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If anyone had told her this would be the last night she would spend listening to Aemetha’s stories, she’d have shrugged and feigned indifference. No one, not even she, would know what she was feeling inside.

“Godmother?” she’d called out that morning, sunlight over her shoulder, bracing the creaky outer door with her back so it wouldn’t slam. Her arms were busy with a box that needed to be held level so as not to damage its contents. “I’m back!”

“Rag manners!” someone chided from three rooms away, barely audible. “In the salon, child. The civilized don’t shout.”

“Whatever you say,” Zetha muttered, finding the old woman sorting hand-me-down clothes for her foundlings as usual. There were several of the littlest ones gathered around her, keeping quiet and waiting their turn in Aemetha’s presence, far different from their usual fidgeting and squabbling and rolling about in the gutters biting and scratching, fighting over everything.

Zetha waited until they had scattered like leaves before the wind, clutching garments that the average Romulan wouldn’t use for dustrags, before she set her treasure down on a rickety side table and let Aemetha open it.

Barter, Zetha thought, is so much more creative than stealing. Stealing is easier, but both, in this time and place, are equally dangerous. I’ll be caught one of these days, and probably disappear. But the satisfaction of seeing old Aemetha’s eyes widen with surprise is worth the risk.

“Kalia jellies! Goodness, child!” Aemetha cried, having threaded her way down the narrow alley between the heaps of castoff garments higher than her head in the dank-walled room. The effort made her wheeze; she pressed one hand against her side where it ached. “I’m not even going to ask where you acquired these! Or how,” she clucked, touching one of the shimmering purplish sweets gently with gnarled but no less sensitive fingers.

“Perhaps better not,” Zetha suggested wryly. The last thing she wanted to do was to get Tahir in trouble. She liked Tahir, and was certain he liked her, and that could have possibilities down the road. Like her, he had no family, which meant he was free to mate where he chose. But what future could be made by two who had no past? She would ask Aemetha’s advice about that later.

Aemetha had counted the jellies and saw that there were two more than the usual allotment per box. She hesitated only a moment before popping one into her mouth. She closed her eyes, savoring every atom of flavor, letting it melt on her tongue and trickle leisurely down her throat, an expression nearly orgasmic on her mapped and storied face.

“Oh, child!” she sighed at last, swallowing the last remnants. “There have been times when I’d have killed for less!”

Zetha helped herself to the other extra one, gulping the treat down with less fervor. Food was food, sustenance to keep one going until the next meal.

“There’s nothing mortal I would kill for,” she remarked, licking her fingers, knowing that both her bad manners and her words would earn one of Aemetha’s cutting looks. They did. She shrugged. “I’ve never been that hungry.”

“Then you’ve never been hungry enough” was Aemetha’s opinion. Her fingers reached for a second jelly, then stopped. She sighed. “Mustn’t. We can give these to Blevas in part payment for mending the roof. Though where we’re to get the tiles…”

“Way ahead of you,” Zetha said, more than a little smugly. “The jellies go to Rexia in exchange for a bolt of good quilted brocade.”

“Stolen, no doubt, from the uhlans’ stores,” Aemetha offered.

Zetha shrugged. “Where she got it is Rexia’s business, as is how.” Rexia, they both knew, had a weakness for officers, though she could be friendly to a uhlan if need be.

“And what are we to do with the brocade thus acquired?” Aemetha wondered, though she had a fair idea.

“I’ve promised that to Metrios in exchange for a partial shipment of roof tiles. His wife wants it for winter jackets for the children. She’ll dye it with blue-bark and turn it inside out so no one will know