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I’d known Asha Woods since she was a child stealing cooling buns off her mother’s sill, and she had no bottom.

Without a reply, I picked up my adze and went to find work at the far end of the green, where the trouble wasn’t. She let me go, which from Asha was the same as a cat letting a mouse have a running start.

Everyone in the Hollow was out in the cold, breath fogging, turning this stubbly field into a fair. Rufus rolled barrels down from the tavern and stacked them behind a plank counter. The Puddlefoots built the pumpkin pavilion and argued the judging criteria loud enough to hear from where I’d started putting up another booth.

Somewhere a fiddle got tested, one long note, and put away again for tomorrow.

Zephyrine’s little frost-wards went up all over the green, driven into frozen ground at intervals.

“They’ll break the cold snap by dawn,” she said.

No one believed her.

She’d built the dunking booth herself, and set it dead center where no one could miss it, and painted a plank, TWO THROWS A COPPER, over a picture of herself going under.

I stopped to help her level the frame.

“Penance,” she said, working a shim under the leg. “I’ve always felt it should be public, wet, and profitable. I’m not going to have a shoddy stool cheat the roof fund of a single throw on account of a wobble.”

So I trued her stool the same as I’d trued the booth. I appeared to be in the business of building things that would humiliate the people I liked.

“Thank you,” she said when I’d finished, and went back to painting a second, smaller sign that read I DESERVE THIS.

Rain’s tea tent went up second from the gate, on prime ground, and I didn’t build one board of it, because Asha had fetched her, and she came across the green at me with a wooden spoon in her fist and murder on her face.

“A teapot.” She stopped a foot from my chest and tipped her head all the way back, brandishing her spoon. “Aris said a teapot, Goran. Nothing heavier than a teapot, for two weeks. It has been eleven days. I have counted every one of them.”

“A post was out of plumb.”

“I don’t care.” She wasn’t laughing. That was the part I hadn’t prepared myself for. She truly looked upset. And worried. About me. “I’ve had my hands on your chest twice a day since the field incident. I know exactly what’s holding you together, and it’s thread.”

“Would’ve stood wrong.”

“Bram had three people on that frame. Asha gave you a different assignment.”

“Ornamentation. I don’t do ornamentation.”

“You should be doing ornamentation now. Look at you!”

I looked down, not seeing her point.

“There are at least forty males on this green and every one of them owes you a barn. You could’ve lifted one finger and had six of them on it in a flash. You didn’t. You never do.”

I had no answer she’d be happy to hear.

“Put the hammer down,” she said.

I did.

She stood there breathing on me, and everyone around us pretended not to watch.

Her shoulders deflated, and she shoved stray hair off her face.

“Go stand behind your booth and look ornamental,” she said. “This booth is mine, and I’ll make sure it’s put up correctly.”

I did my best to look ornamental, and she raised her booth with help. And every so often, across the noise and motion, I would find her looking my way. She’d quickly drag her gaze somewhere else and go back to setting up her board. I would go back to whatever I was pretending to do inside the booth.

For two years I’d done exactly this across a market square and called it enough. Now there was no square between us and no name left for it, and everyone could see the line running taut between her booth and mine.