A month after the creature came through the cellar, Nadir asked Henry to go with him to the upper workshops.
They were washing before supper. Nadir had already finished, but he stood beside the basin rolling his sleeves down, then up again. Henry was working soap into the grey lines around his fingernails.
"Mrs. Aksoy knows a woman who makes harnesses," Nadir said. "She repairs some of our straps. She's looking for another apprentice, and she said I could come and see the place tomorrow."
Henry glanced at him. "Are you leaving the stores?"
"I haven't decided. That's why I'm going to look." Nadir picked up the towel. "You don't have to come. I just thought, if Besson lets us finish early, we could go together."
"What does Ivo think?"
"That I should stay where the slayers are."
Henry dried his hands. "I'll come."
The stairs began beyond the cloth market and climbed between houses built so closely together that their upper windows almost met. Rainwater ran down a channel beside the steps. Overhead, strips of washing crossed the pale afternoon sky: a row of stockings, a yellow sheet, two shirts turning slowly on their pegs.
Henry had swept these lower flights before. Farther up, the chipped stone gave way to broad, shallow steps with an iron rail down the middle. Houses stood back behind walls, their gardens raised above the street. He could see the undersides of glossy leaves and, through one gate, a basin where water spilled from a carved fish's mouth.
They stopped on a landing to catch their breath.
Rocheforte spread beneath them in uneven bands of red tile and grey slate. Chimneys rose among the roofs, some tall and square, others no thicker than drainpipes. The market awnings made little patches of colour between the buildings. Beyond the last streets, fields crossed the plain in long green strips, divided by ditches that caught the light. Everything Henry could see belonged to the country inside Montferrand's walls.
He tried to find the orphanage. There were too many roofs of the same colour.
"It's behind that tower," Nadir said.
"The market's behind that tower."
"Then the other one."
Henry looked at him. Nadir grinned, but there was something distracted about it.
"You don't have to choose today," Henry said.
"I know."
They climbed the next flight.
The harness workshop occupied the ground floor of a long house beside a cart road. Its doors were painted dark green, with white scratches around the latch. Beneath the open windows hung collars large enough to fit a cart horse: thick leather ovals stuffed round and firm, their lower edges darkened where they would rest against an animal's chest.
Inside, the air smelled of leather, warm grease, and the sharp sweetness of fresh wood shavings. Narrow straps hung from pegs in dark bundles. Brass buckles filled shallow trays on a shelf, and curved needles stood upright in a block of wax. A woman at the nearest bench was piercing a strip of brown leather with an awl, its steel point set in a rounded wooden handle. Each hole made a small, firm sound against the wood beneath it.
She was broad through the shoulders, with a grey braid tucked into her collar. The tips of her fingers were stained nearly black.
"Nadir?"
He nodded. "Mrs. Sen?"
"Come in. Who have you brought?"
"Henry. We work together sometimes."
She nodded to him and returned the awl to its rack.
"Aksoy says you can read a label, keep a count, and turn up when you're meant to. That's a useful beginning. What do you want to learn?"
Nadir looked around the room before answering.
"Something I can keep doing. At the yard, I sort things and carry them. I know where most of it goes now, but I don't know how to make any of it. If they stop needing me, I'd be back asking Besson every morning." He touched the blue patch at his cuff. "I can sew a little. Only clothes, though."
Mrs. Sen examined the cuff when he offered it.
"Leather's less forgiving. Pull your thread badly and you cut through the hole you've made. You can't move the next stitch over and expect it to disappear." She let go of his sleeve. "Still, hands learn. Come and see what you'd be doing."
At the back of the room, a girl sat with a wooden clamp between her knees. It held two pieces of leather upright while she stitched them together. She was a few years older than Nadir, with a narrow face, a scattering of freckles, and one copper-coloured curl hanging beside otherwise straight hair.
"Ruth," Mrs. Sen said. "Show them that strap when you've finished."
Ruth pulled the thread tight and held out her work. Henry could barely see the join. The stitches lay in two even rows, slightly sunk into the leather.
"How long does that take?" he asked.
"That piece? Half an hour. Learning to stop stabbing myself took longer." She returned it to the bench. "You get to start with the cheap leather. She keeps the expensive mistakes for me."
Mrs. Sen made a dry sound that might have been a laugh.
Against the far wall, a pale hide was stretched on a frame. Henry had mistaken it for a dirty cloth until he came closer. It was longer than a bed and narrowed into a stiff tail at one end. Four leg openings spread from its sides. Along the back ran six rows of raised grey knobs, each surrounded by folds of skin as fine as the wrinkles on his knuckles.
The head had been removed, but the neck remained: a broad tube with a ragged lower edge. A deep cut crossed one shoulder. Dark red stains had dried into the stitching that held it shut.
"What's that from?"
"An Awakened," Mrs. Sen said. "That's what the yard sold it as. I didn't see it alive, and I'm glad of it."
Henry stopped short of touching it.
"Do you make armour from it?"
"Sometimes a piece for someone who knows what they're asking for. This one's for the outside of an equipment case. It'll take a scrape better than ordinary hide, once it's properly worked. But look here." She turned back a loose edge beneath one of the leg openings. Light showed through a patch as thin as paper. "You can't put a name on a whole creature and expect every bit of it to be equally useful. I'd rather have sound oxhide than a strap cut from that."
Henry leaned closer. The pale skin had tiny pits across its surface, packed with dried mud. He tried to imagine it moving: the leg openings filled, the back rising, a head heavy enough to need that thick neck.
"Where did it come from?"
"A farm farther down the plain. Beyond that, you'd have to ask somebody else."
She lowered the hide and went to fetch a piece of paper from her desk.
Ruth wound the curl beside her cheek around a finger. When she let go, it tightened into a little spiral.
Henry watched.
"[Curl]," she said. "Only a few hairs at a time, and they straighten again before the day's over. I used to do my whole head. Now I usually lose patience after this one."
"Mine takes colour out," Nadir told her.
"That explains your sleeve."
"It was meant to match."
Ruth considered the patch. "Eventually, perhaps."
Mrs. Sen laid the paper on the bench. Her writing was large and square, with spaces between the lines.
"This is what I'm offering. Your first work would be cleaning, cutting practice pieces, and learning the tools. You'd help Ruth before you made anything for sale. Food and a bed upstairs are included. The money is small to begin with; I've written down when it increases, so neither of us has to rely on remembering a conversation."
Nadir bent over the page.
"I'd live here?"
"We start early. You could walk up from the orphanage every morning, but you'd wear yourself out before you touched a needle. There's a room beside Ruth's. You can look at it before you go." She tapped the bottom of the sheet. "Take this to Mrs. Vautrin. She can come and speak to me. I won't have you agreeing to something you haven't understood."
Henry looked down at his hands. A white line of soap remained beside one fingernail.
He had known apprentices sometimes lived where they worked. He had simply not thought of Nadir doing it.
The room upstairs had a narrow bed, a washstand, and a sloping ceiling. Through its window, Henry had seen the fields again, bright under a break in the clouds. There had been no other beds.
He kept thinking about that on the way down.
Nadir carried the paper inside his coat. He said very little until they reached the landing above the market.
"What did you think?"
"It's a good room."
"About the work."
Henry rested his hands on the rail. Below them, a cart was trying to turn between two stalls. The driver had climbed down to argue with a man who refused to move his baskets.
"You'd have to start again," Henry said. "You know what you're doing at the stores."
"I didn't when I went there."
"And it's less money."
"At first. I read that bit." Nadir leaned against the stone beside him. "I wanted you to come because I thought you'd tell me if it looked bad. Does it?"
Henry watched the cart. One wheel had caught the corner of a basket. The men both pointed at it, as though the other had failed to notice.
"No."
"Then what's wrong?"
He could have said nothing. Nadir would probably have let him.
"You won't be there in the evenings."
Nadir's hand went to the folded paper. For a moment, he rubbed its edge through his coat.
"No," he said. "I won't. But I can't keep sorting straps because I like who I eat supper with. I want to learn this. When she showed me the room, I started thinking where I'd put my things." He looked toward the roofs. "Then I thought about eating up there, and I wasn't so sure. That's why I asked you."
Henry felt ashamed of hoping he would refuse. He had been ready to find a fault in the place before Mrs. Sen opened her mouth.
"I don't think it's bad," he said. "I think you should show Mrs. Vautrin."
Nadir nodded, although he did not immediately move.
Below, the basket was finally dragged aside. The cart rolled forward, its driver still arguing as he climbed back onto the seat.
"It's a long way up," Henry added. "But I could come sometimes."
"You could bring Ivo. He'd like the hide."
"He'd ask how to kill it."
"Ruth would tell him to start by cleaning the floor."
Henry smiled. They left the rail and went down together.
At the orphanage, Nadir took the paper to Mrs. Vautrin before supper. She read it twice, then sat with him to go through the terms. Henry stayed long enough to hear her arrange a visit to the workshop later that week.
The place at the table beside him was still Nadir's that evening. Henry passed him the bread, listened while he described Ruth's work to Ivo, and added the part about the thin skin beneath the creature's legs. When Nadir forgot the name of a tool, Henry remembered it.
After supper, they put Mrs. Sen's offer in Nadir's box, beneath the comb so the paper would lie flat. Henry held the lid while Nadir shifted his stockings out of the way. Once the paper was safely tucked between them, he lowered the lid and slid the box beneath Nadir's bed.