I watched his hands in the mirror.
He was good. He'd been good before I'd wound him up, and he was better now that he was angry, the way some craftsmen go. He worked the easing in along the sleeve cap with two pins and a thumb, and I felt the wool settle into where it ought to have settled the first time. It was a small thing. Three millimeters of cloth. The kind of thing nine men in ten wouldn't have clocked even wearing it.
"Sleeve length," the tailor said, professional now. He was through with me. He just wanted me out of his shop. "Arms forward, please. Both."
I brought my hands up.
The tailor measured my wrist, and his eyes flicked to the missing finger and stayed a half second too long for my comfort.
There was a part of me that wanted to cover it up when I knew he was looking, and a part that wanted to slap him for even daring. I suppose if I’d been Aleksi, I’d have done the latter, and had I been who I was eight months ago, I’d have done the former. Being who I was in that moment, I did neither and instead let him look his fill. The stump Nikita’s order had left me with wasn’t a punishment anymore. It was a promise as good as any ring. That was, if Aleksi could bring himself to say the words.
The tailor wrote the measurement on his pad and his hand and said nothing at all about the finger.
When the tailor was satisfied with the shoulder and the sleeve and the dozen small things he'd had to fix because I'd made him fix them, he stepped back and folded his hands and waited to be released.
"Trousers," I said.
"Sir, the trousers were—"
"Aye, I know what ye'll tell me. They were measured. They're grand. Humor me." I held the bad hand out to the side and turned at the waist. "Ye've cut it too generously in the back. I'll look like I'm wearing me da's trousers."
"It's all right." Aleksi's voice came from behind me, mild, the way it gets when he's done being entertained. "He'll let you off the trousers."
I turned my head towards him. "Will I?"
"You will."
I held his eyes for a beat. He didn't blink. I huffed out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh and turned back to the tailor, who had the look of a man who'd just been told he could leave a burning building.
"Fine," I said. "The trousers stay. But I want the buttonhole on the left cuff working."
"Sir, that is an extra—"
"I ken what it is. I want it working. So I can roll a sleeve without looking like a peasant."
The tailor closed his eyes for a half second, gathered himself, and wrote the note. "Working buttonhole. Left cuff."
"Both cuffs."
"Both cuffs."
"Grand. Are we done then?"
"Sir. Yes. We are done."
"Good man." I clapped him on the shoulder with the good hand, like he expected me to bite him. "Ye'll do lovely work on it. I'll come back and tell ye when it's right."
"I look forward to it," the tailor said, and meant nothing of the sort.
I turned and saw a hat sitting on a rack, a perfect little charcoal fedora. I picked it up without looking at the price tag and set it on my head before turning to the mirror. It looked off, so I tipped it to one side. There. Perfect. “Well?” I said to Aleksi. “How do I look?”
“Like trouble,” he said fondly.
“Aye, then we’re on the money.” I took the hat off and held it out to the tailor. “I’ll be taking that with me today if ye’d be so kind as to box it up for us.”
The tailor took the hat with both hands, like I'd handed him a small dog, and disappeared into the back to box it.
I went back behind the curtain and changed out of the half-pinned suit into my own clothes, careful with the pins, and came out tucking my shirt in just as the tailor reappeared with the hat in a navy box tied with a ribbon. He set it on the counter and rang up the total on a little card reader, and Aleksi reached inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet.
