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all your father’s slaves? Or their names, even? The ambush had to be set up somehow. It was only their ill luck that you were there at all. But Quindarvis said there were half a dozen of them, waiting in alleys on both sides of the street. It was planned.”
    “But—That close to her father’s house! It would be too dangerous!”
    “It was the only place they could be sure of finding her,” replied Arrius. “This your place?”
    Marcus nodded. They started the long climb up four flights of pitch-black stairs that swarmed with roaches and stank of grease, stale urine, and cabbage. Arrius went on, “They knew her father was away; they also knew of her upcoming wedding. This might be the last chance they had to strike at her father through her. Now, I’m taking a risk telling you about all this, because I know nothing about you and you could be a Christian yourself, for all I know. But it’s unlikely. You’ll very seldom find a philosopher who has anything to do with that cult.”
    “I should hope not!” cried Marcus, with a vehemence that made the centurion grin. “Have you read their tracts? Vulgar grammar, rotten construction, not to mention holes in their logic you could drive a laden hay-cart through! And as for that—that emotionalistic nonsense—drivel... ” Words failed him.
    They made their way down the stinking, Stygian hall to Marcus’ single room. Its one window faced south onto the building’s central court; the whole place was hot as a baker’s oven. Marcus leaned in the doorway, exhausted by the climb and suddenly giddy; the room began to blur before his eyes.
    Arrius’ voice seemed to come from miles away. “Professor?”
    “Hunh?” he said faintly.
    “You see me all right?”
    Marcus blinked at him and nodded.
    The soldier dumped two scrolls and a couple of apple-cores off the wobbly-legged sleeping-couch, took Marcus’ arm, and steered him to it, kicking aside a pair of discarded sandals, a dish, and several more apple-cores.
    “You’ll have to excuse my housekeeping...” mumbled Marcus.
    “You have someone to look in on you?”
    He lay back gingerly on the couch, paused, and ejected an empty cup from among the tattered sheets. “Don’t waste your time sending for my family,” he said, with faint defiance. “They certainly won’t waste their time coming.”
    Arrius looked around him at the squalid little chamber. Though he made no comment, Marcus felt called upon to add, “I couldn’t live a lie. And my father couldn’t live with a philosopher for a son.”
    The centurion peered under the upended pot that kept Marcus’ bread safe from the local rats. “But he sends you money for your keep?” he surmised.
    Splitting pain lanced through Marcus’ head as he tried to sit up. “If he didn’t, I’d still live as I do,” he flared. “I’d find work of some kind—copying books, or teaching... ”
    He felt himself being scrutinized again and fell silent, feeling exhausted and a little absurd. But in the hot sunlight that fell through the window he saw the calculating expression on the centurion’s face, not mocking him, but gauging what sort of a man he was.
    “I expect you would,” he said after a moment. “And I daresay the old man only sends you money to keep his friends from tattling about how he cut off his only son without a quadrans.”
    Marcus lay back again and closed his eyes, wondering how he could have become so angry. His whole soul seemed to be a single raw wound, sick and dizzy, exhausted but dreading the dreams that he knew would come with sleep. He said, “And anyway, I’m not his only son. I have two brothers.”
    The soldier made a little growling noise of approval. “Well, that explains why he let you go instead of keeping you for stud.”
    It was a hideously accurate representation of his father’s opinions about young men who fribbled away their responsibilities to the House of Silanus rather than wedding and setting up their nurseries, and