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I waited at the front while he shuffled past the bolts of folded linens and wools into the back of his shop. While he rummaged for my order, I tried to make small talk. “Met a woman named Lister on my way over to you.”
From the back, he said, “Prudence, yes. She’s none too happy with me these days, I’m afraid.”
“She says you fired her to hire some Achlevan refugees.”
He returned with a parcel in his arms, eyeing me warily. “They do beautiful work,” he said. “Their spinning, weaving, dyeing . . . I’ve increased my production twice over since taking them on. I would never have let Prudence go, but she was so abusive to them . . .”
“You don’t have to justify anything to me, Mr. Mercer. I’m thankful that they’ve found work. I wish there were more in Renalt like you.”
“It would be one thing if I was employing refugees out of the goodness of my heart, but I am not. I am simply capitalizing upon a boon that landed on my doorstep. They work harder than anyone I’ve ever had in my employ. And what work they do . . . It’s exquisite. Look here.” He waved me to a wire form upon which hung a dress of burgundy shot with silver, shimmering in the lamplight. The cut was simple; there were no lavish trims or intricate embroideries, but it didn’t suffer from the lack. Indeed, adding anything else might have detracted from the loveliness of the fabric. “I’ve been importing raw silk from the isles for decades,” Mercer said, “but I’ve never been able to render it into such magnificent cloth as this.” Then, noticing my captivation, he added, “It looks to be about your size.”
There was a time when I had a closet full of dresses not unlike this one, and I’d hardly worn them. What did it say about me that, now that my life was more suited to breeches and boots, I wanted a dress? I could hardly muck around the Quiet Canary dressed as a creature of the court and expect anyone to take me seriously.
Still . . . it was beautiful.
“What are you going to wear to your brother’s coronation tomorrow, my lady?”
I made myself turn from the dress. “I wasn’t planning to attend.”
If he disapproved, he didn’t show it. “Have you any other occasions coming soon that would call for such attire? It would suit you marvelously, I must say. And I would give you an excellent price.”
Even at a discount, it would cost a mint. But I’d had a windfall earlier today; what better way to use those extra coins? If half the reports of the Humility’s extravagance were to be believed, I’d need the proper attire to set a single foot upon the deck.
At once dark as blood and silver as a blade, the dress was perfectly suited to assassinating a usurper.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
3
Mercer was wrapping the dress in a second parcel when he saw me taking a peek at the first. He said, “It turned out quite well, I think. Though I don’t know why you’d want to use an old worn-out cloak to start with,” he said, “when you could have had it made up new.”
“It has history,” I said as the package fell open. I let my hand run across the familiar blue fabric, given new life.
It was Kellan’s old soldier’s cloak, the one that had comforted and kept me warm during the darkest days in Achleva, now a resplendent coronation cape for Conrad. It was newly emblazoned with his king’s crest, a shield bearing the Renaltan fleur-de-lis, flanked by a heraldic stag and hare.
Mercer’s work was just as good as my mother always said it was: he had rendered the seal flawlessly in gold thread, adding ermine trim to the cape edges. A gold clasp with the same seal was fixed onto the front, a new symbol for the king of a new Renalt.
It would lend a sense of legitimacy to a ceremony that lacked the traditional trappings of a king’s ascension. The official coronation pieces—crown, scepter, mantle—were out of our reach in the Renaltan capital, Syric. The Tribunal, fractured as it was after Toris’s death, had locked down my family’s castle and turned it into a fortress, using the city’s occupants as a deterrent against any attack we might consider. We could not storm it without causing civilian casualties, so we let the Tribunal scurry, ratlike, to the safety of its gilded nest. There were near-daily reports of the jockeying made by the remaining magistrates as they scrambled to hold power within their diminished regime. The names of the front-runners changed constantly—Magistrate Connell one day, Johns the next. Followed by Michaels, and eventually Orryan. Then Bachko, Arceneaux, Santis . . . too many to keep track of. It was my sincere hope that they’d slowly destroy themselves, saving us the trouble.
We’d made it clear to the people that Conrad would rule from his regent’s holdings at Greythorne; he did not need a castle to be king. Dressing the part, however, certainly couldn’t hurt.
I tallied up my coins as Mercer tied the two parcels together. “I’m just short,” I said in dismay. “I’ll have to have you put the dress back.” I sighed. “Unless you’d take a bottle of wine as payment.” I set the offering on the table in front of him, hopeful.
“Sombersweet wine?” He put his hand to his chest. “My dear . . . I’ll owe you another dress for that!”
“If you’d prefer the coin, I can come back another day . . .”
“No, no, child. This will be sufficient, to be sure. On one condition, that is.” He smiled broadly and produced two glasses from under the table. “Share a drink with me?”
* * *
I took the long way to the manor, skirting the perimeter of the village to walk off some of the effects of the wine. I hadn’t seen Conrad in weeks, and I didn’t want to be tipsy for our reunion.
The farmers’ fields outside the village were in the last interval of growth before harvest; the cornstalks waved high above my head, protected from crows by a crude poppet wearing a horse-head mask probably salvaged from last year’s Day of Shades. Beyond them, pumpkins were beginning to show the burnish of orange across the ribbed curves of their rinds, grown fat under the late summer sun. The night wind was brisk, and as it kicked up, I could hear the creak of the weathervane atop the mill as it spun in its rusty flange to point north.
The old mill, once a formidable building, was now crumbling beneath the weight of time. The water wheel no longer turned. It hung at an odd angle, the river lapping hungrily at it as it passed, waiting for the day the water would finally claim it. The thatch of the roof was patchy and thin, barely stretched over the braces, which jutted out like ribs.
The windows were filmy, but even several layers of grit could not fully dampen the light of the lamps within. A new shingle was hung over the door, carved with a rudimentary picture of a spindle. The inside was lit with low-burning lamps, and through the windows, I could make out the shapes of a dozen women, bent over spinning wheels and looms. While the village slept, these women carried on, toiling long into the night.
