The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

own patterns. Do you want to be responsible for ruining your daughter’s future?”
    “Perhaps if you spoke to the queen?” P’pa looked hopefully to his wife.
    “The queen dismissed me today and impounded my pillow and patterns.” M’ma dropped her eyes and her voice. “Please, Fraanken, you have to do something before we starve.”
    Katrina had never seen her mother so reduced, so helpless. Always, Tattia Kaantille’s talent and experience with lace had placed her above ordinary people, granted her privileges and secured her place in society. Now she was lost. Katrina feared they were all lost as well as hungry.
    “What will it take to make the king forgive you, P’pa?” Katrina whispered around the lump in her throat.
    “Too much.”
    “What, Fraanken?” M’ma raised her head, hope bright in her eyes.
    P’pa stood so fast he knocked over his chair. “I will sell myself to the slave ships before I sacrifice any of my daughters to The Simeon’s bloodthirsty god, Simurgh!”
    Hilza wailed again in fright and hunger.
    Katrina lost all heat from her already shivering body.

Chapter 7
     
    ‘ T his doesn’t seem right, M’ma.” Katrina shuffled her feet on the wooden sidewalk of Royal Avenue. This major thoroughfare ran straight through Queen’s City on a true east-west axis. To the north lay the tall, elegant houses of the merchants. Beyond them on the hillside were the palaces of the nobles. To the south lay the commercial district and warehouses that fronted on the SeLenicca River. M’ma walked toward those warehouses.
    “Right doesn’t put food on the table, Katey. With King Simeon’s threat hanging over our heads, we dare not add any more debt, lest he take you and your sisters as sacrifices. Last week he announced that he needs the deaths of all the queen’s prisoners to fuel his next battle spell and win through the pass into Coronnan.” Tattia Kaantille charged ahead on the crowded street. “If I don’t sell this pattern today, we’ll have to sell your patterns and pillow, then next week the house will go. Though the Stargods only know if anyone in SeLenicca has the money to buy it.”
    “Sell the house?” That would mean moving outside Queen’s City. The homeless and dispossessed must leave this side of the river after sunset.
    In recent months Katrina had watched the south bank of the River Lenicc become a veritable city of tents and hovels in its own right. Large numbers of desperate and destitute people fled there daily from all over SeLenicca as mines and timberlands closed.
    Signs of a collapsing economy and the trade embargo with Coronnan affected Katrina’s family faster than most residents of their neighborhood. No servant walked ahead of Tattia as a symbol of her wealth and favor with the queen. Katrina supposed the cook, the governess, the butler, and scullery maids were now part of the crowds who pressed against her, hands out begging, or attempting to creep into her pockets. There was nothing in her pockets to steal. Indeed the only signs that she and her mother had ever been privileged were the still sturdy black cloth of their skirts and cloaks and the two braids that started at their temples and joined into a single plait at their shoulder blades. Peasant women wore a single braid. Noble women wore three. Only the queen wore four plaits.
    “But why must we tell the factory owner I designed the pattern?” Katrina hurried her steps a little so she wouldn’t be separated from her mother by the press of people. They stepped off the sidewalk into a muddy alley.
    “Because the queen has forbidden my designs. That’s one of the prices we have to pay for your father’s foolish investment.” Tattia set her lips in a grim line. She scanned the narrow alley for unfriendly elements hiding in the shadows before proceeding farther.
    “Do you think the factory owner will buy the pattern? He’ll never believe that I drew it. I’m not even an apprentice—officially,” she hastily added. M’ma had been teaching her at home, pushing her through the apprentice patterns and into journeywoman work faster than the palace normally allowed.
    “No, but you are my daughter. We must make these men believe that you have inherited my talents.”
    “I’m not sure I can . . . I don’t know enough about lace.” Katrina bit her lip in uncertainty.
    “Nonsense, Katrina. This is a simple T’chon pattern that uses twenty pairs of bobbins. I designed it for apprentices. It’s