Chapter 162: False Heat

"If the cork has a crown on it, do not drink, do not sniff, do not buy it for someone you intend to impress, and do not tell me your cousin looked fine after one swallow."

Tamsin shouted from the market fountain while Lina stood below her with a tray of Hearthwater cups and a mouth gone dry from repeating the same warning to people who wanted a more exciting answer. Morning rain had turned the square into slick stone, wet awnings, and moving elbows. The false bottles were everywhere now that Lina knew how to look: green corks stamped with a cheap three-point crown over an open circle, copper dust shaken inside the glass for shimmer, labels printed in confident black ink.

ROYAL READINESS.

STABLE COURAGE.

ALL-DIRECTION HEAT WITHOUT DELAY.

Perric had not even bothered to be subtle. Or someone wanted Perric blamed. Lina hated that she had to hold both thoughts at once while a sweating mason tried to push two coins into her hand.

"Mistress Beren, I heard yours is locked up for nobles, but this one works now, and my wife has been looking at me like I am damp laundry for three months. If it is dangerous, give me the safe one that does the same."

"The safe one does not do the same," Lina said. "That is why it is safe. Hearthwater warms you, helps you talk, and gives your body enough kindness to remember wanting. It does not make you brave enough to ignore refusal."

The mason stared at her. He was about forty, square-faced, exhausted, wedding band tied to his belt because his hands were swollen from lime. "I do not want to ignore refusal. I want to stop feeling ashamed when I ask."

That pierced her harder than panic.

Lina gave him two cups of Hearthwater. "Then take these home with bread. You drink one. She drinks one only if she chooses. You ask one plain question before you touch her. If she says no, you eat soup and sleep. If she says yes, you go slowly enough that she can keep saying yes."

His face reddened. "That sounds less magical than I hoped."

"Magic is expensive and badly labeled today."

He paid for Hearthwater. One small victory, almost immediately swallowed by the square.

The tray emptied again before Lina crossed ten steps. That should have felt like success. Instead it felt like trying to bail a flooded cellar with a teacup. People wanted the stronger story. They wanted the bottle that promised they could become the version of themselves who asked, touched, confessed, endured, conquered, or surrendered without the boring terror of being refused. Hearthwater had to compete with a lie that wore perfume and urgency.

An older woman named Pellia, who sold mended gloves and had tested the first public brew months ago, took one cup and sniffed it with deep suspicion.

"This is milder than festival," Pellia said.

"It is supposed to be."

"I wanted enough heat to make my knees remember youth."

"Your knees can remember youth tomorrow. Today I need them to carry you home with your good sense attached."

Pellia stared at her, then drank. "You have become bossy since getting famous."

"I was bossy before. I was poorer, so people called it anxious."

Pellia laughed, and three people near her laughed with relief rather than heat. Lina seized the moment.

"That is what Hearthwater should do first," she called, loud enough for the nearest awning. "It should make you laugh like yourself. If a brew makes you feel larger than yourself, braver than your own words, or ready to ignore a refusal because the bottle says destiny is warm, it is false."

A young printer, adult and ink-stained, held up a false label. "Can I copy that for a warning?"

Thessia shouted from the seller's crate, "Copy it with my mark and no decoration."

"No decoration?" the printer groaned.

Orin, arriving with supervised warning slips tucked under one arm, said, "Decoration is how lies afford better shoes."

The printer sighed and ran.

At the spice stall, a woman had climbed onto a barrel and was unlacing her bodice while laughing too hard. Her friend tried to cover her and got slapped away. At the fishmonger, two men kissed with desperate force, not the rude joy of festival heat but a frightened hunger that made their hands grip each other's hair too tightly. Near the fountain, a clerk in palace-blue cuffs sat on the ground with his legs spread, tunic tented, face gray with panic as he whispered, "I cannot stop wanting, I cannot stop wanting, I cannot stop wanting."

Vex reached him first. She crouched without touching him. "Name."

"Berro. Thirty-one. Records office. I drank because Soval said it was a diluted royal sample and I wanted to stop being afraid of women."

"You can speak, which is useful. Hands on your own knees, not between your legs. Wanting is not an order."

He sobbed once and put his hands on his knees.

Lina felt a wave of arousal pass through the square like heat from an opened oven. Bodies answered bodies. Damp shirts clung to chests. Nipples hardened under linen. Mouths parted. Skirts were lifted for air by people who had not chosen to become public. Desire became visible everywhere, and because so much of it was frightened, none of it could be used.

She named herself under her breath. "Lina. Market. False heat in air. Arousal from proximity. No consent attached. Work first."

Tamsin heard anyway. "Good. Keep pouring."

A seller in a yellow scarf tried to fold his crate closed and slip away. Garron caught the crate handle before the man moved two steps.

"Open it," Garron said.

"I bought them wholesale. I did not brew anything."

"Open it anyway."

The seller looked around for help. He was young enough to look scared, old enough to be accountable, maybe twenty-five. Sweat ran down his temple. "People asked for them. They said the innkeeper had kept the real heat for the queen and rich people. I sell what people ask for."

Thessia arrived with two market guards and a ledger under oilcloth. "Then you will enjoy recording who sold them to you."

"I do not know his real name."

"Most bad commerce begins with that sentence."

The crate opened on thirty-two bottles nested in straw. Lina forced herself to look at them as objects, not insults. Same cheap crown cork. Same copper dust. Same open-circle mark pretending to be the mark that had appeared on her wrist. Each bottle had a different promise, which made the fraud uglier because it knew its buyers.

FOR COLD MARRIAGES.

FOR FIRST COURAGE.

FOR WORKER STAMINA.

FOR WIDOW FIRE.

FOR ROYAL-STYLE THRESHOLD PLAY.

Vex picked up the last label with gloved fingers and read it aloud. Her voice went quiet enough that people leaned in and regretted it. "Royal-style Threshold play. Private room safe. No witnesses needed if trust is true."

"That sentence should be illegal," Tamsin said.

"It will be by lunch," Thessia replied.

Lina wanted to tear every label with her teeth. Instead she took the Hearthwater ladle from Daren, who had just arrived with another pot, and poured a cup so steadily that her hand did not shake.

"Public face," Tamsin reminded her.

Lina lifted the cup. "Trust likes witnesses when heat is high. Anyone selling you privacy as safety is selling you the lock and hiding the key."

Tamsin shouted from the fountain again. "Anyone who has swallowed false brew, come to the blue awning. Anyone who has only touched a bottle, wash hands at the pump. Anyone selling from a crown cork will put the crate down and learn whether market law can be boring at speed."

The crowd listened to Tamsin because she did not sound like she was asking to be liked. Lina loved her so fiercely in that moment that it became heat under her ribs, clean and chosen amid the dirty heat around them.

A hand caught Lina's sleeve. She turned too sharply.

Soval stood there.

Perric's nephew had lost his wine gloves. His hands were inked with copper dust. His face looked too pale for the red flush across his cheeks, and his pupils were wide.

"I only moved crates," he said.

Lina set the tray down slowly. "How much did you drink?"

"I had to show it was safe."

Tamsin was off the fountain in one jump. "Sit."

"I cannot. If I sit, I will say things."

"Then say them standing before your knees decide for you."

Soval laughed, high and cracked. "Uncle Perric said the page was incomplete but useful. Halven said palace men prefer courage in bottles because it looks less like fear. I do not know what that means. I only moved crates."

Thessia's pen stopped. "Halven Rook?"

Soval's eyes rolled toward her. "No. Yes. I do not know. A friend of a friend. A blue ledger pin. Please do not let me touch anyone. My skin thinks every person is a door."

Lina stepped closer, but Tamsin blocked her with one forearm.

"No," Tamsin said. "He is dosed. You are the maker he has been told to want. Vex."

Vex had already moved. "Soval, you are twenty-six?"

"Twenty-six. Stupid. Hot. Not safe."

"Good enough. Hands behind your own back. Walk with me to the blue awning. You will not confess to Lina for relief. You will confess to Thessia after cooling."

He obeyed because Vex made obedience boring instead of erotic. That, Lina thought, should be taught in every school that did not exist.

At the edge of the square, someone screamed. Not pleasure. Pain.

The scream came from the alley behind the dyer's shop.

Lina moved before Tamsin could stop her.

"Lina!" Tamsin shouted.

Lina ran anyway, cursing herself with every step.