The shop had a different look than she remembered. It had been close to a century since she’d needed leathers from Fásachbaile. Where before the items were stacked with no ceremony or delicacy, they now sat on mannequins and racks. Organized. She looked through for not even a minute when she heard the creak of wood from the floorboards above. She dropped to a crouch and put herself in a shadow that would survive candlelight. A moment passed and an elf, light in hand, the other raised and open to show it empty, came into the shop area.
“Hello?” A male voice, young and high as elves went. “I have heard you, I’m afraid. I do not value these things above my life. I came to tell you as much. Take what you like, but I ask you leave me with enough to sell.”
Aile stood. “Where is the old woman?”
The elf squeaked girlishly and swung the candle to light her direction. He squinted as he answered, eyes too close to the light to see much beyond it.
“She… she died. Many years ago. More than forty now.” His eyes adjusted and he covered his mouth, whispering, “Drow…”
“Who works the leather now?”
“I have heard of you! She told me!” He came closer until Aile put a hand to the hilt at her hip. “She told me of you. Said to never turn you away. That you paid well and gave the leather meaning.”
“Who works the leather?”
“M…me? I am all there is here. And my love. He is away, though. With his family.”
Aile found it hard to believe the crone had managed to find a cock bold enough to put a child in her, but the items carried a surety in their stitching not suited to a novice hand.
“Leathers, then.”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes! I have some, made for you. The last thing to ever touch my mother’s hand. I’ve kept them religiously, as she made me swear. Oiled and supple and sturdy. She made them a finish, she said. To seal them.” He turned and moved behind the desk at the head of the shop, pushing a chair aside and opening a hidden place below the floor. “She said they would see use. Over and over she said it, admiring them.”
He pulled the clothes from their recess and held them aloft. They were thicker than any Aile had seen but moved freely as the elf’s hands went across them. The darkness in them was rich, deep, and thorough. The leathers were draped over the desk and Aile put her hand to them. Soft, pliable, and with a strange feel across her thumb, one she had never felt before.
“She’s sealed them. The feel. It will be strange, but no water, ale, blood… nothing will defile the seal so long as it is not cut or scraped.”
She grabbed the leathers and held them aloft. Seams had not been sewn in the edges of the garment at a dozen spots in the top and bottom.
“They are unfinished.”
He nodded. “They are. She did not wish to presume your size and knew nothing of how Drow grow. She sought books on the matter but was rebuffed by the library’s keeper. I will finish them.”
Aile had no reason to complain. She had come expecting to have things cut to size hurriedly as it was.
“Undress.” He said the words in a different tone than he’d talked until then. A serious sound.
Aile did as she was bid. The wraps around her breasts and crotch were stained red where the clothes she’d removed let her work through. The elf returned with a tape measure and told her to spread her legs and arms, throwing a pad of paper to the ground at her feet. He measured her quickly and put the numbers to paper, moving to her bottom half. He took the tape to the outside of her legs and the inside, placing the flat of his hand against her privates. She looked down at him and waited. He did not move.
His voice came out a whisper. “Warm.”
The slap was heavy and true. His ear crumpled under the force, giving a loud snap. The elf sprawled across the floor, grabbing at the side of his head and looking back to Aile as though she meant to kill him.
“You’ve enough measurements. Do your work.”
He stood, whimpering and clutching his ear but nodded and went to his work. Aile took to her old leathers and retrieved the daggers they held, arranging them along the desk. She’d only made a quick count, but there were more sheaths in the leathers than she had knives, at least by a few. All the better for her to be free of the desert before the sun came. An hour passed, through which Aile stood quietly, staring at the door and listening to the faint sounds of the leather being worked and sewn. Just shy of another was gone when the elf came, his ear swollen and red.
“I have finished. She would be so pleased. She obsessed over them.”
He held the work out to her and Aile took the clothes, looking them over. The stitches were indistinguishable from the ones that she knew had been in place when he had taken them back.
“Good. Very good. I may return.”
He scoffed. “That the shop should be here, you will be welcomed.”
Aile raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“That damnable woman… she’s ruined
