Two animal fat lamps hung from the overhead herb hooks in Sister Merrow’s kitchen storeroom. She cast warm amber pools across barrels of salt fish and bundles of dried sage. The narrow room smelled of boiled cabbage from the back kitchen next door, beeswax-rubbed linen twine, dry thyme, and hot iron steam. On a low workhorse between Pella Rook and Master Tailor Dima Fen rested the half-assembled torso of Korr Var’s survey coat.
Her fingertips were pricked raw from pushing heavy sail needles through four plies of waxed canvas. Pella kept a horn sailmaker’s palm and a spool of four-cord waxed linen thread ready on her knee. Across the workhorse, Dima Fen worked with a curved saddler’s awl and a pair of brass-jawed pliers, seating the flexible leather spreading rings into the collar seam.
Joining the diamond-shaped underarm gusset needed four opposing seam tensions to align at the same time without puckering. If a single stitch along the four-way diamond corner pulled uneven under load, the entire sleeve would twist when Korr reached for an overhead water gate spindle.
Pella tensioned the diamond gusset across her knee, checking the stretch against the sleeve tube. Pella used her bone folder and a bronze seam gauge. She confirmed a three-inch diamond insert providing six inches of total chest outer edge spreading under full arm extension. The diamond shape redirected upward pulling loads into circumferential squeezing. He anchored the coat firmly to the waistline.
