Chapter 86: One More Night With Her Cat

Dove found Edrik checking his pack beneath the school’s covered entrance while Thorne returned their room key. The trader waited by his handcart, watching the water dripping from the gutter as though glaring might make it stop.

"If this market turns out to be another bunch of assholes behind a fence, we’re leaving," she told Edrik. "I’m not being grateful for a door somebody plans to lock from the outside."

"Everywhere is unsafe for you, whether we’re on the road or in a camp," he said. "If you say we’re moving to the camp, we’re moving to the camp. If you want to leave, I’ll carry the bags and discourage complaints."

"How discouraging are we talking?" she asked. "Until they lose interest in arguing," he said, with a calmness that made her look at his knife. Dove took the last bite of her breakfast sandwich before telling him to start with words where possible.

Day Thirty-Five had begun with her pool wash and three cotton shirts. Selling two paid twelve normal coins; five fresh Favor unlocked a twenty-coin headlamp. She needed three new stored finds on the road, plus fifteen active minutes for the separate exercise reward.

She packed the shirts, pulled her cap over her white ears, and checked the tan cover around her tail. Thorne lowered his panther body beneath the awning, and she climbed onto his back. Edrik shifted behind the school’s screen after testing his healing arm, leaving his folded clothes secured with his bag.

They followed the trader’s cart along a paved road past closed stores. A sign pointed back toward Three Rivers. Their turn led toward the quarry, where runoff had covered the lowest stretch of road during the night.

By noon, the guide stopped at an abandoned gas station above the flooded dip. Snow surrounded the pumps, and a repair bay stood beside the small convenience store. Water crossed the road beyond it, hiding the edge of a broken drainage ditch.

"We wait," Dove said before anybody offered to carry her through. "I’d rather spend a night complaining indoors than discover which one of you floats."

Thorne agreed, although Edrik looked as though he would have enjoyed proving something. They took turns shifting and dressing behind the cart. While Edrik checked the buildings, her husband unpacked thick chicken wraps, peaches, and water beneath the store’s overhang.

The trader bought one shirt for strong thread. Two maintenance workers arrived from the quarry side before the water rose farther, each carrying a shovel. They traded rice and a sealed cooking-oil bottle for the other shirts, grateful to replace clothes damp beneath their coats.

All three shirts were sold. Sprout paid twelve normal coins, bringing her to sixty. Dove stored the three new trades by touch, then asked the workers which part of the road they had actually crossed. One drew the hidden ditch beside her boot and explained why waiting mattered.

They ate, then the workers returned to a nearby pump building by the safe shoulder. The guide stayed with his cart. Neither stranger became part of Dove’s sleeping arrangements just because they had bought something and offered advice.

Inside the store, Edrik checked the stockroom while Thorne watched the entrance. Dove found a clean towel, nails, toothpaste, paper towels, canned chili, and bottled water behind a fallen display. She checked seals, packed small bundles, and rested between storing them.

"Rice, chili, and no marriage proposal attached," she told Thorne. "Help me with the water before someone realizes I’m enjoying myself."

Fifteen minutes of searching and carrying light supplies completed her exercise task, raising her normal purse to sixty-three. Her teasing and Thorne’s pleased reactions finished the fresh Favor target. With the mate extra, she had eight hundred ninety-two before spending seventy-five on a sealed cigarette carton for future barter.

Eight hundred seventeen remained. She left the headlamp unbought, using their owned lights, and told Sprout to keep its suggestion about rewarding helpful males to itself. She was feeding people she wanted beside her. Sprout could stop trying to turn dinner into foreplay; it was chili, for God’s sake.

Edrik approached with a leather pad threaded onto a strap. He had traded one of his buckles for the guide’s spare harness pieces, then shaped the pad to stop her bag digging into her shoulder. He waited until she lifted her hair before fitting it.

"You keep rubbing this spot," he said. "Now you can stop pretending it doesn’t hurt."

Dove moved her shoulder, surprised by the difference. She had been planning to wrap a cloth around it later, when nobody was watching. "Thank you," she said, then caught his wrist before he pulled away. "You could ask before making me things, you know."

"Would you have admitted you wanted it?" He didn’t sound wounded or patient. He sounded like a man who had already learned exactly how annoying she could be.

She looked at him, then at Thorne smiling by the door. "Neither of you gets to enjoy being right this much. It’s unattractive."

"You looked fairly interested a minute ago," Edrik said. She told him to go find a pot before he ruined a perfectly good gift, and he laughed as he obeyed.

The guide slept in the store near his cart. Edrik took the dry repair bay, with its outer door barred and its inside door facing their shelter. Dove and Thorne used the small service office behind it, where a window overlooked the flooded road.

They heated chili with rice on a stove the guide carried, using it outside the open bay for ventilation. Everyone ate full bowls. Later, Thorne warmed her clean feet between his hands while she sat on their spread blankets, watching water shine beneath the fading daylight.

"An extra night with your wife and you haven’t complained once," she told him. "Careful, handsome. I might start thinking you like me."

"Ask me to stay and find out," he said. The answer caught her beneath the joke. She pulled his hand against her cheek and asked, quietly enough that the guide couldn’t hear. Thorne settled beside her without needing another invitation.

At dawn, the road workers called from the safe shoulder. The water had fallen, and they could guide the cart around the damaged edge. Before Dove finished packing, one warned that another woman was headed toward the same market, bringing enough men to fill its loading yard.