Chapter 44: Please Ask the Woman You Are Discussing

Dove took her offer sheet out of Hale’s hand before Ash could answer. The paper caught against his thumb, and she waited until he released it instead of tearing the only written record of what these men had offered her.

"I’m sitting right here," she said. "You don’t need to ask the taller person whether I come with the furniture."

Hale opened his mouth, glanced toward Ash, and made the mistake of looking surprised when she kept waiting. Beside her, Thorne’s hand stayed on his own knee. She had asked him to come without speaking for her, and he was doing exactly that, even though the muscles along his jaw looked ready to file a separate complaint.

"I was asking about the settlement arrangement," Hale said. "Transport, protection, the supplies you’ve been given."

"My stock is mine. The supplies I borrowed are loans, and neither of those things has a vagina. Try asking the actual question."

Kael coughed into his fist. Ash looked at him before returning his attention to the marked offer beneath Dove’s hand. The healer did not apologize for the cough, which improved her opinion of him slightly.

"Ask her," Ash told Hale. His voice stayed flat, without any comforting suggestion that he had become her champion during the last thirty seconds.

The lynx faced her properly. "Would you come back to Terminal with us? We could make the arrangements we discussed."

Dove looked at the paragraph about a room with a door. She wanted that door so badly that she could picture herself closing it slowly just to hear the latch, then opening it because she could. Wanting it did not make the blank spaces around the offer disappear.

"Not under these terms," she said. "You can’t promise when I’d be able to leave, and you just asked someone else whether you could take me. That’s a fairly dramatic failure of the free trial."

Hale’s ears shifted back. He said the road was difficult and transport could not be created because she disliked waiting. Dove agreed with that part, which seemed to annoy him more than arguing would have.

"Then the offer isn’t right for me," she answered. "You can have a bad offer without me being unreasonable for refusing it."

The room went quiet enough that she heard boots outside the open door. Thorne did not smile as though her decision belonged to him. He moved his knee aside when she needed room to fold the page, and she liked him for that more than she wanted to admit.

Ash turned to the map. Terminal’s crew would leave that afternoon, but he and Kael were going with them. The healer had been asked to assess two recent injuries at the base, and Ash wanted to inspect the fuel exchange and the bridge route himself. They expected to return in two nights if the road held.

"So now you tell me there were medical seats available," Dove said, looking at Hale.

"They aren’t agreeing to move there," the trader replied.

"Exactly. Notice how easy it was to explain the difference when you wanted to."

Kael asked Hale to arrange meals around the treatments. He could examine the patients, but he would not promise to heal injuries he had not seen. His wrapped lunch lay beside the map, a plain reminder that having glowing hands did not stop a man from needing stew.

A broad man came into the doorway when Ash called for Garran. His brown wolf ears barely moved above close-cut hair, and a gray streak ran through the front. He wore a clean work coat with a ring of keys secured inside it, and looked at Dove’s borrowed sleeves before he looked at her face.

"My deputy," Ash said when she kept looking between them. "He handles the inner stores and duty changes when I’m away."

Garran had evidently been living somewhere in the Warren this entire time without visiting her counter, a habit she was prepared to recommend to several other men. He studied Hale’s folded papers and asked whether the trading issue had been settled.

"She’s staying," Ash answered. "Keep the hall orderly. Varek has the records on Rusk, and those restrictions stay in place."

Garran said he understood. Ash added that Dove was to keep access to meals, shelter, and the clinic, regardless of any further questions about her stock. Nobody was to move her or seize her belongings on the strength of a rumor.

Dove looked up at that. It was a useful order, and she had no interest in refusing useful things because the man giving them remained an emotional splinter.

"Could you write that down?" she asked. "Your voice is impressive, but paper travels better."

Ash gave her an irritated look, then wrote the instruction across a duty slip. Varek witnessed it, and Garran signed beneath him. Dove asked for the duplicate and put it in her drawstring bag before anybody could decide she was being excessive.

Sprout remained quiet until she requested her balances. Twenty-one normal coins, thirty-four Favor, both daily tasks complete. Nobody owed her another award for surviving a meeting, which she considered a serious defect in the business model.

Hale returned her washed face cloth before leaving to supervise loading. She checked it, thanked him, and put it away without pretending a returned cloth improved his offer.

Outside the duty room, Thorne waited while she checked the walking route toward her stall. "You don’t have to explain why you stayed," he said.

"Good, because the first reason was the contract, and the second was that moving all my buttons sounded exhausting."

His mouth curved. "All two of them?"

"They’re emotionally heavy buttons. Don’t judge my workload."

She let her hand brush his before they crossed the hall, a small choice that warmed her more than it should have. Then Garran stepped out behind them, carrying the duty book Ash had left in his care.

His eyes stopped on their hands, but his question concerned the stall. "Before tomorrow’s opening," he said, "I need the name and location of your supplier."