A Sharpened Axe

by Jill M Beene

  “Do you think that they were talking about the Chosen?” Samiris repeated.

  “Yes,” Aster said, unpinning her cloak and slumping on the velvet sofa.

  Samiris blinked in surprise at Aster’s blunt answer. Also, she wasn’t sure that Aster had ever sat down in her chambers before. Samiris moved slowly to an armchair across from her, so as not to spook Aster from her relaxed state.

  Aster continued, “Surely you’ve thought about it... the fact that while the curse has been terrible for most of us, it has benefited others.”

  Samiris nodded, tugging her shoes off and letting them drop with two thunks on the carpet. “I guess I just didn’t think that there were people actively trying to keep the curse.” She shook her head. “It’s...unfathomable.”

  Aster stared out the window over Samiris’ shoulder. “I keep thinking that nothing can surprise me anymore, but you are right. I didn’t know that the people who wanted the curse to remain were so organized. I thought they just... hoped it. I didn’t have any idea that they were actively working against the efforts to break the curse, lame as those efforts are.”

  “We should tell someone,” Samiris said, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.

  “Who?” Aster asked, her brown eyes wide, her eyebrows raised.

  “The Crown Prince, or... Artem! Someone with the power to do something should do... something,” she finished, lamely.

  Aster blinked. “If you’re going to tell Captain Trego that you were wandering around the city at night in disguise, got chased into a southside stable by some kune smokers and overheard a plot from two obviously dangerous men....can you please make sure I’m in the room? I want to hear his reaction.”

  Samiris smiled at Aster’s sarcasm, then her smile quickly fell into a chuckle. Before long, they both were laughing so hard that tears streamed down their cheeks.

  Samiris swiped moisture from her cheeks. “So maybe I wouldn’t tell him that. I wouldn’t want him to keel over from a rage-induced heart attack. But I still think that someone should know. I mean... the Chosen are in real danger.”

  Aster’s expression sobered. “You’re just now figuring that out?”

  Samiris winced. “I guess you have a point.”

  Aster glanced at the darkness outside the window. “It’s late. We should get to bed.” She stood and entered Samiris’ bedchamber.

  “Samiris?” Aster called.

  Samiris grinned, despite the heavy note of concern in Aster’s voice. Her maid had never called her by her first name before. Apparently, going out in disguise, running for their lives, and overhearing a plot were the prerequisites for informality.

  Aster emerged from the bedchamber, her lips pressed together, her brow a furrowed tale of concern. “This was on your dressing table. It wasn’t sealed. I read it.” She handed Samiris a sheaf of parchment.

  Samiris read, her forehead scrunching at the words. “Cloris quit? She refuses to be tainted by my scandalous habit of wearing men’s clothes in public?” Samiris fell against the velvet back of her armchair and grinned. “Good riddance to her and her evil hats.”

  Aster crossed her arms. “This is a problem. You need a dressmaker. We are weeks away from the Opening Ball.”

  Samiris rolled her eyes. “Who cares? We don’t need Cloris. Find me someone else.”

  “If Cloris won’t work for you, none of the other palace seamstresses will dare to do it. Cloris can be kind of forceful, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  Samiris rolled her eyes. “Then find me someone from the village. Someone who doesn’t care what Cloris thinks.”

  Aster’s eyes moved back to the window. “I actually might have someone. She’s a bit... different, though.”

  Samiris snorted. “As if I’m considered normal?”

  “Fair point.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The next morning, Aster deposited a servant girl in front of Samiris’ chair and stepped back carefully until her back was against the sitting room wall. Samiris watched Aster’s mannerisms closely. She had seen the same behavior in men at the bar in Faro who were doing their best to avoid being dragged into a bar-room brawl.

  Standing before Samiris was a young girl, petite, but as straight and slender as a willow branch. Samiris guessed that she was no more than eighteen. Her eyes and hair were the shade of good, freshly-tilled soil, and her nose and chin were both uplifted in an expression of pert defiance. Her eyebrows were as carefully groomed as any one of the Chosen, and Samiris saw the faint indentations in her earlobes that showed her ears were pierced for earrings.

  She wore the same uniform as the other servants, but there was something different about the fit. Instead of a sloppily rolled sleeve, her sleeves skimmed closely over her arms, ending in sharp darts above her elbows. Her skirts were cut differently, too. They accentuated her narrow waist and her slender hips and ended in a pleasing fullness at the hem. Even her bow was crisp and tied with a jaunty air, instead of the limp looping that was the standard.

  “My name is Gia,” the girl said, after she had finished her perusal of Samiris. Her hands were clasped neatly in front of her and she stood with her heels even and together, toes apart.

  “I’m Samiris.”

  “I know,” Gia said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  When Gia failed to elaborate, Samiris smiled. “And you’re here to replace Cloris?”

  “She wouldn’t come back to work with you,” Gia said crisply. “Even though I heard they offered her double what she was earning before, and even though designing for one of the Chosen is considered a great honor.”

  Samiris shrugged. “I’m sure I should muster up some regret about her quitting, but truth be told, I won’t miss her.”

  “She was concerned about your poor reputation sullying her good one,” Gia continued. “And you have developed quite a reputation.”

  “I’m sure that I have,” Samiris said, smirking with the memory of her disastrous dancing lesson that week. “Are you a seamstress?”

  “Until three hours ago, I was a maid in the east wing. But I can sew fast as a whip, and it’s been my life’s ambition to become a couturier like my mother was.”

  “So you don’t mind that no one else will work with me?” Samiris raised an eyebrow in challenge.

  “It’s the perfect scenario for me, actually. If my designs aren’t good, everyone will blame you. If they are as fabulous as I know they will be, everyone will be in awe that I could make the country heathen look presentable.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Samiris crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You won’t get any coddling from me. It’s your own fault you lost Cloris.”

  “You don’t mince words.” Samiris said, unsure if she was offended or amused by the girl’s straightforward assessment of the situation.

  “You can’t fire me if you want to have anything decent to wear,” Gia said, smiling sweetly.

  “Hmm,” Samiris said.

  “I have some conditions.”

  “Let’s hear them, then,” Samiris said, propping her feet up on the tea table in front of her.

  “I need a place to work. I want full use of the dressing room adjoined to your bedchamber.”

  Samiris nodded her assent.

  “Secondly, I want your word that you try on every dress I make to see how it looks, even if you don’t like the look of it on the hanger.”

  “Very well,” Samiris said. “But I have a condition of my own.”

  “Yes?”

  “For the love of everything good, please, no more monstrous hats.”

  Gia grinned and put her finger to the side of her nose. Samiris thought she looked like a mischievous forest imp from the books in her childhood nursery. Gia beckoned her forward with a rhythmic curling of her fingers, and Samiris followed her obediently. When Gia threw ope
n the door to the dressing room adjoining Samiris’ bedchamber, Samiris chuckled.

  Once cluttered with overstuffed chairs, velvet poufs, divans, and intricately carved tables, the room was now bare except for four large iron racks around the perimeter, a large work table in the center, and a dress form in the corner. The heavy brocade curtains had been removed from a row of large windows that overlooked a small interior courtyard with a burbling fountain. Even the thick rug had been rolled up and taken away, leaving a bare wooden floor that had been scrubbed until Samiris could see her reflection.

  “You already had the room cleared out,” Samiris said, casting a side-eye to Aster, who shrugged.

  “You will have to wear a hat to dinner,” Gia said briskly, ignoring Samiris’ comment. “But the fashions in Teymara have been overwrought and horrible for years. All the wealth of a nation condensed into one city, and the best they can come up with is this?”

  Gia pulled the poofy blue and white frilled dress that Samiris had worn to that first fateful dinner party off its hanger and tossed it to the floor. Abandoned in a heap, it looked like a sad, fallen soufflé.

  “I cannot understand it,” Gia said, gesturing at the other dresses Cloris had sewn for Samiris, which were all crammed onto one rack in the far corner. As wide and thick as the dresses were, they barely fit on the stand. They looked like a crowd of overdressed females listening at a keyhole.

  “Unless...” Gia continued, narrowing her eyes at Samiris. “Unless you like those dresses?”

  Samiris laughed and gestured at her current outfit, a pair of close-fitting black breeches and a crisp white shirt. “I prefer to be able to move in my clothes, thank you.”

  “Excellent,” Gia said, clapping her hands and straightening her spine. She swept up a charcoal pencil and small, leather-bound book from the table and said, “What do you like? Fabrics, colors, décolletage exposure?”

  Her pencil hovered over the parchment expectantly, and Samiris stared at it as she mumbled, “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s start with the easy one. Colors?” She waited patiently.

  “Green?” Samiris said, with an uncertain wince.

  Gia raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  Samiris took another stab at answering the question. “Black?”

  “Ick. No.” Gia’s lip curled in revulsion. “Only for funerals, and even then I’m thinking a dark charcoal would be better.”

  “Isn’t dark charcoal the same as black?” Samiris said.

  Gia laughed. “Since we’ll be working closely together, I choose to find your ignorance adorable instead of personally offensive.”

  “Thank you?”

  “You’re welcome,” Gia said.

  Gia yanked Cloris’ designs from their hangers, examined each one closely, then flung them in a heap in the corner. Gia reminded Samiris of a crow, turning her head this way and that to get a better view of each dress before dismissing it. The dresses piled one on top of each other like a colorful, multi layered birthday cake.

  “Each one is more tortured than the last. I’m going to need to start from scratch,” Gia said, turning toward Samiris. “I didn’t see any accounting notations from Cloris. How much is left from your clothing allowance?”

  “Well, those were just the initial designs that Cloris brought with her,” Samiris said. “I didn’t buy anything else.”

  Gia’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t buy any shoes? Gloves? Jewelry?”

  “I did buy these,” Samiris said, gesturing toward the buttery-soft leather boots on her feet. “But that was from my own allowance.”

  Gia’s face broke into a grin, and she actually rubbed her hands together. She looked like a raccoon washing its paws before a meal.

  “And I’m right that you don’t really know much about dresses or colors?”

  “I don’t care about dresses or colors.”

  “You don’t....care?” Gia squinted and frowned at the words, as if to better understand their meaning.

  “Do whatever you want. Anything you come up with can’t be any worse than that,” she said, inclining her head to the heap of tulle and lace in the corner.

  “I can tell you’re going to be my favorite client.”

  “I’m your only client,” Samiris said.

  Gia waved her hand as if to clear the words from the air like wayward smoke. “No matter. When I’m finished with you, we’ll both be famous.”

  “I don’t want to be famous,” Samiris argued.

  Gia shooed her out the door with both hands. “Your next event is a formal dinner tomorrow night, and I need every second to sketch, shop and sew. Go do whatever you do, and for heaven’s sakes, don’t eat too many eclairs before then.”

  Gia snapped the workroom door shut in Samiris’ face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Samiris couldn’t sleep that night. She stared up at her bejeweled bed canopy, just visible in the moonlight streaming in from the window. Her velvet bedclothes felt too heavy, as confining as the dresses that Cloris had made her wear. She kicked her feet free and huffed a sigh. Back in Faro, nights like this, where sleep eluded her like a stray cat, were rare. In Faro, she was working, always moving. Sleep was like a comfortable sweater she could pull on at will.

  Her stomach sounded a low, long lament, and she rubbed it and frowned. She had barely touched her dinner; she had been too engrossed in her book. The regular meals were starting to have an effect. Samiris frowned. She was beginning to take food for granted, skipping meals because there would always be another, forgetting what it was like to be constantly hungry.

  The head cook, Marla, had shown her where she kept a huge platter of sandwiches and a bowl of cookies for the servants working through the night. Marla had told Samiris to help herself. Urged on by the insistent prodding of her stomach, Samiris got up and dressed quickly in the dark.

  She opened her door and glanced into the hallway. It was clear, and Samiris ducked out, shutting the door behind her quietly. As she walked the halls, it struck her how different the castle looked at night. Gone were the roving ornaments of over trussed women. The halls felt much larger without having to duck and dodge the huge constructed hips of the ladies. Nor were there any watching, judging eyes of Lady Elise, Captain Trego, Cloris, Narcise, or anyone else in the court.

  Samiris went to a window that overlooked the gardens, and watched the way the light from the full moon had turned everything silver. The hedges, flowers and fountains were all the same shining grey, as if the moon had swiped his silver paint brush over the landscape.

  In the distance, Samiris saw a flicker of movement, like a bird rustling in the brush. She pressed her forehead to the cool glass of the window and focused. Far away in one of the gardens, a woman was swaying back and forth in the moonlight. She was naked, and her pale skin glowed. Her mouth moved in a song or chant. Her thin arms were outstretched above her, toward the moon, and one hand held a knife.

  Samiris had heard about moon rituals, religious dances of the old ways that were meant to call upon or thank the spirits. They were mainly spoken about in bawdy tavern jokes-- stories of naked young maidens dancing beneath the moonlight in the forest. Samiris had never heard of anyone actually performing a moon dance. They were an ancient custom from an old religion that hardly anyone followed anymore. Legend had it that moon dances were done on the eve of a great battle, to ask the moon god for power and protection.

  Then the woman turned, and even from this distance, Samiris could see the four scars that ran from her shoulders and centered in the small of her back. As Samiris watched, Cyra reached back and drew her blade in a line across her lower back, underlining the point of her other scars. The blood that poured over her buttocks and legs looked black in the moonlight. Samiris saw Cyra arch her back in pain, and a strangled sound worked its way out of Samiris’ own throat in response.

  B
ootsteps clicked toward her down the stone hallway. Samiris pushed back from the windowsill as Artem strode around the corner. He was dressed in smart grey breeches and a crisp white shirt. His black leather boots were polished to a high sheen.

  Artem’s eyebrows drew together. “What are you doing up at this hour? Are you going somewhere?”

  Samiris nodded. “The kitchens, for a sandwich.”

  “I thought I heard something.” His eyes shifted back and forth, searching the hallway.

  “Stubbed my toe,” Samiris lied smoothly. She was standing with her back toward the window and prayed Artem didn’t come closer.

  “On what?” Artem gestured to the wide stone hallway.

  Samiris shrugged. “The floor, naturally. You’ve commented on my lack of grace before.”

  Artem winced slightly, and Samiris knew her reference of his uncharitable comments to Lord Kinsley about her dancing skills had landed.

  Then Artem’s eyes narrowed. “What are you hiding?”

  Samiris forced her eyes wide in an expression of innocence. “I’m telling the truth. I was on my way down to the kitchens for a sandwich.”

  Artem strode past her to the window and looked out. Samiris turned with a groan in her heart, but the gardens were empty. Cyra was nowhere to be seen. Samiris did her best to look aloof, neutral, when Artem turned his hawk-like eyes back to her face.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Lucky for me, the truth doesn’t depend on what you believe.”

  He studied her. “Very well,” he said, sweeping an arm in front of them, “I will escort you.”

  Samiris rolled her eyes. “That’s really not necessary.”

  “Oh, I insist. Let’s continue on to the kitchens so you can get a sandwich.”

  “I don’t appreciate your tone,” Samiris said, primly. “But very well.”

  She struck off at a brisk pace, Artem on her heels like he thought she might bolt. He looked surprised when she led the way to the kitchen and swung open the door like she owned the place.