Chapter 88: Apparently Husbands Were Up for Grabs

Dove moved before she thought about it, but Edrik caught her arm without pulling her against him. The fallen man lay beside the chair, and Thorne had already crossed the narrow space between the walkway and the loading yard.

Her husband crouched beside him, pressed two fingers to his neck, then looked back at her. His expression stopped her more effectively than Edrik’s hand. There was nothing in the little bottle she could safely promise a man whose blood had already soaked the gravel.

"Let go," she told Edrik. He did. She stayed where she was because Thorne had shaken his head, not because anyone had decided she couldn’t look at something ugly.

The keeper hurried from his office with two guards. One helped Thorne cover the body with a clean sheet from a nearby wagon. Saffra complained that nobody had replaced her tea. Three of her mates stared at the ground while another hurried to fetch a new cup.

"He’s dead," Dove said, unable to keep it inside. Saffra looked toward her voice, but the men moving the chair blocked her view. She demanded they stop standing around and take her somewhere warm.

Nobody arrested her. Nobody even asked for the knife. The keeper insisted the body be carried away from the busy yard, and Dove watched one of the bearers follow it with his hands clenched at his sides.

Edrik stayed beside her until Thorne returned. "She has thirty-nine mates now," the bear said quietly. "Watch what she does when being wanted stops being enough."

Dove asked for a moment without either man telling her the world worked this way. They gave it to her. She could understand that women were rare without understanding how a spilled drink made that man’s life worth less than a sleeve.

They borrowed the upstairs room above the loading shelter that night. Edrik settled near the landing, while Thorne sat on the bed beside Dove and let her hold his hand. "Don’t make a joke about me doing that to you," she said when he reached for her blanket. "Not even to cheer me up." He covered their joined hands instead. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed him to understand until he simply said he wouldn’t.

Day Thirty-Seven brought her pool wash, a full breakfast, and two hand-crank radios in Sprout’s delivery. Both had rechargeable lights and battery backups. Selling two paid sixteen normal coins; six fresh Favor unlocked a twenty-eight-coin heavy camp cot. One newly stored trade and fifteen active minutes completed the other tasks.

Before opening the shop, she asked Sprout privately whether she could buy a fighting skill. It displayed a Beginner Combat Footwork manual for nine hundred Favor, locked until she completed three supervised practice sessions. It would help her learn and apply movements; it would not fight while she watched.

"Nine hundred? Does it come with somebody to hit for that price?" she asked. Sprout explained that ordinary reactions could keep earning after the daily target. Irritation, surprise, amusement, and affection counted when they came from qualifying men; she didn’t need to turn every conversation into a seduction.

"Wonderful. Continue being annoying and we’ll both be rich," she told it, then read the limits properly. No free skill, no secret purchase, and no promise that getting a manual would make a bullet miss her. She wanted it anyway.

Downstairs, she told Edrik only that she wanted him to teach her how to stay on her feet when somebody grabbed her. He closed the strap he had been checking and gave her his full attention.

"I’ll teach you," he said. "You listen while we’re practicing. Outside that, you can tell me how unbearable I am as often as you like."

"That sounds like a full-time job," she said. Thorne laughed, but the bear looked pleased enough that she nearly smiled back. She wanted someone to take the request seriously, and he hadn’t wasted a second explaining why she should leave fighting to men.

They met the keeper at the available stall. A solid counter faced the raised walkway beneath an awning, with shelves and working space behind it. A rear door opened into a bedroom containing a broad sleeping platform, coat hooks, and a shuttered window facing the quarry wall across a narrow service gap.

Dove checked the lock before agreeing to three nights for two owned blankets, a hammer, and cleaning their frontage. "Nobody comes into the bedroom without asking," she added. "Write it down. I don’t care whose cousin used to keep the spare key."

Edrik tested the window latch while Thorne inspected the floor. She paid and collected the key herself, then stood holding it longer than necessary. Her work and bed would be separated by one door she could close whenever she wanted.

Thorne touched her shoulder. "It’s yours for three nights," he said. "Enjoy it before you find something wrong with the shelves."

"They’re too high," she said, but her voice softened. His kiss landed against her temple while Edrik moved the first shelf down without asking her to justify wanting to reach her own cups.

Their reactions finished the six fresh Favor and mate extra, bringing her to eight hundred twenty-seven. Her normal purse stayed at eighty. She stored a newly traded tray, completing that task, and left the cot for after the radio sales.

She had barely unfolded a display cloth when Saffra’s chair arrived beside the counter. Up close, the woman’s red hair lay oily against her neck, and her breath carried an old sour smell beneath the perfume. Dove stepped nearer the open frontage for air, keeping her expression level.

"Hello," she said. She had managed difficult customers before, although none had arrived with quite so much staff. "We’re opening in a minute."

Saffra looked from Dove’s loose blonde hair to her fitted shirt, then toward the men who had paused beside the stall. One of her own followers was openly watching Dove adjust the display. Saffra snapped his name hard enough to make him flinch.

"You can stop making that smell," she told Dove. "And cover yourself. You’re distracting my males."

Dove set the radio down carefully. "I’m wearing a turtleneck. If that defeats them, I don’t know what you expect me to do about it."

Thorne came through the rear door carrying their bags. Saffra’s anger disappeared for one sharp moment as she looked him over. Then she pointed at him and told her nearest mate to bring him to her.