"Good morning," Octavia said. "My name is Octavia Thornfield. Three weeks ago I bought Aster and Grey from the Carrow family. I have been doing the transition inventory in the evenings, which is why you have not seen me. I am sorry to introduce myself this way, and I am sorry to ask you something before we have properly met, but I need to ask you about something I saw yesterday, and about something I have found in the shop's records."
Tamsin stared at her. She set her coffee down slowly on the counter, and her hands were steady, but her face went through several expressions in quick succession: surprise, then understanding, then a wariness that Octavia recognized as the look of a person who has been waiting for a blow and is trying to decide whether this is it.
"You were the woman yesterday," Tamsin said. "In the denim and the canvas jacket. The emerald ring."
"I was," Octavia said. "And you were the person who showed me a pendant and treated me like a customer. I have not forgotten that. I have also seen the new schedule, and I have seen that your hours have been cut. I want you to know that I saw that too, and that I do not think it was fair. But before I talk to Hugh, I need to know whether what I saw yesterday was an exception or a pattern. Have you seen him turn other people away?"
Tamsin was quiet for a moment. Then she went to her locker, took out a small notebook of her own, the kind with a soft cover that bends with use, and laid it on the counter between them. "I started keeping notes six months ago," she said. "I did not know what I would do with them. I only knew that I did not like what I was watching, and that if I did not write it down, I would start to doubt whether I had really seen it. There are fourteen people in here. Fourteen customers, in six months, that Mr. Ashford turned away or steered to the cheapest case, or told to come back with an appointment, when they had come in to buy something. I wrote down what they asked for, what they were wearing, and what he said to them. I did not write down their names, because I did not want to get them in trouble, and because I did not know their names anyway. But I wrote down enough."
Octavia opened the notebook and read, and the entries, in Tamsin's neat, hurried hand, told a story that matched her own Tuesday morning with a precision that made her chest tighten. There was a man in work boots who had asked to see a gold chain for his wife's anniversary and had been told the chains were by appointment. There was an older woman in a raincoat who had asked about a brooch and had been directed to a tray of costume pieces near the door. There was a young couple, plainly dressed, who had asked to see engagement rings and had been told that the rings were only shown to clients with a consultation, and who had left without a word. There was a woman in scrubs, on her lunch break from the hospital nearby, who had asked about a watch and had been told to come back another day. There was a man with a cane who had asked about a signet ring and had been kept waiting until he left. Fourteen people, in six months, each judged in a glance, each given a reason that was not a real rule, each sent away from a shop that had been built, in