Victor said, “I am certain the holy bishop here will pray for the success of my mission and for my safe return.”

“What?” The prefect had succeeded in startling Eusebius. Like George, the bishop must have figured out that much of what Victor said wasn’t worth listening to. Eusebius did recover quickly. “Yes, of course. I shall pray for your safe journey, your success, and your eventual safe return.” Did he place a little extra stress on that eventual? George wasn’t sure.

The ceremony broke up after that. Some people went up onto the gray stone walls of Thessalonica to keep an eye on the departing city garrison for as long as they could. George would have reckoned that an insult to the militia if he hadn’t noticed that a fair number of those wistful spectators were militiamen. He wondered if he ought to go up himself. The militia would be keeping watch for the city now.

In the end, he decided not to bother. He expected he’d have plenty of chances to do actual patrolling; why bother with rehearsals, in that case? On the way back to his shop, he passed under the triumphal arch of the Emperor Galerius, celebrating his victory over the Persians. Galerius was three hundred years dead, more or less. The Persians were still very much around; Maurice had finally won a long war against them five years before.

George looked at the arch. Galerius, arrogant in stone, stared back at him. “It does make you wonder what the point of all that fighting was,” George murmured. Galerius didn’t answer.

“Hello, Father,” Theodore said when George came through the front door. “How does it feel to be a leading defender of the city?”

“Strange,” the shoemaker answered. “How does it feel to you that I’m a leading defender of the city?”

His son grinned at him. “Is there any way I can get out of town, like the prefect is doing?”

“Children have no respect for their elders these days,” George said. “If I’d told my father something like that--”

He paused. He had told his father things like that, and a good many times, too. Most of the time, the old man had thrown back his head and laughed like a loon.

“You started to say something?” asked Theodore, who was, if you resisted the temptation to strangle him, a fairly good specimen.

“Maybe I did,” George said. “But what’s the use? You wouldn’t listen, anyway.” In a different tone of voice, that would have been wounding. But George sounded somewhere between resigned and amused. Theodore grinned again and went back to the boot he’d been mending.

The shoemaker went back to work, too. Those fancy tooled boots wouldn’t get done by themselves, and he’d never heard of a spirit or fairy that would make shoes for you while you lay in bed.

He went back to the boots, tapping the awl one careful stroke at a time with his light hammer. He had to bend close to the last to see what he was doing. A day spent at uninterrupted fine work like that left him with a pounding headache. One of these years before too long, if God let him live, his sight would lengthen, and then the fine work would be beyond his power. Then Theodore would have to take over the lead in the shop, and George would do whatever his sight let him do, and would probably take a hand in training up his grandsons in the trade.

When the sun went down and shadows filled the shop, the family ended their work and cleaned up. “I wish we had a slave,” Sophia said. “That would make life a lot easier.”

“Your mother and I have talked about buying one, now and again,” George said, setting the tools he’d used back onto the pegs he’d set in the wall to hold them. Each tool had its own set of pegs, on which it hung neatly.

“Have you really?” Sophia sounded surprised. “You’ve never done it when I was around.”

“Could we afford to buy a slave?” Theodore asked.

“Probably,” George said. Irene nodded. Now both their children looked surprised. George went on, “I don’t expect we’ll get one any time soon, though.” His wife nodded.

“Why not, if we can afford one?” Sophia said. “It would save us a lot of work, and besides--” She paused, uncertain how to go on. At last, she said, “If you’ve got a slave, if you don’t have to do all your own work, that means you’re better off than a lot of the people around you.”

Before George could answer, Irene spoke with great firmness: “I can’t think of a worse reason to buy a slave than social climbing.”

“That’s right,” George said, knowing he couldn’t have put it so well himself. Sophia and Theodore let out simultaneous, identical disbelieving snorts. They were at an age where social climbing mattered intensely. George remembered that. He’d got over it. He expected they would, too.

“Besides,” Irene said, “the work wouldn’t disappear as if a priest had exorcised it. The slave might do the housework so we didn’t have to, but we’d have to make more shoes and fix more shoes and sell more shoes to buy the food and clothes and medicines and whatnot we’d need to give the slave.”

“That’s right,” George said again. “It’s not what you pay to buy a slave that counts. It’s the upkeep. We could afford to buy one, but I don’t know how long we could afford to have him here.”

“We’d find a way,” Theodore said with the innocent confidence of youth.

“That’s not the only problem, you know,” George said. “Most of the slaves in the market these days are Gepids or Slavs. They don’t speak Latin, they don’t speak Greek, and God only knows if they understand anything about work. If they run away, you’re out everything you paid for them, with no chance of getting a copper back from the dealer.”

“Some people must manage in spite of all those troubles,” Sophia said, “or nobody would have slaves.” “Some people,” George said pointedly, “must raise up children who don’t talk back to them. Come to think of it, though, I’ve never heard of any. When you can afford a slave, Theodore, or when your husband can, Sophia, then we’ll see what you do. Meanwhile--”

“Meanwhile,” Irene broke in, “we still have a lot of work to do, and not much light left to do it in, mostly because a couple of people I could name have been grumbling instead of doing what they’re supposed to.” She picked up a sandal and made as if to clout Theodore in the ear with it. He got to work, but he didn’t stop grumbling. That satisfied George, who remembered doing a deal of grumbling in his own younger days.

Rufus lined up his charges and gave them their orders: “Walk your stretch of the wall. Try not to fall off and break your fool neck. The challenge is ‘St. Demetrius.’ The answer is ‘St. Nicholas.’ If somebody can’t give you the right answer, he’s got no business up on the wall at night.”

“What do we do then?” Dactylius asked nervously.

“It depends,” the militia officer answered. “If you can tell it’s just some cursed fool from inside the city, just send him down. If it’s anybody sneaking up onto the wall from outside, try and kill the bastard and yell for help like the devil’s about to drag your soul to hell. Anything else? No? All right, first shift, up onto the wall. Second shift will relieve you about the start of the fifth hour of the night.”

George had first-shift duty tonight, along with Dactylius. The two of them climbed to the battlements near the Litaean Gate. George peered west. In the deepening evening twilight, the Via Egnatia was a gray stone ribbon heading west toward the sea, some days’ journey away. Beyond the sea lay Italy. Past that, George’s knowledge of geography faded fast.

The moon, full or near enough, rose in the southeast, in Capricorn, with the bright silver lamp of Jupiter not far away. Even after night fell, there was enough fight to see where to put your feet, and to see shapes moving out beyond the wall. There was, in fact, enough light to see shapes moving out beyond the wall whether they were really there or not.