"Good," Dove said. "Free advice usually turns out to be a sales pitch wearing sensible shoes. What are you charging?"
Mara considered her for a moment, then pointed to a quarter of plain soap. "That, for an explanation of the women’s passage and a private wash turn tonight. My attendants can bring a basin here. You wash yourself."
"I wasn’t going to ask for an audience."
"You used to ask for quite a lot."
Dove pushed the quarter forward. Mara tested it between her fingers before handing it to the man beside her. The transaction left six quarters for sale and gave Dove her first chance to ask a woman what the hell was going on.
"Kael said four females. I saw you and someone in a room. Who’s the fourth?"
"A little girl among the six orphaned cubs. She sleeps in the protected passage with the other children close by. The adult you saw has twenty-five mates. She’s hoping to conceive. Then there’s you and me."
Dove looked toward the rooms again. "Twenty-five? Does she need a calendar or a traffic controller?"
Mara’s expression cooled. Dove caught it before the joke could keep doing damage.
"That was about the scheduling," she said. "Not about her. I can barely organize my own feet right now."
For a while, Mara only drank from her cup. Her attendants stayed within hearing, neither interrupting nor leaving her alone. Dove waited, because paying for information did not give her the right to demand that someone enjoy providing it.
"We were precious before the ice," Mara said at last. "Now there are settlements with no women at all. The fact that we have four is why Ash watches the entrances so closely."
"And nobody expects you to work?"
"No. My age doesn’t change whether I deserve a warm room or a meal. Neither does that child’s age."
"I didn’t mean it should. I’m trying to understand why everyone looks at my counter like I’ve opened a brothel in a church."
One attendant looked abruptly at the opposite wall. Mara did not smile, though her cup paused near her mouth.
"Women are provided for. A woman bargaining over cloth is unusual. You bargaining over anything makes people wonder who will regret it."
Dove looked down at the neatly stacked squares. She had wanted the stall to say something simple about her. Instead, everyone seemed able to read old accusations between the prices.
"Do you think I’m pretending not to remember?" she asked.
"I think being nearly frozen might have damaged your memory. I also think a pleasant afternoon doesn’t erase what came before it."
"What happened with you?"
Mara set the cup in her lap. "You called me a whore. Said I took in any beast who wanted somewhere warm to lie. You found it very amusing that anyone would still choose my company."
Dove’s stomach tightened. The old woman’s shawl, her neatly arranged hair, the care with which her escort had placed the stool all seemed suddenly important in ways Dove could not explain without sounding foolish.
"That was cruel," she said. "You didn’t deserve it."
"I know that."
There was no gratitude in the answer. Dove was glad, despite the heat in her own face. Mara should not have to thank her for noticing the obvious.
"I don’t remember saying it. I’m not asking you to forget hearing it."
Mara studied her over the rim of the cup. "Then perhaps we can manage a transaction. Don’t mistake that for friendship."
It was a fair boundary. It still hurt when Dove had spent most of the day hoping someone might want to sit near her for no reason at all.
Dove did not offer another apology just to make the silence easier. Mara had heard her. Piling on more words would turn the older woman’s hurt into a task Dove expected her to finish. Instead, she asked whether the woman wanted the soap rewrapped for carrying, and accepted the curt refusal without taking it back personally.
Mara gave the promised explanation. Women’s rooms were in the warmer inner passage, and adult attendants escorted them through busier or colder areas. Meals arrived without payment. Household goods belonged to the households, and gifts from unattached men could be taken as courtship even when the woman had intended something simpler.
"Accepting care doesn’t make you someone’s mate," Mara said. "But accepting a particular man’s gifts, again and again, invites assumptions."
"Then I plan to remain extremely disappointing."
Mara stood when her attendant offered an arm. She did not tidy Dove’s goods, fetch a broom, or volunteer to improve the sign. She had sold exactly what she promised and was going home to a room where people wanted her comfortable.
Her men brought the basin later with warm water and a spare screen. Dove used one soap quarter for herself, leaving five for sale. She kept the used piece separate with her personal cloth, cleaned the dust from the sleeping shelf, and washed behind the screen.
Nobody had stolen every bottle of soap in Michigan. She had simply arrived without owning one, and the households who did had no reason to hand her theirs. Now she could wash because she had arranged it herself, which felt better than she expected.
Her hair was another matter. She worked water through the worst tangles and stopped before wasting all the warmth. Shampoo could wait, even if her scalp had started writing its own complaint.
Once the basin and borrowed screen had been collected, she hung the tarp across the back of the recess. She brought a full soap quarter into the system space, placed it on a shelf, and returned empty-handed. Then she retrieved it. The storage worked both ways when she held the goods.
She should put everything away. Instead, she lined tomorrow’s display neatly on the counter, pleased to see an actual shop waiting for her morning. She was sleeping behind it, and the hall watch passed regularly. For tonight, that felt close enough.
On her mat, she pressed her sore palm against her stomach and asked Sprout how to draw healing water without a bottle. It pointed out the small basin beside the pool. She could bring that out too.
Dove closed her eyes, reached into the blue water, and finally asked the question she had been avoiding.
"How much of me can this fix?"