This evening I was lying in bed writing,  on my side, and I felt a fly land on my arm, or the touch of a fallen hair. I twitched it, and the annoyance went away. Then it landed again, and I twitched. It landed again, I twitched, and when it landed again I reached out my hand to swat it. And another hand touched mine, stroked it, sending a tingle up my arm and into my head, and the hand was Leechtin's. He covered my fingers with his, and stroked me, and his voice rumbling me, said, "What are you doing, little bird? No, go on as you were doing before, but tell me. But pretend I am not here."

I lay there, half twisted, gazing up at his darkly lined eyes, his hair pulled back in a loose black braid. He was wearing an overlarge t-shirt and yoga pants, definitely not his clothes. "I'm writing about you, sir. But you don't look the part."

"Say it again now in Latin," he commanded. "I do not understand your accent in English."

I did, and he nodded, dragging his fingernails gently over my wrist, which made my head twist sideways. "What can I do for you?" I asked him.

"No," he said to me. "I do not understand." He leaned in a little, and I kissed him briefly on the lips. Lips so red. "You must write that you were always a good boy, and not afraid."

"But I was afraid. It wouldn't be true."

He looked at me a little while then, unreadable expression, his lined eyes narrow. "Where is your brother?" he asked me, quietly, sounding confused.

"Nonus is in Cyprus," I told him. "Cassius, maybe he is not on the continent. Aulus, he is gone. Escha, I don't know."

"I don't know either," he said, but he seemed a little reassured, warming to me again after the funny moment of coolness. It is known among us that Leechtin does not accept that Escha is dead, and his body ruined.

"I will ask the gods for you," I said, unsure of what else to say to his confusion, to his grief. "Maybe I will ask Cupid first," tilting my head and winking, deeply sad for him, too deply.

"Oh that will be good," he smiled. "That will be good, Iovita."

It is strange for me to be in a position of comforting him. Matters are still so awkward between us. I am not sure how he wants for me to relate to him, because I am unwilling to be either confidant or friend. He took my hand and placed it against his face, which I am still nervous to touch. "Sir," I said, softly.

"Do you have everything you need?" he asked me.

"I do."

"There is nothing I might provide for you?"

"There isn't."

"Be good in your work," he said, tenderly, slipping his hand from mine slowly.

"That I can do," I told him.

The little master, our own flower of life, our little lotus, says that Leechtin often whispers that "This century has been too strange, and too long," and that he prays for a return to old ways or an upheaval to change the new. I fear that the gods listen to Leechtin more than us.

I prefer familiar patterns. It is still a comfort to play a role. He, the master, it is his duty to provide for me. Myself, as servant, it is my duty to minister to his house. If we are living together, this is still how it will be. It is beyond habit, or acceptance. It is how I am built, and not only for his pleasure. Service is how I can understand the world, and without it, I do not know my place. I prefer not to be confused about that, for existential terror is dangerous. But there was a time in my life where Leechtin demanded terror, and I remember it keenly, even though he attempts to minimize it in his account. There are faces he hides.

But I will mold myself a little to Leechtin's story, and go ahead two years. 

Certainly, there were small events that I remember in those two years after Escha arrived. Most notably were the love that grew between us boys, and our bond, and how Escha became more confident, though in his heart felt insecure of his position, and also that Vivacio's anxiety and resultant cruelty preyed upon us. Vivacio gave himself away through little signs that he wanted a place in the master's bed, and this queer neediness made him feel strangely superior to everyone else, as if offering up his body was in itself were some sort of virtue. We mocked him viciously, and the more his desire of fleshly things deranged him, the more comfort he took from whipping us. He took to visiting town after hours, in order to cool his overheated flesh, and even though Vasvius often went to town for the same reason, Vasvius was different. Vasvius was kind to us, and therefore a resource rather than a target, even as he grew cold to us and withdrew. 

I now know that Vasvius had turned to the blood by then, but the eye will only see what it understands, and explain away until it cannot anymore.

An impression grew in me that Escha had seen many homes in his few years. Even two years after entering the house for good, he would sometimes become preoccupied with cuddling up to me and insisting that he was special, and very perfect for the house, and insisting that the master loved him above all and wouldn't ever get rid of him. If teased in these moments he would crack like an egg, rendering him inconsolable for some time. He was intelligent and keen to know things, but part of him was too young for his age, and he had a quality of getting trapped in his own head that we hoped he would eventually grow out of. We tried not to coddle his feelings, but we felt compassion for his abuse, especially because we didn't yet know where he had come from or why.

On this day, Escha came to me as I was dressing to go to town. I picked him up and put him on my hip because he was red-faced, and I didn't want him to cry. "Rub your face here," I said, touching his cheek with my fingertip. "You've got dirt."

He rubbed, face increasingly red, and his eyes red-rimmed, too, from the threat of tears. 

"Don't cry," I told him. "Let's go into town. What are you up to? Are you busy? You're fine."

"Why going into town?" he asked, gathering the collar of my tunic into his fingers and letting the fabric go again. He gathered with his fingers as if counting files in a drawer, or making an inventory of counted stars in the sky.

"We've got to go to the weaver's, for toga cloth. There's a banquet."

"Vivacio is weaving toga cloth. He said he'd give me a kiss if I card wool for him," Escha said, making a motion as if he were holding a boiled egg, and biting the round tip of it off.

"Do you want an egg?"

"An egg," he said.

"If you come to town with me, I'll get you an egg."

"Haven't got pocket money," he said, nibbling his imaginary prize. "The master says he won't give money to me. I want some, though."

"I'll get one for you, because you are so pretty and so pure. Go to your Vasvius and see if he'll let you come."

"I'm supposed to go with Faya down to the water," he said, calling the master by their private name.

"The master is asleep. See if Vasvius will give you leave to come." I let him down and checked that the other boys were all right, washing down the atrium and the big clay pots, and seeing they were, Escha and I went walking down the road.

By that age, I had been put in charge of quite a few things, and my face had become familiar around the market stalls and forum, though Escha was allowed to go into town far less, and it all remained quite novel to him. But the older people especially loved to see him, in his nice white tunic and his blond hair. Sometimes I carried him because he couldn't walk long distances very well, on account of savage and repeated blows to the legs when he was toddling age, and he liked to tuck his head against my neck. At the age of seven, he was still small enough to carry fairly comfortably. He was so small for his age.

"Iovita, let me down, I want to see the Hercules," he told me, as we walked past the temple. "Take off your dagger so you can give it to the young priests to protect. So we can go in."

"Not today. There's too much work to do," I said, and took him directly to the weavers'. The whim fled him like a flock of birds.

These were old widows with husbands gone and buried, plying house work for a reasonable sum. 

"Salvete, mothers," I told them, entering the lower floor of their three-stacked apartment building. At midday, there was good light to see them, and Escha clung to my leg, afraid to be in the presence of muses and crones. He had been told scary stories of all kinds, but the ones about passion and fate scared him the most. 

But he relaxed after a little bit, as was usual for him, and one or other of the ladies gave him a bread while I talked price. I paid good silver for good work, and took away a bolt of finely weaved white wool, which we might have dyed and cut to spec. A few other items were on the offing, and we collected them, including Escha's boiled egg, which he peeled and saved the egg shell of in his little pouch in order to add to our compost. I could not carry him home, as I balanced a basket on my head, held steady with my hand, so he held my other hand as we walked the uneven paving.

"The mothers said that master should be married so he has his own wife to weave his wool," Escha said, offering me that to clarify.

"Who will he marry? It is easy to say that, but think of it. He is a foreign slavetrader living in one of the richest cities in the world. Whose daughter of significant worth will marry him? How could he make a good match? It is better for everyone if he does not try."

"That's what master says but, I think I would like a nice lady," he said, as if trying out the idea.

"What sort of lady?" I asked.

He shrugged, and his little hand twitched in mine. "Maybe just a slave," he said. "Maybe somebody like us?"

I sometimes wondered if he had any memories of his own mother, and small things like that have caused me to think that he did, in the way that a very small child can have memories. By touch, by smell. My own mother lived in Oblia, or I thought so then. I wonder if she killed herself, and yet I don't think enough of myself to think that selling me to serve my father's time would cause her to do it. 

"Siste," he said quietly, stop, "there is a rock in my shoe."

Back at the house I noticed the loom, where Vivacio had indeed been weaving, had been quietly removed. A shameful thing for him to do, the work of a lover, of a wife, and him not even high enough ranked to take initiative. I wiped my sweaty face with the back of my arm, the house so cool to my overheated skin. I thought of taking off my shoes, of lying down on the cool marble and the idea of my stomach muscles relaxing, of lying prone with my cheek pressed against the stone. 

In the dining room off the atrium, with its lower ceiling and red walls, its glass doors bordered in leafed gold, Vasvius, in wine-dark red tunic, had his eye on the tile, pulling couches so that they faced symmetrically. He was an old hand at banquets and other kinds of parties made for those who were client and made our master client. We would later oil ourselves and wax down our eyebrows. Vasvius would paint kohl beneath my eyes to make me look more exotic than I was, and paint my lips deeply red, nearly black, wreathe my hair in ivy. We were a house of mysteries and mysticism, and we must always shimmer and lure. I did not mind it at all, to play the part for the night of a heated boy who lingered in the mind and in the loins, as long as the wine did not flow too freely. When Vasvius saw me step down into the room he said, "Oh yes, the wool. I have been looking for you. Come and I will clip your hair. The master has made you praeceptor to the little ones for now, and you will assist Vivacio with table tonight. You'll need to be fitted. He'll see you. You are going to thank him."

My mouth moved but no words came out, my throat gripped with sudden wordless terror and breathtaking relief at the same time. 

"Do you need a clout?" he asked me, hands pressed together in silent congratulations. He knew that I had always wished to stay. Secretly I had believed that I could go to another house at any time, at my age, perhaps far away, perhaps cruel. "Close your mouth. A fly will go in."

"Did you do this?" I sputtered. "Did you honey his ear about me?"

"You will have to learn not to speak out of turn," he said, straightening a couch with his hip and reaching for me so that I would come closer. "I'm growing too old to strike children. It bruises my heart to hit you. It's my fault you drink so much."

"Are you going somewhere?" I asked him. "But he won't send you away after twenty years? Not after all this time?"

He smiled at me then, and I didn't know that he was already gone, and that at night he wept openly but silently, and begged my master for blood to drink that the master would only give my praeceptor but very rarely. 

I wanted to embrace Vasvius because I sensed a funny note of sadness, but in our house especially the hierarchy of slaves was terribly strict because our master so rarely revealed himself. Vasvius was certainly to us our little master then, and we weren't allowed to touch him unless he initiated it, and he very rarely did. I held out a hand to him though so he could ignore it, and thought of what it would be like if he were my brother, and I could affectionately run my fingers through his wild blond hair. Into my mind came unbidden what it would be like to break him, as if he were a horse as wild as I imagined he could secretly be, and it made my blood run cold, as if someone might have seen my thoughts. 

"Come along. There isn't much time. From now on, you really must show your best face. You are not used to being in the presence of your House, of the man who is that, and be on your best behavior. Do not embarrass me," Vasvius said.

But I was already overwhelmed, both breathing hard and out of breath. My eye caught a silver ring on Vasvius third finger, and not knowing what that meant in a culture of strict sumptuary law sent me into a panic, and my thoughts utterly scattered, dismembering my mind.

"Praeceptor," I started, but he stopped me, and he wanted silence the entire hour it took to fit me out and trim me up. I had never been touched by him so much, and by the time I realized he was pushing me back through the house to my fate, the touch of his fingers all over me had brought me nearly to tears. It was the most important day of my life. I felt every inch of myself tipped with gold, ablaze. I felt as if Mercury himself had whispered the news into my ear, and with his words the sound of wings, and wind. 

Stepping down into the atrium again, I saw cool red silk on the marble tile, heard the rumble of his voice, like a touch, and my head rolled back on my neck as if I had been kissed. I closed my eyes. 

"Bonum vesper, Dominus," good evening, I heard Vasvius say to the master, softly, his voice an unfamiliar tone. Lower, darker, thicker. 

A language I didn't recognize in answer, heavily sibilant, and I thought of the weaving of a shadow with a chill divorced from the warm daylight, the undulation of a snake beyond the veil of the real that I had seen my first night, and all of my pride and ego left me as if draining from my toes, leaving my head dizzy and empty. For very long, I had not thought of that night. Since then, except for very few times, all daily life had been completely mundane, and yet I felt cold, as if penetrated by the shadow.

"Unde es?" I heard, and the accent lingered on the "s", drawing it out as if it were a silver thread. Where are you from?

"Oblia," I said, my voice steady.

"Oblia," he repeated, and I heard the shifting of silk. "You are Iovita of the fifth regiment. You are praeceptor. Will you stay here and rely upon my body and my will?" he asked, vibrating the syllables with his accent.

"Yes," I said. "I have dreamed of it."

His words went into me, through me, and out of me. My head pulsed with them, and I began to sweat, helpless against the weakness of my body. 

And suddenly bloomed in my head there was the image of a man walking the desert, in a dark that my mortal body could not penetrate, but with the eyes given me I could know clearly. I saw him from a distance, with dark hair and deep color, beneath the great maw of widening sky, and too many stars, and only the pale light of half a moon, in a silky flood upon the sand. Behind him in the sand his footprints stretched back to meet me, and I knew that I must follow him, in his translucent linen, and long body, and when he looked back his face was too far away, but I knew that it was the master, and I knew that his green eyes were seeing me, and I knew that his lover was buried in the desert, and that he was taking me there, to show me the world that he had lost every night since it had happened, since his lover had passed away under the sky of Egypt. But I stood still and could not walk, and on the wind was invisible sand stinging me, and the stars too many, and in my head I wept, and called him by a name I could not know, and cannot remember, so that he would not go so far that I could not follow, for the further he left me, the more I felt a pulling in my shattered spirit. I shivered and made soft sounds in my throat. "Open your eyes," I heard, as if inside of myself. I could do nothing, I shook. He had possessed me. He was from the veil. For fear of crying out, I could not part my lips, but realized that they were already parted, and speaking words I could not hear.

"Iovita."

I opened them and the vision closed up and passed away from me again, leaving me whimpering to see his kohl-lined eyes there, in daylight, in red silk, and so different, his skin as pale as fleshscalded with lye, and I fear that I made a sound of devastation, in my throat, in my entire body, because I loved him. And he did not tell you that he grabbed me then, and pulled me to my knees in front of him by the wrists, and that the words he said he never spoke. He took my face between his strong, cold hands, and tipped his forehead against mine, and with no breath whispered against my skin, and we conversed like lovers, him drawing breath from me with his words, and his finger against my ear, his ruby lips close enough for me to kiss if I could find the strength, and I promised him everything, my entire life, my spirit, my body, and to die for him, to bleed, to come to him in the night and to be his with everything that I could give, all of my will and all of my soul. I promised and I promised, and felt the earth turning in my body, and my mind revolving, and wanting never to be released from his hands, and him inside of me, in my head, and whispering to me in a language I do not know, but understood so deeply.

And he comes to me these days casually in yoga pants with his hair up, and it is so queer that I can barely use my head. If he does not use me as master, I know not what to say. If only he were to throw me down and rip me apart. That would be just fine. Fine as fine as fine. I will use my lips. I will use my thighs. If only he would use me as he told me he would.

I fevered. I did as told. And I worked the banquet that ruined us, and listened to Vivacio choke on his blood with my hands over my ears.