“Yes, my lady. I was a sailor. There now,” he said, sitting back with a refreshed expression. “See if this doesn’t suit. And Lady Verr, I expect you can tack on some Segoile foolishness.”
“Lower the neck,” Lady Verr said with a glance. “And widen the skirt a little. The sleeves are cunning, I must say.”
This amicable spirit only lasted until they got into the details of the bodice, and for the next twenty minutes they seemed to forget that anyone else was in the room and veered wildly from applauding their shared genius to Master Tiffen’s resounding condemnation of the Empire, its aesthetics, its fashion, and the fools that offended the eyes of all rational people by wearing it. And while Lady Verr did not ever utter the wordspeasantorclodoruncultured swine,she could communicate a great deal with her eyebrows.
But the final design was that rare flight of inspiration that satisfied everyone. The dark blue brocade overdress was trimmed at the ends with the smoky silver fox fur and lined with satin to keep out the wind, warm and soft and utterly delightful to wear. The wide bells of the sleeves could be folded back and buttoned out of the way with large silver buttons, and these simple ornaments were echoed along the square neckline, where moonstones and sapphires glittered against a length of silver-white ribbon. It was truly lovely.
“I do believe these sleeves would be quite the rage, in Segoile,” Lady Verr said thoughtfully. “They would be attaching bows and knots and all manner of cunning laces.”
“I like the lacing on the back,” Ophele said, admiring the twists of silver ribbon that would tighten the bodice to her torso, with the knot low enough that she could untie it herself. There was a certain helplessness that came with knowing she could not escape her gown if she wanted to. “Would that be the…the rage, too?”
“The lacings would be,” Lady Verr agreed with a small smile, and after a few more minutes of mutual admiration, they set this design aside and began the next.
It was fun, at first. They put together a half-dozen ravishing costumes, as Lady Verr said, in green velvet and violet silk and a beautiful russet and gold that looked like someone had made silk from autumn leaves. But there was such a quantity of clothing to be ordered, nightclothes and morning dresses, robes to be worn to the bath, indoor gowns and gowns for audiences, and riding gowns that would not be crumpled or stretched by riding sidesaddle. Ophele’s interest began to waver around the eighth dress and even Leonin was beginning to look glassy-eyed. Davi had long since lapsed into a coma.
And so, for the first time in her life, Ophele delegated.
“I think you both…know what I like,” she said, rising from her stool in the corner. Other than examining her periodically to discuss her coloring or proportions, she wasn’t of much use to them anyway. “I will leave you to it.”
“Of course, my lady,” said Lady Verr without lifting her eyes from Master Tiffen’s rapidly moving charcoal. “If you would like, I will bring the designs to you for your approval tonight. Lady Carolen often entrusted such things to me.”
“Yes, please,” Ophele agreed, and escaped with Leonin and Davi.
The visit to Master Tiffen’s shop had replaced her lessons with Lady Verr, and the sun was just beginning to slant over the roofs of the town as she stepped out into the brisk morning air. Though she quickly pulled up her hood and burrowed into her thin cloak, Ophele always felt the urge to linger when she came to the market. It was beginning to look like arealmarketplace, a huge plaza three times the size of Granholme’s, and two and a half sides were already lined with shops and houses.
The fountain at the center was nearly completed, too; the smashing sword and its scattering of stars now rolled in sculpted stone waves to four large statues of a farmer, a builder, a soldier, and a mother. All that stonework had been given to Remin by the masons on his birthday, though Master Misler confessed they’d had to employ actual sculptors for the statues.
For a little while, she indulged herself, walking down the line of shops to examine the shoes in the window of the cobbler’s shop and smell the scents of beeswax and tallow wafting from the chandler’s. Through the closed door of the weaver’s shop, she could hear the clatter and bang of the loom. Mistress Roscout had bought the long-hoarded wool from Remin’s sheep and once she was done with it, it would go to the dyer, and then she would sell it back to Remin at five times the price he had charged for the wool.
That thick, soft cloth was destined to become blankets, and Ophele would have all the sewing practice she wanted on their endless seams.
Remin was very pleased with this arrangement. At every stage, he was propping up the fledgling economy of his town, which was understandably wobbly in its first year. But while he counted every coin with his army, and didn’t hesitate to point out shoddy work wherever he found it, he was unfailingly generous to everyone else.
Ophele hurried through her inspection and then headed back to the hitching post in front of the tavern where they had left their horses. The tavern was open and serving breakfast under the hospitable management of the Tregue family, and the warm and yeasty smell of beer and bread wafted through its open doors. Wen’s cookhouse was now closed to everyone but Remin’s army.
“How much it has changed,” she said, looking around with satisfaction as she settled into her saddle. “I remember when this was all sticks and string.”
“Seemed like the whole camp was made of that, in the beginning,” Davi agreed, swinging atop his horse. “Remember, Leonin? We were still in tents this time last year.”
“There will be more walls before the snow flies,” Leonin said with the satisfaction of a prophet that has already seen his visions come to pass. And it was true. Even as they trotted up Goose Road to the outer edges of the market, the builders were bawling at each other and hauling heavy timber frames upright, to bring more of those visions into reality.
***
“Stop,” said Leonin for at least the dozenth time. Tounot’s fingers twanged on his lute and fell silent. “You missed a step, Davi, that’s why you find yourself too far away to reach HerGrace. It is one twothreefour, one twothreefour, on the backfoot. Try again, if you please.”
Davi did not have breath to apologize. Or snarl. Straightening painfully, he nodded and waited for Tounot to resume his infernal plucking. The tiny duchess offered her hand with an encouraging smile.
Davi Gosse’s life had taken many strange turnings since that long-ago day in the fields outside Lomonde, but this was certainly one of the sharper curves in the road.
That was the day that changed his life.
Born on one of the small farms outside the city, his life had been placid as the slow-ripening grain until the year of the Vallethi invasion. It was not the first time that Valleth had ventured south of the Brede, but it was by far their most successful campaign, and by the time anyone thought to inform the farmers that the Vallethi army was headed their way, it was already too late to run. The Imperial Army, outmarched and outmaneuvered at every turn, had been exactly on the wrong side of the city, and so the farmers of Lomonde had hidden away their women and children and gone to confront the Eagle Knights with pitchforks.
It was autumn. The smoke of burning wheat blackened the sky and Davi had been soangrywatching it, the destruction of the food that they had nourished from the soil, the grain that was to sustain them over the winter. But then he had heard the distant beat, beat, beat of those terrible war drums, and the approaching catastrophe of the Vallethi Eagle Knights, and he knew he would be lucky if he lived long enough to starve.
The air was rank with fear. When the Vallethi army appeared on the horizon, two or three men pissed themselves, an audible patter of liquid onto the earth. Davi was so numbed with terror, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he had done the same.
The drums rolled. The Vallethi infantry approached in two long lines, rattling in their scaled armor. Double time,boom boom boom boom,their strides lengthening as they lifted the curved blades of their bardiches, spotting their enemies. They were almost to the wheat.
