Crewel

by Gennifer Albin

  ‘Miss me that much?’ he teases, setting the tray down near me. I’ve been huddling in a corner that feels warmer than the rest of the cell.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I have a fetish for cold prison floors.’

  ‘Fetish? Big word.’ He raises one eyebrow at me, challenging me to explain how a pure Eligible knows a word like that.

  I want to tell him that unlike the other simpering idiots here I’ve actually read a book or two in my life, but no matter how much it might impress him, I keep the information locked in my head and glare up at him. It’s not a very impressive glare, because something about the smirk he’s trying to hide at my wounded expression makes me feel silly and excited and happy all at the same time.

  To my surprise, he crosses the cell and drops down beside me.

  ‘Thought I warned you to play dumb,’ he says with a lowered voice.

  ‘Guess I didn’t listen,’ I retort with a shrug.

  ‘You’ll get yourself killed.’ He sounds resigned as though he knows I don’t care any more.

  ‘I’m dead already. We all are.’

  ‘Death is peaceful,’ he growls. ‘This half-life is worse.’

  He’s less grimy than before but still unshaved and rough, and he hasn’t bothered to tie back his curly brown hair. He’s nothing like my dad or my friends’ fathers or even the guards here at the compound. It’s this coarseness that sets him apart from the well-groomed men of Arras I know. But it’s the penetrating way he watches me that makes me catch my breath when our eyes meet.

  ‘You’re a lot cleaner than the last time I saw you,’ I point out, and immediately wish I could take it back.

  ‘I don’t waste my time on manicures like some men,’ he says lightly.

  I assume he’s taking a shot at Erik, but then again my dad kept his nails clean, too.

  ‘So you don’t shave. You don’t get manicures. What do you do?’

  ‘I keep this place running,’ he says, as though that’s enough of an answer.

  ‘And?’ I push.

  ‘Technically I’m the head valet, which means I communicate between the staff and the Spinsters. I make sure things run smoothly. I got the call that you were to be taken to the salons and thought I’d check you out.’

  I bite my lip and nod.

  ‘What?’ he asks. ‘Oh, I guess I was pretty unkempt when we met, even for me. I had been gardening. It’s the one thing I do just for me. I like the feeling of soil. It’s honest labour.’

  ‘My grandmother gardened,’ I say. ‘A long time ago, before you had to have a permit. She said the same thing.’

  ‘Stupid Guild,’ he says. ‘I bet she missed it. I’m lucky I can bend the rules here. Everyone is too busy controlling the outside world to care.’

  ‘How come you aren’t dead?’ I ask. ‘Or at least stuck in a cell? I haven’t heard a word from you yet that isn’t treasonous.’

  ‘Unlike you, I pay attention to who I’m talking to. I have a special traitor filter I use around others.’ He gives me a tired smile that belongs to someone much older.

  ‘So why me?’

  ‘’Cause you ran,’ he responds simply.

  ‘I can’t be the first Eligible who ever ran.’ I shake my head at the impossibility that no one else has ever tried to escape the Coventry.

  ‘No, but you’re special.’

  ‘Yeah, what makes me different? Or do you talk treason with all the flighty girls?’ I realise that I’m flirting with him, and I’m surprised at how comfortable it feels.

  ‘They didn’t kill you.’ The playful mood dissipates immediately. It’s clear that he’s not joking.

  ‘Well, I guess it’s good to be different,’ I mutter.

  Neither of us laughs.

  ‘Why?’ I ask after a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Why not kill me? I ran. My parents tried to hide me. Why leave me alive?’ I ask earnestly, and he turns away.

  ‘I have my theories.’

  ‘And they are?’ I press.

  ‘I’m not sure you’re ready to hear them yet.’

  ‘That’s sort of condescending. Telling me only what you think I’m ready to hear,’ I point out, annoyed as much by it as by his lack of transparency.

  ‘I thought it was endearing, me looking out for you.’ He grins, and the mood in the dark cell lightens again.

  ‘Are you trying to endear yourself to me?’

  ‘I have a thing for traitors.’

  ‘How do you know I’m a traitor anyway?’ I ask. ‘Maybe everyone is wasting their time worrying about me.’

  ‘You’re in the cells for the second time in a week and you’re still alive.’ He squints against the dark as if to get a clearer look at my face. ‘Either Maela is breaking in her new pet, or you’ve got something they want.’

  ‘Like an attitude?’

  ‘Maela is all stocked up on that.’ He snorts. ‘If you could lie low and not draw so much attention to yourself, we might actually be able to find out, Adelice.’

  ‘See, that’s our problem,’ I point out.

  ‘What? Your inability to keep a low profile?’ he asks.

  ‘No, the fact that I don’t even know your name. How am I supposed to trust you?’

  ‘Josten.’ He smiles all the way up through his eyes. ‘But traitors call me Jost.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Jost.’ I stretch out a hand and immediately regret it because the change in position makes me shiver.

  ‘Here.’ He shrugs off a simple, threadbare jacket and wraps it around me. ‘Unfortunately, I’ll have to take that when I go. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see me giving gifts to the prisoners. It might detract from my low profile.’

  The jacket is soft and smells like woodsmoke and cut lavender. I nod, grateful for its warmth if only for a few moments.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say. ‘They’re probably watching me.’

  ‘The good news is that they don’t bother to keep an eye on the cells. Poor light, stone walls – what’s the point?’ He gestures around us. ‘The bad news is that you’re right. They’re definitely keeping tabs on you.’

  ‘So why are you here then? What help can I be to you if I’m already under suspicion?’

  ‘That’s true, but no one comes down here, so it’s easy enough for us to chat if you keep getting thrown in the cell,’ he points out.

  ‘Of course,’ I agree. ‘But that won’t really help me lie low now, will it?’

  ‘Yep, it’s a no-win situation,’ he says. ‘I’m actually only here today because Erik had lapdog duties.’

  ‘Erik sent you?’

  ‘The pretty blond that just threw you in here.’

  ‘I know who he is, and he is pretty, but why send you now?’

  ‘It’s my job to keep the Spinsters happy and fed, so pretty boy sent me. Sorry to disappoint you, but please tell me you have better taste than him.’

  ‘I’m not marrying him. He’s just well-groomed,’ I assure Jost. ‘But lapdogs usually are.’

  ‘Case in point.’ Jost fingers the hem of my tailored skirt.

  ‘I think I’m failing at being a lapdog.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ he says. ‘So I’ll remind you of my earlier advice: play dumb.’

  ‘That’s easier said than done.’

  ‘Ob-vi-ous-ly.’ He stretches out the word. ‘But it’s important if you want to live. Maela may have a use for you, but she’s not sentimental enough to keep you around indefinitely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re going to have to trust me for a bit on that.’

  ‘Just so long as your reasons are as vague and menacing as theirs are,’ I mutter.

  ‘Ouch.’ Jost frowns. ‘I may not tell you everything, but my interests are in line with your own.’

  He straightens back up, and I shrug the jacket off and hand it to him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was nothing.’ He waves my thanks away as he puts his jacket on.

  ‘Not for t
he jacket.’ I struggle to put into words how I feel. ‘For the company.’

  ‘Also nothing. Take my advice, Ad.’ This time the cockiness is gone and the nickname wraps around me like his jacket – soft and comfortable. I feel warmer. ‘They’ll let you go soon. Try to stay out of trouble.’

  Jost leaves me in the darkness, and I continue to wait, turning over his words in my mind. He’s being too honest with me. Either he knows something that makes him trust me more than he should, or . . . I stop myself there. I don’t want to consider his other possible motive.

  Knowing they aren’t watching me here relaxes me. I fiddle with the time around me. If only there was a spot of heat in this room, I could weave warmth, or maybe even light.

  The food at my feet is stale and cold. A tough bit of bread and thin soup. It’s food to keep me alive and not much more. I could weave and stretch it, but I have to work with the materials I have, and more of this food wouldn’t be much of an upgrade. Then I remember promising my parents that I would never stretch food again, and I falter.

  It wasn’t like I did anything wrong. I was only nine years old, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess I thought I was helping. Each month my mother allotted a small portion of our rations to sweets. It never went very far, and then one month, the co-op had no sweets available. Mom explained that there was a shortage of sugar supplies and put the few bits of chocolate from the previous month in the highest cabinet, with the admonishment that we’d save them for my father’s birthday. It’s not that I didn’t want to save the chocolate for Dad. It was that I couldn’t let Amie get in trouble.

  Ever since I’d discovered I could touch the weave in our yard, I’d studied it, although I’d rarely touched it. But when Amie came home from academy crying because she’d taken some of the chocolate to class and been caught with it, I decided I had to do something.

  Most days Amie and I walked home from academy together, but that day I had been kept behind after class was dismissed. I’d been daydreaming, which my teacher said was pointless.

  ‘What will your boss think if he catches you staring at the sky instead of doing your work?’ she had asked in a cold voice.

  I kept my eyes trained on the floor as she berated me, and by the time it was over, anger and humiliation burned in my chest. And then to make it even worse, Amie hadn’t waited for me to walk home.

  By the time I got to our house, I’d focused my rage on Amie for leaving me behind. I was so mad that I didn’t notice how her lower lip trembled at first. But when she saw me she burst into tears, and my anger dissipated.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked her quietly.

  Amie shook her head.

  ‘You can tell me anything,’ I pushed.

  Amie hesitated for a moment, but then began telling me about her day. Between her sobs, I pieced together what had happened. One of her friends had demanded that they each bring a piece of chocolate to academy that day. It was a game to see who would have the biggest piece, and poor Amie knew Mom wouldn’t give her any. So she took it instead.

  ‘I wasn’t going to eat it,’ Amie told me. ‘I was going to show it to them, and bring it home. I didn’t want to be left out.’

  ‘It’s okay, Ames,’ I said, giving her a hug. ‘Go wash your face, and I’ll see if I can find some.’

  She turned the full force of her pale green eyes on me then, and I saw the tears glistening.

  ‘But I looked. There’s only a tiny piece left,’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I know a secret. Go wash up.’

  Amie looked at me doubtfully, but she did as she was told.

  When I was sure she was in the bathroom, I climbed onto the slick wooden counter in our kitchen and pulled down the last bit of chocolate. I didn’t want her to see me trying to touch the chocolate’s weave. I was still stretching out the strands of the chocolate to make more of it when my mom walked in from work.

  ‘What are you doing on my kitchen counter?’ she demanded. ‘And you’re filthy, too. Were you . . .’ The words dropped off her tongue when she saw what was in my hand.

  ‘That’s your father’s chocolate,’ she said softly.

  ‘I didn’t waste any of it,’ I said, showing her the pieces. There was at least twice as much chocolate as there had been earlier.

  ‘Go to your room,’ she ordered.

  I left the pieces on the counter and stalked away. I didn’t tell them what Amie had done. Instead I let them believe I had eaten the chocolate. And as punishment, I was sent to my room, where I waited until my parents came in later that evening. Amie was probably still too scared to talk to them, so she stayed in the living room watching the Stream.

  ‘Do you understand why what you did was wrong?’ my father asked as he sat down next to me on the edge of the bed. My mother stayed by the door.

  I nodded my head but wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘Why was it wrong?’ he asked.

  I gritted my teeth for a moment before I answered. I knew the answer. I’d learned it at academy for years. ‘Because it wouldn’t be fair for us to have more.’

  I heard a strange gasp from my mom, as if someone had physically hurt her, and I looked up to see her regarding me with tired eyes. She turned away from me to look at Amie in the next room.

  ‘Yes, that’s part of it,’ he said slowly. ‘But, Adelice, it’s also dangerous.’

  ‘To eat too much chocolate?’ I asked, confused.

  He smiled a little at my answer, but it was my mother who spoke.

  ‘It’s dangerous to use your gift,’ she said. ‘Promise us that you’ll never do that again.’

  There was a raspy quality to her words, and I realised she’d been crying.

  ‘I promise,’ I whispered.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I swear I’ll cut off your hands before I let you do it again.’

  Even now, as I nibble at the stale bread, the threat echoes in my ears, warning me to keep my skills hidden. So what if the Guild already knows what I can do? I can’t betray my parents again.

  The next day, when someone finally comes to see me, it’s not Erik or Josten, but Maela herself. She saunters into my cell in a long black gown, holding a lit cigarette. Light streams in from the hallway and outlines her sculpted silhouette. It’s how I imagine death will come to me: overdressed and smoking.

  ‘Adelice, I trust you find your accommodations lacking,’ she purrs.

  ‘I’ve definitely seen better,’ I say.

  ‘Two nights ago,’ she reminds me, puffing thoughtfully on the brass cigarette holder. ‘You are a peculiar case.’

  I remember what Jost said about them killing the other girls. I’m a peculiar case because I’m breathing.

  ‘I thought you might like to see this,’ she says, showing me a small digifile. Maela sweeps her fingers along it and the screen glows, displaying a series of numbers and charts.

  ‘This is what insubordination causes,’ she murmurs, sounding amused with her little toy, and I realise with horror that she’s showing me the number of people killed during the test.

  ‘Insubordination,’ I say softly, ‘had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘When I tell you to remove a weak thread, you do it,’ she snarls, dropping her charade of calm amusement.

  ‘Or you’ll murder people?’ I don’t disguise the hate in my voice.

  ‘Examples,’ she starts slowly, evidently intent on keeping her composure, ‘are necessary to show the importance of our work. You can play the victim, Adelice, but you are as culpable as I am. When you cannot make the difficult decision for the good of others, you jeopardise everyone.’

  ‘It wasn’t a coincidence that Pryana’s sister was in that piece,’ I accuse her, but she ignores me.

  ‘It seems you won’t learn your lesson,’ she says between drags.

  ‘Maybe I’m not the only one.’

  Maela smiles, and it’s a real smile this time, not the dazzling show smile she p
uts on for the others or the wicked grin she seems to save for me. This smile shows all the flaws carefully covered by cosmetics – the lines, the too-noticeable gum line. It’s a hideous sight.

  Her face fades back into practised calm. ‘I’m willing to give you another chance. I’m not usually so forgiving.’

  I picture the other girls, killed for less. Had they wasted away in cells or been ripped out and destroyed?

  ‘What happens?’ I ask, thinking of the shimmering threads hanging off the hook.

  ‘What happens when what?’

  ‘When you remove strands. Where do they go?’

  She smiles again, but it is one of polished venom, not actual mirth. ‘Perhaps you can go to your training classes and find out, instead of wasting away in a cell.’

  She leaves me here to ponder this, but deep down I know that they aren’t going to answer the kinds of questions I want to ask. Enora had genuinely not known the answer when I asked her the same question during our first meeting. But why hide what really happens if ripping is such an integral part of our jobs?

  Unless the ripped could be saved.

  7

  I taste iron and my lip stings from where it split open against my teeth. So much for a low profile – not with Pryana in my training group. Maela officially released me a few days ago, shortly after our little chat, and even though I spent considerable time thinking of the right way to approach going back to training, I was still at square one. I’d planned to apologise, but the words never came. The other Eligibles seemed as cold as Pryana, clearly not impressed by my showdown with Maela. The looks they were giving me were pretty easy to read. In fact, they reminded me a lot of how the girls at testing had treated me. They thought I was awkward and incapable. And maybe they were right. Regardless, I found myself shuffling into the studio for our loom instructions without saying a word to Pryana. It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It was obvious that she laid the blame for her sister’s death at my feet. I was a much easier target than Maela – and a much less dangerous one.

  We were finally working on real looms again. After that first disastrous experience, we’d each been given three days of practice with an artificial weave before they allowed us to work on a real piece. The fake weave had felt lifeless under my fingers, but it was easy enough to work with. By the end of the first practice session I had proved my ability to alter easily enough. But, as if I needed another way to alienate myself, most of the other girls hadn’t. They were passable as Spinsters, but their work was sloppy or they took too long or they lacked the confidence to really dig into their tasks. By the end of the practice days, we all were cleared to try simple tasks like food weaving, but Pryana and I found ourselves singled out. We were both working on weather instead of food. I’d hoped this would give me a chance to talk with her.