Chapter Four #2
Mother endured my attempts to “prettify” (as she called it) our napkins and tablecloths, but it was hard going with her old sewing things.
One night, after ruining a beautiful piece of silk with needles blunt as my own fingers, I begged and pleaded with her for a set of proper embroidery needles.
Surely she could write to one of her contacts in the cities and have the pigeons bring us some? Mother listened, but shook her head.
“We have needles already, my dear.”
“But they’re old, and blunt. And they wouldn’t be expensive!”
Surely a packet of embroidery needles, so small and light, couldn’t cost more than the thick bronze needles for the manuscript binding.
“Please, Mother.”
She leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her tired eyes, a tic of irritation at the corner of her mouth.
I felt a swell of shame. My new interest was frivolous, compared to Mother’s great work—whatever it was.
So I held my tongue and bided my time until Baldbeak came knocking at the casement window again in the morning, when Mother was occupied with her work in the upper room and would not see him.
We had progressed greatly in our understanding of each other, Baldbeak and I, but communicating the concept of a needle to him proved difficult at first.
“Pointy stick?” I tried. “Metal?”
He sent me the image of a sword. With relish. I got the impression that he would rather like bringing me a sword.
“No! Smaller.” I spread my thumb and forefinger an inch apart.
Tiny sword? For why?
I brought my tortured silk handkerchief to the window and showed him the too-large puncture marks, then showed him the thick needle we used for bookbinding. He cocked his head and looked from it to me and back again.
“Like this,” I said, “but thin.”
The Hair obligingly extended a strand of itself, hovering in front of Baldbeak’s beady eye.
This tiny?
“Yes, as thin as possible. To make more things like this, but better.”
For why? he asked again.
“I don’t know. Because it’s pretty. Because I like it.”
Ah!
That he understood. He sent me a quick succession of flashing images—coins, jewelry, bits of silver paper, horseshoe nails, and more that I couldn’t identify.
Ravens knew all about pretty. He took little shining things from us here and there, nothing important, and I knew that they presented an almost irresistible draw.
I got a general sense of agreement from him now, just in time for me to hear Mother’s tread on the ladder and slam the window.
Baldbeak was gone for longer than usual that time, and so it was a surprise when he returned a week or two later with a packet of needles, some metal and some bone—much slimmer than the thick bronze one, or even my old bone needle.
“Where did you get these?” I asked him, but he simply cocked his head to the side.
Shiny, he said wistfully. I admired his restraint in giving them up.
“Thank you,” I said. He closed his eyes blissfully as I scratched the graying feathers on his beak, his favorite spot.
I quickly found that I still had more of a knack for the needles of bone than of metal, and I barely felt any resistance from the cloth as they swam through it, neat and playful as minnows.
Delighted with my new speed and nimbleness, I took to remaking my own clothes, turning the cuffs of undershirts to add stitched bracelets of vines and flowers, or sewing a pastoral scene along the hem of an apron.
My favorite blue dress had a tear in the elbow where I had caught it on the doorknob, and I sewed a little bumblebee over the hole.
You could almost fancy its little wings were moving.
Whenever Baldbeak disappeared for a day or two, he brought me back thread, or little squares of fabric. The way we saw color and texture was different, but with some trial and error, I was usually able to indicate to him any particular thread I had in mind for a piece.
One day, Baldbeak sent me an image of one of my pieces of cloth. In his eyes, it was a mess of odd colors, glowing a little.
Take one, he said.
“You want one of these?” I flapped one at him.
The quick dip of his beak that meant yes.
“Why? What are you going to do with it?”
He stared at me blankly, but I got the sense that the blankness was a front, this time, rather than real confusion. What did it matter, though? He had done more than enough for me, certainly enough to warrant giving him a piece of my stitching.
“Is this one all right?”
A sharp jerk of his head meant yes.
I supposed he might be going to use it in his nest—or perhaps give it as a gift to his raven sweetheart, if he had one. I had never asked what he did with that first one—the one that had apparently called him to me.
After that, he often asked for pieces of embroidery. I had no idea what he did with them, and he didn’t tell me, but I never saw them again.
“Where did you learn to do this?” the young Follower asked me now.
“I just taught myself,” I said, flushing a little. “I don’t know the proper stitches, or their names.”
They raised their eyebrows. “That’s astonishing.”
“I’m probably doing it all wrong,” I said. “I just do whatever I feel like, really, and hope it turns out.”
“May I?” They reached out a hand, and I passed them the piece. They smoothed their hand over the design on the front, then turned it over to look at the bird’s nest of thread in the back.
“Here,” they said, pointing. “This stitch is called the Widow’s Heart. And this one is the Rose, and this the Hands Raised in Prayer.”
“Do you sew?”
They smiled. “I was training to be a Temple Priest for a while, in Quell, before I decided to join the Followers. We were taught the sacred stitches.”
“There are sacred stitches?” I stared at my work. “I had no idea. How can a stitch belong to someone? What is sacred about them?”
“Nothing, really,” they said. “The Temple likes to lay claim to things, and calling them holy or sacred is the easiest way. They want the most skilled and exquisite embroiderers, as they want the best bookmakers, the best scribes, the best mages … Claiming certain things as belonging to their god is what the Temple does.”
“You lived in Quell? So you know it very well, I suppose?”
“Well enough. Quell is a blessed city, believed to be especially favored by the One-Eyed God.”
“And by your gods?” I asked.
“Oh, our gods don’t go in much for blessing,” they said with a grin.
“Or smiting, either. We leave them alone, for the most part, and they return the favor. But Quell is one of the holiest cities in Virelith, according to the Temple. It has four Temple buildings, one at each cardinal point. More than any other city. And all the great schools are there—magic, binding, spellbook calligraphy—”
“I thought Mirthwater was the holiest city? Isn’t the Pontiff there?”
“Even the Pontiff can’t compete with four temples. Although from what I hear, he’s laden with enough gold jewelry to resemble one of them.”
“And why did you decide to leave the Temple?” I asked. “Did you lose your faith?”
“I never had it to lose it. The Temple simply has the best schools, and you need to at least pretend to be one of the faithful to earn a place. I was brought up as a Follower, but tired of the life. I never expected to return to it but”—they shrugged—“here I am. The great bookmaking schools are in Quell, also. My sister attended one, for a time.”
“She’s not a Follower, like you?”
“It’s not really a family business,” they teased me.
“But if your parents were …”
“Oh yes, any children we have will travel with us, of course. But when they are of age, they are free to choose their own path. Tamara had an affinity …” They stopped themself and looked at me quickly, as if gauging my response to the word.
“A talent for bookmaking that matched the very best of any scriptorium in the kingdom. Of course the Temple school wanted her. And she wanted to learn.”
I chose to ignore their slip. Mother had never mentioned the schools—of magic or of bookmaking. I wondered if she had ever attended one.
“So does your sister work at one of the scriptoriums now?”
“No.” A shadow crossed the Follower’s face. “She disappeared. Almost a year ago now. Took her things and left the school, and never even wrote to me. I have no idea where she is now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said inadequately.
“It’s almost worse not knowing,” they said. “It’s difficult to explain, but I would almost feel better if I knew for certain that something terrible had happened to her.”
I desperately wanted to tell them that I knew exactly how they felt, but I held my tongue.
When we arrived in Quell, my new friends were concerned about me and loath to leave me in the city alone.
I was reluctant to leave them by then, too.
I had enjoyed their gentle, accepting companionship, and the city was an overwhelming maelstrom of sights and sounds by comparison.
I had never seen so many people all in one place, or even imagined it—and Quell wasn’t even that big a city, as the cities of Virelith went.
“You will be well,” said the Priest, kissing me on both cheeks. It felt like a benediction, even though the Followers did not go in for that sort of thing. Baldbeak and I watched them go forlornly, then turned our gaze to the city laid out before us.
After the simplicity of my life before, it was almost too much to take in.
The colors. The noise. The sheer number of people!
I knew, of course, that the world outside the Tower was filled with them, but the reality of it—the press of bodies against mine in the street, the sickly perfumes, and the stench of unwashed skin—clogged all my senses at once.