Page 10

“And stain my pretty cheeks with blood?” Mettius lifted himself on one elbow and grinned at her. “My job is to look good and flatter the chefs so they cut us good deals.”

Safinia rolled her eyes. She wasn’t nearly as handsome as Mettius and somehow had never struggled to sell meat to city Quirites. They relied on hunters and butchers from the outskirts to supply the corner chefs—the apartments inside the walls were too small and crammed together for hearths of their own.

“Budge over,” she said. Mettius obliged, sitting up and making room on the wall. “Need any help hauling?”

Mettius lit up. “You’re asking to come with me?”

“No,” Safinia said automatically. Then she sighed. “Yes. Things have changed.”

“I knew it. People said you were in the city yesterday. I can’t believe you went without me.” He actually looked a little hurt. “What’s on for us? Drinks? Get rowdy? Find a pair of good-looking twins?”

“This is serious, Mettius. I have important errands today.” She stopped at his barely restrained excitement. There was something like yearning in the way he looked at her—like she could see through his eyes to his thoughts: Say yes, say yes, say yes. “Maybe one drink.”

Mettius launched himself off the wall and whooped. Safinia knew what was coming next—she scrambled backward, but he lunged and caught her anyway, throwing her over his shoulder while she beat on his back, trying—and failing—to salvage her dignity. Once Safinia had been thoroughly manhandled, he set her down, beaming. “It’s been forever.”

“Calm down.” Safinia blew an errant hair out of her face. “I have people I need to see first.”

“Ooh, people.” Mettius stole and tugged the lock of hair just as she had it tucked away. “I’ll come with. Three is always more fun.”

“No chance,” Safinia laughed. She couldn’t help herself around Mettius. “I have to talk to Tarpeia. You hate her.”

He pulled a face. “True.”

Something in him was still such a boy, so driven by impulse and fun. Safinia loved and loathed it in almost equal measures. She wondered if Mettius missed her as much as he missed the trouble they used to get into together. Sometimes he seemed stuck—where she’d accepted her responsibilities, settled in to see what could be made of the wreckage of her home, he was drinking and fucking with the same people she knew he didn’t even really like, leaving the real work to his father. It was difficult for Safinia to admit they had little in common anymore. She had more to talk about with his twin sisters, Rania and Flavia, and they were nine.

“Why Tarpeia, then?” Mettius asked. “She’s the last person I thought you’d want to catch up with.”

Safinia shrugged. “She’s Hersilia’s best friend.”

His eyebrows lifted with surprise. A few years ago, she’d forbidden him completely from gossiping about Hersilia—she hadn’t wanted to interrogate the ache in her chest when she heard that name. She was spared further questions, though—before he could ask, Mettius’s father called for them.

“Ah, Safinia,” he said, coming over to clasp her hand. “Been a while since I saw the two of you painted on the same urn.”

“I can’t work today,” Mettius told his father. “Saf wants to spend time with me. She said she’ll marry me but only if you’ll release me from the indignity of chores.”

“Keep it up,” Safinia muttered. “Gaius, I’m headed into the city. Anything I can take for you?”

Gaius perked up. “In that case, take the wagon. I’ve got plenty of meat packaged if you’re willing to help my idiot son unload.”

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving your idiot son with more than he can carry.”

It was easy to see why the wagon was a two-person job once Mettius and Safinia were on the path—Gaius’s cantankerous old donkey was losing his eyesight, and seemed to want much more to wander than to go to a smelly city to be jostled around. The pair had to walk on either side of him, each with a hand on the animal’s head to keep him straight. The task took so much of Safinia’s attention that she almost missed Mettius’s silence.

“Why aren’t you asking me about Hersilia?” she demanded finally—once noticed, the quiet stretched into intolerable.

“Would you answer me if I did?”

“No,” Safinia said. “Is that why you’re sulking?”

Mettius cast her a look laden with exasperated affection. “You know, my father hasn’t given up on making a match out of us.”

“I sure have.”

Mettius laughed. “Every year I think he’s going to just start suggesting Anesia, but he has a soft spot for you. He says no one in the outskirts has any right to be as proud as you are.”

“I’m not too proud.” Safinia’s face reddened. She knew she was lying. Gaius provided for his neighbors as best he could in lean times, but the few terrible seasons after her parents died, she couldn’t look him in the eye knowing he was giving away food for nothing. He didn’t have so much back then that keeping three extra girls fed was trivial. That ate at Safinia. It felt different from when he helped raise her—that had been her parents’ debt. But they were gone, and now Safinia would owe him forever. “You have to stop teasing him about marriage or he’ll start to think it could happen.”

“Couldn’t it? It’s not as if we haven’t had a few nice times together.”