Eva came back a little after midday with the sun on her wings and a merchant's worth of gossip in her head, and she laid it out the way Katarina liked things laid out. Cleanest facts first.
"The danger story is planted." She'd declined a seat and stood by the window instead, which was very Eva. "I heard it 4 times, almost word for word, from people who had no business agreeing that precisely. A spice seller recited it to me like he was reading off a card. Robberies, the Greypass isn't safe, you understand. He didn't understand. He'd just been told to say it."
"Word for word is the tell," Katarina said. "Real fear is sloppy. Everybody's scared of a slightly different thing. When the wording's identical, somebody handed it out." [Good. That confirms it. Renzo's seeding a story, not riding a real panic. Which means it's fragile. A planted line dies the second a louder, truer one shows up, and the launch is the louder, truer one.]
