pointed teeth. He could still feel the mark on his neck where those teeth had sunk, lovingly and lightly, into his skin. No blood, all his body's fluids had pooled into the pants he would have to change before anyone saw him again. The heat of his shame replaced the heat of his lust, forced him to scurry from the steaming room and into the coolness of the hallway. He was cold, now, shivering and very much alone.