![]() She perches beside her sister and watches Maria unroll a half-completed priest's stole across the table. She says, "Blessed One, protect us from idleness," and the needleworkers say, "For we have committed sins without number," and Widow Theodora unlocks the thread cabinet and weighs the gold and silver wire and the little boxes of seed pearls and records the weights on a wax tablet and as soon as the room is bright enough to tell a black thread from a white one, they begin. Twenty embroideresses climb the stairs to the workroom and find their benches and Widow Theodora moves from window to window opening shutters. Before she turns fourteen, every person she knows will be either enslaved or dead.ĭawn. Anna has never tasted sweet cream, never eaten an orange, and never set foot outside the city walls. Between them they own four copper coins, three ivory buttons, a patched wool blanket, and an icon of Saint Koralia that may or may not have belonged to their mother. ![]() ![]() Anna and her older sister, Maria, sleep in a one-window cell barely large enough for a horsehair pallet. ![]()
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