“And don’t tell your stepmother.” Lang tipped his chin down to me, leaning on his elbows on the counter. The end of his upturned nose and the curving bow of his upper lip were right at my eye level. “Our secret.”

“Right,” I said slowly. “Our secret.”

Skop broke the silence, nodding at me conspiratorially as he served himself a third portion of carrots. “Homer, it’s your turn,” he called, brushing glossy black hair out of his eyes.

Homer cleared his throat, darting a look at me. “You don’t want to hear my stories.”

“Yes, we do,” Skop insisted. “You haven’t told one in a long while.”

Homer was still eyeing me. I nodded silently, once, twice, from my place over the sink. Lang hopped up on the counter, perching just a little away. He produced a pad and a charcoal pencil from his jacket pocket and began to sketch the lanterns swaying overhead.

“I’m too tired for this,” Homer growled, scratching at his gray beard. But he told us a story all the same.

The others had heard bits of Homer’s account before—a tale of years spent at war on the southern edge of the Imperiya, near Hellás, and years afterward lost at sea with a captain named Odysseus, fighting to get home to his faithful wife.

“Penelope’s suitors seemed to descend as soon as her husband left,” Homer said. “They were wolves at her door, snapping for scraps, begging where she had little to spare. Though she had always been a judicious steward, they seemed determined to eat her out of house and home.

“She had to figure out how to put them off.” Homer eyed me, gray gaze intent. “First, she told them she had to weave a shroud for her aging father-in-law. Every day, she sat in front of her loom, hands busy at work. And every night, she crept back and undid the day’s labor. She fooled them this way for three years.”

“Her suitors must have been morons,” I mumbled, scrubbing at a plate.

“Most of us are,” Skop said agreeably, coming to the counter to pass me his dishes. He grinned at me, and I grinned after his back as he walked away.

“But even when her unwanted guests found her out, Penelope simply devised a test for them,” Homer said. “She found another way to put them off, by insisting she would only marry her husband’s equal—someone who could use the bow he hunted and fought with.”

“Sharp girl.” Lang smiled and crossed his arms.

“Most of us are,” I said lightly under my breath. I kept my eyes on my work, but I could feel his low laugh stir the air just above my right shoulder.