“Do you want to learn the illusion?”
“Yeah!” Verity clomped on the floor as if she still had the hooves family legend swore they once had before they turned to the god Lathander in service.
“Have you been trying the concentration drill Wisdom taught you to feel the Weave?”
“It doesn’t work. You have to be still! And you can’t think thoughts! How do you stop thinking thoughts?”
Saeldian hid a smile. “You have to forget to think thoughts.”
“I tried,” Verity complained.
“We’ll try again together when I’m back, all right? It’s not easy. You have to work hard.”
“Okay,” Verity said, and went upstairs rather than down.
“Why are we going up?”
“Dad needs you. He and Wisdom loaned Lorzok and Kell their garb, but—”
“It doesn’t fit exactly right?”
“Yeah! And you can fix it, like you fixed all Jubilee’s old dresses so they fit me.”
Saeldian let Verity drag them along to the library—which had very few books, since they were too precious to risk under the roof. Bastion sat next to his desk, which was heaped with fabric scraps and boxes filled with the odds and ends of sewing. Lorzok was wearing Bastion’s dress ensemble, and his shiny brown hair was freshly braided with charms and glittering foil coins.
“I helped,” Verity said. “I got to pick the next charm to braid in.”
“Verity was a great help,” Lorzok said. “She was the one who decided that the coins should be tied to the ends.”
“Because I’m smart,” Verity said. “I have to help in the kitchen.”
She stampeded out the door and back to the stairs.
“I hear you’re the expert,” Lorzok said. “Saer Bastion and I are close in size. We figured out how to fix the trousers already.”
“You look very good,” Saeldian said, ostentatiously sizing up his morning-blue doublet, snug breeches, and ribbons with coins laddered up the outside seams. “You need longer sleeves.”
Lorzok held out his hands so Saeldian could pull on his pristine white shirt cuffs. A pile of fine lawn shirts, soft with many washings, lay folded nearby. The top one had a section with no mendings, so Saeldian cut it up before taking the scissors to Lorzok’s sleeves. A quick mending cantrip later and even Saeldian couldn’t tell where the extra part had been put in.
Lorzok inspected the fine lace on his cuffs. “That’s so much better. Thank you.”
“Lorzok, you said you were interested in my books,” Bastion said. “Did you want to borrow one?”
“I’d like to look, at least,” Lorzok said. “Do you have any Tenebrux Morrow?”
“By those windows there.”
“One moment, before you get lost in a book,” Saeldian said. “Is the back of the doublet all right? Can you dance?”
Lorzok raised his arms gracefully, spun around, and offered his hand. Saeldian took it and grinned as they turned a dance step to Lorzok’s tuneless humming, but they stopped when Kell emerged from the office, dressed in Wisdom’s finest.
His hair fell to his shoulders in loose, feathery waves, and it gleamed where the light caressed it. He’d shaved the adventurer’s stubble off his face, exposing the delicate dimple in his chin, but his borrowed robes did not fit. Wisdom had excellent color sense and had ordered his dressy non-magical robes in deep plum-shot black silk that would flatter his lavender skin. They made Kell’s golden-toned skin look smooth and warm, but if Kell took a deep breath, Wisdom’s beautiful, shimmering robes would split.
“Oh dear,” Saeldian said.
“It’s a disaster. I know. You don’t have to say it. What if I left it unbuttoned and used a belt?”
That fine black weskit and blouse had to be Kell’s, at least. The black didn’t quite go, but Saeldian had an idea.
