“Ah.”
Nutmeg wrinkled her nose and then echoed Rivergrace’s noise of understanding. “Thank you. I think.”
“No bother.” He balanced on one foot as if about to dash off again, then paused. “Seein’ as how ye were so generous, and ’tis a hot day, how about I buy you two lasses a winterberry ice? No hard feelin’s an’ all?”
They traded looks. He shrugged as if their hesitation hurt his feelings a bit, but he tried not to show it. “My older sis, she has a stand. Just about the corner or two. I’ll be leadin’ ye back to the market lane, not down another alley.”
Grace nodded. “That would be nice of you.”
“No beard hairs off my chin! She owes me.” He flashed another grin before jogging off, leaving them to follow in his wake again, although at a considerably slower pace than before. After three sharp turns, they emerged from the shadowy backside of buildings into the sunny and bright street, the noise of the throng greeting them again. He did indeed have a sister selling cold juice, although she looked old enough to be his mother, with lines in her face, but she smiled, and dried two clean glasses on her much-patched apron and ladled out the winterberry drink when he asked her.
Nutmeg talked with her a bit while something else drew Rivergrace’s attention. Behind the stand, in the open street with very little traffic across its span, a handful of children milled about, chanting and playing, their skip rope slapping the dirt in steady rhythm. She drifted over to watch and listen.
“Four forges dire Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire, You skip low And I’ll jumper higher. One for thunder By lands torn asunder Two for blood By mountains over flood. Three for soul With no place to go. You skip low And I’ll skip higher Four on air With war to bear.”
The chant made her shiver, but they hardly seemed to pay attention to the words as their feet and rope kept beat and soon they were onto another rhyme, something about boyfriends and kisses and soon a missus, without any notice that the sunshine had, for a moment, grown much colder, and the very air had seemed to have a voice that chanted with them.
Rivergrace turned away as Nutmeg called her impatiently and realized she had been called several times before. “We have to get on.”
Rivergrace finished her drink in a gulp and pressed the mug back into the seller’s hands. “Thank you,” she said, and hurried after her sister, waiting for the summer to warm her again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“DERRO! AND THERE you are, at last. I was hoping your father would let you come today!” The shop door flung open even as Nutmeg and Grace stood on the street, admiring the trim double door, the wainscoted window, and the sign creaking on its hanger arm out over the street, carved with a hat and gown. It took their breath away, the place seemed so grand, and neither could find words to think that Lily owned it now. Their mother stood framed in the doorway, her trim Dweller figure seeming even smaller, but her smile and her energy more than filled it as she flung out her arms to bring them in.
“Look at you! Did your da not even give you time to wash up? Nutmeg, you look like you’ve been wrestling with your brothers again!” Lily removed a cloth from her belt and dusted them both down vigorously with snaps and flicks before tucking it back at her waistline and beaming at them. They had not seen the place yet and Nutmeg’s mouth hung open as she caught a glimpse of the back wall lined with racks and wardrobes, not full of goods, to be sure, as Lily had not yet begun work or gotten clients as she wished, but oh, the possibilities. A chunky young woman, her hair pulled back into a drab bun, her face always creased with a worried frown that looked like it might be permanent, came from the second room, and curtsied to them.
“This is Adeena,” Lily announced. “Adeena, my daughters. Nutmeg, with bright eyes that so aptly named her for the spice, and Rivergrace, with eyes like an ever-changing sea.”
Adeena was of Kernan stock, so she stood taller than either Nutmeg or her mother, but Grace towered another head and near shoulders over that. If anything surprised the seamstress, it did not show in her face. Nothing showed other than that perpetual grimace of worry.
“G’day, and I hope the sun was fair but not too warm.”
“It’s a beautiful day out, but getting hot, and the nights about as short as they can be,” Nutmeg told her. “Have you got your bolts in yet, Mom? And patterns? And have you tables and have you those great caged dolls for fitting?”
“We have,” Lily told her, “everything that a high-toned shop has.” She sat down on a padded stool. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s wondrous,” Grace murmured. She glanced about the two-room shop, with yet another small area behind curtains. There were perches for hats and gloves, as well as racks for clothing of all kinds. She touched the brim of a straw hat, decorated with a spray of flowers that looked so real their lack of scent disappointed her.
Nutmeg leaned over a table, covered with cloth, and a paper pattern browned and frayed at the edges from many uses. “Is this what you’re making now?”
Lily chose her words. “It’s something Adeena and I are discussing.”
“This is not at all what we saw on the streets. Mind you, we came the way the common folk walk, so I have no idea what grand people might be wearing. But this seems . . .”
“Old-fashioned?” Lily offered.
“Something like that. And Grace and I had the most marvelous idea. The Vaelinars wear veils, sometimes even covering the eyes. We could make them like starry skies or fields of butterflies, sparkling, so much more than just gauze.”
“Really?”
“Really. Some embroidery, a sparkle here and there.
Imagine, Mom. So many people wearing so many things out there.”
“The Vaelinars used to shop here,” Adeena offered quietly. “Sometimes their custom is all anyone wants, sometimes they are shunned. It is difficult to know how tastes will run from year to year. Yet, Mistress Farbranch, they are monied and if you could get their trade back, it would more than help sustain the shop.”
“And we need that, we certainly do.” Lily eyed the old pattern a bit. “Still, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the tub water. This has its uses, it’s a basic pattern to base others upon. It follows the lines smoothly, with a flow to it. Let’s keep this for reworking.” She stood up briskly as Adeena leaned over to roll the pattern carefully and stow it away.
“And you, my young lasses, are already dirty, so I think I’ll put you to cleaning the back workroom and fitting area! It’ll be an adventure, there’s much left back there. Ribbons and buttons and pins and more.” Laughing, Lily led the way to their adventure.
They spent the rest of the afternoon having great fun making order out of chaos, binning buttons according to size and type and color, matching ribbons to each other’s fancy before hanging them neatly from wooden arms that were fastened to the wall and could swing out “like herb drying arms,” Nutmeg declared, sweeping and dusting and readying great racks which would hold far more bolts of cloth than they currently had in the shop, and when they were done, Lily had come in with cold mugs of flavored water, and they sat and looked at the results of their work. Then Nutmeg told her their tale of the urchin and her purse and had their mother laughing far more than scolding before the story was done.
Lily wiped her brow and took a deep breath. “No doubt that Tolby is your father,” she remarked. “You tell a tale as well as he does, and if it weren’t for that, my young lass, I would have punished you for taking such a chance! Chasing off into the city after a thief? Do you know what kind of trouble you could have gotten into?”
“I wasn’t worried, with Rivergrace with me. After all, she faced down a Bolger renegade once!”
Grace had been drinking and choked slightly as she pulled her cup away and coughed. “I don’t know what got into me then, Meg, and you can’t hope that would ever happen again!”
Nutmeg put her chin up. “I know a thing or two about throwing my fists, and kicking, too, if it comes to that. It all worked out, anyway.”
“So it seems.”
Nutmeg had kept back the part about giving the lad the few coin pieces she’d had in that purse, and Rivergrace decided against reminding her of that. It seemed prudent not to.
Taking off her apron, Lily began to fold it neatly. “I’m sending the two of you back now. We’ll have cold meat pies and salad for dinner, since it’s still quite warm out, unless the men got into the fixings while we were gone. If not, we’ll have to make do with stewed vegetables. I can’t do it now, Nutmeg, but if the shop picks up, it could be we can offer your new friend some work. They have a great trash dump outside the gates, and we’ll be needing someone to haul our scraps and such now and then. Think he could handle Bumblebee?”
“No, but Bumblebee will probably learn the way on the first drive, and he can just go along and make it look official.”
That brought another chuckle from Lily. “No doubt! On your way now. Adeena’s gone home already, but I want to look at the patterns without her worrying so. Times change, and she seems afraid of that. I understand why Mistress Greathouse did not offer to sell her the business. It would be too great a burden for her. Not that you should ever let her know such thoughts.” She eyed the two of them and both nodded in agreement. She stood. “Away with you, then! See you before candlelight!”
In a tale told in the toback shops, after the sun has set, and weak lamps reflect the blue-cloud smokes of those passing time by, one sometimes speaks of the poor shop-keeper who is alone in her shop and looks up to find a stranger standing by her door. The tale-teller will speak of the fear which flickers briefly through her eyes as she puts her shoulders back and greets the stranger. The stranger is no mean being to overlook or be light with. He is tall and shrouded in black, hiding even his eyes and the back of his hands from sight, but he is well spoken when he finally speaks after long moments of listening as if to assure they are indeed truly alone.
“Good day, milady, if it is still day without, and it is, just barely.”
“And good day to you,” she answers evenly if warily.
“Do you tailor as well as seamstress here?”
“I have a husband and hardy boys,” she remarks lightly. “I cannot help but tailor!”
“You are newly come to this quarter.”
“Newly come to the city at that,” she tells him, slipping a hand into her pocket where a pair of freshly sharpened scissors fall into her grasp. “How might I help you?”
“It is my thought we can help each other. I need some work done, and it appears—” the shade looks about the near-threadbare store, “you could use some work.”
“That may be. What have you in mind, before I make promises I cannot keep,” the seamstress tells him shrewdly.
“A hooded cloak, but more than that, and the fabric I will provide.” And he proceeds to tell her exactly how he wants it cut and sewn, and how it should fall about the body and arms, and she is afraid although she does not let it show in her eyes. The cloak he describes is surely not for a man wishing to go about proudly in the daylight, showing himself off. No, it is made for the dark of the moons, and back alley shadows, and worse, she fears. When he finishes talking to her, he eyes her expression closely. “And no,” he says, “it is not the sort of garment an ordinary man might wear. As to your making it for me, I think you are well qualified and I have no fear you will betray me in any way, for I saw your two fine daughters leaving here tonight and followed them far enough that I am certain what lane of the city they live upon and how to find them if I need to.”
The seamstress draws herself up at that, eyes sparking as though she were a flint and had been struck. “I will take your job, m’lord, and not because you threaten me! But because you have told me what it is you wish, and I listened willingly, and that means a bargain is struck between us, one that I will honor, even if what you will do with the garment may have no honor in it. That, sir, is between yourself and your soul.”
Surprise shows in every line of the man’s phantom body although he is still covered head to toe, and then he nods. “Done, then.”
She slips her hand out of her pocket, letting the scissors drop. “It matters not how well this garment is sewn, if the material is not of the same ilk.”
“Oh, it will be.” And he shrugs out from under his longcoat a bolt of fabric more smoke than cloth, more night sky than shadow, and lays it on the counter. “This is nightweave. As to where it came from, it speaks of the Elven Ways, and as to how I came by it, you are best not knowing. It should be enough, barely, to do the cloak I request. I will be back in two weeks’ time to collect it. You shall fit me tonight, and I will leave a crown piece, with another when I collect it.”
A gold crown is a fine payment for such a job, but the seamstress continues to hold her head high. “Two,” she says, “upon leaving me the cloth, and another two upon delivery.”
“Done again.” And the man chuckles. “We have a bargain.” And he shakes her hand as one man does to another, before she takes out her measuring string of knots and measures him quickly.
As the days pass, she stays in the shop late when others have gone and she fashions the hooded cloak as described, with long, loose flowing sleeves, and deep pockets, and a boot-sweeping hem. It is truly a magnificent thing when she is done.
It does not surprise her that, when she finishes the last stitch in the hem, and holds it up, comparing it to her knotted string of measurements, he enters the shop and is watching her as she turns.
He dons the garment. It is as though he is smoke and shadow and night and nothing more. She blinks, and shivers at what she has made, and tells herself that the work in itself is a thing of beauty, and she cannot begin to guess how it will be used. Instead of two crowns, he fetches five gold crowns from a coin pouch marked only with an embroidered K and places them on the counter, saying, “Well done, and thank you,” and leaves in a mist of darkness that she can barely see.