clothes. He is strict about how he likes things done.”
“Have there been complaints of his teaching?”
“Only by the weak-willed and lazy. He can be exacting, it is true, but he always shows deference to his elders and asks us, we few elders who are left in White Bow House, to share our knowledge. His manners are so very good that I should like to meet his mother!”
Since Vai had never mentioned his village-born origins, I wondered what Magister Vinda would say if she knew the well-mannered young man had been born to the same rank of people as her own lowly servants.
“I will send two attendants with you,” she added.
“My thanks, but I would prefer to go on my own way, if you don’t mind, Magister.” In truth, the tailor’s unexpected summons had raised an unreasonable hope in my breast.
Vinda’s smile was both gracious and skeptical. “You’re a bold girl. The young women in the House think you quite the most exciting person they have ever met and wish only to have adventures like you, but I have told them a hundred times in the last two weeks that the tale gives more delight than the living of it.”
Her words made me think of Luce. Was Luce resigned to helping her mother at the boardinghouse? Had she decided to take a factory job, maybe in the hope of saving up enough money to buy an apprenticeship into a troll consortium that might offer her a chance to travel?
“True enough, Magister. I hope you do not consider me a bad influence.”
“I like the way you speak up, even if I do not always agree.” To my surprise she kissed me on the cheek as she might a niece. “Go on. It is certain you can take care of yourself.”
Sala’s central district was not large, so it did not take me long to reach Cutters Row and the tailor shop opposite Queedle & Clutch. The bell jangled as I entered. Two men sat cross-legged on a raised platform in front of the shop window. The straw-haired man was sewing buttonholes and the black-haired man was finishing a collar. They greeted me with friendly smiles before glancing toward a screen that concealed the other occupants of the room.
“No, the cuffs should not come to the crease of the wrist,” Vai was saying in a tone whose self-indulgent fastidiousness might provoke a less patient man into taking scissors to every garment within reach. “They should be a finger’s width longer—no more!—so the wrist is not exposed when I extend my arm to its full length. You see how that ruins the look.”
I shook out my cape and hung it from a hook at the door.
“I can’t possibly wear this! Please tell me you have not cut the other two to this same length.”
“I have not cut the third one yet, Magister, for I am not sure of the fabric.”
“I have already told you which fabric I want. Did I not make my wishes clear?”
I smiled at the two men, who smiled knowingly back at me. They had obviously endured many of these harangues; I quite wisely never stayed long in the shop when I did come with Vai.
“Of course, Magister, I have already taken care of the problem with the other dash jacket, if you would like to try it on. Let me help you. Just a moment, if you will.”
The tailor emerged from behind the screen to see who had come in. He was a bent old man with the wry demeanor of a person who has for his entire life successfully done business with overly particular customers. “Salve, Maestra,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
“You are a patient man, Maester,” I said in a low voice, with a glance toward the screen.
He inclined his head, thankfully not denying the sentiment. Like me he kept his voice low. “He holds others to the exacting standard to which he holds himself. The first dash jacket I made to his specifications he wore when Magister Viridor introduced him at the ghana’s court. In the ten days since, my custom has tripled and I have had to advertise for more sewers and cutters.”
Through an open door I could see into a sunny room in back, where men bent over garments in various stages of assembly, conversing in a merry rumble of masculine voices.
“The work out of your shop is very skilled.”
“So it is, Maestra, and my thanks for mentioning it. But men will believe the illusion that if a well-formed man looks good in a garment, then they necessarily will also. It takes all my power of persuasion to convince some of these new customers that a different style of clothing would suit them better. Which brings me to my purpose.” He indicated bolts of cloth unfurled across the cutting table. A length of dove-gray woolen broadcloth covered the other bolts; it was exactly the sort of sober fabric Vai despised. “He was insistent about the green floral print but I cannot think the color suits his complexion. Now he has brought in a fabric that is too, ah, decorative for the style he prefers. I intend no offense, but perhaps you could persuade him to a less flamboyant…”
Vai stepped out from behind the screen. The top five buttons of a tepidly green dash jacket were undone. It was indeed not his best color. “Catherine? What are you doing here?”
“Just passing by,” I lied, to protect the tailor. “Goodness, Andevai, you look like a fern.” To give myself something to do before he exploded, I twitched aside the gray cloth to see the fabric hidden beneath. “Gracious Melqart!”
Distracted, Vai looked down, then smiled. “It’s perfect,” he breathed so ardently that the sewers had to conceal snickers.
The cloth beneath was finest wool challis, dyed a deep blue in which whispered all the soft promise of a twilight sky, which subtlety was entirely overwhelmed by its being embroidered with flagrant sprays of bright color depicted as flowers bursting open like fireworks. A person might call it
But what shocked me was that it matched the fabric of the dash jacket worn by the man meant to be Vai in the false dream sketched by Bee to convince Caonabo not to arrest me.
The bell jangled as the door opened. A swirl of chilly, damp air shivered into the shop like a big cat with a cold nose nudging your cheek. A remarkably attractive man with blond hair, a thick mustache, and scarred knuckles stopped short.
“Bold Diana! It is peculiar to find you exactly where I was told you would be.”
“Brennan!” Elation throbbed through my chest. Brennan Toure Du was the first man who had ever truly flirted with me, however mild a flirtation it might have been that night at the Griffin Inn when I had met him, the trolls Godwik and Chartji, and Professora Kehinde Nayo Kuti. I had understood at the time that he was being kind, for a man of Brennan Du’s experience and reputation was quite out of the reach of a girl like me.
Vai’s hand settled possessively on the small of my back as he stepped up beside me. “I believe we have not been formally introduced,” he said in his most coolly belligerent tone. “I am Magister Andevai Diarisso of Four Moons House. Perhaps you will be so kind as to inform my wife and me why you are here.”
The infamous radical called black-haired Brennan had a history of fighting, whether in taverns or in the service of his radical philosophy. He also had a brilliantly charming grin, which he deployed with blinding good humor as he approached Vai with an outstretched hand in the radical manner, man to man as an equal.
“Magister! It is an honor to make your acquaintance formally. You must have quite a rousing tale to tell, if everything Beatrice has told me is true.”
Good manners won out, as they always did with Vai when it came to the point. He shook hands, but watched like a wire strung taut as Brennan shook my hand.
“She told me to look for the tailor shop opposite Queedle and Clutch.”
I just could not stop grinning. “Where are Bee and Rory? Can I go to them right away?”
“Immediately!” When Brennan turned that smile on me, I realized he was striking in large part because he was at ease in himself. He was not burdened by the insecurities and vanities that plagued Andevai.
“Let me finish here before we go,” said Vai, again settling a hand against my back.
“No need to accompany us if it’s any trouble for you, Magister.” Brennan examined Vai with a distinct crinkle of laughter about his eyes. “I will return your wife to you by nightfall.”
“It is no trouble for me to accompany you,” said Vai in a fruitless attempt to sound unconcerned: His tone came off as threatening. “Indeed, I insist on it.”
“You can’t wish to wear that dash jacket in public,” I said.
Unfortunately the tailor sailed into the breach. “I have the other dash jacket ready, Magister, if you will just come back with me to try it on. I assure you, it will fit exactly as you wish.”
I followed Vai back behind the screen, where we chanced to have a few moments alone as the tailor went to the wardrobe to fetch the other garment.
