Page 5 of Of Love and Treason
Titus steadied Iris and slid his hands from her sides, releasing a deep breath. “I’d better go.”
She grabbed his arm in both hands, her fingers unable to meet around the bulk of it. “You’re not going to stay for the chicken hunt? It’s great fun.”
“Not unless the winner gets that sea bass.” He inhaled again and brushed the palla off her head affectionately. “I’ll see you.”
She nodded and climbed the stairs carefully, thankful no one was moving or throwing out a husband today. The three flights of stairs were free of debris.
Iris let herself into the one-room apartment, sparsely furnished with an unused cooking brazier, a rickety table, and three stools. Her loom crowded the far wall, and curtains divided the other half of the room into two sleeping areas, one for Iris and the other for her father. When Titus and his widowed mother had lived with them, they’d slept on pallets in the main room. Titus’s mother had only stayed a few months before marrying a carter and moving to Ostia, leaving Titus to be trained up in the Praetorian Guard.
Leaving her walking stick by the door, she went out to the balcony, checking the dryness of the herbs and potted geranium. They needed water. Titus was right: someone was cooking sea bass. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Sea bass with lemon and rosemary. Her stomach rumbled despite the roasted almonds. She’d make do with plain bread and olives again.
Iris opened her eyes. The shadow of a bird skittered across the wooden planks at her feet.
Her hair stood on end. She stared, mind reeling.
She couldsee.
Her pulse pounded. She watched her fingers come up to touch the soft skin around her eyes, confirming that they were indeed open. She saw her chest rising and falling too fast, her round toes wrapped in plainleather sandals. She was afraid to blink. Afraid the fuzzy gray shapes and light would disappear. Her eyes burned and watered. Iris reached up again, this time to hold her eyelids open. She couldn’t help it.
When she blinked, it was gone. Like a lamp pinched out in the night. That faint glimpse of blinding light and shadow plunged once more into deep fog and swirling darkness.
She blinked again, emotion swelling her throat.
Nothing.
She shuddered, knees going doughy. Sitting down hard, her back against the wall, she struggled to grasp what had just happened. Ithadbeen real... hadn’t it? Perhaps it was only a memory of something she’d seen before... But no, there was no dream or memory in it, just simple sight.
Simple and glorious, and gone.
She sat on the balcony shaking and frozen in place, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry. On the other side of the wall bracing her was thelararium—their niche of household gods so crammed with deities there wasn’t room for another. Had they smiled upon her at last? She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled inside, dropping to her knees before the shrine. Her hands shook as she poured wine into a small bowl to offer as a libation.
But who had done it? Panacea? Hygeia? Aesculapius?
A tiny thought prickled her mind, and she shoved it away. No. Impossible.
The thought came again, stronger. Her insides quivered.No.Valentine had not actually prayed for her. She had not made offerings of any kind. Valentine’s god had no reason to do anything for her. She did not know his god, and his god surely did not know her.
She replayed the images over and over in her mind while hope and despair wrestled in her heart. Where had it come from? Why hadn’t it stayed? Would she ever get it back?
“Thank you.”
Her whispered words bounced off the wall, floating away like the curling smoke of incense. Would they reach the ears of the god who had returned her hope?
II
QUINTUSMAGIUS SQUIRMEDbeneath the tribune’s stare. Tribune Lucius Braccus braced his fingertips against each other, the pillar formed by his index fingers tapping against a thread-thin upper lip.
“I’m afraid I’m out of options.” The tribune looked down at his desk. “And so are you.” He slid a wooden tablet toward Quintus, rows of numbers and dates neatly pressed into the wax covering the surface.
It took Quintus a moment to realize it was a ledger recording the finer details of his financial ruin. A pay advance here and there. Several loans taken from the Praetorian treasury and approved by his cohort tribune—Lucius Braccus himself. Quintus’s finger dropped down the long list of numbers to the sum printed at the bottom.Mars and Jupiter.His throat went dry. He’d never been especially good at calculating interest rates and fees and—carry the one...
It added up so quickly. So high.
Quintus’s heart sank to the underworld. “I spent everysesterceof these loans at the temples.” The explanation fell weak. “My daughter—there is nothing to show for it yet, but soon...”
Soon what? Even if the godsdidrestore Iris’s sight, he would still be swallowed in debts. The money he’d borrowed for charms and incense, physicians, elixirs, and sacrifices in the temples—it would not miraculously reappear once she was healed.Ifshe was healed.
His heart leaped to a gallop, familiar worries circling his mind like chariots in the Circus Maximus. He wasn’t getting younger. Thepainful limp from his old battle wound made finding extra work impossible. And Iris? No one would marry a woman cursed with blindness, no matter how beautiful. What chance did she have on the streets? Each thought lashed at his heart like a charioteer’s whip. He’d never given the loan repayment serious consideration before, his sole focus on Iris and restoring her sight.
