Page 57 of Trial of Bronze and Blood
The next morning, Dru finds Cato and the bard eating breakfast together, Marcus noticeably absent. The fog blocks out the sun, gray gloom soaking the air.
“Drusilla,” Cato welcomes her. “Glad to see you’re finally up.”
She rubs at her eyes. “Did I sleep too long?”
“No, but I thought you’d be more like Marcus. He gets up before dawn every morning to go on a run. I assumed that’s what your sort does.”
Dru tamps her smile. “That’s whatMarcusdoes. He’s always spent his mornings that way.”
“Sounds like a shit way to live,” the bard notes, mouth full of bread.
She sits down closest to Cato, snatching a slice of the bread for herself. “Just because it’s not how you live doesn’t mean it’s shit.”
The bard sets his fork down hard on his plate. “Why do you hate me?”
She sighs. “I don’t hate you; I do not know you.”
“And yet you’ve chosen to judge me from the outset.”
Frustration picks at her nerves. “And why not? What reason do I have to like you? What have you done to prove yourself trustworthy? Have you done me some great service I don’t know about? As far as Ican tell, all you’ve done is use the debt owed you as a way to insert yourself into our good graces and the king’s company.”
The two men remain silent.
Cato speaks first. “I know it’s in your nature to distrust, Drusilla. But I hope you’ll take into consideration that Jove is one of the few people close to me who treats me as a man rather than a king. And that endears him to me.” He taps his fingers on the table. “I’m not saying you have to trust him, but I’m asking you to trust me.”
“I don’t know you well enough to trust you either, Cato,” she confesses. “But I’ll do my best not to make my suspicions of the bard obvious.”
The bard holds out his hands. “Is it my hair, my clothes, my profession?”
“It’s”—she gestures at him—“all of it.”
“You’re jealous,” he says, smirking.
She chokes down a laugh. “I absolutely am not.”
He ignores her. “We all struggle in the Imperium. The difference is, I’m doing something I love. And you can’t stand that.”
She tears off a hunk of bread and chews on it, considering his words. A part of her knows he’s right, that she’s jealous of the life he leads. She’ll never admit that to him, though. He has no right to expect her to see it from his perspective if he doesn’t try to understand hers.
Maybe I can convince Cato though.
“Where are you from, in the Imperium, I mean?”
The bard doesn’t hesitate. “The capital. My family lived in squalor for most of my life, barely getting by. I tried to work like my siblings, but I wasn’t cut out for manual labor. I found an old, abandoned lute on the street one day, fixed it up, and taught myself how to play. So I could bring in some money for my family.”
She takes a moment before responding, unsure of how much of herself to show them. The idea of divulging her secret to prove a point is both terrifying and relieving. Her mother always told herthat keeping her singing voice to herself would ensure her safety in the Imperium, but she never told her why.
In the end, the fear wins out.
“I too had a talent like that when I lived with my mother in Obliviscatur before our village came under Imperium rule. But when the Phaedran army killed her and set fire to our home, I never used it again. Because I saw—as a woman and a conquered—that I had little choice in my profession. Because if I’d chosen to use my talent to scrape by, I would’ve been sold into slavery by now, simply by the fact of who I am.”
Their silence deafens in the quiet morning, pity dragging down the lines of their faces. She hates pity, especially when directed at her, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she insists. “I found something I’m good at and can live with, and sometimes they pay me.”
“Not enough,” Cato says.
“Enough to get by. To enjoy mulsum wine now and again. This may surprise you, but I don’t need much more than that.”
