“Did he bury her?” Amara knows it’s a cruel question to ask, but she cannot stop herself. The need to know burns through, like embers wrapped in parchment.

“I don’t know,” Nicandrus says, his face contorted with grief. “I begged him to tell me. I even . . .” He hesitates, swallowing. “I threatened him. So Zoskales sold me.”

“You threatened Felix?”

“I loved her. She was everything to me.”

Nicandrus always made an unlikely romantic hero, with his scrawny frame and hopeless, largely silent devotion. Amara used to think her friend had deserved better, but now realizes how profoundly she underestimated him. “Dido loved you too,” she says, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I don’t know if she ever told you, because she didn’t want to suffer more by loving someone she could not have. But I promise you, you were the only man she ever cared for, the only one she considered to be truly kind. You were a light in her life.”

Nicandrus cries silently while she speaks. Then he takes his hand back, pressing both palms to his eyes with a ferocity that leaves smears of dirt on his face. When he has wiped away all trace of tears, he stands up. “I have to go.”

Amara watches his thin figure slip between the tables, until he has stepped behind the counter, disappearing into the adjoining shop. The shapes of the other drinkers and diners waver and blur as she stares, unable to call him back.

Fabia taps her spoon against Amara’s bowl. “You going to eat that, or can I have it?”

“Don’t you have any fucking feelings?” Amara snaps.

“Feeling sorry for Nicandrus and Dido won’t keep the stew warm,” Fabia retorts. “And I haven’t eaten in two days.”

Britannica has started to eat too, leaving Amara the only one staring at her untouched food. She pushes the bowl toward Fabia. “Have it.”

The hubbub of the tavern is loud around them. She watches the old woman polish off the second bowl, licking around the edges to pick up every last smudge of sauce. Amara can hear two men haggling over the sale of a mule at the table behind, their tone increasingly heated. She looks away from Fabia to the wall. There’s a small, peeling painting of a waitress handing out flagons of wine, a caption running above her head: Everyone wants a kiss. Underneath, somebody else has scratched a reply: Fat chance with this landlady.

“So what do you want to know?” Fabia’s stew is finished.

“Has he said anything about me?” Amara does not use Felix’s name, but there’s no need. They all know who she means.

“Been in a much better mood since your last visit. Beronice caught him whistling the other day. Whistling!” Fabia shakes her head. “Otherwise, the same old bastard.”