Thessalonica

“I coughed. They jumped apart,” George answered. “They were embarrassed. But they’ll do it again whenever they find the chance. You don’t take one kiss like that without wanting another. If they find the chance, they’ll do more than kiss.”

He expected Irene to be affronted at the way he’d impugned Sophia’s care about guarding her virtue. Instead his wife sighed and laughed a laugh half wry, half genuinely amused. “All right, we’d better talk with Leo,” she said.

“You pick the oddest times to be sensible,” George remarked. Irene, luckily for him, was already intent on the dickering that lay ahead, and so paid less attention to him than she might have done.

Rain pattered down outside. Some of it turned to ice when it struck the ground. George didn’t mind. He was under a roof that didn’t leak too badly, a couple of braziers spread heat, and woodcutters could go out into the forest again, even if they did go with armed guards to make sure no lurking Slavs picked them off. Some of the woodcutters wanted armed guards against the centaurs and satyrs. George knew that was foolish for any number of reasons, but said nothing. He was not a man to whom people listened on such matters.

“The one thing we have to do,” Irene said, her mind running ahead on its own road, “is make certain Sophia doesn’t do anything out of the way”--a euphemism George hadn’t heard before, but clear enough-- “till the dickering is done. When I tell her it would hurt the bargain we’re striking, she’ll understand that.” She looked sidelong at her husband. “My mother told me the same thing about you.”

“Did she?” George said. “You never mentioned that before.”

“A time for everything, and everything in its season,” Irene answered: not quite the language of the Holy Scriptures, but close. She grew brisk again. “Now--how do we approach Leo without making it too obvious we’re approaching him?”

“Why don’t you go buy a pot from him?” George said. “If you like, you can break one over my head, so the story will get round that we need a new one.”

“I usually get them from old grouchy Antonius, but that will do, I think.” Irene gave him a kiss for coming up with a good idea. Musingly, she went on, “I don’t think I have to break one on you. Maybe I don’t even want people to think I did that. I’m not Claudia, after all.”

George kissed her this time. “And a good thing, too, says I.”

Irene came back with a fine new pot--George was ready to admit (though he never would have done so to Leo’s face) it was better than any they already had. She also came back with a triumphant smile lighting her features. “I didn’t even have to start the dickering,” she told her husband. “Leo did that, as soon as I walked through the door. Constantine must be giving him some heat.”

“That’s very good,” George said equably. “Do we have a bargain? Do we have a bride-price set? Do we have a day for the wedding?”

“Of course not,” Irene said. “There’s no hurry to these things--well, not too much of a hurry, anyhow, provided Sophia and Constantine don’t give us a reason for one. But we have a bargain that there will be a bargain, if you know what I mean.”

“All right. Nice to have that settled, or on the way to being settled.” George paused, then said, “Come to think of it, we may be doing some more bargaining one of these days before too long.” He told how, coming back into Thessalonica, he’d found not only Sophia kissing Constantine but also Theodore kissing Lucretia.

“Lucretia?” Irene said in some dismay. “She’s so heavy.” Her eyes glinted dangerously. “And why didn’t you see fit to mention this until now? I might have been caught unawares, you know.”

“It slipped my mind,” George answered with a shrug. “We have had rather a lot of things going on lately, you know. And I don’t have any idea how much she means to Theodore--if she means anything. He hasn’t talked about her, you’ll notice. Maybe that just means he’s shy about it, I admit. But maybe it means--”

Irene finished that for him: “Maybe it means the whole town was going crazy because the Slavs and Avars were leaving, and he decided to see what he could get. Yes. That sounds like a man.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” George said, not about to let his half of the human race be slandered so. “Who came out of this shop and kissed me a lot harder than either of our children was kissing right then?”

“Hmm,” Irene said, and George thought he’d won the exchange. But then she said “Ha!” and pointed at him, and he knew he hadn’t. She said, “I kissed you, my husband, not the first man I saw on the street.” She drew herself up in triumph.

“Well, so you did,” George admitted But he had a finger to wag at her, too: “Theodore’s not married, so that isn’t fair.”

“Hmm,” Irene said again. This time, she didn’t go, “Ha!” She seemed content to leave it a draw. So was George. They both started laughing at about the same time, most likely because they both realized leaving such things as draws was the best way to get through life together and stay friends doing it.