Seren had not slept well.
This was not unusual. She had lived through gods, raids, impossible beer, divine embarrassment, one dwarf who could color match his daily grudge to his beard, and Alric. Sleep had become a thing she negotiated with, not a thing she trusted.
But this was different.
This was not terror. This was not the strained, sharp kind of wakefulness that came before an attack.
This was a brassiere. Well no it was five. Terven had rushed the order for her.
She lay awake for far too long, staring at the ceiling while Brannick slept beside her with the infuriating peace of a man who had seen the garment, understood the problem, and then somehow decided the matter was settled.
It was not settled.
It sat in the room like a small, neatly folded summons.
Seren had wanted to dislike it. She had wanted it to pinch, rub, sit badly, or prove itself another example of men having ideas about women that should have stayed firmly inside their own skulls.
Instead, her back felt better. Her robes sat better. Walking felt easier. Even sitting for long stretches did not leave her with that familiar pull across her shoulders.
It was, in every possible way, useful. This was a problem.
If she was the only woman in the city wearing one of Alric’s mysterious gifts, people would notice. People always noticed the wrong things. They would not say, “How practical.” They would say things in taverns. They would say things in corridors. They would say things near Brannick until the poor man had to either endure it, deny it, or break someone’s jaw.
And Alric.
Alric, who had apparently designed something for her lady parts because she had made too many jokes about his socks.
Seren pressed both hands over her face.
There were only two women she could reasonably diffuse the matter to.
Mara and Margaret.
Mara would have been best in all ways. Mara had the kind of practical sense that could turn even scandal into a ledger entry. Unfortunately, Mara was working today, and when Mara was managing germination, bothering her with underclothing politics was a good way to learn how many things a woman could throw while still handling grain.
That left Margaret.
Seren did not like that.
Margaret was clever. Margaret was respectable. Margaret understood discretion.
Margaret was also the kind of woman who could hear the words practical improvement and immediately turn into a predator.
Still, Seren had few options. She also had to do this today because Alric was out doing something with Tavern keepers.
Seren entered the into Margaret’s apartment after a small knock and invitation.
Margaret was sitting in her lounge room, reading a book, and looked far too calm for what Seren was about to do to it. She had only moved in the day before and had yet to unpack properly.
“I’ve brought tea.” Seren said with a smile. They were still using wooden mugs, Seren hadn’t found good ceramic ones yet.
“You look,” Margaret said, “like you have come to confess to a crime.”
Seren placed the mug in front of Margaret, she moved to the chair opposite and hesitated before sitting down.
Margaret’s smile sharpened.
“Seren?”
“It started with the socks.”
Margaret’s eyebrows moved toward her forehead.
Seren told her.
She told her about Alric’s socks. About the teasing. About the tailor. About the package. About the five garments. About the note. About the fitting. About Gwyn and Terven and adjustments and support and every miserable stitch of the thing.
She told Margaret that Alric had paid for five.
She told Margaret that Terven had made changes.
She told Margaret, with the bitterness of a woman admitting defeat before an enemy army, that the blasted thing worked wonderfully.
Margaret laughed at first.
She laughed with a hand near her mouth and eyes full of delight, as though Seren had brought her the best kind of gossip. Harmless, humiliating, and attached to a man who deserved it.
Then she stopped laughing.
Seren noticed the change.
It began as curiosity. Margaret’s head tilted slightly. Her eyes moved from Seren’s face to Seren’s shoulders, then lower, then back up again with the discipline of a woman who knew exactly what she was observing and exactly how rude it would be to admit it.
Then came professional interest. Then, very quickly, personal interest.
Margaret set down her untouched tea.
“No.”
Margaret smiled. “I have not asked anything.”
“You are about to.”
“Does it help with posture?”
“No.”
Margaret’s eyebrows rose.
Seren sighed. “Yes.”
“Walking?”
“Yes.”
“Riding?”
“Margaret, you think I ride? I imagine so though.”
“Writing at a desk?”
Seren hesitated.
Margaret leaned forward.
“Yes, so much.” Seren muttered.
“Spellcasting movement?”
“I am not Terven or a mage.”
“No, but you are wearing one.”
Seren looked away. Margaret’s smile became unbearable.
“Do the straps interfere with robes?”
“No.”
“Formal clothing?”
“I do not know.”
“Long ceremonies?”
“Margaret.”
“Standing for hours while pretending one is not in pain?”
Seren glared.
Margaret’s expression softened for half a breath. Not with pity. That would have been insulting. With recognition.
Then she said, “Show me how you move.”
“No.”
“Seren.”
“I am not performing underclothing tricks in your room.”
“You are not performing. You are demonstrating.”
“That is worse.”
Margaret folded her hands in her lap. It made her look more reasonable, which was always a sign that she was becoming less so.
Seren lasted three breaths.
Then, because she was apparently weak before organised female curiosity, she stood.
She lifted her arms. Turned. Reached. Twisted at the waist. Bent slightly and straightened again. Every motion felt normal, which was infuriating because Margaret watched each one as if Seren had revealed a new school of magic.
When Seren sat back down, Margaret was silent.
That was when Seren made the mistake.
She had known she might have to prove the thing existed. She had brought one of the spare garments wrapped in cloth, intending to keep it hidden unless absolutely necessary.
It was not absolutely necessary.
She showed Margaret anyway.
Margaret took it as though Seren had handed her either a relic or a political weapon.
For a long moment she said nothing. She examined the straps first, then the shaped cloth, then the stitching. She pressed one finger to the side support, turned it over, and studied it further.
“This is not a wrap.”
“No.”
“It does not simply flatten.”
“No.”
“It holds.”
Seren closed her eyes. “Yes.”
Margaret’s voice dropped into the dangerous calm of a woman reaching conclusions. “And adjusts.”
“Yes.”
“And the weight is taken here.” Margaret touched the straps. “And here.”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“I wear robes and complain. I do not build siege engines.”
Margaret ignored her. She held the garment up again, eyes narrowed. “I want to try it.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Seren.”
“No.”
Margaret looked at her.
It was not a glare. It was the look of a noblewoman who had decided the law was nearby, perhaps even in the same district, but certainly not in the room.
“We are both women,” Margaret said. “We are both adults. And I have spent more years than I care to count pretending certain discomforts are signs of dignity. Give it here.”
“This is not proper.”
“Neither is suffering because every robe-maker in the capital behaves as if breasts are rumours.”
Seren’s resistance, already strained, broke with a soundless little collapse.
Margaret disappeared behind a screen.
Seren sat very still and considered fleeing. She did not flee, because she had dignity.
Also Margaret had taken the brassiere.
There was rustling. A pause. More rustling. A thoughtful sound that made Seren tense.
Then Margaret emerged. She was not emotionally transformed.
She was structurally transformed.
Her shoulders sat differently. Her spine seemed to have remembered it was allowed to be straight. She adjusted her sleeves, took three experimental steps, lifted one arm, lowered it, and then turned as if testing where the limits were.
There were no limits.
Margaret stared at the far wall with genuine horror.
“I need six.”
Seren dropped her head into one hand.
“No,” she said. “No, you do not.”
“I need six.”
“This is not an official atelier matter.”
“It absolutely is.”
“It absolutely is not.”
“Back strain affects concentration.”
Seren looked up slowly.
Margaret continued, apparently now addressing a council and counting on her fingers. “Poor posture affects spellwork. Pain affects patience. If a woman is expected to stand through ceremonies, write letters, ride, manage a household, attend meetings, or hold a conversation with a fool while dressed in three layers of expensive fabric, then this is not vanity.”
“It is underclothing.”
Seren stared at her. Margaret smiled. Seren felt cold dread move through her.
“Where is the tailor?”
“No.”
“Can we be there in a bell?”
“No.”
Margaret had already begun removing the borrowed garment with the efficient focus of a woman preparing for war.
“Margaret, I am trying to make this less strange.”
“And you have. Very well done.”
“That is not what is happening.”
“It is precisely what is happening. If more women have them, then yours is no longer unusual.”
That, unfortunately, was the exact argument Seren had made to herself at dawn.
She hated when Margaret was right. Margaret seemed to enjoy it too much.
They left within the bell.
By then Seren had almost convinced herself that this might remain controlled. Worse, she had already sent a note to Terven by a delivery boy, warning him that she would be bringing a noblewoman to the shop in a bell’s time and that he should, if he valued peace, clear the place first.
She suspected Terven would understand enough to panic on his own.
There would be one fitting. A few discreet orders. The thing would spread slowly enough that no one could point directly at Seren and say she had been the beginning of it.
Then they turned into Terven’s street. Women were waiting outside. Not in a queue. That would have been too honest.
They stood in little clumps. One examined ribbon at a street stall she clearly had no intention of buying. Two were speaking near a wall while glancing too often at the shop. Another stood with a basket over one arm and the hard, patient look of someone prepared to outwait weather, hunger, and social shame.
A few stared openly. At Seren. At Margaret. At the woman beside Margaret.
Mostly at the fact that they were going inside.
Envy had a very particular expression when worn by respectable women pretending not to be desperate. Seren saw it on half a dozen faces before they reached the door.
Her note had worked, then. Terven had cleared the shop. He had not, unfortunately, cleared the street.
Margaret looked pleased. Seren did not like that.
“Who is she?” Seren asked quietly, because Margaret had left house with just Seren and had somehow acquired a second woman before they reached the tailor.
Margaret’s friend smiled before Margaret could answer.
“Edeline.”
She said it like a challenge.
Seren had met confident women before. She had met noblewomen, merchants’ wives, innkeepers, soldiers, and priests who could make a room step aside by breathing in.
Edeline was different.
She had the calm, blunt presence of a woman whose body had been commented on by fools for so long that she had turned embarrassment into armour and then learned to swing it.
She was also, in the most practical and unavoidable sense, extremely busty.
Seren refused to think of it beyond the practical. The practical was enough. Edeline moved like a woman accustomed to managing weight, fabric, eyes, and pain all at once. Her robes had been made well, but even good tailoring could not hide the fact that it was losing a long war against gravity.
“Margaret explained enough,” Edeline said. “I came.”
“You told her?” Seren hissed.
“I was discreet,” Margaret said.
“You brought reinforcements.”
“Yes. Discreetly.”
The women outside watched them enter the shop with the mournful envy of people being denied fresh bread during a famine.
Inside, Terven looked as though he had aged since receiving the note.
He saw Seren first and gave her the tight smile of a man who had been warned and had not been warned enough.
Then he saw Margaret. His smile became professional.
Then he saw Edeline.
For one brief, shining moment, Terven looked like a man trying to decide whether he should summon a leatherworker, a blacksmith, or potentially a bell founder.
Gwyn, standing behind him with a measuring rope around her neck, did not share his terror.
Her eyes moved over Edeline once. Professionally.
Then Gwyn’s expression changed.
Seren imagined that dwarves would look at a rich vein of ore with that expression. This was beyond predatory; Gwyn had found a mountain.
“If we can make one work for you,” Gwyn said, almost to herself, “we can make one work for anyone.”
Edeline looked at her. Gwyn looked back. A silent agreement passed between them.
Terven cleared his throat. “Lady Seren, Lady Margaret, perhaps we should begin with…”
“Her,” Gwyn said.
Terven closed his mouth.
Seren noticed he did not argue. This either meant Gwyn was now in charge of this part of the business or Terven had developed a survival instinct.
Edeline was led to the back first. Margaret watched with bright anticipation.
Seren watched with the hollow calm of a woman seeing a cart roll downhill and knowing there was no point standing in front of it.
From behind the curtain came Gwyn’s voice.
“No, not like that. That will cut into the shoulder.”
A murmur from Edeline.
“Yes, I know that is what they usually do. They are wrong.”
Terven’s voice followed, careful and distant. “We may need a wider band.”
“Much wider,” Gwyn said.
“And reinforced stitching.”
Another pause.
“No,” Gwyn said. “If we pull from there, she will hate us by noon.”
Edeline laughed once. It was startled and sharp. Margaret smiled. Seren did not.
A few minutes later, Terven emerged to fetch something from a drawer. His ears were red.
“She will require thicker straps,” he said to no one in particular. “Very thick straps. Possibly a different side panel. The first design is not sufficient for her shape.”
“Alric’s design?” Margaret asked sweetly.
Terven’s face did something complicated.
“He provided the initial idea,” he said. “This will need adjustments. Many of them.”
From behind the curtain, Gwyn called, “And more now.”
Terven shut the drawer with dignity and returned. Seren looked toward the front window.
The women outside were still there.
One of them met Seren’s eyes through the glass and did not even pretend to look away.
Seren had the sudden, awful thought that she might have become a gatekeeper.
She hated that too.
Then the curtain moved. Edeline stepped out. The shop went quiet.
She stood still at first, as if she did not trust the floor. Then she took a step. Another. She rolled her shoulders back.
Her face changed.
It changed like a locked door opening. She touched her own lower back with one hand.
“My back does not hurt.”
No one spoke.
Edeline took a breath. Then another, deeper one.
“My back does not hurt,” she repeated, now with accusation in it, as if the world had been hiding this from her personally. She rubbed her eye’s briefly.
Margaret looked pleased enough to be unbearable.
Seren felt something in her soften despite herself.
Edeline turned to Margaret. “Have commoners always had such wonders?” Her eyes shimmering with near tears.
“No,” Margaret said. “Apparently my atelier head designed this.”
Terven stepped forward with the expression of a man trying to stop a horse before it reached a market stall.
“Lord Alric had an initial idea,” he said politely. “But this is not a simple matter of copying. Every body requires adjustment. In your case, my lady, the straps will need to be much thicker. The side support must be stronger. The lower band should be widened. Gwyn is quite right about the pull.”
Gwyn, who had followed Edeline out with pins between her lips, nodded as if receiving tribute.
Edeline did not seem to care who had invented it.
“I need six.”
Margaret laughed.
Edeline pointed at Terven. “No. Eight. One for riding. One for formal robes. One for travel. One for summer. One for days when I must speak to men who think one type of robe fits everyone.”
Gwyn removed the pins from her mouth. “Different cloth for summer, and something sturdier for riding.”
“Better.”
“And nothing that cuts into the shoulder.”
Edeline looked at her with sudden, fierce affection. “You understand me.”
“I understand bad tailoring,” Gwyn said.
That, somehow, seemed to settle everything. Margaret turned to Seren with a smile that should have been banned from polite society.
“Now me.”
“Margaret.”
“I have been patient.”
“You tried mine less than a bell ago.”
“And now I know patience was a mistake.”
Gwyn was already moving toward her with the measuring rope.
Terven was writing in a page with the speed of a condemned man taking down his final confession.
Edeline, meanwhile, had gone to the cloth shelves and was examining fabrics with the seriousness of a general choosing battlefield terrain.
Seren stood in the middle of the shop and watched the world tilt.
Outside, women waited with envy sharpened into resolve.
Inside, Margaret was walking toward a fitting with the satisfaction of a woman who had found a cause.
Edeline was choosing cloth. Gwyn had discovered purpose.
Terven was making notes as though ink might save him.
And somewhere in the city, entirely unaware of what he had done, Alric had become the most dangerous man in women’s underclothing.
Seren sighed.
She had tried to make it less strange.
Apparently, she had started an industry.