I say it as a joke when I sit down. Nobody laughs.
It's Friday night at June's Tavern, and everyone is at our usual table, like we always are. This is supposed to be the night we shake off the workweek and look forward to the next one.
But the whole picture is wrong. Lyra hasn't touched the taps. Arabella has a plate of untouched shortbread in front of her, which has never happened in recorded history. Noemi still has her shawl on and keeps turning her mug without drinking from it.
"Nobody died, Lissy," Lyra says. "Sit down."
"I am sitting down," I say. Nobody even reaches for the shortbread. "What's going on?"
The three of them trade a look. Then Arabella reaches into her apron pocket and puts a letter on the table.
It's cream paper of a good weight. I recognize it before I touch it. It's the same kind of paper the man in the purple coat used when he came to my shop and demanded that I vacate the premises.
"It came Tuesday," Arabella says. "Read it."
I read it. Or I read enough of it. The phrases jump out at me: notice of interest in the property. Inquiry regarding your current tenancy. A generous offer to the titleholder. And there at the bottom, dressed up in clerk's language, lease arrangements may be subject to review upon any transfer of ownership.
It stays polite from the first line to the last, and it still reads like a hand closing around my throat.
"Who sent it?"
"An agent's office in Valeforth. There's no name, just the office." Arabella pulls the plate of shortbread toward herself and pushes it away again. "I wrote to my landlord. He lives out in Fernshaw. I've never met him. I send the rent by post. He hasn't written back."
"June got one too," Lyra says. "Same paper, same words. She's owned this building outright for thirty years, so hers went in the fire. But she's the only one on the street who can put it in the fire. Half the shops here rent." She leans forward on her elbows. "The cobbler got one. The chandlery got one. Petra at the flower stall says her landlord already had a visit. A man came to his house."
My stomach drops. How many people have gotten one of these and said nothing?
"Noemi?" I say.
Noemi turns her cup another circle. When she looks up, there's something in her face I've never seen before. This is Noemi, who charged an orc lord twenty gold pieces without blinking and stares down anyone who crosses her counter.
She's scared.
"Mine came a month ago," she says. "I didn't say anything because I thought it was just me. My landlord is an estate. It's held in some family trust in the capital. I've never spoken to a person, just a clerk's office. If the trust sells, the letter saysmy lease comes up for review." She says the word like it tastes bad. "Lissy, I can't move the shop. It's not like moving a bakery. Sorry, Arabella," she adds quickly, not looking at her. "Some of what grows in that garden, my grandmother planted. Thirty years of roots. There are things back there that don't transplant, and workings in that cellar that took..." She stops herself. "It's not just a shop. It's everything I have that I can never move. And a clerk in the capital could sign it away without ever knowing my name."
The table goes quiet. Lyra puts her hand on Noemi's arm.
Cold spreads through me. I've been carrying my half of this for weeks and telling no one. Why didn't I tell them?
"It's not just you," I say. "I got letters too."
They all look at me.
"Not about the building. Grammy owns mine, and she'd salt the earth before she sold. Mine came from the suppliers. Two of my silk merchants canceled my standing orders this month. Same week, same wording, revised dock arrangements, like they copied the same draft. The third stopped answering at all." I set Arabella's letter down in the middle of the table. "Someone is squeezing this street from both ends. The buildings and the goods."
"The flour's gone strange too," Arabella says slowly. "My mill said the same thing. Dock arrangements. I paid a third more for the last shipment, and I thought it was the tariffs everyone keeps going on about."
"The tariffs haven't started," I say. "That's the thing. Everyone keeps blaming the tariffs, and the tariffs are still just talk in a treaty somewhere. Whatever this is, it's already here."
Lyra sits back. "Then who?"
I have a name. Or half of one. And I've been carrying it since spring without knowing what to do with it.
"Months ago, a man came to my door after closing," I say. "Slick. Expensive. He wanted to buy my building, and he gave me a card to pass to my landlord. I gave it to Grammy, and she threw it in her fire, which I thought was the end of it." I take a breath. "The card said Voss. Lord Princeton Voss. Voss Textiles."
"Voss," Lyra says. "Like the duke? That Voss?"
"His son, I think. I don't know." I comb a hand through my hair. "I don't know how a textile lord's son connects to lease letters and flour mills, and maybe he doesn't." I look around the table at my three closest friends. "But somebody with money is buying our street, and somebody with docks is choking our goods. If that's two different somebodies, it's the worst luck I've ever heard of."
