Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(5)

The bobbins still hanging from the surface were coated with dust. She hadn’t worked on it in over a year. It had been her practice piece, on which to try out and refine the techniques she had been taught. By now she ought to have finished it and freed up the loom, but the old wooden structure was too warped to be used for a valuable tapestry anyway, and the one student Grasch had taken on since Rielle had finished her training hadn’t even finished her first year of learning how to spin and dye yarn.

The weaving contained the awkwardness and mistakes of a novice, but that was not why she had abandoned it. The workshop had been in great demand until the siege, keeping all the weavers busy, but that was not why she hadn’t set aside a few hours to complete it. Betzi and some of the other girls had urged Rielle to sit at the loom countless times, but they could not persuade her to work on it.

The trouble was, filling in that last section meant taking a great risk. The karton–the drawing that hung behind a tapestry as a guide–and the painted design showed vague shapes in the unfinished area, because she did not dare add the detail that would reveal the subject. Many times she had wondered why she had chosen the subject at all, especially when she had promised never to speak of it to anyone. Yet her hands had drawn the karton almost as if someone else had controlled them.

Perhaps someone had. The possibility that an Angel had guided her was the only reason she hadn’t cut the unfinished piece down and burned it.

“A weaver’s first tapestry often says more about them than they expect,” Grasch had said, when the other weavers began to speculate on her reason for ceasing work.

“Or about someone else,” Betzi had added. “Whoever this man is. An ex-lover perhaps?”

“He is a priest,” Tertz had pointed out.

“So? Not all countries require priests to be celibate.”

Rielle smiled as she remembered the conversation. That was when Betzi hated me. And I her. The girl had been the favourite in the tapestry workshop, though Grasch claimed to have none. Rielle had been desperate to prove her worth to the master weaver, having been rejected by the town’s master painter after a trial of her skills full of mockery and derision.

Her hands had been shaking so much when Grasch tested her artistic ability, she had barely been able to paint at all, and the weavers had exchanged looks, speaking words she couldn’t understand but which communicated their doubts plainly. Even though they had given her food and a place to sleep, she thought she had failed because the master weaver put her to the most basic and menial tasks. It took some months before she understood enough of their language to discover that spinning yarn and learning to dye it was the first stage of her training, and that cooking, cleaning and serving the weavers were chores given to all new apprentices.

No single incident had turned the dislike between her and Betzi to friendship, just small moments in which they had gained each other’s respect. Though very different in personality, Rielle liked to think that their souls were similar. They both had been hardened by their life before joining the workshop. Each respected the other’s need to keep that past secret.

A noise behind Rielle made her jump.

“Is it the right time, then?” The voice was whispery with age.

Rielle squinted in the direction it had come from. She had brought the loom over to the only window whose shutters hadn’t been nailed closed to deter intruders. With eyes used to the brighter light, it took her a while to see the old man sitting in a dark corner of the workshop.

“Master Weaver,” she said, “I thought you would be upstairs. If I am disturbing you—”

“Not at all,” he said, “I am enjoying the sound of weaving again. I will be disappointed if you stop.”

Looking down, she considered the bobbins she’d been lining up on the trays.

“I guess I must do it, then.” Oddly, her voice sounded more certain than she felt.

“Indeed.” He sighed. “I feel the world turning.”

A shiver ran down her spine. She heard the truth in the saying, in the acknowledgement of great change in the world, but did not want to contemplate it. Yet it filled her with urgency. Weaving was slow work. She did not know how much time she had.

Taking a stool over to the loom, she sat down, blew dust off the threads and bobbins and contemplated their colours. The hues were still vivid. A local berry made a dye almost as vibrant as the bluegem pigment used in the spirituals of her homeland. She had tried to make paint out of it, but the result was dull and disappointing. What made a good dye did not always make good paint, and vice versa.

The blacks were achieved with a mix of dung and the local mud. Reds were extracted with vegetable skins and rusty metal, yellows with a meadow flower, all easily acquired, which meant there was plenty of thread coloured in the skin tones she needed. Since Schpetans were almost as pale as her subject this worked in her favour.

She picked up a bobbin and began to catch every other warp thread with the point, pulling the whole thing through where she judged the hue must change, then weaving back again. A few taps pushed the new yarn snugly against the old. Small sections at a time, she filled in the gap between collar and jaw, following the angle in her memory rather than the karton. Extra stitches here and there mixed with the next shade, creating the illusion of shadow.

Now that she had begun, her hands quickly found their rhythm. As the face began to emerge she worked with increasing speed. Her choice had been made, and now she only wanted to make sure she completed the tapestry before… maybe just before the other weavers discovered what she was doing. So she chose her colours carefully. Mistakes would cost her more time.