“It makes the ordering process smoother,” she said.
“Oh, it’s nothing, I’m easy to please,” said Ms. O’Rourke.
Simone looked at Petra. Petra feigned interest in buttons.
Petra was assigned to the counter, and while Simone kept Ms. O’Rourke in the main room with the curtains discreetly drawn, Petra spent a week rewinding ribbons on their spools and looking at the portfolios of Italian armor-makers. Simone was considering buying a set to be able to gauge the best wadding for the vests beneath.
Petra looked at the joints, imagined the pivots as the arm moved back and forth. She wondered if the French hadn’t had a better sense of how the body moved; some of the Italian stuff just looked like an excuse for filigree.
When the gentleman came up to the counter he had to clear his throat before she noticed him.
She put on a smile. “Good morning, sir. How can we help you?”
He turned and presented his back to her—three arrows stuck out from the left shoulder blade, four from the right.
“Looked sideways during the Crusades,” he said proudly. “Not recommended, but I sort of like them. It’s a souvenir. I’d like to keep them. Doctors said it was fine, nothing important was pierced.”
Petra blinked. “I see. What can we do for you?”
“Well, I’d really like to have some shirts altered,” he said, and when he laughed the tips of the arrows quivered like wings.
“You’d never catch me vagabonding back in time,” Petra said that night.
Simone seemed surprised by the attempt at conversation (after five years she was still surprised). “It’s lucky you’ll never have the money, then.”
Petra clipped a thread off the buttonhole she was finishing.
“I don’t understand it,” Simone said more quietly, as though she were alone.
Petra didn’t know what she meant.
Simone turned the page on her costume book, paused to look at one of the hair ornaments.
“We’ll need to find the ivory one,” Simone said. “It’s the most beautiful.”
“Will Ms. O’Rourke notice?”
“I give my clients the best,” Simone said, which wasn’t really an answer.
“I’ve finished the alterations,” Petra said finally, and held up one of the shirts, sliced open at the shoulder blades to give the arrows room, with buttons down the sides for ease of dressing.
Petra was surprised the first time she saw a Bore team in the shop—the Vagabond, the historian, the translator, two plugs, and a “Consultant” whose job was ostensibly to provide a life story for the client, but who spent three hours insisting that Roman women could have worn saris if the Empire had sailed far enough.
The Historian was either too stupid or too smart to argue, and Petra’s protest had been cut short by Simone stepping forward to suggest they discuss jewelry for the Historian and plausible wardrobe for the plugs.
“Why, they’re noble too, of course,” the client had said, adjusting his high collar. “What else could they be?”
Plugs were always working-class, even Petra knew that—in case you had to stay behind and fix things for a noble who’d mangled the past, you didn’t want to run the risk of a rival noble faction calling for your head, which they tended strongly to do.
Petra tallied the cost of the wardrobe for a Roman household: a million in material and labor, another half a million in jewelry. With salaries for the entourage and the fees for machine management and operation, his vacation would cost him ten million.
Ten million to go back in time in lovely clothes, and not be allowed to change a thing. Petra took dutiful notes and marked in the margin, A WASTE.
She looked up from the paper when Simone said, “No.”
The client had frowned, not used to the word. “But I’m absolutely sure it was possible—”
“It may be possible depending on your source,” Simone said, with a look at the historian, “but it is not right.”
“Well, no offense, Miss Carew, but I’m paying you to dress me, not to give me your opinion on what’s right.”
“Apologies, sir,” said Simone, smiling. “You won’t be paying me at all. Petra, please show the gentlemen out.”
They made the papers; Mr. Bei couldn’t keep from talking about his experience in the Crusades.
“I was going to plan another trip right away,” he was quoted as saying, “but I don’t know how to top this! I think I’ll be staying here. The Institute has already asked me to come and speak about the importance of knowing your escape plan in an emergency, and believe me, I know it.”
Under his photo was the tiny caption: Clothes by Chronomode.
“Mr. Bei doesn’t mention his plugs,” Petra said, feeling a little sick. “Guess he wasn’t the only one that got riddled with arrows.”
“It’s what the job requires. If you have the aptitude, it’s excellent work.”
“It can’t be worth it.”
“Nothing is worth what we give it,” said Simone. She dropped her copy of the paper on Petra’s desk. “You need to practice your running stitch at home. The curve on that back seam looks like a six-year-old made it.”
Tibi cornered Petra at the Threaders’ Guild meeting. Tibi worked at Mansion, which outfitted Vagabonders with a lot more pomp and circumstance than Simone’s two-man shop.
Tibi had a dead butterfly pinned to her dress, and when she hugged Petra it left a dusting of pale green on Petra’s shoulder.
“Petra! Lord, I was JUST thinking about you! I passed Chronomode the other day and thought, Poor Petra, it’s SUCH a prison in there. Holding up?” Tibi turned to a tall young tailor beside her. “Michael, darling, Petra works for Carew over at Chronomode.”
The tailor raised his eyebrows. “There’s a nightmare. How long have you hung in there, a week?”
Five years and counting. “Sure,” Petra said.
“No, for AGES,” Tibi corrected. “I don’t know how she makes it, I really don’t, it’s just so HORRIBLE.” Tibi wrapped one arm around the tailor and cast a pitying glance at Petra. “I was there for a week, I made the Guild send me somewhere else a week later, it was just inhuman. What is it LIKE, working there for SO long without anyone getting you out of there?”
“Oh, who knows,” said Petra. “What’s it like getting investigated for sending people back to medieval France with machine-sewn clothes?”
Tibi frowned. “The company settled that.”
Petra smiled at Tibi, then at the tailor. “I’m Petra.”
“Michael,” he said, and frowned at her hand when they shook.
“Those are just calluses from the needles,” Petra said. “Don’t mind them.”
“Ms. O’Rourke’s kimono is ready for you to look at,” Petra said, bringing the mannequin to Simone’s desk.
“No need,” said Simone, her eyes on her computer screen, “you don’t have enough imagination to invent mistakes.”
Petra hoped that was praise; suspected otherwise.
A moment later Simone slammed a hand on her desk. “Damn it all, look at this. The hair ornament I need is a reproduction. Because naturally a 20th-century reproduction is indistinguishable from an 18th-century enamel original. The people of 1743 Kyoto will never notice.
“Are they hiring antiques dealers out of primary school these days?” Simone asked the computer, and left through the door to the shop, heels clicking.
Petra smoothed the front of the kimono. It was heavy grey silk, painted with cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums. Petra had added butterflies, purple and blue and gold.
The light in the shop was still on; Petra saw it just as she was leaving.
Careless, she thought as she crossed the workshop. Simone would have killed me.
She had one hand on the door when the sound of a footstep stopped her. Were they being robbed? She thought about the Danish Bronze-age brooches hidden behind the counter in their velvet wrappers.
Petra grabbed a fabric weight in her fist and opened the door a crack.
Simone stood before the fitting mirror, holding a length of bright yellow silk against her shoulders. It washed her out (she’d never let a client touch the stuff), but her reflection was smiling.
She hung it from her collarbones like a Roman; draped it across her shoulder like the pallav of a sari; bustled it around her waist. The bright gold slid through her fingers as if she was dancing with it.
Simone gathered the fabric against her in two hands, closed her eyes at the feel of it against her face.
Petra closed the door and went out the back way, eyes fixed on the wings at her feet.
When she came around the front of the shop, the light was still on in the window, and Simone stood like a doll wrapped in a wide yellow ribbon, imagining a past she’d never see.
Petra turned for home.
Disease Control hadn’t made the rounds yet, and the darkness was a swarm of wings, purple and blue and gold.
Dress Code
Sandra McDonald
Here’s a tip if you’re hoping to be bumped up to First Class: no butt cracks. No sagging sweatpants, scuffed trainers, or rubber sandals that show off your gnarled toenails. Dress like a slob and you’ll stay crammed back in Economy, along with all the other passengers who couldn’t be bothered to iron their shirts. When we’re overbooked and need to upgrade a passenger, I’m choosing the man in a well-cut suit with a crisp shirt, smart tie and leather shoes. A silk pocket square of any color or pattern makes my knees go weak; a waistcoat will make me swoon.