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“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just couldn’t bear to leave you there. All your curiosity about the world, about scholarship, and you’d have been trapped in indentured servitude for life.”

I put my hand on his wet shoulder. I felt him flinch and took an irrational satisfaction from having caused him to react so. “The way I look was not in your thoughts at all? Other people seem affected by it. Everywhere I go, people stare at me.”

He shifted so that his shoulder moved out from under my hand. “Are you trying to shame me? What do you want me to say?”

I suddenly felt desperate to understand what I was to him. “I want you to tell me the truth about why you brought me here.”

He was quiet for a minute. “The truth is that in addition to your sharp mind and quick wit, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. And after a decade of visiting the mountain city, that’s saying something.” He sighed. “Does that satisfy you?”

“And yet you’ve hardly touched me.”

“You’re young, alone, vulnerable, and dependent on me. What kind of a man would I be if I took advantage of that?”

It was as though my anger couldn’t be appeased. It had congealed into a vicious desire that I didn’t really understand—a need to take what he had revealed to me and sharpen it into a weapon.

“So, you’re a hero, then? A heroic savior who resists temptation?” I stood up. I unfastened the diaphanous green dress. It slipped to the floor. I pulled my undertunic over my head and tossed it aside. I was naked, and I felt the humid air of the thermae on my skin. “Have a look.”

I heard his sharp intake of breath.

I lowered myself into the still-warm water, inches away from his wet skin. I leaned forward until we were nearly touching. Droplets of water clung to his sculpted face.

He made a sound low in his throat. He took my face in his hands, and the intensity of his gaze seemed to hold me in place. I began to feel an ache below my navel. Every part of my body felt as tight as a bowstring. I was nothing but rage and longing.

He pulled away with difficulty and touched my cheek. His breathing was ragged. “Have mercy, Anna. By the gods, leave me a shred of dignity.”

I felt another flare of savage rage. “You don’t want the tira you paid a fortune for?”

His face hardened into the first real flash of anger I had ever seen him display in my presence. He pushed himself onto the edge of the tub, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his waist. He felt for his walking stick and used it to help him stand up. Then he flipped the lever to drain the tub and thumped toward the door.

xv

THERE WAS A FLOOD IN THE CITY OVERNIGHT. AN UNEXPECTEDLY high tide had overwhelmed a neighborhood on the edge of Panpirion, flooding a block of granaries. Sebastianus and Don left early the next morning to help not only with salvage but also to quell rumors—already rampant throughout the city—that the great Sea God was angry and had sent the flood as a warning. Overnight my own anger had cooled and solidified into something sad and terrible that sat like a painful mass in my stomach. Sebastianus, who had given me an astrolabe, a way out of the mess I had created at Casa Caligine, a home, a study full of books, a tutor, a chance at a different life. Whose touch made my pulse race. Then I remembered the feel of Georgios’s hand on the small of my back and the lump in my stomach curdled again. My thoughts churned: rage, longing, grief, disappointment at my own inability to figure out what to do next.

The two men were gone for several days, giving me plenty of time to stew in my frustration. I spent the mornings with Cassius, tinkering with the orrery in his workshop. He fabricated small brass gears, and we worked to balance them and set them precisely in the delicate mechanism. In the afternoons I rode around the grounds of the villa on a plodding little mare that had appeared in the stable one day not long after Don had begun to teach me how to ride.

I spent hours translating passages of Kish from Geographica and making long lists of words I couldn’t figure out so that I could review them with Cassius.

Sebastianus’s study was filled with his maps, his notes, and his journals—and the smell of the dried leaves he smoked in his pipe. He noticed and recorded everything. I flipped through pages and pages, skimming some passages, reading others. He truly had been to every corner of the continent. There was nothing about having killed a fellow soldier, but he wrote of escaping a sinking skiff on the inland sea, of exploring the ruins of the once-great library at Arcadium, of getting lost on the northern plains beyond the mountains of Mys. How could Sebastianus think he’d never done anything worthwhile?

Don had been with him on nearly all these journeys, setting a broken limb, dragging a small boat, discussing which berries they should touch and which they should avoid. I remembered with chagrin the naive girl who thought Clemens Fabius was an experienced explorer, with his few, simple stories of boat rides and forest strolls with servants carrying his bags.

I found Seb’s journal about the fateful trip to Vendel. In it I saw, recorded in his own hand, his caution to the expedition team against continuing the search for the caves in that region. Would he eventually persuade his uncle to fund another expedition? Would either of us ever have the chance to find what we were looking for?

I was no closer to knowing where to search for my mother, but I had acquired one new piece of information: Corlivo women lived in the Imperator’s palace. What could I do with that knowledge? I could hardly ride the sturdy little mare up to Jovinian’s door and knock. I slid the journal back under the stack of paper with a sigh of vexation. I needed to make a plan. I could not stay in this villa forever. Fear and indecision had held me back, but I had waited long enough.

NEARLY A WEEK passed, and Sebastianus and Don did not come back. The weather turned unseasonably rainy. Cassius was in bed with a cold, being fussed over by Cornelia, who lit candles in the shrine and brought him bowl after bowl of a pungent soup she was convinced could cure any illness. I sat alone in the workshop after breakfast, listening to the patter of water on the wooden roof and trying to fit two small brass gears together, when a delivery boy brought me a letter. I looked at my name on the parchment with a jolt of excitement. Who would write to me? I unfolded the note to see an unfamiliar script.

Anna—

My sister and I enjoyed meeting you last week at the Archidux’s dinner, and we’re hoping you’ll join us for a meal today. Mother has given us permission to take the carriage. Let’s meet at Casa Violetta, in the old quarter, the hour after midday. It’s a place I think you’ll feel comfortable. I must ask for your discretion. My father wouldn’t approve.

Yours fondly,

Agatha

Sebastianus and Don would tell me that venturing out on my own was dangerous, and yet I hadn’t heard from either of them for nearly a week. If I wanted to make my way in the world, sooner or later, I would have to open the gate and walk outside.

I put on the most modest dress in my wardrobe, added a palla for good measure, pinned up my hair, and found my cloak and the small coin purse Cornelia had given me so that I’d have something to call my own, as she put it. I slipped out of the house, not wanting to disturb the sickroom.