The room stopped.
"The old measure," she said, louder, already moving. "Send a runner to the weavers' hall. Run."
Nobody asked what she meant. Two maids simply detonated out of the room, and the wing waited out the longest quarter hour of its collective life until the hall answered, in the form of a cedar chest carried in by two silver-robed elders of the weavers' guild, borne on their arms with the pace and posture reserved for the bones of saints.
The chest was old. The wax seals on it were older. The senior weaver broke them with hands gone careful with age, folded back layers of cloth soft as breath, and lifted out the garment inside.
