Book 3: Chapter 12 – New Equipment [Part 2]
Book 3: Chapter 12 - New Equipment [Part 2]
On their way to the de Laneys’ riverside manse, the carriage rattled through Bouchant’s heart. Stalls leaned into the street like gossips with elbows out, hawkers howled over one another about onions and ironmongery, and somewhere a pig screamed as if being murdered… which it probably was. Amid the clamor, a splash of color caught Seraphina’s eye; a narrow-fronted shop with a painted signboard with grinning jackanapes in motley, juggling wooden soldiers, and a doll in a lace gown.
“Stop,” she shouted, opening the window. “Here.”
The carriage lurched to a halt. Sir Frest, ever the dutiful, swung down from his saddle and tugged the door wide. “My lady?” His visor was up, his brow creased. “What is the matter? Have you seen something?”
Seraphina smiled sweetly, nodding to the bright little storefront. “That toy shop, I mean to have a look.”
Frest blinked. “Toys and dolls, milady? At your age…” He coughed into his gauntlet. “I mean… I only thought such things were for younger children.”
“So are sugared candies,” she replied sweetly, “and I know full well you rather enjoy them despite your advanced age. They will ruin your smile, Sir Frest.”
That shut him up. He stepped back, abashed, and offered a hand she did not take. Seraphina hopped down herself, skirts gathered, her feet finding the cleanest path.
A bell tinkled as she pushed the door like a child’s laugh. The smell of sawdust, linseed oil, and hot glue wrapped around her at once. Shelves pressed close on every side: ranks of painted soldiers in bright tabards, clockwork beetles that clicked and whirred, puzzle boxes carved with tiny dragons, and dolls of every size and complexion, some with porcelain faces pale as the moon, others with wooden heads and painted smiles.
Behind a counter littered with shavings stood the toymaker. He was old, truly old, with a spine bent like a bow and a fringe of white hair clinging stubbornly to his spotted pate. A nest of goggles hung about his head on leather straps, each lens a different size. His apron bristled with tools: awls and gimlets, tweezers fine as needles, little saws with little teeth.
He looked up sharply at the bell, eyes magnified grotesquely behind one lens. When he saw a girl in fine cloth, flanked in the doorway by an armored knight and a harried maid, his eyebrows immediately shot up.
He spoke in the thick, tonal cadence of the Empire, his consonants clipped, vowels rising and falling like a song. “Honored miss, forgive this humble artisan. How may I serve you?”
Seraphina answered him in his own tongue, the words rolling off her tongue with surprising grace. His mouth fell open. “You speak? Your accent is not the… I mean you speak very well for one not of the Provinces,” he managed with a laugh of delight. “Ha! A fancy lady with clever ears. This is a rare day.”
“I need parchment,” she said briskly, slipping back to Aranthian. “And a charcoal stick. Quickly, if you please.”
He scuttled to provide them. Seraphina spread the parchment on the counter, smoothed it flat, and began to sketch—quick, deft strokes, measuring with thumb and knuckle. A bodice no bigger than a palm, a skirt cut on the bias, sleeves puffed just so. “This,” she said, tapping the parchment, “is the size I require. Precisely. Not a hair broader.”
“For a doll?” the old man asked, peering. “Latest fashions, is it? As chance would have it, I was just assembling a new collection for the festival market. Lace, ribbons, little pearl buttons…” He chuckled, a dry, papery sound. “But this size… and holes at the back, that is curious.”
“My doll is… particular,” Seraphina said lightly. Invisible and winged, she did not add. “Do you have anything in the newest style? Empire waists are out—high collars are back in, and sleeves with slashes.”
“Ha! You’ve an eye.” He shuffled to a cabinet, tugged a drawer, and brought out tiny gowns on wire hangers, each no larger than a handspan. Silk in miniature, velvet with mouse-tail trims, brocade so thin it may as well have been painted. Seraphina sorted through them with a practiced touch, lifting, judging, discarding.
“These will do,” she decided at last, picking three. “But they must be altered to this exact measure.” Her knuckle rapped the drawing again. “Precisely.”
The toymaker pursed his lips. “This detailed work takes time, my lady.”
“I know full well that the efforts of the best take time, but alterations are easier to do than to create a dress from a fresh bolt of cloth, no?” Seraphina answered sweetly.
She turned to Miriam, who had been looking increasingly perplexed, and told her, “Milly, see to the payment. Have the doll garments delivered to the de Laney estate by the river. Make sure he is suitably compensated for his haste and skill.”
“Yes, milady,” Miriam said, already producing a purse.
While coin clinked and terms were haggled, Seraphina’s gaze wandered. A low shelf along the far wall held toys that were traditionally for boys: tin wagons, little castles, and a rack of tiny swords. All made from real metal and swordsteel. Her fingers closed around one hilt. The weight and balance pleased her.
In a flash of inspired impulse, she called over her shoulder, “Master…?”
“Zhoun,” the toymaker supplied.
“Master Zhoun. Could you craft a set of arms and armor in miniature? A sword, a dagger, and a spear. Not just as toys. Proper weapons, made as you’d forge the real thing, only scaled down. They should be sharp. Razor sharp.”
The old man blinked, then laughed, then blinked again when she did not laugh with him. “Sharp, my lady? For children? That would be… ah… unsafe.”
“They are for my brother,” she lied with a straight face. “He collects curiosities, and his tastes run to the unconventional.”
“Foreigners have the strangest of tastes.” Master Zhoun scratched his ear. “Armor, you say? What style?”
“Plate where possible, with some mail. Do not skimp on the rivets,” she mused, “Articulated elbows, knee cops that actually pivot.. I expect it to function.” She smiled pleasantly. “Imagine you are making this for a tiny little winged warrior. Make adjustments… like this,” she explained, scrawling a rough design that would allow for Tia’s wings onto the parchment. “And etch the breast with a symbol of my House,” she continued, drawing the Wisterias of the de Sariens.
The toymaker whistled low. “A few days at least. Perhaps a week.”
“A few days is perfectly satisfactory,” she said. “Deliver them with the dresses.”
Miriam was finishing with the coins—arguing a few silvers off the order, of course, just for the principle of it.
The noblewoman offered the old man a nod that was almost a bow. “You have been most helpful, Master Zhoun.”
“And you, most surprising, Lady…” He trailed off.
Seraphina smiled radiantly. “Seraphina.”
She swept out then, skirts whispering, the bell above the door chiming her exit. The street swallowed her at once: noise, stink, and color rushing in like tidewater. Sir Frest fell into step, face unreadable behind his visor. Miriam hustled behind, clutching a folded chit and a receipt.
“Armor for dolls now, milady?” Frest ventured at last as he opened the door of the carriage for her.
She simply shrugged, climbing in and settling in her seat.
“For your brother who does not exist,” he reminded her.
She smirked as Frest closed the door. A few moments later, he banged on the frame and the carriage began to move. “Well, not yet, at least. Though my parents will see to correcting that,” the girl muttered to no one in particular.
Tia settled on her shoulder as the carriage rolled on, past the market square, toward the Lurette’s gray gleam. Ahead, through the bare limbs of poplars, Seraphina glimpsed the de Laney manse: a long, low house of pale stone and steep roofs, standing like a ship beached upon the riverbank. Smoke curled from its chimneys, and a banner, a grove of black alder trees on a green field snapped in the wind.
The young noblewoman was quite looking forward to reuniting with her lady-in-waiting.