Yara Silk's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Yara did not touch the loose thread Mirth had pushed toward her. She pulled the small square off the counter and folded it into her apron. Mirth watched. His grin did not move. "Not that one," she said. "A bigger one. At home. Where I choose the threads." He tipped his head. "Choose what?" "How you met my mother. The true way. I weave it. We see if the cloth holds." He was quiet for a breath. That was the tell. He recovered fast. "Bold." "Come or don't." He came. Her hut sat at the edge of the moss line, tapestries nailed to the outer walls to keep the damp out. Inside, the ancestral loom took up half the room. It was older than her grandmother. The side posts were carved with small birds worn smooth by hands that were not hers. She set the loom, threaded the warp, and sat. "Talk," she said. Mirth leaned against the doorframe. He did not sit. "She sold bread. Three stalls down from a shrine I liked to rob." He shrugged. "I went in as a farmer. Bought a loaf. Short a coin. She knew. She sold it to me anyway." Yara's hands started. She threaded brown for the bread, dun for the false farmer's coat, a single bright stitch for the coin that was not there. "Go on." "I came back the next day as myself. To thank her." "As yourself." "A version." His grin thinned. "She laughed. Nobody laughs when I drop the face. She did." Yara's shuttle slowed. She looked up. He was not grinning now. His mouth was a straight line, and it looked wrong on him, like a borrowed coat. "You loved her," she said. "I stayed a season. That is what I have." "Did she know what you were." "By the end." "And she stayed." "Until you were coming. Then she sent me off. Said a child did not need two liars in the room." He looked at the loom, not at her. "She was right." Her hands were shaking hard now. The pattern under them was not the god she had woven at the stall. This one had a straight mouth. A woman with flour on her wrists stood beside him. Between them, a small bright stitch that was not a coin. Yara tied off the last thread. She lifted the cloth. Mirth's grin did not come back. He touched the patch nearest his heart, a green square she had not noticed before. His fingers stayed there. "That one was her," he said. "The lie I told to leave." He walked out. Yara sat with the cloth across her knees. Her hands would not stop. She had asked for the truth and gotten it, and the cloth had held him honest long enough to speak it. That answered one question and opened a worse one. If she could pull the truth out of a god by weaving, other gods would learn. And they would come to her stall next.