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pot to boil. Pesach climbed wearily into the treading vat.
    Aculeo threaded his way carefully around the drying hoops towards the slaves. “Pesach?” he called tentatively.
    The slave looked up. His bushy grey eyebrows lifted in recognition, then his expression darkened into a scowl. “Aculeo. What do you want?”
    “I need to talk to you.”
    “Well I’m clearly occupied here, aren’t I? It’s very exacting work you know – one wrong step and they make you start all over again.” Aculeo felt his skin crawl when he noticed the man’s red, scabrous hands and dead, yellowed eyes, his ribs in stark relief amidst the shadows of his cheap, soiled tunic.
    “A minute alone. Please.”
    Pesach considered him for a long moment, then glanced at his co-workers. “Is it alright with you gentlemen? I hate to leave our conversation just as things are getting interesting.”
    “What’d he say?” the old slave asked. The other slave shrugged.
    Pesach climbed out of the treading vat, feet dripping with urine, and walked barefoot across the atrium to a stuffy little storage area where a number of gleaming white tunics and togas had been hung, awaiting pickup. Aculeo took a closer look at the man, who scratched every few seconds at the raw pink patches of skin on his arms, bare shoulders and shins.
    A fat, bearded man lay snoring on floor. “The master fuller,” Pesach explained. “He shouldn’t wake for another hour or two. Good man, keen eye for talent. He made me assistant velicus, you know. See, only eight weeks in and I’m already making my way back. You can’t keep a good Roman down for long.”
    “What happened to you?”
    “What do you think happened? I lost everything because of you and that asshole you called a partner. Well, that and a few unfortunate gambling debts, I suppose. I got in too deep to that moneylender Marcellus Cocksucking Gurculio and so here I am.”
    “I’m sorry, Pesach …”
    “You’re sorry?” Pesach sneered. “Well then, as long as you’re sorry! Did you know they sold me to this drunken boob for eight hundred sesterces? I’m a Roman fucking citizen! At least I was. I ran my own business, and a highly successful one I might add! At the very least he could have sold me to a decent place for ten thousand at the snap of a finger and covered my debt. But no, they went out of their way to sell me here at a loss. Just to fuck me over!”
    The fuller gave a rumbling snore. Pesach placed his filthy, urine-stained toes on the man’s whiskered cheek and pushed, turning his face the other way. The man smacked his lips and belched but remained fast asleep.
    “I’ll find a way to help you, Pesach, I give you my oath,” Aculeo said.
    “Stick your oath up your festering hole and leave me be,” Pesach said, turning to leave.
    “Wait, that’s not the only reason I came.”
    “You didn’t come to borrow money I hope. I’m a little short right now.”
    “You were friends with Iovinus,” Aculeo said.
    “There’s another one. It’s a bit late for him though, isn’t it? He was lost at sea.”
    “I thought so too, until I saw him at the Hippodrome this morning.”
    “What?” Pesach said, looking at him in surprise. “Good swimmer is he? Survived the shipwreck and swam all the way back to Alexandria?”
    “Apparently.”
    “What was he doing alive and at the Hippodrome?”
    “Good question,” said Aculeo.
    Pesach’s face darkened, he shook his head in dismay. “Fuck. Fuck!”
    “Any idea where I might find him?”
    “Hm? Oh, how should I know? I was friendly enough with the man once upon a time but I’ve no idea where he lived.”
    “He lived with Corvinus’ family,” Aculeo said. “They treated him like a son.”
    “So much for filial loyalty,” Pesach said, scratching at his red, scaly legs and arms again, which began to bleed. Aculeo tried not to shudder. “He got himself involved with a porne a while back, I recall.”
    “How involved?”
    “He talked of buying