Chapter 2: The Sewing Room

  Kessa woke to pale dawn light and the weight of a cat on her feet.

  For a moment, she didn't remember where she was. The ceiling was wrong, the light came from the wrong direction, and there was definitely not supposed to be a cat.

  Whitecrest. The castle. Her first full day as Royal Seamstress.

  The cat, still grey, still utterly composed, opened one silver eye and regarded her with what might have been judgment. When she shifted her legs, it stood, stretched with the boneless luxury unique to cats, and jumped down to the floor.

  "Good morning to you too," Kessa muttered.

  The cat walked to the door and sat, tail wrapped around its paws, and waited.

  "I don't think I can let you out. I don't even know how you got in."

  The cat's expression suggested this was her problem, not its.

  Kessa sat up, pushed her hair out of her face, and tried to remember everything Devon had outlined yesterday. Workshop on the second floor, west side. Breakfast in the servants' hall starting at dawn. Her official duties began this morning, which meant she had approximately no time to be nervous about it.

  She washed her face in the basin, gasping at the cold, and dressed in one of her work gowns. Navy blue today, with practical sleeves and a bodice that wouldn't restrict her movement. She braided her hair tightly, checked her reflection in the small mirror above the washstand, and tried not to notice the anxious set to her mouth.

  Professional. Competent. Not at all terrified.

  Her stockings were in the chest. She grabbed two in the pre-dawn dimness, pulled them on, and was lacing her boots when she noticed.

  One stocking was grey. The other was brown.

  "Oh, for—" She bit off the curse and stared at her own feet in dismay. Of all the mornings to grab the wrong pair. Of all the days to not check before putting them on.

  The cat made a sound that might have been feline commentary.

  "Yes, thank you, I'm aware," Kessa told it. She glanced at the chest, calculated how long it would take to change them, and made a decision. Her skirts were long enough. No one would see. And if they did... well, at least both stockings were clean.

  She stood, smoothed her skirts, and opened the door.

  The cat shot through the gap and disappeared down the corridor before she could even think about stopping it.

  "You're welcome," she called after it, but the grey tail had already vanished around a corner.

  The servants' hall was exactly where Tarby had described it: down two flights of stairs, through a corridor that smelled of bread and herbs, following the sound of conversation and clinking dishes.

  Kessa paused at the entrance.

  The hall was long and well-lit, with windows on one side and a serving area on the other. Tables ran the length of the room, already half-full of people in various states of wakefulness. Some wore servants' livery. Others dressed in the practical clothing of craftspeople. The noise level was substantial but not unpleasant, breakfast chatter among people who'd known each other long enough to be comfortable.

  She was an outsider here. The new person. The replacement for someone who'd left abruptly three weeks ago.

  Kessa lifted her chin and walked in.

  A few people glanced her way. Most went back to their food and conversations. She made her way to the serving area, where someone had laid out bread, butter, porridge, and what looked like berry preserves.

  "You must be the new seamstress."

  Kessa turned to find a woman about her own age, with warm brown skin, dark hair pulled back in a practical bun, and a face that held cautious friendliness. She was already holding a plate in one hand and a ceramic cup in the other, glazed deep blue with a chip on the rim. Something personal, brought from home.

  "The porridge is better than it looks. Tarby usually sneaks cinnamon into it."

  "Thank you." Kessa took a plate and served herself, grateful for the guidance. "I'm Kessa."

  "Hannah." The woman smiled. "I work in the sewing workshop too. Well, I'm a seamstress, not a Threadmancer, but we'll be seeing a lot of each other."

  A colleague, then. Someone who might become an ally or might resent having a Guild-certified Threadmancer brought in above her. Kessa tried to read Hannah's expression and found only genuine warmth.

  "I'm looking forward to it," she said, and meant it.

  They sat together at one of the long tables. Hannah poured tea into her blue cup from the hall's communal pot, cradling it between both hands the way someone holds a familiar comfort. She introduced Kessa to the handful of people nearby. Names Kessa tried to hold onto and knew she'd forget half of by dinner. A laundress named Margaret. Someone from the stables whose name might have been Robin. A young man who worked in the scullery and said exactly three words before going back to his porridge.

  And then Tarby appeared, sliding into the seat across from her with a plate piled improbably high.

  "You made it! I was worried you'd sleep through breakfast. Not that you seem like the type to sleep through breakfast, but first days are exhausting and sometimes people do." He took a breath. "Did you sleep all right? Was the room acceptable? Did you meet the cat?"

  "The cat?" Hannah asked, perking up.

  "There was a grey cat in my room when I woke up," Kessa admitted. "On my bed, actually."

  Tarby's expression lit up. "Oh good, he likes you! He doesn't like everyone. Givon says he's probably someone's familiar who got bored and decided to go exploring, but I think he's just a very confident stray."

  "He appeared on my fourth-floor windowsill," Kessa pointed out. "That's more than confident. That's architecturally unlikely."

  "Cats don't care about architecture," Tarby said with absolute certainty. "They care about whether you're interesting. Clearly you passed inspection."

  Hannah laughed. "The grey one's been around for a few weeks now. No one knows who he belongs to, if anyone. He shows up in the oddest places."

  "Well, he's welcome to visit again," Kessa said. "He was good company."

  She ate her porridge, which was indeed better than it looked, and let the conversation flow around her. Tarby talked. Hannah asked gentle questions. The morning routine of the servants' hall continued, and Kessa found herself relaxing by small degrees.

  This might be all right. These people might be all right.

  And then a sharp voice cut through the pleasant noise.

  "So you're the new Royal Seamstress."

  Kessa looked up.

  The woman standing at the end of their table was perhaps thirty, with blonde hair elaborately styled despite the early hour and a dress that was too fine for breakfast in the servants' hall. Her gaze swept the table with cool assessment, the edge of it sharpened by something closer to hostility than curiosity.

  "I'm Kessa Corran, yes."

  "Cordelia Ashton." The woman smiled without warmth. "Senior seamstress. I've been managing the workshop since Iris left." She let that statement hang for a moment. "I suppose I'll be showing you how things are done here."

  Hannah drew a quiet breath through her teeth.

  "I appreciate any guidance you can offer," Kessa said, keeping her tone level. "I'm looking forward to learning how the workshop operates."

  "I'm sure you are." Cordelia's eyes traveled over her taking inventory. "Well. Don't let me keep you from your breakfast. I'm sure you'll want to see the state of things before the day gets away from you."

  She swept away before Kessa could respond.

  "Don't mind Cordelia," Hannah said quietly. "She expected to be promoted to Royal Seamstress when Iris left. She's taking it personally that they brought someone in from outside instead."

  "How personally?" Kessa asked.

  "Personally enough to make the first few weeks unpleasant if you let her." Hannah met her eyes steadily. "But you don't have to let her."

  Tarby leaned in conspiratorially. "For what it's worth, I think bringing you in was the right choice. Cordelia's skilled but she's…" He seemed to search for a diplomatic word and gave up. "…difficult. And the workshop needs someone who can actually lead it, not just organize it to death."

  Kessa looked down at her porridge. Her appetite had diminished considerably.

  "What did she mean by 'the state of things'?"

  Hannah and Tarby exchanged a glance.

  "The workshop's been... let's say 'disorganized' since Iris left," Hannah admitted. "Cordelia's good at paperwork but less good at actually managing the work. And there's a backlog. Quite a backlog."

  "How bad?"

  "You'll see," Hannah said gently. "But you won't be facing it alone. I'll help. So will Elise and Marra when they get here."

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  "Elise and Marra?"

  "The other seamstresses. You'll like them. Probably." Hannah smiled. "Finish your breakfast. You'll need the energy."

  The workshop was on the second floor of the west wing, accessible through a corridor that actually had proper signage. Kessa followed Hannah through a door marked Royal Sewing Workshop and stepped into chaos.

  The room itself was beautiful. Large, with tall windows along the eastern wall that would let in generous morning light. Work tables arranged in a sensible layout. Shelves and cabinets for storage. A separate alcove that looked like it was meant for fittings. Under other circumstances, it would have been exactly the workspace Kessa had dreamed of.

  Under these circumstances, it was a disaster.

  Fabric was piled on every available surface. Thread spools had escaped their organizers and scattered across the floor. Half-finished projects sat abandoned on work tables, some of them looking weeks old. One entire shelf appeared to be nothing but tangled trim and ribbons that someone had given up trying to sort.

  And in the center of the room, on a dress form that had seen better days, was what had to be Princess Aurina's gown.

  Or what was meant to become Princess Aurina's gown.

  The fabric was exquisite, silk that shifted between cream and pale gold depending on the light, with an overlay of the finest lace Kessa had ever seen. The construction was ambitious: a fitted bodice with delicate sleeves, a skirt that would fall in elegant lines when complete.

  It was also clearly unfinished, poorly fitted in places, and had a wine stain near the hem.

  "Oh," Kessa said faintly.

  "Yes," Hannah agreed. "That's Princess Aurina's reception gown. It was supposed to be finished two weeks ago. The reception is in three weeks." She moved to one of the work tables and started clearing space. "Iris was working on it when she left. Cordelia tried to take over but the Princess wasn't happy with the changes she made, so it's been sitting like this for a week."

  Kessa walked slowly around the dress form, cataloging the problems. The bodice seams were uneven. The lace overlay wasn't properly anchored. The hem was the wrong length for the Princess's height, if Kessa was remembering correctly from the measurements she'd seen in Devon's files.

  And the wine stain. Someone had tried to clean it and only made it worse.

  Three weeks. She had three weeks to fix this, finish it, and make it worthy of a princess.

  "Right," she said aloud. "Right. This is fine."

  Hannah made a sympathetic noise.

  The door opened behind them. Two more women entered, one middle-aged with silver-streaked dark hair pulled into a severe bun, the other barely out of her teens with anxious eyes and a sewing kit clutched to her chest like a shield.

  The older woman took one look at Kessa and stopped.

  "You're the new Royal Seamstress." It wasn't a question. Her voice was measured, her expression carefully neutral.

  "Kessa Corran," Kessa confirmed. "You must be Marra."

  "I am." Marra's gaze moved past her to the chaos of the workshop. "I see you've been given the tour."

  "More or less."

  "And are you planning to run screaming back to wherever you came from?"

  Kessa met her eyes steadily. "Not today."

  A grudging, brief, and instantly suppressed look of approval, crossed Marra's face. "Good. We have too much work for me to train another replacement." She gestured to the younger woman. "This is Elise. She's learning. Try not to terrify her on your first day."

  "I'm not terrifying," Kessa protested.

  "You have three weeks to finish a princess's gown and restore order to a workshop that looks like it was ransacked." Marra raised one eyebrow. "You should be terrifying. It would be appropriate."

  Elise made a small sound. Her sewing kit slipped and she caught it before it hit the floor, then went scarlet.

  "It's all right," Kessa said quickly. "I drop things all the time."

  This was not strictly true, but Elise looked like she needed the reassurance.

  "Well," Hannah said into the silence that followed. "Shall we begin?"

  "Where's Cordelia?" Kessa asked, suddenly aware of the woman's absence.

  "She usually arrives an hour after we do," Marra said dryly. "Calls it 'administrative time.' I call it avoiding actual work, but no one asked my opinion."

  "I'm asking your opinion," Kessa said before she could second-guess herself. "All of your opinions. This is your workshop as much as mine, and I'm going to need your help if we're going to dig our way out of this."

  The three women looked at her. Hannah's face held cautious hope. Elise seemed surprised. Marra's was unreadable.

  "You're not planning to swoop in and reorganize everything according to your own preferences?" Marra asked.

  "I'm planning to figure out what works and what doesn't, and I can't do that without listening to people who've been here longer than a day." Kessa looked around at the disaster of fabric and thread. "I need honest assessments. What's salvageable, what's not, what's urgent, what can wait. And I need to know if there are any other crises I should be aware of besides the Princess's gown."

  "Define crisis," Hannah said, but she was smiling.

  "Anything that will get me fired in the first week."

  "Then no," Marra said. "The Princess's gown is the only crisis of that magnitude. Everything else is merely urgent."

  "Merely urgent. Right." Kessa turned to the dress form and the beautiful, damaged gown waiting there. "Then let's start with this."

  They worked through the morning, and Kessa learned more about her new colleagues in those hours than any formal introduction could have provided.

  Hannah was steady and skilled, with an eye for detail that rivaled Kessa's own. She knew every piece in the workshop, could recite from memory which noble had commissioned what, and had clearly been holding things together through sheer competence while Cordelia managed the paperwork.

  Marra was exacting and occasionally caustic, but her hands were sure and her knowledge of traditional techniques was encyclopedic. She'd been working in the castle for fifteen years, had trained under two previous Royal Seamstresses, and clearly had opinions about how things should be done.

  Elise was nervous but surprisingly skilled once she relaxed enough to stop dropping things. She had a talent for embroidery that made Kessa's chest ache with something like envy.

  And Cordelia, when she finally arrived nearly two hours after the rest of them, swept in with an air of ownership that immediately set Kessa's teeth on edge.

  "I see you've started without me," she said, looking around the workshop with narrowed eyes, cataloging every decision for future use against her.

  "We didn't want to waste the morning light," Kessa replied evenly.

  "Of course." Cordelia's smile was sharp. "Though I should mention that Princess Aurina specifically requested that the lace overlay be extended to cover more of the bodice. I've been planning that modification for days."

  Marra's hands stilled on the fabric she was sorting. Hannah's expression went carefully blank.

  Kessa looked at Cordelia, then at the gown, then back at Cordelia.

  "The lace is already at the limits of what the fabric can support," she said carefully. "Extending it would compromise the structure of the bodice. Did the Princess see a design sketch of the modification?"

  "She trusts my judgment," Cordelia said coolly.

  "I'm sure she does. But I'd feel more comfortable confirming the request directly before making structural changes to a gown that's already behind schedule." Kessa kept her voice measured. "We can send a note requesting clarification. I assume Devon can arrange an audience if needed."

  The silence was sharp enough to cut.

  "I've been managing this workshop for three weeks," Cordelia said, her smile thinning. "I believe I know what the Princess wants."

  "And I've been managing this workshop for three hours," Kessa replied. "Which means I'm still learning. Humor me."

  It was a gamble. A direct challenge would make an enemy. But backing down now would establish a precedent she couldn't afford.

  Cordelia's eyes narrowed. Then, with visible effort, she inclined her head.

  "As you wish. I'll draft the inquiry." She turned to her desk, the one in the far corner that was conspicuously neat compared to the rest of the workshop. "Do let me know if you need any other advice on how things are done here."

  And there it was. The line drawn.

  Kessa met Marra's eyes across the room. The older woman held her gaze for a moment, chin lifted, mouth set in a line that was not quite disapproval, and gave a single nod.

  "Thank you, Cordelia," she said mildly. "I appreciate it."

  She turned back to the Princess's gown and didn't watch Cordelia sit down with stiff-backed precision.

  Hannah moved to stand beside her. "That was well done," she murmured, quiet enough that only Kessa could hear.

  "That was terrifying," Kessa corrected.

  "Also well done."

  By midday, they'd made actual progress. The floor was cleared of loose thread. The fabric had been sorted into active projects, abandoned projects, and raw materials. The trim and ribbons were still a tangled disaster, but at least they were a disaster confined to one shelf instead of scattered everywhere.

  And the Princess's gown had been carefully removed from its dress form, every seam examined, every problem noted.

  Kessa stood at the main work table with a piece of paper covered in notes and tried not to feel overwhelmed.

  "The wine stain can be removed," Hannah said, reading over her shoulder. "I know someone in the laundry who works miracles."

  "The bodice seams can be corrected," Marra added. "Tedious, but doable."

  "The hem needs to be completely redone," Kessa said. "And the lace anchoring. And we need to verify the measurements before we go any further."

  "Three weeks," Elise said quietly. She was staring at the gown with wide eyes. "Can we do it in three weeks?"

  Kessa looked at the list. At the gown. At the three women who were watching her with varying degrees of hope and skepticism.

  "Yes," she said, and hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. "We can do it in three weeks."

  Marra made a sound that might have been a snort. "You're either very brave or very foolish."

  "Probably both," Kessa admitted. "But we're doing it anyway."

  "Then we'd better get started," Hannah said.

  They worked through lunch, bread and cheese brought up by Tarby, who stayed long enough to nervously ask if everything was all right and then fled when Cordelia gave him a look that could have curdled milk.

  By mid-afternoon, Kessa's back ached and her fingers were cramping, but the workshop was beginning to look like a workspace instead of a disaster zone. Cordelia had maintained an icy silence broken only by occasional pointed comments about how things had been organized under Iris. Marra had countered half of them with observations about how things had been organized under Iris's predecessor. Hannah had mediated. Elise had kept her head down and produced embroidery so lovely it made Kessa want to weep.

  And Kessa had led. Decided. Delegated.

  It felt strange. Uncomfortable. Right.

  When the bells rang for the end of the work day, she looked up to find the sun lowering toward the windows and realized she'd forgotten to be terrified for the past several hours.

  "Go," she told the others. "Get dinner. Rest. We'll start fresh tomorrow."

  Marra left first, with a nod that might have held a fraction more warmth than it had that morning. Elise followed, looking less anxious than when she'd arrived. Hannah lingered, tidying her station.

  "You did well today," she said.

  "I organized some fabric and picked a fight with Cordelia," Kessa replied. "I'm not sure that qualifies as well."

  "You didn't back down. You made decisions. You listened." Hannah smiled. "That's more than Cordelia did in three weeks."

  "She's going to make my life difficult."

  "Probably. But you have allies now." Hannah glanced toward the door where Cordelia had departed twenty minutes earlier with stiff-backed dignity. "That makes a difference."

  Kessa hoped she was right.

  Hannah collected her blue cup from where she'd set it on the shelf that morning, tucking it into her apron pocket. "Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow we tackle the gown properly."

  "I'll try."

  "Good." Hannah paused at the door. "And Kessa? The stockings. Grey and brown."

  Kessa looked down. Her skirt had ridden up just enough. "You noticed."

  "Marra noticed. She told me during lunch." Hannah's smile widened. "She said anyone who shows up on their first day in mismatched stockings and still manages to put Cordelia in her place is either completely hopeless or exactly what this workshop needs."

  "Which did she decide?"

  "She hasn't. Give her a week."

  The door closed behind her, and the workshop went still.

  Kessa stood alone in the quiet. Late afternoon light slanted through the tall windows, turning the dust motes golden. The room smelled of fabric and thread, of beeswax from the candles they'd lit against the dimmer corners, of the lavender sachets someone had tucked into the storage cabinets long ago.

  Her hands were shaking.

  She noticed it the way you notice pain after the crisis passes, all at once, undeniable. Her hands shook and her throat was tight and her chest ached with the sheer weight of everything she was pretending to be.

  Royal Seamstress. Leader. Someone who belonged here.

  She clasped her hands together and pressed them against the edge of the work table.

  The Princess's gown hung in its cabinet, visible through the half-open door. Silk and lace and three weeks of impossible work. She stared at it and for one moment, just a brief, treacherous moment, she felt the magic at her fingertips. The thread-sense that let her understand fabric the way most people understood spoken language. She could feel the gown from here, the tension in the seams, the wrongness of the hem, the wine stain sitting in the fibers. She knew, with certainty that she could fix it. All of it. In hours, not weeks.

  The power hummed through her hands, eager, waiting.

  No. Not yet. Not until there was no other choice.

  She unclenched her fingers and the awareness faded to a whisper. There was always another choice. There had to be.

  A movement at the window caught her eye.

  The grey cat sat on the outside ledge, watching her through the glass with those unsettling silver eyes. Second floor this time. Still no visible means of arrival. Still utterly unconcerned by the impossibility of its own presence.

  Kessa crossed the room and opened the window latch. The cat stepped inside, jumped to the nearest work table, and sat.

  "I know," she told it quietly. "I know."

  The cat regarded her from the work table with half-closed eyes, his gaze somewhere between sympathy and judgment, as if he'd seen this particular kind of foolishness before and had chosen to tolerate it.