Amanda was happier arguing town pride than the official report, too. “Three hundred years is a long time,” she said.
“What have you done since your left-handed poet lived?” Sinistro meant left-handed. “Not much, if you don't understand what this means.”
“Suppose you explain it,” Lucio Claudio said.
“I don't need to explain it. It's as plain as the nose on your face. Let me read it to you, so you can see for yourself.” Read it she did, in classical Latin: “'They having secured the required articles from their suppliers, who, having taken all precautions to produce them with the maximum practicable degree of quality and artistic excellence, conveyed the aforementioned goods to those who would distribute them for retail distribution, they delivered these aforesaid articles of commerce to the famous metropolis for final distribution to and among its most excellent citizens.' There! Isn't that obvious?”
Lucio Claudio fumed. He'd wanted to talk about the official report in neoLatin. But if Amanda stuck to the old language, he had to do the same. If he didn't, he would lose face. He would sooner have been blown to bits by a Lietuvan cannon-ball than admit that a merchant's daughter knew more about classical Latin than he did.
Instead of admitting it, he snatched the official report away from her. He went through it till he found another passage he didn't like. Triumph in his voice, he said, “What about this? It does not explain why you have these remarkable goods and no one else does. That, after all, was the whole point of requiring an official report from you in the first place.”
“So you could steal our trade secrets, you mean,” Amanda said. That made Lucio Claudio look as if he'd bitten into a lemon. Everybody was touchy about trade secrets in Agrippan
Rome. With no patents or copyrights to protect knowledge, people had to be. Not even the government could poke at them too hard, not without risking trouble. Amanda held out her hand. “Let me see it, if you please. How can I answer when you keep taking things away from me?”
“Here,” Lucio Claudio said. “And no quibbles over ablative absolutes this time, if you please. The sentences are very straightforward.”
Even you understand them, you mean? It was on the tip of Amanda's tongue, but she didn't say it. A bureaucrat who was doing his job, going through the motions, was one thing. A bureaucrat with a personal grudge was something else again, and something much more dangerous. She read Jeremy's answer and nodded. “You're right. This is very straightforward. It says we get our goods from the finest suppliers in the Roman Empire. That's the truth. The quality of what we sell proves it.”
“But who are these suppliers?” Lucio Claudio demanded. “Why can't anyone else find them and deal with them?”
“That is our trade secret,“ Amanda said. ”If everyone knew where to get these goods, where would our living be?“ She smiled. ”Would you like some more wine?“
They went round and round for the next hour. Jeremy had done a good job of writing the report so that it sounded impressive but didn't say anything. Finally, Lucio Claudio gave up and went away. Amanda would have liked that better if she hadn't been pretty sure he would come back.
People in Polisso had stopped carrying food out in the open. That was an invitation to get knocked over the head and have it stolen. After almost four weeks, the Lietuvan siege was starting to pinch the city. When shoppers brought grain or olives home from the market square, they put them in leather sacks that could have held anything. They tried not to go alone, too. Having friends along made thieves try someone else.
Jeremy bought wheat and barley in the market square every so often. He wanted people to see him doing it. That way, nobody would start wondering if he and Amanda were hoarding.
He, too, had a plain leather sack for carrying home the grain. He headed back to his house by himself, but he wasn't worried. He was young and big and looked strong. No one had bothered him yet.
He was only a couple of blocks from the house when three punks stepped out of a shadowed doorway. “Oh, it's you,” the biggest one said-they'd met before. “What have you got?”
Before Jeremy could answer, a cannonball smashed through a door about a hundred meters away. One punk flinched, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Jeremy said, “I've got barley.” He felt fairly safe admitting it. Plenty of people were going back and forth. If the three toughs tried robbing him, they'd get jumped on. People here were more likely to do that than they were in Los Angeles in the home timeline. Punks often carried knives here, but so did ordinary men. You didn't run the risk of going up against an assault rifle with your bare hands.
And the leader of this little gang shook his head. “No, that's not what I meant,” he said. No doubt he sounded much more innocent than he was. He could see this wasn't a good spot for a robbery as well as Jeremy could-better, probably.
He gave Jeremy a mocking little half-bow. “What jokes have you got?“
“Oh, jokes.” Jeremy tried not to show how relieved he was. “Let me think.” He'd looked at The Laughter-Lover a long time ago. “Well, there was the cheapskate who named himself as heir in his own will.”
The punks groaned, which was about what that one deserved. “You can do better,” their leader said. You'd better do better, his tone warned. If they started thumping Jeremy for telling lousy jokes, ordinary people might not stop them- might join in, as a matter of fact.
He tried again: “There was a halfwit who bought a house and went around carrying one stone from it so he could show people what it was like.”
They groaned again. They didn't seem quite so disgusted this time, though. “What else have you got?” the biggest one asked.
“There was another halfwit-this one wanted to cross a river,” Jeremy said. “When he rode onto the ferryboat and didn't get down from his horse, somebody asked him why not. He said, 'I can't! I'm in a hurry!'”
“That's not too bad,” the leader said after looking at his two buddies to see what they thought. “But try to have some better ones next time we run into you.” He swaggered on up the street.
Jeremy stood there staring after him till a bad-tempered man in a tunic full of fancy embroidery shouted for him to get out of the way. That tunic shouted, too, and what it said was, I'm important! Don't mess with me, or you'll be sorry! In Los Angeles, that kind of display would have provoked Jeremy to ignore the bad-tempered man. People here paid more attention to status. With a twinge of regret, Jeremy moved.
He got the barley back to the house without any more trouble. Amanda said, “We have a new hole in the roof to fix.” She pointed. Sure enough, another cannonball had hit the kitchen, about two meters to the left of the first hole.
Jeremy said something about what the Lietuvans did for fun that he couldn't possibly have known for sure. Then he asked, “Are you all right? Is the house all right?”
“It scared me out of a year's growth, but it didn't hurt me,” his sister answered. “It seemed worse than the last one, because it didn't go out through the wall. It banged around inside the kitchen till it finally stopped. I was here in the courtyard. It smashed some jars. Some grain got spilled, but it missed the big amphora full of olive oil, thank goodness.”
“That would have been a mess,” Jeremy agreed.
“It sure would,” Amanda said. “But do you know what? I wasn't even thinking about the mess. I was thinking how bad it would be to lose the whole amphora of oil when we're under siege and it would cost an arm and a leg to buy another one.” She looked at him. “I'm starting to think the way the locals do. That scares me worse than the cannonball in the kitchen.”