Herald of the Storm Read Free Page A

his task.

ONE
    S tanding on top of the stool, she could see out of her open window, out across the city almost as far as Northgate. The sky was darkening outside, but the coming of night didn’t bring any relief from the unseasonable heat. The air was still and muggy, and enclosed as she was in so heavy and uncomfortable a gown her flesh was getting clammier with every laboured breath.
    ‘You’re fidgeting again,’ said Dore in his heavy Stelmornian accent.
    Janessa breathed in deeply, sucking in her waist just as he had ordered when this current bout of torture began, and went back to standing like a statue. Dore Tegue might well have been the best dressmaker in the Free States but surely she was the one suffering for his art.
    ‘How much longer?’ Janessa asked through gritted teeth.
    Dore stopped ministering to the silk brocade that adorned the front of the gown and took a step back, looking at her with an arrogantly raised eyebrow. ‘These things cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes. Would you like to be announced at the Feast in a threadbare gown or would you prefer to be the talk of the evening?’
    ‘Right now I’d settle for something that didn’t cut me in two,’ she muttered under her breath, but it was clear Dore heard. It was with a sharp exhalation through his wide nostrils that he went back to attacking the dress with needle and thread.
    Janessa glanced over to Graye, who was sitting on the sill next to the enormous window that looked out onto the city – a city of wonders, secrets and adventure that she had been forbidden to ever enter. Her lady-in-waiting had a sly smile on her face, maybe deriving some sadistic pleasure from Janessa’s discomfort, but that wouldn’t last long. Janessa was determined that her friend would suffer similar torment in her turn.
    A sudden sharp prick of pain in her thigh made Janessa flinch, squeal and almost fall from the stool.
    ‘Dore, what are you trying to do, fix the dress or cover me in pinholes?’
    ‘I’m sorry, my lady,’ Dore replied, holding up the offending needle innocently. ‘But you keep moving. How am I expected to work under these conditions?’
    He looked as forlorn as an artist forced to paint without easel or brush.
    ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this for now.’ Janessa gathered up the heavy dress as she stepped from the stool, then wrenched out the band holding her long, red hair in a knot on her head, allowing it to fall about her shoulders in curling rivulets.
    ‘But my lady, I still have to fix the hem, gather in the bodice and finish the shirring on the sleeves.’
    ‘It can wait, Dore. If I have to spend one more second on that stool I’ll explode.’
    Petulantly Dore began to throw his scissors, bobbins, thimbles, yarn and needles into the various compartments of his small wooden tailor’s box. ‘I was treated like a lord in Stelmorn,’ he mumbled. ‘Ladies of refinement used to beat at my door, begging for the benefit of my skills, and here I am, reduced to little more than manservant. Prey to the whims of the ungrateful aristocracy. Whatever was I thinking?’
    With that he slammed his box shut, lifted his nose in the air and stormed towards the door.
    ‘You were most likely thinking about the money in my father’s coffers,’ said Janessa, before he could slam the door behind him.
    Graye began to laugh.
    ‘How many dressmakers does that make now?’ she said, smiling at Janessa who was still struggling within the confines of the huge, maroon-coloured gown.
    ‘Three … this month. Now will you stop grinning and help me out of this thing.’
    Graye giggled as she walked across the chamber and began to unlace the bodice.
    ‘You’re going to have to suffer through a fitting sooner or later,’ she said as she struggled with the lace bows. ‘The Feast is in less than a week.’
    ‘I know. But it’s just so tiresome, and see what I have to wear.’ She wriggled out of the dress and let it fall to the floor. ‘I