Page 1 of Inferno
CHAPTER ONE
“Isaw those dragons in the sky again this morning. Fearsome beasts! Gave me such a fright! All big and black and pointed tails… Ughh!”
Hearing the comment from the pair of women a short distance away, Yorin put his head down and walked a touch quicker, eager to be back inside the peace and solitude of his tailor’s shop.
“Only the gods know what Captain Renfold was thinking, letting those creatures visit Minia over and over again. Dragons! In Minia! It’s pure lunacy!”
Captain Renfold was the head of the city’s warrior army, the force that defended the human world from the demons who routinely attempted to cross the swirling silver portal that was the Gate of Chalandros.
Yorin, however, had absolutely no interest in debating the pros and cons of letting a group of humans capture dragons, tame them, and turn them into a flying carriage service to transport people to and from Minia. As outlandish as the idea was, Yorin had quite enough to worry about dealing with demanding customers, paying back his loan to the bank for the shop he’d bought eight years ago, and making sure he had enough firewood to cook his dinner. And on a good day, if he was feeling indulgent, he would worry about making it to the bakery in time to get a couple of pastries just as they came out of the oven, and then making it back to his shop in time to open for the morning customers. Today, it seemed, luck was with him – or it would be, if he managed to avoid getting dragged into another discussion about that gods-forsaken gate.
“I know some of the townsfolk are raving about the idea, but it’s just too dangerous! And they’re dragons! Next thing you know, we’ll be invitingdemonsto live with us, as well!” One of the women was Mrs Dee, a middle-aged busy-body who was a regular at the tailor shop, and if she spotted Yorin, she was bound to try and drag him into the conversation. Maybe he should just drop back behind them to avoid their notice.
“Make way, Captain of the Guard coming through!” Well, speak of the devil, there was the captain himself. The deep, booming voice of his announcer drew plenty of attention, and as the crowd scattered, Yorin used the opportunity to dart across to the other side of the street, away from the gossipers.
The four horses carrying the warriors clopped on down the road, the men on their backs no doubt entirely aware of their own importance. But far from standing around and admiring them, Yorin instead hurried past the last few shops that separated him from his own and unlocked the door. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him. The ‘Closed’ sign was still hanging over the door’s little window, but nonetheless, he locked it again, then retreated through the shop to the kitchen in the rear.
He set the pastries on the worn wooden table, then took the time to open the window. The view wasn’t much, the rear of the shop opening into a nondescript laneway, mudbrick walls and cobblestones stretching out in either direction. To the right of the door was a small woodshed, and to the left was an outhouse.
But regardless of the view, the fresh air was nice, a slight breeze quickly driving out some of the staleness of the room from overnight. It was promising to be a sunny day, a light early haze lifting quickly, and that would bring more people outdoors and into the shopping region of the city. Extra reason for Yorin to make sure everything was set up nicely in his shop.
But he still had time for a quick breakfast. He poured himself a cup of peppermint tea, left over from the night before. It was cold now, but he could hardly justify starting a fire just to warm up one cup of water.
Instead, he focused on the pastries. One was filled with spiced apple, the other with custard. He bit into the first, the pastry cracking and flaking around his lips, and he couldn’t help his moan of pleasure. Gods, that was divine. This was one of the few simple pleasures in life that Yorin allowed himself – not because he was particularly pious or strict about such things, but because money was always tight. Customers could change their opinions and their loyalties with a puff of wind, and it was routinely more important to make sure he had enough coin to buy the next roll of fabric, rather than to worry about whether he’d eaten boiled lentils and stewed carrots for dinner for the third time this week.
Once he’d finished savouring his meal, Yorin brushed the stray flakes of pastry from his shirt onto the floor – he’d sweep later – and hurried up the stairs to the single room on the upper storey. This room doubled as his bedroom and his workroom, wide tables taking up most of the space and rolls of fabric lined up along the walls. A single-sized bed was pressed up against the far corner, and a wide wardrobe stood against the wall at the end of the bed. That, at least, was one benefit of being a tailor; Yorin had a plentiful supply of very nice clothes.
Crossing the room, he took off his shirt – plain cream and old enough that it was stained around the cuffs – and pulled on one of his newest creations. This one was a charcoal grey with cream embroidery across the shoulders. Yorin had made it last week, in one of his regular fits of creativity, but his penchant for fine clothes was far more than simple vanity.
This particular shirt was more elaborate than most of the embroidery he’d done on a men’s shirt, but if people liked it, it could make him a lot of money. That was the gamble with any of his experimentation with style; either people would love it or hate it. If they loved it, he’d be knee deep in orders by the end of the week. If they hated it, on the other hand, he’d see a slump in sales for the next week or two, until he came up with a new offering that was more palatable. This one was possibly pushing the boundaries of how decorative a man liked his clothes to be, women being far more open to colours, or patterns, or flowers, or whatever else Yorin decided to sew into their blouses and dresses. But men… men were a more cautious breed, and Yorin stared at himself critically in the mirror. Was this shirt taking a step too far? As with any of his clothing designs, he wanted to stand out, but not to make a fool of himself. Finding the fine line between the two could be a worrisome challenge. For a moment, he decided to take the shirt off, condemning it to the pile of rejects that had accumulated over the years. But… gods, he loved the way the lines of cream contrasted the darker colour of the fabric. Surely some of his customers would share his opinion, even if they thought the detail on the embroidery was a little too much?
In the end, he decided to leave it on. He’d see what the first couple of comments on it were, and then he could always change later, if he was feeling too conspicuous in the garment.
Clothing sorted, Yorin hurried back down the stairs and into the main shop. He checked the display in the window. Hm, yes, the coat on one mannequin was crooked. The skirt on another was slipping. Judicious use of a couple of pins fixed the latter problem, and then he spent a few minutes straightening up the rolls of fabric, the pre-made shirts lined up on wooden hangers, the display of socks. The mainstay of his business was made-to-order items, anything from shirts and trousers to wedding dresses, but there were more than a handful of customers who would drop in just for a plain cream-coloured shirt, or a pair of black socks. He also had a row of long, wrap-around skirts, which would fit a wide variety of shapes and sizes thanks to the adjustable sash. He rearranged a couple of the skirts, so that the brighter colours were towards the front.
With the shop now up to scratch, Yorin headed over to the door, unlocked it, and flipped the sign around to display ‘Open’. He then made the effort to open the door and stick his head out into the street, just in case any particularly eager customer was waiting…
“Good morning, Yorin!” It was Mr Fensworth, an aging and portly man with a booming voice that he never seemed to have learned to soften. “Is that tunic ready yet? I need it for my daughter’s wedding.” He barged past Yorin into the shop, barely giving him time to get out of the way. “We want to get all the clothes coordinated. The seamstress is being horribly slow with the wedding dress, but you’re usually a bit more on the ball.”
Yorin closed the door and followed Mr Fensworth as he ambled around the shop. “I’m very sorry, but I did let you know that it won’t be ready until Wednesday. Today’s only Monday.”
“Oh, pish tosh,” the man said, though there was no malice in his tone. He meandered over to the window display, tugging at the coat on the mannequin. It slipped off one shoulder and hung lopsidedly. “I know you folks. You like to pretend things will take longer than they will just so you can surprise us by getting it done early.”
Yorin forced a smile. “In this case, I do actually need the extra couple of days. I’ve had five different orders come in from the warriors. They’re all trying to get their clothes ordered before they head back into battle tomorrow. There’s been a lot of measuring and deciding on fabrics that’s taken up a lot of my time.”
“But what about the wedding rehearsals?” Abandoning the mannequins, Mr Fensworth drifted over to the rolls of fabric, rubbing the edge of one between his meaty fingers.
Yorin sorely wished he could put his hands over his ears. The gods only knew how this man’s family put up with his constant shouting. “I was of the understanding that your daughter’s wedding isn’t for another four weeks. Am I mistaken about that one?” He wasn’t mistaken. He’d had this exact same conversation with the man at least three times already.
Mr Fensworth poked at another roll of fabric, and Yorin prayed that his hands were at least reasonably clean. “Yes. No, but… Well, yes, it’s in four weeks. After the gate closes again. But we need things to be ready!”
Yorin knew from experience that a wedding in Minia could be pulled together in as little as forty-eight hours. With just over two hundred warriors living here, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for one of them to suddenly decide they wanted to get married – usually but not always to one of the serving women who operated as a combination of housemaid and bed-warmer to the men in the barracks. The warriors were typically handsome, strapping, and wealthy men, thanks to the amount they got paid – though perhaps they wouldn’t be considered quite so handsome if they weren’t quite so muscular and wealthy – and as such, if a woman received a proposal from one of them, they were often inclined to hold the wedding as soon as possible. Yorin had never quite figured out whether the haste to tie the knot was due to an eager desire to begin reaping the rewards of a wealthy husband, or to prevent said husband from being lured off by another woman and slipping away.
Either way, the net result was that a couple of the seamstresses kept a few wedding dresses on hand, and Yorin himself knew he could throw one together in as little as three days, if pressed. The florists had plentiful displays of flowers in summer and ribbons woven into floral shapes in winter, and the local bakers, butchers and pubs could have a feast put together in just under half a day. So four weeks of preparation – in addition to the two weeks they’d already had – was ample time for Mr Fensworth’s daughter to organise a perfectly civilised wedding.
“I’ll have it ready for you first thing Wednesday morning,” Yorin told his customer, as genially as he could manage, while Mr Fensworth manhandled a pair of socks. “I promise, you’ll have it in plenty of time for the rehearsals.”
“Hmph. You’re a good man, Yorin,” Mr Fensworth said, a bit of a non sequitur given his previous complaints. “Your dad would have been proud. I’ll see you Wednesday, then.” He completed his circuit of the room, frowning at a half-finished pair of trousers hanging on a rack and prodding one last roll of fabric, before finally letting himself out the door.