Mira Threadwell's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

After the crowd turned, Mira slipped away from the ring and followed a quiet trail of thread fibers across the ice. The fibers led to a long storehouse with frost-laced doors. She pushed inside. Cold air met colder air. Shelves climbed the walls, and on them sat ice sculptures arranged like a small garden — and tucked between them, her stripped cloak panels, each folded, labeled, and pinned to a frozen plank. She walked the shelves and read the labels. Dates. Stitch counts. Notes on toggle spacing. Her work had not been thrown out. It had been catalogued. Someone had kept every piece the inspector tore off her cloak. At the back of the storehouse stood a small pavilion of pale ice, its arch lit from within. Mira stepped through. A workbench held her shoulder panels stretched flat, half-sewn into a new lining. Above the bench, a wolf totem cast a steady glow over fresh diagrams — her doubled seam, redrawn, refined, paired with a locking stitch she had never tried. Someone had been building on her craft for weeks. Mira pressed her hand to the diagram. The thief on the platform had stolen a copy. This was something else. Someone had saved her real work and pushed it further. She took the top sheet, folded it into her cloak, and walked back out into the cold. She did not know who. But now she knew the panels were alive, and she was no longer the only one carrying them forward.