The washroom was warm with the steam of boiling water and beeswax as Dima Fen sat on a low wooden bench beside the hearth, a wooden stitching pony clamped between her knees. On the deal table lay eight heavy brown canvas work smocks, their left sleeves unpicked at the cuff. They waited for the installation of Eren’s spring catches and Jo’s scarlet tabs. The air smelled of hot pitch, beeswax, boiled tea, and the rich, pungent odor of sheep fat used to grease the sewing thread. Outside, the low-water silt stench rose from the harbor mud.
Dima wore a thick blue apron of handwoven river flax, her sleeves rolled past her elbows, showing forearms lean and corded from fifteen years of throwing a heavy oak loom shuttle. In her right hand she held a curved harness needle with a three-sided cutting point, designed to pierce four layers of heavy sailcloth without tearing the warp threads.
Beside her, Sister Merrow was drawing long strands of four-ply flax thread through a cake of yellow beeswax, coating each fiber until it was stiff, smooth, and impervious to river water. “Pull it twice through the wax, Merrow,” Dima instructed without looking up, her fingers flying with clean, steady care. “If the wax is thin, the stone steam will leach the oil out of the flax within three shifts. A seam in a wet cellar has to be as watertight as a cooper’s cask.”
