Page 7 of Hemlock & Silver

Their presence had been a surprise, although I realized that it probably shouldn’t have been.

Having made it clear that he did not want anyone influencing me, the king would of course take steps to enforce it.

When he left, the pair of them were already stationed at the door, challenging anyone who approached, including the boy who delivered the milk.

The cook still remembered the old days when the king’s guard on the doorstep meant that you were about to be executed for conspiracy, so I’d had to spend twenty minutes soothing her nerves; meanwhile, the housekeeper had gone into strong hysterics and threatened to relocate to the country at once.

(She did this about once a week, so I wasn’t that worried.

I took up a cup of peppermint tea and a plate of honey cakes and explained that I had been called away and that she would have to manage everything until Father returned.

The prospect of being essential—and more important than the cook—revived her remarkably.)

The guards had relaxed their vigilance once it became clear that this was not precisely a hotbed of intrigue.

The sprawling adobe house where I had grown up had been handed over to Isobel and her growing family years ago, and my father and I had relocated to a house better sized to an elderly merchant and a scholarly spinster.

The courtyard was narrow but elegant, the rooms were tall and full of light, and neither contained any significant number of courtiers determined to suborn anyone.

I had been required to vouch for Isobel, and the guards had exchanged a significant look, but apparently sisters were allowed inside and not considered automatically seditious.

Aaron agreed to come with us on our jaunt.

He was the more talkative of the pair. (Javier seemed to communicate primarily in monosyllables or, if possible, grunts.) It felt strange to set out with a guard behind us, and not merely a city guardsman but an actual king’s guard with a sword and a breastplate stamped with the rising moon.

I felt as if people must be staring at us, and I didn’t like it.

I wondered if they thought that I was being arrested.

The streets of our city—Four Saints Mountain, more commonly just Four Saints—are lined with white stucco walls. In richer neighborhoods, there are decorative tiles, and in poorer neighborhoods, there is graffiti, but the walls themselves are the same everywhere.

Set into the walls, every few yards, is a gate, and on the other side of that gate is a courtyard.

The gates stand open during the day, and you can catch glimpses of the courtyards beyond.

At the moment, anyone looking through the gate at our two-story house would see Javier standing guard, and they’d probably wonder what we had done to bring the king’s guard down on our heads.

The wealthier houses have their own courtyards, but in most of the city, three homes will share, one to each side, with the courtyard as a communal space in between.

It’s the place where you put anything that wants to live almost-but-not-quite outdoors—clotheslines and potted plants and the sturdier sort of children’s toys.

(And the rain barrels, of course. In the desert, everyone has rain barrels.) Our courtyard held potted citrus trees and herbs and a row of pepper plants that our cook guarded jealously.

The house I’d grown up in had a fig tree, which meant that we were overrun with pigeons when the fruit ripened, and the ground underneath became a treacherous landscape of overripe fruit and bird crap.

Most of Four Saints follows the courtyard design in one way or another. Houses are built around courtyards, shops are built around plazas, temples are built around cloisters, and the entire city is built around the palace, which stands on a hill and shines savagely down at the rest of us.

Isobel, Aaron, and I made our way down the street Father and I lived on, hugging the wall to one side.

A member of the street sweeper’s circle was pushing his broom along the ground, attempting to corral the pale dust that blows in from the desert.

Depending on who you ask, either the street sweepers do nothing or the city would be buried without them.

(I tend to lean toward the latter, myself, just because of all the time I spend chasing dust out of my workroom.)

It was a little after noon when we left, and the sky was a hard blue bowl overhead.

The walls and the adobe buildings behind them shone so brilliantly that it hurt the eyes.

It was a relief to reach the plaza where Isobel’s seamstress worked, and to step into the shaded walkway that surrounded it.

Green-trunked palo verde trees dotted the plaza, throwing complicated patterns of shadow across the ground.

Someone was cooking fry bread, and my mouth started to water involuntarily.

Isobel’s seamstress had a storefront between a bookseller and a haberdasher.

I glanced over the books on display, mostly out of habit.

The sort of volumes that I seek out are far too specialized to be found in such a fashionable place.

Books on poisons are generally considered rather disreputable, and most sellers won’t carry them at all.

(They did have the latest volume of the Red Feather Saga, though, which was an improbable story of swashbuckling romance imported from the eastern continent.

In the last one, our heroine was being held prisoner by a pirate who, unbeknownst to him, was her long-lost older brother.

She had just finished sawing through her ropes with a nail file when the sounds of battle filled the ship, whereupon it ended “until next time.” I bought a copy of the new one immediately.

It’s not great literature, but after the fifteenth installment, you start to get invested.)

The dress shop itself was the sort that carried a range of styles and tailored them to your frame.

There was a shrine to Saint Bird beside the door.

(Technically clothing falls in the domain of Saint Sheep, patron of cloth and weaving, but I assume they were attempting to invoke the brightness of bird feathers.)

The proprietress wore the sort of extremely simple clothing that requires extremely elaborate sewing.

She was all smiles and nods until Isobel explained that she wanted me to have a dress suit able for court functions within three days, whereupon her smile became a bit more frozen.

I made frantic no gestures behind my sister’s head.

Isobel has never quite fathomed that when you reach a certain size, ruffles and petticoats make you look more like a parade float than a person.

Once my sister had exhausted her store of plans, the proprietress explained that madame’s taste was exquisite, but there were simply not enough hours remaining to make such an outfit as madame required. I blessed the woman silently, and all her children unto the tenth generation.

Isobel sagged tragically. “Can’t you do something?” she asked, gesturing at me. “Everything she owns looks like… that .”

I glanced down at my current belted tunic and trousers. The tunic was earth brown, embroidered at the cuffs and hem, and the trousers were sand colored, which didn’t show dust so badly.

The proprietress looked me up and down, taking in both what I wore and, I suspect, what I could be convinced to wear. “Perhaps Mistress Anja would consider a more formal over-robe?”

Mistress Anja was dubious but consented. I think that someone had to run across the plaza to the shop that sold men’s clothing to find a size that would work, but the seamstress produced three robes, heavy with embroidery, that could be altered to fit me in the next two days.

“They’re awfully dark,” Isobel said doubtfully. “You still look like a nun.”

“I like looking like a nun.”

“But look at this! This is a marvelous color on you,” said Isobel, holding a swatch of pale green silk against my arm.

“That is a dreadful color on me. I would look like a walking shrubbery.”

“Saints forbid that you wear something other than brown and black.”

“I like brown. It doesn’t show dirt.”

“Here,” Isobel said, turning to our guard, who had been standing, relaxed but watchful, by the door. “Don’t you think this is a lovely color?”

Aaron looked startled to be consulted, then slightly panicked. “I… err… yes, Mistress Isobel?”

“You see?” Isobel waved the green fabric at me menacingly. “Tell her, Aaron.”

“Uh…” The guard’s spine hit the wall beside the door as he attempted to retreat. My sister sometimes has this effect on people. “I’m not really a judge of such things, I fear?”

“Nonsense. You’ve seen plenty of women in your life. Surely you must have formed some opinions.”

Judging by Aaron’s face, he was ready to disavow having ever heard of women, let alone seeing one.

“It’s a lovely color,” I said, trying to come to his rescue. “Just not on me .”

“Lovely!” Aaron said, seizing on this as a lifeline. “A marvelous color! Like—um—melon rinds?” Isobel’s eyebrows went up, and he tried again. “New grass?”

Isobel frowned at the swatch. “More celadon than grass, I would have said.”

“Yes. That, too. Absolutely.”

“Perhaps,” said the proprietress, “a compromise? A scarf of this color would go beautifully with the right shade of brown.”

Isobel pursed her lips thoughtfully. Aaron gazed at the proprietress with naked hope blazing on his face.

“I’ll take a scarf in that color, then,” I said.

“But will you wear it?”

My sister has known me too long. No. “Yes.” She narrowed her eyes. I attempted to look like a person who wore decorative scarves. (Honestly, I would like to be that sort of person. I simply never learned the knack.)

“If Mistress Anja would prefer, I have a new line of scarves that are quite subtle,” the proprietress said, and draped something more like a priest’s stole around my neck.

Isobel groaned. “Now you really look like a nun.”

“I rather like it,” I said, checking my reflection in the mirror. It did have an ecclesiastical quality to it, granted, but it looked more like a badge of office than decoration. (Also, Aaron had been right—it was exactly the pale green shade of a honeydew melon rind.)

“It lends you a certain authority,” the proprietress said. “These are very popular among some of my clientele.”

I suspected, as I paid for the scarf—and several others that Isobel had picked out, muttering—that what she meant was her older and more boring clientele. But I also suspected that I would shortly be in need of all the authority that I could get.