Crewel

and cut lavender. I nod, grateful for its warmth if only for a few moments.
    ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say. ‘They’re probably watching me.’
    ‘The good news is that they don’t bother to keep an eye on the cells. Poor light, stone walls – what’s the point?’ He gestures around us. ‘The bad news is that you’re right. They’re definitely keeping tabs on you.’
    ‘So why are you here then? What help can I be to you if I’m already under suspicion?’
    ‘That’s true, but no one comes down here, so it’s easy enough for us to chat if you keep getting thrown in the cell,’ he points out.
    ‘Of course,’ I agree. ‘But that won’t really help me lie low now, will it?’
    ‘Yep, it’s a no-win situation,’ he says. ‘I’m actually only here today because Erik had lapdog duties.’
    ‘Erik sent you?’
    ‘The pretty blond that just threw you in here.’
    ‘I know who he is, and he is pretty, but why send you now?’
    ‘It’s my job to keep the Spinsters happy and fed, so pretty boy sent me. Sorry to disappoint you, but please tell me you have better taste than him.’
    ‘I’m not marrying him. He’s just well-groomed,’ I assure Jost. ‘But lapdogs usually are.’
    ‘Case in point.’ Jost fingers the hem of my tailored skirt.
    ‘I think I’m failing at being a lapdog.’
    ‘Yes, you are,’ he says. ‘So I’ll remind you of my earlier advice: play dumb.’
    ‘That’s easier said than done.’
    ‘Ob-vi-ous-ly.’ He stretches out the word. ‘But it’s important if you want to live. Maela may have a use for you, but she’s not sentimental enough to keep you around indefinitely.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You’re going to have to trust me for a bit on that.’
    ‘Just so long as your reasons are as vague and menacing as theirs are,’ I mutter.
    ‘Ouch.’ Jost frowns. ‘I may not tell you everything, but my interests are in line with your own.’
    He straightens back up, and I shrug the jacket off and hand it to him. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘It was nothing.’ He waves my thanks away as he puts his jacket on.
    ‘Not for the jacket.’ I struggle to put into words how I feel. ‘For the company.’
    ‘Also nothing. Take my advice, Ad.’ This time the cockiness is gone and the nickname wraps around me like his jacket – soft and comfortable. I feel warmer. ‘They’ll let you go soon. Try to stay out of trouble.’
    Jost leaves me in the darkness, and I continue to wait, turning over his words in my mind. He’s being too honest with me. Either he knows something that makes him trust me more than he should, or . . . I stop myself there. I don’t want to consider his other possible motive.
    Knowing they aren’t watching me here relaxes me. I fiddle with the time around me. If only there was a spot of heat in this room, I could weave warmth, or maybe even light.
    The food at my feet is stale and cold. A tough bit of bread and thin soup. It’s food to keep me alive and not much more. I could weave and stretch it, but I have to work with the materials I have, and more of this food wouldn’t be much of an upgrade. Then I remember promising my parents that I would never stretch food again, and I falter.
    It wasn’t like I did anything wrong. I was only nine years old, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess I thought I was helping. Each month my mother allotted a small portion of our rations to sweets. It never went very far, and then one month, the co-op had no sweets available. Mom explained that there was a shortage of sugar supplies and put the few bits of chocolate from the previous month in the highest cabinet, with the admonishment that we’d save them for my father’s birthday. It’s not that I didn’t want to save the chocolate for Dad. It was that I couldn’t let Amie get in trouble.
    Ever since I’d discovered I could touch the weave in our yard, I’d studied it, although I’d rarely touched it. But when Amie came home from academy crying because she’d taken some of the chocolate to class and been caught with it, I decided I had to do something.
    Most days Amie and I walked home from academy together, but that day I had been kept behind after class was dismissed. I’d been daydreaming, which my teacher said was pointless.
    ‘What will your boss think if he catches you staring at the sky instead of doing your work?’ she had asked in a cold voice.
    I kept my eyes trained on the floor as she berated me, and by the time it was over, anger and