The next morning I was too nervous to eat breakfast, even though all I’d had the day before was a couple of peaches I’d brought with me from Shardas’s cave and a sausage roll. Instead I washed as thoroughly as possible in the basin in my room, combed and recombed my yellow hair and braided it neatly. Ulfrid loaned me a clothes brush, which I used to make my gown as presentable as I could. It was countrified, and not new, but it had been laundered just two days ago in Shardas’s bathing pool, and the embroidery showed off my neat stitches.
By mid-morning I was as ready as I thought I would ever be, and Ulfrid agreed in her laconic way. She gave curt orders to the staff, took off her apron, straightened her own gown, and off we went.
Two streets over we encountered a booth selling some badly dyed wool. A girl peddling ribbons from a tray was strolling up and down in front of the booth, as were a number of women with shopping baskets on their arms or overburdened servants trailing behind. It wasn’t far from Ulfrid’s inn, but from where I had met the prince last night it was a confusing walk through a tangle of side streets. For the tenth time, I sent up a prayer of thanksgiving to the Triunity for sending Prince Luka to take me under his wing.
Ulfrid marched past the booth and the ribbon seller, and even past the first few shops. I didn’t know what she had in mind for me, but her stride was so long and purposeful, it was all I could do to keep up.
“But what about that one?” I finally gasped, touching her elbow as she marched past yet another shop displaying a rack of finely woven sashes in the window.
“Common,” grunted Ulfrid, and strode on.
At last, nearly a mile from the inn, she stopped. We were standing in front of a tall and very imposing dress shop. It had a large bay window, but there was nothing displayed in it, unless you counted the beautifully made curtains drawn across the gleaming panes of glass.
The women going in and out were testimony enough to the type of shop this was: they had bodyguards walking before and footmen scurrying after. Maids carried small dogs on cushions, and young boys in livery held sun-canopies over their mistresses’ heads the moment they stepped into the open air.
My jaw dropped. Was Ulfrid mad? Did her foreign upbringing differ so much from mine that she actually thought a shop like this would hire a nobody from the country? It would be much easier to convince a smaller shop that I was a master, but a place like this? Impossible! I slumped in despair. Ulfrid threw her shoulders back and glared at me until I straightened. Then she took my bundle of handkerchiefs and sashes from my arms and stepped into the shop without looking back to make sure that I followed.
Startled, I followed.
The room was furnished with cushioned chairs and little tables laid with snowy cloths. Pretty maids in embroidered aprons rushed to and fro, supplying the customers with refreshments, while other girls in pink dresses with scarlet sashes hurried about with armloads of silks and satins. Ulfrid walked through the maze of delicate chairs and gossiping customers without looking right or left. My face flamed as all conversation stopped and the finely dressed ladies and their daughters paused to stare at us. Nevertheless, I put my chin up and strolled behind Ulfrid as though I did this every day.
At the back of the shop there was a long counter of highly polished wood. Beyond it was a pair of doors that must have led into the backroom and the kitchens. Maids went into one with empty trays and came back laden with delicate cakes and pots of steaming tea or chilled bottles of wine, and the pink-gowned shopgirls went through the other to re-emerge weighed down by bolts of cloth or large wooden spools of thread.
Presiding over it all from a position behind the counter was a stout woman in deep blue silk with a wide pink sash. When we reached the counter I saw that, like the princess the day before and most of the women in the shop today, she wore layers of skirts that had been kilted up to display the fine embroidery along the hem of each garment. With a critical eye I inspected the work, and had to admit that it was quite fine. I also thought that the style and technique bore a strong resemblance to that decorating Princess Amalia’s gown, and wondered with trepidation if she had her dresses made here.
“Ah, dear Mistress Ulfrid, what have you brought me?” The proprietress had bright black eyes and fat little hands that she clapped in delight at seeing Ulfrid. “More samples of that foreign embroidery?”
Without saying a word, Ulfrid laid my bundle on the counter and spread out its contents. She lined up the sashes and smoothed out the handkerchiefs and the two squares of linen I had used as samplers. The customers waiting at the counter leaned in closer to have a look.
The proprietress eyed my stitches beadily. She fingered the sashes, and lifted the two samplers up to study the stitches more carefully.
“It’s amateur work,” she declared with a sniff, casting down the handkerchief she had inspected last. “Crude cloth, crude threads, old-fashioned techniques. But the pattern is certainly unusual, and she has a good eye for colour and form.”
I bristled at this dismissal of my work. “I have embroidered for the Lady of Carlieff Town,” I said in a tight voice. “My stitches were skilled enough for her.” That was not entirely true: my mother had had me copy exactly the work she had done for the lady, but had not let me work on the actual gown. Still, how would this woman ever find out the truth?
“Of course they were,” the stout woman fired back. “She’s the Lady of Carlieff Town. Things are different in the King’s Seat!” She raked me up and down with her fierce eyes. “And mind your tongue, girl.”
“It was for the patterns that I brought her,” Ulfrid said placidly, as though my outburst had never happened. “I’ve never seen this style of embroidery before. And this knotwork is exceptional.” She lifted one of the sashes and showed the proprietress.
“Where did you copy these patterns from? Who was your mistress?” The proprietress’s voice lashed at me.
“My mother taught me to embroider and weave,” I said, only just managing to keep the snap out of my own voice. I wasn’t only irritated with her, I was irritated with myself for thinking that it would be easy to find work with my poor samples. “I had no other mistress,” I confessed, not very humbly. “But the patterns are my own.”
“I see.” The woman looked me over again, and then looked back at my work. Her brows were drawn together as though to say she didn’t quite believe me. “I’ll take her on,” she told Ulfrid after long consideration. “If she can keep a civil tongue in her head.”
I opened my mouth to make some biting retort, but then realised that I had just been offered work. “Thank you,” I said meekly.
Neither of the older women looked at me.
“She has only a small bundle of things, other than this,” Ulfrid announced. “I will send the potboy with them this afternoon.”
“Very well. Would you care for some wine? Cakes?” The proprietress made a gesture at the door to the kitchens. “I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a bit in my private parlour.”
“Thank you, Derda, but I must go back to my inn.” Ulfrid grimaced. “That new serving wench spends far too much time making eyes at the soldiers and not enough time scouring mugs.”
And with that, Ulfrid turned and stalked out, once more ignoring the sneering looks of the patrons. I called a feeble thanks after her, but she didn’t acknowledge it in any way I could detect.
“Come along, girl,” Derda said, gathering up my samples and sashes with a quick movement. “You cannot work in the shop until you’ve made yourself a proper shopgown.”
“I will begin work on it immediately,” I told her. I didn’t much care for the way she and Ulfrid had ignored me and talked so condescendingly about my skills, but she was my employer, and it wouldn’t do to get myself fired before I’d even earned any pay.
Derda snorted. “There you go again, talking when you’re not wanted to talk. You’ll work in the backroom until closing time; your old gown is good enough for that. Then there’s the cleaning. And then you’ll start sewing yourself a pink gown, like Marta’s here.” She pointed at a pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair who was whirling by with a bolt of lavender satin. Marta gave me a saucy wink, and I felt a bitter surge of jealousy for her perfect curls and neat city-style gown.
“How much will my wages be?” I dared to ask as I was stepping through the door into the large backroom where the bolts of cloth and spools of thread and ribbon were kept.
Derda gave me a calculating look. “You’ll be paid a silver every two weeks. But it will cost you two silvers for the cloth to make your shopgown. And another silver for the proper underthings and a sash.”
My jaw dropped as I quickly did the figures in my head. I would have to work here for six weeks until I was finally paid? And, though two silvers would have been a respectable sum in Carlieff Town, I’d heard hawkers calling out prices for things in the street and knew that, in the King’s Seat, that sum a month would buy precious little.
“Additionally, you will room and board in the dormitory at the top of the shop,” Derda went on. “I charge only a copper a week for that, and expect my girls to keep the shop and their living quarters tidy. There will be no gentlemen callers of any kind.”
I could only stare at her. How did her girls make any money at all? It was ten coppers to a silver, and she charged them four coppers a month to live above the shop.
“Stop gawking that way, country girl,” Derda said gruffly. “If you don’t like my terms you’re welcome to try to find work elsewhere. I think you’ll find that I’m more than kind to my girls, at least compared to some.
“Now I’ve customers to attend to. Larkin will show you what to do.” And she pushed back through the doors and into the front room of the shop.
The back room was at least two stories high and the walls were lined with shelves. There were more ranks of shelves to each side of a long table running down the middle, scarred by sewing shears. Here and there a footstool or ladder allowed access to the highest shelves.
“Um, Larkin?” I looked around, but couldn’t see anyone else. I put my bundle on the edge of the table. I raised my voice: “Larkin?”
What appeared to be a moving pile of cloth came lurching towards me, and I took a step backwards. A good half-dozen bolts of fabric tumbled on to the table, revealing a rather plain girl with brown hair in two braids and wide grey eyes.
“I’m Larkin,” she said, limping around the table to take my hand in her own. “Are you new? Welcome.”
“Yes, I’m Creel,” I replied. “I’m supposed to help you back here until I can get my shopgown made.”
“Of course,” she said simply. “You’re so pretty; I assumed that she would have you work in the front.”
“Oh, I’m not pretty,” I protested. “You have much better skin; I’m covered in freckles.”
“No one wants to be waited on by a cripple,” Larkin said in her mild voice.
I realised with a pang that her limp was not from a recent injury. As she moved away from me to sort through the bolts on the table, her skirts swept around her legs, revealing an ankle that was twisted in a way that made her lurch from side to side. I fought the urge to tell her I was sorry; after all, it wasn’t my fault, and an apology would only sound hollow, so instead I put my bundle on a half-empty shelf and wordlessly began helping her lay out the bolts.
Larkin quietly showed me how measuring marks had been burned into the edge of the table on both sides, and told me how much was wanted from each bolt. I took up a pair of heavy shears from the basket dangling from a hook on the wall to cut lengths of cherry-red silk. I hesitated at first, though. I had never seen such fine silk, and it was almost frightening to think about cutting it. What if I cut it the wrong length? What if my hands, calloused from farm work, snagged the fabric?
“Do you need help?” Larkin looked at me with a crease between her brows.
“Oh, no. Sorry.” Taking a deep breath, I began to cut. The rip-rip sound of the shears biting into the silk was exciting as well as scary, and when I was done I held up the length with a triumphant expression. Perfect!
“Larkin, have you got the cherry and the powder blue done yet?” Marta, the pretty strawberry blonde came bustling through the swinging door. “Oh, hello!” She waved a hand at me. “I’m Marta, are you the new girl?”
“Yes, I’m Creel,” I told her, wary. Pretty girls like her always made me nervous, and Derda’s attention made me suspect that this one was a favourite of hers.
“I guess you’ll be stuck back here with Larkin until you can make your pink gown,” she burbled. There was a looking glass hanging from one of the shelves, and she turned to it to rearrange her curls. “I couldn’t make mine fast enough.”
I frowned at her back, thinking that it was extremely rude of her to talk this way, and right in front of Larkin, too! “Well, I am very good with a needle,” I said.
“You would have to be.” Marta laughed. “Derda only hires the best. Not that she lets any of us do anything interesting. I don’t know why she bothers to inspect our handiwork so closely. I’ve done nothing but hem underskirts since I got here last summer.” She yawned. “Larkin, are you finished or not?”
I folded the cherry-red silk loosely, all but throwing it at Marta. “Here! I did the cherry.”
“Oh, thank you,” Marta said, sounding confused at my unfriendly tone. She refolded the fabric into a neater square. Larkin handed her an equally tidy parcel of powder blue.
“I’m just glad we talked Lady Catta out of having these two silks on the same gown,” Marta said, wrinkling her nose. “When she first came in, she wanted layers of these sewn together … ugh. But now she just wants two skirts to wear separately.” And she bustled back out again.
I looked at Larkin, wanting to say something kind, something reassuring, but I couldn’t think of anything. Instead, I just helped her put away the bolts we had finished with, and cut more lengths from the others. Marta continued to flash in and out, collecting swatches and bolts and cut lengths, and so did another girl named Alle, who seemed nice, if rather frivolous.
I had been cutting away with Larkin in companionable silence for about an hour when a horribly familiar voice came knifing through the door as Marta swung it open. Two spots of angry colour were burning on her pale cheeks.
“I want scarlet ribbons for this gown!” the voice from the shop shrieked.
“Gah!” Marta shuddered. “I don’t care if she is a princess – gah!”
“What seems to be the problem?” Larkin put down her shears and looked up at Marta in her mild way. “The Princess Amalia is one of our best patronesses,” she chided the other girl. “You are fortunate to be waiting upon royalty.”
“Again: I don’t care,” Marta fired back. “She’s a horror!”
I was frozen for a moment, but then shook myself. “Is it really her?” I couldn’t keep the dismay from my voice. “The Roulaini princess?”
“Yes, why?” Marta looked at me with curiosity.
“Oh, nothing,” I mumbled.
“All right, suit yourself!” And Marta bounced over to the shelves where the spools of ribbon were kept. “I don’t see it anywhere! I could have sworn we had some, but Alle thought we didn’t, and she made the mistake of telling the princess that!”
“What is it exactly?” Larkin struggled to her feet.
“Scarlet ribbons, from the sound of the shrieking,” I said under my breath.
Marta snickered. “But not just any scarlet ribbons. Not for the Princess of Roulain! Wide scarlet ribbons – two fingers wide to be exact. And of the finest southern silk, if you please.”
I let out a low whistle. “Every hand’s span would be worth our monthly wages,” I said.
“Twice our monthly wages,” Larkin corrected me, going back to her task.
“We are the finest dress shop in the King’s Seat,” Marta shot back. “Which is why Derda charges her customers such outrageous prices.” She shuffled through more spools of ribbon. “Well, I can’t see it anywhere!” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to go back out and face Princess Shrill-malia.”
“Marta, do you think it wise to disparage both our employer and our future queen?” Larkin’s downcast eyes never left the lilac velvet she was cutting.
“Gah! Our future queen! I feel sick!” was the other’s reply as she swept out.
“That girl is going to end up in trouble one day,” Larkin murmured.
The shrieking continued from the front of the shop, where Princess Amalia was letting Derda and Marta know, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of the lack of scarlet ribbons. A cry of distress followed by the sound of breaking crockery told me that the princess had either knocked a serving tray from the hands of one of the maids, or had thrown it.
It was all I could do not to make some comment about spoiled rich girls. But the demure look on Larkin’s face kept stopping the words before I could speak them. We finished the bolts we had been cutting, and Larkin made a laborious move to gather them up and put them back on the shelves.
“No, no! Let me do it,” I protested, taking them from her. “I need to learn where they go,” I went on, to spare her pride. “I can see that they are arranged by colour, but does the fabric matter?”
“The heavier fabrics go on the higher shelves, the lighter on the lower,” Larkin instructed. “In the cooler months, we rotate them.” She was watching me, hovering on the verge of standing up to help.
“It’s all right, I can do it,” I assured her.
And I could. My mother had kept her silks and yarns arranged in the same way, and I knew just how to find the shelves of blue and green and yellow, pink and grey. I was using a stepladder to shelve the last bolt, but something seemed to be blocking it.
“There’s something stuck back here,” I called over my shoulder to Larkin.
“I’ll take care of it.” She lurched to her feet and limped towards me, faster than I would have thought she could. “I’m used to it. Let me.”
“No, it’s all right, I’ve got it.” Stretching my arm as far as I could, I reached back and snagged what felt like one of the large ribbon spools. It was caught for a moment, then came free so suddenly that I fell back off the stepladder and only just managed to catch myself before I tumbled right on to my rear. “Hey!” I held up my prize with a grin. “Scarlet ribbons!”
This had to be what Marta had been looking for. Holding the spool high in triumph, I started for the swinging door.
“What are you doing?” Larkin caught my arm, her face crinkled with concern.
“I’m going to take this out and make Her Highness stop screaming,” I said, bewildered at her reaction.
“But you haven’t a proper shopgown,” Larkin protested.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “What if the princess leaves without anyone knowing that we had the ribbons she wanted?” I grinned at her, ignoring my own internal anxiety at having to face Amalia again. “I’m sure I will be forgiven for appearing in my country gown when they see what I’ve got.” And with that, I pushed through the doors into the shop proper.
As I’d thought, the rest of the customers had left, with the exception of a stately matron wearing a hat so covered in feathers that it looked as though a large bird had settled on her head. She was standing to one side of the princess, looking resigned, while Derda and the rest of her staff fluttered around the princess and her entourage, offering her sweets and bolts of silk.
“I found it,” I called, striding forward and waving the spool of ribbon. “It had been misplaced.”
Marta rushed forward to take the ribbon from me, whispering a string of breathless thank-yous. She offered it to the princess with the expression of a vestal virgin giving sacrifice to a vengeful god. The princess snatched the spool from her hands, and Marta backed off quickly, almost treading on me in her haste to get out of slapping distance of Feravel’s future queen. One of the first things I had noticed on entering the room was that Alle and several of the serving maids had red cheeks and moist eyes, as though they had been struck.
Derda gave me a beady look and a sharp nod and then gestured with one hand for me to return to the backroom. Only too grateful, I nodded in answer and started to creep away in as unobtrusive a manner as possible.
“You there, girl who finds things,” the stately matron barked, halting me in my tracks. “Come here.”
“Madam?” I looked to Derda, who nodded her permission, though she did not appear pleased.
“Yes, yes, come here and let me see your gown,” the woman said with impatience, though her expression was not unkind.
“Forgive me, Madam,” I apologised. “I have only just come to work for Mistress Derda, and have not yet made myself a presentable gown. This is the poor farm garb I arrived in.” I had to grit my teeth to say such a thing, since my dress had not been all that mean back home, but I was hoping for a quick escape.
“Let me have a closer look at that embroidery,” the stately woman said, her tone softening. She snapped her fingers and her maid pulled a pair of green-tinted spectacles from a purse. The woman held them a few inches from her eyes and squinted at my hem. “I have never seen the like.”
“Er, no, Madam, it is my own design,” I told her, and I held up my skirt a little so that she could see it better.
“You!”
My head jerked around and I found myself meeting the princess’s angry gaze. Princess Amalia let her little lapdog, Pippin, down and the creature began happily eating the crumbled cakes that adorned the floor. The princess advanced on me.
“You’re that awful, clumsy country cow who assaulted me yesterday,” the princess said, pointing a sharp-looking finger. “What are you doing here?”
“Some very remarkable embroidery, I hope,” the older woman said, handing her spectacles back to her maid. “I heard about what happened in the marketplace yesterday, Amalia, and I’m sure it was an accident, so please stop fussing about it.
“Derda.” The stately woman turned her gaze from the princess, who was gasping like a hooked fish at this injustice, and addressed my employer. “You must have her do something for me. I’ve never seen the like. It’s breathtaking.”
“Well,” Derda said, coming to my side. “We shall see. I’m afraid the girl is new, and some of this work is not really fit for such as yourself, Your Grace.”
Not caring if Derda was my employer, or the woman facing me a duchess, I opened my mouth to protest, when Princess Amalia said something that made me wish I had taken Larkin’s warning to heart and not left the backroom.
“Where did you get those slippers?” The princess’s gaze was fixed firmly on my blue slippers.
“Er,” I replied, dropping my skirts to cover them. “Er, the cobbler in Carlieff Town?” I wished that it didn’t sound so much like a question.
“I must have some, they’re beautiful,” the princess said. “Too beautiful for a countrified shopgirl.”
“We can send someone to Carlieff Town for a pair at once, Your Highness.” A horse-faced woman standing behind the princess spoke up. “But first, let’s buy the ribbon you wanted and return to the palace, it must be nearly time for you to dress for dinner.” She sounded like a nanny trying to coax a spoiled toddler away from a toy.
“But I want them right now,” Amalia said. “Give me yours.”
“Princess Amalia, surely you don’t want to wear the same shoes that a peasant girl has been wearing?” The horse-faced lady-in-waiting looked scandalised. I wondered how scandalised she would have been if I’d slapped her, and then her rude mistress.
“Maybe not,” the princess said, never taking her eyes off me. “Maybe I just don’t think it’s fair that a peasant girl is wearing such fine slippers.”
“You have dozens upon dozens of slippers,” the lady-in-waiting protested.
“None like those,” Princess Amalia said mulishly.
“Really, Amalia, this is childish,” the duchess said, shaking her head in disgust. “If you deprived every person whose shoes you like of their footwear, half of the King’s Seat would go barefoot. Let’s buy those ribbons and return to the palace.” She gave her attention to Derda once more. “I don’t know what you mean, that it isn’t good enough for me, Derda. If I like the girl’s handiwork, then it clearly is good enough.
“Now, after you’ve made up that grey silk gown, let this girl embroider panels on the skirt and around the cuffs. I want something like this.” She waved a hand at my gown. “Only all in shades of blue. That will go well enough with the grey, don’t you think?”
Realising that she had actually asked my opinion, I shook myself out of my stupor. “Very well, Your … Grace.” It had taken me a moment to think of the proper way to address a duchess. Fortunately my silly aunt’s even sillier romantic tales were a good resource for such things. “I would be pleased to do it, Your Grace,” I added.
“Excellent. Amalia?” The duchess studied the princess, and then sighed when it appeared that Princess Amalia was ignoring all of us until she got her way. “Derda, please use as much of the ribbon as you deem necessary, and add it to the princess’s bill.” She gave another wave of her hand. “The pattern you showed us today will do very well. Now come along, all of you.” And the duchess swept out, taking Princess Amalia and her entourage with her. I had just opened my mouth to apologise to Derda, and to find out why she was glaring at me in that way, when there was a shriek from the street outside, and one of the princess’s burly guards came hurrying back in.
“Pippin! Pippin!” The man looked ridiculous, running around the pink-decorated shop snapping his fingers and calling that silly name.
“Here she is,” I called. I had spotted a long silky tail disappearing under the cloth covering one of the refreshment tables. I reached under and pulled the little dog out. She was busily munching something she’d found on the floor. She licked my chin and I handed her to the guard with a grin that I couldn’t stop.
“Thank you,” he said in laboured Feravelan, and left.
Derda rounded on me as soon as the door closed behind him. “How dare you leave the backroom to wait on a customer when you’re dressed like that?” Her face was red with rage.
I gaped at her. “But – but the princess, she wanted the ribbon and I found it,” I said helplessly. “I didn’t know how to get anyone’s attention, to have Marta or Alle come to get it.” Did she want the princess to leave dissatisfied, and never return?
“That was the Duchess of Mordrel!”
Blinking, I shook my head. I had never heard of the Duchess of Mordrel.
“The Duchess of Mordrel is the cousin of King Caxel himself! Her husband, the duke, is second only to the king in wealth and influence,” Derda ranted. “The duchess is one of our most important patrons, and now she will know that those designs are your own.” She threw her hands in the air and stormed away in disgust. “Get in the back room where you belong, girl!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I was doing a favour for Ulfrid by taking you in, but by the Triunity I will take that favour back if I have to!”
I stood staring at her as she lifted a discreet curtain and disappeared into some unknown quarter of the store. Alle gave me a scandalised look and began to clear up the mess that the princess had left. My hands clenched in my skirts, I started to stomp towards the back room, when a hand on my elbow stopped me.
“She wanted to claim that the designs were her own,” Marta whispered. “She always does. Says it’s her right as our employer. Sewing embroidered ribbons around the necklines of gowns was my idea. And the kilted layers of skirts that are all the rage now? A local fashion where Alle is from.”
Alle shot a terrified glance at Marta and moved farther away, as though not wanting to be tainted by association if Derda came back.
“Why don’t you open your own shop, then?” I asked, also keeping my voice low. My body was turning hot and cold and I wished with all my heart I was back in Shardas’s cave.
“A shop? With what money?” Marta snorted at the idea. “I couldn’t afford the rent on the shop and it would take years to build up a clientele.” She shook her head. “The only hope for country girls like us is to keep our heads down and work for someone like Derda, and hope that we can save up enough money to go into business on our own before we’re too old to care.”
“You could attend the Merchants’ Ball,” Alle put in shyly, and then scurried into the backroom with an armload of cloth.
“Is it true that even an apprentice can go to the Merchants’ Ball?” I picked up the spool of scarlet ribbon and another of grey, and Marta filled her arms with balls of embroidery yarn. My mother had told me that she had once thought of attending, before she married.
“The Merchants’ Ball is a fool’s dream,” Larkin said as I stepped into the back room. “I hope you have not been filling her head with such ideas, Marta,” she said in a severe voice.
“Not me. Alle brought it up,” Marta said with a toss of her head. “It’s not like any of us would have a chance there. But who are you to decide what we can and can’t dream about?”
I dropped the spools on the table with a clatter. “Will Derda attend?”
“Oh, no! Why would she?” Marta shook her head. “The Merchants’ Ball is where people like you and me go to try and court a wealthy investor. Derda doesn’t need an investor, and she would never gamble her money away on some unknown artisan. Anyone can attend, to try their luck.” Marta wrinkled her nose. “The only catch is: you have to look presentable and have some really wonderful samples to prove yourself with. So what would I do? Go in this awful pink shopgirl’s gown and show them some decorated ribbons?”
“We should be grateful to Derda for giving us this fine shop to work in and a good place to live,” Larkin scolded.
I was starting to rethink my first impressions of these girls. Marta, though perhaps a bit of a flirt, seemed genuinely kind, while Larkin was striking me more and more as a wet dishrag, as Hagen would have put it.
“Grateful!” Marta rolled her eyes. “We do all the work, we invent the new fashions, and she takes all the credit and the money! If I had a fine enough gown, I’d be at the Merchants’ Ball begging for a wealthy patron!” Her eyes roved over the shelves of brightly coloured fabric. “There are times when I think about stealing some silk and making myself a ballgown,” she confided to me.
“Derda and I both know the contents of this shop forward and back, miss,” Larkin warned. “If enough silk went missing to make you a gown, we’d know before you had time to baste the seams!”
“Then why couldn’t you find the scarlet ribbons?” she retorted. Marta stuck out her tongue and went back to the front of the store. As she went, I thought I heard her mutter something about a “two-faced little snake”.
“What was it about your slippers?” Larkin gave me a mild look. “I could hear some of the conversation. The princess sounded quite taken with them.”
“If by ‘taken’ you mean that she tried to force me to give them to her, then yes,” I said with a snort.
“Why?”
I hesitated. I disliked calling attention to my shoes because of their odd origin.
“They’re lovely,” Alle said, coming around one of the rows of shelves, her chore finished. “Beautiful blue slippers, they are. A very strange style.” She ducked her head at me in a shy gesture. “If they were mine, I would cut my skirts a little shorter, to show them off.”
“She’ll be cutting her skirts the same length as the rest of you,” Derda said, smashing through the swinging doors. “I’m closing the shop. It’s nearly time, and I doubt that we’re fit to serve another customer.
“So!” She put her hands on her hips and looked me up and down. “Take a bolt of the lightweight pink wool and start working on your dress. I don’t want to see you in the front of the shop again until you have it finished.” And with that she smashed back out.
“Gah,” I said.
“You have no idea,” Alle muttered under her breath. Then, seeing Larkin’s dark look, she trotted out.