Jo Walton

It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books

Girolamo turns the stone in his hand and looks down on its green smoothness. Hope hurts.

It is a long friendless way to Hungary.

She is wearing a dagger in a jewelled sheath. She has about her an air of danger. Then she wipes a crumb from her son’s cheek, and seems like any mother.

They are hung over the fire, and he falls, not forward on his face like good people, but on his back, like the damned.

This is Hell. All possible answers are wrong.

“Do you have the writings of Quintus Curtius?” he responds, and she writes back “I do. But you are the first person to offer them to me instead of telling me Alexander is no fit subject for a woman.” He has San Marco’s copy of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander copied for her.

And more pride, always pride.”

He shrugs, still blushing fiercely. “That doesn’t matter. I’ve virginity enough for both of us.”

And maybe we could have a dog,” he says.

She laughs. He likes her laugh. “A dog?”