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Whatever might be on that paper irritated her, in the same way her satisfied stomach irritated her. She’d seen how fast the service at the cafe was. The only reason for Taius’s meal to come so late was if he’d asked for it to come late. Then he’d gone and made her angry to ensure she’d eat it.
She almost hadn’t, just out of spite. Because no one had ever so neatly understood how she would react before, much less someone who barely knew her. It was unsettling and she didn’t like being unsettled. But she was, more than anything else, practical.
So she’d eaten the food and come to see the tailor. If the tailor ever decided to let her in.
Their—and Clare had no idea why it was “their”, had no past experience for the usage, but it cost her nothing to think of them that way—gaze kept flicking from the note to Clare and back. “What are you to” —they looked at the note again and settled on— “him?”
Clare snorted at the insinuation. “Clearly nothing important enough to warrant his real name.”
A ghost of a smile broke Chalen’s face and they slid the security door open. “Come inside then, Nothing Important.”
Clare hesitated. Mostly because the Song was giving little contented rumbles inside her, as if it had found a person it particularly liked. They weren’t as strong as the ones it had given off around Verol and Marquin, more like the Song had walked into a room it hadn’t entered in years, and run across something it had forgotten about that used to bring it great joy.
“I don’t bite,” Chalen said.
“I doubt that,” Clare answered, finally stepping inside. “Only foolish people don’t, and you don’t strike me as foolish.” Entering the inside of Chalen’s shop—or was it their home? Or both?—felt like entering a lair. A cozy, inviting lair, yet a lair nonetheless. The interior lighting was muted, which was the opposite of what Clare would expect from someone who presumably spent most of their time making small stitches into expensive fabric.
The room was perfectly circular, a third of the wall to Clare’s left taken over by a fireplace with sleepy flames crackling in its depths. Suits and dresses and all manner of fashionable pieces draped over surfaces, hung off racks, or posed on wooden models.
Chalen went to a rack and started flipping through options, glancing at Clare every now and then before discarding this or that. Clare wandered the room, inspecting the pieces on display, but stopped just shy of running her hands over the fabrics when Chalen snapped, “Don’t touch that,” without ever taking their eyes off the dress they were considering.
Clare didn’t touch, but she ached to. She had never cared much about the way clothes looked. Most of her life had been spent simply hoping for any garment that would keep away winter’s chill or summer’s wealth of insects. As for the years spent in finer garments…she’d wanted to burn them. Every drape of fabric, every stitch.
She had walked into this shop braced, expecting her stomach to turn, her hands to sweat, her heart to race. She had walked into this shop unsure of whether she could wear anything nice in the way Veralna’s elite meant “nice” without hating herself.
But the clothes in Chalen’s shop were different. Every design, every stitch, every embellishment felt born of some grand vision, born of…dreams. Because that’s what the clothes were. They were dreams, in the same way Clare’s songs were dreams, the only light that lived inside her poured into the notes and the lyrics and the hope that someday she would understand what any of it meant.
Chalen was doing the same thing through a different medium, and Clare lost herself in looking at the patterns and the designs, until she came to one that arrested her. It was a waterfall of dark red silk that was…not precisely dangerous, but sharp. Sharp cuts, sharp edges, sharp asymmetry in the skirt. She knew that wearing it she would feel dangerous, as if she wore… “Battle armor.” Her whispered words carried to Chalen, who came to stand beside her.
“Ah,” they said softly, “so that’s its name. Battle Armor.”
And it made perfect sense to Clare that Chalen should name their works, in the same way Clare named her songs.
“It would look perfect on you.” Chalen drew their lower lip into their mouth, let it go. “It’s Althenian silk,” they said finally. “The fabric alone cost a fortune. He can easily afford it, but I’d prefer to send a courier to confirm the amount before we settle on it.”
Clare was so busy trying to figure out what Althenian silk was—there was no province in Faelhorn named Althenia—that it took her a moment to process the rest of what Chalen had said. “Why would he be affording anything?”
Chalen gave her a wry smile. “What did you think was on that paper? A letter of introduction? It was an approval to charge whatever you need to his account.”
“I don’t need his account.” It wasn’t that Clare had a problem spending his money. It was that she had a problem spending his money when someone else knew that was what she was doing. If he’d handed her a purse of coins, she’d have been all too happy to hand it over in turn in exchange for a dress. This way felt…not traceable, precisely, but less…clean. Less easy to sever ties and pretend they’d never been there.
Chalen sighed, their gaze slipping pointedly over Clare’s current clothes. “Unless I vastly underestimate your financial situation, you very much need his account. I’m not cheap. You might be able to afford a pair of socks, if you put all your change together.”
Clare bristled, mostly because Chalen was likely right. But that didn’t mean she had to accept the situation. “Why is your shop here?”
Chalen narrowed their eyes at the abrupt question and didn’t answer.
“You aren’t in the clothing district and no one is going to find you here without the very specific directions I was given,” Clare continued. “And anyone who can afford you isn’t going to make the trip. If I had to guess, I’d say Taius is your only customer and he spends enough to keep you afloat.”
The annoyance in Chalen’s eyes told Clare she’d gotten it right so far. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that I don’t think someone who makes things this beautiful made them so they could languish in this house forever.”
“I design things for myself,” Chalen snapped. “Because I like them, because I?—”
“Need to,” Clare finished for them. Chalen couldn’t stop making things any more than Clare could stop writing songs in her head. “And if that’s all you could ever do with them, you would keep doing it.” The way Clare wrote songs in the dark, for only herself to hear. “But you want more. They’re made to be worn. So why are they here? Why are you here?”
“I’m a designer, not a shopkeeper.”
