A breath of air on my ear opened my eyes, a soft humming, in a clear high tone. With my eyes half-lidded, the sounds of the warm world came in — a dog barking far away, a whispered conversation somewhere in the house under bedcovers, the hushed rustle of linen on skin. The voice took in a deep breath, filling his lungs with air, and emptying them again. I turned my head, eyes closed, and felt his face above mine, ready to hum again.

        "Prostitute, is it you?" I asked. Quis ille est? Meretrix?

        "Come with me," he said softly. "Let go of the boy." Veni mecum.

        "Where are we going?" I asked, dizzy from sleep. I turned my face back, not having seen him. 

        Escha's hands were clutching my tunic, because he had woken up, too. I kissed his forehead, and he pushed himself against me, attached. He was protecting me. 

        "No songs, Iellus," I said. Noli cantere, Ielle.

        Escha whispered, "Noli cantere. Noli cantere. Illum odimus. Stultus est." We hate him. He's stupid.

        "Escha."

        "The stewards have gone. The children are afraid," Nataniellus said. "There is nothing for them to eat. These servants have taken your silver and stripped the gold and jewels from the shrine in the corridor. They've robbed you. You must tell me if you want praetorians to search them out."

        "Police. I have no business. I have no legitimacy in the city any longer. You're talking about police," I said, as if I were speaking to Escha, to a child. "Why would they help us without silver or gold?"

        "Nolite auxiliare," Escha said, against my tunic. They won't help us.

        "No business?" Nataniellus asked. 

        "Vasvius sold my interest to a high bidder. I have no stake now in the trade I have run in this city for these thirty years. Was he supposed to do it? No. I take it that is the denarii he stole."

        "What do I feed the children?" his voice trembled a little, and I touched Escha's hands to loosen his grip on me. 

        When I looked down, Escha's wide honeyed eyes were looking up at me. "Your eyes are green," he mouthed. "They are very green." 

        "Leave off me, child," I said. "Go to your brothers." As he scurried off, I saw that the entire left side of his head was crusted with blood. Sitting up, I found my right side was soaked through, though none had touched my hair or face. 

        "Why would he steal from you?" Nataniellus queried me, while I rubbed my face with my hands.

        It was warm morning, and the room seemed to glow with yellow light. Sleep left an aura on my vision, and when I turned my eyes on him, he seemed nervous and troubled.

        "I imagine he was protecting his second. Perhaps you know a thing or two about brothers in arms. Don't cry," I said. "There is money hidden."

        "May I touch you, Faya?" he asked. 

        I stood and stripped off the blooded tunic, tossing it away. In the large chest by the window, I found a fine long linen robe, of deep indigo, and wrapped myself in it. 

        "Please may I touch you?"

        "That is not necessary."

        "Not for you, for me," he said. "Faya. You are terribly selfish. I have known you now a year, and you have never once considered what I want. I thought it was because you thought me low, just a prostitute, but I've come here and seen that you are the same with everyone else." He took a deep breath in and out.

        "Do you hear the birds?" I asked him.

        "What are you talking about?"

        I turned to face him again. His face was twisted up as if he thought I'd gone crazy, eyes puffy and red from crying. When I went to him and folded my arms around him from the back, he sighed. "There are birds singing love songs in the tree near the kitchen window. I hear them. It's funny. It is very late in the year for love songs." His hair was many colors in the light, unbrushed. 

        "I thought I'll just go back home," he said. "I thought, if he murders that boy I'll just go home."

        I kissed the side of his neck, behind his earlobe, and his entire body quivered. His hands went to fists at his sides. A choked, near soundless cry came from him. "Is that what you want?" I asked. I kissed behind his ear, where the skin is like a soft velvet.

        "I can't hear birds, Faya."

        Touching his stomach through the thin fabric, touching the curve of his hipbones. "Do you know how hot your body feels to me?" I asked him. "When your heart beats fast and your skin heats, it is like touching flame. Calm down."

        "You said you didn't bring me here because you love me." He turned his face to meet my lips.

        "Don't kiss me, Nataniellus. Never kiss me unless I ask you."

        He asked me where I was from, and I told him Aleppo. He asked me where it was, and I touched my lips to his heated skin again. When I pressed my fingertips beneath his sternum, I felt the aggressive pulse of his heart beating blood into his stomach, into his viscera. It is a pulse point I do not have. I pressed my fingers to the place just above his navel, which pushed him back against me. He stuttered news of pain. "I don't hear birds," he said. "Are you alright?"

        "Alright?"

        "You seem different. You are swaying. Perhaps we should sit down."

        When I let go of him, he turned on me suddenly, and pressed his thumbs to my temples, pushing his fingers into my hair, kissed me, forced my startled lips apart with his tongue. Then he went still, startling me again. I said his name, but he did not answer. "Nataniellus?" I pulled back from him, holding him up with firm hands at his waist. His body had gone rigid, staring ahead. "Orpheus?" I studied his face for movement, for knowledge of me. He was as if possessed, hollow and frozen.

        He came back slowly after a time, breaking into a fine sweat, making soft clucking sounds with his tongue, licking his lips. 

        "Orpheus?" I asked, frightened that he was sick.

        "When? I can't today," he said, vacantly, shivering. 

        "What?"

        "No. Let go of me," he said.

        I let go and then quickly took him in hand again, as his knees buckled. "Please," I said. "I don't understand."

        Then he went rigid again, staring. A salty tear ran from his left eye, dragging kohl down his face. I wiped my finger after it, cleaning it. For all the time I had known him, he had been meticulous about being clean. I called him "lover" then, cupita. I said "Mei carus?" my darling, and shook him and whimpered. I had never seen it happen to him before.

        "I can't work today," he said, vacant eyes fixed on something distant. 

        I held onto him, wondering what spirit he was talking to, past, present, or future, troubled. 

        "The last time, he hit my face," he said.

        "Who hit you, Iellus?" 

        "What?" he asked, body relaxing, looking at me. 

        "You said he hit your face, Iellus."

        "Who?" he asked, looking at me as if I were talking nonsense. 

        I touched his forehead with my palm, and then with the back of my hand. He smiled benignly, eyes soft. I squeezed the muscles in his upper arm, which had gone so hard and unyielding, and they were as normal again, twitching a little from the strain. He denied any strangeness, trying to make me stop talking about it, and I did not want to hear his denial, so I kissed him as he had kissed me.

        "I knew there was a man in you," he whispered, digging his fingernails into my lower back and dragging them upwards, which reminded me of Vivi, dying. "What?" he asked, seeing the change in my expression. He slipped his hands inside my indigo robe, pressed his body against mine. He ran his fingers up and down the skin of my bare back, sighing against my neck. "Don't be sad," he said. "Don't worry."

        "There is money hidden beneath the back garden. There are clay amphorae buried. There is also money in that chest there, beneath my things. There is gold jewelry to sell, which I intended to give the children upon their selling, so that they might have some security in the world. Sell it all, Iellus."

        "You would sell those children?" he asked.

        "Their lot in life is to live in the world of women, perhaps stewards in their time. One hopes to refine them and offer them as well-skilled household slaves, which may be made tutors for patrician children or otherwise. But there is no selling them now. Without regard for my name in the market, there is little ability to draw what they are worth. There is more money to be made trading on their gold." Fear had made me chatty.

        "So you are really a slaver," he said, running his lips over my collarbones, hair tickling my chin. "How much did you pay for me?"

        "You're shaking Iellus. Give the money to Iovita and he will take the children to market. They might find what they like to eat there. Please eat something."

        "I shudder over your beauty," he whispered.

        "Noli cantere." No songs.

        "Would you leave me so?" he asked. "Kiss me again and it will be enough." He made some sounds, cooing at me. "Faya, I dreamed of being so close to you."

        "Dream of me?" I asked him. "Iellus, don't talk love and tell lies in it's service. I don't require it of you. I paid the money so that you would be free of your old master, but I am not your master now. You are a freedman. I offer you a place in my house because you suit the role."

        "You're so strange," he whispered, sucking on supple skin. "Are you a strix? Are there other striges? If you drink my blood a little, will you then talk to me freely? Do you come from the underworld or are you just a man with stories? Are you a shade who drinks the blood of animals? If I touch you the right way, will you love me until I am dead?" His fingers massaged the muscles in my back. His skin was flushed with heat, heating me. "I am Endymion kissing the moon."

        "I don't love you," I said.

        "That's not the kind of love I mean," he whispered, sly. But he was still shaking from before, and still twitching a little, which frightened me. "Honestly, you are adorable and I must be careful about you," he said. "I used to get upset that you would not respond to my touch. But I think that it's not me at issue, and thinking that, I am alright again. Surely, you feel some pleasure in other ways."

        "Iellus, take the children to market."

        "Listen, I'm free now. Don't order me around. If I want to make you moan out in pleasure, I will. I will discover all of your secrets."

        "Iellus, take the children to market," I repeated. "You're thin. Eat. Ask Escha to take you to the baker. He knows the good one personally. That baker is always giving him things for free."

        "Do you like children?" he asked me.

        "What?" I asked, startled.

        "You keep that boy close. Is there something about him?"

        I pushed him away roughly and he stumbled to the wall, legs still unsteady. 

        "Oh," he breathed. "Oh, no, I'm so sorry."

        "That boy is as my own child," I said. 

        "I didn't know it," he begged, trying to meet my eyes. "Of course it's clear now. Please forgive me."

        "How could you think it?" I asked, crossing my arms over myself. Without his body near, it suddenly felt cold.

        "Oh look how I've upset you. Faya, where I come from, please understand. It's only that I have been used that way myself."

        "And do you think I have much in common with those men, Iellus?"

        "No I don't. Faya, understand. Just understand, ok? You are different from all of the others. A mystery. I only want to know you. You have raised me to your equal, but I am still low," he said. When I didn't respond, he gushed, pushing the words out of his body, stricken. "Forgive me if I say things that show my upbringing. Forgive me. I am just a whore and I have always been. When I offend you, call me such, as you have. I accept it. This mouth is only good for sucking and kissing. My words have no value. My mind is corrupted. Don't be so hurt. Your face is like a knife. Please tell me what I can do to make good."

        "I want you to eat. You are too thin."

        He nodded, struggling to stand on weak knees. 

        "Here," I said, taking a gold bangle from around my forearm.

        He reached out a tremoring hand for it, making sorry humming in his throat.

        "Wear it or they will think you a slave at market. You are patrician now."

        "No, I'm not I'll never be," he said.

Later on, Iovita told me that at market, Nataniellus's old master had hired praetorians to grab him when he appeared, and that an attempt had been made to snatch him. He told me they pulled his hair and tried to drag him away, but that Nataniellus had bit at them brutally and scratched them and ran. "They demand more denarii from you, because you are ruined. They say that you have no reputation and they are not obligated to honor the deal you struck, because you have no honor to regard. That is what they said. They said they will come here and take him if you do not pay them." 

        "I hear you, Iovita. Thank you. Do you have bread? Did you buy some?"

        "Yes, dominus. As much as the children could carry."

        "Make sure he eats. Look after Nataniellus, Iovita."

        "With my whole soul, dominus," he said, sincere.

        I went into the garden and dug for the denarii with my fingers.