Shabbat was over, but Simon’s family lingered afterward—and they lingered around me. Old women clutched my arm; the firebrand nephews pressed for more details of the Jewish defense; even Simon’s stern patriarchal brother gave my shoulder a squeeze. Simon’s mother had tears in her eyes as she invited me to join the family next week when they left for their villa outside Rome. No more of that polite space separating me from them.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered to Simon when I got a private moment. “Didn’t mean to spoil your Shabbat.”

“No,” he said fiercely. “You spoke well. Over ten years I’ve known you, Vix—I’ve never known any of that.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It was yesterday.”

My brows flew up at the heat in his voice.

“If Rome did that to your family,” my friend demanded passionately, “why in God’s name do you fight for Rome?”

“I’m no good for anything but fighting,” I said, uncomfortable. “For a man like me, it’s either the legions or the arena. And I’ll never be a gladiator again.”

Simon gazed into the dark atrium, and I didn’t think he was seeing the orange trees. “Those poor bastards.” His voice was proud and savage. “They left the world on their own terms, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“What more can any of us want than that?”

I looked around the dark atrium, lit with warm yellow light from the lamps and sweetly scented from the potted orange trees. It seemed to me there was a lot more to want from life than that, but I knew better than to argue with Simon in these moods. I thought of going back to Mog, living in my barracks that smelled like sweaty leather and waiting for the Parthian invasion to happen, and felt tired.

A hand caught my arm in the dark, and I looked down at a pretty face with a scattering of freckles across the nose. Simon’s niece Mirah had a wide mouth, large eyes, and her head in its neat white scarf came to my shoulder.

“Thank you.” She tried to say something else but shook her head. Giving my arm a mute squeeze, she turned and retreated down the lamp-lit hall. I watched her go, and wondered what color her hair was under the white scarf.

PLOTINA

The man was sweating. Plotina liked that. Men should be nervous in the presence of goddesses; it was only fitting. And it made things so much easier on the goddess.

He moistened his lips. “I don’t understand, Lady.”

“I think you do, Gaius Terentius.” Plotina pushed a slate across her desk at the plump bewigged little official. “My secretaries brought the discrepancy to my attention, and I checked the numbers myself. You have been skimming money from the building funds for the Emperor’s public baths.”