House Threader

A small, fine construct with a white ceramic head and needle-fingered hands, kept by a few great households to mend, press and preserve their clothes. It is the gentlest device in the realm and one of the dearest.

A threader is made for one wardrobe and learns it as a lady's maid would, garment by garment: what is mended, what is stored, what is worn on which day of the season. It sits under a work lamp and sews with six fingers on each hand, each finger a needle or a hook, and its stitches are finer than any seamstress's and wholly without invention. It mends what it was shown how to mend and refuses what it was not.

Few houses own one and fewer can keep one, for a threader wants its machine-stone renewed and its fingers set by a licensed artificer every season, and the artificers who will touch such fine work can be counted. The households that have them speak of them with the fondness given to an old servant and the anxiety given to a costly clock. Their seamstresses speak of them less fondly.

As witnesses describe it

A slender figure about the height of a child, with a long neck and a smooth, featureless ceramic face, dressed in a small servant's uniform. Its hands are long and many-jointed, each with six needle-tipped fingers. A soft light shows at its throat and wrists while it works.