Tears welled up in her eyes."First thing, Stace," he told her quietly. "Don't swear at me, or even in my presence. It makes you sound cheap. Do you un...erstand?"Dumbly, she nodded her head as the tears began to flow down her cheeks. The humiliation at being talked to like this was even worse than being slapped. What was he doing to her?When he saw her nod, he relaxed his hold, but still kept his arm around her. The cheek he had slapped was starting to turn red, so he leaned forward and kissed. We were just in the way, and after a while it got easier to go to our own place and hang out rather than listen to them gripe.Now you might think that our fortress was the only place we hung out, and that wouldn't be true. On some days I would be over at one of my male friends playing ball or something. Aimee might go to visit one of her girlfriends and do the girl talk thing, or maybe we would both just take our bicycles for a ride to the school playground, or the park, or sometimes we'd go to. I was happy to get fresh fruit and he was happy for the extra coin.It was strange; the young farmers all looked at my sword with some reservation, whereas the older ones seemed to be comfortable dealing with me. I just figured that they knew that I would look funny bringing in a cartload of fruit to the city with my sword in tow. Every single one, though, gave Meri a strange glance, one that I could not interpret. I hoped that it was just that she was a girl acting as my page instead of a boy.. As long as she could convince Corec and Boktar to vote with her, everyone else would likely follow along.She was more concerned with Marco’s meddling. In addition to his attempts to discover the location of the ruins, the contract gave him the authority to block certain types of spending if he disagreed with it. If he did so too often, Ellerie was free to break off the deal without penalty, but if he did it at all, it could hurt their chances of success.Razai had the same rights as Marco, but.