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with only minor hesitation, even at the Roman’s exorbitant rate of interest – twelve percent per week.
    Still, the interest rate had seemed of little consequence in the greater scheme of things as the loan was only for a short term, a few weeks at most. Besides, hadn’t the opportunity been even grander than ever before? After the first storm at Portus, the subsequent demand for grain had soared, prices could be doubled, trebled, the difference pure profit …
    Until the gods had sunk the second fleet as well, taking Iovinus and the ships’ crews down with it. Everything had been lost, Iovinus had drowned, Corvinus was dead – a loss Aculeo still couldn’t fully fathom. All gone, their lives and fortunes with it …
    “Or so I thought,” Aculeo said.
    “What do you mean?” Bitucus asked.
    “I saw Iovinus at the Hippodrome this morning.”
    “What?” Gellius asked, almost choking on a mouthful of the wretched wine.
    “I saw him with my own eyes.”
    “Iovinus is still alive?” asked Bitucus.
    “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
    “What do you think happened?” Gellius asked.
    “A good question. Steered the ships to another port, sold the grain there most likely.”
    “I never liked that little shit,” Bitucus said.
    “We have to find him then,” Gellius pronounced.
    “A brilliant revelation, how did you possibly think of it?” Bitucus said acidly.
    “I would have had him this morning if you hadn’t stabbed me,” Aculeo said, wincing as he touched his wounded shoulder.
    “You stabbed Aculeo?” Bitucus asked.
    “Never mind that,” Gellius said. “Don’t you get what this means? There’s still hope!”
    “What are you talking about?” Aculeo asked.
    “Think about it! Sunken ships are one thing, but stolen ships are something else entirely.”
    Damn. He’s right, Aculeo realized. He felt a thin, warm wedge of hope invade his heart for the first time in months. “Perhaps. But it will only help us if we can find him. Who else knows Iovinus? Does he have any family or friends?”
    They thought in silence for a moment. Iovinus was a different sort of fellow, brilliant at numbers and the like but not the sort of person who gathered friends easily.
    “There’s Pesach,” Bitucus suggested.
    “Yes,” Gellius said. “If Pesach was friends with anyone it was Iovinus.”
    Aculeo recalled Pesach dimly, a small-time investor that he’d met at a dinner once. An annoying little fellow, boorish, constantly pestering himself and Corvinus about details of the business instead of socializing like a civilized person. “Where might we find him?”
    “I heard he was sold into slavery when he couldn’t pay his debts,” said Bitucus. “Someone mentioned they’d spotted him fetching pisspots from a public latrine.”
    “A fuller’s slave?” Gellius asked in horror. Bitucus shrugged.
    Aculeo shuddered at the thought, While he barely knew Pesach and disliked what little he knew, the very idea of a Roman citizen being sold into slavery was atrocious. And to a fuller? The poor wretch would be lucky to survive the year.
    “I’d have killed myself before letting that happen,” Gellius said with a shudder.
    “Do you know where he is?” Aculeo asked.
    “Near the fabric makers’ macellum in Gamma is all I know,” Bitucus said.
    “It’s a start,” Aculeo said. He dropped a few coins on the table and stood to leave.
    “Wait, where are you going?” Gellius asked.
    “To find Pesach,” Aculeo said. “Then I’ll find Iovinus and get my money back.”
    “Our money you mean,” Bitucus said sharply.
    “Yes, Aculeo, our money,” Gellius said, almost desperately. Aculeo looked at the other men with their haunted eyes, gaunt, unshaven cheeks, so utterly broken from the fellows he’d known. And so like himself.
    “Of course,” Aculeo agreed. “Our money.”

 

     
    Aculeo threaded his way through the market stalls in the Agora, mingling with the crowds. A wooden marionette jerked about in a