Household Gods

He smelled worse than the fish would have if he’d left them in the sun for three days. Nicole’s nose had tuned out most of the background stink of Carnuntum, but the fuller and dyer might have had a chamberpot spilled over his head. As she dipped the trout in an egg-and-flour batter she’d made up not long before, Nicole approached that by – she hoped – easy stages: “Do you have to have those jars out in front of your shop for – for men to – to piss in?”

“You’ve teased me about that often enough,” he said with a chuckle. She had, had she? Or Umma had. Nicole wasn’t teasing. Not in the least. He went on, “They’re not wagging their prongs at you, dear, even if it looks that way.” He reached across the counter and chucked her under the chin.

No one, not here, not anywhere, had ever done that to her. Even as a child, she hadn’t been the kind of little girl who invited such an insult. She certainly didn’t either invite or accept it as an adult. She slapped his hand down. To her utter fury, he only laughed and said, “Ai, pretty lady! I’ve had mates in the legion who weren’t as fierce as you.”

Nicole sucked in a breath, nearly choking on it. Her voice when it came was almost too tight to be audible. “Don’t you – ever – do that to me again. Or you won’t eat these fish, you’ll wear them.”

Somewhat to her surprise, he seemed to realize that she meant it. “All right,” he said willingly enough, if with a hint of puzzlement. “You never said you didn’t like it before – but what’s a woman if she can’t change her mind, eh?” He shrugged, grinned rather ruefully at himself, and went on more seriously, “Right. So. Pisspots. Don’t like them either, do you? Look at it this way. They’re neater than pissing against the wall – and I’d be out of work without them. There’s nothing like stale piss to get the grease out of wool so it’ll hold the dye. If rosewater would do the trick, I’d use it. But alas, pretty lady, it doesn’t.”

Nicole finished frying the trout in silence. She hadn’t thought whether Calidius Severus might actually need the urine he collected. She hadn’t wanted to think about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, she’d been too busy being grossed out.

She was supposed to be glad that this was a more natural, more organic world than the one she’d left: no plastics, no polyester, no coal-tar dyes. Urine was natural, all right; anyone who’d ever changed a baby knew that. But Carnuntum was rubbing her nose in the fact that natural and pleasant weren’t necessarily synonyms, no matter what the commercials for Quaker 100% Natural said.

As Calidius began to eat his fish, he set a dupondim on the counter. Nicole started to give him back an as. He waved for her not to bother. “Call it a peace offering,” he said.

“All right,” she said after a pause. “A peace offering. Thank you.”

“These trout are good,” he said after he’d taken a bite or two. “I don’t think you ever did them quite like this before. Tasty.” He ate another mouthful. He used his fingers. They were a peculiar color, like nothing human: mottled blue and green and muddy brown, as if in dyeing cloth he had dyed his skin with it.

As for his table manners, nobody here had any better. Nicole had found spoons and a few knives in a pot by a stack of plates, but no forks. She wondered if Calidius had washed his hands before coming over with the fish. Then she wished she hadn’t. He said, “I don’t want you angry at me, you know.”

“I’m not angry,” she answered, more or less sincerely.

“Good.” He studied her. “Are you not-angry enough for me to come over tonight?” The meaning of that was unmistakable – and, as plainly, he expected her to say yes. Her face froze.

He saw. His own face stiffened in response. He stood up abruptly, grimaced, and shoved the plate at her. There was no meat left, only bones, neatly picked and pushed into a pile. Without a word, he stamped out of the restaurant.

Julia was gaping. So were all three of the remaining customers. Nicole sighed. So Umma and Calidius had been an item, had they? Why on earth the woman whose body Nicole was wearing would want a man who smelled like an outhouse was beyond her.

Whatever the reason for it, Julia obviously thought Umma and Titus Calidius Severus had had a good thing going. Well, to hell with what Julia thought. Nicole had come back here for herself, not to play bedwarmer to the piss merchant across the street.

She would have told Julia so, in no uncertain terms, but two more men and a woman came into the place just then, and set her to running about again. She stayed busy till sundown, which came late this time of year.