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.

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.

Yara was folding a scarf at her stall the next morning when the sky went dark over her roof. Wind kicked the hanging garments sideways. Rain hit the moss on the stall top and hissed. Customers scattered. One woman screamed. Yara held the scarf against her chest and looked up. A woman stepped out of the cloud. Her hair was white and lifting on its own. Her dress crackled with small lines of lightning. Her bare feet did not quite touch the ground. Yara knew her from a pattern she had woven six months ago: the storm goddess who tore the roof off a shrine because a priest kept her son waiting. Breeze. Mother of the wind god. "You," Breeze said. "You wove Mirth honest. I heard it in the wind." Yara set the scarf down. Her hands were already shaking. "I have a husband," Breeze said. "He lies about where he sleeps. Weave him. I want him at my loom telling me true, the way that trickster told you." She smiled. It was not friendly. "Or I tell every god from here to the sea what you can do. Your stall burns by evening. Your hut with it." Yara looked at the small crowd gathered at a safe distance. Priests. Merchants. A boy with a bucket. If Breeze spoke, they all heard. If Breeze spoke, gods came. Gods with worse tempers than a storm. "I cannot weave a god I have not watched," Yara said. "Then watch fast." "I need him here. In front of me. Talking. An hour, maybe two." Breeze's smile shrank. "He will not come for me. He runs when he sees my cloud." "Then I cannot help you." The lightning at Breeze's wrists brightened. Yara's shuttle rattled on the counter. She kept her voice flat. "Burn the stall," Yara said. "You still do not have him. You only have a dead weaver and a story other gods will want to test. They will come for me the way you came. And none of them will get what they want either, because none of them can bring me the one they are angry at." Breeze stared. The rain thinned. The lightning at her sleeves dimmed to a flicker. "Bring him yourself," Yara said. "Then I weave." Breeze stepped back into her cloud. "I will bring him." The cloud lifted. "Do not be gone when I return." The sky cleared. The crowd stayed where it was, staring at Yara, not the sky. A priest in the back had his mouth open. A merchant was already whispering to the boy beside him. Yara sat down on her stool. She had bought time. She had also just been named in front of thirty witnesses as the weaver who could hold a god honest. By nightfall, half the market would know. By tomorrow, the gods would. Breeze would not be the last one at her counter.