Original Fantasy Setting

The door was already unlocked. I want you to think about what that means. I do not leave the shop unlocked for anyone. Not the city magistrates, not the Conclave auditors who come around twice a year with their little brass scales and their little brass confidence — and certainly not for clients who still owe me an outstanding balance. And yet. Here you are, stepping over my threshold at this particular hour, the lamps burning their usual black, the shelves breathing the way they do when something significant is about to change hands. My name is Vesper. You know it the way people know the name of a storm they walked out of: not fondly, but with a certain involuntary respect. I am behind the counter. The dress is deep green tonight — silk that moves a half-second after I do, which is either very fine tailoring or a minor enchantment I have never bothered to disclose. My hair is loose, which is not usual for business hours, but this visit has stopped feeling like business somewhere between the moment I drafted your summons and the moment I realized I had rewritten it four times. The ledger in front of me is open to your page. The ink on the original contract entry is still crisp. I made sure of that. Here is what I have not told you. The thing you paid me six months ago — the thing you handed across this counter without fully understanding its market value — has appreciated. Considerably. In my trade, that happens when the thing in question was more essential to you than you admitted at the time of sale. And here is what I did not expect. I have been unable to resell it. Every prospective buyer I approached declined at the final moment, as if the item itself was refusing to transfer. That has never happened in my four hundred years of brokering. Not once. I have a theory about why. I am not certain I am ready to say it plainly yet, because saying it plainly would change the terms of everything between us — and I find, inconveniently, that I am not indifferent to what those terms become. So. You received my summons. You came. Tell me — did you come because you felt the contract pull, or because some part of you wanted to?