7/919 – 5/920, 9th Era
Endergaln
Sav
Once, there was a tailor who had a malfunctioning mannequin.
The air genasi stood outside of his storefront swearing at the powered mannequin. It was meant to spin and sway in the window to display all the angles of the finery he had crafted and how graceful and lithe his clothing was in motion. Instead, it had spun so fast that one arm flew off, punched out the window, and sent the sign beyond it askew, leading to screams and a spray of diamond-glitter glass coating the paved square before the store. Karal Ochrefeldt, Fine Tailoring Since 890, said the wooden painted sign dangling crookedly from one hook, now scarred from shards of glass.
An engineer was among those who stopped to gawk at the display, their profession obvious from their overalls and the wide toolbelt settled on their hips. Unlike the rest who looked on with wide eyes and laughing mutters, she simply looked at the mannequin, still whirling rapidly with steam spewing from its vents, before she walked up. Pulling out a wrench from her belt, she lifted it with a practiced heft, waited a few breaths, then picked her instant to strike the spinning mannequin.
With a whine, it belched a final gout of steam, listed over to one side, and shuddered to a stop.
Scattered applause rose from the onlookers, with a stray boo or two from those who’d hoped the show would continue, and the crowd began to disperse. The engineer slotted the wrench back into their belt, nodded to the tailor (staring silent in shock), and turned to walk on.
“Oh come now!” The tailor snapped from his state to reach out for the engineer, his gloved hand catching her sleeve. “At least let me thank you, stranger! You may well have saved my life from this rampaging menace of a mannequin, let alone the residents of this district!”
Despite how the engineer protested that they would be late for their shift, Karal would not hear a no, and dragged them inside the shop to coffee and, it turned out, to sweep up the glass, board up the window, and repair the mannequin—the shop assistant had called out sick that day and the work needed done, and since this fine volunteer had appeared like an answer from the angels, who was he to not take advantage of the aid?
And that was how Sav and Karal met.
It was an odd friendship, if friendship it could be called; she would show up when she wanted (always after-hours), and he would serve coffee and snacks and give her a list of projects around the shop. While she was attending to those he would follow her with his coffee, unspooling stories about the district and his clientele and upcoming shows and disagreements with other designers and tailors in the city. She would listen, occasionally comment—though he hardly needed any responses to continue speaking—and then, done with the shop tasks, sit down to coffee and clean out the snack table (meanwhile, he never touched what he set out).
He never offered to pay, but one time when they prepared to leave, he held out the once-ragged scarf Sav had carried with them since before Northgate, given to them by a mendicant peddler they’d traveled with for a few grasps on their long wander north from Lord Harven’s ill-fated keep. They had thought it lost since the week before, and would have been ashamed to confess that they nearly shed a few tears over the loss—stupid, over a scarf.
Only now here he held it, one side still the original faded material with asymmetrical cut-lines cunningly hiding the mended patches and edges, the other side made of a thick new wool in a stain-resistant cream. When he put it on her, there were hidden buttons that kept it snug to her throat without having to knot it.
His eyes narrowed to daggers, daring them to say anything. They didn’t, but they did have to bite their lip against the lump in their throat.
After that, at infrequent intervals there would be something hanging for them when they left—a shirt, a vest, a set of trousers or cufflinks. Sometimes it was practical, sometimes extravagant, sometimes it was even for Aloysius (who got on very well with him), but always it was well-made. Most of the time it had pockets.
The first time he placed a billowing confection of a dress in massive sky-blue swathes of fabric, Sav had stared, and for the first time said something about the gift: “But—”
“Well, I don’t want it! Give it away to one of your little friends if you hate it so!” Karal snapped, and stomped off upstairs.
Sav took the dress and gave it to Peach. It was too large for her, given as Sav was at least half a foot taller and had a different build to boot, but the volume and construction was such that she could cut it down to size and reuse the extra fabric elsewhere, and the color brought out the pink in her cheeks.
From then on, it was as if Karal took the tacit acceptance as a challenge to broaden the scope of the items he would leave for her. Once, when they balked at something that no one of their acquaintance might have liked, he somehow bullied them into putting it on right then. They still hated it, but Karal relented after that and let them leave it behind. “At least you tried it, that’s all I ask,” he sniffed. “I can’t abide a closed mind in any field.”
Sav might not have understood the things he swore were chic and absolutely stunning, but she could appreciate expertise, and that Karal had. Not only was he a consummate tailor and designer, he also was clearly a deft salesman and master of seizing advantage, considering how, over the course of months, he got her to upgrade his store without paying her a cent for labor. Ochrefeldt Tailoring had started as a two-story shop with the retail space below and living quarters above, with a damp, cold basement and a drafty attic. By the time she was done with it, it was a two-story edifice with a sales floor downstairs, living space upstairs, a dry, finished basement for workspace, and a sealed, cozy attic for storage, along with a small bevy of well-behaved automatons. He had to hire an extra assistant to handle the extra work that he could now take on with more workspace.
In his own way, though, he repaid her in food, gossip, knowledge, and a chestful of clothing she didn’t know when to wear, except not in the workshop and not out exploring. (Which left very little else, to be honest. Half of the reason they started catching plays at the local theater, besides nostalgia, was to be able to tell Karal that they’d worn one piece or another.) And where she’d use the knowledge that she was apparently a “warm Earth palette” and had an “inverted triangle” body shape she had no idea; still, it was oddly vindicating to be told that orange did, in fact, suit her skin tone.
If nothing else, when they brought their travel clothing to him for ideas on how to make it more hardy and useful, he did add more pockets and lined it to be warmer and shift more easily with their movements, as well as repairing the wear with more grace than they’d been able to. Besides, the sewing and pattern techniques he demonstrated proved handy on the adjustments they sometimes needed to make to their own kit or to parts of the automaton-work they were doing. So when the newer assistant, Lilyeva, told them under her breath one day that “it’s not fair, you know; if you joined the carpenters’ or the tinkers’ union they’d ensure you got paid a fair wage for the changes you’re making,” Sav just smiled at her. “It’s on’y a bit a handy-work, lass,” they said, despite Lilyeva probably being a handful of years older than them, “an’ I get enough else outae it in exchange. But I appreciate the tip.”
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