Chapter Four #3
Having Baldbeak on my shoulder garnered me some curious looks, but it also provided me a little breathing room in the crowds.
He could look very intimidating when he chose, especially when he hunched his shoulders and lowered his head, glaring at them over the sparse feathers above his beak.
I noticed that some people made an odd sign with their fingers when they saw him, as if warding off an evil eye.
“Do you know what that’s about, Baldbeak?” I asked him.
Some humans think we are bad luck, he said. He snapped his beak at a passerby, who cringed away.
“Well don’t make it worse!”
He gave his equivalent of a laugh, a single harsh cough deep in his throat.
Quell was not laid out in a sensible grid, but instead was a warren of alleys and broader carriageways with treacherous turns.
The glims flickered overhead: blue-white lanterns, faint in the day and bright after dark.
There were great, heavy buildings on every corner that the Priest had told me were crematoriums, built to burn the bones of the dead, ensuring that no bone mage could use them ever again.
They belched great clouds of smoke above the city, so many that Quell seemed to exist in a permanent fog that stank of incense and ash.
“Remember, though,” the Priest had said to me, “that the oldest bones are still there beneath the earth, sleeping. Like the Corpse Roads. The Temple can wall them off, but it can’t destroy them.”
I had never seen such an abundance of things.
I passed a toy shop and stopped to press my nose against the window like a little child and look at the treasures within: carved wooden animals, little pull-along wagons, and porcelain dolls in a dazzling variety of dresses.
I had wished for a doll when I was a little girl in the Tower—someone else to talk to, even if they couldn’t talk back.
I’d tried to make myself one by inking a face onto a wooden spoon, but I suppose my imagination hadn’t been powerful enough to make it seem really alive.
After playing with it in a desultory manner for a couple of days, I’d returned it to its original purpose of stirring the glue, and after that, sentient Hair and a telepathic raven had to suffice. Part of me longed for one of those porcelain dolls even now, for the sake of its beauty alone.
I had always yearned for company, when I was younger, and a sister most of all.
A proper playmate. I hadn’t understood back then how babies came about (and honestly had a shaky grip on the matter even as an adult), and I had asked Mother once, while she was telling me a bedtime story, if she could produce a sister for me.
She had been smoothing my Hair back from my head, making it feel like it was purring, but suddenly her hand paused its restful motion.
I felt her nails scrape against my scalp.
“Why do you say that?”
I had hurt her feelings, I thought. I had made her think that she wasn’t enough for me. I scrambled to reply.
“Just … someone to play with. To talk to. Then I wouldn’t have to rescue all those baby birds,” I said, trying for a smile.
Mother had withdrawn her hand. I wanted to clutch it, to tell her not to stop, but she had already folded her hands in her lap and straightened her back, leaning away from me.
“Believe me, Netta,” she had said. “You do not want a sister. They are much more trouble than they’re worth.”
“A brother, then.”
“Not a brother, either.” She resumed stroking my hair. “Did I ever tell you that I had a little brother, once?”
She hadn’t. I was desperate to hear. She never talked about the past, nor any family we might have had, and I had been afraid to ask for fear of sending her into a scowling silence that could last for days. “Tell me.”
“My father had only daughters,” she said, “and daughters cannot inherit in noble families.”
“You were noble?”
“Hush. Listen. He took in a boy to serve as his heir—a sickly boy, fostered with our family by his spendthrift father, a minor lord, who hoped for his advancement. It is not uncommon, among the lesser nobility, to pay for a favor like this, in the hopes that the whole family might be elevated one day. The boy had shown some small magical ability, and so my father agreed. Unfortunately, that promise proved to be nothing more than minor affinities—nothing terribly useful, and certainly nothing that would enable him to become an incarnist mage. Father decided to train him as a sort of assistant, instead, letting him help with clerical duties, research, that sort of thing. The boy had a way with numbers, which was useful.”
“So … he was your little brother?”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “In name only. He was a child of six when he came to us. I was already more than sixteen. We had little to do with each other. Oh, I showed him charity, of course, but I was repaid with nothing but ingratitude and betrayal. He used my family for connections and advancement at court, then scorned us. He wants nothing more than our downfall, my dear. He has a vendetta against everyone of our line.”
Our line. I longed to ask more about these ancestors, this mysterious family, but this was the most Mother had ever told me, and I was loath to push too hard and silence her again.
“No, Netta,” she said then. “You certainly do not want a brother.”
I never brought up the possibility of a sibling again. And then, when I was at my loneliest, Baldbeak had come along.
So many smells, said the raven now, his eyes bright with interest as he eyed a butcher’s shop.
I didn’t have much coin, but I begged some scraps from the man behind the counter, who was fascinated to see a raven up close, and even more fascinated to see how handily his beak tore and gulped down the thick gristle.
My favorite shops, of course, were those that sold fabrics and notions.
As I wandered through the streets of Quell, still half dazed by the sights and sounds, I found one dressmaker’s shop that had a rail of cloth set outside the door, with textures and colors that felt like food for my skin and my eyes at once.
Even the threads I had begged from Baldbeak over the last few months couldn’t compare.
The interior was even more overwhelming.
I held one bolt after another up to my face in the mirror propped against the wall, reveling in the colors, so rich and liquid it felt like I could dip my fingers into them like paint.
Back in the Tower, I had worn the same faded blue dress every day pretty much, only changing into a brown one on the days I did our laundry.
Both dresses were soft as duckling down from being worn and washed so often, and I had endlessly mended and embroidered them to keep at least a semblance of beauty in my workaday wear.
I had left the Tower in the blue one, and I realized now how odd I must look to the women of Quell.
As I had walked down the streets, my needleworker’s eye had noted all the little details in their dresses that mine lacked—the tucks and pleats, the clever shaping and draping.
To my inexperienced eye, they seemed very grand.
Where the other ladies had skirts that flared from their waists, mine hung straight down, and my hem ended above my ankles, which suddenly seemed very knobbly.
“You’re very pretty,” the shopkeeper said, startling me so that I almost dropped the swathe of fabric. “That green was lovely on you.”
Pretty?
I hadn’t thought much about my appearance in the tower.
Mother didn’t like mirrors, and the little one in her room was there for spellwork more than for primping.
I got a glance at myself now and then, but it was so tiny that I only ever saw myself piecemeal: a curve of cheek and an ear, or a distorted gray eye.
When I knelt by the stream, I saw a rippling mermaid version of myself, shattering and reforming in an endless dance.
I was pleasing enough, I thought, but I had no one to compare myself to besides Mother.
“Would you like me to cut something for you?” the shop owner asked.
I dragged my gaze from the fabrics with reluctance. “I do not have time to make something, I’m afraid. Do you have any dresses already made up?”
“I do,” she said, “and I can alter them to fit, if you can linger awhile. They will not be as pretty as these, I’m afraid.”
“That does not matter,” I said. I promised myself that if—when—I found Mother, I would return and buy lengths of the most beautiful fabrics I could, to fashion us both dresses in every color.
The ready-made dresses were indeed much more drab and serviceable than the butterfly array of cloth, but I found two that I liked: one a sage green, and one a faded butter yellow.
“You have an eye for color,” said the dressmaker.
She was endlessly flattering, as I suppose you had to be when you were selling such things.
“Those will go very nicely with your hair.” As she wrapped them in brown paper, she eyed the designs I had stitched on my shabby cuffs.
“That is beautiful work. Yours? Are you an embroiderer?”
“Thank you, but no,” I said a little shyly, tracing the pattern. “I just do it for myself.”
“Well, if you like embroidery, you must see our tapestry while you are here. It is the pride of Quell.”
“I haven’t heard of it. What is it?”
“It was sewn after the time of the Plague,” she said, “to commemorate the victory of the Temple mages. They house it in the East Temple for most of the year and only bring it out on Plaguenight. It’s well worth a visit.”
I needed to find someone who knew about books—even better, someone who had corresponded with Mother. And after that, I needed to find the Tin Quarter … that is, if I decided to trust Patrick’s introduction. But I could not resist the chance to see such a famous piece of embroidery.
“Could you tell me how to get there?” I asked her.