The War Is Held Together by Thread

How it begins

The banner bled red dye onto Mara's hands.

It had been blue when she started.

She held the cloth away from the lamp and waited for the color to settle. Silk could behave badly in damp weather. Cheap mordant could travel through old seams.

Neither explained the sound coming from the tear.

Men shouting.

Not close. Small and far away, as though the cloth had been stretched across the mouth of a well.

Outside her tent, the quartermaster called for the repaired standard.

Mara did not answer.

She pushed the needle through the silk.

The shouting stopped.

Somewhere beyond the ridge, a horn sounded. The quartermaster cheered.

Another victory.

Mara pulled the thread tight.

At dawn, the enemy flag bearer came through the washing lines with a strip of white cloth tied around his arm.

The guards nearly killed him before he said her name.

He laid a torn banner on her worktable.

Blue silk. Red stains. The same narrow break beneath the embroidered crown.

"Every time you mend yours," he said, "we have to fight again."

Mara looked at his hands.

His fingers were raw where the staff had burned them. A wound crossed his palm in the shape of her newest stitch.

"Who told you to come?"

"Nobody."

"Then how did you know?"

He took a small needle from his pocket. Ordinary bone. The sort a soldier might use to repair a sleeve.

He had pushed it through his flag.

For three minutes, he said, everyone in his company had been able to lower their weapons.

Mara thought of the quartermaster waiting outside. The medals sewn onto her best coat. The letters thanking her for service to the realm.

She turned her banner over.

On its hidden face, beneath generations of careful repairs, another emblem waited.

The enemy's crown.

The flag bearer watched her recognize it.

Mara put down the red thread and reached for the seam ripper.