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walked.
    ‘You can say no,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t be heartbroken. Well, I will. But I don’t want you to say yes just to be nice.’
    Velody did her best not to laugh at how earnest he was. ‘I want to say yes,’ she said. ‘Not to be nice; I really do. But I can’t leave Aufleur. Not to get married. My life’s just starting. I’ve worked so hard for it all. I want to live with Delphine and Rhian and make dresses.’ She sighed, not wanting to make eye contact.
    ‘So,’ Cyniver said. ‘You’re choosing a city over me.’
    Velody was a little startled at the dry note in his voice. ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘It had better be the city, then.’
    She blinked. He didn’t seem overly upset. ‘What do you mean?’
    Cyniver took both her hands in his. Her palms were still sticky from the train, but his skin felt cool. ‘I mean, there are bookbinders in Aufleur. I can get a good recommendation—I’m sure I could find work. Better than that…I don’t want to bind books my whole life. I want to draw buildings. Design new buildings. They don’t have to be made of sandstone. Grey bricks will do just as well.’
    She had forgotten how sweet he was. How had she forgotten that?
    ‘You’re coming with me?’ Velody whispered.
    ‘Of course. And maybe…if you don’t want to get married yet…then in a year or two…’
    She flung her arms around him, face buried in his neck. ‘Maybe,’ she said in his ear. ‘In a year or two. Yes.’
    Dame Threedy from next door was walking past with a basket of fish and pretended not to see them, though she walked faster until she was around the corner and away. Mam would have heard about this before Velody got herself home.
    ‘You’d better give me the ring,’ she sighed. ‘It will distract them nicely.’

6
Ides of Cerialis
    T hings were coming together surprisingly well. Delphine, it turned out, had an aunt who thoroughly disapproved of a demoiselle being disowned for daring to work for a living. Aunt Marcialle declared that her own first marriage had been ‘an appalling exercise’ and that as Delphine was the first Ingiers woman in three generations to ‘show an ounce of gumption’ she was going to support her bid for freedom. She had given Delphine a house.
    It was a small house on Via Silviana, with two rooms below—the shop-workroom in front and kitchen at the back—and three above, with a wash-pump in the tiny yard behind. It was sandwiched into a street full of similar little shops and residences only two blocks from the Piazza Nautilia (with the best public baths in the city) and two streets away from the bustling merchant district of Giacosa. All this, and no rent to pay. It could be a shop one day, if they earned enough from the market to set it up.
    Too good to be true , Velody found herself thinking one nox as she put the finishing touches on a brown and gold harvest tunic by lantern light. She squashed the thought almost as soon as she had it, but the damage was done. If the saints tumbled this into our laps, what do they expect in return?
    Cyniver was coming to Aufleur soon. Whenever Velody thought of him, her stomach melted just a little. He had already made inquiries about work with the best bookbinders in the city, and had insisted their betrothal could be as long as she liked. Or he could move into the house straightaway if she would marry him now…
    Velody had loved other boys here and there, nothing as serious as this. But she had never been able to imagine herself married. She could imagine being married to Cyniver.
    On the few occasions they had managed to spend the nox together, she did not dream.
    Velody could never remember her dreams, except for brief impressions—herself, walking in a noxgown. Sometimes she was underground, in an odd ruined city. Sometimes she was running. Sometimes she was up high, staring at the sky, at the stars, at other colours…
    There were some mornings she almost caught a real memory of her dream—a snatch