Chapter One

Scene One

Rufus woke hungry.

His first thought was breakfast. His second thought was also breakfast. His third was that lying there wasn’t going to get him any.

He was moving before the thought had quite finished.

The city had been awake for a while. He could hear cart wheels, a woman shouting, another shouting back, and a dog making a convincing case that the world was ending.

Rome.

“Morning.”

The nearest wall was exactly where he had left it yesterday. He climbed it, then pulled himself onto the roof.

The roofs were faster. They always had been.

His first jump carried him across a narrow alley. The second landed on a roof tile that rocked beneath his foot.

“Still loose.”

He stepped over it without slowing. Old Sextus had been promising to fix that tile since winter. Rufus had stopped believing him sometime before spring.

Laundry hung between two buildings. He ducked beneath a blanket, lifted a tunic from the line and held it against himself.

“Won’t fit.”

He hung it back and kept running.

A pigeon burst into the air beside his face.

“Sorry.”

It circled once, still angry. Rufus didn’t blame it.

The neighborhood spread beneath him. Crispus’s fuller’s yard was already working. Even from the roof, Rufus could smell the vats.

Lucius claimed you got used to it. Rufus thought that was the sort of thing fullers had to tell themselves.

Beyond it stood Gnaeus’s bakery. Marcus would already be grinding flour. Marcus always started early.

Rufus had never understood why.

His stomach reminded him.

He dropped into the narrow yard behind the bakery.

The side door was locked.

“When did that happen?”

He looked around. Someone had left a crate beside a barrel, and the barrel stood beneath the wall.

People were forever leaving useful things where he needed them.

Rufus climbed from the crate to the barrel and from the barrel to the wall. He swung his legs over and dropped into the bakery yard.

The side door scraped as he eased it open.

Nobody shouted.

That usually meant Gnaeus wasn’t looking. Or wasn’t awake. With Gnaeus, there wasn’t much difference.

Rufus slipped inside.