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I reach for a green so dark it is almost black. The wool is soft against my palm.

“How much for enough to make a dress?”

“Your household will settle the bill.” The trader lifts a grey bolt for me to feel. “Lord Daurek asked me to bring my winter cloth up from the road.”

“He asked for this?”

“For you to have a choice. He didn’t specify the color.”

I smooth the green again. I hadn’t expected him to bother about the choice.

“Does he usually take an interest?” I ask.

“In wool? He’s never bought any from me. Bark seems to serve him well enough.”

I look at Reivaka. She is examining a roll of linen with great concentration.

I choose the green and the heavier grey. Reivaka knows a woman in the Heartwood who can make both dresses, and takes me to have them measured that afternoon.

For the green one, I ask for a closer fit at the waist.

I wonder whether Daurek will notice the closer fit. By the time we get back, I’ve imagined him noticing it twice.

Two days later, a fitting runs through most of the midday meal.

Reivaka is at the table with a plate of bread. Ziku sits beside her, his tail curled around the leg of an empty chair.

“Yours,” Reivaka says, lifting the cloth from a bowl of stew.

“You waited?”

“I wanted to hear whether the green dress fits.”

“It does.”

“And Ziku wanted your lunch.”

“I have shown considerable restraint,” he says.

I sit before he can demonstrate otherwise.

The stew is warm. Reivaka tells me about a dispute over a tree growing across two gardens. I have an answer ready before she reaches the part where the gardeners settled it themselves.

I close my mouth and eat.

Ziku catches me. He says nothing, which is worse than a remark.

Later that afternoon, Daurek knocks at my door.

“I’m going to the cultivation,” he says when I open it. “You asked about it at dinner.”

“I did.”

“Would you like to come?”

“Yes.”

The answer comes too quickly. I reach for my coat to give myself something to do.