That autumn, Octavia went to a gem show in Tucson, as she had done every year since she started her brand, to buy stones for the shop and to see the cutters she trusted. The show was a vast, noisy place, full of tables and lights and dealers calling out prices, and Octavia moved through it the way she had always moved through such places: slowly, with her loupe in her pocket, stopping at the tables she knew, greeting the dealers by name, and looking at stones before she talked about money. She bought a parcel of sapphires from a cutter she had known for a decade, and she bought a small parcel of garnets, and she looked at a parcel of emeralds and did not buy them, because they were treated and the dealer had not said so, and she told him so, politely, and he shrugged, and she moved on, and she thought about how a buyer's honesty is tested not by the stones she buys but by the stones she refuses, and about how the shop's reputation for honest grading began, in part, at such tables, where a dealer learns whether a buyer will look or merely pay.
She also met, at the show, a young cutter who had just started out, and who showed her a parcel of tourmalines he had cut himself, and Octavia looked at them, and they were good, not perfect but good, with honest color and careful cutting, and she bought a few, and she paid his price, without haggling him down, because he was young and his work was good, and because haggling a young cutter down to nothing is a way of ensuring that he will not be cutting in five years. He thanked her, and he asked where the stones would be sold, and she told him, at Aster and Grey in Portland, and he said he would like to visit the shop one day, and she told him he would be welcome, and he did, months later, and he stood at the bench and watched the apprentices work, and he left pleased, and Octavia thought that the trade, at its best, is a web of such visits, cutters and jewelers and customers, all connected by stones that pass from hand to hand, and that the web holds only if every hand in it is honest, and that her part in it was to be one honest hand among many.
Back in Portland, the shop prepared for the holiday season, which is, for a jewelry house, the busiest and most demanding time, when customers come in with lists and budgets and hopes, and when the cases must be full and the staff must be ready, and when the temptation to hurry is greatest. Octavia prepared the way she always prepared: by stocking the cases carefully, by scheduling the staff generously, by making sure the bench was clear of backlogs, and by reminding everyone, gently, that the holiday season is when the shop's practices matter most, because it is when the most strangers walk in, and when the most judgments are made in haste. She told the staff, at the November meeting, that a customer in a hurry is still a customer, and that a customer who cannot afford the most expensive piece is still a customer, and that the case opens for anyone who asks, even in December, even on the busiest Saturday, and the staff nodded, because they had heard it before, and because they believed it, and because belief, repeated, becomes habit.
The holiday season went well. Customers came, and they bought, and they had pieces repaired, and they brought in heirlooms for appraisal, and the shop was busy, and the staff was tired, and the cases were replenished, and the bench worked late, and Octavia worked late too, and at the end of December, when the shop closed for two days, she stood on the floor in the quiet,