“Yes,” Athalaric snapped. “The bones, sir. We are here to meet your Scythian, and see his bones of heroes.”

Honorius laid a placating hand on his arm. But Athalaric could sense his intensity as he waited for Papak’s answer.

As Athalaric had half expected, the Persian sighed and spread his hands. “I did promise that my Scythian would meet you here, in Rome itself. But the Scythian is a man of the eastern desert. Which is why he is so difficult to work with. But his rootlessness is why the Scythian is so useful, of course.” Papak rubbed his fleshy nose regretfully. “In these unfortunate times travel from the east is not so secure as it once was. And the Scythian is reluctant—”

To Athalaric’s irritation, the ploy worked.

“It has always been thus,” Honorius said sympathetically. “It was always easier to deal with farmers. Coherent wars can be fought with those who own land; if deals are struck all understand the meaning of the transactions. But nomads make for a much stiffer challenge. How can you conquer a man if he does not understand the meaning of the word?”

“We had an arrangement,” Athalaric snapped. “We engaged in extensive correspondence with you, on receipt of your catalog of curiosities. We have traveled across Europe to meet this man, at great expense and not insignificant danger. We have already paid you half of the fee we agreed, let me remind you. And now you let us down.”

Athalaric, despite himself, was impressed by Papak’s display of hurt pride — the flaring nostrils, the trace of deeper color in his cheeks. “I have a reputation that spans the continent. Even in these difficult days there are many connoisseurs, like yourself, sir Honorius, of the bones of the heroes and beasts of the past. It has been a tradition across the old empire for a thousand years. If I were to be found out a cheat—”

Honorius made placatory noises. “Athalaric, please. I am sure our new friend did not mean to deceive us.”

“It simply strikes me as remarkable,” Athalaric said heavily, “that as soon as we meet, your promises evaporate like morning dew.”

“I do not intend to renege,” Papak said grandly. “The Scythian is — a difficult man. I cannot deliver him like an amphora of wine, much though I regret the fact.”

Athalaric growled, “But?”

“I can propose a compromise.”

Honorius sounded hopeful. “There, you see, Athalaric; I knew this would come good if we have patience and faith.”

Papak sighed. “I am afraid it will demand of you further travel—”

“And expense?” Athalaric asked suspiciously.

“The Scythian will meet you at a rather more remote city: ancient Petra.”

“Ah,” said Honorius, and a little more of the life went out of him.

Athalaric knew Petra was in Jordan, a land still under the protection of Emperor Zeno in Constantinople. In such times as these, Petra was another world away. Athalaric took Honorius’s arm. “Master, enough. He is applying storekeepers’ tricks. He is merely trying to draw us more deeply into—”

Honorius murmured, “When I was a child my father ran a shop from the front of our villa. We sold cheese and eggs and other produce from the farms, and we bought and sold curiosities from all across the empire and beyond. That was how I got my taste for antiquities — and my nose for business. I am old but no fool yet, Athalaric! I am sure Papak senses further profit for himself in this situation — and yet I do not believe he is lying about the fundamentals.”

Athalaric lost patience. “We have much work waiting for us at home. To be hauled across the ocean for a handful of decayed old bones—”

But Honorius had turned to Papak. “Petra,” he said. “A name almost as famous as Rome’s itself! I will have many colorful adventures to recount to my grandchildren on my return to Burdigala. Now, sir, I suspect we must begin to discuss the practicalities of the journey.”

A broad smile spread across Papak’s face. Athalaric studied his eyes, trying to assess his honesty.

It took Honorius and Athalaric many weeks to reach Jordan, much of it consumed by the bureaucracy required to deal with the eastern empire. Every official they met proved deeply suspicious of outsiders from the broken remnants of the western empire — even of Honorius, a man whose father had actually been a senator of Rome itself.

It was Athalaric’s self-appointed duty to care for Honorius.

The old man had once had a son, a childhood friend of Athalaric’s. But Honorius had taken his family, with Athalaric, to a religious festival in Tolosa, to the south of Gaul. The party had been set upon by bandits. Athalaric had never forgotten his feeling of helplessness as, just a boy himself, he had watched as the bandits had beaten Honorius, molested his daughters — and so carelessly killed the brave little boy who had tried to come to his sisters’ aid. A fine Roman citizen! Where are your legions now? Where are your eagles, your emperors?

Something had broken in Honorius that dark day. It was as if he had decided to detach himself from a world in which the sons of senators needed the patronage of Goth nobles, and bandits freely roamed the interior of what had been Roman provinces. Though he had never neglected his civic and family duties, Honorius had become increasingly absorbed by his study of relics of the past, the mysterious bones and artifacts that told of a vanished world inhabited by giants and monsters.

Meanwhile Athalaric had developed a deepening loyalty to old Honorius — it was as if he had taken the place of that lost son — and he had been pleased, though not surprised, when his own father had agreed that he should serve as Honorius’s pupil in the law.

Honorius’s story was only one of a myriad similar small tragedies, generated by the huge, implacable historical forces that were transforming Europe. The mighty political, military, and economic structure built by the Romans was already a thousand years old. Once it had sprawled across Europe, northern Africa and Asia: Roman soldiers had come into conflict with the inhabitants of Scotland in the west and the Chinese to the east. The Empire had thrived on expansion, which had bought triumphs for ambitious generals, profits for traders, and a ready source of slaves.

But when expansion was no longer possible, the system became impossible to sustain.

There came a point of diminishing returns, in which every denarius collected in taxes was pumped into administrative maintenance and the military. The empire became increasingly complex and bureaucratic — and so even more expensive to run — and inequality of wealth became grotesque. By the time of Nero in the first century, all the land from the Rhine to the Euphrates was owned by just two thousand obscenely rich individuals. Tax evasion among the wealthy became endemic, and the increasing cost of propping up the empire fell ever more heavily on the poor. The old middle class — once the backbone of the empire — declined, bled by taxes and squeezed out from above and below. The empire had consumed itself from within.

It had happened before. The great Indo-European expansion had spun off many civilizations, high and low. Great cities already lay buried in history’s dust, forgotten.

Although the west had been the origin of the sprawling empire, the east had eventually become its center of gravity. Egypt produced three times as much grain as the west’s richest province in Africa. And while the west’s long borders were vulnerable to attack by land-hungry Germans, Hunni, and others, the east was like an immense fastness. The constant drain of resources from east to west had caused a growing political and economic tension. At last — eighty years before Honorius’s visit to Rome — the division between the two halves of the old empire was made permanent. After that the collapse of the west had proceeded apace.