“These lands were given to legionaries, not to pirates. This coast is infested with them and you have a duty to help us.”

Parrakis laughed. “Duty? I left all that behind a lifetime ago. I tell you again, Rome has no call on us here. We live and trade in peace, and if pirates come we sell our goods to them and they leave. I think you are looking for an army? You won't find it in this village. There's nothing of the city here, amongst farmers.”

“Not all the men with me are from the ship. Some are from villages to the west. I need men who can be trained to fight. Men who are not willing to spend their lives hiding in this village as you do.”

Parrakis flushed with anger. “Hiding? We work the land and struggle against pests and disease just to feed our families. The first ones came from legions that fought with honor in lands far from home and finally received the last gift of the Senate-peace. And you dare to say we are hiding? If I was younger, I would take a sword to you myself, you insolent whoreson!”

Julius wished he had just grabbed the man at the start. He opened his mouth to speak quickly, knowing he was losing the initiative. One of the men with axes broke in first.

“I'd like to go with them.”

The older man whirled on him, spittle collecting whitely at the corners of his mouth. “To go and get yourself killed? What are you thinking?”

The axe carrier pursed his lips against the anger coming from Parrakis. “You always said they were the best years of your life,” he muttered. “When the old men get drunk, you always talk about those days like they were gold. All I have is the chance to break my back from dawn to dusk. What will I tell people when I am old and drunk? How good it was to slaughter a pig at festival? The time I broke a tooth on a piece of grit in the bread we make?”

Before the stupefied Parrakis could reply, Julius broke in, “All I ask is that you put it to the people of the village. I'd prefer volunteers, if there are more like this one.”

The anger sagged from Parrakis, making him look exhausted.

“Young men,” he said with a note of resignation. “Always looking for excitement. I suppose I was the same, once.” He turned to the axe carrier. “Are you sure, lad?”

“You've got Deni and Cam to work the farm, you don't need me as well. I want to see Rome,” the young man replied.

“All right, son, but what I said was true. There's no shame in making a life here.”

“I know, Father. I'll come back to you all.”

“Of course you will, boy. This is your home.”

In all, eight from the village volunteered. Julius took six of them, turning down a pair who were little more than children, though one of them had rubbed soot onto his chin to make it look like the shadow of stubble. Two of the newcomers brought their own bows with them. It was beginning to feel like the army he needed to crew a ship and hunt the seas for Celsus. Julius tried to control his optimism as they marched out of the lush trees toward the coast for the first of the day's drills. He tallied what they needed in his head. Gold to hire a ship, twenty more men and thirty swords, enough food to keep them alive until they reached a major port. It could be done.

One of the bowmen tripped and fell flat, bringing most of the column to a staggering halt. Julius sighed. About three years to train them would be useful, as well.

Servilia sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight. The tension was clear in every line of her, but Brutus felt he should not speak first. He had been awake for most of the night without resolving anything. Three times he had decided not to visit the house near Quirinal hill, but each time had been an empty gesture of defiance. There had never really been a moment when he wouldn't have come to her. He felt nothing like a son's love, yet some nebulous ideal made him return, with all the fascination of picking scabs and watching himself bleed for her.

He had wanted her to come for him when he was a child, when he was alone and frightened of the world. When Marius's wife had smothered him with her need for a son, he had recoiled from it, unnerved by emotions he didn't really understand. Still, the woman who faced him had a call on him that no one else had, not Tubruk, not even Julius.

In the unnatural stillness, he drank her in, looking for something he couldn't name or even try to understand. She wore a pure white stola against sun-dark skin without any jewelry. As it had been the day before, her long hair was unbound, and when she moved, it was with a lithe grace that made it a pleasure just to watch her walk and sit, as much as he might admire the perfect gait of a leopard or deer. Her eyes were too large, he decided, and her chin too strong for classical beauty, yet he could not look away from her, noting the lines that marked her eyes and around her mouth. She seemed coiled and taut, ready to leap up and run from him as she had before. He waited and wondered how much of the tension showed in his own features.

“Why did you come?” she asked, breaking the awful silence. How many answers to that question had he thought through! Scene after scene had played in his imagination in the night: scorning her, offending her, embracing her. None of it had prepared him for the actual moment.

“When I was a child, I used to imagine what you were like. I wanted to see you, even once, just to know who you were. I wanted to know what you looked like.” He heard his voice tremble and a spasm of anger rushed through him. He would not shame himself. He would not speak like a child to this woman, this whore.

“I have always thought of you, Marcus,” she said. “I started many letters to you, but I never sent them.”

Brutus took a grip on his thoughts. He had never heard his name from her mouth in all his years of being alive. It made him angry, and anger allowed him to speak calmly to her.

“What was my father like?” he asked.

She looked away at the walls of the simple room where they sat.

“He was a good man, very strong and as tall as you are. I only knew him for two years before he died, but I remember he was very pleased to have a son. He named you and took you to the temple of Mars to have you blessed by the priests. He became ill that year and was taken before winter. The doctors couldn't treat him, but there was very little pain at the end.”

Brutus felt his eyes fill and brushed at them angrily as she continued.

“I… couldn't bring you up. I was a child myself and I wasn't ready or able to be a mother. I left you with his friend and ran away.” Her voice broke completely on the last phrase, and she opened her clenched hand to reveal a crumpled cloth that she used to wipe her eyes.

Brutus watched her with a peculiar sense of detachment, as if nothing she did or said could touch him. The anger had drained away and he felt almost light-headed. There was a question he had to ask, but it came easily now.

“Why didn't you come for me while I was growing up?”

She didn't answer for a long time, using the cloth to touch away the tears until her breathing had steadied and she was able to look at him again. She held her head with a fragile dignity.

“I did not want you to be ashamed.”

His unnatural calm gave way to the emotions sweeping him, revealed as straw in a storm.

“I might have been,” he whispered hoarsely. “I heard someone talking about you a long time ago and I tried to pretend it was a mistake, to put you out of my mind. It is true then, that you…”

He couldn't say the words to her, but she straightened still further, her eyes glittering.

“That I am a whore? Perhaps. I was once, though when the men you know are powerful enough, they call you a courtesan, or even a companion.” She grimaced, her mouth twisting.