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Her mother? What did Rardove know of her mother? And what did her mother know of treatises? She’d known nothing but immoderation. Overweening fervor. Passion. She left the family because of it, ran away when Senna was five. Left Senna in charge of a one-year-old brother and a father descending into the vortex of heartbreak and gambling that had been slowly killing him all the years since.
She’d left it all to Senna and never come back.
Her mother knew nothing of documents, nothing about managing things. Corraling and harnessing the frightening forces of the world. She knew only about running away. And she certainly knew nothing about documents.
That was Senna’s realm.
“And Senna?”
She jerked her attention back.
“The Wishmés are real. They are valuable. And I need you to make them into a dye for me.”
She clutched the account ledger to her chest, feeble armor. She could not make dyes. They could offer her chests of gold that would save the business forty times over, and she would still not be able to dye. She’d spent her life avoiding it.
The question was: what would the stranger before her do when he understood that?
At the moment, he was simply watching her, but with a hawklike intensity that did not bode well for creatures smaller than he. Senna figured she would come to his chin. In slippers.
“Have you a suggestion on how to proceed, Senna?” His voice was calm, as if they were discussing the menu for the evening meal. Perhaps…her.
She wiped her free hand on her skirt. ’Twas time to prove herself reasonable enough not to be splayed and boiled as a first course.
“Have you attempted dog whelk? Or mayhap woad. Its colors are deep and rich, well suited to the fibers. Surely it can produce what you are looking for.”
By the look on his face, Rardove did not agree.
“Sir, ’tisn’t possible for any person with a will to craft the Wishmé dyes. Only a very certain few can—according to legend,” she added hurriedly, then tacked on, even more hurriedly, “which I know only as a result of being in an associated business, you understand, and hearing such things. But even if I wished to dye, I could not do it, just so.” She snapped her fingers. “Such craftsmanship takes years of study. I cannot fathom why you think I can make them—”
He snapped his fingers back, right in front of her nose, then grabbed her hand, overturned it, and pressed his thumb against her inner wrist, over the blue veins that ran beneath her skin.
“Your blood makes me think it, Senna,” he said in a low voice. “They say ’tis in the blood.”
Her mouth fell open. Terrified, she yanked on her hand. He released her.
Continuing to back up, she put her hand on the edge of the dais table for support, ledger clutched to her chest. Fast, frantic chills shot through her, like small, darting arrows, poking holes in her composure.
“Sir.” She swallowed. “Sir.” She was repeating herself. That could not be good. She never even quoted prices more than once. “Sir, you mus
t understand—”
“I understand. You do not.” He turned so his back was to the hall, reached into his tunic, and pulled something out. “This is what the Wishmés can do.”
That was all he said, all he needed to say. Everything else came from the scrap of dyed fabric in his hand. Slowly, she set the ledger down and reached for it.
It was…stunning. Luminous, a kind of deep blue she’d never seen before, so brilliant she almost had to shield her eyes, as if it were emitting light.
Dog whelk could not create this. Neither could moss, or madder, or woad, or anything on Earth. This was straight from God.
“’Tis beautiful,” she murmured, running her fingers almost reverently over the edge of the dyed weave. “On my wool, it would be something the world has never seen.”
An odd look crossed his face. “Where will you start?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
She moved her hands in a helpless gesture. “I do not know.”
But she did. A churning hot spot in the center of her chest seemed to be actually pulling her back to the dye hut, to the room with mortars and pestles, the lichen and bark that could be magicked into things of such beauty.
Just like her mother. Shame sizzled thin, hot rivers of self-loathing down her throat.
