Saeldian smiled. So easy. “You’re so sweet. But it was a business meeting. Or, I should say, a business plea.”
“A business meeting?” Venthar’s smile became a little indulgent. “What kind of business? I’d love to know.”
“I have spent some years dedicating myself to the call of fashion intersected with practical enchantment,” Saeldian said. “I had an idea. And it worked! But I need a particular material—oh, you don’t want to know all of this.”
“On the contrary! I am most intrigued. Fashion, you say? Like the ensemble you currently wear? It’s quite lovely.”
Saeldian had fine-tuned every detail of this ensemble, from the sharply pressed pleats of their heavy silk robe belted over a wide, smooth skirt to a mostly unbuttoned vest woven from fabric as iridescent as grackle feathers. It suited Saeldian’s elegant, long-limbed motions and the changing weather that had finally come to Waterdeep. “This is my design, yes, but it’s not what I meant.”
“Really? Here I was wondering if one of the fey had come to enjoy tea and cakes before Goldenight revels.”
“You’re so kind,” Saeldian said. “I won’t deny the influence. But a hundred cutters in Waterdeep could match it without so much as a whisper of the Weave involved. I have developed a more…bespoke service. I’m getting this all tangled. Let me show you.”
Saeldian reached inside their pouch and pulled out the bait. They spread a square of embroidered cloth across their palm and offered it to Venthar, who stared at it for a moment before daring to touch it.
He could poke at it all he liked. Saeldian’s best work went into that handkerchief.
“We don’t even know what to call it yet,” Saeldian murmured.“It’s spun from the result of our experiment, and it’s a long story, but—”
Venthar wasn’t listening.
He’d touched the fabric and traced his finger over the embroidery. Not a stitch out of place. Saeldian had been careful while making this filmy white-on-white square, and the magic they’d infused into it wove through every thread.
It took another minute before Venthar summoned the will to close his eyes and lift his hand away, rubbing it on his own silk-embroidered jacket. He winced a little.
“We can’t make it into woven cloth; the cost would be unthinkable. But the thread—”
“It’s beautiful,” Venthar said. “Illusion magic, of course. But—”
“It’s Enchantment,” Saeldian corrected. Gently. “It makes the wearer feel confident, seem magnetic. It’s…charisma.”
And Saeldian’s spell would fade in a few minutes, so they tucked the sample into a tiny pouch. Venthar looked disappointed for a moment.
“This sample is overdone just to demonstrate what the charmthread can do,” Saeldian explained. “It wouldn’t be responsible to use this much of it on an entire ensemble. If someone had all their stitchwork done with this—”
He leaned closer. “What?”
Saeldian shook their head. “You don’t want to know. Believe me, you don’t. But it won’t matter. I’ve been stood up.”
“I repeat—they’re a fool.”
Saeldian glanced at the door again. “Which might be for the best. The help I could get might have been more than I bargained for.”
“What do you mean?”
Their shoulders rose in an elegant helpless shrug. “I had a shipment of components for charmthread come in. A customs assessor flagged my trunk and decided that it fit the criteria for an exotic animal import. I can’t afford the duty. But someone from a guild has offered to pay it—”
“And you worry they’ll take your charmthread invention before you can register it,” Venthar said. “But if you can’t pay the duty, you’ll lose the shipment.”
Saeldian nodded. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to save that much gold again. It could be years.”
The door to Aunt Lothiel’s opened, and a trim-looking human woman paused to survey the room. Her clothes were clean but just a little drab for this particular teahouse. Saeldian let their shoulders slump with disappointment.
“I don’t know what to do,” Saeldian whispered. “Nothing but silk fiber from dream-bound Chultan orb-weavers will hold the enchantment for so long.”
Venthar’s jaw went slack for half an instant before he nodded sagely. “I seem to recall reading something that referred to that species. Silk, you say? From a specific spider species in Chult?”
The smart ones, bless them. There was no such spider. Their silk had no special “dream-bound” qualities, but the smart ones were so eager to do half the work of swindling themselves. Saeldian glanced at him with appreciative eyes. “You’re very well read—”
