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If I’d had any money then, I would have begged them to take poppy tears. I would have begged for the chance to end their lives myself.”
    “Water,” Vitas said. He was exhausted, and breath was too precious to explain. Water first; then he would ask her his question.
    She held the sponge up to Jerome.
    The big slave shook his head, refusing.
    “Take it!” Vitas snapped.
    Jerome made the ungh-ungh sound.
    Their eyes met.
    Even though the slave could not speak, Vitas believed in that moment he understood that Jerome was still seeking redemption for placing a knife against Vitas’s throat. A slave would not take comfort ahead of the master or the master’s brother.
    “Fools,” the old woman said. “Both of you are fools.”
    Another man farther down spoke in a ragged voice. “I beg you, give it to me!”
    Vitas nodded at the old woman. “Give the poppy tears to others. Then please hurry for water.”

    It felt like days passed before the old woman returned with water, but the well was just down the road, and Vitas was able to watch her walk to it and back.
    She offered the sponge again, and he wept at the taste of the water. Badly as he wanted more, he found the strength to turn his head away as she lifted it again.
    “Some for Jerome.” No matter what mystery had caused the mute to first draw the knife, then offer it to Vitas, he had truly been a good slave and a good man.
    Jerome gasped as he drank from the sponge.
    Small mercies meant so much. The two of them took turns drinking until the bucket was empty.
    “Now,” Vitas said. He pushed away all the pain that screamed at him from various points of his body. “Ask around. For a traveler. A Jewish woman named Sophia who is married to a Roman named Vitas. Bring her here.”
    “The woman of your poppy delusion? It’s a fool’s errand. For you and for me.”
    During the long, horrible hours of the night, his mind clear, Vitas had given it thought. In all likelihood, yes, his sighting of Sophia had been a vision induced by the narcotics.
    But what if it wasn’t?
    What if—against all odds—Sophia had survived the execution ordered by Nero? After all, so had Vitas.
    What if—and yes, it was delusional hope—she too had been directed to Caesarea, as he had been?
    It was certain that Vitas would die on this cross. He doubted he could make it through another day in the scorching heat, even with water. He doubted Damian would return.
    If he was to die, and if there was only one chance in as many stars as the sky held that he could speak to Sophia before he died, he was prepared to face any amount of agony.
    “Please,” he said to the old woman. “Just ask.”
    Those were the last words he would remember speaking over the next few hours before he lost consciousness and, with it, all sensation of pain.

Intempesta
    Vitas woke in a bed, confused by the cool darkness that surrounded him. It was so startling and in such contrast to the blazing heat and the overwhelming pain that had been his existence that it took long moments for his awareness to adjust to other sensations. His body rested on soft linens. His hand, where it had been impaled by a single spike, was bandaged. His feet, too, were gently tended with ointment and strips of cloth, and his skin had been oiled.
    And his feet were shackled to a short length of chain. As were his wrists. Enough slack to move about, but still a prisoner.
    In comparison to the way he’d been bound to beams of wood, this was glorious freedom. His last moments of consciousness before waking to this had been the inexorable agony of his body hanging on a cross, flies across his face, a tongue swollen with thirst.
    And now he was here.
    But where was here?
    As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Vitas realized he was in a small room. He swung his feet to the floor and gasped as he put weight on them, reminded of where the spikes had bit into his arches. He shuffled and tried a door, which gave slightly before stopping with a