Chapter 38: Customer Service Had Finally Snapped

Dove left the returned footwear with Kael and held out her hand for the message. Ash did not give it to her immediately, so she kept her hand there until he seemed to notice how that looked.

The page claimed she had warned Rusk that certain products required careful handling and could cause an unpleasant reaction. It turned her refusal to share a supplier into evidence that she was hiding a danger.

"I told him the shelf was mine by trade," she said. "I told him to ask the keeper if he was worried. Before that, he asked whether I charged for smiling, and I suggested his bill would be serious. None of those sentences mentioned poison."

Ash read the message again. "He says there was another conversation."

"Then ask when. Ask where. Ask who heard it. Stop bringing me an accusation and expecting me to prove a conversation didn’t happen somewhere in the universe."

Kael took the returned footwear to the cleaning shelf, then came back. "I heard their exchange at the stall that afternoon," he said. "The clinic door was open. I can’t account for every other hour, but the conversation she described is the one I heard."

Dove looked at him, startled enough to lose her next angry sentence. He had not announced trust. He had offered what he knew, with its limits intact. At that moment, it was more useful than somebody promising to believe anything she said.

Ash’s gaze stayed on the healer. "You didn’t mention hearing it before."

"Nobody asked me what they said. You asked whether the goods were safe. Those are different questions."

Dove wondered whether she could sell tickets to Kael explaining basic conversation to powerful men. The income would solve several immediate problems, although the audience might require protective clothing.

Ash asked her not to discuss the message with Rusk alone. She agreed because she had no intention of cornering an angry porter in a service passage. Agreement did not require pretending his concern repaired what he had said beside the cart.

At the stall, Thorne handed back her empty bowl and asked what had happened. She told him the claim, Kael’s answer, and Ash’s instruction without adding motives she could not prove.

"He wanted me to sell through him," she said. "If people are afraid of my goods, he can offer to make the fear disappear. It’s a lovely business model if your soul fits in a drain."

Thorne looked toward the duty table. "You want his message kept with the label."

"Yes. And I want to keep trading while they check it. I’m not spending the day sitting here like somebody already closed me down."

She carried an owned soap quarter, a thread spool, and the last consignment sleeve to the visitors’ table, leaving the stall shut. Thorne came because she asked him to carry the price board, which he did without making the job sound more important than it was.

Hale read the message again in front of Varek and agreed to leave it with the guard. He had not seen Dove issue the warning, and he would not claim that he had. The earlier opportunity in his smile had become caution, but not shame.

A crew member bought the owned soap quarter for a sealed packet of salt, leaving one soap quarter in stock. Dove kept the salt with her food. Her daily reward was already paid, and this was not the day’s target product anyway. Sprout would have been insufferable if she had tried claiming twice.

The man studied her face while she wrapped the purchase. "They said you were beautiful. Didn’t say you looked like that."

"Would you like the soap or a commemorative sketch? One of those is actually available."

He grinned, took the soap, and asked whether she liked dried flowers. She said she liked paying customers, and he promised to remember both answers before leaving. Thorne watched him go, then moved the board to the side Dove preferred without saying a word about who had looked at her.

She noticed that too. Protectiveness was easier to accept when it did not turn every customer into a suspect for owning eyes.

Rusk crossed the far end of the bay with his second worker. He stopped when he saw the trade, then said something to the man beside him. Dove could not hear it. She made herself resist the urge to supply the worst possible version.

A few minutes later, the second worker approached Varek and asked whether a cart strap should have been replaced after a cut. Dove stopped counting her remaining goods. The sudden attention in Rusk’s face made her set the pencil down carefully rather than snap it. The guard took him aside, and Dove watched Rusk’s expression change before the porter looked away.

The worker brought out a short section of leather from his tool pouch. He said Rusk had asked him to discard it after the spill because it was worn. He had kept it to compare with the replacement length. One edge had a clean slice running through most of the thickness, with the final fibers torn.

Dove did not know who had cut it. Neither did the worker. She heard Varek make that distinction before asking when the strap had last held a load correctly.

Thorne stood beside her without speaking. His hand rested on the table, close enough that she could have touched it. She found herself wanting to, and resented needing a public investigation to discover that ordinary wish.

Instead she asked him to carry the board back when the table closed. He agreed, and she looked directly at Rusk for the first time since the question about the strap.

He was watching her with none of his earlier amusement. For a moment, his eyes dropped to Thorne’s hand beside hers, then returned to her face.

"Careful, fox," he said across the bay. "He followed you once before too. Look how that ended."

Dove felt Thorne go still beside her. She turned her own hand over on the table, palm open, and waited until he looked at it before she said anything.

"This time," she told Rusk, "he can hear me answer for myself."