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Chapter 2: The plants

Megara blindly picked her last dark skirt out of her clothing chest. Sometimes, she was able to procure dark shifts and skirts from the workgroups. She had to bribe them to mix a special bath for her bales of fleece. The result was inconsistent usually. Sometimes, the ships would bring in a carob tree sappling, which she could use to order a dye bath of inky black. When she lacked carob, she had to make due with blending the plants they had. The resulting garment was always dark, but sometimes tended to be the blue-black of a sea-depth, or the red-black of blood pooling out of a deadly wound.

This particular skirt was the former blend, an inky sea swath of rectangle to which rows of flounces were sewn. She wrapped it over her linen petticoat, and cinched it with a girdle. She grabbed a bodice of the same dye lot from a second chest. She slipped it on and it hung like a bolero jacked, wrapping tightly around her breasts, pushing them together against the opaque shift she wore underneath it all. She held the bodice and her breasts in place with a leather corset she wetted with mink oil so it didn’t contrast her other clothes.

Boukris threw out anything stained with dirt, and it had been a moon since she bothered the palace dependents for more clothes. Today, she’d set out to procure more garments from them and hope she hadn’t already missed the timing of it all. For, while each workgroup was managed separately, they all operated on one fluid timeline. The wool passed between four different groups before a garment was complete. First, though, she had to manage her own enterprises.

She did her morning rounds in her bedroom suites. Her whomping willow sapling sprouted recently, and would need a vial of red wine. Her songbell plant had started to weep, and she made a note that it would need transplanting outside in the next few days, for she did not want a mote in her bedrooms. Her fire flower had yet to show any signs of growth, so she moved it to the sill. She forgot where she tucked away her nightlock plant, and had to search for a few minutes before finding it under her bed.

Crouched half under her bed, Megara felt Basil leave her ankle before she noticed how many dead mice lay at the foot of the nightlock. They had a habit of gorging themselves on the berries, too full to venture far by the time the poison took effect. She swiped the mice by the tail before Basil could eat one. She hadn’t tested what the effects of a second-hand poisoning would be, but she didn’t want to risk Basil to find out. Megara tossed the creatures on her desk, making a note to pick at them later for her notes on nightshade dosing.

For now, Megara had to set out towards the wool washing workshop. She snatched her utility belt from her desk, securing it loosely so it hugged the dip of her corset at her waist and drooped lazily over her opposite hip. She snatched a pouch she had Boukris purchase from the last shipment from Egypt, and tied it to the belt. One of the six women were going to give her a gods-damned fleece that had yet to go to the dye baths.

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