Yara Silk's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Yara Silk sold cloth from a moss-roofed stall at the edge of the market, and she wove the truths of gods into every hem. Her fingers were stained with ink from marking her patterns. A loom rode on her back when she walked home. She kept a private goal folded behind her ribs: weave one tapestry so flawless the gods of Oblivara would have to seat her among them. This morning her hands shook, which meant the work was true. She was weaving a small square that showed a god who lied. She had watched him at three festivals. She had seen how he touched his own sleeve before he spoke, and how the sleeve was stitched from mismatched patches. She threaded that in. The shaking got worse. A shadow fell across the stall. A pot-bellied man in patchwork robes stood at her counter, grinning wider than a face should stretch. He picked up her half-finished square between two fingers. "Good work," he said. "Too good." Yara reached for it. He held on. "Who taught you the sleeve?" he asked. "I watched." "Watched who?" She knew, then. The patches on his robe matched the patches in her weave, stitch for stitch. Her hands went still. That scared her more than the shaking. "You're him," she said. Mirth set the cloth down. He tapped the counter twice. "Your mother never said?" The market noise thinned to a hum. Yara gripped the edge of the stall. "Said what?" "You're mine. Half, anyway." He shrugged as if the weight of it belonged to someone else. "Explains the hands." "My hands shake because the pattern is true." "Does it?" He leaned closer. His grin did not move. "Or does the pattern become true because you wove it?" She looked at the square. She thought of the god who had walked past her stall without looking, the one whose pattern she had finished the week before. She had called that his truth revealed. What if she had made it his truth. What if every cloth on her table was a lie she had stitched into the world, and the powerful were not afraid of being seen — they were afraid of being written. "No," she said. "Test it, then." He pushed a loose thread toward her. "Weave me honest. See what happens." She did not touch the thread. If she wove him honest and he became honest, she was her father's daughter and every cloth she had ever sold was a small forgery of the world. If nothing changed, her whole gift was smaller than she believed. Mirth waited. He was still grinning.