The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

the third floor of the tall, narrow townhouse. Vents from the kitchen fires kept this room warm enough for the entire family to pursue their daily occupations.
    Dolls and miniature clothing lay scattered around the workroom floor. Katrina’s two younger sisters had obviously used her brief absence as an excuse to abandon their lessons in keeping household accounts for playtime. The limited pictorial language of household ledgers might be all they ever learned to read, but women in the Kaantille family could add and subtract better than any merchant who might try to cheat them.
    “Katey, Maaben says my dolly isn’t as pretty as hers. Tell her it isn’t so,” six-year-old Hilza wailed and tugged at Katrina’s long woolen skirt.
    “Your doll is ugly and broken,” nine-year-old Maaben rejoined. “Tell the truth, Katey. Tell her how ugly her doll is. Its hair is dirty and doesn’t look blond anymore, and the eyes are dull, not blue like a real lady’s. Only peasants and outlanders have dark hair and eyes. It’s ugly,” Maaben quoted the often-heard prejudice. “And peasants can’t wear lace. Give my doll that shawl and cap!”
    “Maaben, Hilza, stop it! Now get back to your lessons. I can’t waste time on such stupid squabbles. I . . . I have to work at my lace for a while,” Katrina brushed aside the grasping hands of her sisters. She needed the soothing thread work to banish the frightening argument she had overheard in the kitchen. What if P’pa lost all of his money?
    She walked past the long study table to the cupboards beneath the single glass window—the greatest luxury in the house. Her agile fingers pressed the lock buttons in the proper sequence and the doors sprang open to reveal her finest treasure.
    She caressed the tubular pillow stuffed with unspun wool, from sheep bred half a world away. Her hand traced the dimensions of the pillow—as long as her forearm and as thick as her fingers stretched wide. Tucked inside the center of the tube was a compartment designed to hold the strips of stiff leather that were a lacemaker’s patterns. Pinholes in a geometric grid covered the patterns, guides for the weaving of the lace. Katrina had inherited nearly one hundred patterns from her father’s mother. Irreplaceable patterns that had never been duplicated and that she alone could legally work.
    The velvet-covered pillow rested in a wooden frame that kept it from rolling. Gently, Katrina carried the precious pillow and frame to the study table. She placed it in the one spot the autumn sun brightened the most. Only when the pillow rested securely in place did she remove the loose cloth draped over the top to reveal an arm-length of a simple piece of lace. Two dozen spindles of carved bone wound with thread dangled from the unfinished end of the lace.
    This lacemaker’s pillow and the patterns were Katrina’s thirteenth birthday present as well as her heritage and her dowry. Gentlewomen of SeLenicca had always made lace to adorn their wardrobes. In the last three generations, lace had been elevated to a national treasure. Only the export of lace could replace the money lost from the failing mines and empty timberlands. Only lace could buy food and wine and woven cloth from abroad, for the land of SeLenicca had never been farmed.
    “Can we watch?” Maaben crossed the room on reverent tiptoe. Her blue eyes widened with wonder.
    Hilza crept behind her sister, moon-blond curls glistening in the weak sunshine. The dolls lay abandoned in a heap.
    “If you are quiet, you may watch. I can’t think if you ask questions or argue.” Katrina caressed the first two pairs of bobbins, thrilling at the texture and wonderful lace they would produce. Engravings etched some of the thin bone spindles. She examined tiny pictures of mythical animals or the names and birthdays of the relatives indentured to the royal family SeLenicca as lacemakers, including herself. At the bottom of each bobbin was a circle of precious beads, some wood, others metal. The bangles added weight to the slender bobbins and kept them from rolling and twisting the thread. Only the bobbins commemorating a Lace Mistress, like Tattia and Granm’ma, contained a single, priceless, glass bead within the circle.
    Peasant women who worked in the export factories couldn’t afford slender, beaded bobbins, light and smooth enough to work Tambrin and the finest long cotton and linen threads. The factory owners supplied their workers with heavy,