In the quiet back room of Threadbare Alterations on Harrowby High Street, the electric kettle on the wooden counter hissed softly as it reached the boil. Jo Saye sat on her revolving wooden stool, a pair of chrome-plated tailor’s shears resting beside an open box of brass dressmaking pins. On her small deal cutting table sat a half-eaten egg-and-cress sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper and a baked-clay mug of hot tea.
Across the space-folding threshold, resting on the cedar workbench in Sister Merrow’s washroom three hundred miles away, the small brass audio speaker of the Courtesy Arch hummed with a clear, static-free hum. Pella sat by the balance weight beam, dipping Hal’s measuring tongs in a small dish of sweet oil to prevent the river damp from tarnishing the hand-filed graduation marks.
“So he wanted you to sign Schedule B, did he?” Jo’s voice came through the speaker, crisp, dry, and with the steady, rhythmic scrape of an emery stone as she touched up the cutting edge of her shears. “The old servant contract trick. We used to have textile mills in the West Riding that tried that with apprentice weavers back in the twenties. Sign here for your room and board, and five years later you find out the company owns your boots, your scissors. The teeth in your head.”
Pella dipped a crust of sourdough crust into a mug of boiled tea. She listened to the familiar northern rhythm. ‘Master Kel called it regularizing external manifestations within the town ward. He said you, Ada, and Imran weren’t real people under Lathmere law. Just astral deep ring patterns generated by the arch.’
A sharp, metal clink echoed through the speaker as Jo set her shears onto the table with controlled care. “Astral patterns? I’d like to see an astral pattern hem forty pairs of school trousers before Friday afternoon and pay ninety pounds of quarterly business rates to the Harrowby Borough Council! That man wouldn’t know an honest day’s labor if it bit him on his ermine collar.”
Sister Merrow sat on an upturned nail keg beside Pella, paring a turnip with a small kitchen knife. ‘That’s what Hal always said, Mrs. Saye. He said the men who write the laws on parchment are always the ones who’ve never had to carry a sixty-pound tool bag up thirty feet of wet ladder.’
“Too right, Sister,” Jo agreed, her tone softening with skilled solidarity. “You did the only sensible thing, Pella. The moment you sign an open-ended labor agreement with an institution, you’re not an independent builder anymore. You’re livestock with an invoice. Ada told me what happened when she was down in that vault. She said you held that fourteen-inch wrench like you’d been turning seized valves your whole life. You don’t sell that kind of backbone for forty sovereigns and a title written in Latin.”
Pella looked down at her tally slate, tracing the forty-two pound mark she had inscribed that morning. ‘They’ve padlocked the front door, Jo. We’re running through an underground under-road drain between Eren’s sawpit and the larder. If we’re going to crawl through the lower bypass to map the pressure drop, we need proper protective gear. Eren got blistered yesterday just reaching past an unlagged pipe rim.’
“He got blistered because he was wearing wool, love,” Jo said, the rustle of pattern paper echoing across the audio bridge. “Wool holds steam against the skin until it parboils you. You need heavy raw, unwhitened reed duck, treated with linseed oil and beeswax, with offset bellows gussets under the armpits so the fabric doesn’t bind when you reach overhead. If you’re crawling on your belly through sixty-degree mud, you can’t have seams that rub your elbows raw.”
Jo paused, taking a sip from her tea mug. ‘A proper work smock isn’t fashion, Pella. It’s protective equipment. In my trade, if a garment pinches a seamstress across the shoulder blades, she develops chronic tendonitis within three years. In your trade, if a sleeve binds. Meanwhile, a man is trying to back off a steam valve, he loses his hand. I’ve designed those armholes with an extra two inches of ease on the bias. When Eren reaches up to brace a timber prop, the coat won’t lift at the waist.’
“Can your friend Dima Fen sew the patterns?” Pella asked.
“Dima Fen has the hands of a craftsman and the stubbornness of a pack mule,” Jo said with a wry snort. “I sent him the master sleeve template through the sky-slit yesterday. He sent back a note saying foreign tailor paper was an insult to Lowbank weavers. But Ada stopped by his shop this morning before her shift. She said he already had three bolts of reed cloth laid out on his cutting bench. He’s proud, Pella, but he isn’t stupid. He knows his own apprentices are passing out from the steam in the lower ward.”
Through the narrow transfer sky-slit beneath the arch, a small roll of stiff brown paper tied with waxed hemp twine slid onto the cedar bench. Pella picked it up, unrolling the sheet under the animal fat candle. It was an exquisitely detailed full-scale cutting template for a heavy work smock, complete with marked seam allowances, dart placements, and handwritten notes in purple indelible pencil.
“That’s the master pattern for five smocks,” Jo instructed. “Tell Dima to cut the front panels on the straight grain and double-stitch the armscye with heavy flax thread. No metal buttons—metal gets too hot in live steam. Use horn toggles or bone pegs. I’ve logged the design fee at one silver coin per smock on Tamsin Drew’s locked deposit ledger. Fair trade, no charity, and no academy interference.”
Pella ran her fingers over the smooth drafting paper, admiring the clean, precise arcs drawn by Jo’s skilled hand. Every line was functional, designed to protect a worker’s skin from physical violence without wasting an inch of cloth. The smell of clean paper and purple pencil graphite rose sharp against the damp wet stonework of the cellar.
Eren examined the drawing over Pella’s shoulder. He pointed to the gusset layout with a cedar shaving. ‘She’s left four inches of clearance under the armpit. That means I can swing an adze without tearing the shoulder seam. Most tailor coats pinch you like an iron collar the moment you lift your elbow above your chin.’
“And look at the seam construction,” Merrow added, leaning close with her paring knife. ‘She’s using a French seam with double top-stitching. That folds the raw edges inside so steam can’t cry through the needle holes. Dima always complains that double-stitching takes twice the thread. But he’ll do it if it’s drawn on paper like this.’
“He’ll do it because he respects the work,” Jo said from Harrowby. “A real craftsman knows another craftsman’s mark, whether it’s cut in Yorkshire serge or Lowbank reed cloth. We’re not charity cases, Pella, and neither is Dima Fen. We’re tradespeople keeping a town on its feet.”
“Five silver coins locked in locked deposit, Jo,” Pella confirmed, writing the transaction into her permanent daybook with black dark oak-ink. “We’ll deliver the payment to Tamsin’s account on Friday after we collect the fee from the Nine Lanterns boarding house.”
“Don’t you worry about the fee, girl. Worry about your boots,” Jo said, the sound of her tea mug clattering on her saucer. “Ada’s got her big stillson packed in her van, Imran’s got his beetle jars ready in his boot. I’ve got five sets of horn toggles soaking in neat’s-foot oil. When your grand summoners come looking for their padlocks tomorrow, you tell them Yorkshire tradespeople don’t work for men who steal their neighbors’ water.”
Jo Saye’s voice took on the firm, unbending tone of an experienced shopkeeper who had spent decades dealing with difficult landlords. ‘When a customer comes through my shop door in Harrowby, they pay me four pounds fifty for a trouser hem, and I give them a receipt. They don’t own me, I don’t own them, and we both walk away with clean hands. That’s what great realm is, Pella. The moment someone tells you that your labor belongs to the Crown because they’ve got gold lace on their hats, you’re not in a great realm anymore. You’re in a press-gang. You hold onto your tools, love, and we’ll supply the thread.’
The audio link hummed softly and settled into its calm standby hum. Pella rolled the pattern paper carefully, tying the twine around the middle. Beside her, Sister Merrow dropped the pared turnip into her soup pot with a satisfying splash.
“Good woman, that Jo Saye,” Merrow remarked, wiping her paring knife on her apron. “Knows how to cut a sleeve, knows how to drink tea, and doesn’t take nonsense from men in silk. Now take that pattern down the crawlway to Dima Fen’s shop, Pella. We’ve got five smocks to sew before the morning tide brings the steam back into the street.”