I found some grosgrain ribbon I’d bought to make over an old dress and never gotten around to using and folded the quilt up, then tied it into a fancy package — pretty as you’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to embarrass Priya or make her feel beholden by giving her things in front of others — and also I was a little shy. So after dinner, but before we all gathered in the library, I tracked Priya down in the pantry where she was inventorying flour and cornmeal and suchlike, and I brought it to her.
I must of crept up behind her softer than I meant to, because when I rapped on the open door with my knuckles she about jumped out of her skin and left it straggled out on the boards. She squeaked and pirouetted, arms crossed over her apron.
It threw me off my stride, I don’t mind saying. I stood there gawping at her while she skipped and stared like a startled filly. You could have used her pupils for stove lids.
“Careful, now,” I told her. “It’s just me.”
Slowly, pretending I didn’t notice her chest heaving up and down, I held out the coverlid all packaged up with its bright blue ribbon. Even folded up, it was colorful and pretty. I’d picked the brightest scraps from the ragbag, greens and pinks and purples and reds in addition to the oranges. It mightn’t match much else — it didn’t match itself, in point of fact, though I loved the way the green and the vermilion played off each other on that one patch — but it was a gaudy great, wonderful pile of cloth.
Priya kept her hands at her sides and caught her breath as she looked at it. “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s for you,” I said. I bounced my hands a little. The quilt was getting heavy. “You’re supposed to take it now.”
“Oh!” Her eyes couldn’t possibly have gotten bigger, but they seemed to. She put her hands on her mouth instead of reaching out. “I can’t—”
“You’d better,” I said. “I got no use for it.”
“But the rug — and—”
“I like taking care of my friends,” I told her. I took a step forward, and she didn’t move back. “This isn’t getting any lighter, you know.”
“Oh!”
Priya didn’t so much reach for the quilt as let me put it in her hands when they came down again. But once she had it, she clutched it like the mane of a bucking horse. Her hands made little fists on the fabric. “Karen, I — this is too nice.”
“So you do something for me someday,” I answered. “Friends don’t keep score.”
Because friends don’t have to keep score, my da would of said. Friends just pitch in as needed, as they can.
Thinking that made me notice something else. To wit: she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on since she got here, the cuffed-up trousers and shirt, and they were all starting to get a bit dingy. She’d washed them, I knowed — we all had a hell of a laundry day once a week, boiling big vats of water with lye soap in Connie’s kitchen for all the underthings and the linens tough enough to take more than airing and brushing. Shifts and bloomers and Crispin’s shirts and suchlike. But I knowed Priya’d borrowed a shift from Beatrice to wear while her shirt was being boiled. And that she didn’t have much else.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “we’re going shopping. If you’re going to wear trousers, they’re going to be trousers that fit. And you need shoes before winter gets worse, and more than one shirt and one pair of skivvies.”
“I haven’t saved the money yet,” she said.
“We’ll buy cloth. I’ll loan you for it. You can pay me back in cash or chores, your option.”
“I don’t sew that well—”
I waved at the coverlid. “I do. We’ll get you ragged up proper in no time at all.”
The look on her face was the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen. She just stood there, canisters of flour and meal on the counter all behind her, hugging that quilt like a cat with only one kitten. I was afraid she was going to cry, and I was afraid I was going to beat her there.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get up early.”
* * *
Early, in this case, was before noon. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find Priya when the time came to go — I’d already learned she had tricks for making things she didn’t want to happen not stand a chance of happening without putting up no kind of a fight. But I woke up instead with her bouncing on my bed like a puppy. Connie was just putting the bread she’d risen overnight in the ovens, but there was some stale from the day before, and she dipped it in egg and fried it in dripping for us so there was something to eat for breakfast.
We gobbled it up, and I wish now I’d been more mindful of my gratitude. Connie had a way of doing such — putting herself out to make things a little easier for all while being so quiet about it you never think to stop and appreciate the kindness. But I was too wrapped up in Priya to pay proper attention. Mama would of been ashamed.
I’d noticed Priya didn’t eat beef or pork by itself — she’d eat around it, not making any fuss — but it seemed more of a philosophical objection than a physiological one. Which was for the good, because ten out of every eight things Connie cooks is fried in dripping.
In return for the early breakfast, Connie gave me a shopping list of her own. “And this time, try not to pre-chop the onions.”
I could feel Priya watching. When I looked at her, she gave me a flicker of a smile. I wondered if she was figuring out how, in this house, we lived together mostly by doing one another favors. I mean, I know there’s houses where it’s every girl for herself, and constant knives in the back. But Madame won’t cotton to that, and any girl who tries to import that sort of behavior and don’t take a warning or two winds up plying her trade elsewhere. Madame’s even less keen on mean than she is on drunk. She might forgive a girl who miscalculates how much liquor she can hold, as long as she don’t do it regular.
I loaned Priya a pair of my boots and three sets of socks to keep ’em on her feet. It weren’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. Then we checked the barometer, which was uncharacteristically heartening, and I flipped open the morning paper to check the Mad Science Report. No experiments were scheduled, and no duels had been announced — at least among the Licensed Scientists — but you never knowed when a giant automaton was going to run rogue unscheduled. Mostly the city makes the inventors keep to the edge of town. Mostly. And there’s always those as won’t pay the licensing taxes, and while that’s illegal, it’s hard to track them.
So I guess what I’m saying is that both looked fair for now, but both was always subject to change without notice.
Blinking in the unaccustomed sun and with Crispin for an honor guard and to help haul dry goods up and down the ladders, we set out with baskets and sacks to get some marketing done.
First I took Priya down Threadneedly, in and out of shops that sold gingham and muslin and wool. We had to walk the long way around to get there, as two big construction armatures had the Deucy Street sidewalks blocked off. They was doing the work of six steam shovels, each lifting a block of granite the size of a boxcar into place to shore up one of the raised street walls, and we all stopped to gawk for a minute. They was like the sewing machine’s much, much, much bigger cousins, and you could hardly see the operators embedded inside the framework of the big things’ chests. One operator must of caught us looking, and the hue of my primrose day dress, because once the rock was placed he began cavorting in his armature, making curled arms like I was supposed to fly up there and feel his big machine’s hydraulic biceps.
The Threadneedly end of town was nearer the rich folk’s homes and the airfield than the docks, and one big airship drifted over while we walked, shadowing us from the rare winter sun. It was a gaudy thing, gold and vermilion and peacock blue and parrot green, and as the docking boom reached up into the sky to snag it and it tilted slightly, I read the words Minneapolis Colony appliqued up the hydrogen bag. I spared a thought for if that was a port of registry or the name of the thing — neither seemed likely. Still, it caught the light, and I heard Priya catch her breath at how it glittered.