Figleaf Leatherwors

Chapter 3

Emory's day started well before dawn. He'd rolled out of bed, thrown on the bare minimum amount of clothing required to be decent and trundled downstairs to clean up the shop in preparation for their guest.

The building was wide and shallow so the struggle for work space was a constantly evolving battle. It was a multi pronged assault between the five work tables, racks of leather, and the honeycomb wall where they stored their client orders when they weren't being worked on. Emory redrew the battle lines as quietly as he could without waking his father and forged order out of the chaos; tables got polished, the door glass got cleaned to a crystal shine, and everything got straightened up or polished until years of patina became character instead of grime.

His father was up about mid morning. He ambled down the stairs and thumped down in his chair almost without realizing anything had changed. He looked around as he buttoned up his shirt and gave Emory a bemused nod of approval.

Emory was the apprentice, even now, so opening up and getting things ready was his job. It didn't require anything of his father except his presence, so the minimum was what he would give until around mid day. Still, he made them both some tea- probably to kill his hangover or whatever.

Tila and Morin gave him questioning looks when they showed up to start the day, Morin looked as if Emory had punted his potted plant across the room.

"Oi, Emr'y. What gives?"

Emory tried for a smile he didn't quite have the energy to keep up. "Thought it'd make the place feel more open. I didn't move anything."

"Psh," the old man scoffed. "And how'm I supposed t'flirt with Tila so far away?" He swept his hand between the tables. No more than shoulder width, really. "Can't tell her no war stories without disrupting the customers."

Tila, who'd been busy wiping wax tablets for the day's work, gave him a dirty look and scoffed. She plucked a scrivener from her cup and wrote in huge letters on one of the tablets: "Lost in field. Very exciting."

"What's that say?"

Emory's father glanced over, laughed. "She says she'd love to hear more."

Tila slopped down the tablet and shot Emory's dad a rude gesture. He grinned at her in return.

When Keline showed up she took one look around, flashed Emory a knowing smile and meandered over to his table. She swooped over his shoulder and kept her voice low and conspiratorial: "Want me to go get some incense? Mom got a stock in last week, really exotic stuff from the desert."

"Nah, if she shows up she needs to smell the leather."

"Got it. Good job." She pat his shoulder and grabbed her stool.

Emory fell into the familiar rhythm of the work with ease, though every now and then when someone wandered by the shop front and their shadow passed by he looked up- hoping he'd see the noble woman again. He'd rehearsed a welcome speech, a subtle introduction that didn't apologize for the worn flooring or slight musk, but gave plenty of room for everyone's individual talents to shine. His dad would've called it a waste: you dealt straight with people or you didn't deal at all. An ethos which you could see reflected in the ledger. The ones Emory totally didn't sneak looks at every couple days.

It'd been a rough few months. This woman could change their fortunes with a single order

and

prove to his father that his ideas might have some ground. Everything needed to work right. Everything needed to

feel

right.

"Emory," Kel said.

"Huh?"

She nodded to his foot, apparently it'd been bouncing and he hadn't even felt it. "Any more nervous and I won't be able to get a needle up your ass with a sledge hammer. It's gonna be fineeee."

At those words his father glanced up from his work. "Not that I mind, but ya'll know that's not how kids get made."

Keline scoffed. "Maybe he likes things up his butt."

"Low blow.

Low

blow." Emory shot back. "Only reason you get away with that is you think I won't hit back."

"You'd know better 'n that," his father said simply.

"Yes, sir. . ."

Keline shot him a teasing grin.

Emory glanced back briefly to make sure his father couldn't see him before he shoved three fingers into a loop he made with his other hand, then withdrew two to flip her his middle. She rolled her eyes and mouthed back 'promises, promises'.

Always an idea, and one that had crossed his mind a few times, but. . . .that would've been weird. So. Very. Weird. Still, he was a young man that couldn't help but notice the lushness of her thighs and the way they plumped when she adjusted this way or that on her stool- some part of him was sure it'd been intentional that she used it instead of a chair.

"Emory, stop it." Keline said again. "The foot thing."

"Tch."

"She'll come," she added quietly.

A shadow passed over the door, it lingered there. Emory looked up. Hopeful- she'd finally arrived! She'd kept her word and probably hadn't sold him out to the Guild. The bell dinged as the door opened and Emory started to rise, already starting with a smile to greet the new customer.

But it wasn't the noble.

She was tall, blonde, and her spurs clanged loudly with every step. Like the tolling of a gathering bell.

The first customer of the day wasn't going to be nobility, but a daemon.

"Oh shit," he whispered.

She wasn't like the gargoyles atop city hall's tower, or the six tailed fox lady that sold clocks to tourists and drugs to locals; this one was different. Both more and less human somehow.

For one, she had wings. Huge leathery wings that clung to her mantle with the help of claws at their tip, giving them the appearance of a cloak. Her long hair played across her shoulders and danced down into her cleavage as she strode towards him.

She has a carnivorous smile with fangs that looked as deadly as the guns on her hips. Real guns. Very

illegal

guns she wore openly.

Well, shit. Were they about to be robbed?

"Hey there," she said in a throaty voice that sounded like aged whiskey given form. "You'reeeee-" her eyes flickered sharp orange, never leaving his; powerful and intense, embers of some beautiful volcano. Emory felt his knees trembling as he realized she was upon him, that he was looking up slightly to meet her gaze.

She didn't know! She didn't know

he

knew.

His heart clenched, his breathing came in rapid sips. He had to focus.

"S- sorry." He had to

focus

. Deep breath. Turn on the charm, she was probably just looking for directions somewhere. "Perhaps I can help you with something? Directions somewhere?"

"You'rreeee not the person who owns this place." She glanced around briefly then back to Emory, her head cant slightly and for just a moment the light slipped under the shadows of her hat and he could see the outline of two sets of ashen horns arcing back from the sides of her her head, like a royal crest. They were inscribed with gold paint that matched her glove's accents, buckles and grommets. She had a personal style. A very expensive one.

Now that the surprise was wearing off he noticed more about how she carried herself and how disheveled she actually was- her clothes looked slept in, barely buttoned and only rolled up at the forearms to hide some stains. It was like she too had done the bare minimum amount required to be decent. But unlike him, she could actually pull it off. The most put together part of her outfit was the thick mantle that hung over her shoulders and acted as a perch for the talons of her wing joint.

Her eyes flickered orange once more, then back to her solid electric blue. "Maybe so! Would you recommend a saddle stitch for a tear in my mantle?"

A tear in her mantle? Emory blinked in surprise. He had a chance to refer her to someone else, anyone else, but even now he could feel his father's eyes on his back, daring him to fuck it up. He rallied and put on a smile. "Mind if I take a look?"

"Not at all." She turned to show him. Her wings' talons dug in for support as she stretched them open at the bottom and out of the way so he could inspect the damage. They had to have been huge unfurled which made her choice of soft, thick bridle leather for her mantle sensible. Insanely expensive, but very practical.

"I haven't seen oil tanned harness leather for a long time, most tanneries think it's wasteful." She had a tail. A thick, long tail ending in a diamond tip. Oh, but Fates' blessings she was toned.

"Turns out," the daemon said as she glanced back, "if you wave enough gold at someone you can get most anything you want." Her tail flicked and danced like a serpent near her foot.

Emory tried to keep his eyes on the work, and to ignore the impulse to glance at her butt. Poorly, but he tried.

The mantle was too supple to take tooling, so it'd been accented with rivets and embroidered in a kind of cross pattern that adorned and hid the edges- labor intensive and shockingly well done. Emory found himself smiling at the quality as he memorized the patterns. Someone cared about their craft and had given their all for their client.

Then he found the 'tear'. It wasn't so much a tear as a scar that couldn't heal. Someone had stabbed through the mantle with a blade on a high angle right into what would've been a human's heart. Emory whistled softly. "You ah, you weren't in this at the time, were you?"

She glanced back at him. Winked. "It takes a lot to keep me down, some might call me

indomitable

."

"I ah. . ."

"Hmmmmm?" She purred languidly, playful as a panther.

Her voice lingered in his ears like a siren's song- he could feel the temptation to be a smart ass pulling at him like a physical force. She was a daemon but she didn't seem all that bad, and she clearly knew her way around the things she liked. His pulse picked up, hand shaking as he rubbed the leather at either side of the mantle's wound, he could feel his face heating up but he didn't dare look up from the work.

Her tail swished against her leg, nearly touching his. He grit his teeth and curled his toes to keep his gaze from drifting down. She was testing him. A normal person couldn't see what she was moving, if he let on that he could, there was no telling how she'd take it.

In his head he knew what needed to be done- he needed to ask her to leave and beg the Fates that she agreed- instead, he gently straightened the mantle on her and grabbed a piece of scrap cloth from one of the tables. He outlined the shape of the hole on the cloth with a piece of charcoal.

The woman's stirrups cling-clanged as she edged up beside him, planting a hand on the table in the edge of his vision- far too close. Her breath was hot across his ear, it smelled of sage smoke and something like ham. "Has anyone ever told you you look even better from behind? I love broad shoulders."

Emory swallowed. His hand trembled, breathing came hard and shaky. He couldn't give up now, not in front of his father. His voice cracked when he tried to speak: "So the hole—" he cleared his throat, tried again. "Is like this, it's across the grain so it's not going to be easy to blend in.

"But," he continued, "we can use what's called a butt stitch to push the fabric together. It'd look like two lines down either side of it, but it'd be discrete, we have thread that'd match the color." For some strange reason he found himself not wanting to rise to meet the woman. Nor did she rise, simply watching over his shoulder as he laid out the idea with her natural heat warming the entire left side of his body.

He breathed in and she followed a second behind, exhaling that sharp and heady breath across his ear. Through sheer force of will he managed to keep from moving, even as he became increasingly aware of other eyes on him- if not him, then her. Her forearm flexed and she turned just enough of her hand to finger the linen- her muscles were taught and powerful.

"That's going to look a little sloppy, isn't it?" She teased hotly.

She was right, it was sloppy; it was a standard stitch to get the job done and get her out the door. But it wasn't

him

. He could do better.

So he did. He outlined a cross stitching pattern angled just slightly up over the back of the mantle to the shoulder line and another pattern to the edges. "I could do this, instead. It's not going to have the fine work of embroidery, but—" he glanced out of the corner of his eye. She was there to meet his gaze with a sly little smile. "Or, we could raise a pattern here across the back and have the stitching follow its lines."

She eased in just that tiny bit closer. Her deltoid pressed to his shoulder blade, her breast plumped against his arm, she fingered the sketch without even looking at it. "How long would that take?"

Emory could've reclaimed some of his space in that moment but somehow that sounded like a really stupid idea, she was so warm and the shop was so chilly, and- her body was hard and muscular under that blouse. He swore he could almost feel the outline of her form down to its details just from the little contact they had. For just a moment he started to wonder what would happen if he stayed like that. Then she smiled and the canines came out, easily long enough to separate small bones given a chance. She pushed the tip of her tongue to one of them, the pink explorer parted around it as easily as water flowing around a rock to form a fork at the tip. He tried not to startle.

Tried and failed.

They drew back from each other like oil and water, she hooked her thumbs into tortured loops on her belt with her hip cocked out. Smiling every bit like a cat that'd just caught a fat, stupid little mouse. She knew. She knew

he

knew.

Fuck.

Fuck

.

Emory stiffened but the daemon didn't bat an eye. She just smiled at his discomfort. Nobody else in the shop seemed to realize how utterly fucked they all were at her whim, some of them were still busy checking out her ass!

"So, how long do you think?" She cooed languidly.

This wasn't a time to freak out, he could still keep it together- it was a simple repair and nobody needed to know how close to dead they all were. "Uh-" he swallowed, his tongue hot and thick in his mouth suddenly. "Depends on what you'd like done with it."

"Mmm, I think. . ." She drawled out, taking a casual look around. She opened her mouth to answer when a short noble woman opened the front door followed by a much taller, broader woman in a double breasted tunic and skirt.

The daemon woman and Emory both looked to the newcomers and simultaneously uttered a curse under their breaths.