Chapter 9
Genevieve
"No one around here sells it, though," Barnaby added. "Finnick ships his coffee beans out to other towns. Heard the transport spells alone cost a fortune."
Barnaby was wiping down the counter as he talked, unhurried, the way he did everything. The bakery smelled like warm oats and browned butter, and I was sitting on a stool with my notebook open and trying to write fast enough to keep up.
"He'll give you a fair rate?"
"Better than fair, if you go in right." Barnaby set down the cloth. "Tell him I sent you. We go back a long way—he did my apple supply for six years before I switched to dried fruit for the pastries. He'll remember." A pause. "He can be difficult with new customers. Doesn't like people who waste his time."
"I don't waste people's time."
"No," Barnaby agreed, with the simple certainty of someone who had watched me scrub a floor for four hours without stopping. "You don't."
I closed the notebook and looked at him—this enormous, flour-dusted creature who had found me crying in the rain outside a building I had no right to and had brought me soup without asking a single question about why.
"Barnaby." I stopped. Started again. "You've helped me more in the last two days than most people have in—" I did a quick mental count. "A while."
He made a dismissive sound and picked up the cloth again.
"When the shop opens," I said, "you're getting free drinks. As many as you want, whenever you want. That's not negotiable."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I've actually been wanting to try that coffee." He went back to wiping the counter. "Been curious since you mentioned it."
I was already at the door. "First batch is yours."
"Wait." His voice stopped me. "Before you go out today." He set the cloth down properly this time, which meant he was being serious. "Keep to the main roads. Don't cut through the lower market."
I turned back. "Why?"
"There's been talk." He kept his voice low, even though we were alone. "Three families on Wicker Lane. Woke up and their youngest couldn't move. Skin gone grey, like—" He paused, searching for the word. "Like stone. Not dead. Just frozen."
"Stone plague," he said.
"That's what people are calling it. The official line is it's isolated, contained, nothing to worry about." He looked at me steadily. "But Wicker Lane is two streets from the lower market, and the family that was hit first had been buying produce there all week."
I thought about the loan contract sitting in my coat pocket. About the word essence in a legal clause. About the fact that I had signed my soul away to open a shop in a city where people were apparently waking up unable to move.
"Right," I said. "Main roads."
"Main roads," he confirmed. "And come back before dark."
The walk to Finnick Sutton's orchard took half an hour past the lower district gate, where the cobblestones gave way to mud and the air stopped smelling like wet stone. I spent most of it doing math.
Half a bushel of coffee beans to start. Twenty-five cups minimum to break even at three copper per cup. Eight silver was the number I needed to stay under, or the margin disappeared entirely.
I had rehearsed the conversation four times before I reached the gate.
The orchard was exactly what Barnaby had described—low farmhouse, slate roof, rows of apple trees running back toward the ridge, and further beyond them, a stretch of darker, lower-growing shrubs I recognized immediately. Coffee plants. Not many, but enough. A dwarf in work boots was hauling a crate toward a cart, and he spotted me before I reached the fence.
"Not buying today," he said, without looking up. "Come back Thursday."
"I'm not here to buy. I'm here to talk about a supply contract."
"Not interested." He set the crate down and finally looked at me. One glance, top to bottom, the kind that calculated net worth in under a second. "New shop?"
"Opening soon."
"How soon?"
"Soon enough that I need supplies before I open."
He picked up the crate again. "Come back when you've been open six months. I don't do contracts with shops that might not exist in a week."
I had expected this. I kept my voice pleasant. "Barnaby Groft sent me."
Finnick put the crate down.
He turned around fully this time, and his expression had done something complicated—the wariness was still there, but underneath it was something that looked like obligation, the specific reluctance of a man who owed someone a favor and had just been reminded of it.
"Barnaby sent you," he repeated.
"He said you go back a long way."
A pause. Then he jerked his chin toward the farmhouse. "Inside. Five minutes."
The five minutes became nearly an hour.
He sat across the table with his arms folded and the posture of someone who had made a decision to listen but hadn't committed to anything beyond that. I put the menu on the table between us—handwritten, two columns, projected weekly bean volume broken down by roast level with a price range and a break-even calculation at the bottom.
Finnick picked it up. His eyebrows moved.
"You did this last night?"
"I couldn't sleep."
He read it twice. Set it down. "Most new owners come in here and wave their hands. Say they need some beans, maybe a lot, depends on how business goes." He tapped the paper. "You've got projected waste factored in. And roast levels."
"If I over-order, the beans go stale. If I under-order, I lose customers." I kept my hands flat on the table, relaxed. "Either way I'm out of business before the first loan payment. I can't afford to guess." I paused. "I need green beans for light roast, medium roast for the house blend, and a small quantity of dark roast for espresso base. Basic. Nothing exotic. Just consistent quality."
"Loan payment." His eyes sharpened. "Which bank?"
I told him.
Something shifted in his face—not sympathy exactly, but recognition. He knew what those contracts looked like. "That's a hard timeline."
"I'm aware."
"Then you know I can't take a risk on a new shop that might fold in three weeks."
"Your risk is zero," I said. "I'm proposing weekly deliveries, payment on receipt. If I miss a payment, you stop delivering. You lose nothing. If I don't, you get a consistent weekly order that scales up as I grow." I leaned forward slightly. "The risk is entirely mine. I'm asking you to let me carry it."
Finnick was quiet for a moment. "Barnaby really thinks you can make this work."
"He gave me your name without me asking. Make of that what you will."
Another pause. Longer this time. He looked at the menu again, at the break-even number at the bottom, and I could see him doing his own math—weighing Barnaby's judgment against the very real possibility that I was a bad investment.
"Two pounds of beans a week," he said finally. "Mixed roast, my discretion on blend. Nine silver per pound."
"Seven," I said.
"Nine."
"Eight, and I pay the first delivery in advance. Right now, before I leave. And I want roast levels specified in the contract—I can't build a consistent menu on my supplier's discretion."
He looked at me. "You have Eight silver on you?"
"I have four." I held his gaze. "Half up front, half on delivery. You have Barnaby's word and my signed contract as collateral for the rest. And you get a customer who actually knows what she's doing with your beans, instead of shipping them across three towns for half the profit."
The silence stretched long enough that I started mentally calculating how far the next nearest coffee supplier was and whether I could make it there before dark.
Then Finnick reached for the ledger.
"Eight silver," he said. "Don't make me regret it."
He wrote up the receipt in the efficient scrawl of someone who had filled out a thousand of them. I read every word, signed it, and counted four silver coins out of my belt pouch onto the table.
Every coin I had.
"Deposit," I said. "Good faith."
Finnick looked at the coins for a moment. Then he picked them up and locked them in a small box on the shelf without comment, which was its own kind of acknowledgment. When he turned back and offered his hand, he was looking at me differently than he had an hour ago.
I shook it. His grip was solid, unhurried.
First win, I thought, tucking the receipt into my coat. Actual, real, first win.
The walk back into the city felt lighter. Not good—I was still four silver coins poorer than I'd been this morning and the chest-burn had started up again, low and persistent—but lighter. Like the plan had weight now. Like it was real.
I was halfway down the main road when I saw them.
Three men in dark uniforms coming the other way, moving with the kind of purposeful quiet that clears a path without asking.
The one in front was tall, dark-haired, with a face that could have been carved from marble if marble came with that kind of precision. Sharp jaw, high cheekbones, silver eyes that caught the light even in the grey afternoon. He was looking straight ahead at something I couldn't see yet, and he moved like someone who had never once wondered whether the world would get out of his way.
It would. Obviously.
I stepped to the side to let them pass.
They turned onto the mud track toward the orchard.
A moment later, I heard Finnick's voice through the open farmhouse door.
"I didn't do anything! This is a mistake—I just grow beans and fruit, I swear, I don't know what you're talking about!"
