Page 93 of Crewel (Crewel World 1)

My fingers sting as she speaks, reminding me how they want to touch the raw material, but I do my best to push the feeling down deep inside me. ‘We don’t do it for them.’

‘No,’ she agrees. ‘We do it in spite of them.’

‘Will they keep watching me?’ I ask.

‘They didn’t stop watching me until I was seventy,’ she says. ‘Cormac is many things, but he was the first to realise I wasn’t a threat to Arras.’

‘I guess I have a while to wait.’

Fifty-four years.

Loricel opens her mouth and then presses her withered lips back together.

‘What?’ I ask, scanning the room. ‘They’re watching us now?’

‘The illusions in this room are too complex to track.’

Now I understand that she’s not sure she wants me to know the truth, because it might be too much for me to live with. Loricel needs to make sure Arras has a Creweler after her death, and if I leave, it won’t.

‘You have to understand my dilemma,’ she says finally. ‘My whole life is this world. I have given everything to it.’

‘I think I understand,’ I say.

‘I wish you could. But until you’ve devoted your life, fought human nature, harnessed matter itself, and contained it for decades, you can’t. It’s a lot to ask of anyone.’ The lines on her face deepen as she speaks, as though the weight of years is dragging down her very skin.

‘But if I don’t—’

‘Then it will fade away.’

My eyes find the floor, and I inhale for strength. ‘So you won’t stay, even if I leave?’

‘No,’ she confirms. ‘My age has passed. It is up to you. Of course, I hope you will stay. I believe that you feel the pulse and understand its importance.’

‘How long will it survive without a Creweler?’

‘They have enough material stocked to last a decade. Maybe,’ she answers. ‘But it will be chaos – an extended apocalypse. And Cormac will be in charge by then.’

‘Of the Coventry?’ I ask. ‘He acts like he already he is.’

‘He oversees us now, but soon he’ll be elected prime minister of Arras.’

‘He’ll have control over everything,’ I whisper.

‘Except you. If you stay.’

I take a seat on a velvet divan, working through this revelation. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry. My sister is here. I won’t leave her.’

‘That’s the problem,’ Loricel says. ‘I want you to make an educated decision. You know about the new remapping tech?’

‘They talked about it at the State of the Guild. They mapped me the other day,’ I tell her.

‘Cormac has mapped each of us—’

‘Even you?’

She nods. ‘He claims that they are trying to understand why some girls have the ability to see and touch the weave and others don’t. He’s particularly interested in why most men can’t see it.’

‘Most?’ I recall her saying she believed some men could weave.