Poppy was curled up on her favorite window seat in her grandfather’s office when there was a knock on the door. She looked up as Silvio came in, followed by a man who was shorter than her mother and overly squishy, like the stuffed dragon she liked to sleep with after Dotty restuffed him wrong.
“Tiberius Gallus here to see you, sir.”
Grandfather didn’t get up, but he looked up from his stack of papers and set down his quill. “Gallus, always a pleasure to have you stop in.”
“Patrician Katullin, very good of you. Very good of you to see me.” He turned to Silvio. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Silvio nodded and closed the door behind him. Gallus turned and saw her sitting in the window, and his face went soft and stupid. “Ah—hello, little one.”
Poppy was nine, which was not little. She had been allowed at her mother’s table for two whole years, where people called her Lady Anne and she knew the difference between the salad and dinner forks. She didn’t correct him, because Grandfather hadn’t introduced her and she wasn’t allowed to be smart at adults, so she said “hello” instead and looked back down at her book with her ears going hot.
The wolf had got there first, and was already in the bed.
“Sit down, Gallus. There’s wine.”
“You’re very kind.”
Poppy read the line again, trying to ignore the sounds of a man sitting: the chair, the small grunt, the creak that only came once, the cup set down on the arm and then picked back up, like he didn’t want to leave it anywhere.
“The winter glassware,” her grandfather said.
“Yes. Yes, and I want to say first that it’s not—”
“Nine crates were delivered.”
“Nine of eleven, and the other two, the two others are—” A sound like a man wiping his mouth with his hand. “There’s been weather. On the eastern road. You’ll have heard.”
“I hear all about the eastern road.”
“Of course. Of course you do.”
“Which two?”
“Spring shipment,” Gallus said. “I’d have the difference to you by the spring shipment. Two crates, that’s nothing, that’s a rounding, and I’ve never—in eleven years I’ve never been short with you, not once, not by a copper, you can look.”
“I have looked.”
The wolf had got there first, and was already in the bed.
The fire moved. Poppy turned her foot inside her stocking, slowly, because it had gone to sleep and she did not want Gallus to notice her again.
“Who’s handling your manifests now?” her grandfather asked.
“My cousin’s boy. He’s very careful.”
“And your west road?”
“The west road we’ve—some of it goes out through the Valerius shipping yard now. Only some. The stone teams have the yards for it and we don’t, and it was simpler, and it was only ever the overflow—”
Valerius.
Poppy knew that name; it belonged to the two older boys at the garden parties who took two of every sweet off the trays. Once, at a party at Mary’s house, the older one had looked at what she was reading and said that stories like that were for babies. He tried to snatch it away, but went into the pool about a second later when Lynn tackled him, shoulder right into his gut.
The adults had pulled Lynn off him, and their father had yelled at her in front of everybody, and Dotty had taken her home before the cake came out. Nobody was allowed to talk about it afterward, but Poppy had seen their father putting his hand over his mouth for the rest of the party and she was pretty sure it was because he was laughing.
Gallus had stopped in the middle of a word. When he started again his voice had gone up, the way Dotty said everyone’s did when they were lying.
“—only the overflow. It isn’t a standing arrangement.”
“Mm.”
“It isn’t. Patrician, I want to be plain with you, it isn’t a—”
“How long?”
“Since summer.”
“Since summer,” her grandfather said, in his nice voice. “The two crates are in their yard.”
“…They’re in their yard.”
“Whose name is on them?”
“Nobody’s. There’s no paper on them, they’re only sitting, they’re not for sale, they’re only—”
“They are sitting in another man’s yard with nothing written on them.”
“…Yes.”
Poppy heard Grandfather pick up his quill, and the small wet sound of it going into the ink.
“Send the boy to me. He can bring what he has, I’ll speak with Marlowe, and we’ll see it put right.” The quill went on. “You should have him do all of it. He’s careful, you said.”
“He is. He is very careful.”
“Spring, then.”
The chair legs scraped and Poppy kept her eyes on the page.
“You’ve been more than generous,” Gallus said. He had said that a lot of times already. “More than generous, truly. I’ll have the difference to you by the spring shipment, you have my word on it.”
“Spring, then.” Her grandfather didn’t get up.
The wolf had got there first, and was already in the bed.
Gallus went out. The door closed, and the office was quiet except for the fire and the sound of papers shuffling. Poppy turned a page.
“You haven’t done that since he sat down.”
She looked up. Her grandfather had turned in his chair to face the window seat, one arm along the back of it, the quill still in his hand.
“Done what?”
“Turned a page.” He tipped the quill toward the book. “You’ve been on that one for half an hour. Either it’s a very difficult page, or you were eavesdropping.”
Her stomach felt the way it did when Dotty caught her with the sweets tin. She couldn’t think of a lie fast enough and had never been very good at them anyway. “I was listening.”
“Hm.” He set the quill down. “What did you hear?”
She should have said nothing, but Grandfather had put the quill down and was giving her his full attention, and she didn’t want to leave anything out.
“He didn’t drink his wine. You poured it and he said thank you and he held it the whole time and he put it down when he left and it was still all the way full. And he sat like this—” she scooted forward until she was perched on the very edge of the window seat “—the whole time, like he was going to have to get up. And his shoes were new but his cuffs were dirty, both of them, not just the one you’d get from writing. And when he said about the Valerius shipping yards his feet moved on the floor, both of them, and he did it twice. And he said of course eleven times, but I didn’t start counting at the first one so it might really be more than eleven. And at the end when he said thank you the last time it wasn’t the same voice as the other times. And Grandfather, he called me little. I’m not little, I’m nine.”
She stopped, out of breath, and waited.
“Say the part about the shipping yards again.”
Poppy blinked. The man had called her little, and this is what Grandfather wanted to talk about?
“He said that they were using the Valerius shipping yards for overflow.”
“Those were his words? Overflow?”
“Overflow. And that it wasn’t a standing arrangement.” She thought about it. “Grandfather, is that the family of the boy who said my books were for babies and Lynn pushed him in—” she stopped.
“Go on.”
“…pushed him in the pool.”
“She ruined the boy’s tunic and I had to pay for it, yes,” Grandfather said, nodding. “I didn’t mind. Why did you think of that now?”
Poppy hadn’t thought of it, really. It had just come to her. “Because it’s the same name.”
“It is.”
He stood up. Poppy went very still, hunting through everything she had said for the wrong part. Then he crossed the room and picked her up under one arm the way Dotty carried the laundry, and Poppy let out a shriek that was also a laugh. He set her down in his own chair and put her book on the desk beside her, open to her spot. Her legs didn’t reach the floor and she swung them, hands next to her knees.
“Tiberius Gallus is a fool,” he said, leaning back against the edge of the desk.
Poppy stopped swinging her legs and stared. Mother said you weren’t supposed to call people that. But Mother had to do what Grandfather said, so maybe the rule was only for everyone else.
“…Is it because he broke the glasses?”
Her grandfather stopped, and for a moment he looked at her the way he had been looking at Gallus. Then he laughed, with his hand over his face and his shoulders going, and Poppy did not know what at.
“No,” he said, when he could. “No. He did not break the glasses. He came into my house and looked at my granddaughter and saw a little girl.” He opened a drawer and took out a small, flat packet wrapped in wax paper. “And do you know what he told me, in front of her?”
Poppy shook her head.
“Everything,” said her grandfather. He unwrapped a corner of the packet, broke off a piece with his thumb, and handed it to her.
The chocolate was dark and very bitter, like the tea Grandmother put poison in to see if you were paying attention. Poppy ate all of it, though she preferred the sweeter kind. She looked up when she was done.
“Grandfather?” she asked. “What’s overflow?”
He looked at her for a moment. Then he took the top paper off the stack, turned it around so that it faced her, and set a finger on a line near the bottom.
“Sit up,” he said. “You won’t see it slouching.”