I found myself standing in the messiest, most disorderly room I have ever been in—and I have seen the worst my own brothers’ rooms had to offer. Strips of fabric lay scattered in such heaps and piles that I could barely see what color the floor was. Bolts of cloth were propped against the walls, and people dressed in white were rushing back and forth, carrying more. Despite their air of diligence, they all stopped to bow low to Mistress Parmina before they hurried on and somehow still managed to jostle into me as they did. Fox sidestepped them with little effort and looked around with interest.
“Parmina?” It wasn’t a voice; it was a roar that could have rattled glass, though none of the people running around so much as blinked. The largest and hairiest man I had ever seen in my life stepped into view. He was so tall that the top of his hair grazed the ceiling, and his arms looked as if a brown bear had mated with the fuzziest carpet in the land and produced twins. I could barely see his face, for his beard started somewhere near his eyebrows and ended at a carefully trimmed point several inches away from his chin, at the center of his chest. He wore a thick, knee-length jacket made of bright-silver silk and several gold rings bearing different cuts of diamonds on his fingers. His curly hair was pulled back from his face in a long ponytail, and his right ear was pierced with a crystal stud. In contrast, his heartsglass was unadorned and purple hued.
“Ah, Parminchka! How good to see you!” He reached us in three long strides and scooped Mistress Parmina up in his arms, swinging her around. This was a difficult feat, but the men and women around us simply ducked out of the way. I didn’t know if I was allowed to drop the asha’s train but decided at the last minute not to; when the man snatched the old woman up, he nearly jerked my arms off its sockets. “Ah, what should I do for you? I see you wear my most elaborate of hua today! Do you wish another? More dragotsennosti for you? More gold?”
I feared Mistress Parmina would slap him and was shocked when she threw her head back and laughed. “Put me down, you large buffoon! I have not come here to add to my collection, my milaya. I have come here to help this wretchling start hers.”
The man she called Rahim set her down, his attention now riveted on me. “Ah! Is this your new uchenik? Is she the little novice I have heard so much about, raising the corpses and causing damage to the Falling Leaf? Ah!” He clucked his tongue, a strangely matronly sound coming from someone who looked anything but. “But she is strong, ya? I can tell that much. As Dark as an asha can be. You will be my latest challenge, little uchenik, and your Mother Parminchka will thank me for performing yet another miracle on the Valerian. Agata! Pavel!”
A boy and a girl disengaged themselves from the rest of the people bustling about and hurried forward. The girl held a piece of parchment and a small quill, while the boy moved toward me, holding a curled piece of measuring tape.
“You will stay there and not move for the better part of an hour until I am done with you.” Rahim instructed me. “Stretch out your arms on either side of your body, like so.”
I obeyed dumbly. I thought I was on my way to be punished, not to be measured for…for what? “Mistress Parmina?” I asked weakly.
“Silence, girl.” The old woman kicked away a pile of doublets on a chair and settled herself comfortably on it. On cue, two more assistants appeared beside her. One carried an elegant crystal goblet with wine, and the other a footstool and a pile of cushions. The old asha lifted her feet, and the girl slid the footstool underneath them with practiced skill. Fox quietly retreated from the whirlwind of activity that was starting up around me, moving instead toward one of the tables laden with rough sketches of motifs and patterns. “You will only speak when spoken to. Do you understand me?”
She gave no indication that she was going to explain any further, so I said nothing, only listened in a kind of daze while Rahim continued his one-sided conversation. He prowled around me, eyeing me the way a tiger might eye a young deer, while Agata took furious notes and Pavel measured me from all angles with his tape. “There is some promise in you, little uchenik. Skin between beige and barley, midnight eyes. Gold for accents only then, but you wrap yourself around as much silver as you want and still shine. Pavel! Under her arms and three inches below her bust.” The measuring tape dipped down to comply. “Thirty-four dyuymov, two and three-quarters. How do you like this sherwani, little girl?”
“Excuse me?” I was losing track of when he was talking to me, to his assistants, or to himself.
“I said, how do you like this sherwani?” Rahim tapped at the long coat he wore. “Popular for the men in Kion but not for the men in Tresea. Agata, take note. Eighteen inches down and across, three and a half in the waist. In Tresea, the men wear fur, but not in the fashionable ways. We kill the bears, the possums, the beavers, and then we stick them on the head, like so.” He gestured. “Boring and unappealing. So I move here to Kion, where the clothes have shape and the hats do not stare back, and your mistress, she has the heart of gold and took pity on the little downtrodden boy from the cold north. I start my shop with her support, and now we flourish. We flourish very much. Rahim Arrakan is now the best word in hua.”
“I think the correct phrase would be ‘the last word in hua,’” Fox murmured.
Rahim frowned. “No, we are the best word. I would prefer death than being last. Agata! Fourteen inches, twelve on each side. Don’t move, little uchenik. I must see how big your breasts are.”
I turned bright red and instinctively tried to cover myself.
“No, no, uchenik! We are all girls here.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke, and then large, burly hands enveloped my smaller ones, holding me still. “Except the handsome brother, of course. Pavel, line it up a santimetr to the right; we must accentuate her form like so…yes. Agata, twenty-one, twenty-seven, twenty-two.”
“Well, Rahim?” Mistress Parmina spoke up.
“Very nice, Parminchka. She has a nice form and will do very well in silks. Long legs and a high waist. Small or large, her breasts will be works of art in my gowns.”
I blushed harder. No one paid me any attention.
“But not the dark gold for this one, no. No oranges and peaches and brown leaves, and I shall know the day you hate me if it is the same day you let her wear all shades of pink, Parminchka. The embers are already in her skin in abundance, and she will have no need of their colors in her hua. The tasteful, bright-gold etchings, maybe. But mostly blues and greens and grays for this one. Do not touch that, boy!”
Fox, who was in the middle of reaching for one of the sketches on the worktable, paused.
“They’re spellholders, boy! A little smudge and they can go…” Rahim’s beefy hands began to raise but then lowered again. “Well, they will be hard to remake.”
“I will require a dozen official hua for her, my milaya. Two of each color you think best for her. And then half a dozen more in every kingdom’s style to start.”
“A dozen official hua?” I echoed.
Rahim looked kindly down at me.
“You still do not know, little uchenik? You are to debut as an apprentice in two months’ time, and it will not do to have no collection of your own. It will not be seeming to borrow one from another asha, for they might believe my Parminchka thinks cheaply of you.”