Chapter 26 #3
All typical scenes of domestic life, visions of craft I might see in my home, or scaled up in a city workshop.
But with a twist. These looms were enormous and gleamed bone white, constructed not of wood but of what appeared to be the antlers of some unknown beast. Sparkling pieces of quartz the size of my fist, with edges so sharp that they glittered, hung from the threads in place of loom weights.
The piles of rough fiber looked matted with grease and shot through with jewels, a sight that both allured and repelled.
The dye vats all simmered and churned with the appearance of blood, and yet the spun skeins that emerged were in every color of creation, in shades so vibrant they defied belief.
The workers were all women, of varying ages and appearances, and yet there was something almost identical about them that went beyond the matching white wraps and looped braids.
They moved in a mechanical, unnatural way, as though they were nothing but extensions of their tools.
No one was sitting and taking a break, no one was singing or exchanging a word of gossip with their neighbor.
Dark bands of smoky ochre had been painted across the center of their faces, making it appear as though their eyes had been burned away.
Combined with their jerky movements and held tongues, this felt less like a temple and more like a tomb of enslaved ghouls set to work.
As I watched, one woman shoved a mass of skirted fiber into a washing tub with a violent motion, holding it down as though it were an animal she was trying to drown.
I wonder if that wool might belong to one of the transformed bandits?
I stared at the dripping fiber, my stomach churning.
What happened to people when they were transformed?
Did they keep their human minds? Become true animals?
I wasn’t sure which fate sounded more monstrous—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Instead, I shifted position, continuing to search the workshop.
Every stage of textile production was on quiet, eerie display, except one: the spinning of the thread itself.
There were no spindles, no spinners, as though that step of the process had been neatly snipped away.
I lifted the grate higher, trying to peer deeper into the chamber, and an astonishing sight captured my gaze.
Taking up an entire wall and stretching at least three stories was the largest tapestry I had ever seen.
And it was alive. That was the only word that seemed capable of capturing the rich sparkle of color, the patterns that twirled and winked before my eyes.
There were no figures I could identity—no floral motifs, no dancing girls, no swooping birds.
There was a pattern, but it was as though staring at a tablet with an alphabet I couldn’t decipher.
No, it was deeper. Like someone had crafted a language of weaving designs, a dialect of stitches, and I was too ignorant to comprehend it, a hunter searching a thicket for an animal whose very shape she did not know.
The massive tapestry was also apparently a work in progress.
As my awed eyes traced its brilliant expanse, I noticed it was still hanging from a loom.
At the very bottom, uncannily silent workers each held a thread thicker than my thigh, seeming to dance among each other as they weaved new strands through, a living shuttle.
Another group of women drew close, shoving the new band in place with hooked poles.
Just above, I spotted a patch of familiar colors: ebony and crimson and smoke, the shades of a campfire, alongside a pattern of coral sunbursts.
It was an exact mirror of the belt Raksh had been given.
I inhaled sharply, but once I noticed Raksh’s pattern, other recognizable pairings came to mind.
The bright crimson and leaf green in the cloaks of the sad-eyed shield bearers who stood watch at court.
The cobalt, moonstone, and saffron of the cape that the irritating poet who’d attempted to flirt with me at the feast wore.
Khatti Ugal’s dyed garments were just so exceptional, in shades I’d never seen captured outside nature, in patterns so unique, that they stayed memorable.
Here, they’d all been preserved. Why? And what did it mean that Raksh wore one?
Movement caught my eye. A door had been opened below the tapestry, letting in a slender rectangle of dawn, black trees jutting against the red sky like burning bones.
A woman entered, dressed in the same plain wrap as the rest of the textile workers.
She was carrying a basket, her well-muscled arms cradling it as tightly as a lover.
Lugging it to the dye vats, she set the basket carefully on the ground.
Nestled inside were a dozen loosely tied skeins of newly spun thread.
Excitement rushed through me, and I lifted the drain higher, watching as the woman approached those combing and preparing the clean fleece.
Without exchanging a word, they prepared another basket for her—of fluffy roving this time, some already wrapped around a distaff rod, ready for a spindle.
She picked up the basket, heading back the way she’d come.
Now, where are you going? I wondered as she slipped out the door again. My old gambler’s instinct soared, for I was damned certain she was off to deliver that basket to the Khatti Ugal’s unseen spinners, and I stared at the door, aching to follow.
But I’d already stayed out far too late. I did not dare try to press my luck.
Tomorrow, I promised myself.
Now I just had to survive another day in Khatti Ugal.