It was a simple drop spindle, a round, smooth stick ending in a flat wooden wheel and hung suspended by the fine purple thread. As it spun, its weight pulled the fibers from the gemstones, and the thread collected in a widening cone atop the wooden wheel.
It was no small skill, keeping the spindle moving at the perfect speed-not so fast that it broke the delicate thread nor so slow that it fell to the floor. To Naoni, the rhythm was as natural as breathing.
When the last of the gems slipped into thread, Naoni eased the spindle to the floor. She didn't fear a fall might shatter her work. Anything she spun became as strong and flexible as silk, for Naoni Dyre was a minor sorceress.
Hmmph. Minor indeed. The ability to spin nearly anything into thread was her lone gift.
'You, dear sister, need a spinning wheel.'
A fond smile lit Naoni's face as she turned to greet Faendra. Her younger sister was the very image of their dead mother: a petite and pretty strawberry blonde, plump in all the right places, with blue, blue eyes that promised sunny afternoons, and a pert little nose that matched a smile that was never far from her lips.
'Spinning wheels are far too dear. What would Father say about such expense?' Naoni asked mildly.
Faendra propped fists on hips and thrust forth her chin in imitation of their father's manner. 'Buy a proper wheel, girl, and stop spinning thread like a Calishite slave! Good tools will triple your coins, or may Waukeen damn me to the poorhouse,' she growled, in tones as deep and gruff as she could manage.
They laughed together, but Naoni's mirth quickly faded to a sigh. Her father knew she spun and earned fair coin, but dismissed attempted talk about her work with a brusque, 'What's yours is yours.' He was far more interested in her ability to run the household with frugal efficiency.
'Perhaps it's time to consider a wheel,' she said. 'Jacintha would be pleased to have more gem thread.'
Faendra eyed the glittering skeins carefully laid out on the sideboard. 'What wouldn't I give for a gown of Jacintha's gemsilk!' she said wistfully. 'Perhaps this time the gnome could pay you in cloth?'
'Little chance of that; most of gemsilk's value is the gems, not the labor.'
The younger girl sniffed. 'Oh? Who else can spin such thread?'
'I know of none other,' Naoni admitted, 'nor know I another weaver who has Jacintha's gift for weaving many sources together into cloth. If not for her, how would I have gems to weave? We're fortunate to have found each other; I've no quarrel with our arrangement.'
'So be it,' Faendra said lightly. 'How soon can we be in the Warrens?'
'We can leave as soon as I finish this last skein.' Naoni picked up a niddy-noddy, a simple wooden frame of three sticks, and began to wind the thread around it.
'Niddy niddy noddy, two heads with one body,' Faendra chanted, grinning. 'You taught me that rhyme when you made your first frame. How old was I then, I wonder?'
'Seven winters,' Naoni said softly. She'd begun spinning the year their mother died, leaving her, a lass of twelve winters, to run the household and raise a frolicsome little sister.
Her swift hands made short work of the winding. 'If you'll summon Lark, we can leave.'
'I'm here,' announced a low-pitched voice.
The young woman who emerged from the buttery resembled her namesake: small, trim, and as brown as a meadow bird. Her long hair was gathered back into a single braid, and she wore a brown kirtle over a plain linen shift. A green ribbon bound her brows to hold back stray wisps of hair, and its two ends had been laced into her braid. A matching sash was tied around one of her bared arms. Her nose was perhaps too narrow and a bit overlong, and her bright brown eyes disconcertingly keen, but she was pleasant enough to look upon.
Naoni gave her a tentative smile. Her father, in keeping with their new-found affluence, had insisted they hire a servant, but his elder daughter was still not sure how a mistress should treat a hired lass.
Her sister had no such worries. To Faendra, every stranger was a friend yet unmet, and any girl living under her roof as good as a sister. She picked up a skein of glittering purple and draped it around Lark's shoulders.
'What say you? Wouldn't you love to wear a gemsilk gown?'
Lark carefully lifted the skein and set it aside. 'For my work, in this heat? It'd be as wet as washrags by highsun.'
'Don't be goose-witted. You wear such gowns to noble revels, not for cheese-making!'
'I've been to many such,' Lark replied, in a tone that implied her memories of revels were neither fond nor impressive.
'To serve, yes, but not on the arm of some handsome, wealthy young man!'
Lark's lips thinned. 'I know my place and want no other.'
'Let's wrap and bundle the skeins,' Naoni said hastily. They all got on well enough, but Lark had little patience for Faendra's thinking: beauty was its own guild, and the business of its members was to charm all the world into doing their will.
Faendra gave her sister a sunny smile. 'I'll just change my gown and freshen my hair.' She danced out of the room, humming.
'She'll not reappear until the task is done,' Lark murmured.
True enough, but such truths would sit ill with the master of the household. 'My father would not like to hear it said that any Dyre shirks work,' Naoni observed carefully.
'Then I'll say instead both Dyre sisters are willing workers,' Lark replied dryly. 'Naoni's willing to work-and Faendra's willing to let her.'
Naoni smiled faintly, shook her head, and wrapped linen over her basket. 'That's the last of it. It seems strange so much thread can be woven from a handful of gems.'
'Stranger still you can do it at all.'
Faendra reappeared, twirling to show off her new blue gown and slippers dyed to match. The bodice was fashionably tight, the sleeves thrice-puffed and slashed to best display her rounded, rosy arms, and the slim skirt hugged her hips and thighs before flaring out in a graceful sweep.
Naoni frowned, gray eyes stern. 'You're dressed very fine for the Warrens. Is that wise?'
Her sister danced over to kiss Naoni on the tip of her nose and then spun away with a grin. 'You worry overmuch. Let's be off!'
As the three girls made their way through Dock Ward, the streets were as crowded and bustling as usual, but no fights or spilled wagons drew crowds and slowed them. Even the everpresent handcarts were fewer and less precariously loaded than usual.
They were soon standing in a narrow alley that ended in a tangle of ramshackle buildings. Naoni tapped on a sagging door half-hidden behind a rotting pile of broken barrel-staves.
It swung open to flickering torchlight amid darkness and the familiar hard stares of a pair of halfling guards. Mostly hidden beyond the doorframe, they were dressed as human urchins, and their belts bore cheap, bright- painted leather scabbards. Despite their childish, harmless appearance, those scabbards held swords that were very real and very sharp.
'A fine afternoon to you both,' Naoni said, hefting her covered basket. 'I've business with Jacintha.'
The guards nodded and silently drew back to let her pass. The three girls ducked inside, and Lark spread her hands, palms up, to show she bore no weapons.
'You, too,' one hin said in a surprisingly gruff voice, nodding at Faendra. 'Palms, pretty one?'
The younger Dyre sister rolled her eyes and held her arms out wide as if to ask 'And where might I be hiding anything in this gown?'
The guard nodded, and the door was already being thrust closed behind them as Naoni handed the basket to Lark and took a torch from the guards' barrel. Lighting it from their wall-torch, she started along the tunnel.
The smell of damp stone arose strongly around the three, and they took care not to brush against the walls. The Warrens was one of Waterdeep's lesser-known neighborhoods. It had been centuries in the making, beginning with stone houses built along hilly streets. Betimes a higher floor would be added here, or a walkway built across a street from house to house there, and with the passing years stretches of streets were completely hidden from the sun, and many lowest floors became cellars. Rebuilding shored up the lower levels and worked upward from there, and beneath a few blocks of bustling Waterdeep, the slow result of this tireless reaching for the grander was a
