Valiant (3 page)

I wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t stay with Father for a moment longer than I had to. I’d make a home for myself, somehow, even if I had to carve it out of the cliffs.

“
H
ere it is,”
said Father.

We stood in a narrow street, looking at our new shop—a modest storefront with a green door and windows that faced the street. All of Reggen was made of stone, as though the city itself had sprung whole from the cliffs behind it. This shop, slumping between its neighbors, was no different, its building stones cracked from supporting its weight for so long.

I’d never missed the thatched roofs of Danavir more.

Father had brought his old shop sign all the way from Danavir. He plucked it from the hired wagon and hung it above a small, rust-colored door in the same building:
Tailor
.

Just
Tailor
, the way others would say
King
.

Then he unlocked the narrow door—
not
the green one—and tugged it open. All I saw was a flight of stairs more narrow than the door itself.

Sky above. He’d bought us a garret shop. We’d freeze in the winter and bake in the summer.

“What do you think, Saville?” He turned with a flourish, as if he’d opened the door to a castle.

I just stared, the early spring sunlight barely warming my back. I couldn’t answer. Then I rushed past him and plunged up into the gloom. The stairs were steep and uneven, and I stumbled twice as I climbed.

When I reached the top, my breath puffed out before me. The garret was dark. One large window let in a pool of light that didn’t dare spread beyond my place at the top of the stairs. There weren’t rooms, just rope strung between hooks in the wall and a pillar to curtain off a sleeping area.

This was my new home. I’d have cried, but I was too angry for tears.

For the next hour, servants wrestled beds, cutting tables, and trunks up the stairs, while Father shouted instructions.

But it was Father’s silence, after the servants left, that scared me. He stood in the middle of the dirty room, his hands pressed against his head.

“Father?”

He didn’t respond.

“Did you hurt yourself yesterday when you—”

He jerked his head to look at me. “See to the fabric trunk, Saville!”

I didn’t move.

“Now!” he barked.

I shoved the trunk against the far wall, scraping it across the floor’s rough planks.

“Careful, Saville!”

“The fabric is
in
the trunk!” I shouted. “Pushing it across the floor won’t hurt your precious cloth.”

Father took a step toward me. “I told you—!”

The words slurred in his mouth and he stumbled. Something was wrong—horribly wrong. A great length of fear unfurled inside me.

Father slapped his fingers over his mouth, as if he could force it to work. When he looked up at me, I saw fear in his eyes, too. He tried to speak as I helped him to his narrow bed. Halves of words tumbled out of a mouth he couldn’t control.

“Father, I’m going for a physician, do you hear me? I’m going to get help.”

My terror made the next hour seem like two lifetimes. It felt like months to find the physician, years to convince him to follow me.

I didn’t think Father would be alive when I returned.

I dragged the doctor to Father’s bed. “Do something!”

The doctor held a candle close to Father’s face, pushing back his eyelids as if he could somehow look into his head, then moved the candle back and forth, ordering Father to watch it.

He couldn’t.

I saw no sign of the man I’d known. Father just lay there. I didn’t even know if he could see us.

“Apoplexy,” murmured the doctor.

“What?” I asked.

The doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Apoplexy, the paralysis that comes when someone has been struck by God.”

“Struck by God …?”

“What else could the old doctors call it? It’s an imbalance
of bodily humors. Bile builds up in the body, pressing against the brain. Finally, it causes great damage. A victim loses his speech, the ability to move, even.”

I looked down at Father, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“But what do we
do
?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Some doctors drill into the head to relieve the pressure. Blood follows the bile, you see, and when the blood is allowed to drain away, the patient sometimes improves.”

I nearly gagged. “Who would even try something so awful?”

“Katar has done great work with prisoners in Yullan, though fewer than half survived the procedure.”

“Fewer than half survived having someone drill into their skulls? I wonder why.”

For the first time, the doctor noticed that I was not pleased with him. His eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. “It’s a good thing this happened to a tailor—”

“
The
tailor,” I corrected, thinking of Father’s sign.

“You’ll need fabric, lots of it,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to diaper him like a child.”

He seemed to take some satisfaction from my horror.

“You don’t want this bed ruined, do you? Change him often, girl, or it will create sores.”

“I’ll take care of him,” I said. The doctor wouldn’t see me cringe again. “Then what?”

He glared at me, disappointed by my reaction. “He either dies, or he recovers.”

“Recovers? How long will that take?”

Another shrug. “He may be able to speak again. He may be able to walk. Or he may just stay there, in the bed.”

I looked down at Father.
Time to recover or to die …

Later that night, I knelt beside Father, watching him. He hadn’t moved in the hours since the doctor left. I’d never seen him so still in all my life.

Even then I couldn’t feel sorry for him. I couldn’t feel anything.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, as if that would blot out Father lying as still as a corpse on his bed and this awful garret—the room I’d planned to escape.

There’d be no leaving now.

After a long while, I looked up and knotted my hands to stop the shaking. I felt tears but blinked them back. With a deep breath, I stood, barely certain that I could, and took stock of the room: trunks scattered, tables clustered in the middle of the room.

It was time to set up shop.

A
week after Father
fell ill, I sat in front of the big window, our last few coins in the palm of my hand. Soon we would be out of money. Father lay in bed, rigid even in his sleep, his hands curled into claws. He’d clung to life with badgerlike tenacity, but he would not sew for a long time.

I dropped the coins into my lap and rubbed my eyes. I might be able to sell the fabric, but I doubted I could get a fair price for it. And how could Father sew once he recovered if he had no fabric left? In Danavir, I could have found work with a friend. If Father had secured even one commission here before his apoplexy, I could have finished it.

I pushed the coins in my lap around with a fingertip. Then I stopped, my finger on a small silver coin.

What if I secured a commission for the tailor of Reggen and then sewed it myself? I held the idea, felt the weight of it.

A girl couldn’t gain a commission. She wouldn’t be allowed to measure a man, let alone be trusted to sew for him. I scooped the coins up from my lap and poured them into Father’s money purse. They made precious little clatter—there was more purse than coin.

I could dress as a boy, as Father’s apprentice.

I sat perfectly still. I didn’t even pull the drawstring of the purse closed.

I could sew, I knew, but to make myself into a young man? I was tall enough. My face wasn’t very feminine—I could thank Father’s jaw for that. I didn’t have to be a knight. Just a tailor.

Ridiculous
. I closed the purse and almost put it away. Almost.

I opened the purse again and shook the coins back into my hand.
Look at them. You have money for two weeks. You don’t have the luxury to sit and hope something will happen
.

I closed my hand over the coins and walked to the cutting tables to examine Father’s equipment: the shears, his box of pins and needles—long pins for thick fabrics, needles as fine as hair for sewing silks. I knew how to use each and every one.

I set the coins on the table. Then I opened Father’s trunk and pulled back the canvas cover of the first bolt—a deep plum velvet. I made myself touch it, palm flat against the cloth.

So much would change if I dressed as Father’s apprentice. I’d have to tell our landlord that Saville had gone to visit family elsewhere. And if Father never recovered, I’d be trapped.

But he would. He must. In the meantime, we had to eat.

I moved to the trunk in which Father kept his already-sewn garments. They weren’t fine, but they were useful when a client needed something quickly. I picked up a shirt and held it in front of me. It would do. I spread it out on one of Father’s empty tables, and studied it the way a knight would survey an
opponent, my finger twirling in my hair.
My hair!

I reached for the shears.

When Father woke the next morning, he saw his new apprentice. He didn’t recognize me at first, his eyes wide in alarm.

“Father, it’s me.” I stepped toward him. “I’m going to find work for us—for me—until you can sew again.”

He examined me like a suit he’d crafted, as if looking for stray threads or crooked seams. But I was prepared for his scrutiny.

I’d wrapped a length of muslin around my chest as tightly as I could. I’d cut my hair to shoulder length and tied it back at the nape of my neck. I kept one lock and hid it in the bottom of one of the trunks. Mama liked my hair. Foolish as it seemed, I couldn’t bring myself to burn all of it. But of all the changes, it was the cravat that I hated the most. The length of silk tied around my neck felt like a hand squeezing my throat.

Father’s eyes slid over my hair, the cravat, the shirt and breeches that hung on a boyish frame … and he nodded.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even kindness. But it was the closest he’d come to approval in years.

For the rest of that day, I wore the garments so I’d grow used to them. But the clothing was nothing compared to walking like a lad.

I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t afford scrutiny the next day when I would go to the castle. The castle. I’d decided it would
be easier to gain an audience with the king while he held court than to secure an appointment with a noble family.

But every time I moved like a girl, I imagined being discovered. I saw the suspicion on the king’s face, heard him shout to the guards.…

I could barely keep the fear at bay.

I was practicing my walk that night when I noticed Father. He was beside himself with fury and flicked a finger with all the emphasis of waving his arm. He wanted me to try again.

I gritted my teeth. I hated obeying him, but I hated the thought of failure more.

So I walked the length of the room, then looked at Father. He blinked his eyes twice:
no
. The finger flicked. I walked again … and again.

Each time was better—my anger gradually pushed the fear aside. But it wasn’t good enough for Father.

Finally, after an hour, he raised his eyebrows as if my performance would have to do.

Somehow, that was worse.

“I am all that stands between us and starvation!” I seethed. “Would it be so terrible to give me a
thimbleful
of encouragement?”

Father’s gaze snapped to me, bright and burning, and he shook his head.
No
.

“Just you watch.” I clenched my fists. “I’ll gain a commission from the king himself. Your daughter can manage that much.”

The words were more breath than bravery, but I needed to hear myself say them. I needed to think I could be as badgerlike as Father.

Father would have none of it. “… entiss,” he whispered, “… entiss.”

“What?” I asked.

“… entiss!” he hissed.

Apprentice
.

I wasn’t his daughter. I was his apprentice. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Then I pulled in one breath. And another.