The Seamstress

Gus's blood was coming out more quietly than Marlow expected.

When it sprays hard, a big vessel has been cut, and you know that on sight. This was not that. It seeped from the base of the fingers and would not stop. Somebody once said the kind that will not stop is the worse kind.

“Can you stand?”

“'Course I can staaand. Who do you think you're talking to?”

“Then stand. Once is enough.”

Gus put a hand against the wall. The hand slipped. He sat back down. He tried again, and it slipped again.

“…Can't do it. Sorry.”

Willa raised the lamp and put the light on Gus's hand. The moment she saw it she turned her face away, and spoke fast with her face still turned.

“Let's go to the seamstress. Come on, let's go. Vesta's place.”

“Not there. Not that place.”

“Whyyy!”

“There's a reason. A reason not to.”

“Then say it. I'm not letting this go until you say it.”

“I owe her money.”

“What? Now? A man's dying and you're talking about money?”

“Three times' worth.”

“You've owed her for three whole times?! That's way worse!”

Marlow put his shoulder under Gus's armpit. Lifting him, he was three times heavier than Marlow had figured.

＊

The night market was still half open.

Because of the trouble in the daytime, there were few stalls. Even so there was the smell of oil and the smell of baked flour, and moths were gathering under the lamps. Dozens of them, so that the shape of each light was blurred round. Willa watched them the whole way as she walked.

“Hey, why do you think moths go into the fire?”

“Don't know.”

“But it's hot, though.”

“I've been telling you I don't know.”

“There's so much you don't know, Marlow.”

“I'm a scavenger. If I knew things I'd be in another trade. Long ago.”

On his shoulder, Gus groaned.

“Hey. This the time to be talking about moths? I'm dying here.”

“You're not dying,” Willa said. “Dying people can't be that loud.”

“Girlie, you're colder than you look…”

＊

Vesta Halm is a seamstress. She sews cloth and she sews people. Which one is her real trade, she does not say.

Close to sixty. Taller than Marlow and broader in the shoulders. Gray hair tied back in one tail. Her left eye is clouded white, and she has a habit of looking at people with the eye that does not see. It leaves you unsettled until you get used to it. She always has a dried root in her teeth, and she spits on the floor at the breaks in a conversation.

Marlow had been sewn by this woman three times. He had not paid off any of the three. So for the last half year he had gone the long way around to avoid this street.

When he kicked the door open and came in, Vesta looked up from the cloth on her table. She looked up and that was all. She was not surprised.

“Put him down.”

“The money.”

“Later.”

“How much?”

“After the bleeding stops. Do you not even know what order things go in?”

She swept the cloth off the table with one arm and laid Gus down there. Vesta counted the fingers that were left and let a breath out through her nose.

“Two. The cut is clean.”

“A blade?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I do not know. I said it was clean, nothing more.”

Then she laid out three needles, hesitated a moment, and took the thickest one.

“Hold him. He will thrash.”

“I ain't gonna thrash,” Gus said. “I'm not some brat.”

Gus thrashed.

“Ah… ow ow ow ow ow! That hurts! I said it hurts!”

“Hold still,” Vesta said.

“I'm not moving!”

“Your mouth is moving.”

Partway through, Willa joined in holding him down. Even that was not enough, and Vesta put a knee on Gus's chest.

＊

It took about an hour to finish.

In that time Willa came back from somewhere with two loaves of bread. Marlow did not ask where they came from. If he asked she would answer, so it was better not to ask.

The two of them sat on the step outside the shop and ate. The bread was cold and burned along the bottom.

“Hey, do you want this burned part?”

“I do.”

“Awww. I was so sure you wouldn't.”

“Then don't ask in the first place.”

“Course I ask. If I ate it without asking you'd get mad.”

“I wouldn't get mad.”

“You got mad last year.”

“…I got mad. That time I got mad.”

In the end Willa ate the burned side herself.

For a while after that, neither of them spoke. From inside came Gus groaning and the sound of Vesta spitting root.

Marlow was the one who spoke first.

“Sybil Orvaine.”

Willa stopped chewing.

“She's a sphinx.”

“You've seen her?”

“No, no. There's hardly anybody who's met one of those, right?”

“Then how do you know the name?”

Willa held what was left of the bread in both hands and was quiet for a little while. Then she spoke at half the voice she had been using.

“…Our cows got bought.”

“When?”

“Four years ago. Eleven head, all of them.”

“Made into grains?”

“Probably. Dad said nobody pays that kind of price except people buying to make grains.”

She was tearing the edge off the bread with her fingers and dropping the pieces. She was not eating.

“I gave all of them names, you know. All eleven. I got yelled at for it. Don't put names on merchandise, they yelled at me like crazy. They didn't hit me, though.”

“Did you stop?”

“I didn't stop. I did it in secret.”

She was mixing the crumbs she had dropped into the sand with the toe of her shoe.

“The people who came to buy wrote it in a ledger. Cows, eleven head. Age, two to six. Weight. There was a column for everything. One row each, properly.”

Willa lifted her face.

“The only column they didn't have was the name.”

“And that's how you learned it. Sybil's name.”

“It was written at the very top of the ledger. Where the buyer's name goes.”

Willa laughed a little. It was her usual laugh, the breath leaking through the gap in her front teeth.

“That ledger is the reason I learned to read, you know. I wanted to know what it said, so I spent a year at it. A year! Pretty stupid, right?”

Marlow started to say something and stopped. It was the second time in three years.

＊

The door opened right after that.

Two men came in.

One tall and round-shouldered. One small, with an old line of stitches on his head. Both of them had been behind Gus that morning. The one whose knee Marlow had folded in the alley, and the one who fired the gun.

Their clothes were not dirty. That was the first thing he noticed. Those were not the clothes of men who had been in blood and dust until evening.

The two stopped in the middle of the shop and bowed politely.

“Good evening.”

On the table Gus pushed himself upright. Still holding his newly sewn hand, he looked at the two of them.

“…Otto. Sam.”

The two did not look toward Gus. It was not that they failed to see him. He was in their field of view. There was simply no reaction to someone being there.

“Hey! Look over here! It's Gus! Twenty years, twenty years! We ate out of the same pot, didn't we!”

There was no answer. The taller one spoke, to Marlow.

“Forgive the late hour, sir.”

“It was Otto, right. You know who I am?”

“Yes, sir. You are Master Marlow Kane.”

The word “master” changed the air in the shop.

Vesta put down her needle. She only put it down; she did not move. Willa tried to get between the doorway and Marlow, and Marlow stopped her with his arm.

“Not giving it up. The box.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't ‘yes, sir’ me. I said I'm not giving it up.”

“I am aware, sir. The box is not today's business.”

Otto came a step closer. Marlow did not fall back. Falling back put Willa behind him.

“May I trouble you for your hand, sir?”

“No.”

“May I trouble you for your hand, sir?”

The same words came out at the same speed and the same pitch. It was not even a repetition. The identical thing from the first time had simply been set down once more.

Behind him, Willa said quietly:

“No… I don't like this…”

It was Sam who moved.

The small one took hold of his wrist from the side. The grip was not strong. But there was no sign of the hand letting go either. Marlow drove his elbow into the man's jaw. Bone cracked. Sam's head turned aside, and came back.

Came back, and was holding his wrist with the same strength.

He showed no pain. It was not that the blow had failed. The jaw was plainly broken. Blood was coming from the corner of his mouth. Even so, the shape of the face did not change.

Marlow could not throw a second one. It felt as though there were no one there to hit.

Otto pressed his thumb against the bandage on Marlow's shoulder.

Blood came away on the thumb.

Then Otto took a small glass vial, no bigger than a finger, from inside his coat, and pulled the stopper. He let one drop of the contents fall on his own thumb.

There was no sound. There was no light.

The blood and the water went away off the thumb.

What was left was one grain, about half the size of a grain of rice. Neither clear nor black. While you look at it, it holds a color that seems unable to decide what it is.

Otto lifted it to the height of his eyes and looked at it for a while.

“Confirmed, sir.”

“Confirmed what?”

“That you are the correct one, sir.”

Sam's hand came off Marlow's wrist.

“Three nights from now, please come to the old lighthouse. One companion at most, sir.”

“And if I say I won't come?”

“Three nights from now, please come to the old lighthouse. One companion at most, sir.”

The two bowed to the same depth and went out.

Gus tried to get down from the table and fell on the floor. Nobody got there in time. Still down, he shouted toward the doorway.

“Sam! Your sister's got supper waiting on you! Hey — Saaam!”

The footsteps did not stop.

＊

Vesta stood with the needle in her hand, looking at the doorway. Looking with the white eye.

“That walk.”

“You know it?”

“I saw it once, forty years ago.”

“Where. Say it.”

Vesta spat the root on the floor. Then she looked down at Gus sprawled on the floor and let out a long breath.

“Not tonight. This fool's hand comes first.”

“Tomorrow, then? You'll talk?”

“Come in the morning. With money. Come empty-handed and I send you off.”

“Without even telling me?”

“I am a seamstress. I am not a charity.”

＊

Outside, three or four of the night market's lamps were still lit. The moths had not thinned out.

Willa tugged his sleeve.

“He said one companion at most, didn't he.”

“He did.”

“I'm going, you know.”

“No.”

“Then who are you taking? Go on, say it.”

Marlow did not have an answer.

End of Chapter 3