Fuck. Did I just offend a client?
I stand alone with my sketchbook open on the cutting table. A wedding dress full of poetry. An oak leaf and needle at the shoulder. A symbol I have drawn thousands of times without knowing it belonged to anything beyond my family.
I close the book and put the kettle back on.
What else am I supposed to do?
"You've got a face on,"Lyra says before the tavern door has even shut behind me.
"I do not have a face on. That's Grammy's line. You're not allowed to steal it."
"She lends it out." Lyra hooks a chair from my usual table with her boot and signals toward the taps. "Sit. Bella!" she shouts as the door opens. "Come here. Lissy's got a face on!"
"Oh dear." Arabella has a plate of cookies with her. She sets it on the table, sits beside Lyra, and joins her in staring at me with friendly ruthlessness.
"It's nothing," I say. "It was a good day, actually. The best consultation of my life. Brynna Oakenshade wants poetry hidden in her wedding dress. I get to sew a library."
"And?" Lyra asks.
"And what?"
"You look like you saw a ghost. What walked through your shop besides poetry?"
I take a cookie and bite into it. Honey and walnuts.
Divine.
Bless Arabella.
"Do either of you know the fable of the Oak and the Needle? Did your families tell it when you were children?"
"The sad one about the seamstress?" Lyra snorts into her stein. "My gran told it. Know your place. Love your lot. Don't go wanting what isn't yours."
She drinks.
"Then I married Aragos."
"My mother wouldn't tell it," Arabella says, licking honey from her thumb. "My gran tried once, and Mother told her to stop. Said it wasn't a story for children. They had a proper shouting match over it. Why?"
Both copies came from Starling Vale.
"A client mentioned it," I say. "That's all."
They let me keep the lie.
Lyra refills my cup and steers us toward gossip. The new dock inspector. Mr. Dapplebeam's ongoing feud with a pigeon. Whether Noemi will ever admit she's sweet on the bookbinder.
I laugh where I'm supposed to.
I don't mention the orc lord who wouldn't come through my door. I don't mention that his sister recognized a mark I've drawn my whole life.
On the walk home, I stop outside my shop window.
A display dress stands on the form inside. It was a spring commission, but now I use it to show my work. At the shoulder seam, the embroidery begins with an oak leaf, a needle, and thread winding them together.
It's on half the dresses in my shop.
I learned to draw at Grammy's hearth, under a mantel with one book on it. I've been marking my work with that story since before I could read.
