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Klaudia shoved her way out of the sea of people. She rushed to me and embraced me in a fierce hug that I was too numb to feel. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. “How did this happen?”

“I want to go home.” I clung to her like a drowning person clutching a branch.

“Let me just—let me just take my leave. One moment, and I’ll have you out of here.” She gently unclasped my fingers from her arm.

I watched, frozen, as she charged through rows of onlookers to the center, where a diminutive woman in a purple stola and matching fur-trimmed cloak stood watching the ritual with her face set in a determined stare. Her dark hair was woven into a long braid wound with gold threads, and a delicate gold circlet sat on her head. Soldiers in red stood on either side of her.

Klaudia curtsied and spoke a few words into the Imperatrix’s ear. The small woman turned in my direction. Her narrowed eyes seemed to bore into me. My mouth went dry.

Another man was shoved into the hole, and then another, screaming. A moment later, Luca, too, was gone.

Klaudia returned to my side and took my hand. She nodded to the soldier, who stepped away.

Neither of us spoke until we had climbed the steep stairs and stepped out into the fresh air. Klaudia stopped and tried to speak, but I cut her off. “We have to keep going. I want to get away from here.”

We continued across the plaza. I wanted to disappear, to melt into the stones under our feet. Finally I paused in the shadow of the statue of Klaudia’s ancestor, the Imperator Priscian, to pull up my palla.

“What were you doing in such a horrible place?” It was all I could manage to ask.

Klaudia looked embarrassed. “Sometimes I accompany the Imperatrix to public functions and ceremonies.”

“And executions, I see.”

“She’s never done something on that scale before. By the gods, how could I have known you’d be there?”

“But you knew other women would be,” I said.

She looked away and said nothing.

When we got back to the villa, I went upstairs immediately and climbed into my soft bed. I lay there as the afternoon sun moved across the sky and began to sink. Klaudia checked on me several times, and although I was grateful to her, I found I had nothing to say. Cornelia brought me soup, but I let it go cold, untouched. She came back and took it away again. I fell into a real sleep, disturbed by dreams of sucking water and Kyra swirling and swirling as her rib cage rose and fell.

xvii

I WOKE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF angry voices in the courtyard. Something clattered. Wood splintered. For a moment I was disoriented, and then I remembered: the letter, Casa Violetta, the holding cell, the temple, a watery execution. I wanted to fall back into the oblivion of sleep.

The door flew open, and Sebastianus stood there. He looked exhausted. He had a growth of stubble on his face to match the shaved part of his scalp, and his traveling cloak was stained and dirty. The moment I saw him a flood of bottled-up emotions rose in me: anger and shame, but also relief and overwhelming affection. I sat up and tried to breathe myself calm, but I couldn’t suppress the great heaving sobs that shook my whole body.

He hesitated in the doorway. “May I come in?”

I nodded without meeting his eyes.

He sat gently beside me on the bed, and I lay back against the headboard, working to catch my breath and calm my trembling hands.

After a few moments he said softly, “No one downstairs seems able to explain to me how you ended up in a brothel in the old quarter.”

I dug into the folds of my dirty dress and pulled out the letter, now a crumpled ball of parchment. I handed it to him.

He unfolded it and read the text slowly. “By the gods—a place you’ll feel comfortable, she says. But why on earth did you go alone? Why didn’t you tell Cassius and Cornelia?”

I closed my eyes and took one more deep breath. “I don’t know. Cassius was sick; I was restless; I was delighted that the girls wanted to have lunch with me; I wanted to be brave and set out on my own.”

The skin between his eyebrows creased.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. “It didn’t occur to me that it might not be true. Here I am with my big dreams of exploring the world, searching for my mother, and I can’t even tell the truth from an obvious lie.”

He took my hands in his rough, steady ones. Their warmth had a calming effect on me.

“Why would Georgios’s daughters do something so cruel?” he asked. “I’m surprised he would have told them about your background. It doesn’t make any sense.”