(eng) Karen Chance - Dorina Basarab 3.5 by Lover's Knot

Author:Lover's Knot [Knot, Lover's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Present Day, Dory

Still at an overpriced dress shop, Paris

"It's fine," someone was saying. "She does this from time to time. No need for concern."

"Are you sure?" Someone else sounded doubtful. I opened my eyes to see my confused, slightly distorted-looking face staring back at me, out of a sea of shiny silver. "Perhaps some brandy?"

"That would be perfect."

My face drew back abruptly, into the silver field stretching across Claude's impressive pecs, and then disappeared entirely as the great man hurried off. Leaving me looking at Radu's worried features instead, bending over to peer at me. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." I swallowed and sat up a little straighter in the chair somebody had found for me, and wished for something stronger than brandy.

I felt like death.

"Then what is all this?" Radu demanded in a whisper.

"Dorina. She keeps knocking me out to show me stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"I don’t know! Weird stuff," I snapped, because my head was killing me. And because how the hell should I know?

And then there was brandy, which was tasty, if nothing else. Claude didn’t serve the cheap stuff. I drank it while Radu questioned the great man about his clothes, something I was barely listening to because my brain was trying to beat its way out of my skull.

Until I finished my drink, and realized that Claude was still talking.

"—think a spell is a single object, a whole cloth, if you will. When, of course, that isn’t true at all." He looked at me archly, pleased to have a new pupil. "Roman matrons, you know."

"What?"

He jerked over a rack with a bunch of bright yellow garments swinging from it. "Chinese silk," he said dramatically. "Highly prized in old Rome."

"Okay."

"But hugely expensive. Had to come along the Silk Road." A dark eyebrow arched expressively. "Bandits, you know."

"Uh huh."

"As a result, the end price was enough to make even royalty blanch. So what did they do, hm?"

I looked at him blearily. "No idea."

"They pulled a thread." Claude picked out a cheongsam-style dress with gamboling dragons—literally, they were chasing each other about, playing some sort of game involving a red ball and a lot of fire breathing. I jerked back to avoid one miniature flame, and wondered how the hell you were supposed to wear that and not burn the house down!

Claude was frowning at it, too, but for different reasons. He took out a tiny pair of silver scissors and snicked away a single, trailing strand, holding it up to the light. "Or, to be more precise, they had their slaves do it," he informed me. "Carefully picking apart the so-precious cloth, which the Romans had no way to make for themselves at the time. But they knew how to get what they wanted, nonetheless—"

"By destroying it?"

A diamond encrusted finger pressed against my lips. "No. By remaking it. Into filmy, gossamer garments, three and four and even more, all from a single piece of good, thick silk. They took what they wanted from the original creation, and made it their own.

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