Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith Page A

business, so I would not use the palace pass.
    She broke my gold piece into satisfyingly heavy six-sided silvers and a handful of small square coppers, and then she and her partner rowed me into the city as the sun began its slide toward the west, lighting up the whitewashed buildings with warm, peachy rose, and intensifying to jewel tones the painted shutters and flower boxes and vine-trailing iron work.
    That bend in Alassa Canal was largely made up of book sellers. The front windows of their shops displayed books and scrolls, old and new.Pine House’s specialty seemed to be illustrated travel records, memoirs, and biographies.
    The Hour of the Lily was when many shops closed and others, mostly places of entertainment, opened for the evening. Booksellers catering to the court and to richer folk usually stayed open late. Tif’s shop was open, its door carved to resemble the outer edges of an open book.
    Inside, the fine display shelves and little reading tables were presided over by a woman wearing a rich overrobe in the deep V-fronted style called “swan wings.” It was embroidered in yellow knotwork over brown linen silk. Merchants dressed to signify success, as everyone believed that success bred more success. “May I be of service, Scribe?”
    “I am here to see my cousin Tiflis, if she is off-duty.”
    The woman’s inviting smile lessened at this evidence of mere personal business, but few dared to be rude to a royal scribe. “Second floor.”
    I found Tiflis in a parlor filled with fine papers, desks, and inks. Wide windows in all four walls let in the florid sunset colors; still-dark glow globes in sconces waited for someone to bespell them to light.
    At my entrance Tif laid aside her book, her manner casual, as if it had been an hour, a day, and not a year since we’d last seen one another.
    She introduced me around with obvious pride, ending with a thin girl our age dressed in a robe with great curling leaves of dull gold over pale eggshell blue silk. This girl, named Nali, eyed me speculatively from under a curled fringe of red hair as she made her Peace.
    Then Tif led me up to the third floor dormitory.
    The view from the journey scribes’ curtained cubicles (each had a window) was over the complexity of pattern-tiled roofs and balconies on the alley behind the shop.
    “It’s pretty,” I said.
    “You know it’s against the law to let any part of a property lapse into unsightliness?” she said.
    “I mean your space. The way you have fixed it up, with this book shelf over your sleeping platform.”
    “It’s small. I’m sure yours is ten times as grand.”
    My pay would be small, but I would always live in a palace. Tif knew that, but because she was Tif, she had to offer a challenge.
    “I hope you will invite me to see the festival of lights,” I said. “Which I will never see from my room.”
    “Oh, I will. But only if you bring some of those good cakes from your friends in the kitchens.” After this reminder of my service in the kitchens,she sat on the bed, waving me to the desk chair. “So you got free time already? I hadn’t expected you to come for a week or more.”
    I couldn’t resist—and the moment the words left my lips, I saw my mistake—“The princess gave me leave.” I tried to mitigate the error by adding, “Tell me about your life here.”
    To her peers Tif had shown me off, but now that we were alone, the competition narrowed to us. I saw it in how her spine lengthened, her chin came up, and her voice sharpened as she launched into an affected speech about how hard
they
worked, how difficult it was to copy books while keeping an eye to beauty on every page—a hint at how much easier it was to make full scribe in the palace than here in the world of commerce, where life was fast and challenging, and how much harder it was to design beautiful books instead of being a mere copyist. “Towers scribes are responsible for making every page look exactly like the original.