Chapter 41: The Offer Came With Better Curtains

Dove read the offer without inviting Hale through the gate. Varek remained at the boundary of the marked visitor route, and Thorne set his mending aside without leaving the bench.

Terminal offered a covered trading space, regular access to its supply runs, and a private room in the old staff section of the bus station. The room had a door, heating, and storage. Dove noticed the door first and hated how hard that single word landed. Ash had offered her a room during the repairs too; she had chosen to stay with her stall. She needed to remember that comfort was available here before letting a stranger sell it as something only he could provide.

"What do you get?" she asked.

"A share of the goods moving through our routes," Hale said. "Agreed in advance. You’d have people bringing you things instead of waiting in a tunnel for someone to remember you exist."

"People here remember I exist constantly. It’s becoming a health concern."

He smiled, then looked at the tarp behind her. "You could live more comfortably. A female should not have to sleep behind a counter."

Dove felt Thorne watching her, but he did not answer for her. She was grateful, especially because part of her wanted to be angry at the offer and another part was already imagining closing an actual door.

"Women at Terminal don’t work like this?" she asked.

"They don’t need to. Their households provide for them. If you wanted a stall, we could make room for one."

"And if I wanted to keep making my own decisions?"

Hale called that obvious too quickly. Dove marked the place on the page where the offer described the room but said nothing about ownership of her stock or the right to leave the arrangement.

"Write those parts down," she said. "A comfortable room isn’t a business agreement. It’s a room."

He promised a revised offer in the morning and left with Varek. Thorne waited until the visitor was out of hearing before asking whether she wanted to discuss it.

"Not tonight," she admitted. "If I start describing the door, I might embarrass both of us."

He nodded and returned to his glove. She had expected visible hurt, maybe an argument about Terminal. His silence left her free to be tempted without feeling she had already betrayed him.

Day Seventeen began with four normal coins and twenty-six Favor. Sprout supplied four unscented candles on consignment, with twelve normal coins for selling three and a forty-normal-coin blanket unlock for earning six new Favor Coins. Dove washed with pool water before accepting, keeping the habit despite its alarming fashion consequences. Her new clothes still fit afterward; she wore Thorne’s loaned coat while waiting for the keeper to find proper winter replacements.

"I own two blankets," she told Sprout.

"The new one provides greater insulation. You are not required to buy every unlocked item."

"Good. For a moment I thought you had started a bedding pyramid scheme."

She accepted the tasks, counted her older goods separately, and opened the stall. The keeper delivered the replacement cloth required from Rusk, checking it in front of her before she added it to stock. The damaged cloth remained out of use. The old soap theft stayed unresolved; she did not let one repayment become an invented victory over everything that had happened.

A visiting driver bought three candles for six clean waxed wrapping sheets. The named sales target added twelve normal coins, bringing that purse to sixteen. Dove kept the wrapping sheets for the business rather than putting them on the price list.

Hale returned with the offer rewritten to say her stock remained hers. The departure clause still required notice, and the transport arrangements depended on space in Terminal’s vehicles. Dove read it twice and asked what happened if she wanted to leave before the next run.

"We’d work something out," he said.

"That’s a lovely phrase for a blank space where the useful answer should be."

Two Favor Coins from his surprise brought that purse to twenty-eight, two of the six needed today. She asked him to take the page back and make the transport terms concrete. He looked at her for a long moment before agreeing.

"You didn’t ask questions like these before," he said.

"I’m making up for lost time."

He left with the paper, and Dove remained behind the counter until the hall quieted. Then she asked Thorne to sit with her while she ate the crackers she had traded for earlier. She gave him half after he checked whether she had enough for herself, and refused to turn sharing lunch into another debt.

"You could tell me why I shouldn’t go," she said.

"You know what happened to me there."

"I know some of it. I’m asking what you think now."

Thorne looked at the scarf she wore, then at her hands. "I think you deserve a room with a door wherever you choose to live. I don’t think a door tells you what the people outside it will let you do."

The answer stayed with her longer than any demand would have. She wanted him to say he would miss her, which was so far outside the conversation she had planned that she nearly choked on a cracker.

"Would you hate me for considering it?" she asked instead.

His face changed. "No."

The word was too small for what she saw behind it, so he continued before she could look away. "I would hate not seeing you. That’s mine to manage."

Dove stared at the remaining cracker in her hand. She had not asked him for a declaration, and he had not made one. He had simply admitted a cost without putting the bill in her lap.

She moved closer on the bench until their sleeves touched, leaving her hand between them where he could see it. "You can sit here while I decide how to answer that."

Four Favor Coins from his happiness brought that purse to thirty-two, completing the target and unlocking the forty-normal-coin blanket. She did not open the shop. She wanted the warmth beside her to remain a feeling before it became a purchase.

Across the hall, Ash stopped at the sight of their touching sleeves. Kael stood beside him, watching too, but his expression was harder to read.

Varek arrived with a message from the outer watch before either man approached. The road inspection had found fresh ice on the north slope, and Terminal’s departure would wait until the following afternoon. Hale would have another day to improve his offer.