Pile of Bones by Bailey Cunningham Page B

an artifex. She wouldn’t be the first builder to supplement her income by dealing in gems.”
    “It didn’t have any gems,” Roldan said. “It was a plain silver fibula, with the likeness of a bee on a bunch of grapes. Does the basilissa even like bees?”
    “I’m not exactly her confidant.”
    “But you’ve been to her parties. You spoke of them often.”
    She managed to look slightly awkward. “I’ve been in the same room as her, but she’s never graced me with more than a few words. Her group is a tight engine, virtually impenetrable. She only mingles with old citizens, and I haven’t lived here for so long. She’d probably still consider me a new householder.”
    Roldan thought it must be strange to live in Anfractus day and night. Like them, Domina Pendelia had once lived beyond the city. She’d spent half of her time in another world. Did she have a family? A career? When someone became a citizen, they vanished from that other place, whose particulars he could barely focus on. It was strange to think that people might be searching for the domina, might be dreaming of her, praying for her return. Or maybe she’d left nothing behind at all. Disappearing would be easy, if that were the case. But to be a citizen, you needed to endure the night, full of venom, arrows, and crooked lares. How had she done it?
    The domina turned to Morgan. “You still haven’t explained to me how you managed to fall in with these two. If the Gens of Sagittarii knew that you were making money on the side, they’d punish you. Perhaps they’d even expel you.”
    “You know a lot about the gens for someone who isn’t amember.” Morgan lowered her gaze slightly. “With all due respect, Domina.”
    “Perhaps I once was a member—of that gens, or another.” She smiled. “That would be a story for another time, though. Stop dancing around my question. What is your part in this, sagittarius? Why are you helping these nemones, clever as they are?”
    Babieca sat up. “We’re not nemones. We may not belong to a gens, but that doesn’t make us nobodies.”
    “
Nemo
means ‘without a gens.’ That makes you both nemones by definition. It’s no grave insult. Anfractus runs on nemo labor. It’s a temporary condition—for some, at any rate.”
    “We don’t think of ourselves as nemones.”
    “Because you have a sagittarius with you? Because you’re no longer shoveling coal or chasing rats out of my undercroft?” A flicker of the old domina had returned—perhaps this was the true version after all. “Meeting her was a lucky turn of the wheel, but that’s all.” She looked at Morgan again. “Now, my dear—you’ve eaten my boar, drunk my wine, and I’ve asked nothing in return. However, it is customary for strangers to repay their host with a story. Do you really want to violate the laws of hospitality?”
    Morgan started to protest—then thought better of it and nodded. “Of course not, Domina. You’ve been very kind.”
    “She misplaced her quiver,” Babieca supplied.
    Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t quite the way of it.”
    “She was in her cups—”
    “The domina asked for
my
story, not your inebriated version of it.”
    Babieca raised his hands. “Of course. I’m an unreliable narrator.”
    “I was with a companion,” she continued. “We’d both spent our day on the battlements, and we wanted to share a few drinks. It was a festival day, though, and all of the respectable cauponae were full. So we tried the Seven Sages. While we were drinking, we set our quivers under the bench.I had to use the necessary. When I returned, both quivers were gone, along with my companion.”
    Domina Pendelia looked confused. “Why would he take yours?”
    “He was going to bet it in a game of Hazard,” Babieca said. “Roldan and I were sitting at a nearby bench, and I saw him take it downstairs. He had a grin like a pig in shit. We followed him, and Roldan created a distraction—what did you do,