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"Only the amount shown," the seamstress said. "Nothing more."

Jade checked the total twice before approving it. Blue light passed between the crystals, and she checked the new balance twice more before accepting the bags.

Alex slipped three pairs of socks onto the counter while she wasn't looking.

She caught him anyway. "I own socks."

"You own six pairs. Two have holes."

When Jade demanded to know why he'd been inspecting her socks, Alex pointed out that she hung them by the washroom fire where anyone could see. The argument made no real progress. Jade paid for the socks.

We left the shop carrying five parcels between us. Jade tried to take all of them until Corian reminded her that accepting help with a bag didn't transfer ownership of its contents. She surrendered the winter coat to Halver and two smaller packages to Alex, keeping the bag with the blue shirt and green jacket looped over her own wrist.

The market had thickened while we were inside, and every few paces somebody brushed my shoulder or pushed a stray thought against my shields. Jade stayed close without seeming to notice she was doing it. We stopped at a tea stall, where she insisted on paying so she could use the coin crystal without a clerk watching over her shoulder.

She checked the amount, approved the trade, and handed each of us a cup. Alex lifted his like he was proposing a toast.

"To financial independence and socks without holes."

"Mention my socks again and you'll lose the ability to wear your own."

The threat came easy enough that Corian smiled into his tea. A musician played near the fountain, and for a few minutes nothing happened that needed recording, solving, or surviving. Jade listened with both hands wrapped around her cup.

"Do you like the town?" I asked.

She considered it. "Parts of it."

"Which parts?"

"The parts that aren't touching me."

I laughed before I could stop myself. The sound pulled her eyes toward me, and the answering curve of her mouth stayed there long enough that the pressing crowd faded into something distant.

It didn't last.

The covered market forced everyone into two narrow lanes. Jade shortened her stride, her breathing going too measured, her focus jumping face to face like everybody carried a signal she couldn't shut out. Her hand flexed beside her thigh, reaching for knives that wouldn't help here.

A child caught his finger on the broken edge of a basket and cried out. The pain barely brushed the edge of my shields, small and bright, gone the moment his mother pulled him close. Jade reacted like the injury had happened to her own skin. She stopped hard enough that someone behind her struck my arm pushing past, and she turned toward the child with her pupils blown wide.

Corian moved first, guiding us through the arch of a closed courtyard until the stone pillars blocked the market from view. The noise remained, distant now, the nearest bodies several paces off.

"We can go home," he said. "Or find somewhere quieter and wait, or you can use this." He reached inside his coat and drew out a small black pouch. "I brought the collar."

Jade looked at it without taking it. "You expected this."

"I expected the town might be harder than the Citadel. I brought an option."

"Did Janus tell you to?"

"No." He held the pouch out flat on his palm. "If you don't want it, it stays here. You decide."

Suspicion crossed her face, Corian didn't move closer and didn't tell her what would be sensible.

She took the pouch.

The collar lay inside, dark crystal fitted into a band that looked too familiar in her hands. Jade turned it once, thumb following the smooth inner edge, then lifted it to her throat and fastened the clasp herself.

Relief crossed her face first, followed by a thread of shame that had no business being there. The city receded, and she hated needing the thing that had once been used to hold her down. I wanted to tell her that choosing a tool didn't turn it back into a chain, and didn't know how to say it without making the moment about me instead of her.