curled her lip.
'Well met,' she said. 'I believe you want the seamstress on the other side of the market. Goodwoman Laever.'
Nestrix frowned. 'I came here to buy clothes.'
'We don't have what you're looking for,' the girl said, coming out from behind the table. 'You should move along.'
Nestrix narrowed her eyes. 'Why? I want to buy some clothes. You're selling clothes.'
'Yes, and this is a very high-quality establishment.' She looked Nestrix over once again. 'We don't have anything in your… size.'
The rear of the store was filled with row after row of fabric on bolts, ready to be fashioned into all manner of garments. Nestrix looked at them pointedly, but the girl didn't budge. She looked at Nestrix as if she were defending her hoard against something weak and trembling. Something cowardly.
Rage swelled inside Nestrix like a physical thing, a force that might push through her skin and make wings and claws and teeth. She felt the dragonfear racing ahead of it like lightning before thunder. The girl's eyes widened a little as it wrapped itself around her, and Nestrix smiled, ready for the rage to crash and rumble and storm through her.
All at once, the fear slipped out of her grasp, taking the force of her anger along with it. The vacuum left her dizzy, and when she put a hand out to steady herself against the desk, the world spun and she fell to one knee on the thick carpet.
The alien memories surged into the void and pressed on her the feeling of killing a man in a dark alley, a soldier of some sort, with a sword that didn't belong to her. The air overflowed with the stale, fishy smell of a dockside, and another man was shouting at her, shouting at Lyra.
Nestrix gasped and pulled herself up.
'Get out!' the girl said, recoiling.
'I have coin and I want to buy clothes,' Nestrix growled.
'Get out or I'll call the Watch!'
'Chennae, what's going on out there?' a new voice called out. Nestrix pulled herself to her feet in time to see a plump woman in neat work clothes come in from the back room. She glanced over Nestrix. 'Good afternoon. Is there a problem?'
'Yes,' she said, shoving the memory aside. It wouldn't budge, and it filled in the dead man's rusty armor, the stubble on his cheek, the whites of his eyes. 'I'd like to buy some clothes.'
The woman folded her hands in front of her. Though her skin was pale and sun-sheltered, her hands looked as if they had known many years of work. 'Very well. How much were you planning on spending?'
The other man-his name was Gralik-he grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back, saying they had to run. She'd loved him… no, someone had loved him.
Nestrix focused on the seamstress, her head pounding with the effort. 'I… don't know. What do they cost?'
The remembered affection swelled up in her, threatening to overwhelm her. He had been kind, clever, short- tempered, but so had she been. A match, an equal.
No, Nestrix thought, and replaced the man with the sinuous coils and sharp eyes of Tantlevgithus, a true match, a true equal, lover, and opponent in all the ways a mate should be.
The alien memory snapped like a string pulled too taut and let Nestrix back into the real world. She gasped at the shift.
The girl, Chennae, snorted. Her mistress gave her a stern look.
'Chennae, go to the back room and find something to do,' she said. The girl looked as if she'd been slapped for a moment, but gave a dutiful curtsey and left. The seamstress took her place behind the counter's table.
'You don't look as if you've done this before,' she said. 'Perhaps I can save you some time. A simple dress-no god's-eyes, no lace, homespun cloth-will cost you two silvers and three coppers.'
'All right.'
'Is it?'
Nestrix squirmed a little. She knew what the seamstress must be thinking-with her too-small dress and her heavy boots, there was no way that Nestrix could afford such finery. She thought of the hillocks of gold coins, stamped with the faces of scores of rulers she had once used as her bed. But that stirred up more thoughts…
As easy as it would be to shout the seamstress down and make her take the coin, Nestrix doubted it would work. Not with this one.
You were clever once, she told herself. Weren't you?
'I'm… new to Waterdeep,' she said. 'My clothes were lost. My trunks were… misplaced on the caravan I took here.'
The seamstress raised an eyebrow. 'Misplaced?'
'Bandits in the passes,' Nestrix amended. 'Things were… very confusing afterward. I've sent for my things from'-Where had Tennora thought she was from? — 'Tethyr. But in the mean-time'-she looked down at Tennora's old clothes-'I borrowed this. I don't like it. I have plenty of coin.' She pulled her purse from her neck and opened it on the table. Gold and silver spilled out on the surface. 'There. You see?'
'It is your coin?' the seamstress asked.
'Of course.' It was now, at any rate, but that was a line of logic not every dokaal followed, so she invented some more. 'My father was an adventurer. I inherited a fair amount,' she added, thinking of the portrait of Tennora's dam and the man in the hearth-house. People seemed to like adventurers; everyone in the city seemed to know one or be one or think they'd make a good one. The seamstress smiled.
'You'll pardon my presumption. Better to ask than to have the Watch on me,' she said. 'You'd best store it in a strongbox though. You're like as well to have your purse plucked carrying those coins around. But I think we might be able to lighten your load a bit.' She smiled cheerily. 'What were you planning on purchasing?'
Nestrix hesitated. Just a cloak, but that had been before they'd insulted her pride so. 'Quite a bit,' she said. 'Perhaps. It depends upon… when everything else-'
The seamstress nodded. 'Your things will arrive. Eventually. But to start, a good sturdy dress or two for day, something fancy for evenings, a stormcloak, and a few frilly smallclothes should stand you. We can measure you today, but it will take a tenday or two to get the other pieces finished.'
Nestrix bit her tongue in annoyance. In a tenday, she would need none of this. 'Is there any way I could get the stormcloak now?' Nestrix said. 'I'm tired of being wet.'
'The storms do get tiresome. Every year, the same time, but they only last a tenday or so. I do have a finished cloak,' the seamstress said. 'If you're not too picky about the color-one of the Hawkwinter girls ordered it.' She sighed and shook her head. 'I send her a message saying it's finished. She sends one back saying she's no longer interested. 'The cut is gauche.' More likely she burned through her allowance for the month.'
'Yes,' Nestrix said, hardly understanding a word the woman said.
'That's what comes of spoiling children, I suppose. Stand up here'-she helped Nestrix onto a wooden box before a full-length mirror-'and we'll see if you like it.' She bustled into the next room and left Nestrix to consider the mirror.
The reflection of a woman-her dark hair damp and curling, her skin a freckled brown, her eyes a nostalgic shade of blue-looked back at Nestrix. She curled her lip. So did the reflection.
'Here we are,' the seamstress said, coming up behind Nestrix with the cloak in a muslin bag. 'Lucky you, it hasn't been hemmed as yet. You're a bit tall to be a match for Young Lady Hawkwinter.'
Nestrix closed her eyes-she was not tall. She was a mite, a crumb, a mouse. Once she would have filled this room from floor to ceiling; now a score of her wouldn't come close to filling it. She felt untethered and flimsy. If she opened her eyes, the vertigo and the memories would claim her again.
She felt the seamstress settle the cloak on her shoulders and straighten the hem. 'There we are. What do you think?'
Nestrix opened her eyes.
The cloak was blue.
… the color of a stormy sunrise over the desert…
A chill ran up Nestrix's neck. Her own ancient memories unfolded. Blue- the shade of an angry sea, the shade
