Chapter 36: She Chose His Side of the Table

Hale looked at Thorne before answering, as if the story might be easier to tell over somebody else’s shoulder. Dove kept her hands beside the bowl and waited until he looked back at her.

"You said his scars frightened you," he said. "The men running Terminal decided he should leave. I walked him to the outer gate."

"Did he get to answer?" she asked.

"It wasn’t my decision."

"That wasn’t my question."

The driver beside the truck stopped adjusting a strap. Hale noticed the attention and lowered his voice, but Dove could still hear the irritation beneath it.

"No," he said. "By then, the decision had been made."

Thorne stared at the table. The familiar details matched what he had told her, but hearing someone else admit them did not make his face easier to look at. Dove wanted to do something with the anger moving through her hands. Instead she kept them still and asked whether he wanted this conversation to continue.

He looked at her for a long moment. "Not with everyone listening."

"Then we’re done for now," she told Hale.

The trader glanced between them again. "You really don’t remember?"

"I don’t remember demanding that. I can still tell you it was cruel. Those things don’t cancel each other."

She moved her bowl to Thorne’s side of the table because the draft struck the other end, then stayed beside him after the bowl was settled. She could hear Sprout offering no commentary at all, an impressive improvement in its customer relations.

Hale did not apologize properly. He said he had followed orders, and Thorne told him he remembered. Neither man raised his voice. Somehow that made the exchange hurt more than the argument Dove had prepared herself for.

Ash ended the gathering by sending the driver back to unloading. He told Hale that visitors would remain in the assigned areas, then asked Thorne to help inspect the covered truck bed.

Thorne looked at Dove before leaving. She nodded, not because he needed permission to work, but because she understood the question he had not wanted to ask in front of Hale. She was all right at the table with Varek nearby.

A crew member brought over a crate of used boots, all cleaned and paired with their sizes marked on string tags. Dove checked the soles, seams, and lining instead of choosing the first pair that looked less embarrassing than her slippers.

The pair closest to her size had a repaired outside seam and good tread. The trader wanted six of her clean cloths after seeing one she carried for wrapping the display. She told him she would bring the goods tomorrow if the boots remained available. He set the pair aside without demanding a promise from her body or her future.

An ordinary transaction nearly made her stupidly happy. She had not realized how much of her day she spent bracing for the extra condition.

At the stall later, she spent twelve normal coins on winter socks and six on a coffee sachet, lowering twenty-seven normal to nine. She used half the powdered milk packet with the coffee and folded the remainder closed inside her tin. The sugar was gone, but the drink still tasted far less like punishment.

Sprout displayed both Day Fourteen missions as complete.

She returned the fourth gauze packet and paid one normal coin, closing the consignment with eight normal and twenty-three Favor. The healed skin on Thorne’s forearm remained separate from what Kael had demonstrated that morning. The healer had said he did not know why men were awakening, and Dove was not letting Sprout turn a coincidence into a sales claim. Dove checked the stock changes and asked it to leave the panel open long enough for her to copy them.

She wanted a supplier, an inventory list, and occasional help remembering arithmetic. It could earn its place by doing those jobs well.

Thorne returned after the truck inspection with dust on his shoulders and a small cut on the back of one hand. He said a rough crate edge had caught him. It was a new scratch on his hand, not the closed forearm cut she had wrapped days earlier. Dove offered ordinary wash water and the clean linen square she had received from Kael, asking before she took his hand.

"I can do it," he said.

"I know. I’m offering, not declaring you medically useless."

He let her clean the shallow scratch. She did not bring out pool water or turn a small injury into another secret between them. Kael could assess it if it worsened. For now, ordinary care was enough.

His fingers rested against her palm, broad and warm. Dove concentrated on the scratch and tried not to remember the same hand supporting her back when she fell. This should have been easy. She had handled money touched by people who sneezed directly into their wallets. A clean hand attached to a handsome man should not have destroyed her professional skills.

"You’re very quiet," he said.

"I’m attempting not to stab you with a piece of linen. It’s delicate work."

He chuffed softly, and she looked up before she could stop herself. His golden eyes were fixed on her, not the cloth, with an attention that made the rest of the hall feel badly lit.

She finished cleaning the scratch and released him. "There. Try not to punch a crate tonight. They rarely learn from it."

"Thank you for asking earlier," he said.

Dove knew which question he meant. She folded the used linen away for washing and answered without making herself sound better than she was.

"I wanted to keep going until he said something that hurt him. It wouldn’t have helped you."

"You stopped when I asked."

She let that matter. It was not proof that she had become responsible for repairing his past. It was one choice she had made correctly, and she was allowed to feel glad about it.

Near closing, Rusk appeared at the far end of the hall with an empty crate and another worker beside him, as ordered. He did not approach her stall. He stopped at the guest boundary instead, where Hale was speaking to Ash about storage for the remaining goods.

Dove saw Rusk hand Hale a folded page. She could not hear what he said, but the trader read it, glanced toward her counter, and folded it into his coat.

Thorne followed her gaze. "Do you want me to ask?"

"Tomorrow," she said. "When I can hear the answer too."

Then Hale looked directly at her and smiled like a man who had just discovered something available for purchase.