Crispus nudged his head to where we had just been in the shops. My heart sank. Only one man was watching me, but his mouth was curled in disgust. It was Sal, lurking in the corners like a Shade escaped from the underworld. Despite Crispus and Aurelia surrounding me, and the toga over my head, he clearly knew exactly who I was. All he needed to do was say my name, and we'd be surrounded. But for reasons I couldn't explain, he didn't.
I lowered my eyes, lifted the toga higher on my head, and followed behind Crispus, hoping that was the last I'd see of Sal for the evening. Or better yet, for the rest of my life.
Aurelia remained at my side. She grabbed my arm to weigh down my pace, and once Crispus was a little farther ahead of us, she said, "Are you sure we should go with him? If he doesn't have Livia --"
"I'm not going to Horatio. Not yet!"
"That's our bargain!"
"What bargain? Crispus is taking me to Valerius, not you." My irritation wasn't entirely her fault. I was terrified for my sister, nervous about what Valerius might want from me, and, delicious as it was, the bread had only barely filled the deep well of my hunger. But on top of all of that, I didn't need to hear her constant pleadings for me to turn myself in to a pompous senator who would most likely pass me straight on to the executioner. "If you're so eager, go run and tell Horatio where he can find me. Maybe he'll still give you that precious reward money."
"Do you think money is all I care about?"
"That's exactly what I think! Why can't you see there is more going on than who will have the pleasure of hauling me in chains before the emperor?"
Her mouth opened in protest, then closed, and she said, "Since we met, I've been shot at, threatened, chased, and nearly drowned. If all I cared about was the money, I'd have disappeared long ago."
"Then what do you care about?" I asked. "It's not finding my sister. You don't even know her."
"But I know you, and ... and I don't hate you, Nic, no matter what you believe. Maybe we disagree about Horatio, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to hurt you."
I glanced sideways at her. "I don't hate you either. But until I find my sister, we'll continue to disagree."
Her mouth opened again, but this time she said nothing and only mumbled that we should catch up to Crispus before he got away from us.
I adjusted the toga over my head again before joining them. When I did, I noticed her hand at her neck, as attached to that crepundia as I always was to the bulla. With enough reward money, she could make herself into a respectable young woman of Rome, and that might give her access to her family again.
And therein was the problem.
It was becoming increasingly obvious how flawed our bargain was. The only way she succeeded with her goals was to get the reward money from Horatio. But even if I defeated Radulf, there was no guarantee Horatio would persuade the emperor to let me go free. In fact, Horatio might not even deliver me to the emperor. For all I knew, he wanted the bulla for himself, and would kill me to keep it.
Aurelia and I were careening toward an impasse. For her to succeed in what she wanted most, I would almost certainly have to fail.
Crispus's home was on the outskirts of the city, on a gently sloping hill with vineyards as far as the eye could see. "They're not all ours," he explained when he caught both Aurelia and I gaping at them. "There are many people in Rome far wealthier than us."
"How many people?" Aurelia quipped. "Three?"
Once we entered his home, I doubted it was even that many. The exterior wasn't so grand -- on either side of the entrance were ordinary shops, selling food and wine produced here on this land. The inside, however, was anything but ordinary.
The wide entry was tiled with precious jewels similar to those I had once mined. For all I knew, my han
ds had pulled them from the earth. They created a colorful mosaic pattern of a griffin. I saw it and immediately thought of Caela, wondering if she had survived the injury to her side. I missed her and wondered whether I'd ever see her again. Beside me, Aurelia seemed to sense what I was feeling. She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I released it as quickly as she had taken mine. It still bothered me to realize only one of us was going to succeed in our bargain, and that it probably wasn't me.
Looking up, large paintings hung on either side of the entry corridor. One was of Senator Valerius, and the second one Crispus said was of his grandfather, who had died only a few years earlier.
"He was a great man." Crispus turned to me. "Did you ever know your grandfather?"
"I never even knew my father," I said. "He died when I was very young." Though he shouldn't have. Why didn't he get inside during the thunderstorm, like any reasonable person would?
It was Crispus's turn to go silent. "Oh," he finally said. "I'm sorry, Nic."
I didn't answer. Not because I was angry, but because I was very aware of Aurelia beside me, who had even less of a claim to family than I did. Crispus never bothered to ask about her. I figured she preferred it that way.
By then, we walked into a large atrium where moonlight poured through an open roof. It reflected down on the surface of a small and shallow pool with another mosaic beneath it, depicting the same griffin as I had seen at the entrance. Bright flowers grew around the pool and their scent carried on the breeze. The full moon and large candles added enough light that I saw the dark orange paint on the walls, elaborate fresco paintings of nature and beautiful women and illustrations of stories that I was sure every Roman over the age of three would understand. Impressive as they were, to me, they were only random pictures.
"This is really where you live?" I asked. "It's not another temple?"
"It's home." Crispus pointed to rooms at the sides of the atrium. "These are our bedrooms. Behind them are rooms where my mother does her weaving, and where the work is assigned to our slaves."