"If we're doing something, we do it right." He examines another bottle. "What's 'spring rain'?"
"Marketing nonsense, probably."
He smells it anyway. "Disappointing. Rain doesn't smell like flowers."
"What does rain smell like?"
"Wet stone. Mud. That mineral smell." He looks almost wistful. "Clean, but real clean."
"That was unexpectedly poetic."
"Soap brings it out in me." Completely deadpan.
The shopkeeper interrupts, voice shaking. "Should I... should I get twenty of each? Of the ones you've selected?"
"Forty," Gray Streak decides. "We might need extra."
"Forty bottles of soap?"
"You wanted everyone clean. This is what clean costs."
The shopkeeper scurries away, probably to tell everyone about the Shadow Guild's soap preferences for the rest of her life.
"Forty bottles though?"
"You don't know how dirty some of them get." He looks haunted. "Tooth especially. Last week he came back covered in... something."
"I don't want to know."
"Neither did I. But I knew anyway. By smell."
"And that's why we need forty bottles of soap."
"Exactly."
Two women by the fabric counter, whispering but not quietly enough. One's wearing too much perfume—lavender, but the cheap kind that makes your nose itch.
"—Lord Brambleton's manor. Completely empty now."
"Twenty bedrooms, I heard. Just sitting there."
"Well, after the scandal with the taxes—"
"—family fled to the summer provinces—"
"—magistrate's selling it for debts—"
I stop so suddenly Gray Streak nearly runs into me. Twenty bedrooms. Twenty. Everyone could have their own room. Real walls, not sheets. Proper beds, not shadow furniture and disease floors.
"Excuse me," I approach the women with what I hope is a friendly smile. The shadows ripple against my shoulders. "I couldn't help overhearing about Lord Brambleton's manor?"
They take one look at me—paint-stained dress, shadow shawl, Gray Streak looming—and press back against the fabric display.
"We don't know anything," one squeaks. Her friend nods so hard her hat wobbles.
"No, I just wanted to ask about the house. How many bedrooms exactly? Does it have proper drainage? What aboutthe kitchen situation? Mold problems? Roof leaks? Proper heating? Are the windows sealed? What about—oh! Fireplaces? Please say fireplaces."
They stare at me.
