Ravelled in Red Silk

The ribbons settled on the floorboards with a dry rustle, leaving Master Orwin frozen in place like a startled heron. The tailor's jaw hung open, a mouthful of brass pins bristling between his lips, while his shears hovered suspended above a broad swathe of grey wool. He was sweating freely now, beads trickling into his thin eyebrows as the heavy tread of Tax-Guard Captain Vane crossed the threshold from the front showroom.

From his perch beside the side casement, Captain Bramblefoot gauged the drop into the muddy drainage ditch outside. It was eight feet down, slick with rotting cabbage leaves, and guarded by an iron grate that would shatter any knee unblessed by luck. He held his breath, pressed flat against the rough cedar paneling, watching Jory through the gap in the partition. The apprentice was plastered against the canvas rack, clutching the damp, ink-stained pages to his ribs as though a handful of stolen crown signatures could stop a crossbow bolt.

"Master Orwin," Captain Vane said, his voice flat and level as he stepped around the partition, his fingers resting casually upon the pommel of his broadsword. "You seem remarkably crowded for an afternoon devoted to plain stitchery."

Orwin attempted a bow, forgot the shears in his right hand, and twitched in sheer panic. The heavy iron blades snapped shut with an audible crunch of severed warp and weft. Instead of wool, the scissor blades sheared clean through the supporting hemp lanyard of the canvas screen. With a dull whip of releasing rope, the canvas parted, dumping two rolled lengths of buckram to the floor and exposing Jory where he crouched, knees knocking together, his spectacles skewed sideways across his nose.

For two heartbeats, nobody moved. The damp pages in Jory's grip gleamed with sticky pools of royal purple ink, clearly showing the jagged borders where they had been torn from an imperial register.

"Stand up," Vane commanded. His eyes narrowed on the purple staining the apprentice's knuckles. "Explain those papers, boy. And make your explanation swift, before I have the irons brought from the quay."

"They're interlinings!" Orwin blurted out, spitting three brass pins onto the floorboards in his haste to speak. He waved his shears wildly in the air, spraying droplets of oil. "Just stiffening, Captain, on my mother's honor! A gentleman brought in an old ox-hide portfolio—said the hide was ruined by dock water, but the parchment leaves made lovely stays for municipal doublets! We were only trimming the margins to fit the collars! Nothing illegal about stiffening, surely, even if the ink does smell like high-tide elderberries!"

Jory closed his eyes and let out a faint whimper. Across the room, Captain Bramblefoot closed his eyes too, silently cursing every tailor who had ever held a needle. The tailor had not merely confessed to possessing the forged ledger; he had cheerfully charted its course directly to the crown exemptions.

Vane's jaw tightened. "An ox-hide portfolio. Bearing municipal levies and imperial purple." He withdrew his blade two inches from the scabbard, the steel grating like gravel under a boot. "Patroller Ren. Take this apprentice by the scruff and secure those signatures. If he tries to swallow one, draw your dagger."