Dragonborn by Toby Forward Read Free Book Online Page B

him share? He was getting forgetful in his age. Some time down the mines will make him forget all this.”
    â€œThey don’t last long down there,” said Khazib.
    Caleb grinned. “I’ll lock him in under the stairs when he gets back.”
    â€œHe’s not coming back,” said Axestone. “There’s enough wizard in him already to know when to run.”
    They looked at each other, knowing Axestone was right.
    â€œThen we must find him,” said Caleb. “Before he does damage to us all.”
    Â 
Pages from an apprentice’s notebook
    TAILORS AND TAILORING. Tailors are best avoided, except when you need a new suit of clothes or a waistcoat. They present themselves as soft as cloth, but they are as sharp as needles. Never trust a tailor. A tailor’s job is to disguise his customer: to make a fat man slim; to make a weak man look strong; to take a peasant who has found a fortune and transform him into a landowner or a merchant, at least until he opens his mouth. Tailors are deceivers—and worse.
    A tailor’s shop is a very pleasant place to spend time, and a good tailor’s shop is a joy to the eyes as well as to the touch. Bolts of worsted wool, linen, and silk. Bobbins and shears. A wide window set in a thick stone wall, to let the customers see the true color of the cloth before they order the tailor to cut it to shape. And, most important of all, the table. A real tailor’s table is made of cedar wood, as are all the shelves and the cupboards. Moths do not like
cedar, so it protects the cloth from them. The table is long, at least three times as long as its width, and it must be wide enough to take a bolt of cloth.
    The tailor’s table has three purposes, but it is never used for food or eating at. Even a small amount of food or drink is enough to ruin a length of cloth worth a year’s pay for a working man.
    First, the table is for display. Watch a tailor seize bolts from the shelves and throw them onto the table, letting them unroll, ablaze with color and rippling with rich folds. One, two, three, more and more lengths fill the table, until the customer thinks himself a king or a merchant prince. How people will respect him when he appears dressed in this! How they will listen to him when the tailor’s shears and needles have worked their magic, snipping and tucking, lining and turning, hemming and cording!
    The second use of the table is for the tailor to sit on. Slipping off his shoes, the tailor jumps onto the table, crosses his legs, picks up the cut pieces, and, turned toward the big window for light, begins to sew. It would be foolish to sew away from the light. The thread tangles, the needle misses its mark so that the seam is crooked or the tuck is in the wrong place, the natural grain of the cloth is ignored and the coat seems twisted. Now, anyone with a thick needle can stitch a shroud or fasten a sack, even by lamplight, but that isn’t sewing. The tailor’s needles are thin and sharp and nimble and fast. And the finest tailors of all sew the cloth so that all the stitches are folded inside, hidden, and the garment looks as though a needle has never touched it, as though
it grew from the earth, like an ear of wheat or an orchid, complex, detailed, with shades and hues that blend and complement each other, never betraying a maker’s hand. This is the sorcery of the tailor. This is what he conjures up, cross-legged on his cedar table.
    The customer thinks he has bought a coat, as he would buy a horse or a cupboard, but it is not like that. For the coat, or the cloak, the worsted suit or the breeches, have been made for him and him alone. Anyone can ride the horse, anyone can put his dishes in the cupboard as well as anyone else—but the clothes will only properly fit one man. The tailor has entered into a pact to transform him into whatever the clothes will make him. And it doesn’t end when the customer walks out of