Page 35 of The Turncoat King

“Where are you going?” Massi lifted her head from the map as Luc followed close on her heels.

“To find Ava.” He waited for her to make a comment, but although her lips thinned a little, she nodded, and he stepped out into the night, fragrant with woodsmoke and roasting meat, and soft with low laughter and conversation.

Someone called a hello to him, and he responded in kind. As he moved through the erratic pathway created by the tents, he realized that for the first time since he’d left Ava near the Grimwalt border two months ago, he finally felt at home again in the Rising Wave.

* * *

Ava studied the knitting,getting on her knees and shuffling closer to the fire for better light.

“How do you twist the stitches?” she asked.

The Cervantes soldier she had befriended, Raelene, joined her, and held up a small wooden needle that instead of being straight, curved up on both sides. “You transfer the stitches to this, hold it in the back or front.”

She took the knitting from Ava’s hands and showed her.

There was magic in this. Ava could feel the tingle in her fingertips as she tried it herself. “Thank you for teaching this to me.”

“My pleasure. I like the embroidery you’ve shown me.” Raelene smoothed the shirt she’d been repairing over her knees.

Ava studied the tent and horse she’d embroidered for Raelene onto either side of the collar.

She was getting better. Quicker.

Every now and then she was overcome with a spike of fear that someone would notice her sewing and she would be punished, and then she would remember she wasn’t in the fortress any more and no one was going to stop her. Sewing was allowed.

It was considered mundane and boring by most.

She had been teased about her interest in it by her fellow warriors more than once.

She simply smiled and wondered what they would say if they understood what she was capable of.

“Did the Cervantes live in tents before the Kassian invaded?” she asked, tracing the tent with a fingertip.

“No.” Raelene folded the shirt carefully, keeping the collar visible so she could continue admiring it. “We lived in villages just like everyone else. The Kassian burned a lot of them down when we wouldn’t hand our children over to the camps voluntarily, and after that the only way we could keep the children safe was to keep moving. They still found us. Took our babies. But not as many as if we’d stayed put.”

“So the tent and the horse are symbols of survival. Of protection.”

“Yes.” Raelene’s smile wobbled a little.

Ava was sorry now she hadn’t asked her question while she was doing the embroidery. She could have woven survival and protection into the shirt. Instead, she had been happy to sit by the fire, talking to someone who sewed and knitted, discussing various techniques.

As she asked where to get supplies to start knitting herself, and said her goodbyes, she made herself relax.

She didn’t have to always include a working. She could do something just because it was beautiful.

Perhaps the last few years had focused her too much on weaving magic into whatever she did, because it had to be done in secret and could so seldom be done at all. And if she were caught, it would mean torture or death.

Everything she’d embroidered in captivity had to be worth the risk.

But she didn’t have that hanging over her anymore.

And now she could try other things. Knitting.

She felt a buzz of excitement at the idea of giving it a try.

She might even be able to infuse the very fabric with a working, rather than stitch on top of it.

A working that would be completely invisible. In the actual weave and twist of the stitches themselves.

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