"I’ll tell them it’s soap," Dove muttered. "If they need its family history, they can marry it."
Ash’s eyes narrowed, which reminded her that arguing with a voice nobody else could hear was not helping her reputation. She pointed at the recess before he could ask.
"Where’s the boundary? I want to know exactly what you’re letting me use."
He called Varek from the storeroom. The guard had gray wolf ears, a thick coat, and a notebook already open in his hand. He listened to Ash, marked a line across the mouth of the recess with chalk, and wrote down the arrangement without once asking whether Dove needed anything.
The space was roughly eight feet wide and six deep. Its left wall bordered the wash corridor; its right faced the common hall. A warm pipe crossed the back above a raised concrete shelf. Two shallow wooden crates stood under it, empty except for dust. Nothing about it looked like a fresh start, but it looked considerably better than snow.
"Inside the line," Varek said. "No blocking the water route. Your assigned bedding will be brought here."
"Does the protection package cover my merchandise?"
"It covers you. I don’t watch people’s belongings."
She nodded because the answer was clear, even if she disliked it. Ash remained beside the chalk line, watching her take stock of a room that barely qualified as a room.
"You could have a door already," he said.
"And an audience every time I wanted to leave it. I’ll improve this."
"You’ve promised improvements before."
"Then you’ll have the pleasure of checking the results. Try to contain yourself."
Two coins registered before he left, bringing her to twenty-five. Dove dismissed Sprout’s delighted suggestion that hostility might conceal interest. She had met enough customers to know hostility often concealed more hostility, with a complaint form underneath.
Varek recorded permission to use one empty crate as a counter. He did not move it. Dove tested its weight, pulled it a few inches, and stopped when the rough edge caught her scraped palm. There were smart ways to be stubborn, and bleeding on furniture was not one of them.
A broad man carrying a bundle of blankets paused outside the chalk line. Rounded bear ears stuck through his dark hair, and his gaze traveled over her face before dropping to the crate.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Opening a shop. The glamorous part is currently stuck to the floor."
"You expect me to move it?"
"I expect to pay for help. Have you got a name, or should I put Broad Shoulders on the receipt?"
"Grist," he said, without smiling. "Same as before."
She accepted that without attempting another excuse. He agreed to wait while she checked her goods, and Dove stepped behind a spare hanging tarp at the back. Varek left for his round, having written exactly what he had been ordered to write.
Dove accepted the stall quest. Inside the system space, three wrapped soap bars and six folded cloths appeared on the wooden counter. She touched one bar, chose to bring it out, and opened her eyes with it in her hand.
"Purchased goods can remain on these shelves," Sprout explained. "You can transfer things you physically hold. I cannot retrieve goods you’ve left elsewhere. Ownership disputes are outside customer support."
That was worth remembering. She moved the rest of the starter parcel out in two careful trips, then closed the space before anyone could catch her standing still with her eyes shut. Five cloths went on the counter. One stayed with her personal wash things.
Grist checked the plain soap, rubbed a damp finger against it, and waited for the lather. "No perfume?"
"No mystery smell competing with yours. Very generous of it."
He looked at her sharply, and she added, "I mean people have noses. Some of you have better ones than seems fair."
He wanted the whole bar. She wanted a dry blanket of her own, a sound bowl, something to write with, and the crate moved. They argued over the blanket before he offered a small stack of used paper with blank backs and a short pencil as part of the exchange.
Dove checked the blanket for damage, the bowl for cracks, and the pencil for an actual point. Grist watched with increasing annoyance, but she had once accepted a return box containing bricks. Death had not made her more trusting.
"You always this thorough now?" he asked.
"Only when everything I own fits under a table."
They settled it. He moved the crate across the recess, leaving a gap at the left for Dove to pass through, and she handed over one wrapped bar. Her sign went above the remaining stock: Dove’s Stall. Goods or agreed work. Prices settled first.
Sprout awarded the promised fifty coins after the completed exchange. Seventy-five sat in her balance, enough for shampoo if she ignored every possible problem tomorrow might bring.
She left it there. Being financially responsible felt less satisfying than advertisements had led her to believe.
Assigned bedding arrived from the stores: one mat and a plain blanket. Dove put the mat on the raised shelf behind the counter, away from the pipe, and folded her own traded blanket at its head. Everything she had was within reach of the place she would sleep.
Grist let her borrow his knife to divide a second bar into quarters before taking it back. She wrapped the pieces in their paper and wrote down her stock. Eight quarters’ worth of soap, five sale cloths, and one personal cloth. It was not an empire, but nobody had demanded a kiss at checkout.
She tried sitting behind the crate and discovered the tail needed its own parking space. Turning sideways solved most of it, though one white tuft still poked into the gap. Dove tucked it back before anyone could step on her and added a lower chair to the list of things she would eventually own.
She pressed a hand into the soft fold of her blanket. For a few seconds, she could see herself waking here, opening the counter, and making enough to buy a better morning.
A shadow crossed the sign. The man outside it had black panther ears, a missing wedge in the left one, and golden eyes that stopped on her face with open disgust.
"Selling things now, fox?" he asked. "Or are people supposed to guess what you’ll take from them afterward?"