“Some have followed the Royalist army, some have holed up in Rock’s Ford or other Royalist-held territory. Those with enough money have fled to West Serafe. There’s a regular expatriate community at this point, Royalists who plan to return at the first sign of the king’s glorious victory. Here’s the draper.”
The draper’s small store tended toward linens and wools, with heavy broadcloths and fine worsteds on display in his front window, similar to the drapers who served the working classes of Galitha City. The ones I had frequented had taffetas and brocades proudly swathed across the windows, but no one in Hazelwhite needed anything so fine now.
“To be honest,” the draper said when Theodor inquired about his silk, “it’s been months since I could get a shipment of Serafan silk in, and this bit of Equatorial cotton is the last I expect to see for a good while. Shipping’s all sorts of cockeyed.”
“There is a war on,” Theodor replied with mild humor, which made the draper chuckle. “Anything at all?”
“Gray I’ve got—follow me,” he said, beckoning. “Here, take your pick.”
“We will, of course, pay,” Theodor said, pulling a cipher book from his pocket as I perused the limited selection. I ran my fingers over several bolts of taffeta, thin Serafan silk, and satin weaves in various shades of gray. I pointed out two whose weights were correct—the colors were different, but that didn’t matter now. The only red silk was a tissue weight Serafan silk in a hideous tomato red, but I reasoned that might work, backed with some linen.
Shouts and the unmistakable sound of shattered glass interrupted our tabulations. Theodor’s hand was on his sword as he moved toward the door, a utilitarian officer’s broadsword that replaced the flimsy ceremonial rapier he had carried as a duke and then a crown prince.
“Some trouble at the haberdasher’s,” Theodor said.
The draper snorted. “Man was a damned Royalist. Smash his windows and his nose for good measure, for all I care.”
I stiffened. Maybe the haberdasher had been a patent Royalist, and maybe he had been throwing in his lot for survival with whoever he thought might keep him from starving this winter. I couldn’t bear the weight of hating my enemy any longer, not when he could have been my neighbor. But I had, I acknowledged, been removed from these fights during my months abroad.
“There’s a group of—hold on, now.” Theodor glanced at me with half a smile working its way into a grin. “They’re coming here.”
“Not to worry, then?”
“You needn’t worry over nothin’, Miss Sophie,” a husky but definitively feminine voice asserted from outside. I followed Theodor to the door; the draper’s tinny bell jangled as we left. Before us, a small army of women in red kerchiefs tied around their heads in lieu of caps waited for us.
“I—thank you?” I said. “I confess I’m confused as to the purpose of this assembly,” I added.
The woman who had spoken, with broad shoulders and tow-bright hair, grinned. “We’re what’s left of the Red Caps of Hazelwhite,” she said. “The menfolk mostly all joined up, so keeping the order here is up to us.”
“I see,” I said. There were young women barely older than girls and women with gray hair visible under their kerchiefs, and several had babies on their backs.
“And so’s requisitioning supplies. Bring it out, Sukey.” From the open door of the old haberdasher, a woman tugged a crate toward me. She cracked it open—it was full of scarlet silk, neatly hemmed in squares a yard across. “When Mr. Finney realized we was buying the red kerchiefs for political-like reasons, he stashed ’em. But we figured they was still there, so when we heard you was looking for silk.” She shrugged.
“Thank you,” I said. I hesitated; this Finney was certainly a Royalist, but the part of me that was still a shopkeeper and not a military strategist felt as though I was stealing.
As if sensing my reticence, the woman standing by the crate added gently, “He was old Lady Pommerly’s man through and through.”
“Old Lady Pommerly is—was—Lady Floralette Pommerly, dowager of one of the estates near here. Her son was technically lord of the family estate, but he lived much of the year in Galitha City,” Theodor supplied.
“She was a mean old bat,” added the woman with the blooming kerchief. “And Rafferty Finney did whatever she wanted.”
“What happened to her?”
“Dunno. Heard she ran for Serafe. Heard she maybe didn’t make it.” The tow-haired woman shrugged. “Anyway. These are yours. With a couple requests.”
I knelt and felt the silk—good, brilliant scarlet. “Of course.”
“First, we’ve got a regular corps here sewing and doing laundry for the army. We’re getting paid, but we want assurances of winter rations from your stores. All our men are in your army, and we’re working for your army, and your army has bought our crops at a pretty scraping-bottom price. We’re glad to do it.” She paused. “But we have to eat.” As if on cue, a baby began to fuss. So did their children, I added silently.
I glanced at Theodor. He nodded. “Done. Send your numbers to our quartermaster. With my promise you’ll be included on the ration rolls.”
“And another thing. We’re on your side because it’s not right that people should get to rule other people on account of how they were born. Nobles were just born lucky, that’s all.” She squared her shoulders and levied a hard look at Theodor. “But we don’t much fancy anybody being born lucky. Men included.”
I stood, hedging my response carefully. “I can’t promise what precise rules will govern us after this war ends. But I can say I will advocate for the very thing you ask for.” I didn’t meet Theodor’s eyes—on this, we did not need to agree. “If we can run our businesses and our farms and our towns, why should we not have a stake in running a country?”
Behind me, Theodor shifted uncomfortably, and I knew I was edging close to promising too much. But the women surrounding me grinned and tied a red kerchief in their signature knot over my cap.
16
THERE WAS LITTLE TIME TO DESIGN A COMPLICATED FLAG, AND no one skilled enough to paint an elaborate device on the silk, so I pressed Theodor’s cipher book into service and divided the red and gray as carefully as I could to avoid waste, resulting in a simple gray banner with a red diagonal bar as our ensign. The regimental flags were copied from that design, adding additional thin bars of scarlet on the right-hand edge, one for the First, two for the Second, and so on.
Sianh admired the first completed flag as I finished the hem in the warm stone kitchen. “It will serve well,” he said. “The design is not as complex as the Serafan flags typically are, but there is something quite fitting about simplicity for this homespun army.”
“If we had Viola here, we could have created a painted device,” I said. “But I hadn’t any silk to waste and didn’t trust anyone green with it,” I said.
“They are, I assume, fortified with your abilities?”
“But of course,” I said. “A bit of extra luck stitched into each.”