The merchant had broken her marriage contract to follow a woman from another city, and she would carry that scandal the rest of her life. She could hide it, could wear grays and subdue herself until the story people told wasn't quite so shameful. Or she could wear the truth. When she walked into the dyer's shop, the dyer took one look at her set jaw and asked, 'How sinful are we talking about?' The merchant explained everything. By the time she finished, the dyer was smiling, the kind of smile that said she'd heard variations of this story a hundred times and had stopped judging approximately ninety-five stories ago. She showed the merchant the white first. 'This is what they'll want to see,' she said. 'Your place, your propriety, your innocence.' Then she showed the red. 'And this is the truth.' When the merchant wore that armor into the merchant council, people couldn't look away. The contrast was so absolute that it forced a choice. You could see the red and understand that she'd chosen love over convention. Or you could see the white and pretend none of it had happened. But you couldn't stand in her presence and stay neutral. She'd forced them all into honest positions, and that, she learned, was its own kind of power...