Chapter 26: The Panther Came With Instructions

"Then they can smell something from farther away," Dove said, loud enough for the two men lingering beside her stall to hear. "I’m selling buttons, not standing room."

One pretended to examine the remaining pins. The other left when Varek came along the hall and pointed out that the marked walking space was not a viewing platform. He did not ask Dove whether she had caused the obstruction by existing.

Kael approached with Ash behind him. The healer’s amber eyes moved over her face, and he took a careful breath before asking whether she had changed her soap.

"I washed," she replied. "I’d hoped the main consequence would be being less disgusting."

"There is a difference," Kael said. "I’m not sure what it is."

"Then let’s not diagnose me with being inconvenient until you’ve narrowed it down."

His mouth curved, earning two Favor Coins. Her Favor purse reached eight, and the five earned today unlocked the underwear shelf. Dove nearly thanked him for his medical contribution to her dignity.

Ash looked from Kael’s smile to the closed gate. "You were already here yesterday."

"The clinic is twenty steps away," Kael answered. "If repeated visits concern you, the location may disappoint you."

Dove looked at Thorne, who had moved aside to leave the passage clear. The panther appeared interested in the healer’s answer for reasons that had nothing to do with clinic planning.

"Everybody enjoys my wonderful customer service," she said. "It’s a curse."

Ash ignored the joke and asked whether she had used anything new. Dove told him she had washed with her own supplies. It was true, although she could feel the shape of everything she had left out.

"If something affects the hall, I need to know about it," he said.

"Men have been staring since I arrived. Yesterday somebody almost had a serious accident with towels. Did you want a written report on my face too?"

Thorne made a short sound that might have been a swallowed laugh. Ash’s eyes cut toward him, then returned to Kael when the healer asked Dove whether the scent bothered her physically.

"No rash, no dizziness, no sudden desire to hang from the ceiling," she said. "Just a growing urge to close early."

Kael did not touch her. He asked her to tell him if that changed, then returned to the clinic. Ash watched him leave before telling Thorne that the loading crates still needed moving.

"I was on my way," Thorne said, holding up the work rope.

"Then keep going."

Dove waited until both men had gone before sitting behind the tarp. She spent twelve normal coins on underwear, leaving nineteen, and tried not to become emotional over an elastic waistband. Later she traded two owned cloths to the salvage keeper for a washed wool dress, loose enough to wear over her underlayer. The dress was hers, including its uneven hem, which was more than she could say for the borrowed shirt she folded on her shelf until she could return it.

She used ordinary water from her wash allocation to rinse her hands and the exposed skin at her neck. Sprout said the lingering scent should weaken with time, but could not give her an exact number of minutes. She wrote down the time anyway. A supplier with vague instructions was still a supplier she intended to question until it became useful.

When she reopened, the hall smelled of stew, damp wool, and lamp fuel. Nobody fell to their knees. A passing man looked twice at her hair, then remembered whatever he had been carrying and moved on. She could handle being stared at if people also remembered how legs worked.

Later, Thorne came back with the rope gone and a small paper twist in his palm. He set it down beside the gloves she had left within reach.

"Sugar," he said. "A spoonful. It’s from my share, and the kitchen keeper wrapped it."

Dove unfolded the outer paper enough to see the neat inner packet. "Do you carry emergency sugar, or did someone warn you about my personality?"

"You complained that the coffee tasted angry."

She remembered saying it near the counter, mostly to herself. That made his answer harder to dismiss than anything expensive would have been.

"You keep hearing things I don’t remember telling you," she said.

"You’re not quiet."

She laughed before she could help it, and his gaze dropped briefly to her mouth. He looked pleased enough that she had to turn toward the shelf to stop herself from staring back.

"You still have somewhere else to sleep?" she asked.

"Yes. I’m not waiting outside your tarp."

"And if I don’t take another gift?"

"Then I keep it. Or use it. They’re gloves and sugar, Dove, not a rope around your ankle."

She wanted to believe the answer. She was not ready to build anything on it yet, so she put the packet in her own tin and thanked him without adding an apology for being difficult.

Thorne rested one hand on the counter, well clear of hers. His scars looked pale against the darker skin near his wrist. She noticed the strength of his forearm, then his short silver waves, then the deeply annoying fact that there was nowhere safe to look if she wanted him to become unattractive.

"What did it smell like to you?" she asked before common sense could clock in.

His expression changed. "Earlier?"

"Unless you’ve been smelling other women at my counter. In which case, take your horrible hobby elsewhere."

"Rain on warm ground," he answered. "And something I wanted to stay near."

For a moment she had no joke at all. She looked down at the gloves, hearing the hall continue around them as if he had not just made the air feel much smaller.

"You still have to ask," she said finally.

"I know. Can I sit across the hall while you finish?"

She considered the open space, the other workers, and her own feelings instead of accepting the first frightened answer that arrived. "Until closing. And you can make yourself useful by telling me which shelves aren’t about to collapse."

He took the bench she indicated, leaving her path clear. Dove went back to her stock list, aware of his presence without having to keep checking where he had moved.

When the household runner returned her dried blanket and old mat, Thorne stood to help only after she nodded. The salvage keeper came over with them and offered a narrow display shelf from an unused cupboard. He would fit it tomorrow if she could clear the counter and mark the height she wanted.

Dove agreed on two owned buttons after installation. Before closing she paid four Favor Coins to keep the unsold matchbox, leaving nineteen normal and four Favor. She could use the matches or sell them later, with no second keeping fee. Thorne tucked her old mat beneath the replacement while she wrote the figures, carefully keeping his eyes outside her sleeping space.

"If you keep staring," he said, still looking down, "I’m going to start hoping it means something."