“I won’t bother, then.” Thea folded her arms around her own waist. “Any reply? She keeps asking me peevishly why you don’t say anything.”

“She’s got eyes like a ferret. Tell her I said that.”

Thea’s face opened up into laughter. “She’d slap me senseless, but it would be worth it.”

A little silence. Arius got the needle threaded, tugging his torn sleeve across his arm where he could get at it. “Surely the slaves do that for you,” Thea observed.

Arius shrugged again. “I hate asking Gallus for anything.”

“Then you’ll need to learn to mend properly. You’re going about it all wrong, you know.”

Arius found himself laughing. Rustily. “Never learned to sew.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“All right.” For the first time he took her into his little cell, watching her touch the stone wall, the back of a chair, the rough blanket on the bed. “What?”

“It’s not what I expected. Austere.” She turned, letting out another smile. “Needle?”

“Here.”

“Good. Now sit down.”

“Why?”

She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down into the chair. Her voice was playful. “Because I’m the teacher, and the teacher has to loom over the pupil. First of all, that tunic has got to come off. You don’t mend something while you’re wearing it.”

Self-consciously he shrugged out of his tunic. He still wore his training kilt underneath, from that morning’s sparring, but he felt naked. One side of Thea’s mouth flicked up, but her hands were businesslike as she turned the tunic inside out. “You’ll need to trim the stray threads. Do you have a knife?”

“Gallus doesn’t let me have anything sharp.”

“Don’t suppose I blame him. Just tuck the threads in and lap the edges over, then.” Showing him. “Now take the needle, and use a roundabout stitch like this.”

His stitches were crude next to hers. “It’s no good.”

“Did Vercingetorix beat Julius Caesar on his first campaign? Try again. Careful, you’ll break the needle if you hold it so hard. It’s not a sword, Arius.”

His name was sweet in her mouth. She leaned over his shoulder, her work-hardened hand gentle as she readjusted his grip. He felt her breath whispering on the back of his neck, the plaited ends of her hair caressing his bare arm. Her skin was smooth and cool in the stagnant heat. The little cell suddenly seemed much hotter.

The needle broke in his hand.

He jumped up then, knocking her back against the bed. “Get out.”

“What?” Half-sprawled across his rough blankets, she looked puzzled. “Arius—”

“Go away.” He said it brutally. Before the demon could whisper, Hurt her.

Something in her face shuttered. The second woman he’d thrown out of his room. Only this one left without a word, quietly and on her own two feet.

He banged the door behind her. Sank his back against the latch, head in his hands, and listened to her quiet footsteps retreating down the hall. Now she would have gone through the door, now the gates would have shut behind her, now she would be walking back toward the Pollio house and her blue bowl . . .