A Garment Worthy

There is power in blood. The blood of our ancestors. Blood given and blood taken. It soaks the threads that stitch our wounds and it binds us all together.

***

Haritu waited in the hall outside the chamberlain’s office, her breath a stuttering veil of mist. She swayed unsteadily beneath the quilted garments she carried, unable to feel the flagstones beneath her frozen feet. The flicker of the torches on the wall held no warmth and the shadows mocked the feeble light they shed.
“You may enter.”
The chamberlain’s muffled command from behind the door allowed Haritu to push through into his chambers. The heat engulfed her as she entered and she felt the immediate prickle of sweat down her neck.
The chamberlain had his back to her, his slender form silhouetted by the roaring fire behind him.
“You don’t have much time left.” he said as he looked into the flames, “Our Lord Protector’s Liberation Day is tomorrow.”
Her heart beat seven times before the chamberlain turned to her with a cursory examination.
“The stitching needs work.” And he turned away.

***

Back in her cramped quarters, she knew the chamberlain was right. If her old master, Turuto, was still with her he would have agreed, which made it worse. The Lord Protector and his chamberlain were fussy men and quick to anger. Master Turuto had been no different.
But, Turuto had died like the others, upon the end of spears held by the men she was now forced to serve. Layers of shame like the quilting she now had to unravel.
Her small room was dominated by her workbench and the deep stone shelves built into the walls. Beneath the bench was a tangle of scrap fabrics that she slept on, more a nest than a bed. But there would be no sleep tonight.
There were no windows. Candles lined the top shelf and wax dripped from them like an untended wound. The shelves were filled with her needles, hooks, thimbles, spools of thread and wool, and leaning in the corners were long bolts of flax and cotton fabrics.
In the flickering light she reached for the tool she needed, a long, hooked and barbed ripper. She hunched over and began to pick apart the heavy stitches on the first of the gambesons she had been working on.
The Lord Protector favoured dark colours, his tunics black and his honour guard the same. It was so removed from the bright colours her people had worn: pale blues, lilacs, oranges and pinks like the sun on the horizon.
Haritu was permitted to wear nothing but these grey rags. There was no warmth to them, no grace, no beauty.
She had long dreamed of making a dress for her Queen, a flowing gown that would move like the wind. She would have embroidered it with birdsong and the salty tang of the ocean. It would have shone like the sun glistening on waves. But Master Turuto had forbade it. He had said she wasn’t ready for such lofty ambitions.
Instead, the blood of her Queen soaked the village square alongside that of Turuto’s and the others who had resisted on what they now celebrated as Liberation Day. And Haritu spent her hours stitching together quilted armour for the guards and tunics for the Lord Protector. Black, coarse and bloated, with white thread stitched at sharp angles. Like the skeletal remains of her kin on the pyre.
It had burned for three days. And she had been the one to sweep the ashes away.
Haritu’s dark reverie was cut short as she slipped with the ripper, and its hook cut into her finger. She gasped as her blood flowed from the wound onto the garment. The white threads of the frayed stitching soaked it up, turning a deep red.
She dropped the tool as she brought her finger up to her mouth. The tang of iron coated her tongue. She salivated with a hunger she’d forgotten she had.
“Let me help you with that.” A quiet voice whispered in her ear.
She spun to face the voice and her shadow lurched across the walls. Empty. Alone.
“If you’ll let me.” Again the whisper.
“Who’s there?” Her voice sounded shrill, tight.
“Look at what you make. Clothes for our killers. Are you not ashamed?”
Haritu spun again, her shadow flickering across the shelves.
“Such crude work,” the voice continued, “born from such low ambition.”
There was something familiar in that voice, and Haritu slowed her spinning. As her shadow settled alongside her, she realised it was not hers, it moved on its own, and it had a familiar countenance.
“Master?” she finally managed to push the word out through her constricted throat, “Turuto?”
“Will you let me help you?” The shadow cocked its head, “help you make a garment worthy of your Lord Protector?”
“But, what…” Haritu glanced down at the blood-soaked threads she had dropped on the floor. She remembered the last time she had presented her embroidery to Master Turuto. Filled with an eager pride, only to have him tear it all asunder with nothing but a look. She felt that familiar flush upon her neck and averted her gaze like she had so many times before.
“What would you have me do?”
“Let me in. Let me show you how it’s done.”
“If I refuse?”
The shadow moved closer, she could feel its whispering touch as it opened around her like a shawl.
“Then your work will remain rags, your sleep will stay restless. Your dreams, ash.”
And so, she let him in.
The shadow closed upon her, she could feel her flesh pucker to meet it and shrink in recoil. Her vision blurred. Her breath stopped.
And then she was not herself. Not quite.
She moved without moving. As her body bent to retrieve the fabric, she felt her muscles slide over bone. She could see through her eyes, but not direct where they looked. Her body stood of its own accord.
She was not herself.
“Ahhh.” she heard herself speak, but it was not her speaking, “I forgot what this feels like!”
Haritu tried to stand back from the workbench. But her body stepped toward it.
No, not this. Her self, no longer hers.
“Why Haritu?” Her own voice replied, impatient, “This is the price of greatness. You cannot be trusted with such a task, it must be me.”
Get out. Please.
“There is work to be done.” He ignored her, “Pay attention.”
And like so many long nights before the invasion. Haritu looked on, a bystander in her own body as her Master measured and cut, stitched and stuffed. She could not control what he was doing, but she could feel it. The deft movements in her shoulders, arms, fingers as he pulled the threads together. The rapid darting of her eyes as he focussed on different details, constantly moving, adjusting. It was almost like a dance. It was not her doing the dancing, but her body was learning the moves.
Turuto worked her body for hours. The candles burnt nearly to their stumps. She could feel the pain of the cramps in her hands and the bitter sting of blisters on her fingers.
And he worked so much faster than should have been possible. Before dawn, there were six gambesons for the Lord Protector’s honour guard hanging on the walls. The quilting immaculate, the black linen puffed in a perfect diamond grid, set by white stitching, the high collars standing to attention.
At their centre hung the Lord Protector’s tunic. The oily sheen of the fabric was embroidered with the finest quilting Haritu had ever seen. A pattern in white threads of twisted feathers, curved talons reaching over the shoulders and upon its back, eagle wings, furled but majestic.
“Now.” Turuto instructed through her own voice, “We bring vengeance for our people. And for that we need blood.”
Haritu saw her left hand extend, and the right raise high, holding the needle like a dagger. She knew with dread what Turuto intended.
She kicked out with her legs to run. She thrust out with her arms to throw the needle across the room.
But she could not. Nothing moved.
A heart beat. Two. Still nothing moved.
Haritu realised she had stopped him.
Her arm was raised but the needle had been halted in its descent. Her shoulders trembled as she fought against Turuto for control.
“No.” she managed to say between bared teeth.
“Blood for blood” she heard her own voice reply.
“Blood… given, not taken.” She choked out.
Suddenly she felt the resistance snap and the needle dropped onto the workbench. She could breathe on her own once more. The shadow of her Master had returned to the wall, and she was filled with a confidence she had never known.
“I will finish this work, not you.”
Turuto’s shadow bowed its head.
Haritu retrieved the needle. She thought she understood what was required. Blood for blood he had said. Yes. But it was more than that. Taking blood was what the Lord Protector had done. It was what Turuto had been going to do.
No. It must be given.
She could finally see an ambition for this new life she had found herself in. There were no flowing gowns of gold under a warm breeze here. This world was built on death.
She would clothe them all in it.
She took the needle, raised her hand, and gently pricked the ends of each of her fingers. The blood welled up and she approached the suits of armour laid out along the walls. She caressed each in turn, running her bloodied fingers along the white stitching.
She whispered, “Blood for blood”, and the candles sputtered. New shadows joined Turuto on the walls around her. They lurched and they danced as the white threads of the garments turned a deep red.
She recognised them. Those who had died in the village square while Haritu had surrendered. There was the merchant who had sold her rolls of fabric every week. The woman whose dress she had patched in time for the harvest festival. The young man who had rushed to defend his family with nothing but a garden fork. And two more, all put to the spear by the Lord Protector and his honour guard.
Finally her Queen. Her shadow extended a hand to touch Haritu’s shoulder as she passed. Soft and cool, like a whisper of coming spring.
All six of the shadows approached the suits of armour, and one by one leaned into them with a gentle embrace. Their hands caressed Haritu’s own as she laid down her blood upon the threads. Then like dark wisps of smoke they settled in until the black fabric was even blacker still.
“Well done,” she heard Turuto say, and she felt the tremor of expectation in him, “and now, the last.”
“Perhaps not the last.”

***

The doors to the great hall swung open on ponderous hinges. Haritu paused on the threshold as all eyes swivelled to her. She had not been allowed inside since before the massacre.
She smiled as the shock on the chamberlain’s face turned to outrage when he saw her. She was not wearing the rags of her station, she was wearing a gown.
She had made it as the sun rose. But unlike the dress she had dreamed of for her Queen, this one was made of pale greys and shining whites. It cascaded in layers of silk around her, the fabrics laced and embroidered with a delicate filigree, like bark flowing into leaves, and ending as flames around her shoulders. A tree on fire, but all in white, and billowing like smoke as she strode into the room.
The Lord Protector sat on the throne that had once been her Queen’s. His cheeks ballooning red at her intrusion. The eagle tunic she had made fit him well.
His guards flanked him, each in their new armour gleaming dark.
Haritu’s bare feet slid across the marble floor as she advanced. She barely noticed the crowd as it parted before her. Cowards and traitors all of them, just as she had been mere hours before.
The chamberlain rushed to intercept. She dismissed him with a casual wave of her fingers, scabbed over with dried blood. His shrill protests trailed off in confusion behind her as she passed. Her eyes fixed on her target.
The Lord Protector grunted, and the guards raised their spears.
Haritu raised her bloodied hands toward them. She could see the swirling shadows in the armour she had made. She could feel the touch of the stitching on the tips of her open fingers.
She twisted her hands into fists.
The guards faltered, gasping for breath as the armour they wore constricted.
She squeezed harder.
They dropped to the floor, their spears clattering across the marble. They clawed at their collars, pleading, choking. She heard the cracking of ribs.
Then, silence.
She stepped over the dead guards as the shadows of her kin rose to join her. The Lord Protector cowered upon his throne. She raised her hands once more.
“No…” his voice was so small, “Please.”
The feather pattern on his tunic shimmered as Master Tuturo’s shadow swirled about him.
Haritu slashed down with her hands and the talons of the eagle obeyed.
The embroidery on the tunic sliced like a thousand scalpels and blood sprayed from the Lord Protector like a fountain.
Turuto’s laughter accompanied the rain of blood as it spattered upon Haritu’s gown. She looked at the Lord Protector’s face as it came to rest at her feet, his eyes stuck wide in terror.
It was done.
Haritu relaxed her hands.
She heard the rustle of the crowd. Gasps of shock, whispers of fear. She needed to reassure them. Like her, they now each had the chance to bring colour back into their world.
She smiled as she turned to face them.
A scream echoed in the hall. A thud. She stumbled back a step and looked down to see a spear shaft emerging from her chest and blood spreading through the layers of silk. At the other end of the spear she saw the chamberlain’s face contorted in anguish.
Her vision darkened. The shadows around her, shadows no longer. She felt herself fall.
But.
Not quite.
Her shadow remained as the gossamer of her body fell away and her blood sprayed the hands of her killer.
And it sprayed the frilled sleeves of his shirt. A shirt she had once been ordered to mend.
She laughed as her shadow rushed forward.
“Let me in.”

I wrote this short story for the first round of the NYC Midnight Short Story competition in early 2025. It had to be under 2500 words, and I was assigned the Ghost Story genre, with a character as a 'fashion designer' and it had to cover the topic of 'Permission'.
I was lucky enough to finish first for my group in that round, but unfortunately life got in the way and i couldn't spend time on the second round. Its a fun competition in any case and here it is for others to read if you so wish.
I use the challenge to explore a moment of rebellion against a would-be Lord Protector from those he attempted to conquer.
This story is likely a myth told by the Uferbrech Goblins of one of their ancestors or cousins from the Dawncrag Goblins as an inspiration for their continuing struggle.