"No! I never said that!"The merchant's face went pale as the judge's expression hardened.
A roar of outrage erupted from behind him:
"How dare you insult us Lucanians? Are you tired of living?!"
"Izam is a hero of our Alliance, and you dare speak that way about his wife?! Judge, you must punish this lecher!"
The merchant cursed his own bad luck. He'd only been in the city for a few days, and hadn't yet learned its customs. Back in other city-states, most citizens' wives stayed at home. If a foreign woman came to the marketplace alone, she was almost certainly a slave—someone you could tease, even touch, without consequence.
But this was Dionia, and things were different here. Many citizens had Lucanian wives, and many Greek women had married Lucanian probationary citizens. These outsiders tended to be bolder, freer in public, and their ways had begun to change even the traditionally conservative Greek citizens.
