The morning after the plaza, the letters started arriving before breakfast even started.
By the time Katarina sat down at her desk, there were eleven of them. By midmorning, there were twenty-six. Enza had stopped announcing them and just started stacking. They were all pre-order inquiries: merchants asking about early allocation, about exclusive district rights, about whether the Signora might find room in the first production run for an old friend of the house.
Some of these were the same people who'd pressed candied figs into her hands last week and told her how terrible it all was. The fruit seller's cousin wanted four units. A wine shipper who'd spent the spring calling her "the toilet girl" behind her back wanted twelve, and opened her letter with "esteemed Signora."
