I’ve never contemplated thieving, but I don’t see how I’ll come up with ten silvers a month. I suppose I could pick up a second job.
“How much do soldiers make?” I muse aloud.
“Women cannot become soldiers.”
“Right. Because we’re so governed by our whims.”
Cato side-eyes my waterlogged dress.
Fine.“I admit I acted a tad impulsively tonight, but at least, I acted. Can you imagine me using that impetuosity and courage in battle?”
Cato fights off a smile. “I’d pity the opposing army.”
I grin.
“Andyour fellow battalion.”
My lips flex higher but then collapse, because my blue house is within sight, and it isn’t dark as it should be this late in the evening.
Eighteen
As the gondolier berths the vessel, Nonna, who still wears her day dress beneath her shawl, fills our living room window.
Gods, she was waiting up for me.
Her lips pinch and roll when she spots me, and then her throat follows suit at the sight of the white-haired Fae helping me out of the boat. She shuts the window and turns away, ashamed, disappointed.
She hid your ribbon and dress, I tell myself.
I may have brought her shame, but she brought it on me first.
I pull my shoulders back as I circle my house to reach the front door. Footsteps echo behind me. I stop and stare at Cato. “Are you shadowing because you don’t trust me to pass my threshold or are you worried Nonna will strangle me with her vines?”
“Neither.”
“Then—”
“Let’s go inside to have this conversation.”
I sigh. “Which you intend to be part of . . .”
He nods and we trudge on silently.
I’m surprised to find the front door gaping, and my grandmother standing there, waiting.
Her arms are still crossed, her lips still pursed, but there’s a sheen to her eyes that makes my anger deflate. Nonna never cries, so those can’t be tears, and yet . . . And yet her lashes are clumped together and her skin is as snowy as Cato’s hair.
“I’ll make tea.” She moves into the kitchen, her back to us. Her spine, always straight as the mast on a boat, is hunched, the line of her shoulders, bent. With her back to us, she asks, “Please tell me you stumbled into a sewage trough.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Do I smellthatawful?”
Although she’s placed the kettle on the stovetop and coaxed the flickering flame into a shallow fire, she keeps her back to us. “How much trouble is my granddaughter in, Cato?”
His sigh is substantial enough to make her turn around. “There was an incident, which hopefully will be resolved with coin.”
“Hopefully?” Her voice is uncharacteristically toneless.
“Fallon jumped into the canal because a group of Fae assaulted a serpent.”
