Rebel Alliance emblem in mandala style on back

The wind came through the north window again last night and lifted the lace off the frame, so I have spent the morning pinning it back down with the bent nails Tobias left in the scullery. The chapel has no roof now, only sky, and the swallows nest in the niche where the saint used to stand. I work by the arch because it is the only place the light falls flat enough to count threads.

You asked in your last letter why I haven't sent the old pattern to the Harbour Guild. I haven't because it is not a pattern for a collar or a christening veil. It is the crescent with the upright spike that the Sorrel men cut over the gate when they still held this valley, the one the soldiers scraped off with their pikes. Grandmother taught me to draw it by pricking holes in paper with a hairpin, and she insisted that every ring of it be filled with small circles, because a sign left bare is easy to tear down and a sign full of close work is harder to read.

So I have been filling it. Two rosettes sit low on either side, each with eight petals, one for her and one for the boy who ran the lamps up the scarp road. When the thread runs out I will stop, and I will not say more about what I meant by it, except that the carters who come up the valley in spring will recognise it without being told.

Send me the bobbins from the market when you can, and mind the cart on the ford.

Your loving cousin, Ilse