The afternoon light in Threadbare Alterations fell through the rain-streaked bow window on St. Jude’s Lane, lighting up drifting motes of wool lint and dry chalk dust. On the cast-iron gas ring behind the cutting counter, the tin kettle gave a low, whistling gasp as the water came to a hard simmer.
Jo Saye reached out with a cloth pot-holder, lifted the kettle from the flame. Then it poured the water into a brown baked-clay pot containing two spoons of loose black tea. In the back parlor, past the half-drawn calico curtain, she could hear the soft, rhythmic scrape of Martin’s wool-slippered feet. Her convalescent husband moved between his wingback chair and the coal scuttle.
“Tea’s mashed, Martin,” Jo called through the curtain. Her voice steady and was warm with the quiet patience of forty years of marriage. “Leave the brass tongs on the hearth. I’ll bank the grate before the evening rush.”
“Aye, Jo,” Martin answered, his voice thin from his winter cough. “Don’t let the gas run. The meter man was by at two.”
Jo didn’t hurry. She set two baked-clay mugs on a round tin tray, placed a saucer with three rich tea biscuits beside them. Then she glanced at the corner of her back cutting room.
Tucked between two heavy rolls of grey suiting serge and a wicker scrap basket, the brass summoning sky-slit sat framed within an antique dressing mirror. The glass had dissolved into a shallow, circular pool of pale amber light, perfectly quiet, hummed with a faint shaking that smelled of wet stonework, cold river salt, and distant woodsmoke.
Directly above the mirror frame, the neat text of the Courtesy Bridge slate glowed in clean, clockwork lettering.
Fifteen minutes. That was her regular tea break between the three-o’clock suit fittings and the five-o’clock rush of shopgirls needing skirt hems taken up before the dance halls opened. In Harrowby, fifteen minutes was just enough time to rest her swollen ankles, drink a cup of boiled tea, and thread a half-dozen needles with black mercerized cotton for the evening shift.
Jo settled her wire-rimmed glasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose, smoothed the front of her black twill work apron. Then it pulled a high stool up to the shimmering oval.
From the other side of the threshold, Pella Rook’s voice drifted through the sky-slit, sounding slightly brassy, like a voice carried down an old speaking tube in a department store cellar.
“Mistress Saye? Are you at the window?”
“I’m here, Pella,” Jo said. He leaned toward the frame. Meanwhile, she stirred a spoonful of evaporated milk into her tea. “I have my tea poured and my glasses on. What’s this nonsense your carpenter was talking about earlier? Something about a curse in the draymen’s fingers?”
A rustle of paper came through the opening. It was followed by the distant clatter of an iron pot being dragged across a stone hearth.
“It’s the jackets, Mistress Saye,” Pella said, her tone earnest and hurried. “Eren was planing an ash axle this morning and his right hand went entirely dead. The drawknife dropped into the shavings and he couldn’t close his thumb for twenty minutes. Sister Merrow says three draymen on the lower wharves have the same palsy. Their forearms swell, their fourth and fifth fingers go cold like river stones. The local temple says it’s an elemental vapor leaking from the mudflats.”
Jo took a slow sip of her hot tea, feeling the warmth spread into her chest. She set the mug down on the tray, picked up a steel needle-point arrow from her magnetic pincushion. Then she rolled it between her thumb and forefinger.
“Elemental vapor,” Jo murmured, her tone rich with the dry skepticism of an experienced alterations hand. “Tell me about the cut of their coats, lass. What are they wearing when they work?”
“Boiled wool jerkins,” Pella replied. “Six-ply river fleece, lined with cured ox-hide across the chest and shoulders to shed the wet. The tailors on Weaver’s Row make them according to the ancient guild pattern—the same cut the academy guards wear on the castle walls.”
“And how are the armholes shaped?” Jo asked.
A pause. “They’re round. Bound with heavy split calfskin and double-stitched with greased hemp thread so the rain doesn’t run in.”
Jo sighed, shaking her head as she looked at the rolls of suiting serge behind her counter. “Men have been making that mistake since the Crimean War. They cut a coat for a soldier sitting on a horse, with his arms hanging straight down by his stirrups. Then they wonder why a laborer working with an axe drops his tools.”
“A horse?” Pella asked, confused. “Our draymen don’t ride horses. They haul hand-trucks and pull oars.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Jo said firmly. “Listen to me, Pella. In tailoring, an armhole is called an armscye. If you cut an armscye small and circular, placing it high into the shoulder seam like a plate-armor cuirass, it looks very smart. Just then, the man is standing at attention with his arms at his sides. The leather lies flat. But the moment that man lifts his elbows to shoulder height—to swing an adze, pull an oar, or heave a sack of flour—what happens to the bottom of the sleeve?”
Pella paused on the other side of the oval. “It... It pulls tight across the armpit.”
“It does far more than pull,” Jo said, tapping her finger on the counter. “It acts like a leather tourniquet. The bottom curve of that stiff armhole binds directly against the axilla. Underneath that armpit runs the upper-arm artery and the forearm nerve cluster that feeds the muscles of the forearm and the grip of the fingers. If you put a man into a stiff, boiled-wool cuirass with a high, round armscye and make him swing an eight-pound mallet, that leather edge saws into his nerves with every single blow. By noon, his nerve sheath is bruised flat, the breath flow to his hand is choked off. His fingers drop their tools. It isn’t a river curse, lass. It’s bad pattern drafting.”
The silence from the Lowbank side lasted for five seconds. When Pella spoke again, her voice had the humbled, startled tone of someone who had just seen a demon reduced to a bad seam.
“The guild masters swore the stiffness was necessary to protect the chest from damp.”
“Stiffness protects against an arrow point,” Jo snapped back. “It doesn’t protect against ten hours of manual labor. A working garment must yield where the body hinges. It must hold firm only where the load is carried.”
Jo turned to her cutting table. From a wooden drawer beneath the counter, she drew out a long spool of heavy, four-ply Irish linen twine that had been drawn through a cake of yellow beeswax until it was stiff and waterproof. She took a pair of tailor’s shears and snipped off a six-foot length.
Moving with practiced speed, she took her wooden yardstick and began tying small, hard knots into the twine at precise intervals: single knots at one-inch increments, and double knots every six inches.
“I’m sending through a measuring twine,” Jo said, stepping to the sky-slit. “Take it, Pella.”
She reached her arm into the amber shimmering oval. The shift felt cool, like dipping her fingers into a bucket of cold spring water on a warm August day. On the other side, Pella’s calloused, ink-stained fingers closed around the twine with careful respect.
“I have it,” Pella said. “The knots are regular.”
“Single knot is an inch, double knot is six inches,” Jo instructed. “Now, fetch that carpenter of yours. What did you say his name was? Eren?”
“Yes, Mistress Saye. He’s standing right here by the timber shore.”
“Tell him to take off his leather apron and stand straight before the table,” Jo said. “And get that horn of dark oak-ink ready. I’m going to teach you how to take a working craftsman’s measurements.”
Through the sky-slit came the sound of Eren’s heavy leather apron being unbuckled. Then it dropped onto a bench. It was followed by the dull scuff of his work boots on the wet stonework.
“He’s ready,” Pella said.
“First measurement: across-back span,” Jo said, her voice crisp and teaching. “Place the first knot at the bony prominence of his left shoulder blade—the shoulder blade point. Run the twine straight across his back to the right shoulder blade. Don’t pull it tight. Have him cross his arms over his chest, hands on opposite shoulders, as if he were bracing to haul a cart.”
“His arms are crossed,” Pella reported. A moment later: “Under load, the twine stretches across fourteen single knots and two double knots. Twenty-six inches.”
“Twenty-six,” Jo repeated, noting the figure on a scrap of brown butcher paper with a stub of tailor’s chalk. “Now have him drop his arms to his sides. Measure the same distance.”
“With his arms down, it’s twenty-one inches.”
“Five inches of spreading,” Jo said, her tone satisfied. “Do you see that, Pella? When he swings his tool, his back broadens by five full inches. If your guild tailor cut his coat with a flat back and a twenty-one-inch allowance, that jacket had to steal those five inches from the armpits every time he raised his hands. That’s where the strangling comes from.”
“How do we prevent it?”
“An inverted box pleat down the center spine,” Jo answered promptly. “Or a split shoulder cape cut on the bias, with an under-gusset of flexible cloth that opens like an accordion when the back expands, and folds flat when he stands straight. Now, measure his armscye drop.”
“How do I find the drop?”
“Place a flat pine rule high under his armpit, level to the floor,” Jo directed. “Hold it snug against the ribs, but don’t pinch. Measure from the top tip of his shoulder bone straight down to the top edge of that rule. That’s the true scye depth.”
Pella worked quietly for a minute. “Nine inches.”
“Right. And the outer rim of his bicep when he makes a fist?”
“Fifteen inches and two knots.”
Jo jotted the numbers in the margin of the butcher paper. She tore off a clean square from the roll, took a red grease pencil. Then she rapidly sketched the curved, egg-shaped outline of an ergonomic armscye, showing the deep front scoop that allowed the arm to reach forward without dragging the chest cloth.
“I’m folding this diagram,” Jo said, pressing the paper flat with her palm. “Take it through the sky-slit, Pella. And take this block of pipe lime chalk.”
She passed the folded sheet and the chalk through the amber threshold.
“What do I do with these sketches?” Pella asked, her voice carrying a trace of worry. “Master Dima Fen runs the Tailors’ Guild on Weaver’s Row. He’s proud, and he doesn’t take advice from failed college apprentices.”
Jo picked up her tea mug and took a long, hot drink. Her dark eyes through her wire-rimmed lenses were entirely placid.
“You don’t offer him advice, lass,” Jo said. “Craftsmen don’t want advice from outsiders. You show him the numbers. You tell him that three of his jackets are crippling the men who move the city’s flour. You ask him if he wants the blame when an ash heavy cart runs over an apprentice on Fish Street because the driver couldn’t close his fingers on the brake.”
She glanced at the wall clock above her cutting counter. The brass hands pointed to four o’clock.
“My tea break is up, Pella. The slate has thirty seconds left.”
“Thank you, Mistress Saye.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jo said, setting the empty mug back on the tin tray. “Get those measurements checked on three more men before you talk to that tailor. A guild master can argue with an opinion, but he can’t argue with a knotted string.”
The amber circle tightened into a single silver point, then faded entirely into the silvered glass of the dressing mirror. That left Jo alone with the familiar smell of lavender water, hot irons, and wool serge in the quiet shop on St. Jude’s Lane.