A Beauty's Bargain

A Beauty's Bargain: A Short Story

Merry turned the ancient television to their favorite news station after breakfast was handed out, then grabbed her coat and woolen hat from the rack. Her stomach growled but she cleared her throat to mask the sound, calling out a chipper farewell and kissing both parents' hollowed cheeks before leaving the house with Dixon at her heel. The wiry-haired brown mutt trotted left and Merry right, as was their morning ritual—Dixon foraging in the barren trees and hollow logs for his meals, and Merry apprenticing at the sewing shop on Ulitsa Street for an embarrassingly meager wage. It was an amount she shuddered to admit to out loud, but somehow Merry made things work week by week, month by month, year by year. A new desperation had sprouted within her since Edith had grown ill however, and Merry sensed that a change of drastic proportions might be the only thing to pull them all through this unrelenting and cruel season.

Merry sidestepped a group of men outside a grimy pub, their scraggly beards and filthy hands two obvious indicators that they couldn't find employment in any part of Shinery, either in the urbs or up at the citadel, serving Legalia's wealthiest.

A bell dinged above the door as she entered Alaric's Tailor Shop, and Merry nodded to the other employee, an elderly woman named Cass who always kept her long gray hair held back in a fraying, colored headscarf.

"All right, Merry?"

"All right."

Merry scooted behind the counter and into the back room, immediately selecting her latest project from the wall and laying it next to the machine at her station. The dress was dazzling; cream velvet with a swirl of crystals embroidered across the neck and hemlines. A gaping hole had been torn into the bottom left side; probably a drunken noblewoman tripping on her way from one buffet to the other. Merry hoped she'd been near a long flight of stairs when it happened.

Merry fingered the gown, examining the hole to find the best way to repair it. Because of the fabric it'd be her most difficult assignment yet, but Merry wasn't concerned. Ever since Alaric had taken her on three years previously, his clientele had grown exponentially.

The nobility's servants had begun to ask Alaric on behalf of their masters who at his tailor shop had repaired the torn lapel or hem, or added the peacock feathers so expertly to the latest fascinator that'd been dropped off. Alaric would give a booming laugh and decline to reveal his secret weapon, his robust belly no doubt bouncing like a tub of lard in the servants' inquiring face. He was by far the fattest denizen Merry had ever seen, and she was convinced it had to do with some sort of arrangement he had with Legalia; receiving extra payment via invitations to their exclusive, delicacy-laden events or something.

Merry had been biding her time, contemplating the most prudent moment to request a higher wage. Two weeks before she'd taken a risk and wrangled an agreement—one that she soon regretted wasn't sealed in writing. It had been on an evening when he'd stumbled in and made a horrendous mess of things out front, knocking over mannequins and riffling through his cash register (which was always locked, the key tied snugly round his front belt loop). Merry had been staying late, hoping to finish hemming a pair of trousers she was sure were for a high-ranking military official of some kind. She'd found a rumpled handkerchief in one of the pockets, with several lipstick marks and the initials Commander J. W. embroidered in royal blue along one corner. The fineness of the material struck her, the mysteriously lavish life this commander certainly led sending Merry's imagination in many directions. It wasn't the first thing she'd stolen off a noble client of Alaric's, always minor items no one could link back to her when she sold them on the black market. But there was something about that pocket square; its gossamer silk, the cross-stitching at the hem. Handmade and evocative of an ardent love from maker to recipient; this "Commander J.W." would never appreciate the level of workmanship it deserved.