Crewel (21 page)

‘Then think of one,’ he says into my hair.

He lingers there for a moment, and I close my eyes, wondering if that kiss really meant nothing to me. The
ding
of the lift door snaps them back open. Beside me, Erik straightens and extends his arm to hold the sliding door – protecting me – as I cross the threshold.

The strands of light wrapping one another in the void mesmerise me. I’ve found the seam in Loricel’s illusion and opened it. I clutch my right arm against my body; my fingers ache to reach out, to discover what the thick rough weave feels like. I force myself to keep my hands back away from the breach now. This room, here in the distant tower, where we can call any place in Arras before us, is the only place that feels real.

‘You could waste away there,’ Loricel says behind me.

The studio was empty when I arrived, but I knew she’d be back soon. Now that she’s here, I wish I had more time alone to study the rift. If I’d been here much longer, I might have crossed the line and touched the rough, raw material that billows out between Earth and Arras.

Loricel moves to stand beside me. ‘It’s hard to fathom, isn’t it?’

‘I see it,’ I say, ‘but it feels like another illusion . . . I want to touch it.’

‘Like your hands are physically being drawn to it,’ she says.

‘You too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you?’

‘No.’ There’s the firmness of resignation to her voice. ‘I guess I don’t want to know. There’s so much possibility until I touch it. Perhaps its powers outweigh my own, or perhaps I could manipulate the raw material as I manipulate the fabric of Arras. I don’t know which I prefer, so I keep my fingers back.’

‘When did you see it the first time?’ I ask.

‘Kinsey, my predecessor, showed me,’ she says, tilting her head and regarding me with half-open eyes.

‘And all these years? You’ve never—’

‘Perhaps I’m a coward.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s harder not to touch it. I want to so badly. It’s a compulsion. I admire your ability to deny it this long.’

Loricel snorts. ‘Maybe I’ll do it before I die.’

I sigh deeply and turn to close the spot. My fingertips burn when they skim the raw material as I repair the hole; it’s the most feeling I’ve had in them for weeks.

‘You can feel it?’ she asks.

‘It’s pulsing. Alive,’ I say quietly.

‘Because it is full of life,’ she says. ‘I know this is hard for you to accept.’

‘How do you close opened eyes?’ I ask her, desperate to know how she’s restrained herself through the years.

‘Like you do at night,’ she instructs me. ‘You work the loom until you’re too tired to go on, and then your eyes close naturally.’

‘Is that why you’re refusing renewal?’

‘Yes, I know it must feel horribly unfair. My leaving you here to take over, but—’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself,’ I stop her. Even now I feel the burden of the raw weave pressing down on me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her.

‘I couldn’t leave it,’ she says. ‘Not without a true Creweler in place to carry on my work. Adelice, you must know how I feel about the Guild. About Cormac, Maela, and their puppets. But that pulse you feel, that electricity, that’s not them.’

My fingers sting as she speaks, reminding me how they want to touch the raw material, but I do my best to push the feeling down deep inside me. ‘We don’t do it for them.’

‘No,’ she agrees. ‘We do it in spite of them.’

‘Will they keep watching me?’ I ask.

‘They didn’t stop watching me until I was seventy,’ she says. ‘Cormac is many things, but he was the first to realise I wasn’t a threat to Arras.’

‘I guess I have a while to wait.’

Fifty-four years.

Loricel opens her mouth and then presses her withered lips back together.

‘What?’ I ask, scanning the room. ‘They’re watching us now?’

‘The illusions in this room are too complex to track.’

Now I understand that she’s not sure she wants me to know the truth, because it might be too much for me to live with. Loricel needs to make sure Arras has a Creweler after her death, and if I leave, it won’t.

‘You have to understand my dilemma,’ she says finally. ‘My whole life is this world. I have given everything to it.’

‘I think I understand,’ I say.

‘I wish you could. But until you’ve devoted your life, fought human nature, harnessed matter itself, and contained it for decades, you can’t. It’s a lot to ask of anyone.’ The lines on her face deepen as she speaks, as though the weight of years is dragging down her very skin.

‘But if I don’t—’

‘Then it will fade away.’

My eyes find the floor, and I inhale for strength. ‘So you won’t stay, even if I leave?’

‘No,’ she confirms. ‘My age has passed. It is up to you. Of course, I hope you will stay. I believe that you feel the pulse and understand its importance.’

‘How long will it survive without a Creweler?’

‘They have enough material stocked to last a decade. Maybe,’ she answers. ‘But it will be chaos – an extended apocalypse. And Cormac will be in charge by then.’

‘Of the Coventry?’ I ask. ‘He acts like he already he is.’

‘He oversees us now, but soon he’ll be elected prime minister of Arras.’

‘He’ll have control over everything,’ I whisper.

‘Except you. If you stay.’

I take a seat on a velvet divan, working through this revelation. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry. My sister is here. I won’t leave her.’

‘That’s the problem,’ Loricel says. ‘I want you to make an educated decision. You know about the new remapping tech?’

‘They talked about it at the State of the Guild. They mapped me the other day,’ I tell her.

‘Cormac has mapped each of us—’

‘Even you?’

She nods. ‘He claims that they are trying to understand why some girls have the ability to see and touch the weave and others don’t. He’s particularly interested in why most men can’t see it.’

‘Most?’ I recall her saying she believed some men could weave.

‘Most can’t. There are rumours of departments where men work with the weave, but the Guild always denies it.’

‘Do you think they exist?’ I ask, realising I’m finally getting more of the story.

‘Definitely. The Coventry is just the face of the Guild. What we do is important, but many more than us are at work.’

I have a hard time imagining someone more powerful than Loricel. ‘More important than you?’

‘My – our – skill,’ she corrects herself, ‘is necessary to harness the actual raw materials. Without that Arras would decay and crumble from within. Then they need Spinsters to add and maintain, but our value stops there.’

‘But they still need us.’ The Western Coventry alone houses a hundred girls and women who work shifts around the clock. There’s no way Arras could survive without Spinsters.

‘Yes, but if they could simulate our skill, they would not.’

‘That’s why they’re mapping me,’ I whisper.

‘They haven’t figured it out yet,’ she says. ‘But the rate at which they are producing manipulation technology worries me. It will not be long.’

‘I can’t let them map me again,’ I say, balling up my fist in my lap.

‘They won’t ask your permission,’ she says with a wry smile. ‘Besides, they already have you scheduled for it.’

‘Is Cormac communicating through you now?’

‘No, it’s my job to lie to you. Cormac assumes I won’t tell you the truth, because he believes I’ll put Arras above you.’ She stops and studies my face for a moment. ‘Because I always have in the past.’

‘Always?’ I ask.

‘It’s not my place to make a decision for you, especially considering what they have planned.’ Loricel’s eyes drift to the floor and when she looks back up, they wander between myself and the walls of her studio.

‘You don’t have to tell me what they have planned for me,’ I say. ‘I’m smarter than I look.’

She laughs, but no trace of amusement stays on her face. ‘They are going to map you again when you go in for evaluation.’ Her words burst forth as though they’ve only barely managed to escape.

‘I see,’ I murmur.

‘No, you don’t,’ she says in a rush. ‘Then they plan to remap you.’

I think of the petty housewives at the State of the Guild thrilling at remapping their children; they were excited to make them more obedient. I push down the scream of anger threatening to spill out of my mouth, which will surely bring the guard up.
How dare they?

‘They can study me all they want,’ I say.

‘Eventually they will find their answer—’

‘And then they can finally kill me.’ My heart no longer leaps when I speak of my death. Its inevitability is another fact of my new life here. I guess I’m transitioning well to the idea.

‘Maybe, but they’ll have to remap you first, to succeed in making you docile.’

‘I don’t think they could go far enough to make me
docile
,’ I say, the last word oozing with rage.

‘You saw how far he was willing to go with Enora,’ Loricel says.

‘Why do you think they tested the remap on Enora first? Because of her affair with Valery?’ I guess.

‘Criticism of the relationship was a ruse,’ Loricel says. ‘It provided an easy excuse to test it on her.’

‘Did she know? What they planned to do to her?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. They took her away in the night. I wasn’t notified.’

They always come in the night.

Even if most of what Loricel is telling me is pure theory, there’s the bitter edge of truth to some of it. Better to be prepared. ‘How long do I have?’

‘They’re still running tests,’ she says. ‘To be honest, Enora’s suicide rattled them. Cormac is afraid you will become unstable, too.’

‘How long?’

‘A week,’ she says, ‘at the most.’

I stand and walk to the wall, trailing my fingers along the peaceful image of the calm ocean; it ripples where I touch it, distorting and coming back together. It’s still the same image, but now it bears a shadow where my hand disrupted it.

‘There’s nowhere to run,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘Enora knew that.’ I turn back to face her. ‘It’s why she killed herself.’

Loricel heaves a sigh. ‘She was confused, Adelice.’

‘Because they screwed with her,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘She was lost. I could see it the last time we spoke, but I didn’t know what they’d done to her.’

‘You couldn’t have prevented it,’ Loricel tells me.

‘I could have. I’ve been fighting them since the moment they arrived at my house. If I’d come along willingly, my parents would be alive and Amie would be safe. Enora and Valery’s secret would be safe. She and Valery—’

‘Would be living half a life,’ Loricel stops me. ‘Don’t overestimate your culpability. Death is the only escape for us.’

‘But that’s what I don’t get,’ I admit. ‘Maela told me there was no escape, even in death.’

Loricel presses her lips together. ‘I’m not sure exactly what Maela means. Her ambition makes her a powerful woman in her own right. Because of it, she knows much more about the Guild’s inner operations than the rest of us.’

‘What happens to people when they die before their thread is ripped?’

‘It happens so rarely—’

‘But it does happen,’ I press.

‘Occasionally. And when it does, we remove the remains of the thread,’ she says.

‘Remains?’ I recall the intricate strings that bind tightly together to make up a single whole thread.

‘When someone dies before a removal request is completed, part of their strand . . .’ Loricel pauses and meets my eyes. ‘Disappears.’

A chill runs through my entire body. ‘Where does it go?’

‘They aren’t sure. That’s why they’re so careful to remove weakened strands themselves. It’s why they capture enemies first or rip them directly. The Guild wants control over removed threads.’

A thousand questions are racing through my head, threatening to spill out at once. It’s a lot to consider – plots and remapping. I take a deep breath and decide on one to ask first, before the others. ‘Why do they care what happens to the removed threads?’

Loricel shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then who cares what happens to the parts that disappear?’

‘When I first began at the Coventry, we didn’t do pre-emptive removals. We simply patched and removed the remains. About fifty years ago, that changed,’ she explains.

‘What do you think happens?’ I ask. Even if I’m not sure I believe everything she’s told me about Earth and the origin of Arras, she still knows more than anyone else.

‘I think the part of the thread that disappears goes back into Arras.’

‘Into the weave? But wouldn’t that provide new raw material?’ I ask.

‘Theoretically.’ A note of distrust rings in her voice. ‘It could strengthen Arras.’

‘Then why rip them pre-emptively? Why not utilise them?’

‘The Guild doesn’t trust what it can’t understand. Letting those people go is an act of faith they’re incapable of.’

I know she’s right, but I still don’t fully understand the Guild’s motives for the pre-emptive removals, and I don’t think Loricel does either. This is about more than control.

‘I don’t understand why they don’t tell us about Earth or remnants. There has to be a reason they don’t want us to know about them. Even you think it’s important enough to tell me,’ I point out.

‘Some things shouldn’t be forgotten.’

‘Remembrance is never useless,’ I say, recalling my mother’s wise, quiet smile whenever she spoke those words to me as a child. My fingers twist to the techprint on my wrist.

‘It’s important that you understand where we come from, Adelice. Especially if you will be assisting in the mining operations,’ she continues. ‘Earth’s resources can’t last forever, not if the Guild tries to mine without the support of a Creweler. They won’t have anyone who can see the raw materials, but that won’t stop them from trying.’

‘Wait, if we’re pulling the material from the surface,’ I say, my eyes growing wide, ‘then Earth is frozen!’

Loricel cocks her head to the side and regards me thoughtfully. ‘So you’ve discovered warping.’

Warping
– that’s the perfect word for it. The moments I made in my quarters weren’t frozen, they were warped. I take a deep breath and admit my secret to her. How I can touch time without a loom. I even tell her about the separate moments I’ve woven, but I leave Jost out of my stories.