For the numbers—it would have been to Rhaena Olwak’s displeasure, who long struggled to teach the girl math using books fit for tiny children—tallies would suffice.
In the long Razasan days, which were just like any other days, she sat in her room at the inn and awaited correspondence. And that was where she did combat with numbers: putting quill to page like sword to flesh, desperately measuring her budget.
One patch-riddled dress. Old bread for breakfast. No unnecessary expenditures. Frugality had become its own addiction.
A BUJJIT
46 48 FORTNIGHT / JUNIER INQUISITER ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||
24 FORTNIGHT / RELEACE PAY ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||
SAVEING ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||||
FOR CHILD |||| |||| ||||
* * * *
The fifth day at the inn—she found out only the day before that it was called the Gruelmaster, which was an awfully unappetizing name—a courier who never spoke delivered for her a very formal page sealed by wax. There over a platter of hard cheese and last year's jam she wedged a finger under the wax, peeled it open, and pulled the page up to her eyes to squint at it.
To M. Wynsee,
Many thanks for your succint letter. At this time any counsel from Ruann is not formally recognized by any of our committees. We implore you to seek audience elsewhere, perhaps somewhere more geographically advantageous to you, and to better outline the purposes of your visit in your dispatch.
We have currently provided a copy of your original letter to Small Affairs that they might get in contact with you.
Sincerely,
G. Sartor, Lud.
* * * *
Twelve days in. She had a small purse of coins furiously scalding her thigh through her skirt-pocket. Get up, get out, visit the town proper, be something other than an insect hiding in the wall, she told herself. She could wait on Small Affairs all she wanted, but what would that do?
In the morning, when the Glass Sun hadn't yet burnt through the blanket of springtime fog and the mist lay across the Razasan streets like a tattered blanket, she wandered the streets until she found a tailor with two candles alight in the window. She used the palm of her hand to open the door and stepped into a world full of colorful drapery, embroidery, and fabric. The language of clothiers was a universal one: a stitch was always a stitch was always a stitch; a good stitch spoke a thousand languages, and a bad one cursed in twice as many.
One dress in particular spoke to her: a full-bodied bounty with a stiff waist and an ankleskirt, and around its hem were all the cycles of the moon—the Crawl Moon, Jernos called it—and she swore she lost months of her life staring at the perfect little circles, running her thumb over them. For a never-ending moment she was twelve, big-eyed and ready to punch another girl's teeth out for stealing her sewing, and she found herself both enamored and in awe of the delicate needlework, getting almost breathless and simultaneously driven to emotion and impulse by, what, a bit of embroidery?
"I want to buy this dress," she told the tailor, trudging through the Standard in hopes that he too spoke the same language.
"You can't afford it," he said over his ledger, never looking up.
How pedestrian; you never cared in your whole life about something as simple as a fucking dress, Glour'eya.
Stung, she said, "Who are you to say I can't afford it?"
"You can't afford it."
She frowned.
"I love it," she said, choking on those foolish, idiotic words, that weakling's admission of obsession: because how laughable, really, that she should find herself in a foreign land, wholly disconnected from everything she'd come to know, thumbing through ladies' clothes in a corner store just to pass the time, and it would hit her like this, a denial, a refusal, you can't, you can't, you can't, and her body's first reaction wouldn't be to lash out or snarl or curse, but to well up with hot and frustrated upset, that you can't would summon from the trembling edges of her eyes hot, burning liquid, and she'd sputter, "I love it," again, and her nose would run—
So she ran, too, right out of the tailor's shop. Back to the Gruelmaster. And up to the room she rented for but a fraction of her tallies.
On her door, a letter, which she read through bleary eyes.
Dearest M. Wynsee,
We have rec'd your missive addressed originally to [the name was redacted with a blot of ink] and believe it is in our best interest to forward your letter to another department. Small Affairs deals solely with minute land disputes between local livestock farmers and we do not believe ourselves appropriately accountable for matters of a non-domestic sort.
We have provided your original letter to Cultural Affairs, who should reach out to you in writing at the Gruelmaster within the coming week.
May you enjoy the splendors of our city,
Thom F. Garrault
She punched the wall above her bed's headboard until the skin along her knuckles split and smiled red.
For a minute the world, even in Razasan, made a lot of sense.