Reckless Borders by Blake Hausladen

Author:Blake Hausladen [Hausladen, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rook Creek Books

48

Matron Dia Esar

Lady Emery

Umera and I laughed all the way back to her shop. Lilly, the most precocious of Urnedi’s children, had decided during the morning meal that she could run the full length of one of the hall’s long tables without knocking anything over. She had gotten close, but near her goal she stepped on the edge of Urs’ bowl. This sent his ham upon the top of his head and her into a stumble that ended with her face-first in a big bowl of blackberry jam. Urs stood, arms flailing, but seeing Lilly’s cry from the sudden shock of jam in her eyes, he moved to assist her instead. Halfway into a second great sob, the girl got a taste of the jam and smiled. The morning’s discussion of the carriagemaker’s visit transformed into the theatrics of a grumpy man and grinning girl cleaning food from hair and face.

It was so good to laugh.

“I bet you one of the boys put her up to it,” Umera suggested as she led me inside.

“They did disappear, didn’t they?”

The town was closer, happier during those hot summer days, though the work was just as hard. The morning and evening meals were much-needed spots of calm and distraction and a place to complain or discuss the town’s business. Sahin had been right. The castle’s staff needed a voice in that crowd. They were still far too accommodating. I guarded their time and got rather good at coaching them to say no. The only troubled talk during those days was of supplies that could not be found on our side of the mountain and Kuren’s timbermen along the east coast who were causing ever-greater trouble for the villagers. Leger’s trip would satisfy the first in part, but no one had any good ideas for how to take care of our trouble with Trace. Until the threat of further sanctions was gone, we could do little.

Umera’s shop was sparse but coming along well, better than some, despite the disadvantage of not having all she needed for her craft in the forest beyond. Very little of the fabric she had come with remained, and Leger’s return would not do much for her. It would turn her into a maker of uniforms. The dress forms beneath her emptying shelves were bare—not that you could tell any of this by looking at her. She was, if anything, permanently cheerful.

She moved behind the thin counter that separated the front of the store from her workspace and the stairs up to her apartment. On the table sat a small basketful of garments waiting to be mended. The wife of one of the carpenters had dropped them off the previous evening, and I had promised to help her with them.

We sat on upturned buckets to have a look at the garments. I was about to ask Umera if she had heard anything more about when the carpenters might finish some chairs when I saw that none of the clothes had been cleaned.

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