They smiled. “I was training to be a Temple Priest for a while, in Quell, before I decided to join the Followers. We were taught the sacred stitches.”
“There aresacredstitches?” I stared at my work. “I had no idea. How can a stitchbelongto someone? What is sacred about them?”
“Nothing, really,” they said. “The Temple likes to lay claim to things, and calling them holy or sacred is the easiest way. They want the most skilled and exquisite embroiderers, as they want the best bookmakers, the best scribes, the best mages … Claiming certain things as belonging to their god is what the Temple does.”
“You lived in Quell? So you know it very well, I suppose?”
“Well enough. Quell is a blessed city, believed to be especially favored by the One-Eyed God.”
“And by your gods?” I asked.
“Oh, our gods don’t go in much for blessing,” they said with a grin. “Or smiting, either. We leave them alone, for the most part, and they return the favor. But Quell is one of the holiest cities in Virelith, according to the Temple. It has four Temple buildings, one at each cardinal point. More than any other city. And all the great schools are there—magic, binding, spellbook calligraphy—”
“I thought Mirthwater was the holiest city? Isn’t the Pontiff there?”
“Even the Pontiff can’t compete with four temples. Although from what I hear, he’s laden with enough gold jewelry to resemble one of them.”
“And why did you decide to leave the Temple?” I asked. “Did you lose your faith?”
“I never had it to lose it. The Temple simply has the best schools, and you need to at least pretend to be one of the faithful to earn a place. I was brought up as a Follower, but tired of the life. I never expected to return to it but”—they shrugged—“here I am. The great bookmaking schools are in Quell, also. My sister attended one, for a time.”
“She’s not a Follower, like you?”
“It’s not really a family business,” they teased me.
“But if your parents were …”
“Oh yes, any children we have will travel with us, of course. But when they are of age, they are free to choose their own path. Tamara had an affinity …” They stopped themself and looked at me quickly, as if gauging my response to the word. “Atalentfor bookmaking that matched the very best of any scriptorium in the kingdom. Of course the Temple school wanted her. And she wanted to learn.”
I chose to ignore their slip. Mother had never mentionedthe schools—of magic or of bookmaking. I wondered if she had ever attended one.
“So does your sister work at one of the scriptoriums now?”
“No.” A shadow crossed the Follower’s face. “She disappeared. Almost a year ago now. Took her things and left the school, and never even wrote to me. I have no idea where she is now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said inadequately.
“It’s almost worse not knowing,” they said. “It’s difficult to explain, but I would almost feel better if I knew for certain that something terrible had happened to her.”
I desperately wanted to tell them that I knewexactlyhow they felt, but I held my tongue.
When we arrived in Quell, my new friends were concerned about me and loath to leave me in the city alone. I was reluctant to leave them by then, too. I had enjoyed their gentle, accepting companionship, and the city was an overwhelming maelstrom of sights and sounds by comparison. I had never seen so many people all in one place, or even imagined it—and Quell wasn’t even that big a city, as the cities of Virelith went.
“You will be well,” said the Priest, kissing me on both cheeks. It felt like a benediction, even though the Followers did not go in for that sort of thing. Baldbeak and I watched them go forlornly, then turned our gaze to the city laid out before us.
After the simplicity of my life before, it was almost too much to take in. The colors. The noise. The sheer number of people! I knew, of course, that the world outside the Tower was filled with them, but the reality of it—the press of bodies against mine in the street, the sickly perfumes, and the stench of unwashed skin—clogged all my senses at once.
Having Baldbeak on my shoulder garnered me some curious looks, but it also provided me a little breathing room inthe crowds. He could look very intimidating when he chose, especially when he hunched his shoulders and lowered his head, glaring at them over the sparse feathers above his beak. I noticed that some people made an odd sign with their fingers when they saw him, as if warding off an evil eye.
“Do you know what that’s about, Baldbeak?” I asked him.
Some humans think we are bad luck, he said. He snapped his beak at a passerby, who cringed away.
“Well don’t make it worse!”
He gave his equivalent of a laugh, a single harsh cough deep in his throat.
Quell was not laid out in a sensible grid, but instead was a warren of alleys and broader carriageways with treacherous turns. The glims flickered overhead: blue-white lanterns, faint in the day and bright after dark. There were great, heavy buildings on every corner that the Priest had told me were crematoriums, built to burn the bones of the dead, ensuring that no bone mage could use them ever again. They belched great clouds of smoke above the city, so many that Quell seemed to exist in a permanent fog that stank of incense and ash.
