Lena Marsh's Arc

Chapter 1 of 24

Lena Marsh pricked her finger on a needle that wasn't there. She was pulling thread from empty air again, blue thread this time, coiling it above the counter of her shop. Her father slept in the room above her, breath rattling through the floorboards. The garment on her table was half-finished: a long shirt of pale linen meant to draw the sickness out of him. She did not know yet if it would work. She only knew she had thread now, and hands that made it, and a father who would not last another winter without something more than tea. The bell over her door rang before she could hide the thread. Governor Calloway Hild stepped inside, silver hair combed flat, spectacles fogged from the cold. He smiled the way he smiled at market days. Two of his men stayed on the step. He looked at the blue thread hanging in the air, then at her blue-tinted nose, then at the shop banners moving in the draft. "They say you spin from nothing," he said. "They say your nose goes bluer when you do it." Her hands went still. The thread dropped and lay across the linen like a vein. "I sew," she said. "You do more than sew." He set a folded paper on her counter. A closure order. His seal, already stamped. "Outsiders don't hold shops in my village. Not without my permission." Her sister came down the stairs then, paint on her knuckles, purple hair still tangled from the woods. Linny had been home four days. She stopped on the last step and read the room in one look. "You're closing us," Linny said. "I'm offering," Hild said. He kept his eyes on Lena. "Marry me. I'll call your gift a blessing. I'll send your cloth to every city on the coast. Your name will be known." He tapped the paper. "Refuse, and you're outsiders by nightfall. Banished. The three of you. In this weather." Lena thought of her father's cough. She thought of Linny's boots, still stained from the clearing. She thought of the half-finished shirt. The door opened again. Nell Larkspur stepped in without knocking, snow on his shoulders, the fox at his heel. The governor's men did not stop him. They stepped back. Nell looked at the paper on the counter, then at Hild. "Leave," Nell said. "This isn't your business, half-blood." "It is now." Hild's smile thinned. He picked up the closure order, folded it once, and slid it into his coat. "Three days," he said to Lena. "Answer me in the square. Or pack." He left. The bell rang behind him. Linny turned on Lena. "You're not marrying him." "No," Lena said. Her hands had started moving again, pulling thread without her asking. "I'm finishing the shirt. Before the third day." Upstairs, her father coughed.