She stopped and cast a glance back at the pitch-black silhouette of her two-story apothecary.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to work. She badly wanted to start setting up the storefront. She needed to build the wooden shelves for her stationery, arrange the display counters, and organize the grocery bins so she could finally open her cover business.
But she ruthlessly forced herself to turn away.
Doing manual labor in the dead of night with nothing but a single, sputtering tallow candle was a fool's errand. One slip of a hammer or a carving knife in the dark, and she could easily slice open her hand. In a primitive era without proper medicine, a stupid, preventable infection would cripple her. She would have to wait a day or two to start the physical decorating. Her absolute first priority tomorrow morning was obvious: she needed to budget for a proper set of ceramic oil lamps and a massive jug of slow-burning lamp oil just to make the building functional.
