A moment ago she would have been glad to reject anything Trader, like her scarlet mourning. Now she blinked with dismay. He was right; she knew he was, but … She smoothed her hand over a sleeve. She would ask Lark. Lark would know what to do.
Frostpine resettled his belt. “Kirel’s aprons and mine are too big. We’re off to the tanners’.” Putting an arm around her shoulders, he steered her out into the rain.
Watching Briar and Tris bicker as they washed the supper dishes, Daja remembered Frostpine’s instructions. It still bothered her to think of putting off her mourning clothes, but she knew the smith was right. Scarlet clothes were too expensive. “Lark?” she asked, hesitant. “I—there’s a smith who’d like me for an assistant.”
Lark had been about to rise from the table. She settled back into her chair instead. “Does he have a name?” she asked.
“Frostpine.”
Lark and Rosethorn shared a look—an odd look, thought Sandry, who watched them with interest.
“Niko was right,” murmured Rosethorn.
“We know Frostpine,” Lark told Daja. “He’s a good man, and a fine smith. You’ll learn a lot from him. He wants to see you in the afternoons?”
Daja nodded. “Are there—do you know where I could find—well, other clothes?” She smoothed a hand over her scarlet tunic. “Nothing fancy, just—leggings, maybe, and some shirts.”
Lark nodded. “That’s sensible—it’s no use getting your mourning all burned and streaked in the forge. I don’t have leggings, but will breeches do?”
Daja nodded, looking at the table in front of her.
A warm brown hand rested on her shoulder. “I can make you a scarlet headband, and a scarlet armband, so you’ll have some colors to wear for your family,” Lark told her. “So people will know of your loss.”
For a moment Daja couldn’t speak past a lump in her throat. Lark had seen her heart. She knew what it cost to put aside the scarlet and had offered a practical way not to. Now the Kisubo spirits would not be angry and take revenge, or think that she hadn’t loved them. “Thank you,” she whispered. “That is kind.”
“Then let’s take care of it right now.” Lark took Daja upstairs, where general stores for the cottage filled boxes in the space between the girls’ rooms. “These should fit you,” she told Daja as she opened a crate. Sorting through folded clothes, she picked out several pairs of breeches—three in different shades of brown, one in leaf green, one in dark blue—and placed them in the girl’s outstretched arms.
“With the weather turning hot, these should be suitable,” Lark said, adding light, sturdy tunics in green, orange, light brown, and blue to Daja’s stack. “Why don’t you try them all on? Those that don’t fit, bring to me. I’ll have the headband and armband for you by tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Daja whispered, clutching an armful of clothes that smelled of cedar chips and sun-drying.
“It’s hard to break traditional ways,” Lark said kindly. “If it helps, the people of Caravan Qurilta wore headbands and armbands one year when they followed the Spice Trails into Aliput. There, all-scarlet clothes means disease in the house.”
Daja frowned. Hadn’t she heard about that somewhere?
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Lark said in Tradertalk, framing her eyes with two fingers. Among Daja’s people that sign was as holy as a vow to Koma and Oti. “I rode with them when it happened. They’d lost the caravan-master and three of the guards in a rockslide.”
“You lived with Traders?” Daja blushed; she hadn’t meant to sound shocked.
“I wasn’t always a house bird.” Lark’s eyes twinkled. “I belonged to a company of acrobats. We traveled to Yanjing to work and to learn their acrobats’ tricks.” Gently she pinched Daja’s upper and lower lips with her fingers, to get the girl to close her mouth. “Have I shocked you with my disreputable past?”
Daja gasped. “Oh—Lark, no, no, I was just—” Looking at the woman’s dancing eyes, Daja realized Lark had been joking.
“Your family won’t hate you if you relax a bit, you know,” the woman told her softly. “I think they’d want you to really live your life, trangshi or no.”
Daja turned to take the clothes into her room, thinking about what Lark had said. A flicker of green—a cartwheel?—caught her eye. She looked back, to see Lark turn a second cartwheel before she went down the stairs.
The woman looked back and up at her. “And I’m not completely a house bird yet,” she said, and winked.
Smiling, Daja went into her room to try on her new things.
8
That night Tris slept deeply, without dreams. When the voices got her attention just after dawn, she was already awake, feeling more rested than she had in a long time. For a moment she cringed, afraid of still more evidence that she was losing her mind. Then she remembered what Niko had told her. The voices weren’t signs of insanity—he wanted to know what they said to her.
“Quick! There he—”
“No, that way! Circle him!”
“It’s that cursed thief-boy!”
Tris rolled off the bed and thumped her knees. She scrabbled under the bed for her shoes.
“Be careful of that tree!” the voice cried. “It’s a Yanjing shakkan, and priceless, priceless!”