Brightly Woven (11 page)

The room had darkened abruptly, and all I had to light my work were three candle stubs that were melting quickly. Still, once my hands began their usual routine, it felt like coming home again. When the rain finally started to fall, I opened the windows and listened to the droplets as they hit the roof and windowpane. For the first time in days, I felt like myself.

But just as quickly, a different storm blew in, one of hearty laughter and heavy stomping.

“I think I know which room is mine, boy!”

“Didn’t know you could read!”

“How ’bout you read my…my…”

“Ha! Still a quick wit, I see!”

I dropped the thread without a second thought.

Thank you, Astraea
, I thought, releasing a heavy sigh.

The door to the room banged open, and two figures stumbled in, laughing and wheezing. I turned to greet them, but the words died on my lips. They stopped midchuckle, their eyes wide. They had forgotten about me.

“Hullo, Syd!” North said brightly. He was leaning heavily on Owain, who looked only a little steadier on his feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked. “When you didn’t come back I thought that—Did you get the dragon?”

North tried to draw me into a hug, but I knew the warning signs now. Flushed cheeks, glazed eyes…and
the smell
. I took a step back, and he landed face-first on the bed.

I looked to Owain in disbelief, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“He’s drunk—you’re both drunk!” I said. “All this time, were you just drinking yourself to rot?”

“We did the job, lass!” Owain said quickly. “Job done, dragon slayed, all merry!”

“So tell me how the job entailed drinking yourselves into stupidity?” I demanded. “You should never have left me behind! I wanted to go!”

“But it was a
dragon
—too dangerous,” Owain said, almost whining.

“I’ll decide what’s too dangerous for me from now on, thank you,” I snapped.

Owain shook his head, and the rain clinging to his thick hair went flying. “Took us hours to ride out there on Vesta. North gave that dragon hell—never seen so much magic in my life. Whirls of ice, fire of his own! I thought he might be burned to a crisp, but he brought the red cloak down and there wasn’t a burn on him. Then I climbed on the dragon’s back and took my sword and—” He took a deep breath. “And then the villagers made us stay and feast, because that dragon had been around for a year and no wizard had been able to kill the bloody thing until him and me!”

I clenched my fists at my side. “So North, where’s your pay?” I demanded. “If you killed this dragon, I want to see what the villagers gave you.”

North had a piece of paper in his hands and was peering
at it closely. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision.

“Henry Porter,” he began, his voice slightly slurred as he read the name on the letter I’d written earlier. “Who is this
Henry?
Why do you keep writing to him?”

“That’s my letter,” I said, ripping it so brutally from his hands that it tore. “How dare you?”

“Why do you keep writing home, anyway?” North asked, rolling onto his back. “What do you tell them? How much you…you hate me and how stupid I am?”

My throat burned, but I couldn’t speak.
He
was the one who had taken me far enough away that I could only imagine what was happening to my home—to my friends and family.

North continued playing with the ripped edge of the letter. “’s not so bad with me, is it? I take care of you. Not like your parents. Gave you up for a few drops of rain.”

He wasn’t even talking to me anymore. My throat clenched, and I felt the letter wrinkle in my palm.
Don’t cry
, I told myself.
Don’t cry, don’t cry…

And just as quickly, the ache in my heart gave way to a new one, only this pain was hot and burning. The tears dried up in my eyes before they had a chance to fall.

“You’re better off with me, Syd,” North said simply. “I’ll take care of you and all.”

“Well,” I said, clutching my necklace in my fist. “Start taking care of yourself, because I won’t be your problem anymore.”

“What?” He lifted his head. “Don’t be stupid, Syd—”

I tore out of the room, not letting him finish, and I stumbled down the stairs.

“Syd!” he yelled, his voice cut off as the door shut behind me.

I heard the door bang open again and the sound of a few heavy steps before a sudden crash marked the end of all further movement. “Syd, don’t—”

But I just ran harder, past a startled Mrs. Pemberly and out into the cold rain.

If it had been a clear night, I would have been halfway back to Cliffton, but the rain was hard and unforgiving, so thick that I had to stop and shield my eyes just to see the street names. Lungs burning, desperate, I forced myself to keep running.

I came to rest against the beveled surface of a building, gasping for air. The wind howled angrily back at me, as if disappointed that I had given up so easily. The rain soaked straight through to my bones and caused my stubborn hair to cling to my cheeks. I took a deep, steadying breath. The more upset I let myself become, the worse the storm seemed to be. I needed a few moments to think, I told myself, bringing my hands to my face.

I had to go back to North. It wasn’t a choice; no matter how many times I stormed away, it did not change the situation in
Cliffton. What was I running toward? Soldiers? A village that was no longer standing?

When I closed my eyes, I could see everything so clearly. The sun-bleached mud houses, the shadows the foothills cast over the valley, the mountains that scraped the very sky—those things were a part of me. I had spent so long dreaming about the day I would leave, but I had never imagined the world to be as it was. For so long I had thought of those mountains as nothing more than the barrier that kept me from my freedom…but the truth was, they had kept so much of the world’s wickedness out. Times had been hard before the rain, but we had managed. There had been no angry crowds, vile wizards, or drunken brutes. There had been family and love.

But there hadn’t been hope. There hadn’t been a dream to keep me there. There had been only the same of everything I had known, and a suffocating familiarity.

I needed to escape the storm.

Across the street, a small
OPEN
sign hung on the outside of a great wooden door, clattering noisily whenever the wind brushed by.
Thank you, Astraea
, I thought, wiping the rain from my eyes. I struggled to pull the door open against the wind and barely managed to slip inside before the storm slammed it shut behind me.

It took me a few moments to gather my wits enough to recognize the shop I had wandered into. I had been in this particular building earlier in the day, making a delivery of sand to Mr. Monticelli, the glassblower. He had been so
completely involved in his work that he hadn’t even looked up as I dropped the sack of sand on the floor.

He was still working, hours later, though this time he did spare a glance in my direction.

“I see you have come back to me,” he said, in a strangely accented voice. “Terrible storm we are having, no? Come in, come in.”

I nodded, taking a few steps closer to his fire. The rain, dripping from my hair and clothes, collected in a puddle on the stone floor.

Mr. Monticelli’s careful hands curled around one end of a large staff, expertly shaping a glowing ball of molten glass against a stone table. I stood there and watched as the shape of a cat began to emerge.

“You do it so perfectly,” I said. “Sometimes it takes me three or four tries to get a blanket right on my loom.”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you my secret: steady hands, eyes always on the art, mind always on the art. No matter how many times I’ve done it. Steady hands, careful focus. Remember that.”

I nodded, and Mr. Monticelli held up the small figurine for my inspection. There was still a faint pink glow at its core, but the edges had been pointed and darkened by ancient tools. A slant of light struck the glass figurines in the shop and set the whole place aglow.

“It’s not so different from weaving,” Mr. Monticelli said. I nodded. Focusing was so difficult when I wove; my hands
knew exactly what to do, but my thoughts and emotions were usually somewhere else.

“Do you know any of the master weavers?” I asked. He took the cat back and held it up to the fire to examine it.

“Mr. Monticelli?” I said when he didn’t respond. His thick black eyebrows drew together with his frown.

“Thinking, thinking,” he said. “I am thinking.”

There must not have been many master weavers in Fairwell if he couldn’t think of even one. Maybe they had moved on to another, quieter city? I knew from experience that it was difficult to concentrate with the noise and bustle of the streets.

“Ah!” Mr. Monticelli slapped his hand down on the table. “We will go ask Colar!”

“Colar?” I repeated.

The glassblower lifted his heavy apron over his head and used it to wipe the sweat from his face.

“He is my sister’s husband,” he explained. “Bit of…how do you say…bit of air in the head. No, head in the air?”

I shrugged.

“Bah,” he said, taking my arm. “Let me tell you, where I come from, a man who does not use his hands for his job is no man at all. Books! Bah! My sister must have air in her head, too, to marry such a man.”

I looked down.

“No? Not even a smile for me?” he asked, studying my face.

“Not today, I’m afraid.”

He patted my head fondly, the way my father sometimes did, and the knot in my stomach became unbearable. The only thing keeping me from tears was the confusion and anger I felt toward North. About the way he had treated me, about what was plaguing him, about why he had taken me in the first place.

For a moment I was afraid we would be heading back out into the rain, which was still coming down hard enough to flood the deserted streets. Instead, Mr. Monticelli led me through the maze of shelves and cases in his dark shop to yet another door. This one, however, he kicked open, taking obvious pleasure in the way his brother-in-law jumped at the noise.

Connecting shops
, I thought as I stepped through the doorway and into a different world. Where Mr. Monticelli’s shop had been dark and smoky, I had to squint my eyes against the sudden onslaught of brightness in Mr. Colar’s shop. Gone was the smell of fire, replaced by the familiar, comforting odor of old parchment and leather-bound volumes and bookshelves lining every wall. A bookshop and a glass shop were not an obvious pair—but, then, neither were their two owners.

Mr. Colar had his back to us as we walked to his front counter; I heard the pages of his book rustle.

“I see my wife inherited all the manners in the family,” he said loudly. We were standing right behind him when he finally turned around.

The resemblance kicked the air from my lungs. The similarly bent nose and square jaw, the light, receding hair—the man was a living double of my father.

“A refugee!” he said. “Well, come in!” he added, ushering me closer and ignoring Mr. Monticelli. “Terrible weather, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “It makes me miss the desert.”

“I’ve been trying to get home for hours, but I can’t coax my horse from his stable.” He laughed. “You say you’re from the desert? Not much of that in this country.”

“Cliffton,” I answered. “The very far west.”

“Of course, of course,” he said. “Terrible drought you’ve been having—do
not
touch that, Renaldo!”

Mr. Monticelli dropped the book back onto the counter with a noise that was halfway between a groan and a growl. “I see business has been slow.”

“No slower than yours, I assure you,” Mr. Colar said, turning back to face me. “Now what can I help you with?”

“This pretty young lady has asked about the master weavers,” Mr. Monticelli said.

“Ah,” Mr. Colar said again. “I’m very sorry to say you won’t find any of them here in Fairwell.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I thought Fairwell housed the guild?”

“Years ago,” he said. “Most left when the hedges tried to take the city. Only one, a Mr. Vicksmorro, stayed and suffered terribly for it.”

“I remember now!” Mr. Monticelli cut in. “They poisoned him like a common pig! This was before my sister and I came, you see.”

“I’ll tell the story, thank you,” Mr. Colar said irritably. “Vicksmorro and many of the other guild leaders soon found themselves with raging fevers, horrible spasms in their bodies. Worst of all, their hands shook so badly that they couldn’t practice their craft. Awful magic that was—and it was only
rumored
to be poison.”

Disappointment washed over me like the cold rain—sudden and surprisingly painful. But just as quickly, a thought struck me as Mr. Colar described the weaver’s hands. How many times had I seen North’s hands tremble and his body shake with unexplained pain? It might be random similarity, but there was a possibility, if only a slight one, that I had accidentally stumbled upon the answer to his mystery.

“Do you think this rumored poison could affect a wizard?”