With all the interruptions from various palace-dwellers, it took me another two days to finish the pink gown. I refused to talk about the incident with my shoes, no matter who brought it up. It was a measure of how badly she wanted to keep the duchess’s patronage that Derda did not fire me over my surliness and troublemaking.
But she didn’t, and in two days I was waiting on customers in the front of the shop, giving me a much-needed respite from the strange looks and comments of Larkin. Alle also gave me the eye from time to time, but it was less threatening coming from her, and Marta’s sunny nature didn’t allow her to dwell on the strange happenings at all.
When I wasn’t out in the front of the shop, fetching and carrying lengths of cloth and ribbons, pinning hems, and telling very large middle-aged women that low-cut daffodil-yellow gowns made them look both younger and slimmer, I was in the back, hard at work. The duchess’s grey gown was all stitched and I had lightly chalked in the pattern for the embroidery. On my own poor gown I had used whatever colours and types of thread I had with me, but with the duchess’s gown I had more freedom. Derda kept a supply of every type of embroidery silk imaginable, in colours I had never even dreamed of, and for an important patron like the Duchess of Mordrel I could use any of them that I fancied. The duchess had said that she would prefer the colours to be shades of blue and grey, but I branched out into lavender and violet, turquoise and slate. I decided that I would outline each block of colour with silver bullion, to give the impression of silver leading holding panes of glass in place.
Larkin frowned at me as I embroidered a diamond-shaped section of lavender next to one of deep blue. When Derda circled the table to check on our work, Larkin whispered something to her that sent Derda whisking around to my side of the table.
“This is for the Duchess of Mordrel,” she stated.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, not looking at Larkin, who was watching us avidly.
“She requested only blue and grey embroidery,” Derda reminded me.
“Yes, ma’am, but when I am done, the colours will blend together and make a beautiful pattern.”
“You seem awfully sure of yourself for an apprentice,” Derda said waspishly.
I did not reply that I was sure that I had a better eye for colour than most of our patrons and perhaps even Derda herself. I merely bowed my head. “When the dress is completed, if it does not please you, ma’am, or Her Grace, I will pay for the gown out of my own wages.”
Derda snorted. “Of course you will. And with the price of the silks you’re using, it will take you a hundred years to make up the debt, too!” But with that parting shot she went to her own table to work, and I settled down to embroidering the gown and ignoring Larkin.
It took weeks, but finally I was finished. And I could say without any little pride that it was magnificent. The grey silk gleamed and the panels of embroidery – perfectly shaped like gothic arches – glowed like jewels. I had been right about my choice of colours: the different hues complemented each other perfectly, and the thin lines of silver bullion created the exact effect I had wanted. It looked like panels of Shardas’s finest windows had been transferred to the bodice and skirts of a beautifully fitted gown. The duchess stood before Derda’s long looking glass in silence for several minutes.
“You have a very great talent,” she said finally.
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Feeling a surge of pride, I hoped that the Triune Gods would let my mother hear this from paradise, so that she would know I wasn’t squandering my talent or her training.
The women of Carlieff Town who had bought Mother’s work had always treated her as being merely competent, sighing over the fact that she was their only source for fancywork. But here I was in the King’s Seat, my mother’s unofficial apprentice, being praised by a duchess. My mother’s handiwork was at least as good as Derda’s, if not better. I wished that Mother were here. I wished that she were home, or anywhere, as long as she was alive and I could throw my arms around her once more.
I had to blink away tears before I accepted the duchess’s gracious praise again. Then she and Derda got down to haggling about price while I folded up the gown and wrapped it in linen. I think the duchess noticed my tears, though, because before she left she patted my cheek gently and pressed an additional silver coin into my hand.
After she was gone I offered the coin to Derda, not sure what to do, but she gruffly told me to keep it. Marta clucked at me as soon as we were safely out of our employer’s earshot.
“How do you expect to ever save up any money if you give it all to Derda?” She shook her head at me. “Anytime a patron gives you a little extra for yourself, put it in your moneybox as soon as you can!”
“I haven’t got a moneybox,” I told her, putting one hand over the apron pocket that held the coin to make sure it felt secure.
“Then that’s the first thing we’ll have to buy at the market on our day off,” she said, giving my shoulder a little squeeze. “Everyone must have a moneybox.”
The next day brought swarms of ladies to Derda’s shop and gave me hope that I would be able to fill a moneybox of my own. It seemed that the duchess had worn the new gown to a state dinner that same night, and now every woman who had been in the room was clamouring for a gown by Derda’s new apprentice. My employer’s mouth thinned until it almost disappeared at all the attention my design was getting, but she smiled for the customers no matter how much it grated, and promised such a gown to each of them.
I looked at Marta in despair. “How will I be able to make all those gowns?”
“We’ll all have to help, of course,” she laughed. “We’ll sew the gowns and take care of the fittings, while you do the embroidery. I don’t think I could ever figure out how you combined those colours to make it look so … shimmery.”
Marta and I went to work immediately, taking down the fabrics and threads needed for each gown and placing them within easy reach. Derda joined us and announced that from now on I was to stay in the back room, working on new designs and colour schemes, since we couldn’t insult the duchess or our other patrons by dressing them in the same gown. I felt like the walls were closing in on me. I had only had the freedom to move between the shop and the back room for a few days, and already I was being shut in the back again. Larkin would be my only company during shop hours, and I wouldn’t be in a position to receive any extra coins of gratitude from the patrons. It would take me twice as long to get my own shop, now.
As if reading my thoughts, Marta leaned in close and said that she would share her tips, as she called them, with me. I tried to refuse, but she shrugged me off, saying that if it weren’t for my designs, she wouldn’t be getting the tips, and I subsided gratefully.
“Don’t your feet itch?” Larkin asked the question suddenly, making me fumble the reel of emerald-green ribbon I was carrying. It bounced on to the table and rolled past her. She reached out and stopped it, hard, with one hand.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your feet. Don’t they itch? If I wore those blue slippers all the time, my feet would always be itching.”
“Um, no, they’re fine,” I lied.
The truth was that they did itch all the time. But by now I was used to it. In fact, until she had mentioned it, I hadn’t thought about my feet all day. The itching grew stronger or weaker in surges and waves, and right now it was more like a subdued pulse that made me feel my heart beating in the soles of my feet.
“I thought I heard voices when I put them on,” Larkin continued, ignoring my discomfiture.
“How odd,” I said with a catch in my voice. “Perhaps you were overtired.”
Larkin merely looked at me until I grew uncomfortable and went back to sorting silks. A young countess with dark hair would be dressed daringly in shades of red on a pale rose background, with the leading stitched in gold. A crocus-yellow gown for an earl’s daughter would be ornamented with greens and blues, and the leading done with a green so dark it was nearly black. I laid out each collection of silks with care, positioning them atop the bolt of fabric that the gown would be made from. The red-on-rose reminded me of Shardas’s Lily Window, blood-red lilies with green stems arching against a pale pink background. The yellow gown made me think of sunshine, and the blue-and-green embroidery would be eye-catching in patterns like ocean waves. I had never seen the ocean, but my memories of Shardas’s Ocean Window would provide the pattern, with the fabric of the bodice rising over it like the sun. Enticed by the colours and the challenge of the designs, I set to work.
I was the last person awake that night. I had somehow found myself agreeing to cut out all the fabric for the new gowns I would be supervising, and was hunched over the worktable with a heavy pair of shears long after the others had gone up to bed. By the time I finished cutting the last piece of yellow silk, my eyes were dry and burning and the itching of my feet had deadened them until I could no longer move my toes.
With a huge sigh that made tears start in my eyes, I flopped back in one of the hard chairs and dropped the shears on to the table. “Oh, Shardas, how I wish I were back in your cave,” I groaned, shaking out my sore hands. “How I wish I were sitting on a coil of your tail and talking … anything but cutting fabric!”
I was so tired that I couldn’t even bring myself to mount the narrow stairs to the sleeping quarters. Instead, I slumped forward and pillowed my head on my arms. I closed my eyes and dozed off at once.
I awoke with a start. It felt as though my feet were on fire. I reached under the table and ripped my blue slippers right off, rubbing my stockinged feet back and forth on the bare wooden floor to try to soothe them.
The itching stopped immediately, which made the noise all the more obvious. There was a scraping sound coming from somewhere outside the shop, accompanied by a weird rumble that reminded me of a dragon laughing.
With a jolt I realised that it was a dragon laughing, or sighing, or something.
I ran through the shop to fling open the front door, needing both hands to lift the heavy bar that secured the entrance at night. Running out into the street in my stocking feet, I nearly tripped over a coil of Shardas’s tail. The huge gold dragon was crouched uncomfortably in the street directly in front of Derda’s shop.
“Oh, Shardas! Dear Shardas, you’re here!” I was half-laughing, half-crying at the sight of my friend. “I was so longing to see you!” And I threw my arms around one of his forelegs, the only part of him I could get my arms around, other than his tail.
“Of course I’m here,” he said in his dry way. He huffed warm breath down the back of my neck. “How could I not come?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he began reluctantly, “you see, I –” He broke off. “Where are your shoes?”
“Oh, just inside there, they were making my feet itch, so I took them off. Why?”
“Yes, and I don’t know why. I don’t have fleas or anything. It was so bad right before I heard you that I thought I was on fire.”
“I’m sorry.”
I brushed aside his apology. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Actually,” he said, “I – No. Never mind. I came to see how you were getting on.”
I realised that I was squinting, confused by his half-finished thought. “Er,” I said, blinking. “Not very well,” I confessed. Then I looked around. I thought I saw a movement in one of the second-storey windows, but when I looked closer I couldn’t see anyone. The shutter was ajar, however. “But someone might see you, you should go.”
“I know a place where we can be comfortable,” Shardas said. “If I may?”
He held out a claw to me. I stepped into it and he gently picked me up and leaped into the sky. A single flap of his wings and we had soared over the rooftops of the cloth-workers’ district. A building with three fat steeples at one end of the roof loomed before us, and Shardas landed on it neatly. He curled up on the flat roof in the shadow of the spires while I seated myself on a comfortable section of his tail. Thus hidden from prying eyes, I spilled out my story.
“I know I should be grateful,” I finished with a sigh. “But it’s just that, well, I dreamed of coming here and becoming a famous dressmaker or some such. But I didn’t think that most of my earnings would go to my employer, or that she would keep me in the back room slaving away until my fingers bled!” I held up my reddened digits for his scrutiny.
“Come back with me, then,” he offered. “You are more than welcome at my cave.” He hesitated. “I must confess that I enjoyed having you there, and have found myself rather … lonely … since you left.”
I blushed, flattered. Then I wondered if some day in the distant future Shardas would be telling another human about a girl named Creel, who had been his friend when he was a mere seven hundred and seventy years old.
“I would love that,” I said. “But the truth is, I would feel like a failure if I gave up now and went with you. I came to the King’s Seat to make my fortune and by the Triunity, I’m going to do it!” I pounded on his scales with one clenched fist.
“Yes, well, that’s very noble of you,” Shardas said with a rumble of laughter that rattled the slate tiles beneath us. “But please call on me if you decide that you’ve had enough.” He raised his long neck and looked over the roofs. “It will be dawn soon, and I should go. But promise me one thing …”
“What’s that?”
“As soon as you have earned some money, please buy new shoes.”
“What? What is it about my slippers?” I hopped to my feet. “Wherever I go these shoes stir up trouble. It’s becoming ridiculous. You must know something; I can hear it in your voice.” I remembered suddenly that I had forgotten to tell him about Larkin. “The other day one of the other girls put them on, and she fainted. Is that not strange?”
“She fainted?” Shardas sounded concerned.
“Yes, and she said she heard things, and that they made her feet itch, too.” I shook my head, puzzled. “Please, Shardas, if you know something about them, I think I have a right to hear it. They are my slippers, after all.”
Shardas leaned his long head in close to me. “They are not just any plain slippers. They are very old, and have a history to them.” He looked at the horizon, where there was a faint hint of dawn. “I thought before that it might be better if you didn’t know, but since they are making you itch and attracting attention, then perhaps it is time you knew. Those slippers come from –”
We both jerked as the sanctuary bells began to ring, heralding the first hour of the day. I gave him a panicked look.
“Derda’s an early riser,” I said.
Shardas spread one foreclaw and I jumped into it. He soared off the roof and back to the street where I lived now. He set me down gently, rumbled an apology, and took off again, unfurling his wings with a snap as soon as he cleared the rooftops. I whisked inside the shop and stood peeping out from between the curtains of the large front window, watching as a pair of King’s Guards marched down the street, on their way home after a night spent enforcing the curfew. After they had passed I waited until the sun had risen fully for Shardas to return, but he never came back. In the end I gathered up my strange slippers and went upstairs.